Democracy gone Astray: Friday, August 10, 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, August 10, 2018

China And Pakistan Plan To Get Rich Together. The Price? Human Rights.

My big brother and I got into a shouting match about our country last summer.

We’d been talking about a trip I took a few years ago to Gwadar, a centuries-old fishing community that millions of Pakistanis ― including my brother ― see as a portent of a glamorous, wealthy and once-unimaginable future. Gwadar is located just by the entrance to the Persian Gulf, in the southwest of the exceptionally poor and rarely peaceful Pakistani province of Balochistan. Eventually, it’s supposed to become the crown jewel of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a $62 billion branch of China’s “Belt and Road” plan to expand trade and relationships across Asia and Europe.

I am not a communist. Literally. Though God knows I have been called one for demanding a tea break when working in Florida. I half-pretended to be one when I worked for Marxism Today, the magazine of the Communist party of Great Britain, but I never joined. Which was lucky really, because when the business manager forgot to pay the electricity bills and everyone got sent home, they didn’t get paid as they were in the party, but I did.

The noble and necessary motives that led to WikiLeaks’s creation in 2006 have been undermined by its own creator, Julian Assange, who has devoured his creature and turned it into a hybrid weapon at the service of the enemies of Western democracies, particularly Vladimir Putin’s Russia. There is no other explanation for Assange’s actions in the 2016 US presidential elections, when Donald Trump’s campaign received opportune assistance from the leak of Hillary Clinton emails.

Spain’s conservative People’s party (PP), which was cast out of government at the beginning of June after a string of corruption scandals, has shifted further to the right by choosing an outspokenly traditionalist MP as its new leader.

Pablo Casado, who served as the party’s communications vice-secretary and was also chief of staff to the former prime minister José María Aznar, was elected in a poll of PP members on Saturday.

The UK will not be saved from crashing out of the EU via an extension of the article 50 negotiations unless there is a major realignment in British politics, most likely through a second referendum or general election, senior diplomats and European commission officials have disclosed.

Among those calling for Theresa May to be ready to ask for a prolongation of the UK’s membership beyond 29 March 2019 should a no-deal scenario appear likely are the Commons’ exiting the EU select committee, chaired by Hilary Benn, and the former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.

Israel has for decades been running the occupied territories of Palestine—Gaza and the West Bank—with apartheid tactics. As with black South Africans under apartheid, most Palestinians have been deprived of citizenship in a real, recognized state. Their villages have been isolated by a network of what often amount to Jewish-only highways. They have trouble getting to the hospital through checkpoints. Their territory in the West Bank is patrolled by the Israeli army, and the Israeli state is actively depriving them of their property and giving it to white squatters.

Fossil fuel producers, airlines and electrical utilities outspent environmental groups and the renewable energy industry 10 to 1 on lobbying related to climate change legislation between 2000 and 2016, according to a new analysis released Wednesday.

The research, which will be published Thursday in the journal Climate Change, suggests that, at a time when the majority of Americans understand global warming and support government action to deal with it, industry lobbying still has far greater influence in Washington.

When Carl Campeau's captors forced him to make a proof-of-life video, there was nothing he could do but play along.

And so wrapped in gauze daubed with iodine and lying on his back, Campeau spoke to the camera, claiming his leg had to be amputated after he was injured in a strike on the villa in which he was held south of Damascus.

In reality, his leg was folded underneath him.

Legislation to address climate change has repeatedly died in Congress. But a major new study says the policy deaths were not from natural causes — they were caused by humans, just like climate change itself is.

Climate action has been repeatedly drowned by a devastating surge and flood of money from the fossil fuel industry — nearly $2 billion in lobbying since 2000 alone.

This is according to stunning new analysis in the journal Climatic Change on “The climate lobby” by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle.

European regulators on Wednesday slapped Google with a record-breaking $5 billion fine for violating anti-trust laws and abusing the popularity of its Android mobile Operating System.

According to the European Commission, Google used a number of underhand tactics with Android, which “denied rivals the chance to innovate and compete…[and] denied European consumers the benefits of effective competition in this important sphere.”

Dozens of Syrian civilians approached the fence separating the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria on Tuesday, apparently seeking safe passage to the Golan, but were sent back by an Israeli guard.

Reuters first reported the pleas of civilians stranded near the fence, which was later confirmed by Syrian humanitarian workers in the area of Quneitra.

