while tens of thousands of cubans are clean, these canal continues to argue the do you as he can amik embargo is the roof of all cooper's woes. but on this occasion, he issued a novel challenge to the united states. what can i go wrong? we conclude that they maintain the blockade because without it, our country would be a model of a humane society to supply received for the current will daughter. if i'm wrong, been lift the blockade immediately completely and without restrictions and remove our so called pretext. in the mean time, the us can l promised that in a few weeks you'll announce the details of in economic reactivation plan to counter acute shortages of food supplies. and energy only all ended the ceremony with the traditional oh, increasingly questioned cry of socialism in fatherland or death. oh, you see, newland al jazeera ah

type a quick check on the headlines here on al jazeera, a magnitude 7 point one earthquake as hit the northern philippines. the epicenter appears to be the town of dolores and the province of abra. tremors were felt in the capital city, manila, which is more than 400 kilometers to the south. sh european union nations and agree to russian gas supplies after russia announced another cup to deliveries . e members agree to voluntarily reduce gas use from august until march usher says the reduced output is due to a faulty gas turbine. but he, you leaders accused moscow of playing politics. russia has launch more missile stripes on your cranes black sea coast. the rockets hit the village of atoka in the odessa region as an economy, as lensky says. it's a residential area with no military assets. eastern city of harkey was also targeted and russia says it'll quit the international space station at the 2024.

moscow announced it will shift its focus to building its own station. the u. s. has expressed regret the i m f for slashed its global growth forecast, who just over 3 percent as conflict in ukraine and are slow down in china. take their toll on the world economy. it says higher food and energy prices are expected to push up inflation more than expected. but while the outlook is bad, the i'mma says there are measures countries can take to mitigate the worst impact. the outlook is darkened significantly since april. the world me soon be teetering on the edge of a global recession. only 2 years after the last one. multi lateral cooperation will be key in many areas from climate physician and pandemic preparedness, to food security and that distress. amid great challenge and strife, strengthening cooperation remains the best way to improve economy prospects fall and mitigate the risk of g economy fragmentation, firefighters in the usa,

they're making progress in battling california's biggest wildfire this year. maybe a quarter of the blaze near yosemite national park is now contained nearly $3000.00 fire fighters and $24.00 helicopters are at the scene. the oak fire started burning on friday and has destroy them area, half the size of san francisco. thousands of people have been moved from their homes, a heat wave and long term drought conditions have filled the blaze. well, that was what the headlines and he's continues he, on al jazeera after democracy may be station. thanks for watching bye for now. how and why did it become so obsessed? with this law, we were giving them a tool to hold corrupt individuals and human rights abusers accountable. they're going to rip this deal apart if they take the white house of 2025. what is the world hearing? what we're talking about by american today, we take on us politics and society. that's the bottom line. ah

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i'm the managed i little mom made a domain. none, and none that to should ah, lebanon was one of the 1st countries in the region to have that democracy, unfaithfulness we are a democracy. but in vin life, it's not that a demo. krista has certainly been hijacked. it's a resemblance for them walking. we live on corruption, asher, where we have one of the oldest democracy data boy. but the democracy is

not functioning well because it's not responding to the benefits of the citizen. oh, we are in an era when a lot of people are angry. ah, they are on discontented with their leaders and governments for not being able to deal with economic challenges like growing in quality and declining social mobility . ah, and a lot of people are willing to vote for politicians who don't seem to have a lot of concern for those democratic in street. ah, m, with a willing when they come to power to ignore some of the limits on their power.

ah, even making sure that that power is not, and that means a long standing tension. and i have been studying the development of democracies and dictatorships for much of my professional life. ah, we're in a period of what some social sciences call democratic recession. now that has to be taken in context because what happened at the end of the 20th century as we had an explosion of transition to democracy, an explosion of dictatorships that collapsed. wow. yeah. how many of those democracy is not surprising? that was quite nice. but saddening, what's also happened is that democracies in places that we took for granted that we

assumed were solid, that we assumed were no longer threatened by autocratic tendencies. these democracies have also proved to be much more vulnerable than we thought. ready a lot of people make arguments about democracy being for sale or hijacked. it's very hard for me to understand how we can have something approximating political equality with the degree of social and economic inequality that we have ah, sort of tragic example of that in the middle east, of course, is lebanon. ah ah

