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The 2016 Panama Papers leaks were supposed to be a tool for the forces of democracy. They were meant to expose corruption and reinvigorate institutions. By one reading, the resignation of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after the countrys Supreme Court declared him guilty in a corruption trial relating to the papers seems like a case in point. In fact, however, it shows that the leaks have become a tool of the anti-democratic in some instances. In Pakistan, the revelations came as the country was undergoing a return to full democracy. Now that process has been set back.

Part of the problem is the way Pakistans media handled the leaks. The countrys prominent outlets had long been censored and vilified by the military and powerful civilian politicians alike. Journalists who have spoken critically of the establishment have been attacked fiercely; for example, the journalist Hamid Mir, who was shot in Karachi, had irked Pakistans dominant intelligence agency by critiquing its activities against other journalists and civilians. The result of such cases was excessive airtime and a free pass for pro-establishment opinion.

When the Panama leaks came out, however, the media opened to voices critical to the sitting party (if not the entire establishment). Conventional wisdom quickly came to hold that the prime minister should resign. Most mainstream television programs organized panels vilifying Sharif for looting the nation. And the majority of the public went along, blaming him for the corruption that has plagued the nation for a long time.

At the forefront of the media campaign has been Imran Khan, head of the Pakistan Justice Party, who had tried to galvanize the nation against Sharif since the leader took office in 2013. Although Khan presents himself as a pro-democratic leader, he has at times beencalled a puppetof the military. In fact, he once admitted to having been brought into politics with the help of former military dictator Pervez Musharraf. Critics assert that the purpose was to counter

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Democracy After Sharif in Pakistan - Foreign Affairs

Historian and Duke University Professor Nancy MacLean, in her very important new book, "Democracy in Chains," alerts Americans to the "single most powerful and least understood threat to democracy today: the attempt by the Billionaire-backed radical right to undo democratic governance." The book was recently recommended by Opra Winfrey.

MacLean is a historian of social movements and their impact on public policy. She became interested in Virginia's decision, made after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, to issue state-subsidized education vouchers for all-white private schools. Her research led to James McGill Buchanan, a professor at George Mason University, who created, in 1956, an academic center with a quiet political agenda: to defeat what he considered a perverted form of liberalism by training a new line of thinkers.

Confidential letters between Buchanan and Charles Koch, from 1997-1998, disclosed Charles Koch's investments, beginning in the 1970s, of millions of dollars in Buchanan's Center for Study of Public Choice Program. It became a research and design center for a project to train operatives to staff far-flung and purposely separate, yet intrinsically connected, institutions funded by the Koch brothers and their large network of fellow wealthy donors.

Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries Inc., is shown in this undated company handout photo. (unk / The Denver Post)

It was not until 2012 that Americans began to sense that something extraordinarily troubling was happening. "In 2011 the new governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, put forth legislation to strip public employees of all their collective bargaining rights, teachers were attacked in New Jersey, large cuts to education occurred in several states with laws to enable unregulated charter schools. In 2011 and 2012 legislators in 41 states introduced more than 180 bills to restrict who could vote and how. The movement went national with an all-out effort to oppose the Affordable Care Act."

Nancy MacLean provides knowledge about the vast plan to destroy American democracy that is moving with shock-and-awe speed. Thirty-three states are already totally controlled by the Republican Party. It is the plan of ALEC (The American Legislative Exchange Council), as disclosed on their website, to hold a constitutional convention and rewrite the U.S. Constitution to provide governance by and for the billionaires. Saving democracy is up to us. We the people.

Shirley Jin lives in Boulder.

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Shirley Jin: Democracy in chains - Boulder Daily Camera

A future trivia question and historical footnote, the spectacular 10-day flameout of Anthony Scaramucci qualifies as the most entertaining episode yet of the ongoing reality show that is the Trump presidency. (Working title: The Pompadours of 1600 Pennsylvania.) But even as the cocksure sycophants gobsmacking spectacle stole the show, something of real importance took place a bit lower on the radar.

At five separate junctures, the sinews of our democracy held against the careening recklessness of this presidency. Consequently, Donald Trumps worst week proved a particularly fine hour for American democracy:

The military says no to Trump on the transgender ban.

