Democracy gone Astray: Sunday, October 01, 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, October 01, 2023

Russia accused of intimidating US consulate staff with Ukraine war spying charges

The United States has accused Moscow of attempting to intimidate and harass US employees, after Russian state media reported that a former US consulate worker had been charged with collecting information on the war in Ukraine and other issues for Washington.

The FSB security service has accused Robert Shonov, a Russian national, of relaying to US embassy staffers in Moscow information on how Russia’s conscription campaign was affecting political discontent ahead of the 2024 presidential election in Russia, according to Russian state news agency Tass.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he will not attend the G20 Summit in Delhi next month.

India is hosting this year's summit, which will be held in the capital Delhi from 9-10 September.

Mr Putin rang Mr Modi and told him that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would attend the summit on his behalf.

There was a time when clear blue water separated Europe’s mainstream centre-right from the Eurosceptic populists and xenophobes of the hard right. A Christian Democrat such as Helmut Kohl or Angela Merkel would have had nothing in common with – and nothing to do with – a nativist such as Marine Le Pen or Geert Wilders.

No longer. In the run-up to the 2024 European Parliament elections, once-sharp lines between pro-European conservative parties and the nationalist far right are blurring as both seek to tap into public anger or anxiety over migration, the cost of living, the green transition and gender diversity.

Dmitry Utkin, a shadowy figure whose call sign “Wagner” allegedly inspired the Russian private mercenary group’s name, died alongside Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash on Wednesday.

Utkin, who served in the Russian military intelligence, is often cited as the founder of Wagner Group, but many analysts now say that rumour was simply a smokescreen for Prigozhin, who only recently acknowledged his leading role in the armed group.

So, who really was the 53-year-old veteran on board the doomed private jet that fell from the sky between Moscow and St Petersburg?

Ukraine has confirmed it has captured a key village on the southern Zaporizhzhia front, the latest step in a gradual advance aimed at splitting the Russian lines that defend the overland route to Crimea.

Hanna Maliar, a deputy defence minister, said on Monday morning that the village of Robotyne, south of Orikhiv, had been liberated, bringing Ukraine into contact with Russia’s main defence line to the south covering routes to the Sea of Azov.

The first big showdown for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in her case against Donald Trump and 18 of his allies will take place on unfamiliar turf: a federal courtroom.

Officially, the Monday hearing in Atlanta will focus on a bid by co-defendant Mark Meadows to move the case out of Georgia state court.

But the session will also be a post-indictment courtroom debut for Willis’ prosecution team and a chance for attorneys in both camps to air their strongest initial arguments about the case, which was unveiled just two weeks ago and alleges a sweeping conspiracy to subvert the 2020 presidential election in Georgia and other states.

POTSDAM, N.Y. — Elise Stefanik is betting big on 2024.

The leading House Republican says she convinced her party to flood key swing districts in New York with $100 million in campaign cash. She joined Speaker Kevin McCarthy in the Hamptons for a previously unreported fundraiser with deep-pocketed donors and lawmakers. And she shared a sprawling digital database of contributors with the state GOP.

Pope Francis has come under fire after he encouraged Russian youths not to give up their “legacy” as heirs of a “great, enlightened Russian empire.”

“Never give up this legacy, you are the heirs of the great Mother Russia, go forward with it,” Pope Francis told young Russians gathered for the All-Russian Meeting of Catholic Youth in St. Petersburg on Friday.

During the speech, a clip of which was posted online, the pope also invoked former Russian emperors Peter I and Catherine II, two rulers who played key roles in expanding Russia’s conquests in Europe, and who are known as symbols of Russian imperialism.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was booed on Sunday at a vigil for the victims of Saturday’s racist attack at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville.

Three people were killed in the shooting.

Footage from several angles shows the governor ― who is also running for president ― getting jeered by the crowd.

Jacksonville City Councilwoman Ju’Coby Pittman asked the crowd to settle down and put political parties aside.

The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has made a surprise visit to Xinjiang, urging officials in the region to conserve “hard won social stability” and deepen efforts in controlling “illegal religious activities”. It was only his second visit since launching an extreme crackdown on the area’s Uyghur and Turkic Muslim population almost a decade ago.

