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Originally posted here:
Al Green: 'This is about the democracy ' - Washington Post
Janine Jackson interviewed Maria Luisa Mendona about Brazils presidential crisis for theJune 2, 2017, episodeof CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
1. CounterSpin170602Mendonca - fair.org
2. MP3 Link
Janine Jackson: When Brazils elected president Dilma Rousseff was ousted last year by political opponents in what many called a parliamentary coupas she was impeached, ostensibly for corruption, after being cleared by a special prosecutorsome US media presented the fight as the people versus the president. Politicians know how to read society pretty well, and they can sense that the people want her out, a think tank source was quoted in the New York Times. The deep unpopularity and evident corruption of Rousseffs opponents, including current President Michel Temerrecently highlighted with smoking-gun tape recordingsnow have the Times suggesting that Brazils problems have to do with it being a turmoil-prone nation.
Maria Luisa Mendona: If you dismantle basic services, that is not good for the economy. But, of course, this is the mantra that mainstream media use.
Were joined now by Maria Luisa Mendona. Shes coordinator of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil, and director of the Feminist Alliance for Rights at the Center for Womens Global Leadership at Rutgers University. She joins us now by phone from New Jersey. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Maria Luisa Mendona.
Maria Luisa Mendona: Thank you very much.
JJ: Well, maybe its too simple to say, but the latest scandal, involving tapes of Temer and former Sen. Aecio Neves talking about bribes with the head of the food empire JBSthey lend credence to what many said, that one of the real purposes of impeachment was to stop investigation into just those sorts of actions.
MLM: Yes, because there were actually no charges of corruption against President Dilma. They accused her of using a practice in dealing with the federal budget that was a very common practice, used by all presidents before her, so they had to come up with an excuse to impeach her, and thats why we called this a parliamentary coup.
And the main reasons for the impeachment were, first of all, to stop investigations of corruption; now we have the most corrupt politicians in power, that are facing very serious accusations of corruption. And also to implement austerity measures, cuts in social programs, dismantling the pension system, labor laws. Those changes were rejected by voters, so the only way for them to implement those measures was to impeach President Dilma and establish an illegitimate government, and this is what we have now in Brazil.
JJ: Well, let me read you this from just over a week ago, May 19, the New York Times Simon Romero:
Just a few days ago, Brazil seemed to be turning a corner. The stock market was soaring. Bankers were cheering. The nations cutthroat lawmakers were lining up to curb spending. Inflation had been tamed.
Brazil, it appeared, was finally on the mend.
Then, in a matter of hours, it all started falling apart.
So cheering bankers and cutting spending is Brazil being on the mend, in this view, and its only evidence of corruption, when that spoils it, that then we have instability. Youre saying quite the opposite of that, that in fact it was these austerity measures that have been driving public protests.
MLM: Yes, exactly. I dont understand why not giving job security and dismantling the pension system, retirement plansI dont understand how that would create a more stable society. And even for the economy, if you dismantle basic services, that is not good for the economy. But, of course, this is the mantra that mainstream media use, and we hear this over and over again.
JJ: Yes, a more recent piece talked about how the Brazilian economy has not responded as vigorously to Mr. Temers proposed austerity measures as his supporters had hoped. Well, yes, I guess thats one way of putting it.
So a number of things have driven protests, but then, the government response to protests has been especially repressive, has it not?
MLM: Yes. We have seen severe repression. And just about a week ago, there was a large demonstration in the capital, Brasilia, and Temer actually called the army forces to occupy the city. And several people were hurt, there were shots with rubber bullets, but also one person was shot by the police. And also, in the countryside, there have been dozens of killings of peasants, and just also last week, there was a massacre in the state of Par in the Amazon, and ten peasants were killed. So we have been seeing increasing repression in the countryside and also in urban areas.
