What I Learned From Freedom House…

This about Politics, tagged , , , , , was written by for , on March 5, 2013 .4 Comments

My latest for the US-Russia Experts Panel and VoR. In this latest Panel, Vlad Sobell asks us supposed Russia “experts” whether Freedom House’s “alarmist stance” towards Russia is justified. Well, what do YOU think? I don’t think you need to be an expert to answer this; it’s an elementary issue of common sense and face […]

My Article For Komsomolskaya Pravda On Press Freedoms In Russia And The West

This , about Media, tagged , , , , , was written by for , on February 5, 2013 .4 Comments

Here it is in Russian: Вверх-вниз по рейтингу свободы. This translation here is of a longer version at my Russian language blog. A version of it also appears on Voice of Russia: Press freedom – on both sides of the Information Curtain. Thanks to Alexei Pankin (who is a regular at Komsomolskaya) for making it happen – and […]

Translation: Up And Down The Freedom Rating

This about Media, tagged , , , was written by for , on February 5, 2013 .No Comments

In a comment for popular Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, Anatoly Karlin compares media freedoms – or the lack thereof – in Russia and the “free” West. There is a longer version of this article at Da Russophile. Recently the French human rights organization Reporters Without Borders unveiled new press freedom ratings, which showed Russia sinking to […]

Karlin Freedom Index 2012

This about Politics, tagged , , , was written by for on January 24, 2012 .26 Comments

This is the Karlin Freedom Index for 2012, a political classification system I formulated more than a year ago in response to systemic bias on the part of traditional “freedom indices” such as Freedom House and The Economist Democracy Index (hint: they give massive bonus points for neoliberalism and pro-Western foreign policy orientations). The explanation: […]

National Comparisons: Freedom And Security

This about Society, tagged , , , , , , , was written by for , on April 5, 2011 .15 Comments

In the first part of my series comparing Russia, Britain and the US, I am going to look at their levels of social freedoms. While political scientists go on about to what extent a country has “democracy” or “rule of law”, this ignores that these arcane concepts have practically zero relevance to the everyday lives […]

Measuring Democracy I: Introducing the Karlin Freedom Index (KFI)

This about Politics, tagged , , , was written by for on August 29, 2010 .26 Comments

I’ve been meaning to make an in-depth study of the 3 major “freedom indices” – Polity IV (the most objective one), the Economist Democracy Index (fairly arbitrary) & Freedom in the World (a purely ideological project) – for more than 2 years now, but have yet to come round to it. Though it remains on […]

Philosophical Musings #2

This about Philosophy, tagged , , was written by for on January 28, 2010 .No Comments

4. Freedom from fear, the only real freedom. Political scientists try to rank countries based on their levels of “freedom”, frequently arbitrarily defined and applied (Freedom House, Economist Democracy Index, Polity IV, etc). Yet despite the inconsistencies and difficulties with quantifying something as abstract and intangible as freedom across cultural and civilization borders, for all […]