Democracy gone Astray: Sunday, September 17, 2023

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.]

Sunday, September 17, 2023

Lawsuit says Israeli firm that helped Saudi Arabia spy on Jamal Khashoggi broke international laws

A lawsuit filed on Sunday in Tel Aviv on behalf of a Saudi Arabian activist living in Canada aims to hold an Israeli software company with government ties accountable for the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The lawsuit claims that by selling its Pegasus software to oppressive governments, NSO Group is breaking international laws. The suit was filed on behalf of Montreal-based activist Omar Abdulaziz, who was in touch with Khashoggi.

“The hacking of my phone played a major role in what happened to Jamal, I am really sorry to say. The guilt is killing me,” said Abdulaziz, whose WhatsApp messages with Khashoggi were hacked.

Today, I shall go to the German embassy in London to sign the necessary forms so that my half-German sons may apply for dual citizenship. My father and one of my brothers have already been granted Maltese passports (my family hails from the tiny Mediterranean island). I am glad that such options are available, as a Brexit of unknowable character approaches, and at a time when the prime minister sees fit to label those of us with funny continental names “queue-jumpers”. It is fair to say that, in the circumstances, we are fortunate.

China is holding 1 million people in secretive indoctrination camps, separated from their families in conditions that have led to suicide attempts and deaths. The reason, it says, is Islam.

International outrage over the fate of those detainees ― Muslim citizens of China, the vast majority of them members of an ethnic minority group called the Uighurs ― has reached an unprecedented level this year, with the United Nations confirming the number of detainees in August. Congress wants sanctions, and European officials are urging independent investigations into the facilities.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday accused police of a "witch hunt" after authorities recommended a new indictment against him.

In a joint statement with the Israel Securities Authority, Israeli police said that sufficient evidence was found to bring bribery charges against Netanyahu and his wife. The Israeli leader allegedly traded regulatory favors to a top telecommunications company in exchange for favorable news coverage.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police on Sunday recommended indicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on bribery charges related to a corruption case involving Israel’s telecom giant, prompting immediate calls for his resignation.

Police say their investigation has established an evidentiary foundation to charge Netanyahu and his wife Sara with accepting bribes, fraud and breach of trust. The case revolves around suspicions that confidants of Netanyahu promoted regulations worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the Bezeq telecom company in exchange for positive coverage of the prime minister on Bezeq’s subsidiary news website, Walla.

Mexico today will inaugurate its first leftist president since the country transitioned to a full democracy in 2000. The outgoing Enrique Peña Nieto, whose 26 percent approval rating took another dive after he awarded Jared Kushner Mexico’s highest honor, will be replaced by the 65-year-old Andrés Manuel López Obrador, better known as AMLO.

AMLO swept to victory during July elections, winning 53 percent of the vote and a majority in Congress with a leftist populist platform. He’s made a series of high-profile promises which have further endeared his populist credentials, including slashing his own salary, selling the presidential plane and pledging to get rid of his presidential bodyguards.

Ukraine has banned Russian men aged between 16 and 60 from entering the country for the duration of martial law after Russia seized three Ukrainian ships and 24 sailors.

The measure was announced on Friday at a security meeting where Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko assured that the move would “prevent the Russian Federation from forming detachments of private armies” in Ukraine “similar to the operations they tried to carry out in 2014.”

In the annals of presidential directives, few were more chilling than a document signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in April 1953. Crafted during the height of the Cold War, Executive Order 10450 declared that alongside Communism, “sexual perversion” by government officials was a threat to national security. The order became the trigger for a massive purge of the federal workforce. In the years that followed, thousands of government employees were investigated and fired for the “crime” of being gay.

Ukrainians in the industrial cities and resort villages along the coast of the Sea of Azov knew a showdown with Russia was coming. The only question was when.

Even before the clash on Sunday in which Russia’s coastguard seized three Ukrainian ships, Moscow had spent months strangling the sea trade into the vulnerable Ukrainian port cities between mainland Russia and Crimea.

US President Donald Trump has cancelled a planned meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin over a naval clash between Ukraine and Russia.

On Sunday Russian border guards fired on three Ukrainian ships and seized their crews off the Crimean Peninsula.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to rebuild the Russian Empire, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.