i was born in the war when peace came, we were hopeful that something good would come out of a lecture occupied by foreign country by syria. ah, so before this occupation for a long time until 2005, when the occupation just left the country and this huge manifestation that took place on the 14th of march, where we actually believed for once that this was our chance to create a country. ah. c and then everything collapsed. mm hm. the political id just decided to cut

the piece of cake and shared among each other me. when i was a close, they taught us what the 1st state would be. i can tell you that we are definitely on the last tracks of switching the 5th state revenue was built as a safe haven for all the persecuted minorities in the middle east. but the problem of the system with this country is that we couldn't build a system that answers the diverse society that you have 11. 0, it's about having an i versus the living in the you need to the system and the system not answering the needs of the minority 11. if you ask someone, would you rather have a leader group from your own sex that might be caught up?

or somebody from a different sex, but you don't feel anything about them to this one. it's mainly when you understand this and you understand the problem is within the system, then you understand why these people are caught up. and when they come to office, they don't work for the better of the state and the citizens, they work for the method of their party and their group. me you have a society that historically been carved up in terms of power and wealth by these different confessional leads from these different religious and social groupings. and it just becomes a kind of elite cabal to extract the wealth of the society

and serve the different, competing a lead interest, but not the collectivity, not the society as a whole. now, here in 2021. we are in the 15th consecutive year of democratic decline. mm mm. for democracy's fail for many particular reasons. they made me extremely corrupt and self serving with the leads that are not governing well in serving the public trust.

people get a dissolution with the ruling elites and parties, ah, and when people see that the rulers they have elected are serving their own interests rather than the public interest. it's very alienating, it's very de molar moralizing. it's very infuriated people are supposed to be able to choose their politicians, and those leaders and governments are supposed to come to power and put in place policies that help make people's lives better. that is what democracy is all about . what we've seen over the past several decades is governments that have been increasingly either unable or unwilling to do that. so if we look at the trends and the last few decades,

we can see some very troubling trends. growing levels of inequality. a sense that the future is going to be much less certain than we expected during the post war period. and in these kinds of contexts, people are rightly angry people become vulnerable to the appeal of populist, illiberal, or authoritarian leaders who say, i'm the answer to me. and of course them, when you trust and authoritarian populace things get even worse. ah, another really critical political trend of the last decade is an unprecedented number of protests against existing governments. whether democratic or undemocratic is for corruption, for lack of responsiveness across the globe. and i think more and more lebanese are

recognizing this are seeing verse and wanting a new social and political bargain in the country. oh, so be 17. was a turning point in my life. that was the chance people were fed up because the government, instead of thinking of the forms we're thinking of, i think texas, we want something new. this is finished with cookie. don't, don't able to spray it at 7 pm. it will only 3040 people. and so we started getting messages and people started coming with it will 40000 people with for the 1st time old confession or religious effects were on the city. those individuals just voicing dental soon and

in anger against a, the slogan of that illusion. 11 was everyone needs everyone. everybody needs to be held accountable for every action that they have done in this political system for the past 30 years. and the 1st demand was for the government to resign the government to sign. and then we asked for a formation of a new cabinet of independent people. i we're going to have not come out of the street until the government steps down. and a new government is going to come up with the professionals and they don't belong to any sectarianism to any political association with any of the ones that we have currently with one of the forms that have been worked. it wasn't made of independence and the political class faith to gifts

with them now and nothing happened. and i think with them and we thought that we had actually nothing with them. we discovered that has layers ah august 4th explosion came and we lost houses, lost people and lost hope in the process of ever finding a solution to the problem that you are in the 3rd

explosion and the well apparently it comes after hiroshima and nagasaki in all the stood half of the city and killed more than $200.00 people in cost. i think $5000000000.00 in losses. so many people data so many ah, tense, if not hundreds of thousands homeless as a result of bad governance because governing really isn't happening. and the logic of rule in a country like lebanon isn't to govern. it's to divide up the wealth and power of the country. so it was a corrupt political class that had agreed to put massive explosives and the point of bade was, and that just blew up and nobody to now is, has a town to mostly this. we live in that smarts corruption,

that even human life is not worth it anymore to those people. it's not just that they failed us. it's that they are tremendous. 2 me know who i have an n g all. so when the explosion took place, unfortunately, we had teams in place for instruction because you had already done that because you have to know that 11 on its personal initiatives and civil society who does the work of what a state should be doing because we do not have a state that has me so so he could be my name will be and we'll see

how that's going and what about hey, they allow me to let me call them ok. so have the muzzle title and seizures in this little a little have of i live in the initials that they keep telling me oh, i expect you entering and autonomy which cannot see the nights at the end of it.

