Democracy gone Astray: Tuesday, September 26, 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.]

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Stirs Mockery With Question About 'Proven' Trump

Extremist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) really, really doesn’t think Donald Trump should have to debate his 2024 Republican rivals.

Greene over the weekend backed Trump’s vow to skip the Fox News-hosted first debate in Milwaukee on Aug. 23. She asked on X, formerly Twitter: “Why would President Trump have to debate the other candidates?”

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti summed up one of the biggest challenges for Donald Trump’s defense team as the former president faces the possibility of yet another indictment, this time in Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis’ investigation into his attempts to overturn the 2020 election in her state.

Mariotti, appearing on CNN, pointed out “how hard it is to defend a multi-front war in criminal defense.”

Former President Donald Trump, who has been restricted by a federal judge about how he publicly discusses the Jan. 6 conspiracy and obstruction case against him, urged a potential witness in a similar Georgia state case to not testify.

In a post on his social media site Monday, Trump said he had heard Georgia’s former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan was set to testify before a grand jury in Fulton County that is expected to hand down an indictment against Trump soon.

Mark Zuckerberg has a lesson to offer archrival and potential cage-match opponent Elon Musk: Beware of Washington when trying to build an “everything app.”

Lawmakers are warning that Musk could face scrutiny if he pushes ahead with plans to turn X, the social media giant once known as Twitter, into a financial services provider. It’s a key step to achieving Musk’s long-held goal of building a mega-app that serves as a hub for messaging, payments and more.

Taiwan’s vice president Lai Ching-te defied pressure from Beijing to make a transit stop in New York City on Saturday en route to a state visit to Paraguay.

Lai, the leading presidential candidate in Taiwan’s upcoming election, is using the Big Apple layover to meet with members of the Taiwanese American community. On Saturday, China began conducting a three-day military exercise in the East China Sea a few hundred miles from Taiwan — a typical show of force from Beijing to express its displeasure with the island’s foreign political activities — and followed up Lai’s arrival with strong verbal denunciation.

MSNBC anchors Mehdi Hasan and Ayman Mohyeldin on Sunday mocked the latest instance of “faux outrage” from Republicans.

Many in the GOP were incensed with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment Friday of U.S. Attorney David Weiss as special counsel for the investigation into Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden.

Police Face Criticism Over Central Kansas Newspaper Raid In Which Computers, Phones Seized

MARION, Kan. (AP) — A small central Kansas police department is facing a firestorm of criticism after it raided the offices of a local newspaper and the home of its publisher and owner — a move deemed by several press freedom watchdogs as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protection of a free press.

The Marion County Record said in its own published reports that police raided the newspaper’s office on Friday, seizing the newspaper’s computers, phones and file server and the personal cellphones of staff, based on a search warrant. One Record reporter suffered an injury to a finger when Marion Police

Chief Gideon Cody wrested her cell phone out of her hand, according to the report.

Police simultaneously raided the home of Eric Meyer, the newspaper’s publisher and co-owner, seizing computers, his cellphone and the home’s internet router, Meyer said. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother — Record co-owner Joan Meyer, who lived in the home with her son — collapsed and died Saturday, Meyer said, blaming her death on the stress of the raid of her home.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been hitting the summer barbecue circuit with ramped-up rhetoric around debunked claims that the World Economic Forum is attempting to impose its agenda on sovereign governments.

It is, some experts suggest, another sign that some conspiracy theories are moving from the fringes of the internet to mainstream thinking, as people's distrust of government grows.

As tens of thousands of Israelis continue to join weekly protests over the government's highly controversial plans to change the justice system, as many as one in three citizens is thinking of leaving the country, according to a poll.

Professor Chen Hofmann is one of them. Together with his wife and their children, they start the Jewish Sabbath with a meal together every Friday evening. Nowadays they end it at a huge anti-government rally.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump attempted a violent coup to remain in power the last time he was president, so why would he step down at the end of his term if he’s elected a second time, particularly knowing that prison may await him once he leaves office?

To a range of increasingly alarmed authoritarianism scholars and Republican officials and consultants, the answer is simple: He will never leave willingly.

