Tag: belarus

The UK’s Scandal-Plagued Prime Minister Circles the Drain

We begin with the exodus of ministers from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s cabinet further isolating the scandal-plagued leader to the point where he will soon have to step down or be sacked by his party. Joining us from the UK is Paul Whiteley, professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. His research is in Political Communication, Political Economy and Elections, Public Opinion and Voting Behavior and his latest book is Brexit – Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union, co-authored with Harold Clarke and Matthew Goodwin.

Under Enormous Pressure From Putin, Belarus Will Soon Enter the War Against Ukraine

Then we examine the possibility that Belarus will soon enter the war against Ukraine as its dictator bends under enormous pressure from Vladimir Putin to deploy Belarus’s 100,000 man army on Ukraine’s northern border creating an extra front for the already hard-pressed Ukrainian army to fight on. Joining us is David Marples, the Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History & Classics at the University of Alberta and the author of a number of books including The Lukashenka Phenomenon: Elections, Propaganda, and the Foundations of Political Authority in Belarus, Prospects for Democracy in Belarus, and Understanding Ukraine and Belarus. His latest book is The War in Ukraine’s Donbas: Origins, Contexts, and the Future and he has an article at Canada’s National Post, “Here are the terrible costs of Vladimir Putin’s enduring war in Ukraine.”

SCOTUS is Using the Constitution to Destroy the Very Democratic Governance it Was Designed to Protect

Then finally we get an appraisal of the Supreme Court’s attack on the Constitution and the rights of average Americans as the far-right supermajority of justices heads into radical territory with more and more nakedly political rulings that could lead the United States into one-party rule by a tyranny of the minority. Joining us is Lawrence Douglas, the James Grosfeld Chair in Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought at Amherst College and a contributing opinion writer for The Guardian. His latest book is Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Electoral Meltdown in 2020, and we discuss his article at The Guardian “The US Supreme Court is turning the Constitution into a suicide pact: The Constitution is being used to destroy the very democratic governance that it was designed to protect.”