i think everybody bankers up right in october 2019. when the bank is re open and people went back to the bank . they had limits on their own. second talk was the gun and he started w 8 they we had a fixed rate for the denise pound because $1.00. it was $1571.00 . it was $15000.00. 0. so today, we lived in another enough inequality and coverage is that has never been seen in lebanon. so had a station price increase the receipt evaluation. this is the economy, the more inequality we have, the less democracy we have. i

know nothing about equality of incomes. it says nothing about a quality of wealth, but it does say that everyone must be politically even. rather, the problem really is when social and economic inequality seep into the political sphere, there is no doubt that wealthy citizens have more influence over political outcomes than poor ones. those who are already very wealthy use their wealth to corrupt politicians. so when you have concentrated well, the temptation of the extremely wealthy is to use their economic power to convert it into political power through lobbying and political control so that they can then reproduce their need, can amik concentration of wealth. and you get into

a vicious cycle me. ready democracy does not succeed in the app, but because we do not know how to deal with democracy, we have dictators there just people who just want to sell their pockets who are service differ power, who want to oppress in order to stay under the spring was a hope for everyone. it started in tunisia by this decision of this fruit vendor and tenicia who's dignity had been repeatedly violated and humiliated by petty corruption by the police to emulate

themselves. and that was the mission switch because it spoke to the sense of humiliation that arabs broadly felt by abusive, monopolistic, corrupt, already about justice and dignity, respect for them as individuals which all of these arab dictatorships deny the our bring this is. busy quite upsetting to people who studied democracy the whole was, was that, that democratic wave had finally come to the part of the world that seem to be most immune to it. but of course, that democratic wave failed these uprisings failed because mainly of the regional

dynamics that there were so few democracies in the region that there weren't others that could, could come to their aid. the anger at old dictatorships was massive, but the ability to build new democracies was not yet there. oh, governments can respond to the needs of their citizens, people. mm. think what we learn from lebanon is that democratic governments have some legitimacy simply by being democratic rights. but even those systems are corrupt and if they are unresponsive, they will lose legitimacy as well. and democracy will not be able to thrive in those kinds of circumstances. ah, it's my last,

but this is the last time on gun fight. and if this does not happen, i don't want to see my children fighting the same backwards again, over and over again with the solution for me is for us deeper does tied to realizing that this is tough, norman, wow, i'm sad, it loads typical night soda. that's what we're living and it's not accepted, it's not okay to accept that our leaders just are corrupt, kiddos, and it's time and this is the african crisis where and when you start questioning, it's when we start changing, as long as we're not questioning,

we cannot change we still have some meetings in the country, but every day, oh dreams. i'm coming lower now of a dream is if you can eat more or you can have eaten wardwall if he can fill out cars with gus. so this is how much the country became a grave for dreams, especially for the with coleman with dody. let's see a demo. but at a simon and events that i, jim i believe, jimmy canup is that i jim on the he's sort of beat him to free to paki are we able to pack. ready ready joe from. ready a letter back later to

home. now, but i'm not my, you know, my son has been down for a round one percent of electricity globally is consumed by data centers, many of which provide promote storage facilities or what is also known as the cloud . i'm in no way to see how one center is harnessing the entity of these fuel woods to stole our digital information without a heavy cap and footprints. and i'm russell viewed off the north coast of the u. k, where the global green energy revolution is picking on a new element, thrice owner,

which is 0. what happens in new york. 1 has implications all around the world to make these stories resonate requires talking to everyday people, the mayor of the city and i was doing away with the current view that was supposed to get everybody on it's international perspective with the human touch zooming way in. and then pulling back out again, new voices heating up the airway. lot of chinese listeners. we can't really hear what they really think in their own country shifting pal of a case. the rise of citizen journalism has changed everything. how do happen? it happened on social media and the undeniable impact of the mainstream narrative, australian point to the pole with those images front of mine is a war that very much came forth out in the media as well as on the battlefield. they're listening post. dissect the media on al jazeera ah.