Speaking to German newspaper Bild in an interview published Thursday, the Ukrainian leader also dismissed as “ridiculous” Putin’s claim that he had provoked the Kerch crisis to improve his popularity ahead of an election.

If a referendum was held today 55 of the 89 most marginal constituencies would support EU membership, up from just 25 which backed Remain in 2016, according to new analysis.

The study by Professor Chris Hanretty from Royal Holloway said Jeremy Corbyn’s path to Downing Street runs through seats that have switched since the Brexit vote.

London will lose up to to €800bn (£700bn) in assets to rival financial hub Frankfurt by March 2019 as banks start to transfer business to the German city before Brexit day.

The lobby group Frankfurt Main Finance released the figure after it was confirmed that 30 banks and financial firms had chosen the city as the site of their new EU headquarters.

Japan is to acquire at least one aircraft carrier for the first time since the second world war, as it attempts to counter Chinese maritime expansion in the Pacific ocean.

The government will upgrade its two existing Izumo-class helicopter carriers so they can transport and launch fighter jets, according to media reports. The plans are expected to be included in new defence guidelines due to be released next month.

Kiev, Ukraine – Ukraine’s foreign ministry has condemned Russia’s plan to deploy a fourth S-400 surface-to-air missile battalion to the annexed Crimean peninsula amid a deepening conflict with Kiev.

Earlier on Wednesday, Russia’s southern military district spokesman Vadim Astafiyev told Interfax news agency that S-400s would soon be deployed to Crimea. The system is expected to be operational by the end of the year, according to Russia’s RIA news agency.

Britain crashing out of the European Union without a deal could trigger a deep and damaging recession with worse consequences for the UK economy than the 2008 financial crisis, the Bank of England has warned.

Raising the stakes as Theresa May battles to win support in parliament for her Brexit deal, the central bank said that failure to reach a deal with Brussels – with no transition period to a new trading relationship – could spark an immediate economic crash.

Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko of provoking the crisis in the Kerch Strait on Sunday to boost his popularity ahead of an election.

The incident was “a provocation organized by the current government … in the lead-up to the presidential election in Ukraine in March next year,” Putin said at a forum in Moscow, according to the TASS news agency.

BERLIN — Chalk another one up for Vlad.

By the time Western officials had figured out what and where the Kerch Strait was, the Russian leader had sewn up his naval operation, taking around two dozen Ukrainian sailors prisoner (shooting and wounding at least three of them), and impounded their vessels. Not bad for a Sunday outing.

Meanwhile, over in the EU cocoon, Germans debated whether the United Nations refugee compact would be legally binding and the French squabbled over the price of gasoline. And the U.S.? Lost somewhere in Trumpland.

The UK will be worse off with whatever Brexit deal Theresa May gets through parliament, new analysis by the government has claimed.

Withdrawing from the EU under a deal similar to the one the prime minister is trying to get through parliament could shrink the economy by up to 3.9% over the next 15 years, would amount to around £100bn-a-year by the 2030s.

Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko has warned of the threat of “full-scale war” with Russia as tensions escalated between the two countries over the detention of Ukrainian navy vessels in the Kerch Strait.

The president told national television on Tuesday: “I don’t want anyone to think this is fun and games. Ukraine is under threat of full-scale war with Russia.”

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have reached their most dangerous moment in years — one that has the potential to ignite a new phase in the deadly conflict.

Here’s what happened: On Sunday, Russian ships fired on three Ukrainian vessels in the Kerch Strait — a critical passage connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov — injuring at least six sailors. Moscow’s crew has since boarded Kiev’s two warships and one tugboat, detaining more than 20 sailors, and even placed a freighter ship length-wise along the only entrance in and out of the strait.

KIEV — Ukraine’s parliament on Monday voted to introduce martial law in the wake of Russia seizing Ukrainian vessels and detaining 24 sailors.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko made a personal appeal to lawmakers to back his plan for martial law, warning of “a highly serious threat of a ground operation against Ukraine” by Moscow.

Russia on Sunday opened fire on two Ukrainian armored artillery vessels and a tugboat off the coast of Crimea, which Russia’s FSB security service claimed had illegally entered its territorial waters. Russian authorities then seized the three naval ships and blocked the Kerch Strait.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Ukraine is to blame for the confrontation in Crimea, as Moscow warned that the conflict could escalate because of Kiev’s decision to declare martial law.

