[000:00:00;00] ah, hello, i'm marianne was in london, our main story now. the world health organization has declared a new corona, virus, variance of concern warning of a new mutation which could spread more quickly. varying has been assigned the greek letter, omicron. it was 1st identified in south africa in the area surrounding your highest bug, but is now believe to be present in almost all the provinces. the united states has become the latest countries have been traveling from south africa and other countries in the region. cases of also have been detected in belgium, israel and hong kong. and barbara has report. it's the news. no one wanted to hear the discovery of a new covey variant called ami krohn. first identified in south africa has hit

world stock markets as concerns grow about a new global threat. the world health organization has labeled it a variance of concern based upon the information that we have, particularly from south africa. and they have advised w h o that this variance should be classified as a variant of concern. so today we are now seeing b 11529 is the variance of concern, named on the con, the w h o cautioned against hasty counter measures for now, but many governments chose instead to act fast. early indications show this varied may be more transmissible than the delta v, and current vaccines may be less effective against it. it may also impact the effectiveness of one of our major treatments. one of the u. k. his lead by restricting travel from 6 southern african countries with the emerging all member states to follow suit. cases of a new variant have been confirmed in a growing list of countries including hong kong,

israel and belgium. it is now important that all of us in europe act very swiftly. the european commission has today proposed to member states to activate the emergency brake on travel from countries in southern african and other countries affected. of course travel restrictions are designed not to hold the spread of the variance. it's too late for that. but instead to buy time, this new variance is has government mutations that we've never seen a crowd of ours. so 30 more compared to the original strain and about twice as many delta, it will take weeks to know all of that information. and we know that from previous studies on the alpha delta that it takes time to understand the transmission infectiousness. it takes time to understand the severity in the weeks ahead, the world will hold its breath, waiting to find out whether the new variant is a dark turn in the pandemic, or a false alarm. nadine baba al jazeera french president. emanuel micron has

cancelled an invitation for the british transact khatri to a meeting on the migrant crisis, and it was the u. k to get serious or main lockdown of discussions. it comes up to the u. k. prime minister barak johnson wrote a letter to mac, ron urging franz to take back migrants who make a person 27. people die trying to cross the sea between france and the u. k. on wednesday the flow of migrants is still causing concern on another of the eas board is this time it's between poland and batter. ruth, who's present alexander lucas. shank of visited a crowded border camp. you met some of the thousands of people, a mate, ship shelter, and told them they were free to head west or to go home. europe ian union has accused batteries of engineering that crisis by flying people in and then pushing them towards the border. because shanker says, but we will help people to return to their home countries. they won't be forced to do so. yes ma through does. yes, i'm looking ahead. and if the margaret crisis in the bill of room, so now it will grow much bigger, much, not only in spring,

but next winter. we understand that a large flow of people will be arriving and bill bruce, and it will be hard to hold them on the border. the problem must be solved now before it grows much bigger. and the ethiopian state t v as both cost images, which appear to show the prime minister visiting soldiers on the front line and the countries conflict with to grind rebels. the toll reported that the armies morale is high and opposition forces have been pushed back to growing rebels began their offensive. earlier this year, the group in its allies have been advancing towards the capital, addis ababa? those the headlines? this our do stay with us for the bottom line with steve clemens. this is coming up next. ah

hi, i'm steve clements and i have a question. 2021 wasn't exactly the best year for democracy around the world. so was joe biden, summit for democracy supposed to come in and save the day? let's get to the bottom line. ah, us president joe biden had barely arrived at the white house last february when he announced that he'd hold a summit for democracy in december. he said the idea was to defend democracies against the spread of authoritarianism, fight corruption, and promote respect for human rights. it's been a year where 6 coups have already thrown out. civilian leaders in countries ranging from sudan to myanmar. china's leaders in russia's leaders look like they're outperforming biden on a lot of france and democracy looks like it's gasping in the boxing ring. and after taking a lot of punches, can it prevail? even in the united states, the year started out with angry mobs attacking congress to try to overturn the results of the presidential election. authoritarians are on the march worldwide,

