Democracy gone Astray: Thursday, August 02, 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.]

Thursday, August 02, 2018

Kim Jong-un’s Overture Could Drive a Wedge Between South Korea and the U.S.

SEOUL, South Korea — Beyond a New Year’s declaration by North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, that he would move to the mass production of nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles in 2018 lies a canny new strategy to initiate direct talks with South Korea in the hope of driving a wedge into its seven-decade alliance with the United States.

Mr. Kim, perhaps sensing the simmering tension between President Trump and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, called for an urgent dialogue between the two Koreas before the opening of the Winter Olympics in the South next month.

Shortly before 11 a.m. today, the average top-earning CEO in Canada will have already earned — in less than one work day — what the average worker makes in an entire year, says a new study.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report examined the 100 highest-paid CEOs at TSX-listed companies for 2016.

Turns out, those corporate executives had a stellar year. Their average annual compensation hit a record $10.4 million — that's more than 200 times an average worker's salary of $49,738, says the report.

A dozen governments around the world say they've recovered a combined $500 million in unpaid taxes so far thanks to the Panama Papers leak of tax-haven financial records in 2016.

But not a penny of that is destined for Canadian government coffers. The Canada Revenue Agency maintains it will be at least another 2½ years before it will have an idea of how much it might recoup.

When farmer Darvin Bentlage surveyed his southwestern Missouri soybean fields in August, he knew something was amiss in one of them. “I’ve been looking at soybeans for about 60 years, and these didn’t look right,” he says. The plants’ leaves had shriveled upward, taking the shape of little cups: a telltale sign they’d been exposed to dicamba—a potent herbicide that Bentlage does not use. It had wafted onto his farm from his neighbors’ fields.

North and South Korea have agreed to hold military talks to defuse border tension, after their first high-level meeting in two years.

The North will also send a delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympic Games taking place in South Korea in February.

Agreement was also reached to reinstate a military hotline suspended two years ago, the South's government said.

Forget Russian fake news for a moment. Another extremely consequential privacy-breaching, identity-theft hack is undermining our democracy and almost certainly being perpetuated by corporate America.

A pattern of cyber deception is appearing across the federal government in the nooks and crannies of the process where White House directives or Congress’ laws are turned into the rules Americans must abide by—or in the Trump era, are repealed.

When the Chinese action movie “Wolf Warrior II” arrived in theatres, in July, it looked like a standard shoot-’em-up, with a lonesome hero and frequent explosions. Within two weeks, however, “Wolf Warrior II” had become the highest-grossing Chinese movie of all time. Some crowds gave it standing ovations; others sang the national anthem. In October, China selected it as its official entry in the foreign-language category of the Academy Awards.

The hero, Leng Feng, played by the action star Wu Jing (who also directed the film), is a veteran of the “wolf warriors,” special forces of the People’s Liberation Army. In retirement, he works as a guard in a fictional African country, on the frontier of China’s ventures abroad. A rebel army, backed by Western mercenaries, attempts to seize power, and the country is engulfed in civil war. Leng shepherds civilians to the gates of the Chinese Embassy, where the Ambassador wades into the battle and declares, “Stand down! We are Chinese! China and Africa are friends.” The rebels hold their fire, and survivors are spirited to safety aboard a Chinese battleship.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued a grim warning as 2017 drew to a close.

In a somber video address posted to Twitter on New Year’s Eve, he cautioned that the globe was on “red alert” following a year marked by deepening conflicts and “new dangers.”

The congressional office that handles sexual harassment complaints, along with a top Republican senator, have refused to divulge information about taxpayer dollars doled out to settle harassment claims — and pressure is mounting on them to come clean.

Congress' Office of Compliance, which oversees payments to resolve sexual harassment claims and other workplace disputes, has given data on the Senate’s taxpayer-funded settlements to Senate Rules Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). The House has already released the compliance office’s settlement totals for that chamber going back a decade.