In a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday, Putin said he is “seriously concerned” about the weekend naval standoff off the coast of Crimea between the Ukrainian navy and Russia’s coastguard, which saw the latter seizing three Ukrainian ships and their crew.

The government has been accused of “scaremongering” for exaggerating the scale of NHS fraud committed by migrants, HuffPost UK can reveal.

Official government publications have stated fraud involving Europeans charging the NHS for care amounts to almost £19 million a year by mis-use of the European Health Insurance Card.

Ukraine's parliament is to decide whether to bring in martial law, after Sunday's capture of three of its naval vessels and 23 crew members by Russia.

The three ships were sailing off the coast of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, when they were seized.

Russia opened fire, before its special forces stormed the vessels. Between three and six Ukrainians were injured.

Ukraine said it was a Russian "act of aggression". Moscow said the ships had illegally entered its waters.

On Monday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he was proposing that parliament back a 30-day martial law - half the length of that recommended by Ukraine's security and defence council.

The Ukrainian president has proposed imposing martial law after Russian forces shot at and seized three Ukrainian navy vessels in the Black Sea, injuring six crew members according to Kiev, in a major escalation of tensions between the countries.

The seizure sparked protests by dozens of people outside the Russian embassy in Kiev. Some placed paper boats outside the residence while others threw smoke grenades and set fire to tyres piled up outside.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is likely to become Speaker of the House for the second time when the new Democratic majority is seated in January.

There is one obstacle in Pelosi’s way: A much-publicized bid, mounted by a breakaway group of Democrats seeking to end Pelosi’s reign as leader of the House Democrats, a position she has held since 2003. Their effort, however, met a setback on Tuesday when Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH), who was at one point put forward as this opposition group’s choice to repeal and replace Pelosi, announced she would be backing Pelosi instead.

By a 2-to-1 margin, Democratic voters want Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to be House speaker in the new Congress, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult survey.

Far more Democratic voters (48 percent) want Pelosi to be speaker next year than say she shouldn’t be speaker (22 percent), a result that’s in line with a handful of other polls conducted in the wake of a historic Democratic victory in the midterm elections.

ATHENS — Greece is getting out the credit card and going on a big military spending spree as it faces growing tensions with Turkey.

Despite the deep recession caused by the coronavirus crisis and a rising budget deficit, Athens has decided it’s time to act. Fighter jets, frigates, torpedoes and helicopters are all on Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ shopping list.

On Monday, 16 conservative Democrats took their shot at Nancy Pelosi, who is expected to easily win the speakership when the 116th Congress convenes in January. It’s an odd, futile rebellion, one that underscores the incoherence of a lot of Pelosi’s critics, particularly in right-leaning districts.

One problem, among many: An alternative to Pelosi is never named. Ohio Democrat Marcia Fudge is considering a challenge, but she didn’t even sign the letter. The letter itself fails to mention specific criticisms of Pelosi’s past performance, or of the aims she has set for the next Congress. It does not say what the conservative antagonists, who are decidedly to the right of their fellow Democrats and more likely to vote with President Donald Trump, think a Democratic-controlled House should try to accomplish.

Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) could soon be on Team Pelosi.

The liberal freshman firebrand made a splash during her first day of orientation by joining a protest outside of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office to demand action on climate change.

But over the weekend, Ocasio-Cortez told her nearly 800,000 Instagram followers she will likely back the California Democrat, calling her the most progressive of the possible candidates for Speaker.

A formal endorsement from Ocasio-Cortez would be a boon for Pelosi as she seeks to return to the Speaker’s office and create the perception that the longtime Democratic leader is building momentum for her bid.

Before the narrative of Len Deighton’s bestselling thriller SS-GB begins, there is a “reproduction” of an authentic-looking rubber-stamped document: “Instrument of Surrender – English Text. Of all British armed forces in United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland including all islands.” It is dated 18 February 1941. After ordering the cessation of all hostilities by British forces, it sets down further conditions, including “the British Command to carry out at once, without argument or comment, all further orders that will be issued by the German Command on any subject. Disobedience of orders, or failure to comply with them, will be regarded as a breach of these surrender terms and will be dealt with by the German Command in accordance with the laws and usages of war.”

