Politics Archives - Page 79 of 105

Reflections on Bolivia’s Coup d’État

December 24, 2019 • by Nicolás Figueroa García-Herreros

Clearly his hesitant rejection of attempts to frame these events as a coup derives from the very complexity of the situation. After all, what some people see as a coup, others can plausibly describe as a revolution. From Arato’s perspective, Morales not only broke the principle of legality when he ...

Politics

Impeachment Is Principled, Not Partisan

It Is the Republicans Who Are Behaving like a Sect

December 19, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Raskin’s performance—both his message and his manner of delivery—ought to be the touchstone of everything that follows in this impeachment. Had this performance, rather than the more narrow and sedate demeanor of Adam Schiff, set the tone from the start, the Democrats would be in a much stronger place than ...

Democracy

30 Years Ago, A Moment of Joy and Hope

December 13, 2019 • by Adam Michnik

*** I clearly remember that November evening. In my country, Poland, events of great importance were taking place. Poland’s first non-Communist government had already been operating for three months. The prime minister was Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a broad-minded catholic intellectual and long-standing advisor to Lech Wałęsa. Just at that time, a delegation from the Federal Republic ...

Activism

A Public Service

Whistleblowing, Disclosure and Anonymity

December 12, 2019 • by Tim Schwartz

In 1965, 28-year-old Peter Buxtun was hired by the U.S. Public Health Service in San Francisco as a venereal disease investigator. Shortly after starting his job, Buxtun began hearing about a little-known, ongoing study on African-American males with syphilis. To Buxtun’s ears, this didn’t sound right -- by the late ...

North America

Why I Don’t Like the Leading Democratic Candidates to be President of the United States

And why I would support anyone of them

December 11, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“I am devastated. All of my public commitments are under attack. I thought there was progress during my lifetime. Democracy and the positive developments of democratic culture, free speech and expression, social justice and the fight against racism, sexism, class exploitation, xenophobia, and much more, all seemed to advance, even ...

Why I Don’t Like the Leading Democratic Candidates to be President of the United States

North America

With Impeachment, Messaging is Everything.

And the Democrats seem behind the curve.

December 9, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Strategic communication. Trump’s White House has eliminated press briefings, viciously attacked the press and indeed all independent media sources, and organized a cynical and relentless campaign of disinformation via Twitter, Facebook, Fox News, Breitbart, YouTube, the One America News Network, and a range of other media. Trump in office -- with the ...

With Impeachment, Messaging is Everything.

North America

Obama’s Strategy for the Primaries and the Convention

Supporting Buttigieg ensures that Warren will win the nomination – and then lose it

December 7, 2019 • by Eli Zaretsky

What will – what can -- Obama do? As we learned recently he and his surrogates will support Buttigieg. This strategy launched today with endorsements from Reggie Love, Austin Goolsbee and Linda Douglass—three top Obama aides. The following is a speculation based on the best evidence we have. Obviously Buttigieg will not get the nomination. ...

Obama’s Strategy for the Primaries and the Convention

Europe & Central Asia

Romania in 2020

Fighting Corruption Just Got Harder because of Trump

December 6, 2019 • by Maria Bucur

The big unknown for Romania moving into 2020 is its relationship with the United States. Though Romanians have become more anti-American in the last few years, they are still the second most pro-American post-socialist state in Europe (Poland is in first place). Since 1990, the U.S. ambassador has played a ...

North America

Who is the Audience for the Judiciary Committee Hearing?

An Evaluation of the House Democratic Leadership’s Performance

December 5, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

I have long expressed my exasperation with the timid way in which the House Democratic leadership has only reluctantly moved toward impeachment, even in the face of the damning Mueller Report, and then has proceeded in the most narrow and legalistic way imaginable. Trump is a very dangerous President, and it ...

Who is the Audience for the Judiciary Committee Hearing?

Europe & Central Asia

The Romanian 2019 Presidential Elections

Populism on the retreat

December 5, 2019 • by Maria Bucur

Romania was one of the post-communist countries to join the neoliberal bandwagon slower than the Visegrad group and made it to EU membership just when the 2008 global crisis was about to break. For over a decade after the end of the brutal Nicolae Ceausescu dictatorship, old communist apparatchiks together ...

The Romanian 2019 Presidential Elections

North America

I Would Love to Vote for a Gay President

But Pete Buttigieg is not my guy

December 4, 2019 • by Claire Potter

Many remember this loss because of Dean’s cowboy moment at the lectern. Masochists and political junkies can watch the famous “scream” that provoked endless media mockery here. But the swift collapse of the Dean campaign following Iowa also revealed other weaknesses that early polling had not: the excitement of this ...

I Would Love to Vote for a Gay President

Latin America & Caribbean

Coup, Revolution, or Negotiated Regime Change

What is happening in Bolivia?

December 4, 2019 • by Andrew Arato

At the same time, I fervently hope that what is occurring in Bolivia is not a revolution. Of course that hope may well be disappointed, especially if the right wing (supposedly interim) government seeks to perpetuate itself by blocking the road to genuinely free elections through the repression, media manipulation, ...