Democracy gone Astray: Monday, September 18, 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.]

Monday, September 18, 2023

How do you solve a problem like Dmitry Medvedev?

MOSCOW — What to do about Dmitry? That’s the question facing Russian President Vladimir Putin as public approval of his government — led by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev — drops to unprecedented lows and public frustration with economic conditions and out-of-touch officials soars.

An opinion poll published this month by the Levada Center, an independent pollster based in Moscow, indicated for the first time that a majority of Russians want to see Medvedev’s government dismissed with immediate effect.

The Russian government has denied that it has sent mercenaries to protect the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, after an opposition leader with backing from the United States declared himself the country’s president.

Russia has thrown its diplomatic weight behind Maduro in recent days, criticising the US for violating Venezuela’s sovereignty by supporting the leadership claim of opposition leader Juan Guaidó.

The story of the world today is the rise of right-wing populism, or so we are told. It’s the story of Donald Trump, of Brexit, of rising nationalism in continental Europe — especially in the east — as well as almost all of the former Soviet Union. But stories can change quickly. Whatever happened to "The End of History"? Or the War on Terror? The Great Recession? Or the Arab Spring? Who knows what the story will be next? Perhaps it’s already being written in Sudan, with echoes of so many other stories folded into it.

Spain, France, Germany and Britain have given embattled Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro an ultimatum, saying the nations would recognise opposition leader Juan Guaido as president unless he calls elections within eight days.

“If within eight days there are no fair, free and transparent elections called in Venezuela, Spain will recognise Juan Guaido as Venezuelan president,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a televised announcement on Saturday.

NATO and Russia are clashing over the country’s introduction of a new medium-range missile, when 29 envoys from security alliance met with Russia in Brussels, calling on the country to destroy the missile before a Wednesday deadline.

If Russia does not comply, the United States will go through with President Donald Trump’s call to start the six-month process to pull out of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) on that deadline.

A relatively new school of thought called “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT), which holds that governments that issue their own currencies do not have to worry about financial constraints on spending, has gained adherents among American progressives.

Newly elected Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has cited MMT in support of her claim that the U.S. government can afford a single-payer health care system.

A Ukrainian court has found the former president Viktor Yanukovych guilty of treason for his efforts to crush the 2014 pro-western demonstrations that eventually toppled his government.

Yanukovych was also charged with asking Vladimir Putin to send Russian troops to invade Ukraine after he had fled the country.

The verdict came almost five years after Yanukovych was overthrown, and could serve as an important symbolic conclusion to the events of 2014. More than 100 people were killed, many by sniper fire, on Kiev’s Maidan Square in clashes between protesters and police.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was the lone House Democrat to vote against a bill to reopen the government on Wednesday, a position she described as “a tough/nuanced call,” The Hill reported.

The short-term measure included funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which Ocasio-Cortez explained in an Instagram story is opposed by many people she represents.

“Most of our votes are pretty straightforward, but today was a tough/nuanced call,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “We didn’t vote with the party because one of the spending bills included ICE funding and our community felt strongly about not funding that.”

Key allies of Venezuela’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro, led by Russia and China, have warned the US not to intervene in support of the opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s attempt to lead the country.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone with Maduro and offered him strong support in a political crisis he said had been “provoked from abroad”, a Kremlin statement said. “Destructive interference from abroad blatantly violates basic norms of international law,” Putin was quoted as saying.

The Kremlin press release did not mention the US by name but matched earlier rhetoric by other senior Russian officials targeted at Washington.

Russia’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, described the US support for Guaidó as a “quasi-coup” and accused the US of hypocrisy, asking rhetorically how Americans would react if the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, declared herself president.

New Zealand academic says Chinese intimidation tactics she has studied are now being used against her

It’s just gone midday at Canterbury University and Professor Anne-Marie Brady is rock-hopping across a crystal clear stream.

