A Global Health and Green New Deal
Can we both build a global response to Covid-19 and its social consequences yet at the same time, prevent ecological disaster? This now seems increasingly to be a worldwide demand, but what would be the appropriate response?
The response
Such a response to the health, social and ecological crisis we face is, in fact, obvious; building on what members of Congress, such as the Democrat from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have suggested, it should be a Global Health and Green New Deal . It would be a pact articulated around three major global themes:
First, around health, to prevent pandemics and to ensure that all regions of the world, without discrimination, have access to the medicines and vaccines they need;
Second, the global economy, in response to the recession to come, in order to prevent poverty and hunger; and
Third, the environment, through the promotion of a green economy, supported by a legal framework that values, prioritises and protects our natural world, especially its forests – the ‘Amazons’ replicated worldwide – but also each individual tree for they all contribute to the earth’s system upon witch life depends.
It is a project based on self-evident common–sense; much of it, indeed, was already proposed after the 2008 financial crisis, tragically in vain. It has been sketched out in reports for the United Nations and in books such as Edward Barbier’s Global Green New Deal.
The European Union, if it were prepared to take on the task now, could be the ideal body to propose an ambitious and new global pact on social justice alongside health and the environment at the United Nations and to the G20 group of leading states.
Nonetheless, the imperative then, as now, was to prevent billions of dollars from being invested in the world’s economies ostensibly to ensure social justice and counter the anticipated recession but which only served to finance a distorted global economy that aggravated ecological crisis and financial speculation. The European Union, if it were prepared to take on the task now, could be the ideal body to propose an ambitious and new global pact on social justice alongside health and the environment at the United Nations and to the G20 group of leading states.
The detractors
In the tragedy that we currently face, human beings have discovered that the world is global in a sense far beyond the constraints of trade, goods and finance They are coming, too, to realise that multilateralism is fragile and that President Trump and his pocket puppets in Brazil and elsewhere want to force it to serve the purposes of their own unilateral obscurantism.
It is sad to see that, today, the United States of the New Deal and the Marshall Plan, the two great examples of the fight against social crisis in the 1930s and 1940s, now only has the suicidal proposal of unilateralism alongside its campaign against the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international bodies to offer the world. The American president’s unilateralism, coupled with the Sino-American rivalry he has stoked up have paralysed the United Nations’ Security Council. The result has been that the Security Council has not even be able to approve a resolution drafted by France and Tunisia to support the Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres’s call for a global ceasefire, to allow access for medical aid to countries at war. It is a shameful outcome for a body that is meant to monitor and protect the global commons.
Yet President Trump is not an insurmountable obstacle. The European Union and its liberal democracies could be decisive in shaping the post-Covid-19 world instead. Yet, to do so, they will need first to save themselves by responding to the consequences of the health crisis with a project that radically transforms economics and politics – promoting a real green pact that is an example for us all and not just a convenient political slogan.
So far, it has not done too well; the Commission’s Green Deal does not have even half the resources it will need, and the Union’s proposed budget for 2021-2027 does not even exceed 1.074% of the member states’ global gross domestic product (GDP). Against that, we should remember that Europe’s NATO member states had already agreed to increase their defence spending alone to 2% of their GDPs.
Europe’s new green pact must become Europe’s post-pandemic reconstruction plan. However, to meet the resources it will need, the Union’s budget must be revised to match the demands a real green deal will place upon it
Against that background, Europe’s new green pact must become Europe’s post-pandemic reconstruction plan. However, to meet the resources it will need, the Union’s budget must be revised to match the demands a real green deal will place upon it. In that context, the Franco-German agreement for a recovery fund – of grants, not loans – of €500 billion is a first step in the right direction.
The alternative
The evidence of these challenges should be a stimulus for a new era of international cooperation, as has happened in the past. The United Nations (of which the WHO is one of six key agencies) and the European Community emerged from World War II. And it was the WHO which eradicated the deadly smallpox -the virus killed almost a third of its victims- by a vaccination campaign it launched in 1966.
If the European Union were to be able to unite around the proposal for an ambitious global pact for social justice, health and the environment, it would find universal popular support, even in America and Brazil. It would certainly find support in most of the world’s states, as was made clear by the UN’s General Assembly’s resolution on the pandemic or by the world conference convened by the WHO, France, the European Union and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on April 24, 2020, in which participants pledged to ensure that any treatment against Covid-19 would be equally accessible to all.