Xi arrived in the city of Urumqi on Saturday, according to Chinese state media, where he heard a government work report and made a speech to Communist party and government officials. During his visit, Xi urged officials to “more deeply promote the Sinicisation of Islam and effectively control illegal religious activities”.

Donald Trump’s legal spokesperson has predicted that forthcoming early trial dates in the former president’s four criminal cases will not hold, and that his multiple cases could clash with the final stages of the 2024 presidential election campaign and voting.

Alina Habba told the Fox News Sunday show that prosecutors’ plans for fast turnarounds in Trump’s two federal criminal cases and the state indictments in New York and Georgia amounted to “unrealistic theatrics”. She said that each of the trials would last from four to six weeks, raising the threat of overlapping schedules.

Vessels from the Russian Navy returned from more than three weeks of joint-patrolling the Pacific Ocean with Chinese warships – manoeuvres that came close to the US West Coast.

Warships of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, together with a detachment of Chinese navy ships, travelled more than 7,000 nautical miles (13,000km) through the Sea of Japan, the Sea of Okhotsk, the Bering Sea, and the Pacific Ocean, Interfax news agency reported on Sunday.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has gone from being a fringe, Palestinian-hating, religious far-right provocateur to holding a key position in the Israeli government.

His most recent outrage-inciting comments came last week when he admitted that his right to move around unimpeded is superior to the freedom of movement for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy suggested he could pick Elon Musk as a potential adviser in the White House if he won the 2024 election.

“I’ve enjoyed getting to know better Elon Musk recently, I expect him to be an interesting adviser of mine,” he said during an Iowa campaign event Friday, according to NBC News.

The biotech entrepreneur has previously praised Musk’s takeover of X — formerly known as Twitter — which involved laying off a substantial number of employees, as emblematic of his approach to slimming the federal bureaucracy.

The form of the attacks has varied, from underwear daubed with the nerve agent novichok and polonium-laced tea to more straightforward assassinations by bullet, but throughout Vladimir Putin’s 23 -year rule, Kremlin critics, journalists and defected spies have met with similarly ruthless treatment for opposing the Russian president.

The fatal crash of a private jet carrying the Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin two months after he spearheaded a mutiny against Russia’s top army brass two months ago appeared to have added a new method to the Kremlin’s extensive assassination menu.

Social media channels associated with the Russian state have launched a major effort to exploit last month’s military coup in Niger, seeking to reinforce Moscow’s influence in the country and possibly open opportunities for intervention.

Mohamed Bazoum, the pro-western elected president, was ousted by senior army officers on 26 July and is being held prisoner in his official residence in Niamey. African leaders have threatened military action to oust the new regime but advocates of intervention have so far been unable to rally sufficient support.

On August 23, the news of Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death in a private plane crash north of Moscow sent shockwaves across the world. Coming just two months after he led an audacious but short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military leadership, suspicions swirled that his sudden demise was no accident.

Earlier today, the Kremlin dismissed rumours that it ordered the assassination of Prigozhin as an “absolute lie”. Yet the timing and circumstances of the crash strongly suggest that it was an act of revenge by President Vladimir Putin against the man who nearly caused him to lose control of the country he has been leading with an iron fist for decades. By dramatically taking out his wayward mercenary commander, the Russian leader sent a clear message to all his allies and subordinates: No dissent against him and his handling of the war in Ukraine will go unpunished, no matter how powerful or well-connected the dissenter.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, just left Mali where he filmed a video pledging to make “Africa even more free” before he perished in a plane crash in his home country.

His death has sparked concerns for some client governments in Africa who rely on his unique services.

Patronage of Prigozhin’s private military force has been on the rise in recent years since some African governments started turning towards Russia as an alternative international partner in their fight against rising insecurity from various armed groups.

President Faustin-Archange Touadéra of the Central Africa Republic (CAR) was the first to turn to the feared militia in 2018, but the shifting sands of democratic governments that have seen a rise in military takeovers in the Sahel region opened the door widely for Wagner.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House GOP leaders gathered earlier this summer to discuss a jarring problem with their 2024 campaign strategy: They lacked strong recruits in too many critical districts.