The life-long academic takes an overgrown bush track to reach the Okeover community gardens, her eyes scanning the sky for native birds. It’s the height of summer in Christchurch and the garden is filled with rhubarb plants, clumps of chewy spinach and spring onions whose tips have turned white in the sun.

If American-British businessman Bill Browder is Russian President Vladimir Putin's "public enemy no. 1," then Michael McFaul, who served as President Barack Obama's representative to Russia from 2012 to 2014 after helping him craft the "Russia reset" policy as a senior foreign policy adviser, is seemingly a close second. Along with Browder, McFaul was one of several people who Trump offered to hand over to Putin for interrogation at the Helsinki summit last July.

When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan launched a fierce political crackdown in the wake of a failed coup in 2016, Osman Kavala did not expect to become a target.

“I doubt if they’d be interested in me,” Kavala, a former businessman and Turkey’s best-known promoter of social and political reconciliation, told a British visitor in September 2017.

Keith Maxwell, the self-declared “commodore” of the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR), liked to dress up on special occasions in the garish costume of a 18th-century admiral, with a three-cornered hat, brass buttons and a cutlass. Ordinary members of his organisation were expected to show up in crisp naval whites.

Gathered together in upmarket restaurants, or the quiet of the Wemmer Pan naval base in south-central Johannesburg, they had the air of eccentric history buffs. Maxwell talked about the group’s roots in a Napoleonic-era treasure-hunting syndicate, and told outsiders it was still focused on deep-sea exploration.

There are few people who could rightly be considered freedom fighters in the ongoing battle between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the forces of human rights, but American-born British businessman Bill Browder has as legitimate a claim to that title as anyone. Shockingly, Putin seemed to have temporarily convinced President Donald Trump to hand over Browder for interrogation at the Helsinki summit in July.

This article first appeared on Salon.

China's envoy to Canada on Thursday warned Ottawa of possible repercussions if it banned technology firm Huawei Technologies from supplying equipment to Canadian 5G networks, the latest blast in a deepening bilateral dispute.

Canada is currently studying the security implications of 5G networks, but unlike some allies has not announced a ban on Huawei equipment.

"I believe there will be repercussions" if Huawei were to be banned, Ambassador Lu Shaye said through an interpeter at a news conference at the Chinese embassy in Ottawa. He urged Ottawa to make a "wise" decision but did not provide details about what the "repercussions" would be.

Ankara, Turkey – When Venezuela’s industry chief Tareck El Aissami swapped the Caribbean sun for the wintry skies of central Anatolia on Wednesday, he was greeted by bouquet-bearing dignitaries eager to play a role in Turkey’s growing gold trade with the Latin American state.

His arrival in the city of Corum was the latest development in a burgeoning gold market that has raised eyebrows among the international community, which largely views Venezuela as a pariah state.

The group and its origins sound innocuous enough. But the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) — a right-wing group founded 36 years ago — has deepened connections between America’s religious right and Russians even as the latter have been sanctioned by the United States, according to a ThinkProgress investigation.

By networking with Russians, the HSLDA — now America’s largest right-wing homeschooling association — has provided the Kremlin with a new avenue of influence over some of the most conservative organizations in the United States.

The man who popularized the phrase that left-leaning Democrats now use to describe a vision for a radical government spending plan to combat climate change is a self-described centrist “free-market guy” with a New York Times column.

It was Thomas Friedman who in 2007 started calling for a “Green New Deal” to end fossil fuel subsidies, tax carbon dioxide emissions and create lasting incentives for wind and solar energy. At the dawn of the global financial crisis, the “New Deal” concept that Franklin D. Roosevelt coined 76 years earlier to describe the labor reforms and historic spending on infrastructure and armaments that pulled the United States out of the Great Depression proved attractive.

If MPs vote against the Brexit deal, leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn said he would call a motion of no confidence in the government "at the moment we judge it to have the best chance of success."

Delivering a speech on Brexit in Wakefield, in the north of England, the Labour Party leader also said it is "a possibility" that the Article 50 negotiating period would need to be extended.

