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President Biden and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva marked the survival of their democracies in a bilateral White House meeting Friday, a common ground that led to the leaders to taking jabs at their predecessors. “Both of our democracies have been tested of late,” Biden said, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the riots that broke out in Brazil last month.

President Joe Biden once again started yelling and rambling about the future of democracy, misstating one of his favorite talking points about democracies backsliding around the world. “Well guess what? In the last ten years there’s fifteen fewer democracies in the world,” Biden said, before raising his voice. “Fewer. Not More, FEWER!”

President Biden on Friday visited with U.S. troops on his first stop in Poland, commenting on the importance of their work for maintaining democracy amid the Russian invasion into Ukraine. “10, 15 years from now in terms of our organizational structures, the question is, who’s going to prevail? Are democracies going to prevail and the values we share? Or are autocracies gonna? That’s really what’s at stake. So, what you’re doing is consequential, really consequential,” Biden said to the 82nd Airborne of the United States Army stationed in Rzeszów.

A man is mauled by dogs in Amsterdam for "breaking" COVID restrictions. Credit: Disclose.tv/Twitter screenshotPerhaps nothing has done more to expose the authoritarian tendencies of many “democratic” leaders throughout the world than COVID-19. Australia has perhaps been the most visible example, with numerous viral videos showing police viciously beating people for transgressions as small as not wearing a mask in public. Then there are the COVID concentration camps where people are forced into multi-week confinement — even if they aren’t positive for the virus.The scenes out of Europe are hardly better. Today, a video emerged that is so brutal that...

We FReepers complain about the Uniparty. Do other democracies have a uniparty or in the UK, e.g., do the the Tories and Labourites manage to avoid overlapping ideologies?ff

The 2018 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), reflects growing animosity towards journalists. Hostility towards the media, openly encouraged by political leaders, and the efforts of authoritarian regimes to export their vision of journalism pose a threat to democracies.The climate of hatred is steadily more visible in the Index, which evaluates the level of press freedom in 180 countries each year. Hostility towards the media from political leaders is no longer limited to authoritarian countries such as Turkey (down two at 157th) and Egypt (161st), where “media-phobia” is now so pronounced that journalists are routinely accused...

Is America descending into a dependency state, where the majority uses its voting power to demand government services from taxpayers? New research from Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee Jeff Sessions (R-AL) reveals that this reality may already be here, with more than 107 million Americans on some form of means-tested government welfare. ... most voting-age Americans do not pay income taxes — approximately 50.6 percent. That includes 53.91 million Americans who pay nothing in income taxes, and another 64.7 million who get refunds in excess of what was owed. That’s 118.61 million out of 234.6 million Americans 18...

The term "War of Ideas" began appearing in the years following al-Qaeda terror attacks against the United States on 9/11. In the days following the massacres, the mainstream media displayed a stunning lack of determination in identifying where aggression was coming from and why.  In the hours following the bloodshed in Manhattan, Pennsylvania, and Washington, where about three thousand -- mostly civilians -- were killed, the main question raised by networks, publications, and commentators was "Why do they hate us?" Incredibly revealing, this slogan told the world and public at home that America did not know who the "they" (i.e.,...

As the American president embarked on his farewell tour of Europe last week, Der Spiegel, echoing the sentiments of a number of leading newspapers on the Continent, pronounced "Europe happy to see the back of Bush." Virtually everyone seems to believe that George W. Bush's tenure has undermined trans-Atlantic ties. There is also a palpable sense in Europe that America will move closer to Europe in the years ahead, especially if Barack Obama wins the presidential election. But while Mr. Bush is widely seen by Europeans as a religious cowboy with a Manichean view on the world, Europe's growing rift...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain envisions a "League of Democracies" as part of a more cooperative foreign policy with U.S. allies. The Arizona senator will call for such an organization to be "the core of an international order of peace based on freedom" in a speech Tuesday at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. "We Americans must be willing to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies," McCain says, according to excerpts his campaign provided. "Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want,...

Isn't it always? But enough about Iran, let's talk about me! The same university that shouted down an American anti-illegal-immigration activist and the same university culture that just deemed former Harvard honcho Larry Summers too misogynist to be permitted on campus is now congratulating itself over its commitment to "academic freedom." True, renowned Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo is not happy. "They can have any fascist they want there," said professor Zimbardo, "but this seems egregious." But, hey, don't worry: He was protesting not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presence at Columbia but Donald Rumsfeld's presence at the Hoover Institution.... Lots of prime...