In Kiev, you can walk up the stairs from the metro onto a square that’s been home to three revolutions in thirty years, and any number of protests large and small. With its memorials, monuments, and a few men dressed up in panda suits, Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) has become synonymous with modern Ukraine.

“For me, it’s Jerusalem,” says Sviatoslav Yurash, an activist who worked as part of an international public relations team for protesters during the 2013-14 revolution that toppled then-president Viktor Yanukovych, a client of Paul Manafort’s. “It’s the place that changed it all for me and for Ukraine.”

One of the big roadblocks on the horizon before Democrats can start making use of their new House majority is the question of whether to make Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Speaker of the House again.

While Pelosi is publicly confident she has the votes to regain the Speaker's gavel, a small band of rebellious House Democrats, including Reps. Seth Moulton (D-MA) and Tim Ryan (D-OH), believe they can block her. Pelosi faces both centrist Democrats in the Problem Solvers Caucus who have a set of demands for her first, and incoming freshman Democrats from conservative districts who pledged not to vote for Pelosi during their campaigns.

Jair Bolsonaro isn’t big on democracy. The newly elected president has dismissed the notion of human rights as a “disservice” to Brazil. He has bemoaned the fact that its police force, one of the deadliest in the world, does not have the right to kill more freely, promising to give it “carte blanche” under his administration. He once proposed using a helicopter to drop pamphlets warning drug dealers to leave poor communities, or be fired upon indiscriminately.

Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer has contradicted Jeremy Corbyn by insisting Brexit can be stopped.

In an interview with Der Spiegel last week, the Labour leader said “we can’t stop” the UK’s departure from the EU and said Labour had to “recognise the reasons why people voted Leave”.

But speaking to Sky News on Monday morning, Starmer said: “Brexit can be stopped.

“But the real question is what are the decisions we are going to face over the next few weeks and months?

Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in a clandestine raid targeting a Hamas commander and air attacks that provided cover for the commandos to escape back into Israel by car.

The Israeli incursion and air attacks drew rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled enclave late on Sunday. A senior Hamas official said the Israeli special forces team infiltrated an area near the southern city of Khan Younis in a civilian vehicle.

Among those reported killed in the attack was Nour Baraka, a prominent commander of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron wanted to turn this weekend’s ceremonies marking the centenary of the end of World War I into a stark warning against the return of nationalism — a phenomenon he describes as a threat to global peace in the 21st century.

Instead, the Armistice commemoration looks disturbingly like a victory parade for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who will bask center-stage among the 60 heads of state and government invited to Paris, looking stronger than his Western rivals despite the annexation of Crimea, destabilization of eastern Ukraine, partition of Georgia, intervention in Syria, cyber warfare and the clumsy skullduggery of his secret agents abroad.

GLENVILLE, W.Va. — Charlotte Greenleaf won’t be voting on Tuesday. Neither will anyone else in her family. Never have, never will, she says.

It’s not that she’s too busy. Greenleaf, 60, is unemployed and trying to make it on disability benefits, plus the pigs and chickens she raises on a small farm near this scruffy town in central West Virginia. And it’s not that she’s satisfied with how things are. Unhappy with President Trump, she quoted her mother: “If you don’t got nothing nice to say, say nothing at all.”

LONDON — The National Crime Agency has launched a criminal investigation into the funding of one of the organizations which campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union.

The Electoral Commission said today it had referred Better for the Country, the organization which ran the Leave.EU referendum campaign, and Leave.EU founder and major UK Independence Party donor Arron Banks, to the National Crime Agency, which has launched a criminal investigation.

The last time the party exaggerated claims of widespread social assistance fraud, it do so in order to justify deep cuts.

Any day now, Ontario Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod will release her promised reform plan for social assistance. Given the new Ford government has already rolled back recent social assistance enhancements and ended the basic income pilot, it seems likely that further cuts will be announced.

The massacre of Jewish worshippers on Saturday by an avowed anti-Semite in Pittsburgh reveals a clear, straight line between Trump’s sustained dog-whistles – against Jews, black people, Muslims, immigrants and members of the LGBTQ community – to the violence carried out by right-wing white nationalists.