The good news is that a return to life on earth without deadly threats from the ‘four horsemen of the Apocalypse’ – today pandemics, misery, inequality and global warming – is possible. But to achieve that, we must break with the neo-liberal development model that has brought us into the dystopia in which we live. We must, in short, replace it with a more just and fraternal alternative that offers equality of rights and support for all.
What is climate from a legal point of view?
The structural step to overcome climate emergency
By Paulo Magalhães, CIJE – Centre for Legal and Economic Research of University of Porto and President of Common Home of Humanity
A stable climate is a visible manifestation of a well-functioning Earth System. Climate as “an intangible natural resource, which spans across and beyond the national territories of States”[1], challenges the very foundations of International Law, because it is subversive to any kind of physical/territorial division, even in a legally abstract way. Answering to this paradigm challenge, by framing and organizing the relations of interdependence that emerge from the shared use of a unique and highly interconnected Earth System in a global scale, is certainly the biggest challenge to enable our common future.
Almost 30 years after the “adverse effects of climate change” being considered as a common concern of humankind, there has been no consensus on what it means from a legal standpoint. Even though it remains the legal framework of the Paris agreement, there is today no official definition of what the implications of this approach are. A common concern is a vague political formula that does not legally recognize the existence of the common good itself (stable climate), it neither helps to create the necessary legal capacity- building among nation-states to monitor, maintain as well as to restore the Earth System for present and future generations.
To read the full text click here
By surrendering to autocracy in the fight against COVID-19, Hungary poisons European ideals
We Europeans need to fight two viruses, simultaneously and equally vehemently: Covid-19, attacking our bodies, and yet another infection targeting our ideals and democracies.
On March 30, 2020, the Hungarian Parliament adopted a text that allows the government to suspend the enforcement of certain laws, depart from provisions enshrined in the existing ones and implement additional extraordinary measures by decree for a practically unlimited period of time, with new limitations on media and information.
Such a concentration of power is unprecedented in the European Union. It does not serve the fight against Covid-19 or its economic consequences; instead, it opens the door to all types of abuses, with both public and private assets now at the mercy of an executive that is largely unaccountable. It is the culmination of Hungary’s 10-year drift towards authoritarianism, and it is dangerous.
Indeed, it is with great concern that we observed Prime Minister Viktor Orbán embark his country on a track diverging from European norms and values over the last decade. This power-grab in response to Covid-19 is just a new and alarming chapter in a long process of democratic backsliding.
To read the full text click here
Moving forward – with or without Germany
By Álvaro Vasconcelos
The Eurogroup’s decision on support for Southern Europe on April 9 may have incidentally anticipated some of the dramatic implications that would otherwise have attended the outcome of the European Council’s meeting on 23 April.Nevertheless, that meeting will still be no less decisive for the future of Europe’s response to the extremely serious health, economic and social consequences of the pandemic that we all now face.Even if the Council does not go much beyond what was proposed by the Eurogroup, it will still be a leap into the unknown, and that will force those who defend the European ideal to rethink their attitude towards the European Union itself.
To read the full text click here
Coronavirus: Without a new European patriotism, the decline of the EU is inevitable
On 26 March, an utterly divided EU emerged from the European Council dedicated to European measures aimed at managing the severest crisis since 1929, one far worse than the 2012-2017 crisis. The coronavirus pandemic and the transpiring economic and social crises present Europe with an extraordinary opportunity: to decide to move towards a deeper unity, or to decline irrevocably. The prevailing road will naturally depend on the decisions of the governments in the European Council and other EU institutions; but also, and above all, on the mobilization of citizens and the public opinion in each of the Member States. Measures which correspond to the EU’s values, traditions, and increased global responsibilities? The question for Europe is the following: is the EU a community of destiny, a Schicksalsgemeinschaft, or is it but an instrumental association of national selfishness, where the blind choice of each man for himself clearly prevails over rising up to historical challenges? Does a common sense of belonging, based on strong common interests, still exist?