On Wednesday, an Israeli military court extended the detention of Ahed Tamimi, a 16-year-old girl who has become the face of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank for many who follow the weekly protests in her village through social media.

The girl was arrested in an overnight raid of her family’s home in the village of Nabi Saleh early Monday.

8.8 million sign up for ObamaCare, nearly matching last year

Democrats declared victory Thursday after the Trump administration announced that nearly 9 million people signed up for health insurance through the federal ObamaCare exchanges.

Last year, 9.2 million people signed up for coverage during an open enrollment period that was twice as long.

Approximately 8.8 million people enrolled during the six-week open enrollment period in the 39 states that use the federal healthcare.gov website, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said.

The video clip is low resolution, blurry. Two soldiers stand with their backs to the cellphone camera in the landscape of a Palestinian village—concrete fences dividing yards with low fruit trees.

Two teenage girls, kefiyyehs around their necks, approach. The one with a mane of light curly hair grabs at one soldier's arm, shouts in Arabic, “Get out of here! C'mon, go! Get out!” She turns to the other soldier and gives him a hard push, then returns to the first, shouting louder.

The government’s decision to return British passports to their “iconic” blue hue has prompted scenes of sheer jubilation among Brexiteers - but it’s not without controversy.

The words “European Union” will be removed from the new documents, due to be issued from September 2019, while the new colour scheme will also include opulent flashes of gold.

On the inside, pages will “be adorned with patriotic background scenes,” The Sun reported with glee.

Andrew Anglin was mad. Triggered, to be precise.

As we reported Tuesday, a short, bald man who looked exactly like the publisher of The Daily Stormer, one of the biggest neo-Nazi websites in the world, was spotted buying protein powder in a grocery store outside Columbus, Ohio, two weeks ago.

This was bad news for Anglin, who is currently embroiled in a federal court case in Montana in which his whereabouts matter a great deal. Anglin is arguing that he exists beyond the reach of federal litigation as a “stateless” person, an unusual legal category that applies to American citizens who live abroad with the intent to remain there indefinitely. In July, Anglin managed to troll CNN into publishing that he lives in Lagos, Nigeria. Amazingly, that’s what he and his lawyers were going with in court.

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny says he has gathered enough nominations to challenge Vladimir Putin in March's presidential election.

His supporters met in 20 cities across the country to secure the signatures.

Mr Navalny is still unlikely to run as election officials ruled him ineligible because of a corruption conviction which he says is politically motivated.

On December 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Russian oligarchs at the Kremlin. Тhe men in attendance had a combined wealth of $213bn, almost as much as the Russian federal budget. So it was no wonder Putin wanted to meet them and assure their loyalty, especially before the presidential elections next year (even if they will be just a formality).

Until recently, such meetings used to happen once a year, but this one was the third in 2017. So why all this enthusiasm for meetings at the Kremlin? For those who have been following closely the dealings of the Russian oligarchs, it is not that difficult to guess.

ObamaCare is showing its resilience after a year where it took a beating but survived.

A surprisingly high number of people signed up under the law in the enrollment period that ended last week: 8.8 million, just short of the 9.2 million from last year.

And that was despite the Trump administration’s attacks on the health-care law, cutbacks on outreach and an enrollment period that was half as long as previous ones.

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced his short-lived resignation in early November under heavy duress from the Saudi Arabian government, according to a New York Times report based on the accounts of Lebanese, Western and regional officials, as well as other figures close to Hariri.

Veteran Middle East watchers immediately suspected that Saudi Arabian pressure was at play when Hariri suddenly resigned on Nov. 4 during a visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Times’ report confirms those suspicions and adds new details about what occurred.

Russian election officials on Monday formally barred Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny from running for president, prompting calls from him for a boycott of next year’s vote.

The central election commission decided unanimously that the anti-corruption crusader is not eligible to run.