Well, not directly thats insubordination but with rather elegant circumspection. The president tweeted out a total ban on transgender people serving in the military. It came practically out of nowhere. The military brass, not consulted, was not amused. Defense Secretary James Mattis, in the middle of a six-month review of the issue, was reportedly appalled.

What was done? Nothing. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs simply declared that a tweet is not an order. Until he receives a formal command and develops new guidelines, the tweet will be ignored.

In other words, the military told the commander in chief to go jump in a lake. Generally speaking, this is not a healthy state of affairs in a nation of civilian control. It does carry a whiff of insubordination. But under a president so uniquely impulsive and chronically irrational, a certain vigilance, even prickliness, on the part of the military is to be welcomed.

The brass framed their inaction as a matter of procedure. But the refusal carried with it a reminder of institutional prerogatives. In this case, the military offered resistance to mere whimsy. Next time, it could be resistance to unlawfulness.

The Senate saves Sessions.

Trumps relentless public humiliation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions was clearly intended to get him to resign. He didnt, in part because of increasing support from Congress. Sessions former colleagues came out strongly in his defense, and some openly criticized the presidents shabby treatment of his first and most fervent senatorial supporter.

Indeed, Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, warned Trump not to fire Sessions because he wouldnt get another attorney general the committees entire 2017 schedule was set and there would be no hearings to approve a new AG. That was a finger to the eye of the president. Every once in a while, the Senate seems to remember that it is a co-equal branch.

Senate Republicans reject the Obamacare repeal.

The causes here are multiple, most having nothing to do with Trump. Republicans are deeply divided on the proper role of government in health care. This division is compounded by the sea change in public opinion as, over seven years, Obamacare has become part of the fabric of American medicine, and health care has come to be seen as a right rather than a commodity.

Nonetheless, the stunning Senate rejection of repeal was also a pointed rejection of Trumps health care hectoring. And a show of senatorial disdain for Trump craving a personal legislative win on an issue about whose policy choices he knew nothing and cared less.

The Boy Scouts protest.

In a rebuke not as earthshaking but still telling, the chief executive of the Boy Scouts found it necessary to apologize for the presidents speech last week to their quadrennial jamboree. The speech was wildly inappropriate, at once whining, self-referential, partisan and political.

How do you blow a speech to Boy Scouts? No merit badge for the big guy.

The police chiefs chide.

In an address to law enforcement officials, Trump gave a wink and a nod to cops roughing up suspects. Several police chiefs subsequently reprimanded Trump for encouraging police brutality a mild form, perhaps, but brutality still.

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it was all a joke. Nonsense. It was an ugly sentiment, expressed coyly enough to be waved away as humor but with the thuggish undertone of a man who, heckled at a campaign rally, once said approvingly that in the old days guys like that would be carried out on a stretcher.

Whatever your substantive position on the various issues outlined above, we should all be grateful that from the generals to the Scouts, from the senators to the cops, the institutions of both political and civil society are holding up well.

Trump is a systemic stress test. The results are good, thus far.

Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for The Washington Post. He can be contacted at:

[emailprotected]

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Krauthammer: Trump's worst week was a strong one for democracy - Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel

John Adams, the second American president, famouslywarned that without constitutional constraints on the power of popularly elected governments, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

That these words of wisdom, which for so long remained dormant counsel in history books, now spring to relevance marks the crisis of modern democracy today. Drawing on his reading of the failures of Greek democracy and the Roman Republic in antiquity, Adamsunderstood that predatory appetites are whetted when too much power is concentrated in any one place.To that end, along with the other Founding Fathers, he designed a Constitution with circuit breakers an independent judiciary and a deliberative upper house selected to check the popularly elected lower house that would cut off power when too much of it flows to one set of interests, including, and especially, the electoral majority.As John C. Calhoun would later put it, a positive majority makes a government; anegative, or check on that power, makes constitutional rule.

Barely a day goes by in the United States when President Donald Trump doesnt assault one or another of the institutional constraints on his power, above all an independent judiciary and the free media, not to mention the special prosecutor appointed by the Justice Department to look into whether the Trump team colluded with Russia during the campaign. Fortunately, the weakness and incompetence of inexperienced leadership combined with factional polarization within the ruling Republican majority has only yielded paralysis. Democracy in the U.S.today may be wasting and exhausting itself, but so far it has not succeeded in taking its own life.