and they're taking advantage of people's frustrations, centralizing, control, and suppressing dissent. people around the world are not so sure that democracy makes their lives better. now, more than 100 heads of state had been invited to jo biden's virtual summit. but besides speeches, what's it going to be? who's invited to the club? who's left out? what does success even look like? and does washington have the moral authority to lecture folks about democracy? that's what we're talking about today. with ambassador daniel freed, who served as one of america's top diplomats to europe for decades, serving under both republican and democratic presidents. he's a distinguished fellow at the atlantic council, alief lab. it is column this for foreign policy magazine, and she's the founder of ziggy media platform for debate on international affairs. check it out. and david adler, a political economist who's worked on the foreign policy team of senator bernie sanders and is the coordinator of the progressive international ambassador free discrete to have you with a great to have you all with us today. but let me just start with you. explain to

our audience what this summit the summit for democracy is supposed to achieve. what's it about? i think biden is essentially right. democracies need to get their act together. they need to rally because the world's dictators are rallying themselves. okay, you're right. 2021. bad year for democracy, what do we do about that? give up, throw up our hands. biden remembers the 1930. she was alive then, but it's, it's more of a real memory for him that it is for the younger generation of americans. she knows what happens when democracies lack self confident, confidence, and are passive disaster. so i think the summit for democracy is a great idea. ah, but implementing it, yuk, many pitfalls. many traps, many problems. i think the biden ministration can pull it off, but it's not going to be easy, still worth a try. but i guess my question,

you just take a step further is a lot is done under the tent of democracy. and if you look at the united states, for example, where we have the insurrection, you had an attack on the capital, we've had growing inequality in this country, not just recently, but for decades and decades. you've got trials going on right now in this country that touch on race and inequality in division. and some of these trials are going in ways that are making those people feel even more frustrated. what gives the united states the moral position and, and moment to be able to call other democracy and say, hey, let's, let's all talk about, you know, how to keep this right when we're not even getting it right. we're not getting it right. we never have gotten had perfectly. there is a dark under side of american history. ok, racism the legacy of slavery. that's real. but so our, our founding principles, the good ones. and american history is a history of a struggle between the,

the good side and the bad side. so let's assume you're right in everything you say that i think it pretty much our. what do we do about that? give up retreat. say we're unworthy. we were even worse in 1945. when we conquered, when we destroyed naziism, does that, we will worse. we had institutionalized racism, legal racism in the united states. and yet we set out to make a better world, a more democratic world. and we often succeeded, right, jumped to lease, i want to get david adler in this. david, you've written a can article and you said biden wants to convene and international some democracy . he shouldn't. so why shouldn't he, what, what, what is the reason that you think that this is folly? so i want to take your critique about moral authority a step further to say that leave a real crisis of credibility with the u. s. as joe biden would have it taking its

seat at the head of the table discussing democracy. and that's not just because of legacies of institutionalized racism. that's because on the key priorities of this administration of secretary of state as he began in particular like corruption, the u. s is a primary actor. we are the central node, for example, in a network of a legal and cut to credit finance that passes through our financial system on route to financing those autocratic regimes of the master points out or rising around the world. so the real crisis of credibility not just looking at january 6, but also looking at the trade campaign promises joe biden promised to stop offshore drilling and tracking now is leading the largest auction of a territory of u. s. territory to enable off short drilling. so it comes to either the domestic promise or its relationship between the u. s. and his autocrats abroad. it's deeply problematic and i don't think that we are to position to be lecturing other other other governments. there's a chrysler credibility at home is a crisis of the club model abroad. he mentioned

a 100 leaders coming to the table. why those 100? we been here before in the cold war, dividing the world between the free world, and we used to call the slave world of the soviet union. does that cold war logic work? this is something that i hope to debate today, but one thing i could point out is our systematic inability to pick good allies abroad, senators at antony blink. and we recently, and latin america giving a speech for how we can defend democracy in the americas ahead of this summit. where is he doing it? he's doing kito. we're ecuadorian present gear mulatto had just introduced the state of emergency to craft and protesters and distract from the revelation to the pandora papers of his extensive tax evasion, and later in bogota in columbia. praising, lavishing praise on present even do gay, who stands accused of enabling facilitating and supporting massacres of indigenous peasant in social movement liter. so we've got a crisis, credibility abroad clubs, the club model, sorry, critically to home, the club model abroad. and just as importantly, our model of cooperation across the u. s. continues to insist on dominating