SKOPJE, Macedonia — Macedonian officials report having uncovered an alleged massive scheme run by Russian-Greek businessmen to incite violence ahead of a referendum that would allow the country to join NATO.

Investigators have gathered evidence that a former Russian politician named Ivan Savvidis, who is now one of the world’s richest men, has distributed more than $350,000 to derail a key referendum later this year.

This is according to Interior Ministry documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News’s reporting partners, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and Investigative Reporting Lab Macedonia.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy for six years, but the country’s new president is ready to evict.

According to The Sunday Express, Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan is “said to be involved in a diplomatic effort” just weeks ahead of President Lenin Moreno’s visit.

HERAT, AFGHANISTAN — Hamid Amiri was only 11 years old when he took his first puff of hashish.

His friends — a mixture of fellow Afghan refugees and young Iranian boys — had offered him a hand-rolled hashish cigarette as they stood around a stream in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, where Amiri’s family had been living as refugees.

Israel just carried out a massive daytime airstrike campaign in Gaza — the largest since the 2014 war — with Hamas firing back with rockets on Saturday.

The Associated Press says there are no reports of casualties so far, but Getty Images has already moved photos of bodies being taken into hospital morgues.

British police believe they’ve uncovered the source of the deadly nerve agent Novichok, which was used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, and also led to the death of a woman who was exposed to the agent in June.

Counter-terrorism officers said on Friday that upon searching the house of poisoning victim Charlie Rowley, they came across a small glass bottle. After sending the bottle to Porton Down, Britain’s military research laboratory, it was confirmed that the substance inside was Novichok.

Alabama’s sheriffs have been getting rich off of prisoners for decades thanks to purportedly ambiguous pre-World War II statutory language that lets them keep “excess” food funds. With that distorted incentive to keep expenditures low, sheriffs have been subjecting prisoners to sustenance that ranges from unappetizing to inadequate to unsafe.

Now, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey is trying to put a stop to that practice with a memo to the state comptroller. “Public funds should be used for public purposes—it’s that simple,” Ivey said.

Just the latest corporation to spark privacy concerns over worker surveillance efforts, Walmart has patented audio technology that would allow the retail giant to eavesdrop on conversations among employees and between clerks and shoppers, to measure employee performance.

According to the patent document filed with the U.S. government, Walmart is calling the invention “listening to the frontend.” The patent reads, in part:

Many different types of sounds result from people in a shopping facility. For example, guests of the shopping facility may talk amongst each other or with employees of the shopping facility. Additionally, guests and employee movements and activities can generate additional sounds. A need exists for ways to capture the sounds resulting from the people in the shopping facility and determine performance of employees based on those sounds.

Former Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein raised millions of dollars in 2016 to pay for a recount after the electoral victory of President Donald Trump.

However, Stein’s fundraising for the recount significantly exceeded what was actually needed to pay for it — and she tried to reassure her donors that their money would still be well spent by promising to give them a say in how it got used.

The 2018 World Cup is winding down with memorable play, but for FIFA itself, this was a preventable own goal.

FIFA’s flagship tournament could have done something to relieve the worst human rights crisis in Russia since the Soviet era, but instead the football organization condoned many human rights violations, undermining its own policies. Russian President Vladimir Putin emerged as the big winner, using the games to sportswash his rule — to legitimize it by hosting a sporting mega-event.

According to a survey conducted by the state-funded Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM), public trust in President Vladimir Putin has dropped significantly. The July 1 poll found that just 37.9 percent of respondents trusted the president on taking decisions on issues of national importance. Right after the March 18 election, that number stood at 53.6 percent.

The semi-official Public Opinion Fund (FOM) registered a similar drop. Their weekly survey looking into voter confidence found that just 49 percent would vote for Putin if elections were held today, down from 68 percent in late March.

It’s no secret that, as the saying goes, “The rent is too damn high.” Across the nation, housing is becoming increasingly expensive for many Americans. But the story of the present-day housing crisis is not just a story of rising rents; it’s also a story of systemic racism. Today’s rising housing prices exacerbate the racial wealth gap in the US by making it more difficult for Black people to accumulate wealth since the 2008 recession, thus further decimating Black wealth.

Welcome to Interviews for Resistance. We’re now more than a year into the Trump administration, and activists have scored some important victories in those months. Yet there is always more to be done, and for many people, the question of where to focus and how to help remains. In this series, we talk with organizers, agitators and educators not only about how to resist but also about how to build a better world. Today’s interview is the 130th in the series. Click here for the most recent interview before this one.

