Viewing Authoritarianism

ADDED 01/03/2019

Nicaragua’s Ortega pushes ahead with crackdowns on dissent

FROM 12/23/2018 | The Republic

BY CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — In barely a week’s time, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has cemented the authoritarian reputation of his government by shuttering the offices some of the few remaining resonant voices of dissent and expelling the international monitors documenting his government’s alleged crimes. The heavy-handed raids on the country’s most prominent nongovernmental organizations and the […]

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ADDED 01/03/2019

Fascism is thriving again in Italy – and finding its home on the terraces

FROM 12/29/2018 | The Guardian

BY Tobias Jones

The kind of racist abuse aimed at Napoli’s Kalidou Koulibaly is commonplace in Italian football – and points to a wider malaise. This week has shown, once again, that Italian football has a deep-seated problem with racism and fascism. At the Boxing Day game at the San Siro stadium in Milan, the black Napoli defender Kalidou […]

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ADDED 01/03/2019

Liberia: The Unveiled Dictator – 20 Keen Observations and Interpretations of President Weah’s Statue

FROM 12/28/2018 | Front Page Africa

BY FPA

MONROVIA – In one of my latest articles titled “The early signs and symptoms of Dictatorship under ex-Soccer Legend George M. Weah”, I outlined almost ten (10) signs and symptoms. As though these justifiable signs and symptoms were enough to prove me right, another vicious sign has emerged in less than a year. This time around, […]

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ADDED 12/29/2018

Rising populism threatens LGBTQ in West and around the world

FROM  | Globe and Mail

BY JOHN IBBITSON

In Poland two months ago, more than 200 schools planning to hold a “Rainbow Friday” to promote tolerance for sexual minorities had to cancel the event, under orders from the increasingly authoritarian government’s Minister of Education. In the United States, as part of the Trump administration’s attack on transgender rights, the Department of Health and […]

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ADDED 12/29/2018

Facebook is not equipped to stop the spread of authoritarianism

FROM 12/24/2018 | TechCrunch

BY Yael Grauer

After the driver of a speeding bus ran over and killed two college students in Dhaka in July, student protesters took to the streets. They forced the ordinarily disorganized local traffic to drive in strict lanes and stopped vehicles to inspect license and registration papers. They even halted the vehicle of the chief of Bangladesh Police Bureau of Investigation and found that […]

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ADDED 12/29/2018

Indonesia’s president turns tough

FROM 12/24/2018 | UCA News

BY KEITH LOVEARD

Joko Widodo was welcomed as a fresh breeze when he stood for election as president of Indonesia in 2014. A stranger to the elites that had long dominated politics, he became a media darling by talking to ordinary people in the street, in what quickly became known as blusukan, roaming around.Now, facing re-election next April, questions are […]

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ADDED 12/19/2018

THE UNDERLYING PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL RADICALISM

FROM  | Pacific Standard

BY TOM JACOBS

New research finds radicals are less able to recognize when they’re wrong, even in a task having nothing to do with politics. Radicalization is surely one of the scariest words of the 21st century. After the 9/11 attacks, much effort was devoted to discovering how terrorist organizations convince people to die for their religion. More recently, angry demands […]

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ADDED 12/17/2018

How The US Left Failed Brasil

FROM 12/10/2018 | Brasilwire

BY Brian Mier, Sean T. Mitchell, and Bryan Pitts

On November 29, 2018, the socialist magazine and news site Jacobin co-sponsored a public interview with Fernando Haddad, the 2018 presidential candidate of Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT). The former São Paulo mayor and federal education minister was introduced at Manhattan’s People’s Forum by Jacobin’s founding editor, Bhaskar Sunkara. To a packed house, Sunkara praised Haddad and the governments he […]

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ADDED 12/17/2018

The Heresy of White Christianity

FROM 12/10/2018 | Truthdig

BY Chris Hedges

There are, as Cornel West has pointed out, only two African-Americans who rose from dirt-poor poverty to the highest levels of American intellectual life—the writer Richard Wright and the radical theologian James H. Cone. Cone, who died in April, grew up in segregated Bearden, Ark., the impoverished son of a woodcutter who had only a sixth-grade education. With […]

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ADDED 12/17/2018

Turning tyranny into a client: How McKinsey is helping the rise of authoritarian regimes like China & Russia

FROM 12/17/2018 | Economic Times

BY Walt Bogdanich

This year’s McKinsey & Co. retreat in China was one to remember. Hundreds of the company’s consultants frolicked in the desert, riding camels over sand dunes and mingling in tents linked by red carpets. Meetings took place in a cavernous banquet hall that resembled a sultan’s ornate court, with a sign overhead to capture the […]

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ADDED 12/17/2018

Heated protests against overtime, court reform

FROM  | Budapest Business Journal

BY BBJ

Anti-government protesters took to the streets of Budapest after Wednesdayʼs uproarious parliamentary session, protesting the passing of new laws governing overtime and the establishment of administrative courts, with more demonstrations planned today, according to multiple reports. Demonstrations started almost immediately after the completion of voting on the laws. Initially a few hundred protesters closed down Margaret […]

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ADDED 12/12/2018

An estimated 15,000 have marched to counter a far right rally in London

FROM 12/09/2018 | DAZED

BY Thom Waite

Counter-protesters have gathered today to oppose a Tommy Robinson-led, Brexit-based Ukip march in London. Groups opposing the far right, such as Unite Against Fascism and Momentum, are leading the opposition march with backing from figures such as Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell. In a Twitter video, political commentator Owen Jones pointed out that the number of counter-protesters […]

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