Politics Archives - Page 65 of 112

Democracy

Hong Kong: Pandemic, Protests, and Protecting “National” Security

July 20, 2020 • by Mark Frazier

The annual June 4 candlelight vigil in Hong Kong to commemorate those who died in the 1989 suppression of peaceful protests in China was canceled this year, although a few thousand citizens jumped the fences at Victoria Park to hold informal ceremonies. For the first time in three decades, the ...

Hong Kong: Pandemic, Protests, and Protecting “National” Security

Politics

The Disastrous Handling of the Pandemic Is Libertarianism in Action

Will Americans finally say good riddance?

July 20, 2020 • by Thom Hartmann

Back in the years before President Ronald Reagan, a real estate lobbying group called the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) came up with the idea of creating a political party to justify deregulating the real estate and finance industries so they could make more money. The party would give them ideological and ...

The Disastrous Handling of the Pandemic Is Libertarianism in Action

Democracy

Should Governments Have Access to Our Data?

Privacy and democracy in the age of pandemics

July 20, 2020 • by Jo Guldi and Macabe Keliher

Americans are scared about encroachments on their data privacy, and rightly so. Prior to 9/11, most advocated limiting the government’s ability to gather and access data in the name of civil liberties. Faced with the threat of terror, however, citizens resigned themselves to encroachments on privacy made in the name ...

Should Governments Have Access to Our Data?

Politics

Representative John Lewis, a Hero for Our Time

And what Donald Trump could still learn from him

July 18, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

______________________ Last night, just before midnight, we heard the news that 80-year-old Georgia Representative John Lewis has passed away from pancreatic cancer. As a young adult, Lewis was a “troublemaker,” breaking the laws of his state: he broke the laws upholding racial segregation. He organized voting registration drives and in 1960 was ...

Representative John Lewis, a Hero for Our Time

Europe & Central Asia

Poland Slouches On

After a noxious and underhanded campaign, Poland’s incumbent president, representing the country’s illiberal ruling party, has clinched a narrow re-election victory. That gives the government three more years to dismantle the country’s democracy.

July 17, 2020 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

WARSAW -- In the second round of Poland’s presidential election, incumbent Andrzej Duda narrowly defeated Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski. Though he carried just six provinces in eastern Poland, compared to Trzaskowski’s ten, and lost in medium and large cities, Duda’s support in villages and small towns was just enough to push him over the ...

Democracy

Why the Harper’s Letter Got It Wrong

The most serious threats to protest and open debate come not from the left or the right but from the state and powerful political institutions

July 16, 2020 • by Nicole Hemmer

So I took a new job in a new city and began again. I have been thinking about my decision to speak up, and its costs, in light of The Letter. You know the one: the open letter in Harper’s magazine that praises the “needed reckoning” of the past few months ...

Power and Crisis

Why I Didn’t Sign the Harper’s Letter

Meeting our Black Lives Matters moment — and what the letter gets right

July 16, 2020 • by Robert Boyers

The now famous Harper's letter signed by 153 intellectuals has understandably stirred furious debate. Though I declined to sign it when asked, I disagreed with nothing in the letter, and I knew that I would continue to have misgivings about my decision. After all, the letter is informed by a concern ...

Democracy

The Politics of Small Things Before, During and After the Pandemic

From the Kitchen Table to the Kitchen Cabinet

July 16, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Between 1973 and 1989, I intensively studied public life behind “The Iron Curtain.” I researched and wrote my dissertation on student theater in Poland. In the late 70s and the 80s, I observed the emergence of an autonomous cultural and political life, and the development of a democratic opposition there ...

Activism

Their Violence and Ours

Attacks on property do not always undermine a political cause

July 16, 2020 • by William E. Scheuerman

How should we make sense of the political violence that has sometimes accompanied Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests? What about the state’s violent response to peaceful protest, or the dangerous acts committed by right-wing counter-protestors? Speaking on Canadian radio in the wake of 160 riots that shook U.S. cities during the ...

Climate & Ecology

Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta

A webinar view, featuring author Debjani Bhattacharyya and commenter Kasia Paprocki

July 15, 2020 • by Claire Potter

The event was hosted and moderated by Claire Potter, co-executive editor at Public Seminar & professor of history at The New School for Social Research. Save the date: our next Public Seminar book talk is on Wednesday, July 22, featuring Ted Widmer, author of Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to ...

Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta

Democracy

The NGO Sector in Slovakia as a Subject of Conspirators

July 15, 2020 • by Ján Orlovský

Overnight, on Monday, February 26th, 2018, Slovakia became a very different country. The news of the brutal murder of a young investigative journalist and his fiancée in their village house at the outskitrts of the capital shattered all illusions about corruption in the country being remote and harmless. The deaths ...

The NGO Sector in Slovakia as a Subject of Conspirators

Politics

What Roger Stone’s Commuted Sentence Tells Us About Trump’s Commitment to Conspiracy

The president is covering up the cover-up of a crime

July 14, 2020 • by John Stoehr

It’s hard to know where to begin discussing the president’s commutation of Roger Stone’s sentence. So let’s start with what it means. It’s not a pardon. Donald Trump’s goombah is still a felon convicted of witness tampering and lying to the U.S. Congress. He plans to appeal the guilty verdict. “Commutation” ...