That is not the case elsewhere. As Nilfer Glewrote recently in The WorldPost, a pluralist Turkey that once aspired to join Europe has now given way to an authoritarian, Islamic populist regime ratified by a majority through the ballot box.

In Venezuela, the ruling regime has used the populist canard of a popular referendum to elect a stacked list for a constituent assembly to write new rules that nullify the power of the opposition-dominated National Assembly. The 545 largely pro-regime constituents elected over the weekend are now directed by Venezuelan President Nicols Maduros government not merely to rewrite the constitution, writesMoises Rendon, but also to establish a new communal political system with absolute power, not unlike those in Cuba or North Korea. The prospect of such a systemrisks total economic collapse, a worsened humanitarian crisis and permanent civil conflict in Venezuela.Since last weekends vote, Maduros government has moved speedily to arrest opposition leaders. With domestic avenues of resistance now blocked, hope turns to international pressure. The world needs to move now before the situation spirals into a failed state, says Rendon.

Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters

Poland, once the poster child of post-Cold War democratization, is sliding back to authoritarian rule. Taking heart from the solidarity with its illiberal sentiments expressed by Trump during hisrecent visit to Warsaw, the parliamentary majority of the ruling Law and Justice party and its allies passed legislation in July that would politicize the rule of law and end the independence of the judiciary. The aim, as Jacek Kucharczykwrites from Warsaw, is to completely overhaul the judiciary system, including the forced retirement of Supreme Court justices, [as] an essential part of the ruling partys long-term strategy of dismantling democratic checks and balances and introducing de facto one-party rule.

To everyones surprise, Polish President Andrzej Duda vetoed the law that would have ousted the Supreme Court justices after massive demonstrations against it across all of Polands major cities. These young people sent a strong signal to Duda, who largely owes his unexpected victory in 2015 to anti-establishment young voters, Kucharczyk reports. The ruling party has nonetheless pledged to press on with its proposed reforms. Stay tuned as uncertainty and turmoil grips yet another nation.

In Italy, representative democracy is being challenged from another angle by the populist Five Star Movement, which polls show is a leading contenderfor power in upcoming elections in 2018.The Eurosceptic movement believes that delegation of power to a corrupt political class ought to be replaced in the internet age by direct citizen participation in governance. In a video, a Five Star leader, Davide Casaleggio, explains a set of innovative online tools the movement has created not only to raise funds and recruit candidates for office from outside the mainstream parties, but to engage citizens directly in the proposition and drafting of legislation as well.

Writing in The WorldPost last year about Brazils own democratic meltdown,one of the countrys former presidents, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, identified the core of the crisis of representative democracy as the widening gap between peoples aspirations and the capacity of political institutions to respond to the demands of society. He continued: It is one of the ironies of our age that this deficit of trust in political institutions coexists with the rise of citizens capable of making the choices that shape their lives and influence the future of their societies.

Despite what one thinks of the Five Star Movements simplistic populism, the tools it is inventing are a significant remedy to closing the trust gap Cardoso identifies. If citizen empowerment can be combined with the ballast of deliberative bodies that check popular passions and formulate responsible policies, as John Adams and the other American Founding Fathers rightly thought so necessary, the renovation of democracy instead of its suicide may well be possible.

OHSU/OHSY

This week, scientists reported that, for the first time, they succeeded in editing the genes of a human embryo to eliminate a genetic mutation. Responding to the breakthrough, Craig Calhoun, the president of the Berggruen Institute, argues in a short essay that science and technological capacity are racing ahead of ethics, safety regulations and our understanding of risks and societal implications. Some, he writes, even worry that such gene editing practices are a backdoor to eugenics that will reinforce racial divisions. At a fundamental level, Calhoun posits, Genetic modification challenges our very idea of human nature. It suggests that we can make human beings into what we want them to be. Though conceding that gene editing is one of the most promising medical technologies in years, Calhoun concludes that unless there is much more attention to the ethical and social choices before us, we risk seeing that promise mired in controversy or turned into a disaster.