Robert Bowers, apprehended after a shooting spree that killed 11 people, explained he wanted “all Jews to die” and described immigrants and asylum-seekers as “invaders” of the United States. Instead of condemning far-right nationalism, Trump reinforced this hysteria, tweeting on Monday that a caravan of asylum-seekers coming from Honduras should be considered as an “invasion” and that the US military “would be waiting” for them. Last week, Trump proudly embraced the “nationalist” term.

China vowed it will never give up an inch of its territory – whether it’s the self-ruled island of Taiwan it claims as its own or in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

China’s Defence Minister Wei Fenghe made the remarks on Thursday at the opening of the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, which China styles as its answer to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in the wealthy city-state of Singapore.

The Trump administration is forcefully pressing its case on a variety of Chinese trade practices that it views as unfair or discriminatory. Successive rounds of punitive tariffs have been implemented, with more potentially to come. These may or may not have their intended effect, and could lead to wider conflict.

Although there has been no shortage of criticism of the tariffs (both in the United States and beyond), even their staunchest critics have frequently acknowledged that many of the United States' grievances are legitimate. In fact, the European Union, Japan, and other trade partners have voiced many of the same concerns for years. There is a growing sense that China is not “playing by the rules” and that its practices of state-led and subsidized economic development need to be addressed one way or the other.

Utah law enforcement officials are struggling to answer questions about their efforts to help a University of Utah student who was murdered by a man she’d reported for harassing her weeks earlier.

Lauren McCluskey was shot and killed by Melvin Rowland on campus Monday night. Rowland killed himself later the same evening. McCluskey first reported Rowland’s harassment to campus police on October 12, lodging a second complaint the following day.

Earlier that week, McCluskey had ended a brief romantic relationship with Rowland, 37, after discovering he’d lied about his age and concealed a criminal history that included convictions for rape and soliciting sex with a minor. Rowland’s felony convictions mean it was illegal for him to purchase or own a gun, but Utah law enforcement figures refused to answer questions about how he’d gotten his weapon at a Tuesday news conference.

Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who has remained holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London for six years, has reportedly decided to take the unusual step of suing his hosts after an unsuccessful attempt to escape to Russia.

Assange’s lawyer, Baltasar Garzon, announced last week that his client had filed a lawsuit against new restrictions the Ecuadorian government has placed on the former hacker. The lawsuit specifically names Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Jose Valencia, and was filed in Quito. Assange is wanted in the U.K. for skipping bail.

On Friday, the US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia unsealed a criminal complaint accusing a Russian national named Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova of conspiring to interfere in the US political system. The document maintains that as a financial officer, Khusyaynova was part of the effort mounted by the Internet Research Agency, a troll farm in St. Petersburg funded by a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, to use Facebook and Twitter accounts to influence politics in the United States. The IRA’s role in Putin’s attack on the 2016 election—a scheme that was part of what’s known as “Project Lakhta”—has already been revealed. But the complaint highlights a less-known fact: that the Russian attack “continues to this day” and is partially aimed at the 2018 midterm campaign. That is, the United States, as it heads toward a crucial election, remains under assault by the Kremlin.

In one heck of a foreign policy speech on Thursday night, Russian President Vladimir Putin trolled the United States, calling it an “empire” and saying “[they] often think they can make some little mistakes … because they’re so powerful. But when the number of these mistakes keeps growing, it reaches a level they cannot sustain.”

He added that this “impunity” is “the result of the monopoly from a unipolar world…luckily this monopoly is disappearing. It’s almost done.”

He wasn’t finished though.

For over six years, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has tried repeatedly to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy in London without having to face any potential legal ramifications for skipping bail in the United Kingdom. With each new reported attempt, one destination seems to be at the top of Assange’s list: Russia.

This week, the Associated Press reported that Ecuadorian legislator Paola Vintimilla published documents detailing Ecuador’s plans to not only make Assange an Ecuadorian citizen, but to then appoint Assange as an Ecuadorian diplomat and assign him to Moscow.

China has issued an ardent defence of its mass internment of Muslim minorities in far west Xinjiang region, with a regional official insisting authorities were preventing “terrorism” through “vocational education” centres.

Sohrat Zakir, governor of Xinjiang, said Beijing was saving Uighur and Kazak Muslims from the lure of religious violence by teaching them job skills and to speak Mandarin, according to a report by the official Xinhua news agency on Tuesday.