Democracy in the 21st century becomes butchered
Putins Demokratur: Ein Machtmensch und sein System (German Edition)
https://www.amazon.com/Putins-Demokratur-Kreml-Westen-F%C3%BCrchten/dp/3430200067
Author Archives: Plamen Miltenoff
one in four Europeans vote populist
Revealed: one in four Europeans vote populist
Exclusive research shows how populists tripled their vote over the past two decades
The data shows that populism has been consistently on the rise since at least 1998. Two decades ago, populist parties were largely a marginal force, accounting for just 7% of votes across the continent; in the most recent national elections, one in four votes cast was for a populist party.
Populists tend to frame politics as a battle between the virtuous ‘ordinary’ masses and a nefarious or corrupt elite – and insist that the general will of the people must always triumph. The Guardian is adopting the classic definition of populism proposed by political scientist Cas Mudde. Populism, he says, is often combined with a ‘host’ ideology, which can either be on the left or right.
It reveals the different fortunes of rightwing populists such Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Italy’s Matteo Salvini, who have had the most success in recent years, and leftwing populist parties, which rapidly expanded in the aftermath of the financial crisis but failed to secure a seat in government anywhere other than Greece.
Populism in Europe goes back several decades: the far-right Freedom party of Austria was founded in 1956 by a former Nazi and first won more than 20% of the vote in 1994. It is now part of the country’s ruling coalition.
Populist parties enjoyed success in Norway, Switzerland and Italy in the 1990s. But it was not until the turn of the century that populist ideas, legislators and challengers started to proliferate, from the Netherlands to France, Hungary to Poland.
Since then, anti-establishment populism has snowballed, particularly after the 2008 financial crash and the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe. The anti-austerity Syriza took 27% of the vote then 36% in successive Greek elections; Ukip propelled Britain to its Brexit vote and Marine Le Pen became the second member of her family to reach a presidential run-off in France, winning 33% of the vote.
Claudia Alvares, an associate professor at Lusofona University in Lisbon, who was not involved in the Guardian research project, said: “The success of such politicians has very much to do with their capacity to convince their audiences that they do not belong to the traditional political system. As such, they are on a par with the people to the extent that neither they nor the people belong to the ‘corrupt’ elites.” social media had a role to play in the rise of populism, its algorithmic model rewarding and promoting adversarial messages. “The anger that populist politicians manage to channel is fuelled by social media posts, because social media are very permeable to the easy spread of emotion. The end result is a rise in the polarisation of political and journalistic discourse.”
Austria out of UN migration treaty
Austria follows US and Hungary as it opts out of UN migration treaty
By Irene Kostaki PUBLISHED 19:32 OCTOBER 31, 2018 https://www.neweurope.eu/article/austria-follows-us-and-hungary-as-it-opts-out-of-un-migration-treaty/
The arch-conservative government Austria, the current chair of the European Council’s rotating presidency, has decided to follow the lead ideological allies the United States and Hungary in backing out of a United Nations migration pact.
Sharing Immigrant Experiences in the Classroom
Sharing Immigrant Experiences in the Classroom
Exploring the perspectives of immigrants with students helps them better understand the meaning of citizenship in a democracy.
By Benjamin Barbour October 9, 2018 https://www.edutopia.org/article/sharing-immigrant-experiences-classroom
Today, the foreign-born population of the United States is the highest it has been in more than a century. Nearly a quarter of the U.S. population does not speak English at home. Meanwhile, the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States, long thought to be around 11 million, may be as high as 22 million.
Immigration remains one of the most contentious issues facing America. Social studies teachers, therefore, need to bring the conversation about immigration to our students.
PERSONAL NARRATIVE AS A SPRINGBOARD FOR CONVERSATION
Depending on the testimonial or speaker, teachers may focus the classroom conversation on any number of difficult topics. If educators couple firsthand accounts of migration with concerns about border security and undocumented immigration, for instance, students may begin to recognize the challenges lawmakers face in trying to address people’s desire for a better life with the mission to uphold existing law.
How should lawmakers balance the safety and well-being of American citizens with our country’s ideals and historic role as a place of sanctuary and opportunity for newcomers? How do we decide who gets to come here and how? How should our nation humanely enforce the law on its southern border, while not incentivizing a journey in which many are killed or exploited? What, ultimately, is America’s responsibility to its own people, and to the people of the world?
Ann Coulter and immigration
Ann Coulter believes the left has ‘lost its mind’. Should we listen?
The bestselling author has been criticized for dog-whistling to the far right. Now she’s taking aim at the left – can progressives learn anything from their sworn enemy?
by J Oliver Conroy Wed 17 Oct 2018 05.00 EDT
“Immigrants are great if you’re rich,” Coulter tells me. “You live in New York or LA, you get your pool cleaned. Rosa the maid cleans everything, serves, picks up the kids, makes the beds. Life is grand. But I go out to America. And I knew that immigration was an enormous effing issue that our political class – Republicans for the donor money, Democrats for the votes – was ignoring.”