JJ: Lets talk about going forward. US media outlets tell a pretty crude story about Brazil, in a way. Its, you know, they had this previously corrupt or malfeasant government, and now the new ones corrupt too; its as though theres just a cultural tendency toward chaos. And it tends to skip right over what kind of progress people are asking for. The protests that were seeing right now are not just anti-Temer; theyre really pro-democracy protests.
MLM: Yes, exactly. People are demanding direct elections, and theyre also demanding Temer to stop those measures that would undermine workers rights, basic rights. Those are the main demands.
And its very important for people to know that, because of media manipulation in Brazil, the majority of people, they dont really understand the reasons for the impeachment. There were no accusations of corruption against President Dilma, they couldnt find any case against her. So they used something that was very technical, that most people didnt understand. It was a mechanism that she was delaying payments from the federal budget to public banks in order to subsidize interest rates for low-income housing and for agriculture. And those types of mechanisms have been used for decades in all previous governments.
But most people dont even understand the reason for the impeachment, and of course, the mainstream media, also, they dont talk about this. So the idea is that there was this scandal in Brazil, and the only reason for the economy to improve was to get rid of President Dilma. So that was the message that Brazilian society was targeted with, there was this message saying that the only way to improve the country was to have a change in government. And that, of course, is undermining democracy, because millions of people voted for her. She was elected and re-elected. So even if we dont agree with her policies, we cannot just impeach a president because we dont agree with her policies. You need to have a specific crime that would justify the impeachment. Thats why we call this a parliamentary coup.
JJ: Well, let me just ask you, finally, is there concern that even if Temer steps down or is removed, that what might happen next might be something other than direct elections?
MLM: Yes, exactly. So one possibility is that the Brazilian congress would choose the next president, but two-thirds of congressmembers have also been facing corruption charges. So thats why we have been seeing large demonstrations asking for direct elections. I think this is the only way to restore democracy in Brazil.
JJ: Weve been speaking with Maria Luisa Mendona of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil, and the Feminist Alliance for Rights at the Center for Womens Global Leadership at Rutgers University. Maria Luisa Mendona, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
MLM: Thank you very much.
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Originally posted here:
'This Is the Only Way to Restore Democracy in Brazil' - FAIR
By Mai'a K. Davis Cross By Mai'a K. Davis Cross June 7 at 9:15 AM
Maia K. Davis Cross is the Edward W. Brooke professor of political science at Northeastern University. She is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Politics of Crisis in Europe.
It may seem that the June 8 general election in the United Kingdom puts Britains exit from the European Union on solid democratic ground. In fact, however, this is only the latest stage in a deeply problematic saga that has been anything but democratic.
Beyond the fact that former prime minister David Cameron promised a Brexit vote only as a desperate measure to stay in power in 2015, relying on a popular referendum as the sole determinant of the U.K.s status in the E.U. was a bad course of action.
Political scientists have long acknowledged that referendums are a poor gauge of voters actual preferences. Electorates are especially vulnerable to manipulation when complex issues are reduced into a simple yes or no question. Results often come down to which side has more money and persuasive marketing. This was certainly true in the case of the Brexit vote. The Leave side mischaracterized and even lied about the nature of the E.U. and the U.K.s role in it. And we now know that the same company that used personal data to individualize propaganda and fake news in President Trumps campaign Cambridge Analytica was paid to work for the Leave side.
The undemocratic nature of the process goes even deeper. First, there is no legal precedent in the U.K. system for making major, constitutional decisions in this way. With no single, written constitution, British governance since the 17th century has been based firmly in the supremacy of Parliament. Although Parliament did authorize the 2015 European Union Referendum Act, nothing in either the act or U.K. law stipulated that the referendum would be binding. Despite this, the referendum was used to circumvent Parliament, and it took a lawsuit for the Supreme Court to finally grant members of Parliament the right to vote on invoking Article 50. But by then, it was more than seven months after the fact, and it had become politically impossible for Parliament to vote against the already questionable referendum results.