KHOGYANI, Afghanistan — When the American military dropped the largest bomb in its arsenal on an Islamic State cave complex here in eastern Afghanistan in April, the generals justified it as part of a robust campaign to destroy the group’s local affiliate by year’s end.

Its force had been reduced to 700 fighters from 3,000, they said, and its area of operation diminished to three districts from 11.

But as the year comes to a close, the Islamic State is far from being vanquished in eastern Afghanistan, even as the group is on the run in its core territory in Iraq and Syria. It has waged brutal attacks that have displaced thousands of families and forced even some Taliban fighters, who had long controlled the mountainous terrain, to seek government protection.

Every American president influences the course of our law and legal institutions through Supreme Court appointments or by pushing legislation and executive orders. But few have had as much impact in one year as the current occupant of the White House, Donald J. Trump.

An intemperate, burgeoning autocrat swept into office by a hypermasculine nativist revival and backed by the most rapacious elements of the corporate oligarchy, Trump has had a hand in shaping all of the year’s biggest legal stories.

Politicians, and others in positions of power, should stop corroding civil discourse and seek to unify society, the former US president Barack Obama said in a rare interview conducted by Prince Harry for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Obama did not mention his successor, Donald Trump, by name, but said social media could lead to facts being discarded and prejudices being reinforced, making public conversation harder. “All of us in leadership have to find ways to recreate a common space on the internet,” he said.

MOSCOW, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Opposition leader Alexei Navalny announced on Wednesday a series of rallies across Russia in January to press home his call for a boycott of next year’s presidential election, a move likely to draw a sharp response from the Kremlin and police.

Navalny unveiled his plan hours after President Vladimir Putin, who polls suggest is a shoo-in for re-election, registered his candidacy at the central election commission ahead of the March 18 vote.

Four Russian hackers have been rotting away in a notorious prison for more than a year—and they are either traitors to their country for telling U.S. intelligence agencies about Russian meddling in last year's U.S. election or just pawns in a bizarre power game by President Vladimir Putin.

Almost nothing about the cases against Sergei Mikhailov, Dmitry Dokuchaev, Ruslan Stoyanov and Georgy Fomchenkov is known, except that all four are being held on charges of treason. Their lawyers won't talk about details of the cases, and even the legal papers haven't been made public. Newsweek spoke to one of the men's lawyers, and he wouldn't even confirm the name of his client, let alone whether he pleaded guilty or not guilty.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has accused the U.S. State Department of trying to interfere in its upcoming election after the U.S. criticized the Kremlin for barring a Putin critic from entering the presidential race.

Alexey Navalny’s candidate registration for the upcoming election was rejected by Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) on Christmas Day. The CEC justified his suspension because of a series of spurious criminal convictions Mr. Navalny has received, but his supporters claim barring him from the election is politically motivated.

At least 40 people have been killed and dozens wounded in a blast in Kabul at a compound comprising a news agency, Shia cultural centre and religious school, the interior ministry has said.

The explosion early on Thursday struck an area close to the Afghan Voice news agency and Tebyan cultural centre, local media reported.

As 2017 draws to a close, the mood among leading pundits on the U.S.-led campaign to dislodge the Islamic State from Iraq and Syria might seem justifiably upbeat, even jubilant. After all, the accomplishments in the campaign’s first three years are many: eliminating key ISIS leaders, clearing the group from its so-called “dual capitals” of Mosul and Raqqa, and reducing the territorial safe havens from which it can plot attacks. It’s with some justification that, on December 9, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over ISIS in Iraq.

It’s hard to write about the Russian Presidential election, not because it is particularly difficult to understand but because the normal language of such things can’t describe it. There are candidates, but their names can appear on the ballot only if the Kremlin allows it. There is a campaign, but candidates are allowed to appear on television only if the Kremlin O.K.s it. There are, usually, debates, but Vladimir Putin, who has been in power in Russia for eighteen years and is running for another six-year term, doesn’t deign to take part in them. There are opinion polls, but their results are adjusted to fit the probable result of the vote. And then there is the vote, but its outcome is preordained. In other words, the event scheduled for March 18, 2018, is not an election, but it is called one.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government has issued a warning to the U.S.: Don’t “meddle” in the country’s upcoming election.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the U.S. this week of “direct interference into the electoral process” after the State Department criticized Russia’s decision to ban opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny from running for president.