I first met Karim Franceschi in November 2016, in the hills of northeastern Syria, at a remote compound everyone called the Academy. It was a former oil facility that had been turned into a training camp for the volunteers from the U.S. and Europe who were coming to battle the Islamic State with the Kurds. A lot of the fighters were soldier-of-fortune types, veterans of the French Foreign Legion or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but at least half were militant leftists like Franceschi, an avowed communist who wore a Mao pin on the lapel of his camouflage uniform. He had been one of the first to arrive, in October 2014, and by the time we met, he had seen more combat than any other Westerner around.

Gary Lineker has topped the list of the BBC’s highest earners, after the corporation published its latest salary report.

The corporation has released the pay of those earning over £150,000, and despite steps to close the gender pay gap that last year’s report revealed, the majority of top earners were still men.

VANCOUVER — Former RCMP officers who suffered sexual harassment and bullying on the job are grieving the suicide of an ex-Mountie who advocated for change within the force they say ruined so many lives.

Catherine Galliford, who was one of the first Mounties to speak out about her experiences at the hands of fellow officers, said she was devastated to learn that Krista Carle, with whom she graduated from Depot division in Regina, had taken her own life.

During a private meeting shortly before the November, 2016, election, Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, floated to a longtime American interlocutor what sounded, at the time, like an unlikely grand bargain. The Emirati leader told the American that Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, might be interested in resolving the conflict in Syria in exchange for the lifting of sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Current and former U.S. officials said that bin Zayed, known as M.B.Z., was not the only leader in the region who favored rapprochement between the former Cold War adversaries. While America’s closest allies in Europe viewed with a sense of dread Trump’s interest in partnering with Putin, three countries that enjoyed unparallelled influence with the incoming Administration—Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E.—privately embraced the goal. Officials from the three countries have repeatedly encouraged their American counterparts to consider ending the Ukraine-related sanctions in return for Putin’s help in removing Iranian forces from Syria.

A 44-year-old British woman has died after being exposed to the Novichok nerve agent in western England just a few miles from where Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were struck down four months ago.

Police had been working to discover how Dawn Sturgess and a 45-year-old man had come across an item contaminated with Novichok, which was developed by the Soviet military during n the Cold War.

BERLIN — What’s in a name?

Quite a lot if you’re a German bureaucrat.

As Angela Merkel and her interior minister, Horst Seehofer, traded rhetorical blows over the past two weeks in their clash over refugee policy, another war of words was raging behind the scenes among the faceless bureaucrats whose job it is to implement and name whatever policy emerges.

Sometimes the most vicious fights occur over the smallest differences. Brutal battles have pitted Catholics that kneel in prayer against Protestant sects that stood before the same God. There’s a (possibly apocryphal) story from the US House of Representatives about a senior politician explaining that internal conflict between Congressional chambers was more important than fights between Republicans and Democrats. “Republicans aren’t the enemy,” the Democratic old timer says in one version of the story. “Republicans are the opposition. The Senate is the enemy.”

The war in Syria, now in its eighth year, has been punctuated by a series of grisly massacres — so many that it has become nearly impossible to keep track. But the massacre of August 21, 2013, the day that Bashar al-Assad’s regime unleashed sarin gas on the suburbs of Damascus, is one that will not easily be forgotten. For those following the geopolitics, it is the day that the Syrian dictator crossed President Barack Obama’s infamous “red line.” For the families of the upward of 1,000 people who died a bloodless but painful death, it was a day of darkness and mourning. For Kassem Eid, it was the day he died and was born anew.

In his new book, “My Country: A Syrian Memoir,” Eid, a Palestinian-Syrian activist from the Damascus suburb of Moadamiya, describes waking up that August morning. “My eyes were burning, my head was throbbing, and my throat was rasping for air. I was suffocating,” he writes, painting a scene of an experience that is too often debated in the abstract. “Suddenly my windpipe opened again. The air ripped through my throat and pierced my lungs. Invisible needles stabbed my eyes. A searing pain clawed at my stomach.”

On July 11, the upper house of the Irish parliament, the Seanad, will vote on a landmark bill that, if passed, would ban the purchase of goods and services from illegal Israeli settlements. The "Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018" was put forward by Irish independent Senator Frances Black and co-signed by Senators Alice-Mary Higgins, Lynn Ruane, Colette Kelleher, John G Dolan, Grace O'Sullivan and David Norrison on January 24 this year.

Democracy gone Astray