ADDED 03/22/2018
FROM 03/18/2018 | The Intercept
BY Carol Schaeffer
A WEEK AND A HALF after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, Jason Reza Jorjani took the stage at a white supremacist conference in Washington, D.C. Richard Spencer gave him an awkward hug and pat on the back before he shuffled to the podium and spoke into the microphone. “In light of the outcome […]
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ADDED 03/22/2018
FROM 03/20/2018 | Foreign Policy in Focus
BY Conn Hallinan
More than a quarter of a century ago, much of the European center-left made a course change, edging away from its working class base, accommodating itself to the globalization of capital, and handing over the post-World War II social contract to private industry. Whether it was the “New Labor” of Tony Blair in Britain or Gerhard […]
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ADDED 03/16/2018
FROM | The Guardian - Australia
BY Scott Ludlam
Australia’s accelerating militarisation and erosion of civil liberties must be resisted. There’s an old aphorism about the best way to boil a frog which holds that if that’s your thing, you sicko, you should turn the temperature up very, very slowly. Shock the frog with a sharp enough temperature increase and she’ll jump right out […]
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ADDED 03/16/2018
FROM 03/08/2018 | The Nation
BY Katha Pollitt
Some on the left are still waving away the inconvenient facts that don’t fit with their politics. When will we really know what happened with Russia and the 2016 election? The story lines proliferate so quickly that it’s a full-time job following them all. Quick: How did the Democratic memo refute the Nunes memo? Identify: […]
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ADDED 03/16/2018
FROM 03/14/2018 | Medium
BY Robert Greenfield IV
Maduro’s new Petro token is consolidating power and crowdfunding oppression. “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” ― Simone Weil Last year, token sales raised approximately $5.6 billion. The crypto-method of crowdfunding has opened the floodgates to decentralized funding, which […]
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ADDED 03/08/2018
FROM | Ahval News
BY Michael Koplow
As I previously wrote, there are many similarities between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. But despite these shared attributes and the fact that they have both dealt with ongoing corruption charges and investigations, Israel’s future will not look like Turkey’s present irrespective of whether or not Netanyahu is able to […]
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ADDED 03/08/2018
FROM 03/08/2018 | Slate
BY YASCHA MOUNK
He is following the same playbook as other authoritarian populists around the world. He’s just bad at it—so far. A week after the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 dead and 14 injured, Donald Trump publicly scolded members of his own party: “They have great power over you […]
see sourceADDED 03/08/2018
FROM 03/08/2018 | Budapest Beacon
BY Staff
“If you don’t have a free and pluralistic press that is conveying messages on different sides of issues and which is actively critical of the government and its policies, then democracy starts to be meaningless. If people are just fed a steady diet of pro-government propaganda by media sources either controlled by the government or […]
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ADDED 03/08/2018
FROM | ABC News
BY Jim Gomez, Associated Press
The Philippines‘ embattled Supreme Court chief justice urged Filipinos on Wednesday to stand up against authoritarianism and threats to human rights, in an indirect criticism of the country’s volatile leader, who has long called for her removal. Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno is facing two ouster attempts, including by President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration, whose legal counsel asked […]
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ADDED 03/08/2018
FROM | The Economist
BY Bagehot
British institutions may not withstand the authoritarian-populist wave. IN HIS dystopian novel of 1935, “It Can’t Happen Here”, Sinclair Lewis described the rise of an American Caesar, Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip. Buzz easily defeats Franklin Roosevelt for the presidency by promising to make America great again. He then sets about destroying the country’s system of checks […]
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ADDED 03/08/2018
FROM 03/08/2018 | Open Democracy
BY Bilge Yabanci
Not a single International Women’s Day or Mother’s Day can pass by without reasserting women’s main duty as child-bearers and men’s responsibility to ‘protect’ and ‘rekindle’ fragile mothers. Last January, shortly after Turkey’s military operation started in Afrin, I was at a women’s event held by a pro-government civil society organisation in a working-class suburban […]
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ADDED 03/06/2018
FROM | Ha'aretz
BY Uri Misgav
The Netanyahu regime is a populist, Peronist right. It’s doubtful it can even be called fascist; fascism is an ideology with core values that can be challenged. How do they look at themselves in the mirror, the new right-wingers? The prime minister is suspected of receiving a million shekels’ worth of “gifts” and of bribery […]
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