Category: Democracy (Page 4 of 10)

Women Peace Security Index for 2023

2023-10-25 / Downshift

Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS) seeks to promote a more stable, peaceful, and just world by focusing on the important role women play in preventing conflict and building peace, growing economies, and addressing global threats like climate change and violent extremism.

This fourth edition of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Index ranks and scores 177 countries on women’s status. The results show that countries where women are doing well are also more peaceful, democratic, prosperous, and better
prepared to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

This year, nine of the top ten best countries to be women are European, with Scandinavian countries leading the rankings. Denmark leads the 2023 rankings, scoring more than three times higher than Afghanistan.

1 Denmark
2 Switzerland
3 Sweden
4 Finland
4 Iceland
4 Luxembourg
7 Norway
8 Austria
9 Netherlands
10 New Zealand

Poland shows that autocracy is not inevitable

2023-10-17 / Downshift

Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic »

After democratic coalitions failed to defeat nationalist-conservative ruling parties in Hungary last year and in Turkey last May, and after elections in Israel brought a coalition of extremists to power, plenty of people feared that democratic change in Poland, too, was impossible. Against the odds, yesterday’s election has proved them wrong.

Even if you don’t live in Poland, don’t care about Poland, and can’t find Poland on a map, take note: The victory of the Polish opposition proves that autocratic populism can be defeated, even after an unfair election. Nothing is inevitable about the rise of autocracy or the decline of democracy. Invest your time in political and civic organization if you want to create change, because sometimes it works. »

The mayor of Pontevedra, Spain is placing pedestrians first

2023-09-27 / Downshift

For decades, throngs of cars clogged the cobblestone streets of Pontevedra’s downtown, making this seaside city on Spain’s northwestern tip a hard place to live. Smog, loud noise and narrow walkways drove young families away from a region struggling with a shrinking and aging population.

Family physician turned mayor Miguel Fernandez Lores managed to halt the bleeding by closing many streets to car traffic. Now Pontevedra is a model of success in a growing global movement that’s trying to reclaim streets for pedestrians.

Bloomberg »

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Banned in Texas » The Diary of Anne Frank

2023-09-20 / Downshift

Anne Frank, a young Jewish German teenager, journaled her experiences as she and her family hid for two years in an attic during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War II.

Anne and her family were apprehended in 1944, and Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

Her diary, which was first published in 1947, has since been published in more than 70 languages, and used in schools around the world for decades to educate students on the the Holocaust.

History is repeating itself. This time the USA.

The Chron »

A Texas middle school teacher has been fired after assigning an unapproved illustrated version of Anne Frank’s Diary to her eighth grade reading class. Per a report from KFDM, a spokesperson for Hamshire-Fannett ISD, located south of Beaumont, released a statement confirming the teacher was sent home on Wednesday after reading a passage from Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation in which Frank wrote about male and female genitalia. An investigation into the incident has since ensued.

Meanwhile

The Guardian »

Ariana Grande, Guillermo del Toro, Mark Ruffalo and Amanda Gorman are among the over 175 actors, entertainers, authors, activists and others who have signed an open letter calling on Hollywood to use their influence to oppose book bans.

The letter, spearheaded by Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton and published via the political advocacy organization MoveOn Political Action, calls out books bans in US schools as “restrictive behavior” that is “antithetical to free speech and expression”. It also emphasizes the “chilling effect” the bans, often implemented at the local level, can have “on the broader creative field”.

With democracy at stake, the mainstream press must change its ways

2023-09-20 / Downshift

The Guardian »

“We have to be truthful, not neutral,” she urged. “I would make sure that you don’t just give a platform … to those who want to crash down the constitution and democracy.”

It’s an important call to action. But so far, the American press is failing to meet its responsibility to adequately emphasize the stakes of the coming election.

US-China tensions and the war in Ukraine are already swinging investments to like-minded countries — a sign that companies are making geopolitical bets

2023-09-19 / Downshift

Bloomberg »

It’s not just talk. Hard evidence is now emerging that all the discussions of strained international relations and more than a decade of warnings over the end of an era of globalization are finally spurring corporations to pick sides with their capital. Western multinationals that for years have avoided geopolitics in favor of pursuing profits in less mature markets are increasingly building the factories of the future in like-minded nations.

…

“This is a historic change,” said Yeo Han-koo, a former South Korean trade minister, who sees a world entering an era of upheaval. “A new economic order is being formulated and that will cause uncertainty and unpredictability.”

Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization, to be declared a terrorist organisation by UK

2023-09-06 / Downshift

BBC »

Prigozhin, who founded the group in 2014, died in a suspicious plane crash along with other Wagner figures on 23 August and was buried in St Petersburg.

The group’s name will now be added alongside that of other proscribed organisations in the UK such as Hamas and Boko Haram.

The Terrorism Act 2000 gives the home secretary the power to proscribe an organisation if they believe it is concerned in terrorism.

The Guardian | RFi | VoA | Channel News Asia

Category: Democracy (Page 4 of 10)

Women Peace Security Index for 2023

Poland shows that autocracy is not inevitable

The mayor of Pontevedra, Spain is placing pedestrians first

Banned in Texas » The Diary of Anne Frank

With democracy at stake, the mainstream press must change its ways

US-China tensions and the war in Ukraine are already swinging investments to like-minded countries — a sign that companies are making geopolitical bets

Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization, to be declared a terrorist organisation by UK

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