Though Mexico entered the democratic pantheon in 2000 when elections ended more than 70 years of one-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, it has not yet been able to establish an effective rule of law. In an article and video that profile personal cases, Amnesty Internationals Josefina Salomn reports on what appears to be widespread arbitrary detentions by corrupt police chalking it all up to the war on drugs. View the WorldPost video based on Amnestys reporting below:

EDITORS:Nathan Gardels, Co-Founder and Executive Advisor to the Berggruen Institute, is the Editor-in-Chief of The WorldPost.Kathleen Milesis the Executive Editor of The WorldPost.Farah Mohamedis the Managing Editor of The WorldPost.Peter Mellgardis the Features Editor of The WorldPost.Alex Gardelsis the Video Editor of The WorldPost.Suzanne Gaberis the Editorial Assistant of The WorldPost.Rosa OHarais the Social Editor of The WorldPost.Katie Nelsonis News Director at HuffPost, overseeing The WorldPost and HuffPosts news coverage.Nick Robins-EarlyandJesselyn Cookare World Reporters.

EDITORIAL BOARD:Nicolas Berggruen,Nathan Gardels,Arianna Huffington,Eric Schmidt(Google Inc.),Pierre Omidyar(First Look Media),Juan Luis Cebrian(El Pais/PRISA),Walter Isaacson(Aspen Institute/TIME-CNN),John Elkann(Corriere della Sera, La Stampa),Wadah Khanfar(Al Jazeera)andYoichi Funabashi(Asahi Shimbun).

VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS:Dawn Nakagawa.

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS:Moises Naim(former editor ofForeign Policy),Nayan Chanda(Yale/Global; Far Eastern Economic Review) andKatherine Keating(One-On-One).Sergio Munoz BataandParag Khannaare Contributing Editors-At-Large.

The Asia Societyand itsChinaFile, edited byOrville Schell, is our primary partner on Asia coverage.Eric X. Liand the Chunqiu Institute/Fudan University in Shanghai andGuancha.cnalso provide first person voices from China. We also draw on the content ofChina Digital Times.Seung-yoon Leeis The WorldPost link in South Korea.

Jared Cohenof Google Ideas provides regular commentary from young thinkers, leaders and activists around the globe.Bruce Mauprovides regular columns fromMassiveChangeNetwork.comon the whole mind way of thinking.Patrick Soon-Shiongis Contributing Editor for Health and Medicine.

ADVISORY COUNCIL: Members of the Berggruen Institutes 21st Century Council and Council for the Future of Europe serve as theAdvisory Council as well as regular contributors to the site. These include,Jacques Attali, Shaukat Aziz,Gordon Brown,Fernando Henrique Cardoso,Juan Luis Cebrian,Jack Dorsey,Mohamed El-Erian,Francis Fukuyama,Felipe Gonzalez,John Gray,Reid Hoffman,Fred Hu,Mo Ibrahim,Alexei Kudrin,Pascal Lamy,Kishore Mahbubani,Alain Minc,Dambisa Moyo,Laura Tyson,Elon Musk,Pierre Omidyar,Raghuram Rajan,Nouriel Roubini,Nicolas Sarkozy,Eric Schmidt,Gerhard Schroeder,Peter Schwartz,Amartya Sen,Jeff Skoll,Michael Spence,Joe Stiglitz,Larry Summers,Wu Jianmin,GeorgeYeo,Fareed Zakaria,Ernesto Zedillo,Ahmed ZewailandZheng Bijian.

From the Europe group, these include:Marek Belka,Tony Blair,Jacques Delors,Niall Ferguson,Anthony Giddens,Otmar Issing,Mario Monti,Robert Mundell,Peter SutherlandandGuy Verhofstadt.

The WorldPost is a global media bridge that seeks to connect the world and connect the dots. Gathering together top editors and first person contributors from all corners of the planet, we aspire to be the one publication where the whole world meets.

We not only deliver breaking news from the best sources with original reportage on the ground and user-generated content; we bring the best minds and most authoritative as well as fresh and new voices together to make sense of events from a global perspective looking around, not a national perspective looking out.

