In America, the two houses of Congress, The Senate and the House of Representatives, not to speak of the Electoral College, are the checks against ‘too much democracy’ of The Founders. The Good Grey Mr. Walter Lippmann advocated a cadre of technocrats, as another effective check against that menace. The rise of these ‘Experts’ brought wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and The War On Terror. The cost of this latest exercise in the murderous insanity of the experts :
Headline: At Least 37 Million People Have Been Displaced by America’s War on Terror
Sub-headline: A new report calculates the number of people who fled because of wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.
At least 37 million people have been displaced as a direct result of the wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, according to a new report from Brown University’s Costs of War project. That figure exceeds those displaced by conflict since 1900, the authors say, with the exception of World War II.
The findings were published on Tuesday, weeks before the United States enters its 20th year of fighting the war on terror, which began with the invasion of Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001; yet, the report says it is the first time the number of people displaced by U.S. military involvement during this period has been calculated. The findings come at a time when the United States and other Western countries have become increasingly opposed to welcoming refugees, as anti-migrant fears bolster favor for closed-border policies.
The report accounts for the number of people, mostly civilians, displaced in and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria, where fighting has been the most significant, and says the figure is a conservative estimate — the real number may range from 48 million to 59 million. The calculation does not include the millions of other people who have been displaced in countries with smaller U.S. counterterrorism operations, according to the report, including those in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Niger.
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Who can forget John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge other best-selling books:
The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, of 2004
God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World . 2010
If there ever were two more stalwarts of the bankrupt tradition of The Economist’s ‘Liberalism’ it its these two propagandists. For a telling history this newspaper, and of their particular brand of toxic politics, see:
Liberalism at Large: The World According to The Economist by Alexander Zevin
The Wake Up Call, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge latest reactionary polemic, in the guise of a commentary on the pandemic: Mr. Ganesh employs the help of Mr. Garrett Jones’ “10 per cent less democracy” , that does not so much as make an argument, as state a belief, or more plainly, enunciates an ideology, that is the worldview of both Conservatives, of what ever hue, and Neo-Liberals who are presiding over the Economic/Political collapse, in the present. The origins of which are in the failed policies of the very experts that Mr Ganesh doesn’t quite praise, as the voice of political reason, but merely a check on ‘too much democracy’. Mr. Ganesh is guilty of the political crime, of trivialization, in a time of grave political/civic crisis!
Political Skeptic
https://www.ft.com/content/f68c13a4-1130-49d5-b3c6-2270711d819e
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