Next week, Joe Biden holds his virtual democracy summit. Polish Mateusz Morawiecki, Jair Bolsonaro and Indian Narendra Modi, respectively, were named the first, fourth and seventh most “autocratic” leader in the report just released by the V-Dem institute — which pays special attention to freedom of expression.
Many even worse off, such as Congolese Félix Tshisekedi and Iraqi Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, rich in minerals, also participate.
The list of overtly geopolitical bias is another result of the dysfunctional foreign policy team at the White House. A dysfunction that, warned a columnist in the New York Times, is leading to the absurd, for example:
“Vaccinating fewer people worldwide, in hopes of demonstrating American superiority or democracy, is a moral calamity that will harm us all.” Days later, the omicron and the veto on the entrance of Africans were made public.
Although close to the Democratic government, the NYT has even avoided reporting on Biden’s summit. He preferred to give full attention to the V-Dem. In short, “The US and its allies were responsible for a significantly greater portion of the global democratic setback in the decade”, after a democratizing period in the 1990s and 2000s.
In the American case, there was a regression in the right to vote and with the politicization of the courts, among others. “The findings also undermine American assumptions that US power is a democratizing force in the world,” the paper says.
Perhaps more significantly, “contradict that the trend [autocratizante] whether driven by Russia and China,” the summit targets, “or by Donald Trump, who took over when change was already underway.”
A second report on democracy, by another European organisation, Idea, came out next and with a similar conclusion. In the Guardian, “USA added to list of democracies in retreat for the first time” due to “declining civil liberties and government controls”.
Biden may not feel so out of place, talking to Morawiecki, Bolsonaro and Modi about democracy.
THE NEW SKYLINE OF AMERICA
The so-called “billionaires’ row” has just reached eight “super-thin towers” erected in just seven years, as New York’s new profile.
The city tries to react, with the NYT (pictured above) demanding the lack of security in the eight, precarious occupation, and the city hall creating a shelter for the homeless in the corridor, despite protests from residents, shown by the local news from CBS and Fox.
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