Tag: democracy

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People’s right to think, teach and speak are routinely violated

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In Western world, free speech is held up as core value, but there is widespread discord and disagreement about what freedom of expression means. In China, India and across the Islamic world, unorthodox views about politics, sex, and religion are repressed and people are often punished for expressing them. Amidst perennial imbalances of power, continually evolving cultural taboos, dramatic new technologies and a fast-changing global media landscape, where free speech comes from- and how we might think about it- are critical questions. Through lens of history, freedom of speech is not an absolute from which societies and regimes have drifted … Continue reading People’s right to think, teach and speak are routinely violated

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Democracy is in Crisis

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Democracy is in crisis across the globe, especially in UK, it has been rocked by Brexit, the pandemic and successive attempts by governments to bypass legal norms.  Jonathan Sumption renders acute analysis of the state of democracy today – from the vulnerabilities of international law to the deepening suppression of democracy activism in Hong Kong, and from the complexities of human rights legislation to the defence of freedom of speech. One of the finest examples is of Jonathan Sumption, whose career has been an unusual combination of medieval historian, barrister, supreme court judge, member of the House of Lords. The … Continue reading Democracy is in Crisis

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Diagnosis of Xi Jinping, Putin and Trump – warns of a second Weimar-like era 

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In Waste Land, geopolitics veteran commentator, Robert Kaplan’s wide-angled vision of our chaotic, globalised world, where present crises resonate with past tyrannies, and assess the outlook for the 21st century, and reveals the society is  a hair’s breath away from the abyss. Donald Trump is taking office amid mini Trumps elsewhere, as steely autocrats steer Russia and China. We are entering a new era of global cataclysm, a deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid technological advancement, and the end of empire. Kaplan explains incisively how we got here and where we are going. His trademark sweep of history, … Continue reading Diagnosis of Xi Jinping, Putin and Trump – warns of a second Weimar-like era 

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Dictators seeking to impose their vision

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Historian and Anglo-Polish journalist Anne Applebaum uncovers the sophisticated networks of kleptocratic financial structures, security services and professional propagandists. The main enemies of domestic demagogues fanning the flames of populism. Foreign dictators who seek to impose their vision of a new international; order and hate our freedoms in George W Bush’s sonorous phrase. Applebaum’s catchy coinage “ Who are these bad guys?” is said to be a group of autocratic regimes, such as Russia, China and Iran, who together operate “not like a bloc but rather like an agglomeration of companies, bound not by ideology but rather by a ruthless, … Continue reading Dictators seeking to impose their vision