Doubts, Death and Democracy: Mikhail Gorbachev’s Bitter-Sweet Legacy

By Deborah L. Armstrong

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, is dead at the age of 91.

He survived 31 years longer than the country of his birth, which he dissolved in 1991 despite a referendum of the people, who overwhelmingly voted to keep the USSR up and running.

Doubts, Death and Democracy: Mikhail Gorbachev’s Bitter-Sweet Legacy

We won’t be fooled again, say people of Pakistan

AUGUST 04: PAKISTAN JUSTICE MOVEMENT (PTI) PARTY SUPPORTERS HOLD A PROTEST LED BY FORMER PRIME MINISTER IMRAN KHAN AGAINST THE COALITION GOVERNMENT AND THE ELECTION COMMISSION AT FATMA JINNAH PARK IN THE F-9 REGION OF ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN ON AUGUST 04, 2022. (MUHAMMED SEMIH UĞURLU – ANADOLU AGENCY)

Politicians in Pakistan rise to power and fall from grace with alarming regularity, so much so that not a single prime minister has ever completed a full term in office. The one constant has been the genuine love and affection ordinary people have for the military. However, that could be about to change now that some inconvenient truths are beginning to surface in the increasingly clumsy attempts to silence Imran Khan.

We won’t be fooled again, say people of Pakistan

‘I Know You Are But What Am I’: Russia’s Ready Response to US Africa-Alarmism

Perhaps you’ve heard: not only is Moscow about to maraud its way through Ukraine, not only is Tsar Vladimir I seeking a new Eurasian empire, but – as if to add insult to injury – Russia is “returning” to Africa in a big way, intent on “displacing” the influence of the continent’s apparently rightful influencers (interesting language, that – no?). Anyway, at least that’s the hyper-panicked Russophobic narrative emanating from America’s top think tanks, papers of record, and bipartisan but paltry politicians.

‘I Know You Are But What Am I’: Russia’s Ready Response to US Africa-Alarmism

The Malian Junta Isn’t A “Defensively Nationalist Regime” But An African Pioneer

The Malian example strikes fear in the hearts of Western leaders since it makes them suspect that some of the same men tasked with enforcing their neo-colonial regimes in West Africa might secretly be anti-imperialist freedom fighters plotting to overthrow these unjust systems from within like that country’s junta clearly was in hindsight.

The Malian Junta Isn’t A “Defensively Nationalist Regime” But An African Pioneer