A Russian warship fired warning shots at a cargo ship in the south-western Black Sea on Sunday as it made its way northwards, the first time Russia has fired on merchant shipping beyond Ukraine since exiting a landmark UN-brokered grain deal last month.

In July, Russia halted participation in the Black Sea grain deal that allowed Ukraine to export agricultural produce via the Black Sea. Moscow said that it deemed all ships heading to Ukrainian waters to be potentially carrying weapons.

Democratic lawmakers are calling out Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas after new revelations from ProPublica that he’s taken at least 38 luxury trips paid by wealthy benefactors.

Some say Thomas’ longstanding acceptance of freebies shows the need for ethics reform on the Supreme Court.

Former President Donald Trump went after a reporter for a “wise guy question” after they asked whether he’d take a plea deal if he faces charges in the Georgia election interference case against him.

In comments to a reporter in Iowa, Trump said he’d never “take a plea deal” as state prosecutors reportedly look to present the case to a grand jury on Tuesday.

“We did nothing wrong. We don’t ever take a plea deal. We don’t take plea deals. It’s a wise guy question. You’re a wise guy,” Trump told the reporter as he left the Des Moines International Airport on Saturday.

“We don’t take plea deals because I did nothing wrong. It’s called election interference. You know what that is?” he continued.

Prosecutors investigating the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election results in Georgia have texts and emails that connect members of former President Donald Trump’s legal team to the January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County, according to a CNN exclusive.

Texts and other evidence collected by investigators in the Georgia criminal probe indicate Trump’s lawyers tried to gain access to Coffee County’s voting systems so Trump’s allies could produce evidence for the unfounded theory that the election was stolen, according to CNN’s sources.

Ukrainian forces fired three missiles at the bridge connecting occupied Crimea to Russia, forcing Russian authorities to cover the structure in white smoke to deter further attacks and prompting a furious threat of retaliation.

In the latest example of Kyiv taking the war to Russia, multiple guided S-200 rockets were fired at Kerch Bridge but they were seemingly shot down by local air defences.

A further 20 Ukrainian unmanned drones attacked targets in Crimea, the Ukrainian territory illegally annexed by the Kremlin in 2014, but Russian officials said they had also been successfully neutralised.

Seven people including a 23-day-old baby girl were killed in Russian shelling in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on Sunday, the country’s internal affairs ministry said.

Artillery shelling in the village of Shiroka Balka, on the banks of the Dnipro River, killed a family – a husband, wife, 12-year-old boy and the 23-day-old girl – and another resident.

Two men were killed in the neighbouring village of Stanislav, where a woman was also wounded.

Ukraine is now the most heavily mined country on Earth and its army is suffering from a critical shortage of men and equipment able to clear the frontlines, the country’s defence minister has said, as soldiers spoke of heavy casualties in the engineering brigades.

In an urgent appeal to allies, Oleksii Reznikov told the Guardian his soldiers were unearthing five mines for every square metre in places, laid by Russian troops to try to thwart Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

He said the vast minefields could be traversed, but that it was critically important that allies “expand and expedite” the training already being provided by some nations, including Britain.

In the aftermath of the mutiny by the Wagner private military company (PMC) in Russia, many observers expected that its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin would pay dearly for his actions, perhaps with his life. Instead, the mercenary commander was sent into “exile” in neighbouring Belarus and his fighters continued operations outside Russia and Ukraine. Prigozhin eventually met with Russian President Vladimir Putin personally and then announced that his PMC would focus on its work in Africa.

A group of Nigerian Islamic scholars who met Niger’s coup leader have said the general has agreed to hold direct talks and resolve a standoff with West African leaders.

Sheikh Abdullahi Bala Lau, who led the Nigerian delegation, made the announcement on Sunday, a day after his group held talks with General Abdourahamane Tchiani in the Nigerien capital Niamey.

The meeting took place as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) explores its options to restore civilian rule in Niger, including potential military intervention, following the removal of President Mohamed Bazoum last month – the seventh coup in West and Central Africa in three years.

Israel has rejected the idea of a diplomatic base in Jerusalem for Saudi Arabia’s envoy to the Palestinian Authority (PA), who recently presented his credentials to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s diplomatic adviser Majdi al-Khalidi.

