The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Winter 2010)
Editorial
First, we would like to apologise to all our readers for the long delay in publishing this double issue, which was not unrelated to the plethora of important events, both at the global level and the interlinked events at the regional level, which we were determined to cover with this issue. We therefore hope that the rich thematic of this issue will compensate your patience!
The issue is divided into three main sections. The first section deals with the continuous deterioration of the systemic crisis. It begins with an article by Takis Fotopoulos on the systemic crisis in Greece, which recently developed into a crisis of the Eurozone, and through it, has been directly connected to the global crisis. The article examines the current attempt by the EU elites to transform Greece into an EU protectorate and proposes an alternative solution that aims to stop the Latin-Americanization of the country, while creating the preconditions for a self-reliant economic democracy as an integral part of an Inclusive Democracy. The section continues with an article by Sophia Antonopoulou, which painstakingly examines in detail the origin, the causes and the consequences of the global financial crisis, which has recently begun developing into a recession crisis, as states had to drastically reduce their excessive public deficits created by the huge bailout operations to save the privatised banking sectors ―an issue that we examined also in the article on “The myths about the Crisis” (IJID, Vol. 4, No. 4, October 2008). This section ends with a discussion of the crucial issue of Iran (Takis Fotopoulos) which, noting the mounting strong indications (particularly the December events but also the gathering campaign to impose much stricter sanctions against the Islamic regime), draws the conclusion that a military coup from within, perhaps accompanied with a military blow from without (by the Zionist regime and/or the Obama administration) is planned to lead to a regime change in Iran, possibly even within this year, with implications of immense significance for the Middle East and beyond.
The second section examines one particular, and very significant by its nature, aspect of the wider systemic crisis: the health crisis, which came into the limelight on two accounts in the last six months or so. First, on account of the chronic crisis of the US health system and the massively advertised as important reform by the Obama administration to deal with it, by forcing citizens to buy insurance policies rather than by creating a system of public health ―a topic that John Sargis discusses insightfully. Then, the (non)epidemic of the swine flue is examined with particular emphasis on the systemic nature of it. In this article Takis Fotopoulos discusses the various plot theories about the flu, as a symptom of the present rise of irrationalism which has now been extended to medical practice itself, and then he goes on to consider the systemic nature of the swine flu in terms of the intensive factory farming system, the interests of the tourist industries and airlines and, of course, the interests of the pharmaceutical industry.
In the final section, a restatement of an older D&N article by Takis Fotopoulos on the theory towards a liberatory democratic ethics is published, which following a critical assessment of the approaches to liberatory ethics, explores the reasons why today’s liberatory ethics should avoid both the Scylla of “objective” ethics and the Charybdis of irrationalist ethics or unbounded moral relativism and, he concludes with a proposal for a democratic liberatory ethics, which could only be derived through a process of democratic rationalism that should necessarily express those moral values which are intrinsically compatible to the democratic institutions themselves.
The Editorial Committee
Winter 2009