By Jonathan Power January 16th 2018 Is democracy in decline? If you talk about the quality of democracy the answer is clearly yes. The US, the world’s first and most important democracy- although at the beginning a limited democracy for white men only – is in trouble. President Donald Trump has brought old problems […]
Shock. It’s a word that has come up a lot since November – for obvious reasons.I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about shock. Ten years ago, I published “The Shock Doctrine,” an investigation that spanned four decades from Pinochet’s U.S.-backed coup in 1970s Chile to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I noticed a brutal and […]
By Jan Oberg • Message sent to Facebook in response to its blocking attempt and change of algorithm, both serious restricting my freedom of communication. Blocking personal messages to friends Yesterday it was my birthday and roughly 500 people sent me thoughts, pictures and good wishes – also for the international peace issues […]
By Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini In Iran today, over 20 people have been killed in the streets and two young men are dead from unknown causes after being detained in prison. An estimated 3,700 others have been arrested across the country, most of them under the age of 25. In Tehran the families of detainees are […]
By William Bowles • Before I began this essay I read through some of my past forays that mentioned climate change and capitalism, the first I think, being in 2006 where I opined in a piece on the ‘War on Terror’: Perhaps the impending climate catastrophe as well as the genocidal actions of the US […]
By Juan Cole Fascism as a political ideology is difficult to define, in part because it usually contains a big dose of populism, and the content of populism differs from people to people Via juancole.com In my view Mussolini’s fascism in Italy is a fair exemplar of the phenomenon. One characteristic fascist societies have in […]
By John Scales Avery Introduction This is a collection of biographical sketches showing people whose wise voices from the past can help to guide us today. All of the women and men, brief glimpses of whose lives and ideas are portrayed here, gave a high place to compassion. None of them was a slave […]
By Jake Lynch • “Free elections and free markets” represent “the single sustainable model for national success”. So declared the US National Security Strategy published by the Administration of George W Bush in 2002. It’s a document better known for the novelty of its proposed variation on the traditional UN provision for the legal use […]
By Johan Galtung Farewell Seminar SCAR, George Mason University, Arlington-VA 6 Dec 2017 • Two basic institutions in Western history and individual lives: Christianity offering Salvation to those following Laws, Commandments, and Science offering Truth to those who believe in scientific laws. After Enlightenment ushered in a godless world, one is waning and the other […]
By David Kline A year ago, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi (sha-oh-me) had fallen from the world’s most valuable unicorn to a “unicorpse.” Sales plunged in 2016, pushing the company from first to fifth place among China’s smartphone makers. No firm had ever come back from a wound that severe in the trench warfare of […]