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Song Young-gil, head of South Korea's ruling Democratic Party, was assaulted Monday with a hammer and sent to the hospital while campaigning for presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung in Seoul. Photo by Yonhap

SEOUL, March 7 (UPI) -- The head of South Korea's ruling Democratic Party, Song Young-gil, was attacked with a hammer Monday while campaigning just two days ahead of a contentious presidential election.

Video footage posted to social media showed an elderly attacker dressed in traditional Korean garb approaching Song from behind and striking him several times in the head with an object in a plastic bag, later revealed to be a hammer. He was quickly restrained by bystanders and detained by police.

Song, who was campaigning in Seoul for candidate Lee Jae-myung when the assault occurred, was taken to a hospital but was not seriously injured. He received stitches and was released.

The assailant is in his 70s and operates a YouTube channel, according to news agency Yonhap. He was filming himself and shouting critically about joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea before the attack, eyewitnesses said.

"Election violence is terrorism against democracy," President Moon Jae-in said in a statement after the assault. "It should never happen. Hate and violence cannot change the world."

Both main camps in Wednesday's election were quick to condemn the attack. The Democratic Party called the attack "a serious threat to democracy" and said in a statement that Lee had spoken to Song on the phone.

A spokesperson for opposition People Power Party candidate Yoon Suk-yeol expressed "serious concerns about violent acts just two days ahead of the presidential election."

"[We] are firmly opposed to any violent acts that threaten democracy," the spokesperson said in a statement.

Song said in a Facebook post hours after the attack that he was recovering.

"I can endure it," he wrote. "It's good that the young people who were with me didn't get hurt."

Wednesday's presidential election remains an extremely tight race. The campaign season has been marred by mudslinging and scandals that have left voters with majority-unfavorable ratings for both candidates.

South Korean presidents are only allowed to serve a single five-year term and cannot be re-elected. Having taken office in 2017, Moon is unable to run again.

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Chief of South Korea Democratic Party attacked with hammer at campaign rally - UPI News

Last week, as I was downstairs emptying my trash can, my neighbor, a man in his 50s approached me awkwardly and said almost inaudibly, I havent had a trash can to empty in a week. In all my naivete, I thought he meant that he didnt have a physical trash can and so I offered him an unused one that I had at home. He threw me an embarrassed look and asked me if I could also bring some food with the trash can. Horrified, I realized at that moment that he was telling me that he hadnt had a trash can to scavenge for food.

My heart ached for him. After taking him to the supermarket and making sure he had everything he needed for his family, I told myself that I had to do something more, beyond helping one man, one family. I spent the coming days, after my afternoon with him, thinking about poverty and its impact on Israels future and resilience.

The ugly truth is that my neighbor, a Haredi man in his 50s, has no real options to acquire a profession that can improve his financial situation. In fact, he is just another statistic in the depressing reports published by the National Insurance Agency, in which 61 percent of the Haredi families in Israel are defined as poor, meaning they earn less than NIS 2,811 ($863) per person per month.

This sad reality has serious consequences, not only for the families themselves, but also for the general welfare of the State of Israel. Time is running out as we are approaching the point of no return, that point being a poor and divided Israel. Our national pride will fade, and the country might not have funds to properly equip our soldiers, a challenge we recently witnessed in Ukraine.

It should also be said that, since the outbreak of COVID-19 two years ago, there has been a further decline in the number of employed Haredi men, bringing unemployment statistics to 48% amongst Haredi men. A further deep concern of mine is the deterioration in relations between the Haredim and the general public. The growing frustration among the general public, because they feel they are carrying the burden of the state alone, is deepening the rift.

I believe with every fiber of my being that the fundamental and most significant solution is revamping the Haredi educational system, a movement that we are leading at the Netzach Educational Network. On the one hand, we provide our students with outstanding Torah education, empowering them to remain strongly connected to their fundamental values and Torah observance while simultaneously preparing them to attain their bagrut (matriculation) certificates and equipping them with the tools to make alternative choices, compete for quality employment, and pursue higher education.

