For too many people in too many countries, democracy isn’t working. Simon Tisdal. The Guardian.

Britain, as elsewhere, a general election is the primary means of democratic renewal. But what if elections do not, or cannot, bring about genuine change? What if they are secretly manipulated by state or foreign “influencers”? What if polls are fixed in advance, providing an illusion of democratic choice – or their results are rejected? (...)

Age of Uncertainty. Christine Smallwood. The New Yorker

On a Sunday night in June, the twenty-nine-year-old astrologer Aliza Kelly was preparing to broadcast an Astrology 101 live stream from her apartment, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. A glittering SpectroLED light panel made the living room feel like a tiny movie set. (…)

Spain’s Respons to Protest is a Dangerous Step Towards Authoritarianism. Tiago Miller. Open Democracy

The jailing on Monday, October 14, of nine Catalan pro-independence leaders for a total of 100 years sparked six consecutive days of mass demonstrations, road blocks and riots, transforming the region into the epicentre of a debate on political and civil rights. (…)

What Would Take to Unify Korea? Melissa Chan. The Atlantic

No one was really in charge the night of November 9, 1989. Thousands of Berliners had converged along the walls slicing through the center of the city, crowds with their own life force, lifting people through unmanned border checkpoints, to be greeted by cheers and street parties on the other side. (…)

A Heritage of Evil. Michael Gorra. The New York Review of Books

The small Bavarian city of Landshut sits on the Isar River about an hour northeast of Munich. It’s an absurdly pretty place, with the blue and pink buildings on its main street so pristine that it looks like a postwar reconstruction. But it’s not: Landshut wasn’t big enough to be a target of the Allies’ strategic bombing, and it lay out of the way of any advancing army.(…)