Members of Ruch Palikota Party wear masks during a vote of no confidence for Health Minister Bartosz Arlukowicz in Poland's parliament in Warsaw January 26, 2012 More European parliaments are refusing to ratify the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, claiming it violates human rights. Now, some are asking: “why it was signed in the first place?” It looks like some of the countries who signed... 

In the fourth part of his pre-election manifesto published in Kommersant daily on Monday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin touts the internet as an electronic means for making democracy more responsive to the people. The premier is running for president in next month’s election. Expressing the importance of “indispensable” democratic principles, Putin stresses at the same time that democracy-building... 

While local U.S. police use excessive force and violence against OWS protesters, the U.S. government continues to attempt to spread “freedom and democracy” of this exact same kind around the world. Reports come in daily about beatings, clubbings, tasering, a female having her bicycle thrown at her and disabled veterans being abused. Meanwhile, Libya attempts to free itself from this “freedom... 

Mahmoud Jibril (shown), the number two in Libya's Transitional National Council, gives a press conference in Doha, Qatar, August 23, 2011, hours after Libyan fighters overran Muammar Gaddafi's fortified Bab al-Azizyah headquarters in the capital, Tripoli. A senior Libyan opposition official says the political transition in Libya will begin promptly, as Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s... 

The Arab Spring may be a great source of inspiration for popular movements around the world. However, a study assessing social, political and economic freedoms points to a steady, global shift towards authoritarianism. Above, Red Shirt anti-government protesters gather in Bangkok in April 2010. Over the past six months, the world has watched as the Middle East, a region that long seemed immune to democratic... 

World View: The anti-regime demonstrations that worked so rapidly and unexpectedly in Tunisia and Egypt are faltering elsewhere as rulers fight to hold on to power The Arab awakening is turning into the Arab nightmare. Instead of ushering in democracy, the uprisings in at least three Arab states are fast becoming vicious civil wars. In the past 10 days, crucial developments in Syria, Libya and Yemen... 

Why would NATO not bomb Bahrain and Yemen? It would seem than their leaders, from a Western point of view, are no better than Gaddafi or al-Assad. According to the Western elites, they allegedly are rigidly oppressing their people. What about the behavior of the Bahraini King and the Yemeni president? The former, unable to cope with people’s anger, brought in the Saudi troops for the suppression... 

It has been pretty clear from comments over the past few days that the Obama Administration is keen on Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s newly appointed Vice President and long-standing spymaster, as a successor for dictator Hosni Mubarak. WikiLeaks cables have suggested he has long been Israel’s favorite successor candidate as well. But while his decades near the head of Egypt’s torture-happy regime doesn’t... 

In the annals of CIA sub­terfuge, this is a weird one: A spe­cial ops unit pitched the idea of try­ing to dis­credit Sad­dam Hus­sein as a gay pedophile before the 2003 inva­sion, reports the Wash­ing­ton Post. The idea was to cre­ate a phony home video pur­port­ing to show Sad­dam hav­ing sex with a teenage boy. Supe­ri­ors even­tu­ally shot it down, though the unit did make a fake...