Democracy in Crisis

The amazing person and phenomenon called Greta Thunberg can be looked at from many perspectives. What connects them all is the energies of hope. Thus, for instance, her own personal story and what drives her so passionately – and scientifically – at the age of only 16. Or, how she is challenging the entire global establishment as a youth leader not allowed to vote herself but demanding that decision-makers take into account the millions and millions she speaks for as well as the yet unborn generations. That’s a non-contractual, non-reciprocal way of thinking foreign to Western culture’s “I do something for you if/when you do something for me”. And you can’t ask something in return from the yet unborn. Or, how the role she plays now makes visible and catapults a fundamentally moral criticism into the political discourse where it hasn’t existed, I would say, for decades. Or, how her...

Nobel Laureate and TFF Associate Mairead Maguire requests UK Home Office permission to visit her friend Julian Assange whom this year she has nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize ‘I want to visit Julian to see he is receiving medical care and to let him know that there are many people around the world who admire him and are grateful for his courage in trying to stop the wars and end the suffering of others’ Thursday 11th April, will go down in history as a dark day for the Rights of humanity, when Julian Assange, a brave and good man, was arrested, by British Metropolitan Police, forcibly removed without prior warning, in a style befitting of a war criminal, from the Ecuadorian Embassy, and bundled into a police van. It is a sad time when the UK Government at the behest of the United States Government, arrested Julian Assange, a...

M. K. Gandhi on democracy The jaws of power “The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.” John Adams, (1735-1826) According to the Nuremberg Principles, the citizens of a country have aresponsibility for the crimes that their governments commit. But to preventthese crimes, the people need to have some knowledge of what is going on. Indeed, democracy cannot function at all without this knowledge, What are we to think when governments make every effort to keep their actions secret from their own citizens? We can only conclude that although they may call themselves democracies, such governments are in fact oligarchies or dictatorships. At the end of World War I, it was realized that secret treaties had been responsible for its outbreak, and an effort was made to ensure that diplomacy would...

The icon’s legacy is no longer secure, but he anticipated much about our current political moment By Pankaj Mishra January 11, 2019 In 2015, in South Africa, where Mohandas Gandhi lived from 1893 to 1914, a statue of him was defaced by protesters. The following year, the University of Ghana agreed to remove Gandhi’s statue from its campus, after an online campaign with the (misspelled) hashtag #Ghandimustfall charged the Indian leader with racism against black Africans. Compared with other recent targets of political iconoclasts—stalwarts of the Confederacy and Cecil Rhodes—Gandhi seems an unlikely symbol of racial arrogance. Nelson Mandela claimed that Gandhi’s tactics offered “the best hope for future race relations”; Martin Luther King, Jr., held Gandhi up as a model; decades before that, black activists such as Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., and Benjamin Mays were enthralled by the phenomenon of an Indian leading people of color in the campaign...

In the Western world, there is a constant debate about democracy. In the US the Democrats charge quite correctly that the House’s constituencies are gerrymandered against them. Then there’s the insoluble issue of the Senate’s anti-democratic bias where its numbers are tilted against the Democrats by the fact that rural, less populated, states which tend to be conservative, elect two senators, just as do the Democratic-inclined, heavily populated, states. In Britain, the country is riven by the Brexit debate. A referendum was held two and a half years ago when voters were given the choice of “Remain” or “Leave”. The “Leavers” won by a small margin and the country has been in political turmoil ever since. Now with Prime Minister Theresa May’s exit plans on the rocks the debate has become vitriolic. There are calls for a new referendum to reverse the previous vote. It’s likely to happen since Mrs...

Et forkert klik på ”del” ikonet på Facebook skal fremover give en staf på op til 12 års fængsel, hvis det står til den danske regering, fremgår det i et nyt lovforslag. Det afhænger selvfølgelig af omstændighederne. Eller rettere af en bestemt omstændighed. Den hedder Rusland. Forestil dig, at du har en kritisk holdning til NATO, og du læser en nyhed på Facebook eller Twitter, som du synes er værd at dele med dit netværk. Du deler nyheden. Det viser sig, at nyheden er fabrikeret af den russiske efterretningstjeneste, der har haft til hensigt at påvirke den offentlige debat i Danmark. Nu skal du forklare retten, at du ikke bevidst ifølge lovforslaget har forsøgt at påvirke ifølge ”den almene opfattelse af NATO-samarbejdet negativt”. Lykkedes du ikke med det, kan du se frem til op til 12 års fængsel, hvis du delte nyheden det under et valg. Ovenstående er desværre ikke...