But, as I pondered the situation, I surprisingly found very interesting observations in a new book, Version Update, by former MK Roy Folkman (who was the chairman of Moshe Kahlons Kulanu party). These are three insights I gleaned from the book and which, I believe, have the power to reduce the widening gaps between Israels Haredi society and the rest of society, and provide a map to securing a prosperous future for Israel in the coming years.

The first thing is the recognition that there is a state and that it is more important than its leadership. Folkman talks about the fact that, in recent years, more and more people have lost faith, not only in the leadership, but also in the institutions of government. In fact, he talks about a direct correlation between the level of public trust in government institutions and the GNP. This is where Haredi society enters into the equation, with political leaders who work to strengthen segregation, mainly through the promotion of sectoral interests. This harms the resilience of the state as a whole.

This question of faith/trust in leadership and institutions leads me to the next point, a practical step that has the power to strengthen the level of trust among Haredi society namely, the integration of Haredim into the professional workforce, and from there, into the public sector. Folkman specifically points to the need for a balance of professionals in the public sector as foundational for a healthy state. A progressive state and society require a professional rank that is judged by its capabilities and not in its political affiliations. So, in order to establish a common narrative, more and more Haredi professionals need to join the ranks of the public figures and leaders.

Finally, the establishment of a lobby for the creation of broad agreements should be promoted. The danger of extremism is a concern that Folkman addresses at length in his book. The tendency of contemporary politics is to create camps on opposite sides of the spectrum and a political culture that focuses on emphasizing differences and widening gaps. The media, when talking about leadership, uses terms like enemies, rivals, and detached. But the essence of democracy is rather to seek compromise and move towards agreements. We must focus on developing a discourse that promotes consensus and not succumb to the populism of party leaders peddling polarization and extremism.

I believe that anyone who is interested in our future as a Jewish society in a rapidly changing world should read Folkmans book. The tensions and gaps that are dividing us are not set in stone and do not have to determine our future. We must return all of us together to the values that accompanied the sages of Judaism throughout the generations: demand moderation, find the middle ground, and most importantly, tikkun olam wherever it is required!

Rabbi Menachem Bombach is a community leader and educational entrepreneur in the Haredi community. He heads the 'Netzach' Haredi educational network, which he founded, and which combines religious and secular studies, and aims to educate students to become observant, Torah-loving Jews who are also prepared for practical life. He also heads the Hasidic girls seminary affiliated with the network. Menachem has served as principal of the award-winning 'LeZion BeRinah' high school; founded the preparatory program for Haredi students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and directed the youth department of the Beitar Illit local authority. Menachem studied at the Vizhnitz Ahavat Yisrael yeshiva and at the Mir yeshiva, and holds a bachelors degree in education from Moreshet Yaakov College and a masters degree in public policy from the Hebrew University. He lectures in Israel and abroad on education and society.

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How democracy can help Haredi society | Menachem Bombach | The Blogs - The Times of Israel

MARCH 8, 2022 - Hikaru Sulu, you likely remember, was a trained pilot, a starship navigator, and the captain of theUSS Excelsior. So, when the United States Air Force Academy needed a speaker for its annual National Character and Leadership Symposium, perhaps it only made sense to invite the man who embodied Captain Sulu, George Takei.

Given Takeis activism on behalf of Japanese Americans and the LGBTQ+ community, perhaps it also made sense for him to speak to this years theme, Ethics and Respect for Human Dignity, which he did back on February 23, according toUSAFA Public Affairs.

Takei kicked off the event and came right to the point, speaking to cadets about the insidious nature of racism and militarism, and [saying] true democracy is impossible without promoting human rights. Takei has long been an advocate for human rights, being a gay man and havingbeen imprisoned with his family in two different internment camps, in Arkansas and Northern California, during World War II.

The latter experience is the subject of his graphic novel,They Called Us Enemy, which has been part ofreading programs at the USAFAand is required reading for freshmen. The Academy also has the Spectrum Club, a support network for gay, lesbian, bisexual, questioning cadets and their allies, with whom Takei had dinner during his visit.