The field was so sparse, in fact, that nearly everyone on the leadership team committed to help close the gap, according to five people familiar with the strategy who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) on Saturday hit back at Vivek Ramaswamy for labeling her part of “the modern KKK,” calling the Republican presidential candidate’s comment “backwards and harmful.”

“We typically don’t engage in these bad-faith attacks but yesterday a line was crossed. A GOP candidate referred to Ayanna as ‘a modern grand wizard of the KKK’ because she speaks out against racial injustice,” Pressley’s team said in a fundraising pitch. “This is backwards and harmful, but that is the point.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for the hardline approach to dealing with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang to continue, despite international criticisms.

Delivering a major speech on Saturday in Urumqi, the region’s capital city, Xi stressed that “social stability” remained the top priority there, as he highlighted the need for counterterrorism measures and further “Sinocizing” of Islam, the predominant religion for the Uyghurs who make up the majority of the indigenous population in the area.

In a 2018 documentary, Vladimir Putin answers instantly when asked if there is anything he cannot forgive. “Betrayal,” he says with no hesitation.

Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a probable assassination last week on board his Embraer private jet, held a similar belief. One of his fighters’ tactics to punish deserters was to tape their heads to a block of concrete and then bludgeon them to death with a sledgehammer. The hammer became their symbol.

Fox News host Jesse Watters on Friday admired Donald Trump for looking “good” and “hard” in wild comments about the former president’s recent mug shot.

The image was released Thursday after Trump turned himself in to Georgia’s Fulton County Jail on charges stemming from efforts to alter the state’s 2020 presidential election results.

Florida Governor Ron Desantis said on Wednesday night that he would send the military into Mexico to fight drug cartels on “day one” of his presidency if he wins the 2024 presidential election.

At the Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee, DeSantis was asked if he would support sending in US special forces to take out fentanyl labs and other drug cartel operations. “Yes, and I will do it on day one,” he replied.

“We have to reestablish the rule of law and we have to defend our people. The president of the United States has got to use all available powers as commander in chief to protect our country,” DeSantis said.

Fox News anchor and co-host of the first Republican primary debate Martha MacCallum defended using the conservative anthem “Rich Men North of Richmond” as a talking point after the songwriter criticized GOP presidential candidates Friday.

“The reason we asked 8 GOP candidates, after playing ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ and pointing out that DC is just 100 miles N of Richmond was to say, are you on the stage part of the problem that he sings about? or part of the solution?” MacCallum wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “He sings of people who are deeply frustrated and don’t want anyone trying to control them. It would be a good way to start a Dem or GOP debate, to spark an important conversation.”

Donald Trump on Friday bashed Fox News and the GOP primary debate that he refused to attend, returning to one of his favorite themes: ratings.

Two days after the first GOP debate — punctuated by Trump’s arrest in Fulton County, Georgia — the former president wrote on social media that the Republican presidential candidates were “second tier” and that the debate’s ratings were low, while boasting about millions of views of his pre-taped interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which aired the same night.

A little over a week after a prosecutor in Georgia indicted former President Donald Trump for trying to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 presidential election, Republicans said they will use a new law to remove her from office.

In May, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed the law that created a new commission of political appointees with the power to remove and discipline elected prosecutors over decisions or policies not to prosecute certain offenses. The law seeks to limit or restrict reform-minded prosecutors. In the case of Fulton County — which includes Atlanta — though, District Attorney Fani Willis is not even known as much of a reformer. Instead, Republican lawmakers set their sights on Willis for another reason: prosecuting the wrong person.

Harvard University Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe argued that the Constitution “couldn’t be clearer” on why Donald Trump is “disqualified” from becoming president again.

The legal scholar, in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Friday, cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states that a person is barred from holding office in the U.S. federal government if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

President Vladimir Putin has called on all employees of Wagner and other Russian private military contractors to take an oath of allegiance to the Russian state.

The decree applies to anyone participating in military activities in Ukraine, assisting the army and serving in territorial defence units.

He signed the decree on Friday, with immediate effect.

KYIV — U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy has joined ex-President Donald Trump in believing that there are deals in good faith to be made with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

That’s a position that was also taken last December by French President Emmanuel Macron, who held out the prospect of negotiating security guarantees for Russia with Putin under a new security architecture for Europe.

