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Alexey Sergienko with his artwork. The Republicans will be more desperate than ever to retain their power. If the Democrats win just one chamber, the landscape will be transformed. Photograph: Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty

In November next year the UnitedStates will hold its midterm elections. Every seat in the House of Representatives, and a third of the seats in the Senate, will be up for grabs. For the Democratic party the elections represent a desperately anticipated opportunity to break the Republicans complete control of the federal government. If historical midterm trends and the votingpatterns of recent special elections hold up, Democrats have a fighting chance of winning back the House, and an outsideshot at the Senate.

The Republicans will be more desperate than ever to retain their power. If the Democrats win just one chamber, the political landscape will be transformed. In addition to blocking the GOPs legislative agenda, Democrats will forcefully scrutinise Russias interference with the 2016 elections and investigate President Trumps remarkable commercialisation of his office. Impeachment of the Republican president will become a real possibility. Everything depends on the wishes of the American voters in 2018.

Or does it? There is a third, even more momentous scenario: another Russian cyber-offensive sways the outcome of a US election in accordance with the wishes of Russia, not American voters. What is being done to prevent this?

After emails revealed that Russian actors colluded with Donald Trump Jr in June 2016 as part of Russia and its governments support for Mr Trump, it is clearer than ever that the Russian active measures cyber-warfare and campaigns of propaganda and disinformation seriously affected the 2016 elections. Fake news and bogus comments were disseminated on news and social media platforms, and cyber-attacks were used to tactically leak internal Democratic party communications. The voting systems of at least 39 states were penetrated by hackers.

There is no evidence (maybe because no voting machines have been examined) that the hackers changed vote tallies. The US may not be so lucky in 2018. According to the congressional testimony of the cyber-security expert Alex Halderman, Americas enemies could quite feasibly tamper with the voting apparatus to invisibly cause any candidate to win. The American intelligence community asserts that Russia, given its success in 2016, will almost certainly be back, perhaps more aggressively andpotently than ever.

On Thursday the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wrote to its Republican counterpart, the NRCC, requesting a joint effort to protect the 2018 elections from cyber-attacks. It also asked the committee to give a steadfast commitment that it will refrain from the use of any stolen or altered documents or strategic information as part of any past or potential future hack on our committee or campaigns. The NRCC has yet to respond.

In more normal times the Russian national security threat would elicit an immediate bipartisan response. Proportionate sanctions would be imposed and maintained as a punishment and deterrent. Steps would be taken to secure and audit voting machinery and voter registration bases, with paper ballots introduced if necessary. Relevant intelligence would be collected and coordinated by federal and state authorities united by a desire to protect American voters.

But these are abnormal times. Republicans have just voted to defund the election assistance commission, the federal agency responsible for electoral security; and, whether in Washington or in stategovernments, they have done nothing to suggest that they view hostile election interference as apressing and serious problem.

Republicans have just voted to defund the election assistance commission, the agency responsible for electoral security

Then theres Donald Trump, the Republican president. He recently tweeted that Russian interference was all a big Dem HOAX!, and at last weeks G20 meeting he accepted Vladimir Putins assertion that Russia hadnt meddled with the US election. At the same meeting, the parties agreed to set up a US-Russian unit to guard against election hacking a proposal so counterintuitive that even Republican senators have ridiculed it, for now.

The unstated reality here is that Russian meddling with US elections is a politic phrase. Russian meddling actually refers to Russia unlawfully participating in a US election on behalf of the Republicans. It should not be forgotten that almost a dozen Democratic House candidates were also attacked and damaged by Russian measures. Asking Republicans to stop this happening again is asking them to deprive themselves of a potentially crucial electoral ally.

It may be argued that this is all a bit too dark. Whereas many Republicans could more or less plausibly claim to have been unaware of the gravity of the 2016 attacks, that claim wouldnt work in 2018. They would be seen to have knowingly, indeed culpably, permitted the Russians to illegally assist them. That would not be politically tenable.

The problem is that political tenability is largely determined by the electoral victors; and the Republicans, if they are the beneficiaries of a rigged midterm vote, will have the authority to decide if their own power is tenable and if it isnt. This is a win-at-all-costs party that ruthlessly suppresses votes and gerrymanders districts; has brazenly stolen a supreme court seat; has set up an election integrity commission to combat the nonexistent problem of massive voter fraud; and (as were seeing in the attempted passage of the American health care act) has abandoned the basic norms of truthfulness and good faith in congressional cooperation, on which the American political system depends. If Russia is ready and willing to alter vote tallies in favour of the GOP, does anyone really believe that Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence or Donald Trump would voluntarily stop it?

