Democracy Now?
Contemporary geopolitical currents make global democracy a highly contentious issue. The U.S. empire is continually looking for a bad guy as required by the military-industrial-financial community in order to maintain their power over the people of the world. They are currently acting aggressively against both China and Russia with two areas - Ukraine and Taiwan - being possible flashpoints for some kind of war, while continuing their smaller aggressive actions in areas of geopolitical interest - Ethiopia and Yemen being two of many current hotspots.
Beyond wars, the current world of financial manipulations has led to huge inequalities within countries and between countries. Structured mostly on debt manipulations of one kind or another, the U.S. economic system is slowly having its impact reduced, but its overall enormity - mostly due to the global-reserve nature of its currency - keeps it powerful. But power built on debt and large manipulations of economic factors could also lead to an equally enormous collapse.
Finally, one of the more discussed but practically ignored situations is climate change. Lots of greenwashing occurs but until the grass roots of society change and demand change to the overall debt-burdened consumer society powered by economic structures and military structures, climate impacts will simply be absorbed and placed under the rubric of "disaster capitalism," and the corporate interests will harvest their profits until flooded or burned out.
In sum, democracy is a wonderful ideal, superficially widespread, but with major aspects of society that truly deny it. Many places have personal freedom, but limited also for many by economic, social, educational, and other civic structures, many racist, many class oriented. Until the non-democratic aspects of the financial world, the military world, and global climate change are dealt with, democracy will be a commodity in name only.
[1] ] ... and even then politicians are quite willing to lie about how they will vote in order to appease the voters as Canada's political bait-and-switch rhetoric concerning NAFTA demonstrated.
[2] The World Bank's "structural adjustment programs" in liaison with the IMF work to constrain the democratic tendencies of any government and force them through financial manipulation - read large debt - into changing their economic structures to benefit the corporations wanting to extract resources using cheap labour, with no environmental safeguards, and lax or non-existent criminal law.
[3] Unfortunately South Africa fell victim to the neoliberal economic order and the manipulations of the already discussed dictates of the World Bank, IMF, et al.. and have not successfully developed a democratic society as economic inequities continue to plague the country.
Contemporary geopolitical currents make global democracy a highly contentious issue. The U.S. empire is continually looking for a bad guy as required by the military-industrial-financial community in order to maintain their power over the people of the world. They are currently acting aggressively against both China and Russia with two areas - Ukraine and Taiwan - being possible flashpoints for some kind of war, while continuing their smaller aggressive actions in areas of geopolitical interest - Ethiopia and Yemen being two of many current hotspots.
Beyond wars, the current world of financial manipulations has led to huge inequalities within countries and between countries. Structured mostly on debt manipulations of one kind or another, the U.S. economic system is slowly having its impact reduced, but its overall enormity - mostly due to the global-reserve nature of its currency - keeps it powerful. But power built on debt and large manipulations of economic factors could also lead to an equally enormous collapse.
Finally, one of the more discussed but practically ignored situations is climate change. Lots of greenwashing occurs but until the grass roots of society change and demand change to the overall debt-burdened consumer society powered by economic structures and military structures, climate impacts will simply be absorbed and placed under the rubric of "disaster capitalism," and the corporate interests will harvest their profits until flooded or burned out.
[1] ] ... and even then politicians are quite willing to lie about how they will vote in order to appease the voters as Canada's political bait-and-switch rhetoric concerning NAFTA demonstrated.
[2] The World Bank's "structural adjustment programs" in liaison with the IMF work to constrain the democratic tendencies of any government and force them through financial manipulation - read large debt - into changing their economic structures to benefit the corporations wanting to extract resources using cheap labour, with no environmental safeguards, and lax or non-existent criminal law.
[3] Unfortunately South Africa fell victim to the neoliberal economic order and the manipulations of the already discussed dictates of the World Bank, IMF, et al.. and have not successfully developed a democratic society as economic inequities continue to plague the country.
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