Two high-ranking Ukrainian officials have been named as suspects in an embezzlement scheme uncovered by Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities this week, involving the procurement of humanitarian aid.

Ukraine’s first deputy minister of agrarian policy and food and the former deputy minister of economy reportedly misappropriated UAH 62 million (about €1.5 million), the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) found.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie asked “what the hell” Vivek Ramaswamy is doing running for president if he thinks Donald Trump is the “best president” of the 21st century, as he declared during the first GOP presidential debate.

Ramaswamy made that comment on the debate stage Wednesday in response to fellow candidate Christie, who said Trump’s “conduct” was beneath the office of president.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin apparently thinks only bad things can come from prosecuting Donald Trump for his many alleged crimes ― including a possible civil war.

Palin, who rose to national prominence as Republican John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election, suggested that possibility on Newsmax soon after the former president surrendered to authorities Thursday evening in Fulton County, Georgia, where he faces 13 felony charges related to his efforts to steal the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden.

We do not know if Donald Trump’s hairdresser and makeup artists blow-dried and primped the former US president on his flight from Mar-a-Lago to Atlanta, but it seems likely. By the time he surrendered at Fulton, like that other fading star Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, Trump was ready for his close-up. The celebrity mugshot, after all, is more about performance art and political statement than mere police documentation.

Trump makes the best of what he has. Or his people do. Is it possible they brokered a deal with the sheriff to change the wattage of the overhead lightbulb to make it less harsh? Boldly leaning forward so we can study his thatch, and see where toupee ends and pate begins, it’s a performance that perhaps, like his hairpiece, is poised to become unstuck. The red-rimmed eyes suggest tiredness. Perhaps – let me dream – he’s been crying over his comeuppance. And the sternness of the expression seems almost self-satirising.

The United Auto Workers said Friday that members voted overwhelmingly to authorize the union to call strikes against Detroit’s Big Three automakers if they fail to reach new contracts next month, forcing the next major showdown in a year of U.S. labor unrest.

The UAW’s agreements with Ford, General Motors and Stellantis North America all expire the night of Sept. 14. The union said that 97% of members who cast ballots were in favor of walking off the job if their demands aren’t met by then. Specifically, 98% of workers at Ford, 96% at GM and 95% at Stellantis approved of authorizing strikes.

Israel’s far-right national security minister has sparred with US supermodel Bella Hadid over comments this week that Palestinians condemned as racist.

In an interview with N12 News on Wednesday, Itamar Ben-Gvir said that the right to life and movement for settlers in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank trumped the right to movement for Palestinians.

Palestinians have long railed against travel restrictions, including checkpoints, imposed on them by Israel in the occupied West Bank, an area where they exercise limited self-rule.

An estimated 24,000 full-time jobs and $33 billion in investments are at risk because of the Alberta government’s seven-month moratorium on renewable energy development, the Pembina Institute said this morning.

Courtney Smith, spokesperson for the Calgary-based clean energy think tank, said Pembina researchers reviewed the Alberta Electric System Operator’s list of electricity generation projects in development in relation to their approval status from the Alberta Utility Commission to determine how many projects are impacted by Danielle Smith government’s freeze on renewable energy development.

A new report from a government watchdog details an alarmingly comfortable relationship between the U.S. Secret Service and far right militant group the Oath Keepers during the final months of the Trump administration.

The report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) was published on Wednesday, and includes communications between Secret Service agents, including emails from one who claimed to be a “liaison” between the agency and the right-wing group.

Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), in his capacity as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is demanding records and opening an inquiry into Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis’s charges against former President Donald Trump.

Jordan made the request for records in the investigation on Thursday, just hours before Trump is set to surrender to Fulton County authorities. Upon surrendering, Trump will be formally booked and arraigned on 13 charges relating to his attempts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

If you’ve been reading right-wing headlines, you may have heard that President Joe Biden’s Border Patrol “admitted” to “intentionally” opening floodgates on the border wall championed by former President Donald Trump. MAGA supporters threw a fit on social media, claiming in countless posts that the floodgates are evidence that the Biden administration is allowing migrants into the country for nefarious ends. In one post, Fox News personality Jesse Watters suggested that Biden himself had opened the “gaping holes” so migrants and “antelope” can “pour through.”