To read the full text click here
Coronavirus : Sans un nouveau patriotisme européen, déclin inévitable de l’UE
L’UE est sortie déchirée du Conseil européen du 26 mars consacré à la gestion de la crise la plus grave depuis 1929, bien pire que celle de 2012-2017. Pourtant, nous pensons que la pandémie du coronavirus et la crise économique et sociale offrent à l’Europe une opportunité extraordinaire pour décider si avancer vers une unité plus profonde ou décliner irréversiblement. Cela va dépendre des décisions des gouvernements, du Conseil européen et des institutions de l’UE; mais aussi et surtout de la mobilisation passionnée et compétente des citoyens et des opinions publiques de chaque Etat membre. La question pour l’Europe est la suivante : est-ce qu’elle est une communauté de destin, une Schicksalsgemeinschaft, consciente de ses responsabilités mondiales, ou bien n’est-elle qu’une association instrumentale d’égoïsmes nationaux, suicidaires, où le choix aveugle du chacun pour soi prévaut nettement à l’occasion des épreuves historiques ? Est-ce qu’un sentiment d’appartenance commune, basé sur des solides intérêts communs, existe toujours ?
To read the full text click here
The virus of humanity
By Álvaro Vasconcelos
In addition to the medical and socio-political consequences now on our horizons, the pandemic caused by Coronavirus is also going to be a challenge for our own sense of humanity. Amidst our fears of being contaminated ourselves and the anguish of seeing those dearest to us also affected, will we still be able to treat others as part of the same humanity as ourselves? And will we, in consequence, have the time and space not only for our own problems but also to be moved by, for example, the fate of the refugees who will now inevitably disappear from the pages of the newspapers we read or the news programmes we see or hear?
Symbolism and sensationalism
Yet, in the midst of our own fears and anxieties, we should recall that here is a literary premonition of what could happen. Albert Camus’s novel, The Plague, describes what happens when a deadly epidemic contaminates a city, the Algerian city of Oran. The city is locked down and quarantine camps are erected, but the book’s hero, Bernard Rieux, a doctor, fights professionally against the epidemic but also seeks to affirm the moral values of solidarity and common humanity within a colonial environment. He denounces those who have come to see “the other” as the evil symbolized by the epidemic, the environmental threat, the “foreigner” who should be slaughtered.
To read the full text click here
The Outcomes of 2011
By George Joffé
In the midst of the generalised disappointment about the outcomes today of the Arab Awakening in January 2011, now a year short of a decade ago and at a time of profound political disruption in Algeria and incipient civil war in Libya, it may be worth asking what that outcome has really been. One possibility, other than outright despair, might be, to echo Chou En Lai in his apparent response to the street protests in Paris in 1968, that it is still ‘too early to tell.’ After all, democratic transitions elsewhere have been imperfect and often long delayed, as the continent-wide experiences of 1848 in Europe – and more recent experiences in the twentieth century – have demonstrated. Furthermore, authoritarian resilience appears to be more tenacious and sophisticated in exploiting its vested positions than was realised in 2011. However, it is also the case that what we really mean by ‘democratic transition’ – the presumed outcome of those events nine years ago – is also not so obvious.
At its most banal, the phrase provides a label for the transformation, within the state, of the governance process from one dominated and exclusively controlled by an elite to one in which popular participation becomes the means by which that process is accepted as legitimate by the community to which it applies. Yet, despite widespread received opinion, particularly in Europe and America, there is no single model that automatically qualifies as generating an inevitable outcome of such popular legitimacy. Nor is it simply a matter of institutions, such as constitutions and parliaments, for the widespread experience of institutional failure in the post-colonial world throughout the past half-century has demonstrated their fragility.
Back to the Future? No, Forward to Worse.
By Radha Kumar
Last week’s horrific violence in north-east Delhi sparked traumatic memories of the pogroms against Sikhs in 1984 and Muslims in 2002. Thankfully, the scale of destruction was much lower this time, but the similarities are deeply disturbing. Once again, ruling party leaders and cadre incited hatred. Once again, the police stood by and even participated (indeed, instances of the latter, such as police attacks on students in Jamia and AMU, were precursors this time). Once again, the Union and state governments were glaringly absent. And once again, the courts have provided little relief.
Yet there are differences too, and they are in many ways even more disturbing. As one of the hundreds of citizens of Delhi who poured out of their homes to combat the 1984 violence and rescue victims, I can never forget the anguish we felt and the horrors we beheld. There was then, as there is today, a total breakdown of trust in both the Union and the city governments. It ran so deep that for some weeks it was we, the citizens, who took over the areas of east Delhi where Sikhs were targeted.
