by the recommendation is made by the truth and reconciliation commission. for this former warlord, liberia has become the frontline of a drug war. it cannot afford to lose. he says it's a battle he will fight out of responsibility and killed for his past crimes. and for his country ah, i marlene site and oh, he top stories on al jazeera, south africa, the president has demanded an immediate end to travel bounds, but he's cool, unjustified, and discriminatory against this country. its neighbors, pharaoh rum oppose the address the nation after highly mutated variance of coven 19 was identified by scientists that we are deeply disappointed by the decision of several countries to prohibit travel from a number of southern african countries, including our own following the identification of the army corn variant.

this is a clear and completely unjustified departure from the commitment that many of these countries made at the meeting of the g. 20 countries in rome last month for now from from it miller. in johanna beg sciences here, have done everything they've needed to, to ensure that the world is made aware of exactly what's going on. and also the scientists and exposed to spoken to have said there's no clear indication of where the mutation originated. it doesn't mean just because of african sciences have identified it that it's from south africa. there's great concern around the impact was travel bad will have on the region, especially at a time of year when they should be of thousands of travelers from the rest of the world are coming to the region for holidays. but one of the other issue that they

pointed out, and i think what was, what appears to be the message from the president ramos is that he is not heightened restrictions within the south africa. reese of africa remains at level one. so i think also sending out a defiant message to the rest of the world, say there's no scientific foundation for such a travel ban. okay. says have now been found in more than 10 countries and a number have added travel restrictions. all foreigners the now bod, from entering israel for 2 weeks, morocco has also halted all incoming flights. a mass vaccination drive is underway in the philippines, only 40 percent of the population that has been fully inoculated so far. the government here has also recently tightened its order controls in an effort to limit the spread of the on the chrome variant. also results from honduras and giving left us opposition counted at a lead on to sunday's presidential election. it's the armada castro wins. she

becomes the country's fast female leader. a main rival is the current may at a capital manual wrapper reports. it's been a jovial environment. people very much happy, celebrated and were val. we've already heard from us your motto, counselor herself, who came out and spoke to her supporters stopping short of declaring victory with saying that to day the people of honduras have one and promise a government reconciliation. saying that it's early as tomorrow she wants to meet with the under other candidate to form a government of reconciliation or government that truly serves all of the people of honduras. this election really does have the potential to be a pivotal one. not only because the of the potential for the us scenario where we could see a 1st woman president of honduras, but because of the backdrop under which these general elections are taking place. one of the most, one of the worst migrant crisis in the history of the country,

a poverty rate that's reaching historic levels, it currently sits at somewhere around 75 percent. and regardless of your political background here in honduras, many people are simply happy to see the exit of the controversial president. wonder landlord. amanda is a president whose administration has been marred by allegations of corruption, misuse of public funds and ties to norco trafficking, to, to drug trafficking, to the united states, his own brother, a former member of congress, now serving a life sentence in the united states for drug trafficking, so many people in this country are hungry for change. that to all, so being counted in cag, it's town off to a parliamentary election. nasty selection was disputed and taken lives that led to the others for the previous government. okay. as i headlines, the bottom line is next. oh 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. spent 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, a lease lab. it is column this for foreign policy magazine, and she's the founder of zippy 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 sen, bernie sanders, and is the coordinator of the progressive international ambassador free. just great 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 our 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 democrat, a world. and we often succeeded, right, jumped to elisa when i get david adler in this. david, you've written an article and you said biden wants to convene an international summit. 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, institutionalized racism. that's because on the key priorities of this administration of secretary of state as he been going 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 ambassador points out arising around the world to 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 offshore drilling. so it comes to either the domestic promise or its relationship between the u. s. and an autocrat 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 crisis of credibility at home is a crisis of the club model abroad. you mentioned a 100 leaders coming to the table. why those 100?