multilateral for which could it be avenues for the forcing of democracy. that's of course, the organizational american states which has led those qu, efforts in places like bolivia and earlier in haiti. but as well as w a choke, you know, that we're, we're, we're converting a pandemic that doesn't care about whether you're a democracy, whether you're a communist regime. and yet we continue to insist on protecting our patents against global vaccination efforts. preventing d, w h o from engaging with russian chinese cuban vaccine candidates. these are things that require us to look beyond that issue between freehold and slave world, democratic and non democratic. and so for those reasons, i think it's not helpful framing. and i'm curious to hear from other people on the panel about what we can achieve within those constraints, but i'm remain very pessimistic about his prospects for those reasons. well, elise lab it and, and in a, in a great piece and foreign policy magazine writes that, you know, and i, and i agree with that. one of the assets that the united states had in decades of struggled during the cold war, et cetera, were it were the characteristics of it as a democracy. we can debate how,

how hypocritical elements of that were. but that was part of the package of america's engagement. with the world and you write that, that is what we need to bring back to deal with china elise, that you, you. so i'd love to kind of hear, we've just had kind of to, you know, different perspectives here both quarter, realistically, that the high stakes moment for joe biden. but tell us your views. it's a high stakes moment. and dan, and i debate this all the time about and, and david makes a good at case about whether we should be having this at all, considering america is not leading with its values. yes, joe biden is speaking about, you know, the importance of american values. and these are organizing principles. you know, the famous foreign policy practitioner left gout gal bused to say, former chairman emeritus of the council on foreign relations, used to say, positioning without taking a position. and so these are ground organizing principles. but when you see america,

whether it's abroad, you know, in afghanistan, not defending democracy, there with the withdrawal. look at syria, look at a cuba where there are protesters in the streets. they're not only protesting. i'm freedom, which of they've been doing traditionally for years. but they're all protesting their lack of food at a time where, you know cubans eggs experiencing a huge amount of terry and crisis yet president biden is cracking down and imposing new sanctions even tougher. i think then the president trump was at some point. so here at home you see all the voter rights bills that are being passed across the country. you mentioned some of these trials. america is not a democracy right now. and when you look, you know, you know, dan knows, you know, the dangers of communism, of fascism is experienced it. he's written about it. a lot of americans don't know

about this arcade system. and when we have the shrinking of the middle class here at home, neither party is delivered. and they're saying, well, you know, let's give authoritarianism a shot. and i'm afraid that we're looking towards this new revolutionary system where americans are increasingly saying authoritarianism might not be so bad. so should joe biden be organizing the world and saying yes, we should be talking about democratic principles. yes, but it's supporting freedom fighters. whether it's, you know, abroad or whether it's at home, it's about supporting the people that are fighting for democracy. instead of these organizing principles, democracy is work. it's not just an idea, and i'm afraid we're promoting the idea and doing the hard work, but safe guard. it, but let me ask you a question, a lease in dan and david. i hear that argument a lot and i have seen it a lot. i've seen it in places where i was, you know,

having sort of duelling op eds with an mri slaughter before actions were taken in libya. that it's easy for people to say, support the freedom fighters in that moment of passion. but when it comes to real institution building, when it comes to the cost of helping another nation, build the institutions that it needs to build to deliver something there. and it's sometimes very hard to do it or, or the forces that are released like in a place like libya that are so hard, i find right now america in strategic contraction. so when you sort of look at that moment of saying, hey ra, let's go help, you know, other nations, you know, engage in revolutions and fight for their rights. but at the same time, we are nowhere to be found when it comes to supporting them. tell me where i'm wrong. know you're 100 percent. right? but it's not, it's not a binary choice. i'm one or the other. ok. i think you're 100 percent. right. whether it's in iraq, whether it's in afghanistan, whether it's in libya, as you say, the u. s is really good about, you know, going in and, and, you know,

getting rid of the dictator. but then what happens about that political will to stay there and it helps build the state. and everyone says, oh no, we're not into nation building about nation building. it's about state building and helping countries govern themselves. u. s. has never been good about building those institutions that teach people about those, and it doesn't have to be a jeffersonian democracy. but about those, you know, democratic small di principals that are able to safeguard democracy over the long term. but again, it's not a binary choice. it can't be this potter, it's, it can't be this pie in the sky. you know, idea, it starts at the grassroots level and i think, you know, and i want to see what dance says about the tech aspect. but at the grassroots level, it's not being done. dan. yep. so do we support democracy better as lee says, in which case, i'm all in or do we not support it at all?

