Discover Top Posts Tagged with #western democracies

US president said Ukraine war would not have happened if Moscow had not been thrown out in 2014 over Crimea

Trump continues to be a servile mouthpiece for Vladimir Putin.

Donald Trump has displayed his disdain for the collective western values supposedly championed by the G7 group of industrialised countries by again demanding that Russia be readmitted to the group. He also said the war in Ukraine would not have happened if Moscow had been kept in the club. Trump made his remarks in front of media, alongside Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, who is hosting the G7, at the start of the summit’s first round of talks. Russia was thrown out of the G8 after it invaded Crimea in 2014, and Trump’s defence of Vladimir Putin came a day before the US president is scheduled to meet his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on the fringes of the summit. It will be the first meeting between the two men since Pope’s Francis’s funeral in April.

His words could have been written in Moscow – except that the Kremlin would have had difficulty mimicking his peculiar style of dementia.

TACO seemed to claim that there wouldn't have been a war in Ukraine if Putin hadn't been kicked out of the then G8. Of course The Orange One doesn't want you to remember that Putin got kicked out in the first place for his forcible annexation of Crimea in 2014. d'oh!

Jonathan V. Last and Will Saletan of The Bulwark delve into Trump's train wreck appearance at the G7 meeting in Canada.

The violence, hate and mockery aimed at the media in the United States reflect how freedom of the press is being eroded. Donald Trump's anti-media strategy is also finding imitators in other Western democratic states.

Democracy is in danger, and it is not at all a hidden danger: Freedom of the press is being constrained across the world, and Western democratic states are among those doing it — even if, unlike authoritarian regimes, their governments seldom get their hands dirty in the process.

In the United States and Brazil, there are no gagging orders or obvious state censorship. Instead, presidents Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro incite social division and violence by spreading fake news and employing rhetoric that is hostile to the media.

This dangerous development can be seen not only in these two major countries on the American continent, but also in European states, including Malta, Montenegro, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic and Italy.

#western democracies #freedom of the press #news media #trump

When Western Democracies betray themselves We wonder why Western civilization has lost credibility in the world ? When in the name of "business as usual" one renounces one's own values of civilization and freedom, this is the result. Killing Jamal Khashoggi: How a Brutal Saudi Hit Job Unfolded | NYT - Visual Investigations

#Arabia Saudita #Jamal Khashogg #Western Democracies

Pussy Riot's Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is currently in a prison hospital in Siberia; here she and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek meet in an extraordinary exchange of letters

2 January 2013 Dear Nadezhda, I hope you have been able to organise your life in prison around small rituals that make it tolerable, and that you have time to read. Here are my thoughts on your predicament. John Jay Chapman, an American political essayist, wrote this about radicals in 1900: "They are really always saying the same thing. They don't change; everybody else changes. They are accused of the most incompatible crimes, of egoism and a mania for power, indifference to the fate of their cause, fanaticism, triviality, lack of humour, buffoonery and irreverence. But they sound a certain note. Hence the great practical power of persistent radicals. To all appearance, nobody follows them, yet everyone believes them. They hold a tuning-fork and sound A, and everybody knows it really is A, though the time-honoured pitch is G flat." Isn't this a good description of the effect of Pussy Riot performances? In spite of all accusations, you sound a certain note. It may appear that people do not follow you, but secretly, they believe you, they know you are telling the truth, or, even more, you are standing for truth.