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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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On what would have been assassinated Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba’s 99th birthday, we speak with author and analyst Vijay Prashad, who has just published a lengthy article on Lumumba and the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s ongoing struggle for control over its own resources. Sunday marked the 64th anniversary of Lumumba’s historic speech marking his country’s independence from Belgium, in which he delivered a blistering critique of colonialism. Lumumba’s rise to become the first elected prime minister of Congo came after decades of brutal violence under Belgian rule and the extraction of vast wealth in rubber, ivory and other commodities from the country. Lumumba was assassinated soon after taking office in a plot involving the CIA and Belgium, leading to decades of dictatorship under Mobutu Sese Seko, wars, poverty and resource exploitation that continues to ravage the country to this day. “The issue of control over resources is fundamental,” says Prashad, director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. “The Congolese have never been able to put forward a national project around how to unite the people. … This has always been suborned by external intervention.”
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The world-renowned linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky was discharged from a São Paulo hospital in Brazil last month as he continues to recover from a stroke last year that impacted his ability to speak. His wife, Valeria Wasserman Chomsky, told a Brazilian newspaper he still follows the news and raises his left arm in anger when he sees images of Israel’s war on Gaza. False reports that Chomsky had died went viral online in June. We speak with historian Vijay Prashad, who co-authored his latest book with Chomsky, The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power, and was able to visit him twice while in Brazil. He describes Chomsky as “a beloved friend, adviser, confidant, in some ways the one who helped explain what was happening in the world for decades.” When Prashad was with Chomsky, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also stopped by.
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In a historic decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled on Monday that presidents have broad immunity from prosecution. The 6-3 ruling by the court’s right-wing majority — including all three justices appointed by Trump — was issued on the final day of the Supreme Court’s term and just four months ahead of November’s presidential election. It will further delay Trump’s criminal trial for leading the January 6 insurrection. The ruling upends more than two centuries of legal precedent, for the first time shielding U.S. presidents from criminal accountability. “In one fell swoop, this court has essentially left the American people to the whims of the president of the United States — any president of the United States, but particularly Mr. Trump,” says Donald Sherman, executive director and chief counsel of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. We also speak with Lisa Graves, executive director of the watchdog group True North Research, who says the Supreme Court’s conservative wing has left the country “unmoored from the rule of law” by adopting such an expansive view of presidential power. “This decision is the most reckless and dangerous decision ever issued by the U.S. Supreme Court,” says Graves.
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Democracy Now! Tuesday, July 2, 2024
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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Chris Lehmann, D.C. bureau chief for The Nation, discusses the ongoing fallout from Thursday’s first presidential debate of 2024 and mounting pressure on President Biden to drop out of the race amid questions about his age and mental fitness. “It appears that Biden and his inner circle of advisers are doubling down,” says Lehmann. “They took this incredible risk to do this debate … and they’re now saying it’s a greater risk to change horses.”
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We look at the unfolding ethics scandal at The Washington Post that has rocked one of the nation’s leading news outlets and raised questions about its future. The controversy centers on CEO and publisher Will Lewis, who has reportedly pressured journalists inside and outside the newsroom not to run unflattering stories about him. His efforts to reshape the newsroom in the face of steep financial losses have also alarmed staff, and British editor Robert Winnett, Lewis’s pick for a top editorial role, withdrew amid concern over his history of using fraudulently obtained information in newspaper articles. Lewis is also implicated in the long-running U.K. phone hacking scandal. Both Lewis and Winnett are veterans of conservative British papers owned by Rupert Murdoch, and The Guardian recently revealed that Lewis advised then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson on how to cover his tracks amid public outrage over violations of COVID precautions at the height of the pandemic. “At the most basic level of how journalism should operate, executives in charge of news in the public interest should not be suppressing news. It’s a pretty simple bar, and Will Lewis has failed to clear it,” says Chris Lehmann, D.C. bureau chief for The Nation.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday approved a power grab by corporate interests who want to strip federal agencies of their power to regulate public health, the climate and environment, worker protection and more. In the 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority overturned a precedent known as the Chevron doctrine that stems from a Reagan-era ruling called Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which established that judges should defer to federal agencies on interpreting a law if Congress did not specifically address the issue. We speak with Mustafa Ali, former head of the environmental justice program at the Environmental Protection Agency, who describes it as “a very devastating decision,” and to The Nation's justice correspondent, Elie Mystal. “It's taking power out of our hands, out of the democracy’s hands, and putting it in the hands of the court,” says Mystal, who also addresses other recent rulings from the court at the end of its term, including the highly anticipated ruling on presidential immunity.
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France’s far right has won the first round of voting in a snap election, followed closely by the left, as President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition is trounced. We go to Paris for an update as the far-right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen shocked the French establishment after winning the most votes in the first round of parliamentary elections on Sunday. A broad alliance of left-wing parties calling itself the New Popular Front came second, while President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc fell to third place. Macron called the snap election after the National Rally won the most seats in last month’s vote for European Parliament, even though his own presidential term runs until 2027. A second round of voting on July 7 will decide the final makeup of the National Assembly, but if the National Rally wins outright, it will mark the first time the far right has governed in France since the Nazi occupation during World War II. “This decision was timed at a moment when the far right was at its strongest historical position in modern French political history, and they’ve capitalized on that,” says Harrison Stetler, an independent journalist and teacher based in Paris. He says that while the left has already committed to forming “a republican front against the far right,” Macron’s centrist forces have sent “mixed signals” on joining forces after a campaign in which they recklessly portrayed both the left and the right as equally dangerous to the country.
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Democracy Now! Monday, July 1, 2024
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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