Second, there was the simple 50 percent threshold. It is hard to imagine any other country in the E.U. using such a low-bar decision for such a high-stakes question. For example, the French Constitution states that France is in the E.U., and the Italian Constitution forbids abolishing international treaties with a popular vote. They would have to actually change their constitutions no easy feat before a vote on membership could even take place, and their constitutional courts would still be able to block it.
Finally, British Prime Minister Theresa May who only inherited her position from Cameron has been on shaky ground in her pursuit of a hard Brexit. The simplistic language of the referendum said nothing about the nature of the withdrawal. May did not even support the Leave campaign before the vote. Now she repeatedly echoes the pro-Brexit United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in speeches even though that far-right party has all but evaporated. Since triggering Article 50, May has continued to sideline Scotland and Northern Ireland, both of which voted to remain. And she is still only willing to pay lip service to Parliament, giving it an up-or-down vote only on the final text of the withdrawal agreement a vote she has vowed to ignore if it doesnt go her way.
Since May was never publicly elected as prime minister, her surprise call for a general election might seem to allow for some kind of democratic mandate. After all, Brexit is the most significant change in the U.K.s global role since the end of its empire. But Mays motives are best explained by the numbers: Data experts thought that she had a better chance to win now than in two years.
And yet, like Camerons gamble on Brexit, the snap election is backfiring. The dramatic loss of support that May has already experienced, especially in the face of a weak opponent, makes her approach even less legitimate. The only way to start reducing Britains democratic deficit would be for her party to lose. A coalition of Labour and the Liberal Democrats, for instance, would bring Parliament back into the process, and this would bode much better for British democracy as Brexit plays out.
The E.U., by contrast, has been remarkably fair in dealing with Brexit all along. From Camerons first announcement, E.U. leaders were willing to work with the British, giving ground on core issues such as immigration and exemption from the principle of an ever closer Union. When that didnt work, the E.U. then made it clear that it would negotiate its side by taking into account both member-state and E.U. citizens preferences and embracing democratic deliberation and transparency in the terms of the withdrawal agreement.
Indeed, the democratic deficit will only deepen when the U.K. actually leaves the E.U. Despite Brexit, the British will always need to work closely with the E.U. But when they no longer have a vote in E.U. governance and cannot even sit at the decision-making table in Brussels, they will truly experience what it feels like to follow rules that they do not make. Brexit may have been envisioned as a means of restoring democracy and sovereignty to the British people, but that is far from what is actually happening.
Original post:
Don't be fooled by the UK election: There's nothing democratic about Brexit - Washington Post
Exciting to see so many people filing to run for office. (See Candidates file for November election by Catherine Krummey, Bothell-Kenmore Reporter, May 22)
Our democracy works best when more of us participate. Our representatives and senators need to hear what matters to us. For example, the health care bill that just passed the house is being rewritten in the Senate. Our stories about the importance of health insurance coverage need to be shared with Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. They will use these stories to make sure no one loses their health care.
This is important since the bill that passed in the House would cause millions of Americans to lose their insurance. The changes to the Medicaid program will especially harm children, the elderly and those with disabilities. So pick up the phone or a pen and participate in our democracy by contacting our senators. You can help make a difference for millions of Americans!
Willie Dickerson,
Snohomish
See the original post:
Democracy works best when more participate - Kirkland Reporter
The French Revolution from 1789 to 1799 had a large influence on Karl Marx, and on the origins of communism. Weve written previously about Gracchus Babeuf, regarded as the first revolutionary communist, and his direct influence on Marx; and weve also written about Maximilien Robespierre, whose violent Reign of Terror had a strong influence on both Babeuf and Vladimir Lenin.
But what were the ideas that incited Robespierre to start his Reign of Terror? What was the environment that would inspire the atheistic hatred behind the French Revolutions dechristianization movement? And what was it that inspired the revolutionary revolts that would continue into the 19th and 20th centuries?
