Democracy – local

By Biljana Vankovska – Билјана Ванковска Recently a short statement (from a longer interview) that “Macedonia and Bosnia are post-Yugoslav states that, in fact, are not states because Bosnia is a protectorate of some kind and Macedonia is a type of an ambiguously collapsed state which never united in order to be able to fall apart” echoed as an earthquake with the public. Even “Vodno” [President’s office] was visibly upset and angered at the statement of one of the most authoritative professors and public intellectuals from the area of former Yugoslavia, Zarko Puhovski. He is one step away of being labeled persona non grata. The very fact that part of the establishment dramatically took to heart a media statement of a professor from a third country, as if said by an influential political factor or a center or power, is a clear indication of the accuracy of the thesis that...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> The Germany of the victorious Angela Merkel, the second most powerful political leader in the world, is the peacenik nation of the West. But it is also the quasi-authoritarian keeper of the “austerity” that uses its economic clout to impose its standards on the rest of Europe, reminding some southern European countries of the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler that imposed a sort of common market on its captured nations. We may like the one and detest the other but Germany, for better or worse, is at the moment a package deal. Germans themselves would like to shed the responsibilities of the second and concentrate on the first, encouraging Europe to use its underlying strength to do good and bring peace to the world. After all, not only is this the land of Hitler, his war and his Holocaust, it is the land of Bach and Beethoven which produced,...

There is something particularly distressing about the ongoing debate on authorizing an internationally illegal and immoral military attack on Syria: a show of political support on the right. Such a ‘coming together’ of some of the center and much of the right in the American Congress has been sadly absent during Obama presidency until now, whether the issue was health, taxes, social services, keeping the government running, and immigration. And this support emerges on the rare occasion when a majority of American citizens, not known for their cosmopolitan sentiments or affection for the UN Charter, oppose attacking Syria, as was the British Parliament, and as is public opinion throughout Europe. In such a setting, it is not only international law and the UN are being repudiated in a war/peace situation, but the whole fabric of democratic accountability to law and the judgment of the people. At least we can conclude...

By Farhang Jahanpour September 1, 2013 In his most statesmanlike statement, a short while ago (31 August 2013) President Barack Obama announced that he would seek Congress’s approval before ordering military action against Syria. After all the hype about an imminent strike, this statement was a breath of fresh air, and it has renewed many people’s faith in President Obama. Not only would any other action have been against international law, it would have even been against the US Constitution that gives Congress the right to declare war, except in emergencies. That right had been usurped by a number of recent presidents who exceeded their executive prerogative. The Congress will be back in session during the second week of September and this delay provides a breather and an opportunity for cooler heads to prevail, and hopefully the chance to find a comprehensive solution to the Syrian crisis. However, it is...

President Obama’s August 31st remarks from the White House Rose Garden will long be remembered for their strangeness, but the final interpretation of their significance will have to await months if not years. There are three dimensions, at least, that are worth pondering: 1) seeking Congressional authorization for a punitive military attack against Syria in support of the treaty prohibition on recourse to chemical weapons in an armed conflict; 2) reconciling any endorsement of an attack by Congress with United States obligations under international law and with respect to the United Nations and its Charter; 3) assessing the degree to which American war making prerogatives continue to operate within an unacceptable domain of American exceptionalism. In framing the issues at stake Obama set forth the fundamental policy choices in a rather incoherent manner:

The U.S. Government rains drone missiles on civilian human targets anywhere in the world, continues to operate Guantanamo in the face of universal condemnation, whitewashed Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and the torture memos, committed aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan, and invests billions to sustain its unlawful global surveillance capabilities. Still, it has the audacity to lecture the world about ‘norm enforcement’ in the wake of the chemical weapons attack in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus. Someone should remind President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry that credibility with respect to international law begins at home and ends at the United Nations.

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> Fifty years ago Martin Luther King made his earth-shattering “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Is there anybody who watches and listens to it on YouTube not moved to the soles of their shoes? I’ve heard it a hundred times and still it stirs me. His dream that one day his children would “not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character” is one of the greatest lines in all oratory. The south of the US, he said, was “sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression”. Within ten years of the end of America’s civil war, fought over the issue of slavery, southern white Democrats had established state constitutions that stripped black citizens of their newly won political rights. Terrorist groups like the Klu Klux Klan destroyed black...

The Orwellian features of the military takeover in Egypt have received attention, although the use of language to evade unwanted truth continues because incentives to do so persist. For this reason, Washington has remained unwilling to call what happened in Egypt on July 3rd as a coup, despite its unmistakable character. The nature of Egypt’s coup has daily become more and more evident. It is now clear that not only was the takeover properly described as coup, but it has turned out to be a particularly bloody coup that is now being reinforced by a total lockdown of opposition forces and democratic options, including even dissenting opinions.

I am posting on this blog below two important texts that deserve the widestpublic attention and deep reflection in the United States and elsewhere.I would stress the following: • the extraordinary disconnect between the impunity of Bush, Cheney,Rumsfeld, Yoo, and others who authorized and vindicated the practiceof torture, were complicit in crimes against humanity, and supportedaggressive wars against foreign countries and the vindictive renderingof ‘justice’ via criminal prosecution, harsh treatment, and overseashunts for Snowden and Assange, all individuals who acted selflessly out of concernfor justice and the rights of citizens in democratic society to be informedabout governmental behavior depicting incriminating information kept secret to hideresponsibility for the commission of crimes of state and awkward diplomacy. A perverse justice dimension of the Manning case is well expressed inthe statement below of the Center of Constitutional Rights “It is a travestyof justice that Manning who helped bring to light the criminality of...

The drift toward autocracy: It is not just one thing that should worry us about the authoritarian tendencies of the Obama presidency, but one thing after another. The cumulative effect of it all. The latest sign of the times was the August 19th detention of David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald’s partner, at Heathrow Airport under the British anti-terrorist law for nine hours. His laptop, cell phone, and other electronic devices were also confiscated, and presumably examined. We need to wonder what is so frightening about ‘the Snowden documents’ that it induces these flagrant intrusions on the privacy and confidentiality of journalists, and now even their associates who are not known to be accomplices. President Obama keeps reassuring Americans, and indeed the world, that he shares a concern for protecting elemental rights, and yet he seems to spare no means to move against disclosures of information that seems awkward for the United...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> The military’s crackdown in Egypt was foolish. Democracy is not. Without democracy there is no way of arbitrating the clash of interests, the demands and beliefs in this gravely disturbed society. The military/civilian government, instead of resolving to break the back of the Muslim Brotherhood and thus, counter-productively, drive it underground, should speed ahead with a fast re-write of those clauses of the constitution that offend liberals and secularists – on the role of women and the place of shari’a law – and then immediately call an election open to all. All this could and should be done within three months at the most. It is highly unlikely that the Brotherhood would win this time but if they did they should be allowed their victory – as long as they promise the present interim government not to use their position to re-create the kind of rule that was the...

Now that Snowden has been given temporary asylum in Russia for a year, attention in the drama has shifted in two directions, although overshadowed at the present by the horrific happenings in Egypt and Syria. The Snowden issues remain important, and it is too soon to turn aside as if the only question was whether the U.S. Government would in the end, through guile and muscle, gain control of Snowden. The issues that should continue to occupy us are as follows: • interpreting the negative impact on U.S.-Russia relations; • the claim that if Edward Snowden is a sincere whistle-blower he will now, despite asylum, voluntarily return to the United States to tell his story in open court so as to answer charges that he is guilty of criminal espionage and conversion of government property. As before, to grasp this post-asylum phase of the Snowden drama a few aspects of...