Bill Engvale is a member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. For years he’s been doing a routine about stupid things that people say. Each example ends with the tag line, “Here’s your sign.” That means a big sign with STUPID written on it. Although geopolitics are not Bill’s metier, he offers a way to cut through the twaddle about the beginning of WW III. Let’s start with Howard Dean. (Remember him? He was in all the papers.) Dean cropped up today giving a fire-breathing speech to the faithful (and forlorn), screaming that we wouldn’t have these problems in the...

President George W. Bush is planning a two-day wind sprint across India this week, when he will meet with political leaders, chat up high-technology millionaires and give a speech at a 16th-century fort. But to the consternation of many Indians, he will not see the country's most famous monument, the Taj Mahal, a decision Bush blamed last week on an omnipotent scheduler. "Look, if I were the scheduler, perhaps I'd be doing things differently," Bush said when he was asked in an interview with Indian reporters at the White House why he was skipping the Taj. "I'll be the president,...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22, 2006 – India and Pakistan are key allies in the long war against global terrorism and important partners in spreading democracy, President Bush told an Asia Society audience here today. Bush, who is scheduled for an upcoming trip to both countries, said the United States, India and Pakistan face a common threat in Islamic extremism and laid out how both countries are working with the U.S. to defeat this shared enemy. For instance, India and the U.S. are sharing intelligence and cooperating on law enforcement issues, the president said. "Our two governments are sharing vital information on...

MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla., Jan. 29, 2006 – For more than a year, Albanian army Maj. Ilirjan Balliu has served as the senior national representative for Albania with the 63-nation coalition organized to combat global terrorism. Shortly after his arrival to U.S. Central Command here, Balliu had breakfast with a U.S. military officer. As the two shared conversation and coffee, the U.S. officer revealed what was on his mind. "'If you would have told me years ago that I would have been sitting at a U.S. military base, eating and talking to an Albanian military officer, I wouldn't have...

Group says it mistakenly attributed statement to parliamentary nomineeIn a correction, a group that claimed a Canadian parliamentary candidate declared to supporters his nomination by the Liberal party was a victory for Islam says the statement actually was made by an accompanying town council member. The Canadian Coalition for Democracies, or CCD, issued an apology, saying it wanted to set the record straight, but pointed out the candidate, Omar Alghabra, did not disavow the statements. The group originally said Alghabra, who won the Liberal Party nomination for a parliamentary seat in Ontario, Canada, declared in a speech earlier this month,...

For those who believe Amnesty International is a non-partisan organization, perhaps a closer look at the organization's actions in Britain will provide some enlightenment. Amnesty International is accusing British Prime MinisterTony Blair of undermining decades of British campaigning for international human rights by using the war on terror to give, what they call, a "green light" to torture. Amnesty is planning to initiate a global campaign against the British government as a result of ministers saying they would use information gained by torture to prevent attacks on the United Kingdom. The ministers, however, never said they condoned torture. They said...

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Former President Clinton praised former members of the Soviet bloc in the Baltic states and eastern Europe for moving to democracy, but said "we're going through a critical period" on the future of Kosovo. The Serbian province populated by ethnic Albanians and Serbs has been run by the United Nations since NATO's 1999 air war against Yugoslavia, later renamed Serbia-Montenegro. Kosovo wants full independence; Serbia refuses to give it. As president, Clinton ordered the bombing of Serbian targets to force former President Slobodan Milosevic to end a crackdown on armed ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. Clinton...

One of Bush's concepts on the War on Terror is to replace those governments that harbor and grow hate with democracies. It's an important concept, one that recognizes that in order to kill the weed of murder and torture you have to pull it up by its roots. The new seeds, planted well, will flower into the type of free flowing information that'll pollinate the brains of young and old alike. I know, I know. It sounds like some fairy tale. But recent polls taken in Islamic countries show a sudden drop in support for Bin Ladin accompanied by an...

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts Many of the European “new democracies” strangely appear closer to Medieval Principalities (in terms of size and influence), than to the countries they would rightfully become. True most of them were born out of Mother Russia’s demise, so they do have that slight leaning (at best). Now, many of those “new” countries have been in existence for centuries and just reclaimed their rights to their own language, schools, religions, etc. More importantly many of them are racing to become members of the European Union. I have seen (first hand) how several of these new states...