Ambassador Nayef al-Sudairi, the kingdom’s current ambassador to Jordan, was named as non-resident envoy to Palestine and consul general in Jerusalem on Saturday at the Palestinian embassy in Amman.

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told Tel Aviv radio station 103 FM on Sunday that the new ambassador, Nayef al-Sudairi, could meet representatives of the PA but would have no fixed presence.

Islamabad, Pakistan – A Pakistani court has sentenced a Muslim woman to death for committing “blasphemy” by sharing images deemed to be insulting to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad and one of his wives, also considered a holy personage by many Muslims.

The trial court in the northern Pakistani city of Rawalpindi on Wednesday sentenced Aneeqa Ateeq under the country’s strict blasphemy laws, which impose a mandatory death penalty for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

The Taliban have said Afghan women seeking to travel long distances by road should be offered transport only if accompanied by a male relative.

The directive, issued on Sunday, is the latest curb on women's rights since the Islamist group seized power in August.

A majority of secondary schools remain shut for girls, while most women have been banned from working.

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — A leftist millennial who rose to prominence during anti-government protests was elected Chile’s next president Sunday after a bruising campaign against a free-market firebrand likened to Donald Trump.

With more than 90% of polling stations reporting, Gabriel Boric had 56% of the votes, compared to 44% for his opponent, lawmaker José Antonio Kast.

Kast tweeted a photo of himself on the phone with his opponent congratulating him on his “grand triumph” as supporters of Boric gathered in downtown Santiago to celebrate. Outgoing President Sebastian Pinera held a video conference call with Boric to congratulate him.

I am an Afghan female journalist and I have been on the run for more than four months. I have lived in numerous safe houses and the homes of people who’ve offered me refuge. I am constantly moving to avoid being caught, from province to province, city to city.

The Taliban insurgents have been threatening to kill me and my colleagues for two years, for our reports exposing their crimes in our province. But when they seized control of our provincial capital, they started to hunt for those who had spoken out against them. I decided to escape, for my own and my family’s safety.

New commercial satellite photos taken on Monday confirm recent reports that Russia is once again massing troops and military equipment on the border with Ukraine after a major buildup this spring.

The new images taken by Maxar Technologies and shared with POLITICO show a buildup of armored units, tanks and self-propelled artillery along with ground troops massing near the Russian town of Yelnya close to the border of Belarus. The units, which began moving in late September from other areas of Russia where they are normally based, include the elite 1st Guards Tank Army.

Shanghai, China – Amid repeated air incursions close to Taiwan, and reports that China has tested hypersonic weapons, the world is paying closer attention to the modernisation of China’s armed forces and its pursuit of ever more sophisticated weaponry.

Once hailed by the Communist Party as having defeated past adversaries with only “millet plus rifles”, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has now grown into the world’s largest fighting force, with more than two million active personnel.

US President Joe Biden has said the United States would come to Taiwan’s defence if the island were attacked by China, in comments that appeared to be a departure from a longstanding US policy of “strategic ambiguity”.

“Yes,” he responded when asked in a CNN town hall about defending Taiwan, whose government has been under mounting military and political pressure from Beijing, which claims the island as its own. “We have a commitment to that.”

For almost a decade he was a pariah who struggled to get a meeting abroad or even to assert himself on his visitors. Largely alone in his palace, save for trusted aides, Bashar al-Assad presided over a broken state whose few friends demanded a humiliating price for their protection, and weren’t afraid to show it.

During regular trips to Syria, Vladimir Putin arranged meetings at Russian bases, forcing Assad to trail behind him at functions. Iran too readily imposed its will, often dictating military terms, or sidelining the Syrian leader on decisions that shaped the course of his country.

There have been reports of divisions among the Taliban leadership, raising questions about the unity within the group which took over Afghanistan last month.

The public’s doubts about the group’s unity only increased earlier this month, when Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy prime minister, seemed to have disappeared from public view.

Then came reports that he had been killed.

Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has warned of the risk of a “civil war” in Afghanistan if the Taliban is unable to form an inclusive government there.