To understand these, we need to look at the cultural and philosophical environment in Europe at the time of the French Revolution.
Communism grew out of an age in which everything was being reconsidered, and the mid-to-late 1700s was a time of massive religious and political shifts.
The growth of Protestantism led to the First Great Awakening in the 1730s and 1740s, and it captured many discontents within the Catholic Church. Likewise, the American Revolution between 1775 and 1783 showed there was an alternative to the rule of kings.
People came to believe they could live lives independent of the existing hierarchies, and they sought new ideasand alternatives to the prevailing religious and political systems. The political paths Europe inevitably took, however, were opposite to those of the United States.
The new American system attempted to create personal liberties bylimiting government. It allowed people to build wealth and choose how to live their lives with a greater allowance for free will.
The emerging European systems aimed to strip the individual of adherence to traditions, to replace the practice of individual faith with state-sponsored beliefs, and to begin playing with the idea of achieving equality through state redistribution. They would soon find these goals were only possible through a totalitarian system that could force its will on the individual.
Just a few years afterLenins Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the famous essayist G.K. Chesterton wrote on March 21, 1925, that the new communist systems are not rebelling against an abnormal tyranny; they are rebelling against what they think is a normal tyrannythe tyranny of the normal.
They are not in revolt against the king, he wrote. They are in revolt against the citizen.
Author Michael Walsh wrote in his book The Devils Pleasure Palace that these problems persist in modern Western societies and lie almost entirely in our rejection of myth, legend, and religion as unscientific and in our embrace of barren process to deliver solutions to the worlds ills.
Communism is not just a political movement, but also an ideology with its own sense of moral structure and allegiance. Walsh writes, During the Cold War, critics in the West remarked that the Soviet Union and its doctrine of Marxism-Leninism resembled nothing so much as a new religion.
He notes this new religion of communism mirrored the structures of traditional religionswith its own scripture in the writings of Marx and Engels, with its leaders raised as prophets of the system, and with a clerical caste in the Politburo committee and communist apologists in the West.
To understand this new religions occult and violently anti-religious nature, its important to understand the ideological environment from which it emerged.
While the history of Illuminism has unfortunately been overshadowed by conspiracy theories and popular fiction, there really were Illuminati, and their role in influencing the modern ideologies of communism cannot be overlooked.
A portrait of Leon Trotsky, a Communist Party leader alongside Vladimir Lenin, and one of the seven members of the first Politburo. (The Russian Bolshevik Revolution, 1921)
Leon Trotsky, a leader of the Russian Communist Party alongside Lenin, noted the importance of this in his 1930 autobiography, My Life.
Trotsky wrote, In the 18th century, freemasonry became expressive of a militant policy of enlightenment, as in the case of the Illuminati, who were the forerunners of revolution.
He noted that those to the left of the Illuminati culminated in the Carbonari, referring to the Carbonari secret revolutionary societies in Italy. These societies were prominent during the Napoleonic wars and were partly credited with the spread of socialist ideas.
Illuminism was among the many occult philosophies of the time, with influences from the ancient belief systems of Gnosticism and Hermeticism. It wasbased on a loose idea of personal enlightenment through reason, with a heavy focus on materialism and the nature of manand often with strong anti-religious and anti-government overtones.
The Order of the Illuminati was among the more influential institutions of the philosophy, and was founded by occult revolutionary Adam Weishaupt in Bavaria in 1776. His organization was known for its many writings calling for the overthrow of religion and government, and its ideological battle with the Rosicrucians, another occult sect that was popular at the time.
Weishaupts order didnt last long, however. In 1786, the elector of Bavaria, Charles Theodore, banned all secret societies and seized the correspondence and writings of Weishaupt and his followers. The government would later publish these in order to further incriminate the groups of conspirators seeking to overthrow the governments of Europe.
Abb Augustin Barruel, a French Jesuit priest, wrote in his 1797 book Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism that the ideas of Weishaupt were later carried out by the Jacobin Clubsthe group behind the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, of which both Robespierre and Babeuf were members.
