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Institutionalized corruption

Around the world, many people suspect that some leading politicians are bought off by powerful interest groups, such as Big Pharma. A recent report from Germany highlights the problem:

Pfizer is one of the sponsors of the party conference of SPD, which is one of the ruling parties in Germany. Norbert Häring writes on his blog about this form of institutionalized corruption (in German):

Together with Biontech, Pfizer is producing a vaccine whose unrestricted patent protection was rigorously defended by the SPD

Pfizer profits enormously from vaccination, which is compulsory for health workers in Germany and perhaps soon for the general population.

High Court’s decision on Assange

Yesterday it was announced in the UK that the High Court allowed the US appeal to reverse an order not to extradite Julian Assange, which we can read about for example in The Indicter. This is top news around the world, for example on DW, which interviewed Nils Melzer. However, it is remarkable how quiet some organizations are, which otherwise work for the protections of human rights. This can be seen especially in Sweden, one of the vassal states involved in the persecution of Assange. For example, at the time of writing this post, we cannot find is a word about the High Court’s decicion when we look at the web pages of the Amnesty Sweden, Civil Rights Defenders and UNA Sweden. Meanwhile, Amnesty International calls the High Court’s decicion a “travesty of justice”.

Some of the world’s most repressive countries

When it comes to vaccination obligation, some of the world’s most repressive countries nowadays are not typical dictatorships. We have recently reported about Austria. Swedish Television has also reported (in Swedish) that in Greece, people over 60 years are planned be fined 100 Euro per month if they are not vaccinated against Covid-19. In many other countries, such as the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Fiji, you can loose your job if you are not vaccinated against Covid-19. In Latvia, some can also loose their right to vote, for the same reason. There are also extremely alarming reports from Australia, but it’s difficult to know if all of them are true.

The world is becoming more authoritarian

The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance writes:

The world is becoming more authoritarian as non-democratic regimes become even more brazen in their repression and many democratic governments suffer from backsliding by adopting their tactics of restricting free speech and weakening the rule of law, exacerbated by what threatens to become a “new normal” of Covid-19 restrictions. For the fifth consecutive year, the number of countries moving in an authoritarian direction exceeds the number of countries moving in a democratic direction. In fact, the number moving in the direction of authoritarianism is three times the number moving towards democracy.

In their new global report, we can inter alia read that:

Some of the most worrying examples of backsliding are found in some of the world’s largest countries (Brazil, India). The United States and three members of the European Union (EU) (Hungary, Poland and Slovenia, which holds the chair of the EU in 2021) have also seen concerning democratic declines.

Although some statements in their reports can be questioned, the general trend of undemocratic development is alarming.

Download the global report or see regional reports on https://www.idea.int/gsod/