The truth of the matter is that unless Republican politicians are pressured into taking prompt and effective defensive measures (paper ballots, for instance), we can look forward, in 2018, to a repetition of 2016. It will be the Democrats v the Republicans and an enormously well-funded battalion of foreign hackers and propagandists.

The beauty of this scenario, from a Republican point of view, is that collusion will not even be required. TheRussian offensive last year was a dry run for future offensives. Next time round, their assistance will arrive like manna from heaven, only more effectively.

Were a de facto GOP-Moscow alliance once again to win a national US election, the incentive to repeat and, if necessary, strengthen the formula in 2020 would be even more powerful. It goes without saying that Americas old experiment with democracy will, by this point, have come to a complete halt.

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Be wary: Trump and Putin could yet bring democracy to a halt - The Guardian

If this attempted coup was to give way to a true democracy Turkey needed to elucidate properly what happened on the night of 15 July. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan speaks during a ceremony marking the last years failed coup. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Today marks the first anniversary of a heinous attempted coup in Turkey. A group of soldiers, belonging to Fethullah Glens network, led an attempt to overthrow Turkish democracy. The attempt foundered in the face of the resistance of our people and the overwhelming majority of the Turkish armed forces. There were 249 people who lost their lives in the events of 15 July. Elected representatives rushed to the parliament to defend our democracy. MPs from my party were at the forefront of this effort. I immediately condemned the coup attempt and instructed our members to defend the parliament. Government sources and media circulated my condemnation message all night so it was this unified stance that helped to secure the coups failure.

The next day could have been the start of a new and democratic era in Turkey. Instead, in the year since, Turkish democracy has given way to a near-dictatorial regime. Recep Tayyip Erdoan, the president, exploited the crisis to declare a state of emergency, led a purge against all oppositional voices and started ruling by decree.

If we want to eradicate the coups detat from Turkeys future what needs to be done is the very opposite. Coups do not take place in countries where democratic institutions are strong, where parliamentary supervision, judicial control and transparency provided by a free media prevent abuses of power and where there is a societal consensus against the use of violence to solve problems.

All these tenets of democracy have been severely weakened in Turkey over the past year. After an illegitimate referendum, held under the state of emergency and in breach of Turkish electoral laws and international standards, the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) imposed a sui generis political system worthy of an authoritarian state, and bearing no resemblance to the presidential systems of democratic countries.

This system enables the president to appoint indirectly all judges and prosecutors. In any event, any judge who contradicts the government faces the risk of immediate removal and even arrest. Parliaments powers of supervision are seriously reduced. Even debating this becomes absurd as 12 MPs, including one from my party, are currently in prison. Similarly, since the declaration of the state of emergency, 150 journalists and numerous academics and public servants, in total more than 50,000 people, have been jailed.

Secondly, if this attempted coup was to give way to a true democracy Turkey needed to elucidate properly what happened on the night of 15 July. Unfortunately, our attempts at doing this have been blocked by the government. A parliamentary commission set up with this mandate could not question the chief of joint staff and the head of national intelligence. The limited information that we have is insufficient to pinpoint the true identity of those behind the attempted overthrow. Moreover, we also need to hold to account not only those who are criminally liable but also those who are politically responsible. We need to point out that almost all the generals who are currently in prison were promoted to that rank by the AKP. The ruling party supported the Glenist networks against their opponents, in government, in the bureaucracy and in business for years. They fell apart in 2012-13 not because of a conflict of principle, but because of a conflict of interest. The true history of 15 July cannot be written without this political background.

Finally, the government argues that it has been adopting these new measures to defend democracy. Imprisoning MPs, journalists, academics, judges or employing widespread torture is not a defence of democracy. Labelling at least half of your population as terrorist is not a defence of democracy. And concentrating power in the hands of one person without any checks or balances is an assault on the very notion of democracy.

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In the year since Turkey's failed coup, democracy has become near dictatorship - The Guardian

Aung San Suu Kyi may have won international acclaim for advocating human rights and democracy in her native Myanmar, but since becoming the countrys de facto leader 15 months ago, she has done little to protect the human rights of the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority there. Long a target of persecution, the countrys estimated 1 million Rohingya live mostly in the Rakhine state in impoverished villages. About 120,000 of them have ended up in wretched displaced persons camps.

