Photo credit: Donald Trump at a rally in Montoursville, Pennsylvania. Source: AFP/Getty Images/sbs.com The Frankfurt School on the appeal of authoritarianism – and how to counteract it. By Charles H. Clavey* November 5, 2020 A number of recent books have put the methods of the social sciences in the service of understanding Trump, his movement, […]
Peter Isackson November 10, 2020 The chaos of this year’s election may well be enough to dispel all remaining illusions about American democracy. A functioning democracy requires an educated, informed population that understands its role in the processes that define how the democratic nation is governed. Ordinary citizens have two opportunities for actively participating in […]
Richard Falk November 9, 2020 The victory by the Biden/Harris ticket in the 2020 American National Elections are basically good news for the country and the world, although not as good as expected (by pollsters or enthusiasts) or nearly as decisive as desirable given the dreadfully regressive behavior of Trump and the Republican Party over […]
Brilliant collage by unknown creator If Biden has, in fact, received so many more votes, why is the CNN-led media flock in such a hurry to declare him the winner? Is it the media’s job to decide the winner in a democracy? How will Trump and his sympathisers, about half of the people, react to […]
Jan Oberg November 4, 2020 In the early morning Europe time/late night in the US, I had an opportunity to comment on the presidential elections in the United States, together with journalist Jeff Brown in Paris. Here we go… If you like this type of discussions which are certainly different from the – uncritical – […]
By Johan Galtung – TFF Associate October 23, 2020 This paper was written in 2015. Republished here on the occasion of Galtung’s 90th birthday, October 24, 2020. It was originally published at TMS, Transcend Media Service 1. Definitions and Hypotheses: An Overview Definition: An empire is a transborder Center-Periphery system, in macro-space and in macro-time, […]
John Steppling October 7, 2020 Some books demand slower reading than others. Ed Curtin’s new book is such a case. But then this assemblage of essays, many published elsewhere, is a corrective to the growing intoxication with technology, with the surveillance and the policing it is being used for, and to what Jonathan Crary wrote […]
Collected by Jan Oberg October 6, 2020 Stephen Frand Cohen was an American scholar of Russian studies. His academic work concentrated on modern Russian history since the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia’s relationship with the United States. Cohen was a contributing editor to The Nation magazine, published and partially owned by his wife Katrina vanden Heuvel. […]
New cold war? Chinese soldiers march in Moscow on Victory Day, 24th June 2020 © PAVEL GOLOVKIN/POOL/EPA-EFE/ After the long stand-off against communism, victory seemed as total as it was sudden. But the west has since fractured and is now losing prestige and influence – does the reversal expose a moral defeat? Anatol Lieven in […]
Fig. 1: From the Collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the Collapse of Our Inner Walls in 2020. Image by Kelvy Bird By Otto Scharmer October 3, 2020 We are living in a moment of tectonic shift in society. Something changed when we all watched the same images — 8 minutes and 46 […]