To hear Donald Trump tell it, the fact that he keeps getting indicted by prosecutors is a boon to his reelection effort. “Any time they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls,” he said at a dinner shortly after he was charged by the Justice Department with attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

This counterintuitive claim is questionable on its face — if not demonstrably false upon close examination — but it is one among many dubious arguments that Trump and his allies have advanced in recent months as he has been confronted with four different prosecutions brought by the Justice Department, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and, most recently, the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office in Georgia.

For two months after Yevgeny Prigozhin led a brief mutiny that threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hold on power, the mercenary boss traveled freely, attending to business in St. Petersburg and Moscow, as if all were forgotten and forgiven.

But on Wednesday, a very suspicious plane crash killed Prigozhin and decapitated his Wagner Group, the mercenary army that marched on Moscow in June under his command. Dmitry Utkin, Prigozhin’s right hand at Wagner, and Valery Chekalov, a close Prigozhin aide, died along with him as they flew from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The other passengers on the plane were also with Wagner.

The long-awaited and unprecedented mug shot of Donald Trump has been released following his arrest on Thursday on charges related to his efforts to change the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.

Trump was processed after his arrest at the Fulton County jail, which is notorious for its deplorable conditions for inmates, CNN reported. Georgia officials had insisted on Aug. 1 that Trump would not be given special treatment if indicted by the Fulton County grand jury, which happened two weeks later, and that he would have his fingerprints and mug shots taken when booked.

If Russia’s propaganda machine seemed caught off guard by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny, its reaction to his death in a plane crash has been far more disciplined.

Take Margarita Simonyan, the normally outspoken editor-in-chief of the state broadcaster RT. As Prigozhin’s Wagner troops marched on Moscow in late June, her social media accounts were silent. Only days later, after calm had been restored, did she resurface, saying she’d been digitally detoxing while on a trip down the Volga River.

The defeat of Ohio Issue 1 on August 8 demonstrated the strength of the pro-abortion rights vote. Activists secured an initiative to be placed on the November ballot constitutionally enshrining the right to abortion until fetal viability. To head off what promises to be a slam dunk for the pros, Ohio’s anti-abortion Republican legislature proposed its own amendment, to raise the bar to amend the state constitution. That was Issue 1, the sole question on the ballot of the special August election.

Issue 1 was a transparent ruse — polls showed 58 percent support for the abortion rights measure; the lawmakers specified a 60 percent majority to pass an amendment instead of the current simple majority — and voters soundly rejected it.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment has found that the plane crash presumed to have killed Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was intentionally caused by an explosion, according to U.S. and Western officials.

One of the officials, who were not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the explosion falls in line with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics.”

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said Thursday will bring the “most humiliating” moment of Donald Trump’s entire life.

That’s when the former president is expected to surrender to authorities in Fulton County, Georgia, where he will be booked and photographed after being charged in a wide-ranging election interference case.

O’Donnell predicted that Trump’s mug shot may be on the front page of every newspaper in the world by Friday.

Donald Trump Jr. lambasted Fox News on Wednesday, accusing the conservative network of trying to “censor and silence” his father’s supporters because it had barred him from entering a spin room after the GOP presidential primary debate.

Trump Jr. and several others, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), attended the Milwaukee event as surrogates for former President Donald Trump, who declined to participate.

Fox News, the host of the event, restricted access to the post-debate spin room to allow only representatives of candidates who took part, according to an internal memo circulated in the media earlier this week.

“We will all go to hell. But in hell we will be the best,” commented Yevgeny Prigozhin, discussing his attitude to death in an undated interview that was published last night on the pro-Wagner Grey Zone Telegram channel. In the absence of any remarkable developments, it is looking increasingly likely that, as per Russian reports, the Wagner boss was killed on Wednesday afternoon in a plane crash in the Russian region of Tver, on his way from Moscow to St Petersburg.

Scientists recently revealed that they revived a worm that was frozen in the Siberian permafrost 46,000 years ago. This was obviously a totally unnecessary and reckless exercise.

Because barely a month later Tucker Carlson would revive the semi-frozen carcass of an ex-president from the Twitter permafrost that is now weirdly known as X. Anyone who has watched a Jeff Goldblum movie knows how badly these experiments can turn out.