Fear

Fear is never a good reason to make decisions and that is exactly why it's always used as a shield by all kinds of extremists and dictactors everywhere in the world.

This Thursday the british magazine The Economist sent a newsletter with an opening text by the editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes that sums up that very well and it's worth the effort of typing each and every word of it to share it here. Enjoy the reading... and the lesson!

This issue's cover focuses on Vladimir Putin. In Belarus, among scenes that recall the revolts of 1989, people are turning out in their hundreds of thousands after a blatantly rigged election. In the Russian city of Khabarovsk tens of thousands march week after week to protest against the arrest of the local governor and the imposition of Moscow's rules. Mr Putin is rattled. Why else is Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption crusader and his greatest popular rival for the Russian presidency, lying poisoned in a Berlin hospital bed? Regimes that rule by fear, live in fear - the fear that one day the people will no longer tolerate their lies, thieving and brutality. They try to hang on with propaganda, persecution and patronage. But it looks increasingly as if Mr Putin is running out of tricks, and as if Alexander Lukashenko, his troublesome ally in Minsk, is running out of road. That is why, despite the Kremlin's denials, they are falling back on the truncheon and syringe. And it is why, as the protests roll on, they must be wondering how long state violence can keep them in power.