A portrait of Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830), founder of The Order of the Illuminati in Bavaria in 1776. (Kupferstich nach C. K. Mansinger von 1799, Punktierstich von Johann Friedrich Rossmssler, via Wikimedia Commons)
Barruelwrote that the Jacobins preached the idea that all men were equal and free, but that in the name of equality and liberty, they trampled under foot the altar and the throne; they stimulated all nations to rebellion, and aimed at plunging them ultimately into the horrors of anarchy. Weishaupt himself calledfor the abolition of all ordered government, inheritance, private property, patriotism, family, and religion. In Weishaupts writings, we can find many of the same core beliefs preached by Marx.
Weishaupt also developed the idea of stages of civilization, later mirrored by Marx in his theory of the six stages of society, with communism the final stage. Under communist leaders that would follow, their belief that their ideas were Utopian was used to justify their destruction of all other traditions and beliefs.
Occult historian Nesta Webster wrote in her 1924 book Secret Societies and Subversive Movements that neither the French Revolution nor the Bolshevist Revolution arose from merely the conditions of their times or the direct teachings of their leaders.
She wrote, Both these explosions were produced by forces which, making use of popular suffering or discontent, had long been gathering strength for an onslaught not only on Christianity, but on all society and moral order.
There were popular discussions on the nature of religion and politics in France at the time of the French Revolution, and in this, all ideologies from Europe and abroad were being observed and discussed.
Many French began to question the church, with their doubts fueled in part by the churchs attempt to suppress doubtparticularly under the Inquisition, which continued trying heretics until 1834 in Spain. In the debates about religion, the French began abandoning Catholicism for other variants of Christianity and also turned to many dark occult beliefs.
Ideologies of the time were influenced by Hermeticism, as well as dark occult sects of Gnosticism. The Gnostic cults often incorporated parts of Christianity and other faiths, yet largely opposed the Christian moral order. Their core beliefs played a key role in shaping the moral philosophies in the French Revolution.
Some of these beliefs were more upfront in their nature. The Gnostic sect called the Cainites, for example, pushed for a direct rebellion against moral order, and called on followers to destroy the creations of Gods and to engage directly in sin.
Others took a less direct path and masked their nature with a veil of reason. The sect known as theCarpocratians, for example, denied the divinity of Jesus and believed they shouldnot be held tolaws or to moralitythings they regarded as human constructs.
Jacques Matter, a 19th-century author ofecclesiastical history, wrote about the Carpocratians in his 1828 book Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme, noting that the sect opposed religion and that its followers believed their abandonment of restraints made them equal to God.
Its belief in human nature, rather than moral aspirations, was something that mirrored the materialist ideologies that communism would later adopt. It was the idea that if nature takes precedence, anything that springs from human nature is then correctincluding any crime and any sin.
Russian author and historian Alexander Solzhenitsyn said in his 1983 Templeton Address that within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions.
He added, Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot.
All of this comes back to the roots of communist ideologythe promotion of human nature over divine aspirations, and the destruction of moral restraint.
And this deification of human nature was a key element in the social philosophies and occult institutions of the French Revolution.
The first state religion of the French Revolution, the Cult of Reason, carried the same anti-religious fervor, and deified the concept of human reason in place of a belief in the divine. Under it, Jacques Hbert and his Hbertist followers carried out the dechristianization movement to slander and destroy Christianity.
Part of the anti-Christian obsession under the Cult of Reason can be attributed to the prevalence of the teachings of Voltaire, an influential philosopher of the time.
A portrait of Franois-Marie Arouet (16941778), known as Voltaire, a philosopher and anti-religious writer of the French Enlightenment. (Workshop of Nicolas de Largillire, via Wikimedia Commons)
In his letters, Voltaire frequently referred to Christians and Christ as the wretch, and frequently called for crushing the wretch. He urged one his key followers, Jean-Baptiste le Rond dAlembert, to accomplish this using a tactic where he called to strike but conceal your hand.