Now, in another alarming move, Suu Kyis government has refused to allow a U.N. fact-finding team to come into the country to investigate reports of human rights abuses by security forces in Rakhine against the Rohingya. The decision to deny visas to members of the mission, established by the U.N.s Human Rights Council earlier this year, seems more in step with the repressive military regime that Myanmar used to be than the fledgling democracy it now prides itself on being. Suu Kyi and her government should immediately reverse course and let the U.N. human rights mission into the country to investigate.

The latest wave of violence started last fall after armed men, believed to be connected to a militant Rohyinga group, attacked border guard outposts on Oct. 9, killing nine police officers. In response, the Myanmar government instituted a massive crackdown in the area that included hundreds of arrests. Police officers and soldiers allegedly conducted a months-long campaign of terror, according to reports gathered by human rights groups and the United Nations, indiscriminately killing hundreds, raping and abusing women and children and burning down homes. As many as 90,000 Rohingya have fled their villages since last fall. Investigating all this is the goal of the fact-finding mission.

Human Rights Watch, an international advocacy group, has decried Myanmars refusal to grant visas. Even the Trump administration, so reticent to wade into human rights controversies that might cause political fallout, has called on the government of Myanmar also known as Burma to cooperate with the United Nations. The international community cannot overlook what is happening in Burma, said Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Suu Kyi and other government officials have dismissed the U.N. request, saying the government is doing its own investigation. Suu Kyi has steadfastly tried not to alienate those in the Buddhist-majority country who maintain that the Rohingya are in the country illegally. She has said that allowing in the U.N. team will only heighten tensions in Rakhine.

Actually, one sure way to raise tensions is for Myanmar to continue treating the Rohingya so badly (denying them access to healthcare and education as well as citizenship) that more of them become radicalized. In the last week, the government has opened Rakhine to a group of foreign journalists (with government escorts) and a human rights investigator for the United Nations (who is reportedly not touring all of Rakhine.) Thats good, but thats not enough. The government of Myanmar needs to allow the full U.N. fact-finding mission unfettered access to Rakhine to show that it has changed not only its leaders, but the way they govern as well.

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If Myanmar really wants to be considered a democracy, it needs to ... - Los Angeles Times

Once seemingly on the path towards liberalisation, China is now in position to redefine the term for the region, taking ownership and reshaping the term in its own, more authoritarian image

By Rana Mitter

15 Jul 2017

As I walked through central Beijing this week, I passed endless posters promoting democracy (minzhu). One might be forgiven for raising ones eyebrows at a moment when the 20th anniversary of the Hong Kong handover prompts elegies for the fate of democracy in the SAR. Yet it is no longer just greater China where liberal democracy seems in peril. It may be in retreat all across Asia.

If so, that political trend would be a reversal of the past three decades. When the Joint Declaration on Hong Kong was signed in 1984, both the Chinese and the British sides shared two assumptions. One was that China would become more democratic over time. This was the era of top Communist leaders Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, who at times allowed startling levels of freedom of speech that seemed to indicate eventual liberalisation in a way hard to imagine in todays China. The other assumption was that China would liberalise in the context of a rather undemocratic continent. In those cold war years, Japan and India were the only full liberal democracies in Asia.

The situation had changed hugely within a decade. By the mid-1990s, China was in a much harsher mode, its governing party burnt by the 1989 Tiananmen uprising, but also taking advantage of its new double-digit growth. In contrast, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines had democratised.

One reason that the struggle for democratisation in Hong Kong has become so fierce in recent years is that the comparators have changed. Between 1984 and 1989, Hong Kong could believe it was going back to an authoritarian but liberalising power in a continent that was mostly undemocratic; rule by Beijing didnt look so bad, or at least so anomalous. Today, Hong Kong can compare itself to cities such as Seoul, Taipei, and even Singapore and ask why it has less autonomy than these other cosmopolitan and democratic cities. Even a couple of years ago, the direction of travel in Asia itself seemed to be firmly toward democratisation.

