Democracy gone Astray: Friday, July 27, 2018

Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.

This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, July 27, 2018

“Putin’s Revenge”: It’s the little things that cause our undoing

If not for one person’s failure to type the letters I and L, global politics may look very different right now.

This jaw-slackening revelation opens the second half of Frontline’s two-part documentary “Putin’s Revenge,” debuting on PBS member stations on two consecutive Wednesdays, Oct. 25 and Nov. 1, at 10 p.m. Two letters shifted the momentum of an acrimonious presidential election campaign cycle that seemed to favor Hillary Clinton’s victory toward Donald Trump, reality star.

Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire media mogul and former mayor of New York, has said Brexit is the “single stupidest thing any country has ever done” apart from the election of Donald Trump as US president.

Bloomberg argued that “it is really hard to understand why a country that was doing so well wanted to ruin it” with the Brexit vote, in a series of outspoken remarks made at a technology conference in Boston a fortnight ago.

As cities around the world adapt to the harsh realities of climate change, the divide between the doomed and the saved is growing starker. In New York City, the first stage of a barrier designed to prevent flooding in lower Manhattan will break ground early next year. No such barrier is being seriously proposed for, say, Red Hook, a predominately African-American neighborhood that is equally at risk. In Miami Beach, streets are being elevated and LEED-certified condo towers are rising, but in low-income neighborhoods like Miami Shores, you have to walk through shit-filled water every time a big tide arrives. And in Saudi Arabia, billions of dollars are being spent on desalinization machines that can turn ocean water into fresh drinking water, while in Bangladesh tens of thousands of farmers flee because rising salt water has ruined their wells. It’s often argued that climate change is a problem that impacts everyone on the planet; what’s less obvious is that the solutions to climate change are already deepening the divide between the doomed and the saved. In the coming years, that divide will only grow wider, creating what amounts to a climate apartheid.

Two of Italy’s biggest food companies have been implicated in labour abuses of migrant workers picking tomatoes bought by thousands of British and European consumers every week, according to court documents.

Italian prosecutor Paola Guglielmi has named food giants Mutti and Conserve Italia as benefiting from “conditions of absolute exploitation” in the country’s hugely lucrative tomato industry, as part of an investigation into the death of a seasonal labourer.

Israeli MPs will this week consider two initiatives that critics say are aimed at shutting down one of the country’s most high-profile anti-occupation groups, Breaking the Silence, which records the testimonies of Israeli soldiers operating in Palestinian territories.

They will examine proposals for a committee of inquiry into groups receiving foreign funding, and a provision in the so-called “NGO law” advanced by Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightwing coalition that would allow the state to shut down groups it claims are working to “have [Israeli] soldiers tried under international law”.

This week, a hurricane broadsided Europe—a rare event considering most of the continent is closer to the North Pole than it is to the tropics. That would have been enough to make worldwide news, but the continent was due for much more.

As the storm, named Ophelia, approached, it was the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the eastern Atlantic. Although weather watchers were initially focused most closely on Ireland, where the storm made landfall, its deadliest impact occurred hundreds of miles south in Portugal and Spain.

In the late 19th century, the US government opened the first of 25 off-reservation “American Indian boarding schools.” Over the years, hundreds of thousands of Native American children were bused to the schools as part of a federal effort to inculcate them with Judeo-Christian values and speed their assimilation.

FBI watched, then acted as Russian spy moved closer to Hillary Clinton

As Hillary Clinton was beginning her job as President Obama’s chief diplomat, federal agents observed as multiple arms of Vladimir Putin’s machine unleashed an influence campaign designed to win access to the new secretary of State, her husband Bill Clinton and members of their inner circle, according to interviews and once-sealed FBI records.

Some of the activities FBI agents gathered evidence about in 2009 and 2010 were covert and illegal.

The President of the Czech Republic, Milos Zeman, crudely insulted reporters by showing off a replica AK-47 with the inscription “for journalists” — less than a week after an investigative journalist in Malta was killed by a car bomb.

Zeman brandished the fake assault rifle during a press conference on Friday, as Czechs voted to elect populist billionaire Andrej Babis as prime minister. Zeman said on Saturday that he would name Babis as the country’s prime minister. Critics however are concerned that Babis’ media dominance — he owns two of the country’s leading newspapers and a radio station — will lead to conflicts of interest. In addition to Babis’ success, the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD) made surprising gains in the election, potentially positioning them as the country’s political kingmakers.