Vladimir Putin has revealed that he commanded an artillery battalion during the Soviet period, a detail of his shadowy biography that was previously unknown.

Putin made the comment during a visit on Monday to St Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Fortress, where he pulled the lever on a cannon that fires a daily salute at noon over the Neva River.

“I received the rank of lieutenant as an artilleryman, as the commander of a howitzer artillery battalion… 122mm [calibre],” Putin said, according to video footage posted by the Kremlin. He gave no further details.

After the worst year for Saudi Arabia’s image since the 9/11 attacks involved several of its citizens, the kingdom began 2019 with a fresh controversy by asking Netflix to block Saudi users from viewing an episode of “Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj.”

On Jan. 1, The Financial Times confirmed that Netflix had complied ― setting off international condemnation and a wave of renewed attention to a sketch Minhaj released months ago. (He appreciated the publicity.)

Earlier this week, Russian authorities seized Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine who had traveled overseas for a wedding, and charged him with espionage. Whelan, who has extensive contacts with officials at Russian civil and military institutions, and is now detained in a Moscow prison, denies the allegations — and given he has a court-martial for larceny, he would have been unlikely to be hired by any U.S. intelligence agency.

But it is looking increasingly like the Kremlin views Whelan more as a bargaining chip than anything else.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that no one can change the fact that Taiwan is “part of China”, adding that Beijing will not give up the use of military force as an option to ensure “reunification”.

Xi made the comments on Wednesday in a speech marking the 40th anniversary of a policy statement that eventually led to a thaw in relations with the self-ruled island.

“We are firmly against those who conspire behind the ideo of ‘Two China’, or ‘One China-One Taiwan’, or Taiwan Independence,” Xi said in a part of his first major speech addressing the people of what Beijing considers a breakaway province.

Women who are in abusive relationships, or relationships they fear will become abusive, are often told to reach out for help to prevent things from progressing further. Lauren McCluskey, a track athlete at the University of Utah who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend on October 22, 2018, did just that.

She alerted the campus police. She showed them threatening text messages from her ex, told them about his criminal record, which she found out about a month into their relationship.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw a test Wednesday of a new hypersonic glide vehicle, declaring that the weapon is impossible to intercept and will ensure Russia’s security for decades to come.

Speaking to Russia’s top military brass after watching the live feed of the launch of the Avangard vehicle from the Defense Ministry’s control room, Putin said the successful test was a “great success” and an “excellent New Year’s gift to the nation.”

WASHINGTON — A federal judge ordered North Korea to pay more than $500 million on Monday in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died shortly after being released from that country.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington ruled that North Korea should pay damages to Fred and Cindy Warmbier, the parents of the University of Virginia student.

China on Monday lashed out at Canada and the US for demanding the release of detained Canadians and accused Western countries of double standards.

“The Chinese side expressed strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition to the statements made by Canada and the US,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a press briefing.

As single mum Joanne Harrison opens her fridge to reveal its meagre contents, she explains she has been stockpiling food for weeks.

Instead of mince pies or other festive treats, the 43-year-old mum from Leeds has been putting aside basics to feed her family over the next month – packets of pasta, frozen bread, rice.

She is one of thousands of people who are being moved onto the government’s new Universal Credit benefit payment this December. And due to the highly controversial five-week delay in payments, she will be left without any benefits until the new year.

The extent of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election is well-documented and yet still not fully understood. Russian agents were responsible for stealing and releasing emails from the Democratic National Committee. Russia used Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms to spread disinformation and sow discord among the American public. This was done to benefit then-candidate Donald Trump.

A new report commissioned by members of the U.S. Senate intelligence committee expands upon another facet of Russia’s pro-Trump operation: an effort to divert votes away from Hillary Clinton and toward Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

KIEV — Ukraine’s Christmas markets may be in full swing, but the season isn’t feeling particularly festive this year. Our thoughts are with the 24 Ukrainian sailors who were attacked and captured by Russia last month in the Sea of Azov, and the Kremlin’s attempts to destabilize the region.

