Actually, this comic brings up something I’ve always thought about. The Dark Ages happened after both the Greek and Roman civilizations. This is strong evidence that things like democracy, freedom, and the arts should not be taken for granted. They can — indeed they have — gone away, replaced by feudalism and serfdom. I have […]
Today I was having an interesting conversation with a friend of mine, who happens to be a fairly famous computer scientist. We were discussing innovation, which led to expressing our amazement at the success of Twitter. Who could have predicted that imposing a completely artificial constraint on the length of messages would not only lead […]
© Ruben Bolling Donald Trump seems to be having a love affair with brutal, autocratic dictators. It isn’t just his lavish praise of Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, who rigged an election to dismantle democracy in his country, or The Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, who used death squads to execute thousands of his own citizens without trial (and […]
I spent the last week in Paris, mostly running around a bunch of museums, and some thoughts keep coming up. First of all, I keep being reminded of the fragility of democracy. I’m sure everyone here knows that Hitler came to power in Germany through democratic means. But there is another example. There was a […]
Retired Supreme Court justice David Souter, back in 2012, reminds us of the biggest danger to democracy. His words are prescient given our current election. This clip starts near the end of his talk, but the whole talk is very interesting.
I have to admit, I’m not really sure what to think about what is going on in Egypt right now. Some of you may remember that I visited Egypt less than two years ago, just after the revolution but before the elections. But if I learned one thing from talking to people there, it is […]
Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Buckley v. Valeo (1976) that spending money to influence elections is a form of constitutionally protected free speech, the speech of wealthy citizens and Corporations have increasingly dominated public debate. Even worse, money is nearly the only form of speech behind closed doors in the halls of […]
[by Cliff Schecter] Towards the beginning of the original Terminator film, Kyle Reese, who has come back to the past to save Sarah Connor – whose spawn will save mankind – lets her know what she’s facing in her new cybernetic stalker. “Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. […]
Juan Cole has a thoughtful piece on his blog entitled “10 Ways Arab Democracies Can Avoid American Mistakes“. In it, he encourages the new democracies emerging in the Middle East to avoid making the same mistakes that are causing so much trouble in the US. What I find ironic is that his article is really […]
© Ted Rall We’ve done a spectacularly bad job of “helping” countries like Iraq and Afghanistan transition to democracy. I for one am glad that we are staying fairly hands off with countries like Egypt and Libya. But it is ironic that the same conservatives who used to denounce “nation building” are now attacking Obama […]
© Matt Wuerker This cartoon makes the point that we don’t learn from history, but I think it might even be worse than that. At least in some cases, we have encouraged these people to become dictators. Democracy can be such a messy thing.
[reprinted from Political Relief. Thanks Chris!] Libya Darling and Keep the Oil Flowing For a country that did something truly revolutionary 235 years ago and is rightfully proud of it, our reactions to the recent protests in the Arab world would leave all but the most cynical person scratching their heads. Libya is the latest […]
© Clay Bennett Actually, it seems like they own us outside of work as well.
© Ed Stein Egypt now has a smaller gap between the rich and the poor than we do. Only in America could the powers-that-be co-opt a popular uprising like this. Tea Partiers, by and large, are richer, whiter and older than the general population, and hardly represent the downtrodden and the disposessed. If anything, they […]
© John Sherffius Just a few days after the Iran government praised the protesters in Egypt, they got their own protests, which they promptly tried to suppress.
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