Yet if the tide is not going out on democracy in Asia, it certainly seems to have seriously stalled in the past couple of years. In Thailand, a formerly raucous and flawed democracy, is now very much under the control of the military. In Myanmar, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi seems to be in close collaboration with that countrys military as political prisoners remain in detention, and the countrys Rohingya inhabitants have their rights restricted. Indonesia has seen religiously inspired prosecutions. The Philippines has certainly elected its president, but much of its political culture seems to have turned brutally authoritarian. Even in democratic Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abes regime has been accused of pressuring the free media and trying to stack the governing council of NHK, the national broadcaster.

Meanwhile, as China rises, the exhortations to civilisation and democracy are plastered far and wide in its capital. However, little in the direction of Chinas political travel in recent months suggests any version of liberal democracy. Rather, there have been discussions among Chinese think-tankers over whether China is a meritocracy rather than a democracy.

Why, then, is the term democracy so powerful that the Party wants to own it? The answer may be a nod both to the past and the future. Back in the days of Chinas war against Japan, Mao Zedong pioneered the three-thirds system which actually preserved the majority (two thirds) of the local assemblies for non-Party members. President Xi Jinpings party is unlikely to permit that much loss of control, but it certainly wants to use an association with the Mao era to burnish its brand.

But its the future that might be the more powerful factor. If China can persuade new partners to redefine democracy in its own terms, as a system that somehow does not involve national votes, free media or popular participation in government, then it will have won ownership in a powerful linguistic battle. The record of peoples democracies in Eastern Europe doesnt suggest success, but then they didnt have Chinas advantage of decades of high economic growth or attractive technological and consumer goods to make their model attractive.

We now face the prospect of two hegemons in the region with different, but damaging views on liberal democracy. The US administration no longer seems to care for the presence of liberal government in Asia (or at home) as a good in its own right, a situation which has given Beijing the opportunity to redefine democracy in its own terms. Now the region needs a champion who will defend democracy not just for the economic and security benefits that it brings, but as a powerful ethical good in its own right. Ideally that should be a power within Asia; it is strange that a North American power has held that role for so many decades. But does such a champion exist?

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The mystery of China's eagerness to own the term 'democracy' - South China Morning Post

Taiwans president marked the 30th anniversary of the lifting of martial law on Saturday by crediting the public rather than late leader Chiang Ching-kuo for putting the island on the path to democracy.

The comments prompted the opposition Kuomintang to hit back, saying Chiangs role in the process was undeniable.

In a Facebook post, President Tsai Ing-wen said many nameless people from truck drivers, to dissidents, teachers, factory workers and owners of small businesses were behind the struggle to remove martial law.

For a long time, some people have been in the habit of crediting former president Chiang Ching-kuo for Taiwans democratisation, but I would say [the credit] should go to the Taiwanese public, Tsai said.

Tsais independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party also called for the younger generation to have a correct perception of history, saying the removal of the martial law was neither an act of grace nor wisdom by the governing authority at that time.

70 years after Taiwans White Terror, relatives of victims still seeking justice

On July 15, 1987, Chiang announced the lifting of martial law, which had been in place on the island since May, 1949, seven months before the KMT forces led by his father, Chiang Kai-shek, were defeated by the Communists and fled to Taiwan.

The martial law period is associated with the so-called white terror, when many political dissidents, including communists and supporters of Taiwanese independence, were either jailed or executed.

But the KMT, now in opposition, insisted on Saturday that Chiang Ching-kuo was a central player in the shift to democracy on the island.

Former president Chiang laid the foundation for freedom and democracy in Taiwan by lifting martial law in 1987, which was followed by the removal of bans on the founding of new political parties and new newspapers, the KMT said.

It said the changes spurred the formation of many new political groups and expanded freedom of speech in Taiwan, paving the way for several peaceful transfers of power.

Game set during Taiwans White Terror garnering rave reviews

The DPP government has tried to use the anniversary to manipulate public feeling towards the old authoritarian regime in a bid to make political gains, the KMT said.

It also accused the DPP of pursuing a political witch hunt against the KMT.

The DPP has previously blamed Chiang Kai-shek for a massacre in 1947 in which thousands of Taiwanese were killed by KMT troops sent to suppress an uprising on the island.

Some KMT lawmakers and local news outlets have said that since Tsai became president in May last year, the DPP government has sought to not only minimise the islands historical links with the mainland, but also to eradicate the legacies of both Chiangs.

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People power not politicians put Taiwan on path to democracy, island's president says - South China Morning Post