because we're flawed. as david suggested, i spent many years of my career working with freedom fighters, democratic activists in eastern europe and the former soviet union. they believe in america, they still do. the yellow russian democracy movement believes that america has stands for something that's good. they're not cynical. now, all of our mistakes, yeah, we'd better own them. but does that mean we give up and simply say that because we are flawed, we will leave the field open to the putin's and the she's and the autocrat. right? and i say we can do better now, david made a suggestion that i think is spot on which is focused on anti corruption, which happens to be one of the 3 pillars of biden summit for democracy. we need to do better, dirty money flows to us. and i know that's going to be a big a big part,

right. and it should need to clean up our act and do it with the europeans and the british and others, and the democracy summit can help. so let's talk about ways we can help. instead of wringing our hands, right, talking about our, you know, our english imperfections. and if we were worse in 1945, right? we had legal segregation in this country. does that mean we shouldn't have supported democracy in europe because we were flawed. david adler, david, yeah, i think we're getting ahead of ourselves. i think, you know, before we can speak about state building institutional construction. those are all, you know, mostly military options. they could speak about some really simple basic institutional issues that are at stake here. i want to be clear with, with dan, that i don't oppose our efforts to support democratic forces around the world. i to my capacity is general coordinator organization has a chance to work with those social movements, those political parties, those trade unions were standing up for their rights around the world. what we're

talking about is putting the focus back on the a sick, hypocritical dimensions of our relationship to the concept of democracy and its expression, the global stage. i gave the example of our financial system being the primary hub for collect to craddick finance around the world. that should be the 1st in that we're focusing on. and my dear friend ben judah has a nice piece out in the atlantic on jo biden's administration. basically you turn on collect dorsey and refusal to take those issues seriously in the 1st years of administration. but let's go one step further. what is democracy? but the respect for the rule of law, domestic and abroad, the u. s. continues to be engage in a systematic violation of international law or sanctions. regime is illegal. we mentioned cuba, but the same thing extends around the world. those are unilateral coercive measures within the world are legal and condemned on the global stage. how can we be

a reasonable manager, let alone promoter tomorrow? if we are sitting at our high chair at the security council, refusing to respect even those basic tenets, so i'm not saying we shouldn't stand up for democracy, right? i'm saying let's sit down and have a really clear and honest conversation about what the u. s. relationships, democracy is at home and abroad, and it's really these start there and then we can towards the commitments of other countries who are also in attendance. i appreciate it perspective, but i got to throughout something here that i'm really responding to, which is, you know, we always have to look at who got invited, who didn't get invited me 109 nations supposedly in this. but those that didn't get invited include thailand, vietnam, turkey, hungary and egypt and iran. and you know, you can make various cases why they didn't come in. i would say, you know, look, i saw the mayor of ist and bull beat back the, the party a very you got to look at whatever democracy means. if you're looking just at leaders and leaders behavior that i'm not sure that we would have been invited to

the south democracies under the trump administration, but we'll get, we'll get beyond that. but you'll be invited to philip invited poland, invited india invited israel and iraq. and, and i think part of the question comes in in this, in this broadside, dan, what did we set the bar to low? did we set the bar into confused a way? i mean, i and i also find it odd along the line that david just shared about ecuador and tony blink. and in a secretary of state, tony blinking, being down there and talk to me. and we were also saying glowing things about turkey recently. and you know it taking in refugees and doing a variety of things and how it was great to stand by our alliance and turkey as a nato member, hungary, as a member of europe, and they both been excluded. so i'm just interested in the hypocrisies that we will all have to talk about during the summer. wherever the administration crews, along with invitations, it would face criticism. in fact,

the issue of invitations could have sunk the whole summit. so i have some sympathy for the administration they aired on the side of inviting watson, including flaw democracies. and you could argue, so are we so has appropriate i think one way to avoid obsessing about which governments are invited is to also invite democracy. activists like the philippines are invited. but how about giving the floor to the journalist who won the nobel prize for journalism? right. as a way of saying, yeah, philippines is invited. look who speaks for the philippines. rushes not invited, but how about inviting somebody from the democratic opposition to speak for russian society? oh, by the way, i have to go back us. so is there any sense that the administration is doing that? i have not heard that there. i think they are. i don't know for sure. at least you know, they'd better be i have there is still, i don't think the agenda is really set. i mean,