In a 1765 letter, he wrote, Victory is declaring for us on all sides, and I can assure you, that soon, none but the rabble will follow the standard of our enemies, and we equally condemn that rabble whether for us or against us. And in a 1768 letter, he wrote that the monster of religion must fall, pierced by a hundred invisible hands; yes, let it fall beneath a thousand repeated blows.
John Robinson, the first general secretary to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783, wrote about the conspirators behind the French Revolution in his 1797 Proofs of a Conspiracy, and noted Voltaires effects.
Robinson wrote that the darling project of Voltaire and his followers was to destroy Christianity and all Religion, and to bring about a total change of government. He wrote that Voltaire took the approach of ideological influence, and mass produced writings equally calculated for inflaming the sensual appetites of men and for perverting their judgments.
Solzhenitsyn believed this concept is at the root of many ills the world has witnessed under communism. He said, The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century.
When people lose a sense of moral responsibility, and when human reasonwith similarly unrestrained will and desires behind itbecomes the sole foundation of understanding right and wrong, what then motivates people to choose right over wrong? Solzhenitsyn noted this was a core loophole within communist ideology.
When external rights are completely unrestricted, why should one make an inner effort to restrain oneself from ignoble acts? he said. Or why should one refrain from burning hatred, whatever its basisrace, class, or ideology? Such hatred is in fact corroding many hearts today. Atheist teachers in the West are bringing up a younger generation in a spirit of hatred of their own society.
A similar ideological source was found in the teachings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a political philosopher who was a major influence on the French Revolution and modern socialism.
Similar to the Gnostic sects, Rousseau held that character and identity were formed post-natally, and he preached a new virtuous social vision that he believed would bring people closer to unbridled human nature.
Among his key texts was The Social Contract, published in 1762. The book contains Rousseaus theories on how to establish a political society, which aimed to free people from his concept of slavery by having people all equally surrender their rights.
Robespierre was heavily influenced by Rousseau, although Robespierres belief in using terror is not found in Rousseaus thought.
Among the other major beliefs of the Enlightenment was deism, a core belief in Robespierres Cult of the Supreme Being and a philosophical religion that believed the universe was reasonable and could be understood by unassisted human reason. While deism didnt go as far as atheism, its morality was centered on man rather than the divine.
Behind all these beliefs was a shift in religious thinking. It would look to personal reason in place of traditional faith and belief. From this grew a new concept of the deification of man, and a tolerance of all evils that arise from unrestrained human desire.
Leading 19th-century French occultist liphas Lvi explained the nature of some of these sects in his 1860 book, Histoire de la Magie. He referred to them as rebels to the hierarchic order and said in place of the moral sobriety of traditional religion, they sought sensual passions and debauchery, which fed their desire to destroy all social hierarchy, down to even the family structure.
Nesta Webster wrote that these sects had two focuses: the esoteric and the political. They used perversion to bind men to a system, which thenacted to obscure all recognized ideas of morality and religion.
The writings of Marx and Friedrich Engels would mirror this assessment. They said in The Communist Manifesto that their new system abolishes all religion, and all morality.
Solzhenitsyn said that before the communist revolution in Russia, Faith was the shaping and unifying force of the nation, and the religious culture was the moral foundation that held society together.
He said when he was a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; thats why all this has happened.
After his more than 50 years of researching, conducting interviews, and writing about the history of the communist revolution, he said, If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; thats why all this has happened.
Communism is estimated to have killed at least 100 million people, yet its crimes have not been fully compiled and its ideology still persists. The Epoch Times seeks to expose the history and beliefs of this movement, which has been a source of tyranny and destruction since it emerged. Read the whole series at ept.ms/DeadEndCom
Continued here:
The Dark Origins of Communism: Part 3 of 3 - The Epoch Times