Such agency was not allowed this time around. Looking at what happened in north-east Delhi, I now feel grateful that there was at least an iota of shame in our governments then, that allowed us to requisition the army and CRPF to instantly rescue and shelter the victims. Nor were we arrested for accusing the Rajiv Gandhi administration of turning a blind eye to the communal massacre, or charged with enmity to the Indian state when we did.
To read the full text click here
Le Brexit et son prophete
Mario Telò
Invité par l’Institut d’Etudes européennes de l’Université libre de Bruxelles, à présenter pour la première fois la position du Royaume-Uni de Boris Johnson en vue de la complexe négociation sur les relations RU-UE après le Brexit, David Frost n conseiller du Premier Ministre et négociateur en chef , en partenariat avec M Barnier en représentation de l’UE) a présenté é une conférence très cultivée et ambitieuse mais surprénante, ayant comme titre « Reflections on the Revolutions in Europe », une véritable philosophie du Brexit.
Ce qui a frappé l’auditoire très nombreux c’est la contradiction évidente entre l’extrême gentillesse et le pragmatisme annoncé par David Frost au niveau de la négociation et de l’autre la portée philosophique du tournant historique qu’il souhaite ainsi que l’agressivité du défi souverainiste à l’Union européenne.
On ne peut que se réjouir de l’intention, au moment de la séparation du Royaume-Uni de l’UE, de situer le Brexit dans une perspective historique de longue durée, et de hausser ainsi le niveau du débat en abordant des questions fondamentales d’histoire et perspective de la pensée politique.
To read the full text click here
Trump and the age of barbarism
By Álvaro Vasconcelos
This new decade is off to a bad start as far as world peace and the International Order are concerned! The assassination of General Soleimani, ordered by President Trump, perhaps because he thought it would divert attention away from his impending impeachment, was an irresponsible escalation that could lead to a new war in the Middle East. Of all the possible responses to the attack on the American Embassy in Baghdad, the president chose the most extreme, in contempt of international law and American domestic law as well.
The president’s threat to bomb a ‘cultural’ site in Iran, presumably a site such as Persepolis or Isfahan, if Iran were to riposte, was, quite simply, barbaric, a mirror-image of the alleged barbarity for which he had originally blamed Iran. International conventions prohibit historical monuments being used as military targets, a principle reaffirmed by the resolution of the United Nations Security Council – adopted unanimously in 2017 – when Da’ish destroyed large parts of the historical heritage of Palmira in Syria. Even if it did not occur in reality (the president withdrew his threat in yet another tweet the following day), the fact that the threat had ever been voiced nonetheless endangers world heritage sites by legitimising a trend that in the last decade has led, amongst other atrocities, to the destruction of historic monuments such as the great mosque of Aleppo or the massive Buddhist sculptures at Bam.
To read the full article click here
Labour and the 2019 Brexit Election*
By Mary Kaldor
A failure to come to terms with the changing structure of society under the impact of globalisation holds lessons for Social Democrats in other parts of Europe.
How did it happen that the United Kingdom has elected as Prime Minister a proven liar, someone who does not know how many children he has, and someone who uses facetiously racist and misogynist language? How did it happen that he achieved a Conservative majority for a monumental act of self-harm to the United Kingdom, namely Brexit?
The Conservative Party had hardly any activists; they have less than 70,000 members, mostly elderly (by contrast Labour has half a million members). Those of us out on the doorstep never saw a single Tory campaigner and very few posters. The Conservative manifesto was sketchy, prone to vagueness and double counting, as in the number of hospitals to be built or the nurses to be recruited. By contrast, Labour had an exciting and ambitious manifesto, representing the outcome of years of hard work, especially by the shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell. It included a green new deal, big commitments to public services and utilities, and innovative proposals like public service broadband.
Boris Johnson made gaffe after gaffe – stealing a reporter’s phone after he took a picture of a sick boy on the floor of a hospital, hiding in a fridge to escape the media, not turning up to hustings on climate change or in his own constituency, refusing to be grilled by Andrew Neil of the BBC even though the other party leaders had done so on the clear understanding that the Tory leader would also be interviewed, to name but a few of these incidents.
And yet the relentless message of ‘Get Brexit Done’ combined with the vilification of Jeremy Corbyn put out by a centralised well-funded Tory HQ through social media and the tabloid press seems to have hit home at least in England and Wales. As a whisky exporter from East Dumbartonshire, where the Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson lost her seat, put it: ‘I don’t think it would have mattered if Koko the silverback gorilla was the leader of the Tories; they had a message wrapped in the Union Jack and voters in England bought it.’
