Democracy In Decline, World's Chilling Return To Authoritarian Rule, Human Rights Abuses

[appalachiablue]

- Democratic Backsliding. wiki, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding
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- NPR, Our World's Chilling Return To Authoritarianism, - ED., Feb. 26, 2022.

I doubt any of us who lived through the Cold War want those times to return. Schoolchildren scrunched below desks in fear of a nuclear attack. Riches were spent on weapons, instead of people. "Every rocket fired," said President Eisenhower, "signifies ... a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." A cold concrete wall divided Berlin, the communist East and freedom in the West. There were proxy wars, missile rattling and nightmares about mushroom clouds and global devastation.

I remember the Captive Nations Day Parade each summer in Chicago celebrating Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Albania, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia & other countries caught by Russian tanks behind what Churchill had called "an Iron Curtain ... descended across the continent." The parade was always stirring, with signs & slogans that cried out for freedom. But as years went by, it became harder to believe the people of those nations would ever break free.

Yet they persisted- and prevailed. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, in a hail of cheers. That burst of freedom seemed to blow down the hard, cruel walls of the old Soviet Union and its sphere within 2 years. Dozens of nations were reborn. Wars, crimes, terrorism and genocides would still follow, in Bosnia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Iraq and elsewhere. I would cover many of those events. Yet when the walls came down with the fall of Soviet communism, it seemed as if history had turned a corner; the world looked brighter

But today, according to Freedom House & the Economist Intelligence Unit, more than a third of the people in the world still live under authoritarian regimes, including Russia, China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Venezuela &, once more, Afghanistan. 20% of the people in the world still live under 1-party communist rule, according to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, including China, North Korea, Laos & Cuba. Authoritarian regimes have proliferated all around the globe, & human rights crimes abound. Just a generation after so many walls were brought down, it is hard not to feel that the world has plunged back into darkness... https://www.npr.org/2022/02/26/1083217990/opinion-our-worlds-chilling-return-to-authoritarianism--
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- Daily Kos, Ukraine is fighting bravely for its democracy. How hard will we fight for ours? 2.26.22,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/2/26/2082516/-Ukrainians-are-courageously-fighting-for-their-democracy-How-hard-will-we-fight-for-ours
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- FREEDOM HOUSE, Freedom in the World 2022, The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule- *Report
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2022/global-expansion-authoritarian-rule
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- EIU, DEMOCRACY INDEX, ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT, *Reports:

- Democracy Index 2020: In sickness & in health? Democracy was dealt a major blow in 2020. Almost 70% of countries covered by The EIU's Democracy Index recorded a decline in their overall score, as country after country locked down to protect lives from a novel coronavirus. The global average score fell to its lowest level since the index began in 2006.
- Democracy Index 2021: less than half the world lives in a democracy. Democratisation suffered more reversals in 2021, with the percentage of people living in a democracy falling to well below 50% & authoritarian regimes gaining ground.

The state of democracy around the world: The EIU Democracy Index provides a snapshot of the state of world democracy for 165 independent states and 2 territories. It is based on 5 categories: electoral process & pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, & political culture. Based on their scores on 60 indicators within these categories, each country is then itself classified as one of 4 types of regime: full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime or authoritarian regime...

- 2020 Rankings:
Top 5 Country Score
1 Norway 9.81
2 Iceland 9.37
3 Sweden 9.26
4 New Zealand 9.25
5 Canada 9.24

Bottom 5 Country Score
163 Chad 1.55
164 Syria 1.43
165 Central African Republic 1.32
166 Dem. Republic of Congo 1.13
167 North Korea 1.08
Our solutions
Bird's eye view of a city. - COUNTRY ANALYSIS... More, https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2020/

[rpannier]

1. I've been to Laos, and it's a mess as a country

The government is just inept
There are serious drug issues in Vientiane
The country, which was once closely aligned with Vietnam, is nothing more than a Chinese proxy state
Chinese businessmen go to Vientiane to gamble and for the hedonism

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Time to start learning Norwegian, maybe ... nt