Debra Topping has been harvesting wild rice near her home on the Fond du Lac Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota for thirty-eight years. Around late summer, she skims the shallow lakes where it grows, using two lightweight wood batons, called “knockers,” to pull the stalks of grass over the canoe, and swatting the husked tips, the “spikelets,” into the boat. The seeds are protein-rich and nutty in flavor. Topping sometimes cooks them inside a pumpkin, with sweet potatoes and squash—her grandson’s favorite dish. An uncle once told Topping that the family needed 100 pounds of finished wild rice per year for each person. In practice, she says, it’s more like four times that much—enough to share with the community during feasts, ceremonies, and funerals. “Wild rice is why the creator put us where we’re at, as indigenous Anishinaabe people,” she tells The Progressive.

I’m a misogynist. I’m a black man who likes to think of himself as a feminist. I’m a progressive. I’m gay. Hopefully, I’m a relatively decent guy; I certainly mean well. Still, I’m also a misogynist.

How could I not be? I’ve spent my entire life in a society that, by every imaginable measure, devalues and dismisses women. It’s the case for politics: In the nearly 230-year history of the US Senate, we have elected just 50 women to serve; nearly half of that number are in office now. It’s the case for wages: Women still make roughly 80 cents on the dollar that’s paid to men. It’s the case for families: “Single mother” remains a casual, if coded, slur in a great many minds, shorthand for a jezebel who’s damned her offspring by failing to get and keep a man. It’s even the case for our diversions—in sports stadiums and movie theaters and museum galleries and comedy clubs, and on and drearily on it goes.

Breitbart News is covering up its recent promotion of an openly white nationalist and anti-Semitic congressional candidate, Paul Nehlen. Meanwhile, Joel Pollak, the site’s senior editor-a-large and frequent spokesman, is falsely claiming the site hasn’t covered him in “months.”

In reality, Nehlen’s public association with white nationalists dates back more than a year and was contemporaneous with Beitbart’s relentless promotion of his primary challenge to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI).

Al Franken Makes First Public Speech Since Announcing His Resignation

An emotional Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) thanked his supporters and friends during a speech in Minneapolis Thursday night, in what is expected to be one of his final public appearances as a senator.

“Serving the people of Minnesota in the United States Senate has been the honor of my life, and I’m here tonight to say thank you,” Franken told the crowd.

Europe’s newest right-wing government took office on December 18; this time in Austria. The two parties that form the government are the Freedom Party and the People’s Party. During the fall campaign, they vilified refugees, attacked Vienna (Austria’s liberal, big-city capital), and—less loudly—promised major tax cuts for the rich. This won them a combined 57.5 percent of the vote. Austria thus appears to be the newest member in the Central European club of “illiberal democracy,” as Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán proudly calls it. But the Austrian situation is—for those of us who prefer our democracy liberal—both scarier and less scary than that of its neighbors.

LONDON — The biggest news story of the year stars China — but not the story of how Beijing took advantage of Donald Trump’s isolationism to emerge as the world leader on trade and climate. Let’s call that the romance theory of world politics.

The reality is more like a thriller. China started the year following its proven strategy of waiting for its time, moving slowly and relying on long-term forces to tilt the plot in its favor. Then something happened. Maybe Beijing grew impatient, or maybe fate and destiny played their usual tricks. Be that as it may, the most surprising and consequential story of the year was how Chinese power revealed itself in all its breathtaking size for the very first time in centuries, and — more importantly — how the world recoiled in horror.

Democracy gone Astray