Takei noted during his address that the country must come to terms with its past mistakes if it hopes to achieve respect for human dignity, and he said, progress comes in little bursts.

For more on George Takeis address, head over to theUnited States Air Force Academy.

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Star Trek's George Takei speaks on democracy and human rights at U.S. Air Force National Character and Leadership Symposium - Daily Star Trek News

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The lack of trust in police and government at all levels is concerning."

Who were the winners in the weeks-long Freedom Convoy standoff?

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Not Mayor Jim Watson, (now former) police chief Peter Sloly or the Ottawa Police Service. Not city council, and definitely not Ottawa residents.

The truck protesters? With relatively small numbers, they successfully made an outsized amount of noise and immobilized the downtown core, but can hardly claim victory after gaining little support and, in the end, failing to realize their stated goals of ending COVID-19 mandates and bringing down the Trudeau government (which, you may recall, recently gave Canadians the opportunity to legitimately do just that).

There were no winners, but there may have been one overarching loser: democracy.

The lack of trust in police and government at all levels is concerning, says Daniel Stockemer, professor at uOttawas school of political studies. A democracy needs the people to give trust for the legitimacy of the state. If they dont have this trust anymore, it could have dire consequences. And I think thats the potentially long-term worst effect of this.

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This sentiment applies not only to convoy protestors, but also to counter-demonstrators who, frustrated by a lack of concrete response from elected and enforcement officials, confronted truckers themselves, most notably at the Battle of Billings Bridge.

But the lack of trust in the system was clearly evident among the protestors, a tent that welcomed people with all kinds of grudges and grievances: vaccine and mask mandates, Justin Trudeau, Eastern Canada, communism, the green economy, wokeness, and racialized and other marginalized people and communities. Confederate and Nazi flags waved, while some compared the limits placed on their liberties to the experiences of Holocaust victims.

Its a movement that opposes something, Stockemer says, and its always easy to bring a lot of people under one tent who oppose something. I think the masks and vaccine mandates is an umbrella theme that can recruit people who are dissatisfied.

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Stockemer describes the convoys appropriation of nationalist pride as an attractive and clever tactic. They co-opted patriotism and the Canadian flag, he says. There was this idea that youre either with us, and Canadian, or youre not with us and youre not Canadian. They tried to divide society, and thats dangerous.

Stockemer doesnt think the protest had the number of participants or coherence to become a mass movement with any significant long-lasting effects, but hes worried about the continuing erosion of norms, and the convoys possible contribution to that decay.

I saw a flag comparing their situation to the Nuremberg trials, he says. This is completely out of order. Ten years ago, a former U.S. president calling a sitting Canadian prime minister a leftist lunatic would have been the main news headline. Today, you dont even talk about it.

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What I find shocking, he adds, is this acceptance, by some protestors, but also by some politicians, of this very extreme element. Weve seen a large increase of polarization in a lot of countries, and I think this movement can contribute to that. It can contribute to people not having trust in the government anymore, and if you dont have trust in the government, you start looking for something else.

While care should be taken to avoid lending support to far-right extremists, including some of the convoys organizers whose voices were magnified in the media, the so-called woke liberal elite that is so disdainful of the convoy protesters ignores them at their peril.

There are real material issues that are at play here, says Roberta Lexier, associate professor and historian of social movements at Calgarys Mount Royal University, especially as weve seen with the 2008 economic crisis and, following that, climate change and its effects, and then we get hit with the pandemic.

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Capitalism has entered a pretty significant crisis, and peoples material conditions are really being affected by those overlapping crises. The reality is that people are suffering, and what the right, or whatever you want to call it, has done really well is theyve found a way to tap into that anger and frustration that I would argue is often quite legitimate. The system is failing people, and theyve found a way to tap into that and mobilize it towards something.