This was a Brexit election. Those in favour of Brexit united behind the Conservative Party and obtained 47% of the vote. Those who were against Brexit, the majority of the population, were divided among Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens, and the Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalist parties. In the British first past the post system, only the dominant parties matter. Labour had a Brexit policy that satisfied no one. Its commitment to a public vote was opposed by those who want to leave but its refusal to commit to a remain position lost it remain voters. The Conservatives only increased their vote by 1.5% compared with 2017, Labour’s share fell by 8%, mainly to other remain parties. This allowed a string of Conservative victories in what is known as the ‘red wall’ – the traditional English labour heartlands across the middle and North of England from the Irish Sea to the North Sea.
* This article was originally published in Open Democracy on 16 of December 2019.
To read the full text click here
1989-2019 pour un bilan équilibré : du cri de liberté de 1989 à l’union politique européenne ?
Mario Telo’
- Le mur de Berlin ne s’est pas effondré. Il a été abattu par la révolte populaire des allemands de l’Est. Il serait erroné d’attribuer 1989 uniquement aux facteurs externes, qui ont pourtant joué chacun un rôle important : la victoire des USA dans la guerre froide, grâce à la supériorité technologique et militaire occidentale; la tolérance de l’URSS de Gorbatchev arrivé au pouvoir en 1985 et mettant une fin à la Guerre froide depuis le traité de Reykjavik . Surtout, l’attraction spontanément suscitée auprès des populations des pays de l’Europe centrale et orientale par le modèle d’intégration et développement pacifique de la Communauté européenne , accompagnée par la tournant obtenu surtout grâce à Palme et Brandt par le traité de Helsinki de 1975 : CSCE, coopération Ouest-est, dialogue au niveau de la société civile.
Article initialement publié sur globalgovernance10.net *
To read the full text click here
The fragile lightness of freedom: The Berlin Wall thirty years after
By Álvaro Vasconcelos
Thirty years after it disappeared, the memory of the Wall that divided Berlin cries out to us as a protest against all the walls that must be broken down so that we can complete the more fraternal world that, in the euphoria of the surprising and unexpected celebration that November 9, 1989 became, then seemed within our reach.
The democratic revolutions that followed were “velvet revolutions”, as Vaclav Havel’s described the Czech revolution.In them, unlike in Hungary in 1956, there were no more tanks in the streets, rolling through the blood of their martyrs. The progress towards political and social rights in a kidnapped “Central Europe,” of which Milan Kundera spoke in 1984, still remains, showing that the utopia of a united and democratic Europe could still be achieved.
To read the full text click here
LIBYA AND THE EU: TIME FOR A NEW WAY FORWARD?
By George Joffé
At the end of October, the Italian government announced that it would renew its agreement with over migrant control which it originally signed with the government of national accord in Libya in February 2017. A few days later, at the start of November, Greece – another ‘frontline state’ as far as migration across the Mediterranean is concerned – announced that it would deport all failed migrant asylum-seekers back to Turkey.
Both developments underline the continuing frustration that the frontline states feel at Europe’s ongoing inertia over finding an equitable and humane solution to the Mediterranean migrant crisis that the Union has had to confront ever since 2015. The United Nations, it is true, is planning a conference in Berlin in the next few weeks, but this is intended to resolve the domestic Libyan crisis, not the specific issue of migration there.
To read the full text click here
Le Nouveau Président : un événement singuler, un souffle nouveau de la révolution
Por Azzam Mahjoub*
Nous sommes pris dans un tourbillon marqué par un marathon électoral. Pour une jeune et fragile démocratie ce grand tumulte est de nature à ne pas prendre le recul nécessaire pour réaliser la signification profonde des événements que nous vivons, événements qui se déroulent devant nous et dont nous sommes les acteurs. Ces événements multiples se succèdent, se croisent et se télescopent, d’autant qu’à l’ère de l’information qui capte et relate l’immédiat relègue ou déclasse, souvent, l’événement d’hier au profit de celui d’aujourd’hui, ce qui est dans l’ordre du temps des médias.
