Politics Archives - Page 38 of 143

Democracy

Iran, Impeachment, and Implosion

Trump keeps getting worse — and the crises are interconnected

January 8, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

On December 18 of last year, the House of Representatives voted to impeach in the face of very public Republican obstructionism. Within hours of the vote, Nancy Pelosi announced that she had yet to decide how to move forward with delivering the impeachment articles to the Republican-controlled Senate, and was ...

Past Present

U.S. Embassy Attack in Baghdad

Past Present Podcast, Episode 210

January 7, 2020 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Iraqi militants stormed the American embassy in Baghdad last week. Neil referenced the recently leaked cable communications between Iran and Iraq. Natalia referred to this Middle East Eye essay on the historical significance of attacks on American embassies and to this Guardian piece on the history of U.S. embassies. In our ...

North America

A Vote for Sanders is a Vote to Restore the Commonwealth

Government is essential to defending truth and dignity — and that requires changing minds

January 7, 2020 • by Bernard Avishai

This past year, though, I spent much of my time torturing myself with choice. My YouTube account would show me flitting -- admiringly, on the advice of pundits, and for all the obvious reasons -- from Pete Buttigieg, to Elizabeth Warren, to Kamala Harris, then back to Warren, then, for ...

A Vote for Sanders is a Vote to Restore the Commonwealth

Uncategorized

What We Learned in Pine Valley

The conversations All My Children promoted put feminism on television’s map

January 6, 2020 • by Elana Levine

This scene, broadcast fifty years ago this week, marked the debut episode of the American daytime television soap opera, All My Children. More than forty-three years later, on the program’s final broadcast, the same character, the glamorous Erica Kane, repeated her observation, “Pine Valley . . . is still not the corner of ...

Latin America & Caribbean

Democratic Degradation and the Bolivian Coup

A response to Andrew Arato’s reflections on Bolivia

December 30, 2019 • by Leonardo Avritzer

In his recent article “Coup, Revolution or Negotiated Regime Change: The Case of Bolivia,” Andrew Arato responds positively to the latest political developments in La Paz. In disagreement with his Latin American students, he expresses the following caution: “I hesitate to concede the point [there was a coup] to begin ...

Democratic Degradation and the Bolivian Coup

Activism

Fonda’s Firedrill Fridays

December 28, 2019 • by Jo Freeman

Each features a rally on the southeast quadrant of the Capitol lawn followed by a short march and mass civil disobedience in a different location. The theme varies. On November 29 (the day after Thanksgiving) it was Food Justice and Agriculture. On December 20 it was it was Health. Held the day before ...

Politics

Understanding Kashmir’s Crisis

Current narratives ignore key histories

December 26, 2019 • by Shubh Mathur

On August 5, the Indian government, headed by the hard-right Hindu nationalist party BJP, unilaterally revoked Articles 370 of the Indian Constitution, ending the limited autonomy of Kashmir. This move of dubious legality, carried out entirely without consulting Kashmiris, was supported by a majority in the Indian parliament. Anticipating bitter ...

Latin America & Caribbean

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 ...

Migration

Remote Control of Asylum Seekers

How States Evade their Protection Obligation

December 17, 2019 • by David Scott FitzGerald

Zolberg observed that regulating migration at the port of embarkation abroad “is now so familiar that we tend to underestimate its radically innovative character and its fundamental importance in regulating world-wide movement.” In Refuge Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers, I show how modern remote control has become a ...

Migration

Grassroots Asylum

Escaping the Statist Paradigm

December 17, 2019 • by Simon Behrman

Because the asylum framework is constructed upon such subjective criteria, and is administered by states themselves, the decisions about who receives protection are stuck within a statist paradigm. Asylum is conceived of as a gift of the state, over which the state has discretion in how requests are considered. And ...

Migration

The Epistemology of the Refugee: 30 Years after Zolberg

Introduction to the Zolberg Institute Special Issue

December 16, 2019 • by Daniel Calzadillas-Rodriguez

Zolberg, Suhrke, and Aguayo’s analysis is centered around the question who is recognized as a refugee -- still a contested issue in today’s public discourse, as people arriving at the southern U.S. border are alternatively categorized as “refugees” or “economic migrants.” Although the majority of migrants at the southern border ...

The Epistemology of the Refugee: 30 Years after Zolberg

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 ...