Lexier points to other factors that have contributed to the malaise, including the NDP absconding a left-wing alternative, and years of conservatives, particularly in the U.S., creating distrust and undercutting experts. She cites climate change as a clear example of the deliberate hobbling of science, where both sides of the debate are now expected to receive equal attention.

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Any journalist I know was not taught that thats how you do objectivity. When 98 per cent of scientists agree on a thing, you can say that. But we spent decades undercutting experts, undercutting media, undercutting government, and basically trying to put the power back in the hands of corporations.

Its easy to credit events in the U.S. for the surge of right-wing populism in Canada particularly, for example, given the funding the convoy received from south of the border. But Lexier cautions against treating it as an external movement that was merely transplanted here.

The funding is a big part of the story, but we have a lot of home-grown right-wing supremacist fascism that we have to face as a country. Its built right into the core of who we are, because thats why we were invented as a nation, to open space for white people to settle the prairies and elsewhere. So its a mistake to think this is only coming from the outside.

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The task of convincing convoy supporters to switch tents, though, is a difficult one. Its far easier to stir up anger than it is to explain and address structural realities that are playing with peoples lives. Meanwhile, the elitist approach of the left doesnt easily engender converts.

Theres a tendency on the left to attack each other for not being pure enough or ideological enough, where you have to have read Marx to participate. The way its been approached, by saying, We cant talk to you if youre racist or if you dont already realize that capitalism is failing has not worked particularly well.

Lexier admits she doesnt know exactly how to reach those attracted to the convoy, except by connecting with peoples material concerns and seeking different approaches to address them.

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Things are awful and, between the pandemic and climate change, theyre just going to get worse. And if we dont start offering an alternative or start showing people that this isnt the right path, the one we are on is incredibly terrifying, and were not that far from the very terrifying parts of it doctors and nurses being told not to walk to work in their uniforms and being targeted for their professions is not that far from being targeted as a communist or a Jew.

Its not going to get better by policing, and its not going to get better by lecturing. It only gets better by acknowledging that this is a core problem of the system that were in, and were going to have to find a way through that.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

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Democracy the big loser in the 'Freedom Convoy' - Ottawa Citizen

The story in the Washington Post recounted the experience of a 47-year-old Russian employee of an ice skating rink in a village in the Rostov Oblast region near Russias border with Ukraine.

Moved by Vladimir Putins decision to attack Ukraine, the man wrote an anguished social media post, lamenting the horror and shame of a war that will be catastrophic, according to the article written by the Posts Moscow bureau chief, Robyn Dixon.

The next day, police with weapons showed up at the mans home, arrested him and charged him with showing disrespect for society and the Russian Federation, Dixon reported.

In the United States, such an action goes against the grain of fundamental beliefs and principles. But as the democratic nations of the world galvanize to oppose Russias assault in the Ukraine, anecdotes such as this one help remind us whats at stake when leaders discuss the escalating threats to democracy.

UVA Today checked in with John M. Owen, the Taylor Professor of Politics, to gain perspective and context on the larger struggles around democracy that Russias unprovoked war against Ukraine symbolizes. Owen also is a senior fellow at the Miller Center and a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.

Q. How is Putins attack on Ukraine a threat to democracy globally?

A. Putin is attacking not just the government, military, people and territory of Ukraine, but also Ukrainian democracy.Ukraine has never been a stable constitutional democracy; it is better to say that it is an aspiring democracy.But Putin does not want successful democracies on Russias border, and he is taking aggressive steps to keep constitutional self-government far away.Having democracy next door undermines his own authoritarian regime in Russia.And free-market democracies, at least in Europe, tend to be carriers of American influence and power. It is pretty clear that Putin wants Ukraine to be like neighboring Belarus a pliable authoritarian country.