In June 2015 Coulter published Adios America! The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole. The book argued that unchecked immigration, both legal and illegal, was increasing crime, straining the welfare state, and depressing blue-collar wages, and that the media, because of political correctness, and big business, for cheap labor, were preventing honest debate.
The book’s most serious charge has since become a mainstream allegation by conservatives: if Democrats have their way, Coulter claimed, they will add up to 30 million new voters to the rolls – overwhelmingly dependent on big government and loyal to the Democratic party. In other words, liberal elites support mass immigration because they are thumbing the scale of democracy itself.
In the Atlantic, in December 2015, the former Bush speechwriter David Frumdescribed Coulter’s book as the “political book of the year”. “Perhaps no single writer has had such immediate impact on a presidential election since Harriet Beecher Stowe,” he added, in a sentence that might cause consternation to the author of the antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Frum argued that rosy liberal claims about immigration are not borne out in statistics. Although some immigrants have assimilated well – he cited Nigerian Americans – other immigrant communities suffer from high unemployment, welfare dependency, and educational failure, he said.
In an incisive recent piece in Current Affairs, a left-leaning journal, writer Brianna Rennix acknowledged that Coulter was probably correct about Democrats (and Republicans) exploiting immigration for cheap labor and votes. But Adios America! is a “vicious, dehumanizing” book, the review said, and one with eugenic undertones.
Twitter and Teargas
The Road to Bulgaria 1983-1990
Ghodsee, K. R. (n.d.). Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life After Communism. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/461250/Lost_in_Transition_Ethnographies_of_Everyday_Life_After_Communism
I joined the Model United NationsClub in middle school.
I read voraciously about the Rus-sians, about Marxism-Leninism, about the Soviet space program, and aboutcollectivized agriculture. I read everything that I could get my hands on,hoping to understand the Soviet worldview so that I could more accurately represent them and convincingly argue their position on the key worldissues of the day: the Middle East, Northern Ireland, and nuclear prolifera-tion among others.
I played Poland and Romania on a couple of ad hoc committees and then was finally assigned to be Bulgaria on the Security Council.
In 1985 Bulgaria was a relatively small country about the size of Delaware with a population of about nine million.
In early June of 1990 I found myself in Turkey after having traveledoverland from Egypt through Jordan, Iraq, and Syria.
The Bulgarians would have none of me; they only entered a thirty-hour transit visa so that I could take the train to either Yugoslavia or Romania. I flipped a coin and chose Yugoslavia.
It was a mixture of intellectual curiosity and infatuation that would lead me back to Bulgaria in January and March of 1998.During those first two visits I was shocked to realize that the hopes and dreams of 1990 had not been realized. Although most people were still glad that communism was gone and agreed that the totalitarian past was best put behind them, the promises of democracy had not been realized. Many Bulgarians I met had started to question the transition process. Where there had been security and order, there was now chaos and unchecked criminal violence. Where there had been universal health care, the best doctors now worked in fee-only clinics for the new rich. Where there had been free university education,there were now private colleges. Where there had been a decent amount of gender equality, there was now outright discrimination against women.
In Bulgaria, he said, they had torn down the old house (communism)before the new one (capitalism) was ready. Everyone was now forced to liveon the street.
It was clear tome in 1998 that there were people suffering in Bulgaria, that democratzia was not all that it was cracked up to be. From that wondrous summer in1990 emerged a dark reality. People who had worked hard and built success-ful careers under the old system were cheated out of their well-deserved retirement. Men and women in the middle of their lives had to drastically change course just to stay afloat; they had to learn new skills, new lan-guages, and an entirely new way of thinking. A whole generation of young people lost the futures for which they had been preparing themselves.Entire academic disciplines disappeared overnight; what do you do with a PhD in Marxist economics or dialectical materialism in a capitalist society?In short, daily life had been turned on its head. No one knew what the rules were anymore.
My students seemed funda-mentally unable to comprehend the sheer magnitude of that change.
An ad for a Bulgarian beer that simply says ‘‘Men know why.’’ When asked, most Bulgarians don’t actually know why.
The Slovenian philosopherSlavojˇZiˇzek really put his finger on something when he said that it is fareasier for young people today to imagine total planetary environmental catastrophe than it is for them to imagine any significant changes in thepolitical and economic system that will precipitate this catastrophe.
Bulgaria is a country about which most Westerners have few preconceived notions. Unlike Russia or Poland or the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria has seldom been in the international spotlight,and few people know much about this relatively small country tucked into the most southeastern corner of Europe. Even with all of my background in current events, I did not know what to expect of Bulgaria when I firstboarded that train in Istanbul back in June of 1990.
blockchain for refugees
Is Europe a sanctuary
The EU’s new plans for a border force of 10,000 guards yet again shows its unwillingness to defend the fundamental rights of refugees.
Posted by Le Monde diplomatique in English on Monday, September 10, 2018
migration in spotlight
Juncker puts migration in spotlight ahead of annual State of the Union speech
Juncker puts migration in spotlight ahead of annual State of the Union speech via @New_Europe
Posted by New Europe on Monday, September 10, 2018