“Unfortunately, today anybody talking in support of human rights and against fake encounters [extrajudicial killings] is branded a Maoist supporter. Along with that, my criticism of Hindutva [aggressive majoritarian ideology that stands for a Hindu Theocratic State] politics and the caste system, which is part and parcel of what is considered ‘Hindu dharma,’ makes my critics brand me as a ‘Hindu hater.’ But I consider it my constitutional duty to continue—in my own little way—the struggle of Basavanna and Dr. Ambedkar towards establishing an egalitarian society.” —Gauri Lankesh

Carmelinda Valera and her husband have a small farm perched on a steep hill with a breathtaking view of Caracas, Venezuela. As an early morning fog hugs the farmland, Valera shows me where they grow bananas, coffee, and other subsistence crops.

Venezuela’s two-year-old economic crisis has hit the couple hard. They can’t find cement to finish building another room for their two-bedroom, concrete block house. And they barely make a living from farming. Valera also works as a school janitor.

OTTAWA — Pollution kills more people around the world than war and infectious diseases, says a new report — proof, environmental lobbyists say, of why Canada needs enforceable national air quality standards.

The Lancet medical journal study out Friday suggests at least nine million people died around the globe in 2015 because of pollution. Almost half of those deaths occurred in India and China, nine in 10 were in low and middle-income countries, and those most affected came from marginalized and poor communities, the report found.

So far, the nation’s largest and most productive agriculture regions—the Midwestern Corn Belt—have largely escaped the most cataclysmic events of what has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for climate-related mega-disasters.

That means the price and and availability of most foods have been mostly unaffected. But that’s just dumb luck—these regions are by no means immune, as the Central Valley epic, recently-ended drought, and the Midwest’s 2012 drought and 2008 and 2013 floods show.

SHANGHAI — If all goes as planned, China hopes to be the world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030. If successful, Beijing’s “moonshot” initiative – recently unveiled by the government – has the potential to be a game-changer not just for Chinese society but for global geopolitics as well.

My bet is that China will indeed reach its goal over the next decade, in part because of how far it has already come. While so much of the world today lacks clear direction, China has an edge in its ability to combine strong, top-down government directive with vibrant grassroots-level innovation.

Pollution is killing 50,000 people a year in the UK, a report in the Lancet has found.

The figure constitutes 8% of all deaths and puts the UK in 55th place out of the 188 countries measured – higher than the US and many European countries including Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Denmark.

Bill Clinton sought State’s permission to meet with Russian nuclear official during Obama uranium decision

As he prepared to collect a $500,000 payday in Moscow in 2010, Bill Clinton sought clearance from the State Department to meet with a key board director of the Russian nuclear energy firm Rosatom — which at the time needed the Obama administration’s approval for a controversial uranium deal, government records show.

Arkady Dvorkovich, a top aide to then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and one of the highest-ranking government officials to serve on Rosatom’s board of supervisors, was listed on a May 14, 2010, email as one of 15 Russians the former president wanted to meet during a late June 2010 trip, the documents show.

KASHGAR, China — This is a city where growing a beard can get you reported to the police. So can inviting too many people to your wedding, or naming your child Muhammad or Medina.

Driving or taking a bus to a neighboring town, you’d hit checkpoints where armed police officers might search your phone for banned apps like Facebook or Twitter, and scroll through your text messages to see if you had used any religious language.

The six years since the Libyan people's successful uprising to end Muammar Gaddafi's rule have seen the country divided between rival governments, various armed groups, ethnic militias, and a renegade general.

A once united rebel front has now broken into innumerable armed factions loyal to their home cities, political or religious ideology, or foreign backers.

Sears Canada will pay a final $2.8 million in retention bonuses to 36 head office staff, even though the retailer's restructuring efforts failed and the company is closing its doors.

Promised bonuses were only supposed to be paid in full if the company found a way to survive. However, Sears got court approval on Wednesday to continue paying retention bonuses to key staff such as executives and managers who will now steer the retailer through the wind-down and liquidation process.

China’s communist leader, Xi Jinping, looks to have further strengthened his rule over the world’s second largest economy with the apparent confirmation that a new body of political theory bearing his name will be written into the party’s constitution.

On day two of a week-long political summit in Beijing marking the end of Xi’s first term, state media announced the creation of what it called Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.

