Are democracies losing out to authoritarian regimes?
In just a few years, Hong Kong has turned from a free city into an authoritarian police state. Freedom: How we Lose it and How we Fight Back, a new… Read more »
Africa: Countering fake news in The Continent
The COVID pandemic provided a fertile ground for misinformation across Africa as elsewhere, prompting a group of journalists in South Africa to turn the crisis into an opportunity by launching… Read more »
Did the EU help autocrats to weaponize migrants?
The violent clashes at the Poland-Belarus border resulting from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s cynical weaponization of migrants were in part caused by European Union deals with authoritarian regimes to curb… Read more »
‘Privatized subversion’: U.S. to launch global effort to curb digital authoritarians
The U.S. plans to work with other countries to limit exports of surveillance tools and other technologies that authoritarian governments can use to suppress human rights, an alleged practice in… Read more »
Can Russian threat revive Ukraine’s stalled reform efforts?
The current stand-off in Ukraine could yet result in military conflict between Russia and the West, analyst Kadri Liik tells the FT’s Gideon Rachman. “I do not exclude it because… Read more »
Ideological crusade? Autocrats attack summit for ‘weaponizing democracy’
Angered by President Biden’s Summit for Democracy, and filled with scorn for a dysfunctional West, China insists it is more democratic than America https://t.co/S2wF4QSWw4 from @TheEconomist https://t.co/S2wF4QSWw4 — David Rennie… Read more »
A missed chance to show democracies can deliver?
A Marshall Plan-like effort to vaccinate the world’s poor would confirm that democracies can deliver and reboot the US’s global standing. The global vaccine emergency is tailor-made for a tarnished… Read more »
Summit can ‘lend voice, visibility, and support’ to democracy’s advocates
Latin America has an advanced system of regional organizations conceived to protect and foster democracy, says Miriam Kornblith, senior director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the… Read more »
Ukraine: Solidarity the best response to Russia’s threats
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken today warned that there’s “evidence” Russia is moving to “destabilize Ukraine from within,” according to reports. “We’ve seen this playbook before — in 2014… Read more »
Lithuania – punching above its weight
A Lithuanian lawmaker pushed back against Chinese propagandist ‘clowns’ this week after politicians from the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia met Taiwan’s top leadership in Taipei, Newsweek reports. None of the Baltic states… Read more »