Author Archives: DemDigest

Beyond the Euromaidan: Will the West ever stand up to Putin?

     

Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to expand the invasion of Ukraine in January, according to independent Russian military analyst Pavel Felgengauer. Such a development would retard Ukraine’s fitful reform… Read more »

Russia’s ‘Kremlin Playbook’ boosts covert influence in Eastern Europe

     

Russia has mounted a campaign of covert economic and political measures to manipulate five countries in central and eastern Europe, discredit the West’s liberal democratic model, and undermine trans-Atlantic ties,… Read more »

Why is Russia simultaneously attacking and promoting civil society?

     

Russia’s government has declared groups like the National Endowment for Democracy and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, to be undesirable and the regime has cracked down on the rights of… Read more »

How to de-glorify and discredit ISIS

     

How can a genocidal and an apocalyptic group like ISIS become a beacon of hope for segments of excluded and marginalized communities in the West and beyond?  asks Kawa Hassan (above),… Read more »

How can West start winning global battle for democracy?

     

Why are the world’s despots thriving, and how can the West start winning the global battle for democracy? Have we hit democracy’s high water mark? These questions are among those… Read more »

Morocco: PJD electoral success highlights new breed of Islamism

     

In last Friday’s legislative elections in Morocco, the ruling Islamist Party of Justice and Development (PJD, left) again secured a plurality, but while the elections were hailed as proof of… Read more »

Pakistan: journalist travel ban ‘against the norms of democracy’

     

Pakistan’s government should immediately drop the travel ban on a leading journalist and respect a free and open working environment for the media, Human Rights Watch said today: On October… Read more »

Kleptocracy not only a problem of ‘faraway, nasty countries’

     

A sorry parade of arms smugglers, oligarchs, defense contractors, mafia dons, drug dealers, gambling fraudsters, sanctions breakers, and kleptocrats emerge from the Panama Papers, journalist Alan Rusbridger writes for The… Read more »

The problem with plebiscites

     

The unanticipated and widely debated results in Colombia and Great Britain – indeed, the very decision to use the mechanism of popular consultation to identify the citizenry’s will – obliges… Read more »