If Putin succeeds in Ukraine, it certainly will not doom democracy around the world or even in Europe. But we have much research that suggests that domestic regimetypes, including liberal or constitutional democracy, tend to spread and contract in waves over time and geographic space. Political regimes spread through a number of mechanisms. One is by setting a successful example, such as when democracies sustain economic growth and stability. Another is by a kind of osmosis: social contact across borders can have effects.A third is by active promotion, usually by a great power such as what Russia is doing now.A fourth is through contagion, such as happened in the Soviet satellite states of Central Europe in 1989. Finally, international rules and institutions can, depending on their content, favor democracy or authoritarianism. Since World War II, and especially since around 1990, they have favored free-market democracies although they clearly need reform today.

What this all means is that, as President Biden likes to say, democracy and authoritarianism are in a global contest.A Russian victory in Ukraine and I must say that that could well be the outcome, at least in the eastern part of the country could mean a net gain for authoritarianism.It would show that authoritarian states can win in the 21stcentury. It would remove a threat to Russias own authoritarianism and would put an authoritarian country on the border of some young democracies just to the west Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova.It would cast doubt on the power of the liberal international rules and institutions that for decades have helped sustain democracy even in our own country.

Q. Freedom of expression including the ability to criticize and protest against the government without fear of punishment is something Americans enjoy and might take for granted. Why is it so important?

A. It is important to note that during wartime, even democracies sometimes restrict speech and other expression that could aid the enemy.But by and large, they try to maintain individual liberties and certainly to restore them once the war is over.

Freedom of expression can be seen as a good thing in itself part of what makes a good life. Political science research also shows that free expression is part of a package of rights and freedoms that tends to give countries a more rational, peaceful and productive foreign policy.When a countrys leadership must tolerate dissenting views, it gets access to more information and the potential for correction.We are hearing that Vladimir Putin is not only suppressing dissent among the Russian public but has isolated himself from dissenting officials.That illustrates the problem: He seems to have made a catastrophic miscalculation in invading Ukraine, and it may be in part because his regime represses speech and protects him from information and opinions he doesnt want to hear.

Q. What other principles of democracy are threatened directly or indirectly by what is happening in Ukraine?

A. The principle of governmental accountability is under attack. Ukraine has held several rounds of free, competitive elections since its independence in 1991. Of course, free elections in Ukraine are a threat to Putin because the resulting government may want to align Ukraine with the West. So Putin almost certainly wants Ukrainian elections to be fixed, with one party certain to win, just as Russian elections have been fixed for more than 20 years.Ukraine also has not exemplified the rule of law very well, but Putin wants to remove any chance of the rule of law taking hold there. All of these institutions free expression, competitive elections, rule of law are linked and mutually reinforcing, of course.

Q. What can people in the United States and other established democracies take from the experiences of those such as the man arrested in Russia for criticizing the assault on Ukraine?

A. Such events drive home to us that individual liberty is a precious achievement that can be taken away or weakened, even in the 21stcentury. Back in the 1990s, many very smart Americans thought that liberal democracy was inevitable that the collapse of Soviet communism meant the End of History.Now we know better. The world has two authoritarian great powers now, and neither is on a path to democracy.As tensions with Russia mount in our own country, one thing to guard against is the tendency to do, in mirror-image fashion, what Russia is doing to censor dissent, particularly dissent that favors Russia. Democracies must remain democratic, even under stress.

Q. Ultimately, will the violence in Ukraine and the larger threats illustrate the fragility of democracy, or could it also strengthen the commitment to its principles in some ways?

A. I think that Europe is already showing us that those two outcomes can go together. Europeans, until last week, have been more accommodating of Russia. Some governments, particularly that of Germany, have maintained that democracies can work with Putin and his regime. They have completely flipped over the past week, and I think that part of the reason why is that Russia today, in the year 2022, really is a menace to democracy in Europe, and that Europe must respond by showing that it is willing to take serious, costly action to defend self-government. Commitment to constitutional democracy has wavered in the United States of late too, and I am hoping that a silver lining to Russias aggression will be our own recommitment to our countrys principles, including free expression. I am just sorry that it might take massive suffering in Ukraine for us to learn this lesson.

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How Russia's Attack on Ukraine Threatens Democracy Everywhere - UVA Today