With a level of contempt and disregard for international law with which the world is sadly all too familiar, Russia has sought to present our captured servicemen as “criminals.” It blocked consular access, a direct violation of international laws, and gave us no information of their welfare for 11 days.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday warned that the threat of nuclear war should not be underestimated, saying it could result in the “collapse of the entire civilization and maybe our planet.”

“The danger of the situation is being downplayed,” Putin told reporters at a press conference when asked about the threat of nuclear war, according to CNBC.

Vladimir Putin has said the UK should not hold a second referendum on Brexit, insisting Theresa May must “fulfil the will of the people”.

Offering public support that the embattled British prime minister could probably do without, Putin said he understood May’s position in “fighting for this Brexit”.

Emergency no-deal Brexit contingency plans must now be implemented across government, cabinet ministers have agreed, including reserving ferry space for supplies and putting 3,500 armed forces personnel on standby to deal with any disruption.

No 10 confirmed on Tuesday that ministers would “ramp up” no-deal planning, and that the departments would be expected to make it their main priority.

Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 political landscape — and presidential election — was a much wider effort than previously understood.

Two new reports released on Monday, prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee by independent researchers, reveal that Moscow’s intelligence officials reached millions of social media users between 2013 and 2017, in part by exploiting existing political and racial divisions in American society. Vox obtained the two reports before their planned release.

This week, an independent review of the Thunder Bay police force found that institutional racism in the force contributed to shortcomings in how it investigates the deaths and disappearances of Indigenous people.

It also recommended that at least nine cases involving the deaths of Indigenous people should be re-investigated.

WASHINGTON — Russian efforts to interfere in American politics were more pervasive on Instagram and other social media platforms than previously known and showed a clear preference for Donald Trump during the last presidential election, according to a pair of new reports prepared for the Senate.

Third-party researchers completed two reports for the Senate Intelligence Committee, which released them on Monday. The documents provide the most complete picture to date of the years-long campaign by the Internet Research Agency — a Kremlin-connected troll farm indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in February — to sow divisions in American society, spread disinformation, and manipulate US voters through social media.

Russia used every major social media platform to try to influence the 2016 US election, a report claims.

New research says YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram and PayPal - as well as Facebook and Twitter - were leveraged to spread propaganda.

The report, released today by the US Senate, exposes the scale of Russian disinformation efforts.

BRUSSELS — So here we are at the supposed Brexit cliff — a political crisis and diplomatic crisis rolled into one — and I have a confession. I’m thoroughly bored by it all.

I suspect I’m not alone.

For those beyond Brussels and London, maybe just starting to tune in, here’s some advice. Let go of any illusions that this drama is about trade protocols, residency rights or the status of the Irish border. The histrionics going on in the United Kingdom aren’t even really about its impending departure from the European Union — or about Prime Minister Theresa May’s tenuous attempts to cling to power.

Jessica Salfia knew the pay wasn’t going to be great when she became a teacher in Martinsburg, West Virginia, but she did have really good health coverage. She felt like she could go to see any doctor she wanted. The copay for an emergency room visit was just $15. She had three kids over the years, and health care was one thing Salfia didn’t feel like she had to worry about.

“The one thing about being a public schoolteacher was you knew that was taken care of,” Salfia, a teacher of 16 years, tells me. “But in the last four to six years, it’s been death by a thousand cuts.”

In the chilly pre-dawn gloom one recent morning, Father Makarios hurried to his chapel, one of dozens of churches and cathedrals across Mount Athos, to perform morning liturgy. A two-hour marathon of biblical recitations and sonorous chanting, it would be just one of many services that day.

After the liturgy, Makarios, a 68-year-old Greek monk who has lived on Athos for 51 years, changed from his white prayer robes into his habitual black attire and doled out spiritual advice to a group of Belarusian businessmen who had made a pilgrimage to see him, over an austere breakfast of coffee and nuts.

