International-Affairs Columnist, The Globe and Mail. Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy. Author of Arrival City, Maximum Canada, etc.
Toronto, Canada
Joined March 2009
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Out this week. The history you never learned in school; the argument you never thought you’d make
This is such an impressive accomplishment it has led me to question my great distrust of direct democracy! (Well, within-party direct democracy… as an electoral system it remains a tool of autocrats)
Sırbistan'da öğrenciler doğrudan demokrasi yöntemini seçim siyasetine taşıdılar.
Liderlere dayalı, yukarıdan aşağıya bir örgütlenme yerine, herkesin söz alabildiği öğrenci genel kurulları (plenum) oluşturdular. Kararlar tartışılarak, mümkün olduğunca uzlaşmayla alındı.
Bu yöntemi üniversitelerin dışına da taşıdılar. Mahallelerde, kentlerde ve köylerde yurttaş meclisleri (zborovi) kuruldu. İnsanlar kendi sorunlarını tartışmak, çözüm önermek ve birlikte karar almak için toplandı.
250 kişilik milletvekili aday listesini de şöyle oluşturdular:
1- Önce 250 adaylık kontenjanı, öğrenci sayılarına göre altı üniversite kenti arasında paylaştırdılar. Belgrad'ın listeye hâkim olmaması için diğer kentlerin de üst sıralarda temsil edilmesini sağladılar. Ardından her kentin kontenjanını fakülteler arasında dağıttılar.
2- Ülke genelinde 80'den fazla fakültede öğrenci genel kurulları toplandı. Öğrenciler kendileri aday olmadı ama her biri aday önerebildi ve neden o kişiyi önerdiğini açıkladı. İsimler tartışıldı, önce uzlaşma arandı, gerektiğinde oylama yapıldı.
3- Mevcut siyasi kadrolara kapıyı kapattılar. İktidar partilerinin mevcut ve eski üyelerini, iktidar adına görev yapmış siyasetçileri ve bürokratları, muhalefet partilerinin üst düzey yöneticilerini aday göstermediler. Böylece hem iktidardan hem de yerleşik muhalefetten bağımsız bir liste oluşturdular.
4- Fakülteler birbirlerinin adaylarını da denetledi. Önerilen bütün isimler ortak bir listede toplandı ve tüm fakültelerin incelemesine açıldı. İtirazlar öğrenci kurullarında tartışıldı. Adayın elenmesi için kurulların yarısından fazlasının veto etmesi gerekiyordu. Tek bir fakültenin itirazı yeterli değildi.
5- Elenen veya çekilen adayların yerine yedekler getirildi. Böylece profesörlerin, doktorların, bilim insanlarının, işçilerin, sanatçıların ve aktivistlerin yer aldığı 250 kişilik liste ortaya çıktı.
Within the last 5 minutes I have read reports from non-flaky sources that Flavio Bolsonaro 1) Has turned himself in; 2) is currently on a flight to the United States; 3) has faked his presence on the flight to the United States in order to sneak into Argentina
Doug Saunders retweeted
“Flávio has given up,” an adviser to the Bolsonaro family told me. “He’s terrified. He is worried his father will die in jail, that he himself will be jailed this week and that he may have a long prison term ahead.”
washingtonpost.com/politics/…
If they expanded this map out a bit, you’d see the wider temporal sweep of Protestant to Catholic to Islamic coffee culture — by the time you reach Riyadh, the coffee shops are packed at 3am most nights, as all manner of stimulants including caffeine provide the only escape
Actually the “hippie trail” route (Europe->Turkey->Iran->Afghanistan->onward) is quite doable today — just don’t try it from east to west; I wrote at length about the people attempting that. I know someone going Europe->Tehran entirely by high-quality trains
The past is a foreign country. You could drive through Afghanistan as a hippie woman but places like Vietnam were worn torn and China was closed off to the outside world.
Now you can backpack through Vietnam and tour the Forbidden City of Beijing but the old hippie trail is nearly impossible to recreate.
My chronicle of the reverse hippie trail aka the Dunki route. Not fun at all, wildly expensive, multiply illegal and horrifyingly dangerous. The only escape for many Afghans
theglobeandmail.com/opinion/…
Amazing. Hungarian TV also did this after Orban was gone: went off the air, came back on, admitted they’d been telling the regime’s lies for a decade and a half.
Will we see CBS do something similar in 2029? Will this platform someday have to do this?
I had to check but yes this is their actual report which assesses that the Chinese and Russian threats to their territory are greater than the North Korean threat etc. Those kids need to work on their posture
Kermit Roosevelt Jr. cocks his eyebrow suspiciously from some astral plane
Trump: "We didn't start the war with Iran. Iran started the war with us."
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The U.S. launched the war on February 28, 2026, with coordinated strikes under the name Operation Epic Fury. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes. Iran retaliated afterward.
reuters.com/business/aeros…
apnews.com/article/iran-u…
I’m getting the sense that the other authoritarians realized during the campaign, and especially during the debate, that Bolsonaro Jr is such an incompetent failson that it wasn’t worth intervening for him unless the margin was very narrow (which it sure wasn’t)
So, three Arctic-containing countries are avowed enemies, for the pettiest of reasons. And one is, contrary to everyone’s wishes, a great ally led by a humanitarian, for the gravest of reasons
Doug Saunders retweeted
In fact, her point about Lady Macbeth is very accurate and has been part of our understanding of the play for centuries. And that line is one of several that explicitly illustrate it
My hot take de jour: Elected school boards are really a terrible idea, both unnecessary and very bad for education. In much the same way that elected judges are bad for justice.
A voter’s task is to figure out which of the 27 on the ballot are a) normals with minor political ambitions who’d maybe like smaller class sizes etc or b) single-issue freaks who want to ban certain lessons or books or sex ed or snitch on kids to their parents. And memorize an a)