“If they do not have an inclusive government, and gradually it descends into a civil war, which if they do not include all the factions sooner or later [will happen], that too will impact Pakistan,” Khan told the BBC network during an interview aired on Tuesday.

MOSCOW — Russia’s ruling United Russia party on Sunday secured a landslide win in a vote that has been dubbed the most repressive since Soviet times.

But the long road it took to get there suggests all is not well in the Kremlin’s self-fashioned paradise.

With some 85 percent of ballots counted as of Monday morning, United Russia — which backs Russian President Vladimir Putin — had won 50 percent of the vote, appearing to lose some seats in parliament but paving the way for it to retain its majority.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers set up a ministry for the “propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice” in the building that once housed the Women’s Affairs Ministry, escorting out World Bank staffers on Saturday as part of the forced move.

It was the latest troubling sign that the Taliban are restricting women’s rights as they settle into government, just a month since they overran the capital of Kabul. During their previous rule of Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban had denied girls and women the right to education and barred them from public life.

Supporters of two rival factions reportedly brawled at the presidential palace in the capital Kabul.

The argument appeared to centre on who did the most to secure victory over the US, and how power was divided up in the new cabinet.

The Taliban have officially denied the reports.

The group seized control of Afghanistan last month, and have since declared the country an "Islamic Emirate". Their new interim cabinet is entirely male and made up of senior Taliban figures, some of whom are notorious for attacks on US forces over the past two decades.

A month after seizing Kabul, the Taliban is facing daunting problems as it seeks to convert its lightning military victory into a durable peacetime government.

After four decades of war and the deaths of tens of thousands of people, security has largely improved but Afghanistan’s economy is in ruins despite hundreds of billions of dollars in development spending over the past 20 years.

The Taliban’s violent crackdown on protests against their hardline rule has already led to four documented deaths, according to a UN human rights official who said the group had used live ammunition, whips and batons to break up demonstrations.

Ravina Shamdasani, the UN’s rights spokesperson, told a briefing in Geneva that it had also received reports of house-to-house searches for those who participated in the protests.

The Taliban has accused the United States of violating the peace deal the two signed in 2020, for keeping its new interior minister Sirrajudin Haqqani on the US terror list.

The new minister, who is part of the Haqqani Network, had been accused of attacks on US forces in Afghanistan during the 20 years of war. The US has a $5m bounty for Haqqani. He also remains on a United Nations terror list.

Several other members of the group, including the acting Prime Minister Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, are blacklisted internationally.

André Meneses made a gun sign with his hands to convey what he thought should happen to those who opposed Jair Bolsonaro’s project for Brazil.

“The right thing to do is put them on the wall and fucking … shoot them,” the 60-year-old protester declared on Tuesday morning as thousands of the Brazilian president’s most loyal supporters gathered in the country’s capital to celebrate their leader.

“They are traitors. They are traitors to Brazil,” Meneses said of the supreme court justices and leftist senators he claimed deserved to meet the firing squad for daring to thwart Bolsonaro’s plans.

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, and his allies could be preparing to mount a military coup in Brazil, according to an influential group of former presidents, prime ministers and leading public figures on the left.

An open letter claims rallies that Bolsonaro followers are staging on Tuesday represent a danger to democracy and amount to an insurrection modelled on Donald Trump supporters’ attack on the US Capitol on 6 January.

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least four planes chartered to evacuate several hundred people seeking to escape the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan have been unable to leave the country for days, officials said Sunday, with conflicting accounts emerging about why they flights weren’t able to take off as pressure ramps up on the United States to help those left behind to flee.

An Afghan official at the airport in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif said that the would-be passengers were Afghans, many of whom did not have passports or visas, and thus were unable to leave the country. He said they had left the airport while the situation was sorted out.

Kabul, Afghanistan – Dozens of women took to the streets of the capital on Saturday to demand their right to work, a role in any future government, and a seat at the table in discussions with the Taliban.

The protest began with 50 women marching towards the presidential palace.

However, Razia Barakzai, 26, said the women were stopped near the entrance to the finance ministry, where the Taliban “surrounded” them and kept them from continuing on their march towards the palace entrance.