Ever since his daughter first learned to use a pen, Joseph Onzik has looked forward to her letters. He reads them from a cell in a state prison in Pennsylvania, where he’s been locked up for about five years, since she was three. “I ask her to write me as much as possible,” he says. It “has advanced from scribble to cursive writing like magic as the time passes by.” Sometimes she calls to let him know what color pen she’ll use for the next one: “At eight years old, it is quite hard for her to keep a secret about the little things in life.”

At least two Israelis have been killed and two injured in a shooting in the occupied West Bank, after Israeli forces killed three Palestinians in separate operations overnight on Wednesday.

Israel‘s army said on Twitter that “a Palestinian opened fire at a bus stop killing 2 Israelis, severely injuring 1 & injuring others”.

Eli Bin, the head of Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency services, confirmed to Israeli Army Radio that two people were killed in the shooting. Their identities were not immediately known.

Admitted Russian spy Maria Butina’s Republican operative boyfriend wrote in private communications that he was involved in setting up a “very private line of communication” between Russia and the Trump campaign using the National Rifle Association as a “conduit.”

Butina, a 30-year-old Russian gun rights activist, worked for years to cultivate relationships within Republican and NRA circles. She was charged with working as an agent of the Russian government earlier this year and on Monday agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges and cooperate with prosecutors.

As the United States looks to strengthen its commercial competitive stance vis a vis China in African markets, policy makers should look to one area of competition that has been absent from the debate —higher education. While the United States is home to most of the world’s best universities and a historical legacy of educating African political and business elite, Beijing has actively wooed the next generation of African leaders by broadening educational opportunities in China.

In the summer of 2008, William Pfeil made a startling discovery: Hundreds of foreign companies that operated in the U.S. weren’t paying U.S. taxes, and his employer, the Internal Revenue Service, had no idea. Under U.S. law, companies that do business in the Gulf of Mexico owe the American government a piece of what they make drilling for oil there or helping those that do. But the vast majority of the foreign companies weren’t paying anything, and taxpaying American companies were upset, arguing that it unfairly allowed the foreign rivals to underbid for contracts.

Don’t look now, but Vladimir Putin has racked up another win in his latest skirmish with the West.

The victory took place Nov. 25 in the Kerch Strait, the narrow strip of water separating the disputed Crimean Peninsula from the Russian mainland to the east. It occurred when the Russian coast guard fired on and seized three Ukrainian naval vessels. As always, the details are in dispute, with the Ukrainians claiming that their boats informed the Russians about their plans to navigate the strait but received no reply and Russia saying the opposite.

In late November, after Russian vessels opened fire and seized three Ukranian ships near the Crimean peninsula, researchers said internet trolls with a history of sharing Russian propaganda targeted at Western audiences shifted their focus to the crisis near Russia’s own borders.

Hamilton68, which tracks profiles it believes are Russian-linked, showed accounts posting a high frequency of tweets about Ukraine and the naval conflict in the Kerch Strait last week. While Hamilton68 and its parent organization, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, have been criticized for a lack of transparency about the accounts they follow, other researchers not affiliated with the group say they’ve also noticed the shift.

Vladimir Putin’s old East German secret police identification card has reportedly been discovered in the Stasi archives.

The card for “Maj Vladimir Putin” was discovered among Soviet-era personnel files in Dresden, where Putin served as a KGB officer in the 1980s. It bore stamps and was validated through 1989, the German newspaper Bild reported, along with a photograph of the identification card.

The Kremlin launched a year-long disinformation campaign to soften up public opinion before its recent seizure of three Ukrainian ships and their crews in the Sea of Azov, the EU’s security commissioner has alleged.

Julian King said Russia had paved the way for its decision to fire on and board two artillery ships and a tug boat through the dissemination of fake news.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed sentencing memos this week for three key players in his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, but there's still one crucial question that remains unanswered.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange keeps popping up around the edges of the Mueller probe, though his role is far from clear.