[...] Electoral fundamentalists refuse to regard elections as a means of taking part in democracy, seeing them instead as an end in themselves, as a holy doctrine with an intrinsic, inalienable value.
Occupy demonstrates the malaise more than it suggests any remedy. Its diagnosis of representative democracy was correct, but the alternative was weak. [...]
[...] He conveyed Marx's view of the process of holding elections in a sentence that would not have been out of place in New York or Madrid: 'The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in Parliam…
During one of his appearances as a witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Dallaire described the evacuation missions that foreign armies launched when the genocide broke out. He explained that soldiers rescued their own nationals but left Rwandans to die and called their conduct…
On April 21, the Council met to make its decision. After perfunctory debate, it approved an ignoble document called Resolution 912. It was a veritable lexicon of diplomatic mendacity. First it proclaimed that the United Nations was "shocked," "appalled," and "deeply concerned" by the bloodshed in R…