When Taliban fighters moved into Herat city in western Afghanistan last month, one thing mattered more to some of them than the battle itself. As gunmen faced off around the governor’s office, a group of militants came to Shogofa’s* workplace and ordered all the women home.

“They hadn’t even taken all the city, but they came to our headquarters. The manager called an emergency meeting and they told all the women to leave,” she said.

The Taliban are expected to announce a new government in Afghanistan within hours, as chaos in the country deepened and aid experts warned of imminent economic collapse.

More than two weeks after the Islamist militia seized control, sources told Agence-France Presse that the cabinet could be presented after morning prayers on Friday and Ahmadullah Muttaqi, a Taliban official, said on social media that a ceremony was being prepared at the presidential palace in Kabul.

The Taliban says it is planning an inclusive caretaker government in Afghanistan after the group toppled the Western-backed administration in a stunning sweep earlier this month.

Taliban sources told Al Jazeera that the caretaker government will include leaders from all ethnicities and tribal backgrounds in the country.

Nearly a dozen names are being considered to be part of the new government, sources said.

The duration of the caretaker government is unclear at the moment.

WASHINGTON – The deadly bombing near the Kabul airport on Thursday, which left 170 dead, including 13 U.S. service members, dismantled yet another of former President Donald Trump’s boasts: that he had “eradicated” the ISIS terror group.

In the latter three years of his presidency, Trump repeatedly claimed he had eliminated the threat.

At an April 28, 2018, rally in Michigan, Trump bragged: “We have really wiped out ISIS.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to ask U.S. President Joe Biden to keep American boots on the ground in Afghanistan after August 31’s withdrawal deadline but the Taliban say they won’t accept any extension.

Johnson is set to push the American president for more time for evacuation during an emergency summit of G7 countries on Tuesday, according to briefings to journalists by No. 10 Downing Street. The meeting comes as several thousands of people have gathered around Kabul airport in a desperate attempt to escape Taliban rule.

The Taliban have warned that there will be “consequences” if the United States and its allies extend the presence of troops in Afghanistan beyond next week, as chaos continued to overwhelm Kabul airport, with a deadly gun battle on Monday at one of the airport’s gates.

The comments were made after a firefight between unidentified gunmen and US, German and Afghan guards at the airport left one Afghan guard dead and three wounded, underscoring the fragile security situation around the site and throughout the capital.

Istanbul, Turkey – The pride in Ugur Zengin’s voice is palpable as he stands in front of a full-scale model of Turkey’s fifth-generation stealth fighter jet.

“It’s a very prestigious project and a technical breakout for Turkey that will introduce a lot of new technologies for the whole defence industry,” said Zengin, vice president of the National Combat Aircraft project.

“There will be a very high percentage of local parts in the aircraft.”

Evidence of Taliban killings, detentions and intimidation is emerging across Afghanistan, ominously contradicting the hardline Islamist group’s promise earlier this week not to take revenge against its opponents.

With reports of the Taliban going door to door searching for people who worked with the former Afghan government or western countries, claims have also emerged of Taliban fighters torturing and killing members of an ethnic minority in Afghanistan after overrunning their village last month.

CNN’s Clarissa Ward and her reporting have stood out from the pack amid the chaos in Afghanistan.

Ward, 41, has roamed the streets with her crew for days covering the U.S. withdrawal of troops and the Taliban’s lightning-speed takeover of the country.

Her dispatches from Kabul have shed light on the chaotic nature of the U.S. pullout, the tense mood as the Taliban retakes power and the plight of the scores of Afghan civilians looking for a way out of the country.

Taliban fighters hunting a Deutsche Welle journalist have “shot dead a member of his family and seriously injured another,” the German public broadcaster said in a report on Thursday evening.

The militants had been searching door-to-door to find the journalist, who now lives in Germany. Other relatives were able to flee and are now fugitives from the Taliban.

“The killing of a close relative of one of our editors by the Taliban yesterday is inconceivably tragic, and testifies to the acute danger in which all our employees and their families in Afghanistan find themselves,” DW Director General Peter Limbourg said.