  We must end this Russophobic insanity   By Jack F. Matlock, Jr. June 4, 2018 That saying – often misattributed to Euripides – comes to mind most mornings when I pick up The New York Times and read the latest “Russiagate” headlines, which are frequently featured across two or three columns on the front page above the fold. This is an almost daily reminder of the hysteria that dominates our Congress and much of our media. Originally published by The Nation on June 1, 2018, here The New York Times, of course, is not the only offender. Its editorial attitude has been duplicated or exaggerated by most other media outlets in the United States, electronic and print. Unless there is a mass shooting in progress, it can be hard to find a discussion of anything else on CNN. Increasingly, both in Congress and in our media, it has been...

  By Tibor Várady April 19, 2018 Some introductory remarks concerning the use of the term “populism” The term “populism” is becoming increasingly popular in public discourse. It is difficult to deny – and I have no intention to try to deny – that the designation tackles (or tries to tackle) a serious problem. But wide use has made it more and more difficult to discern what ground is actually covered by this term. The question also arises, whether more coherent (even if contested) notions framed in social sciences may succeed in reining in careless use of the term “populism” in public discourse. A couple of years ago I was noting various contexts in which the term “populism” was used – particularly in the press. For instance, the Hungarian Népszabadság on May 2, 2009, cites the Slovak “SME” comparing the Czech and Hungarian government crisis, and concludes that “What is...

  By Peter Frankopan April 15, 2018 British historian Peter Frankopan, author of the bestseller “The Silk Roads: A New History of the World” paints an unexpected portrait of our Western civilization and the way we perceive our position in the world: old Europe is convinced to be the best, most prosperous and safest region. Europeans think that they have a good position in the actual world, absolutely denying the new world order that is currently happening. On YouTube here The power is shifting from West to East. Until today, the world history was a western-centered enterprise – based on the belief that everyone should be like us, or at least should want to be. According to Frankopan, the West has completely alienated itself from the rest of the world. Old Europe is on the decline and the economic prosperity in Asia, Africa and South America is over. We have...

As demagogic leaders with popular approval or at least acquiescence dominate the political process of several important ‘democratic’ states questions need to be asked about the core or indispensable content of democracy. Other states seek the imprimatur of ‘democracy’ but limit drastically the choices open to the citizenry or proclaim themselves ‘a Jewish state’ or ‘an Islamic Republic,’ and are more accurately regarded as an ‘technocracy or ‘theocracy.’ The legitimating impact of being a democracy should be based on something more objective than the language of self-identification, that is, claiming that we are a democracy because we describe our governing arrangements as a democracy, nothing more, nothing less. Procedural and Republican Democracy The idea of ‘free elections’ is certainly a prerequisite. It is not possible to think of a political system as democratic if it does not allow its citizens to choose without fear or interference among a wide range of candidates...

  In the U.S., carrying out military interventions abroad has undermined freedom at home   By Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall   Originally published by Stanford University Press blog here The Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal continues to be front-page news. According to current reports Cambridge Analytica obtained private Facebook data, which it used to send pro-Trump material to targeted Facebook users. These reports have been met with outrage in Washington, D.C. The Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation and U.S. senators have called for Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, to testify in front of Congress. Calls by Congress for increased oversight to prevent private companies from surveilling people are extremely ironic given that they themselves recently renewed a section of the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which allows for the warrantless surveillance of Americans. Issues regarding the appropriate use of government surveillance are also at the center of...

    On March 17, 2018, New York Times posted “How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions.” Here is the background as covered by Washington Post. Here is an in-depth undercover investigation by Channel 4 News that reveals how Cambridge Analytica secretly campaigns in elections across the world. Bosses are filmed talking about using bribes, ex-spies, fake IDs and sex workers.     Jan Oberg comments We’ve heard a lot about Russian meddling in the US Presidential election process. We hear daily media stories of just how brilliant Russia’s performance is in the ongoing media/propaganda war. This documentary is deeply disturbing because it reveals the utter decay in business and political ethics that now influence elections processes in what was supposed to be democracies. It seems plausible to me that the pointing of fingers at Russia – which of course also use media manipulations – is a kind...