Le temps de la réflexion et de l’analyse profonde est plus lent et, peut-être, décalé par rapport à l’urgence du temps immédiat. C’est vrai qu’aujourd’hui la question de la formation du prochain gouvernement est au centre des préoccupations du monde politique et médiatique, c’est vrai que les contraintes économiques et les urgences financières sont à l’ordre du jour, mais ce n’est pas par déni de ces préoccupation justifiées que je souhaiterais inviter les lecteurs à une ébauche de réflexion brève sur le moment singulier que nous vivons et dont l’élection quasi plébiscitaire de Kaies Saied en est un signe manifeste.
Unfinished Transition and the crisis of Liberal-Democracy in Poland
By Marcin Zaborowski
Until recently Poland has been seen as a model example of a transition to democracy and market economy. The economy has grown without interruption for 29 years, which is the longest for any country in Europe after the end of the Second World War. When Poland launched its transition in 1989, its GDP per capita was lower than that of Ukraine. Today, Poland’s GDP per capita is four times higher than in Ukraine and Poland has become a primary location of economic migration from Ukraine. After the turbulent 1990s, in the 2000s the politics seemed to have stabilised in Poland and became dominated by centrist parties led by predictable politicians well versed in western norms and languages. In 2004 Poland joined the EU and become the biggest net beneficiary of EU funds. The population in Poland remains pro-European and overwhelmingly supportive of EU membership.
However, in autumn 2015 the Poles elected a government of a Law and Justice (PiS) party that questioned the post-1989 liberal consensus, is critical of the EU and preaches conspiracy theories. In all democracies, accidents happen and it was widely expected that PiS will burn out in the process of governing and Poland would re-join the liberal-democratic mainstream. However, after four years of governing the popularity of the PiS party has grown. If the polls are correct than PiS will win the elections on the 13th of October and most likely it will form another government. This begs the question: what happened that the Poles continue to support the party that questions the fundamentals of Poland’s post-1989 transition?
To read the full text click here
Jerusalem is our Future
By Álvaro Vasconcelos
The recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in violation of the decisions of the United Nations, is an attack against a city that, more than any other, is a world city.
In 2000 in Ramallah, Faisal Husseini, the late PLO leader,in a EuroMeSCo seminar, declared that Jerusalem should be an open city, with a municipality run jointly by Israelis and Palestinians. Faisal Husseini explained that in a city that is home to the sacred sites of more than 2 billion inhabitants of the world – the ruins of the Temple of Solomon, the Mosque of Al-Aqsa or the Holy Sepulchre – only a shared management would guarantee peace and the free access of all.
Jerusalem is much more than a geographical reference, it is a symbol of the millennial coexistence between the three great monotheistic religions, in all its declinations, is multiculturalism made world, the Tower of Babel as a “realizable Utopia” to use Paul Ricoeur formula .
To read the full text click here
Seeds of Hope in the Trump-Era?
By Cláudia de Castro Caldeirinha
Donald Trump is on the news everyday, all over the world – and this well before his official term as US President started. His controversial personality and decisions leave little space for neutrality and soft positions. His zero-sum positions provoke an endless succession of tensions and intense reactions, at home and abroad. The least we can say is that he is not good at making friends, as his stances on Mexico, China, the Muslim countries, on multilateralism, on trade, on NATO, the UN and the EU, on freedom of the press, etc, are currently showing.
Gone are the expectations of those who had expected (read “hoped”) that his campaign promises would be replaced by a more pragmatic agenda, once he got elected. His ominous vision of “America first” is everyday incarnating into controversial nationalist measures that are fuelling widespread discontentment. The refugees and immigration bans (also called “Muslim-ban”, as it became known in social media); the anti-abortion rulings; the order to build a border wall to prevent Mexican immigrants to enter the US; the persistence on supporting an unsustainable fossil fuel industry; the destruction of Obamacare, Barack Obama’s healthcare law, are some of the most contentious decisions. Moreover, his radical positions seem to dismiss the point that stable international relations, security and trade are based on compromise-building. This apparent unconsciousness leads many to fear that the new American President might precipitate serious conflicts and even provoke a new global recession with his drastic populist agenda.
It is therefore not a surprise that democrats and liberals all over the world both fear and abhor Donald Trump. Not one day passes without Trump-related declarations. From Obama to the Silicon Valley tycoons, from world leaders to the Members of European institutions, from civil society leaders to concerned citizens. This article focus on the latter, i.e. on the social mobilization gradually building in these first weeks of Trump’s rule.
Forum Demos 