China: Struggle at the Top
If democracy has an advantage over authoritarianism, it is that the struggles of interest, power, and ego that are the unavoidable stuff of human life take place in the open,… Read more »
Category: Communist regimes
Amnesty demands urgent action for Cuban dissident ‘El Sexto’
Cuban graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado Machado (‘El Sexto’ – left) continues to be detained in a maximum-security prison, a month and a half after his arrest, Amnesty International reports. “El Sexto”,… Read more »
Perfect Dictatorship? China‘s “controlocracy” stifles NGOs
Authorities in China’s capital have cut off the utilities and destroyed the central heating system of a prominent non-government organization (NGO) set up to help migrant workers, as a new… Read more »
How Putin does it: well-trained in ideological warfare
Cold War notions of “fake news” and “Soviet-style propaganda” are back in style, except now people say them about shiny new concepts such as cyberattacks and WikiLeaks. Whether or not… Read more »
China’s censorship reaches Washington, D.C.
Miss World pageant authorities have refused to allow Ms. Anastasia Lin to attend the American premiere of her own film, The Bleeding Edge. She “has been barred from speaking to the news… Read more »
Tourists ‘literally eating Cuba’s lunch’: reform a distant prospect
The changes in Cuba in recent years have often hinted at a new era of possibilities: a slowly opening economy, warming relations with the United States after decades of isolation,… Read more »
Cuba at a Crossroads
The Cuban people have a profound need for international solidarity from the outside world, which has been partial and inadequate because of the obfuscation and wrong-headedness engendered by Castroism, argues… Read more »
Manipulating history serves new ideological trends
From Ukraine, to Belarus, to Poland and Lithuania, historical narratives of communism, World War II, the Holocaust, and the Holodomor—Ukraine’s Terror-Famine—are being reviewed, revised, and in many cases manipulated to… Read more »
Unraveling Cuba’s Gordian Knot
In the wake of Fidel Castro’s death, it may be helpful to examine the empirical evidence of the transition experience of the Central and Eastern European countries when the Soviet… Read more »
Cuba: Four Heroes and a Demagogue
Fidel Castro, who died on November 25, was a political tyrant who succeeded in convincing many people in the democratic world that he was actually the very opposite, the National… Read more »