Freedom House's "Freedom Watch" 2011

One of my university lecturer's said in class that we are in a strange place in history. For the first time ever, there are arguably more democratic states (bearing in mind the variety of types of democracies around) than non-democratic states, and that academics are unsure of what the impact of that will be.


Unfortunately, things are not looking good:

Global freedom suffered its fifth consecutive year of decline in 2010, according to Freedom in the World 2011, Freedom House’s annual assessment of political rights and civil liberties around the world. This represents the longest continuous period of decline in the nearly 40-year history of the survey. The year featured drops in the number of Free countries and the number of electoral democracies, as well as an overall deterioration for freedom in the Middle East and North Africa region.

A total of 25 countries showed significant declines in 2010, more than double the 11 countries exhibiting noteworthy gains. The number of countries designated as Free fell from 89 to 87, and the number of electoral democracies dropped to 115, far below the 2005 figure of 123. In addition, authoritarian regimes like those in China, Egypt, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela continued to step up repressive measures with little significant resistance from the democratic world.

...

Published annually since 1972, Freedom in the World examines the ability of individuals to exercise their political and civil rights in 194 countries and 14 territories around the world. The latest edition analyzes developments that occurred in 2010 and assigns each country a freedom status—Free, Partly Free, or Not Free—based on a scoring of performance on key democracy indicators.

Four countries received status declines, including Ukraine and Mexico, which both fell from Free to Partly Free. Mexico’s downgrade was a result of the government’s inability to stem the tide of violence by drug-trafficking groups, while Ukraine suffered from deteriorating levels of press freedom, instances of election fraud, and growing politicization of the judiciary. Djibouti and Ethiopia were downgraded from Partly Free to Not Free. Other countries showing declines included Bahrain, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, France, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela.

A colour coded map of Free, Partly Free and Not Free states(PDF)

Worrying signs for the future, or a bump in the road?

China's military modernisation and the US

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

China's prototype stealth fighter has made its first known test flight, marking dramatic progress in the country's efforts to develop cutting-edge military technology.

The President, Hu Jintao, confirmed the flight in a meeting with the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, Reuters reported.

The prototype plane dubbed the J-20 flew for about 15 minutes yesterday over an airfield in the south-western city of Chengdu where it was spotted carrying out runway tests last week, the Kanwa Asian Defence magazine editor, Andrei Chang, said.

News of the flight emerged as the Chinese Defence Minister sharply defended the nation's arms build-up, pointing to US military sales to Taiwan as a continuing obstacle, and deflected a US request for ''in-depth strategic dialogue'' on nuclear missile defence, space and cyber warfare....Regarding US concerns over new weaponry, including the stealth fighter and an anti-ship ballistic missile potentially capable of hitting a US aircraft carrier, the Defence Minister, General Liang Guanglie, suggested the US was overreacting to an effort to modernise.

''We can by no means call ourselves an advanced military force,'' General Liang said. ''The gap between us and that of advanced countries is at least two to three decades.'' He said China was interested only in its own security and that ''there are some people always in the world who want to label China's military development a so-called threat to the world''.

On Taiwan, the general implied that any further sale of arms would disrupt relations and prompt China to cut off military ties with Washington, as it has repeatedly in the past.

And from the Lowy Interpreter we get some further analysis. This, when read in conjunction with the Crikey article from Monday about the JSF vs J-20 vs Russia's PAK-FA situation (basically, when the JSF was conceptualised, China and Russia would have been nowhere near having a competitor for a fair amount of time after the JSF became operational), does seem to point to a further shake up in the Asia Pacific region and even down to what China's intentions will be.

Once again, we come to the questions "Rise of China? Resurgence of China?" and "What role will China play, from a security standpoint, in the region?"

As far as the JSF goes, what choice does Australia have? As Paul Barratt, who has extensive experience in this area tweeted me:

 What choice do we have? We won' t buy Russian or Chinese for good reason, can only buy the aircraft that are available to us.

What choice indeed?

Yet more climate scepticism

Kindly linked by Paul_Ausvotes is this piece of climate change denial nonsense:

"Scarewatch"

I'll let you read through it, though odds are, it will end up in a News Ltd publication near you.

Just wanted to highlight one (of many) issues it has

In fact the rate of warming, at .16C degrees per decade,  was the fastest rate to be sustained for more than a decade in the 160 year record, but exactly the same rate occurred from 1860-1880 and again from 1910-1940, when we could not have possibly have had anything to do with it.




What?

1860-1880 was part of the period described as the Second Industrial revolution, which saw such things as the invention of oil drilling, improving of steel making and the trans-Atlantic steamship service.

1910-1940? 2 World Wars (with the industrial might that was required), the beginning of air travel, widespread use of automobiles, etc, etc.

They really think in these years, when many of the things we take for granted today were nascent and being improved upon, we had no impact on climate change?

Ludicrous.

Welcome (and other stuff)

After being a compulsive blog reader, I decided it was past time I tried my hand at actually being on the writing end of the process.

This blog will cover a whole range of topics, though mainly in the political spectra, both domestic and foreign.

Comments are always welcome.