Epstein Secrets

e the intimidating effect on other neighbors. It conducted war games in which 33,000 troops rehearsed the invasion of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark." The Russian navy has held multiple, large-scale exercises in the Black Sea to defy NATO, assert its control over Crimea, and threaten Georgia.1°

and persecution. They are frequent- ly jailed on trumped-up charges of defamation, tax fraud, or drug trafficking, among others. 12 EFTA00804736 Freedom House 2. Marginalizing the opposition: As noted above, authoritarian leaders use their media power to paint critics as knaves or buffoons. Especially t

battering. Nor is the EU a paragon of democracy. The decision to introduce the euro in 1999 was taken largely by technocrats; only two countries, Denmark and Sweden, held referendums on the matter (both said no). Efforts to win popular approval for the Lisbon Treaty, which consolidated power in Brus

in countries that will hold free and fair elections this year, democracy's global advance has come to a halt, and may even have gone into reverse. Freedom House reckons that 2013 was the eighth consecutive year in which global freedom declined, and that its forward march peaked around the beginning of the c

mize the intimidating effect on other neighbors. It conducted war games in which 33,000 troops rehearsed the invasion of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark.!? The Russian navy has held multiple, large-scale exercises in the Black Sea to defy NATO, assert its control over Crimea, and threaten Georgia.'* R

tions with other regional states. Turkey similarly claimed a policy of “zero problems” with its neighbors in the period before the Syrian civil war. Freedom House's Tyler Roylance has described a “common set of concessions" that 21st-century au- thoritarians made to the prevailing democratic ethos in the wake of