Author Archives: DemDigest

Chavista courts eroding Venezuela’s democracy

     

Venezuela’s courts — packed by leftist loyalists of Nicolás Maduro only days before they handed over power — have fiercely chipped away at the new legislature’s efforts, leaving some here wondering… Read more »

What’s next for Iraq?

     

  Iraq is facing a looming economic crisis, with a displaced population of 3.3m people, according to the UN, and renewed sectarian bloodshed which could fuel the very resentments that helped… Read more »

Still a long road ahead for Cuba’s civil society

     

  A leading human rights group has strongly condemned the harassment of Cuban doctor and journalist Eduardo Herrera Duran (above). In March, Herrera — a surgeon at the Calixto García University… Read more »

Can Ukraine achieve a reform breakthrough?

     

  It is easy to characterize Ukraine’s latest attempt to reform as a repeat of the unrealized potential of the 2004 Orange Revolution, analysts John Lough and Iryna Solonenko write… Read more »

What are Khalilzad memoir’s lessons for U.S. policy?

     

Raymond Tanter, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, asks in The National Interest: First, regarding theory: recognize bureaucratic principles, as modified by recent research, which is quite critical of… Read more »

U.N. experts decry Egypt’s civil society crackdown

     

Egypt is closing down domestic non-governmental organizations and putting travel bans on their staff in order to obstruct scrutiny of human rights issues, three independent U.N. human rights investigators said… Read more »

Nations in Transit: Europe & Eurasia – grim portrait of decline, small reasons for hope

     

While economic downturns are threatening the stability of the former Soviet Union’s “entrenched dictatorships,” the migration crisis is fueling populism in Eastern Europe, and reforms in the Balkans are in… Read more »

Video shows ‘Putin’s New Praetorians’ training to suppress a Moscow Maidan

     

On April 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would develop a national guard to fight terrorism and crime, but a recently released video (above) from Open Russia purports to show the guard training to… Read more »