the guest list might have got out. i mean, this is in a company we yeah, it's still there trying to figure out what they want to do when i think dan makes it really important point, right. is this just going to be and i think it goes to the whole organizing idea of what we're talking about and whether this should be what kind of conference that should be. should this be a bunch of leaders getting together and making a big declaration or we're all standing by democracy, or should this be trying to find a highlighting people who are fighting for demography and be, as david said, this can't be just a big declaration. dave has to be things that come out of this conference, there have to be deliverables there have to be commitments. come out of this conference to actually fight for democracy. well, i mean, david adler also makes a piece and i really enjoyed your piece in the guardian. david, when you made a point, i thought in your article about this summit becoming a way that institutionally turns a blind eye against horrific behavior. that other lead rodrigo, do their day in the philippines is taking, gets his own people. your,

if i don't want to speak for you, but shares you're with us, your thoughts? well, i think the exclusion principle speaks to i, we don't have to defend this summit. i mean, i think it's a nice idea in principle, but i think that these kinds of flaws during impose, let's say moral questions for its productivity and sense in which to tear taste at the table. but air to one is not, isn't just an arbitrary division. i am with dan, i was empathy. how going to draw a line in the world? right. isn't that mean and you shouldn't be drumline middle the world. the way i see it, for example, is that cop 26 the you and conference on climate change. that's also a summit for democracy was, are also avenues moments when democracies around the world should be coming together and fortifying their principles and their capacity to deliver on behalf the peoples of the world. climate change is an issue of democracy. we know that because we know it can cause instability force migration or these issues that lead the same rise of authoritarian tactics. so my point is to say, you know,

shoving the issue of democratic principles and values into a summit so flawed in its architecture. and so vague in its goals is less important to me than having that value. having read the summit for democracy vision plug into actually existing multi la fora, where we kind of refuse and give up the goat away. thank you. we're, we're in our labs. i'm in and zone on that. yeah, go ahead of one minute. okay, david, as a point, i'd like to see the summit of democracy. really fire up people to work in other institutions on climate change on tech democracy, on fighting corruption. the summit can give impish the people to governments working in different for to advance a things david was talking about. he's got a point, but it's a good idea. i work in i work in government for 40 years. imperfection is inevitable. flaws are inevitable. re question is, are you moving in the right direction?

and i think the biden administration, with the center for democracy is it, can we see we have, we have, we have 32nd, but i want to give you, you made a profound see, you said right now america is really not a democracy. i'd like to know on a scale of one to 10, where we are because i don't know how you communicate a new air of democracy around the world. and until america straightens out to its own house. but where do you think america isn't going? we can look at other one to 10 and say, oh, where a 8 and a half. i think the thing about what is a democracy, right? a democracy is when people are practicing democratic principles and we're not doing that. democracies are more than an election. yes, we had a lot election right. ok, but we need to be practicing it. and when we look at what's happening across the country with voter bills, with all of these clamped down, i think that's where we least. thank you. master daniel freed columnist, leaf lab and in political economists, david our thank you so much for your candor, this a great conversation. thanks for joining us today. thank you. thank you. so what's

the bottom line is america the last place that should be preaching about democracy? a lot has been done in the name of democracy that just hasn't delivered for americans or for folks around the world. the richer getting obscene the richer while many are really struggling. in this country, you can be sidelined easily if you're born into the wrong zip code or skin color. democracy isn't just about the vote. how about protecting minorities and the week? how about equal rights for everyone? biden is right, the dictatorship is not the answer, but it's disingenuous to gather heads of state in a big virtual conference as if there's a secret handshake that fixes these problems. instead of that, american needs to get his own house in order and deliver democracy. that's real, and that brings justice and opportunity for all americans. the u. s. has a lot of work to do and we need to be a lot more honest about that, both at home and abroad. and that's the bottom line.

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make it on the white 9 and the book make it africa direct on al jazeera. ah, hello i marianna magazine, london with a quick look at the headlines now. well, health organization has declared a new karone of ours variance of concern warning of a new mutation which could spread more quickly. variance has been assigned the greek letter, omicron. it was 1st detected in south africa early this month in the area surrounding johanna's bug, but he's now believe to be in almost all the provinces. the u. s. is the latest countries, a band travelers from south africa and neighboring countries. cases of also have