Along a major tributary of the Mekong River in northeastern Cambodia sits the newly opened Lower Sesan II Dam hydropower plant. The 400-megawatt dam will produce badly needed electricity for the country, but at the cost of potential major ecological damage and the eviction of some 5,000 families from the area. Such consequences are unlikely to sink the fortunes of Hun Sen, Cambodia’s strongman leader who, for 32 years, has relied on the largesse of foreign governments to fund infrastructure projects: For this latest venture, he has China to thank for footing the more than $800-million bill.

Perhaps no event embodies the unyielding abstruseness and the unforgiving hierarchy of China’s ruling Communist Party as much as its Party Congress, the government’s most important leadership conference. Attended by some twenty-three hundred delegates from across the country, it is held every five years in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People—and when the weeklong meeting finally begins, one can be certain that the crucial politicking has already concluded. What proceeds is a choreographed spectacle bearing fastidiously scripted speeches, pro-forma elections of what has heretofore been determined (a leadership reshuffle in the seven-member Politburo, the highest echelon of power), and, in the case of the 19th Communist Party Congress, which opened today, high-spirited, propagandistic posters reminding the masses that “Life in China Is Good! Everyday Is Like a Holiday!”

A notorious Russian internet “troll factory” spent about $2.3 million during the 2016 election cycle to meddle in US politics, paying the salaries of 90 “US desk” employees who helped wage disinformation campaigns via social media that reached millions of Americans. The operation also contacted US activists directly and offered them thousands of dollars to organize protests on divisive issues, including race relations.

Xi Jinping has heralded the dawn of a “new era” of Chinese politics and power at the start of a historic Communist party congress celebrating the end of his first term in office.

Speaking in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, at the start of the week-long 19th party congress, Xi told delegates that thanks to decades of “tireless struggle” China stood “tall and firm in the east”.

China has entered a "new era" where it should "take centre stage in the world", President Xi Jinping says.

The country's rapid progress under "socialism with Chinese characteristics" shows there is "a new choice for other countries", he told the Communist Party congress.

The closed-door summit determines who rules China and the country's direction for the next term.

The number of hate crimes against Britons of ethnic or religious minorities soared around the time the UK voted to quit the European Union and in the aftermath of recent attacks, according to a government report.

The Home Office said on Tuesday the 29 percent rise in a year marked the biggest annual jump in hate crimes since figures were first recorded in 2011. Between 2015 and 2016, there were 62,518 reported offences. The following year, that number rose to 80,393.

Tom Steyer has his own litmus test for Democrats. The billionaire environmentalist and major donor from California called last week for his party’s lawmakers and candidates to pledge to impeach Donald Trump. A “clear and present danger to the republic,” Trump should be removed from office over his “relationship with Vladimir Putin and Russia,” allegations that Trump used the presidency to “promote his own business interests,” and his “seeming determination to go to war,” Steyer wrote in a letter to Democratic campaign committees and members of Congress, according to The New York Times. He left no ambiguity: “I am asking you today to make public your position on the impeachment of Donald Trump and call for his removal from office.”

As fires spread across Northern California last week, smoke fouled the air of the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Ash fell from the sky like snow, walkers strapped on face masks before heading outside, and school children throughout the region were kept indoors. The fires have since been controlled, but air quality hasn’t yet returned to normal in the area.

It’s no secret that air pollution is dangerous; the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 3 million deaths worldwide are linked to outdoor air pollution every year—nearly double the number of people who die each year from diabetes, and more than double the number who die from road injuries, according to the organization.

From buying targeted ads, organizing rallies, and employing bots to spread false information, we now know that Russian agents have used a wide variety of techniques on Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram, and even Pokémon Go to sow discord during the 2016 election. Google, Facebook, and Twitter will publicly testify before the Senate and House Intelligence Committees this week.

"If I were to describe Islam in three words, there is nothing there besides sex, crime and murder. So the question for you is not whether Rohingya will stay here or the Musulman will leave here…. Now, what’s the question is that everyone is being brought here [The banner in the back reads: Drive Out Rohingya Save India Protest].… Thank Modiji for saving Gujarat in 2002, otherwise we would have been surrounded from all sides. So, the question is only this, that you will have to repeat Gujarat 2002, there is only one solution, there is no other solution…. Are you ready for that thing?…. Look, our ancestors fought for us…. to keep us Hindu…. Can we say the same about us? That we can to do the same for the coming generation, or not?" —Man addressing a crowd at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on Oct. 7, 2017

Democracy gone Astray