we the year before, in the cold war, dividing the world between the free world and what we used to call the slave world of the soviet union. does that cold war logic work? is, is something that i hope to debate today. but one thing i could point out is our systematic inability to pick good allies abroad, secretary at antony blinking, 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 and kito were ecuadorian present gear. melissa had just introduced a state of emergency to cracked and protesters and distract from the revelation in the pandora papers of his extensive tax evasion and later in bogota in columbia. praising, lavishing praise on present yvonne bouquet, who stands accused of enabling facilitating and supporting massacres of indigenous hasn't in social movement liter. so he's got a price of credibly abroad clubs, the club model, sorry, critically at 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 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 can teach, you insist on protecting our patents against global vaccination efforts. preventing d, w show 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 here we just had kind of to, you know, different perspectives here both quarter, realistically, that's a high stakes moment. for joe biden, but tell us your views. it's a high stakes moment, and i'm 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 ammon ameritas 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 theory, a 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, cuba is experiencing a huge amount of terry in 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 archaic 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 not doing hard work, but to be safe, guarded. 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 re 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 a 100 percent. right. whether it's in iraq, whether it's an afghan, as to 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 help 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. us 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 pot if 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. can i get so do we support democracy better as a lease says in which case i'm all in or do we not support it at all because were

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. believe that america has stands for something that's good. they're not cynical. now all of our mistakes. yeah, we 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 buttons and the cheese 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. that 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 ringing our hands, talking about our, you know, our english imperfections, and if we were worse than 945, 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 mostly military options. they get 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 q in my capacity is general coordinator organization has a chance to work with those social movement. those political parties, those trade unions who are 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 in its expression, the global stage. i gave the example of our financial system being the primary hub for klett to craddick finance around the world. that should be the 1st that we're focusing on. and my dear friend ben judah has a nice piece out in the atlantic on jo biden's, ugh, administrations, basically you turn on, clap, darcy and refusal to take those issue seriously in the 1st years of the 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. our sanctions regime is illegal. we, we mentioned q but, but the same, same thing extends around the world. those are, you know, lateral coercive measures which in the eyes the world are illegal and condemned on the global stage. how can we be a reasonable manager, let alone promoter of democracy if we are sitting and our high chair,

the security council, refusing to respect even those basic tennis. 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 an honest conversation about what the u. s. relationship. democracy is at home and abroad. and that's really, really start there. and then we can retorted the commitments of other countries who are also in attendance. i appreciate that perspective i but i got to fill out something here that, that i'm, it really said you guys are responding through, which is, you know, we always have to look at who got invited, who didn't get invited me 100 and i nations us 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 in a look, i saw the mayor of ist and bull, you know, beat back the, the party, a veritas, you can look at whatever democracy means. if you're looking just at a leader or is in the leaders behavior, then i'm not sure that we would have been invited to the sound democracies under the trump administration, but we'll get,

we'll get beyond that. but they invited the philippines and 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 also find it odd, you know, along the line that david just shared about ecuador and tony blink. and in a secretary of state, tony blinking being, being down there and talk to me. and we were also seeing 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 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

with the administration they aired on the side of inviting watson, including flawed 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 it? 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 trying to figure out what they want to do. and 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 and 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. 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. i mean, david adler also makes a piece. i really enjoyed your piece in the guardian, david, but you made a point. i thought in your article about this summit becoming a way that institutionally turns a blind eye against horrific behavior. the other we rodrigo, do, derek day in the philippines is taking his own people years. i don't want to speak

for you, but shares you're with us, your thoughts? well, i think the exclusion principle speaks to 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, durant pose, let's a mortal 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 you 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 last him in and zone on the 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 senate 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 straightened out to its own house. but where do you think america isn't going? we can look at a 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. that's daniel freed column. this elise 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 an 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. ah.

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where beautiful possibilities are offered. ah, ah, i'm not inside in the hall. with the headlines on al jazeera, south africa's president has demanded an immediate end to travel bands that he's co, unjustified, and discriminatory against this country. on its neighbors. several rum opposed to address the nation knobs. a highly mutated veterans of cub 19 was identified by scientists that we are deeply disappointed by the decision of several countries to prohibit trouble from a member of sodom, african countries including our own.