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Weekend Roundup: Modern Democracy At The Crossroads - HuffPost

Venezuela has installed an all-powerful constituent assembly with the authority to rewrite the constitution, remove public officials and trump all branches of government, raising concerns about the health of democracy in the country.

Opponents of President Nicolas Maduro fear it will solidly entrench his socialist administration and create a one-party state, while supporters say it offers a the best chance for peace after months of deadly unrest.

Some analysts evaluate the state of democracy in Venezuela:

MICHAEL SHIFTER, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue: "It's not a dictatorship in the classic formulation. Maduro was elected. But I think he's lost any legitimacy. There has been a gradual erosion of democratic practice, and this is a significant line that has been crossed. To attach the term democracy to Venezuela with this new constituent assembly is on very weak ground. I think it can't be taken seriously."

JOSE MIGUEL VIVANCO, Washington-based director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch: "Two basic principles need to be present to characterize a government as a democratic one. The first is free, fair and competitive elections. The second is the obligation to govern democratically to exercise power in accordance to respecting the limits of the rule of law, separation of powers, independence of the judiciary, free press, respecting civil society. And you are not supposed to engage in persecution of dissidents and political leaders. At this stage, I don't think Venezuela passes the test as an electoral democracy. And the Maduro administration should be treated as such. In plain language, as a dictatorship."

MARK WEISBROT, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington: "The media has kind of assumed that the assembly was a dictatorship of some sort, but they haven't done anything yet. They haven't abolished the National Assembly. So far, nothing has happened. ... Venezuela is still a very polarized country and there's a standoff between the two sides. Mediation failed last year because neither side was willing to concede anything. There is going to have to be a negotiated solution, with elections. And for those elections to settle the conflict there is going to have to be constitutional guarantees that the losing side is not going to be politically persecuted. That's the only way I can see to avoid a descent into violence and civil war."

LUISA ORTEGA DIAZ, Venezuela's chief prosecutor, during an interview with CNN en Espanol: "I couldn't say that we've absolutely lost democracy. There are still some glimmers of it. But unfortunately if we continue down this road, we will lose all traces of democracy. The trial of a civilian in a military tribunal that is the act of a dictatorship. The detention of people with no formal proceeding, without a judicial order, mass raids, the lack of information on people detained ... especially those who are uncomfortable for the government. They (the Maduro administration) have used criminal law, the police, to disappear, to extinguish them."

FERNANDO BUEN ABAD, Mexican philosopher, in remarks to be the Venezuela-based network TeleSur: The election of the constituent assembly "solidifies the extraordinary strengths of a people who understand what a constitution is. Who understand what a powerful tool the constitution is in order to weave together a framework of collective relations. And who understand that this is a platform to advance and deepen, including to criticize, its own process. We saw a robust lesson in democracy, that in spite of everything, despite tensions from some circles and parts of the country, the gathering was incredibly rich and proposed, in quantity and quality, a reflection that in my mind is a moral lesson for the entire planet."

BENIGNO ALARCON, director of the Center for Political Studies at Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas: "Democracy does not exist in Venezuela, but it has not existed for some time. What's being installed is an assembly that is not governed by the constitution and has no constitutional limits. It can do practically whatever it wants. But it does not have any political acceptance. People will not obey the decisions they make. The only way to implement its policies will be with repression."

DANIEL LANSBERG-RODRIGUEZ, Northwestern University law professor who is a dual U.S.-Venezuelan citizen: "By its very nature, the creation of a constituent assembly under Venezuelan law delegates most of the traditional functions of participatory democracy to the newly created body, which for the indefinite duration of its deliberations can override the conventional legislature, the presidency and even the pre-existing constitution. Such delegation, if always risky, need not be inherently undemocratic, provided that a majority of the people vote for this process to take place. In this case, however, there were no plebiscites and Maduro is at 20 percent approval rating, lacking any semblance of electoral viability let alone a powerful mandate for change. In a cynical ploy to stave off future elections he can't win, Maduro has hijacked what remained of Venezuela's democracy without popular permission."

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With all-powerful assembly, is Venezuela still a democracy? - ABC News