Democracy gone Astray: Tuesday, October 03, 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, October 03, 2023

No sign of Black Sea grain breakthrough after Erdoğan-Putin talks

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has concluded face-to-face talks with Vladimir Putin by claiming a deal to export Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea could be revived.

But there was no evidence of a breakthrough as the Russian leader again accused the west of reneging on promises.

Putin claimed there had been no crisis in global grain markets since Moscow pulled out of the deal two months ago over what it said was the west’s failure to keep its side of the bargain covering Russian food and fertiliser exports. He said prices were falling and there was no evidence of food shortages.

US President Joe Biden has said he is "disappointed" that his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping plans to skip the upcoming G20 summit in India.

"I am disappointed... but I am going to get to see him," Mr Biden told reporters on Sunday, but did not say when that meeting may take place.

Beijing said on Monday that its premier Li Qiang would lead China's delegation at the summit in Delhi this week.

Chris Christie couldn’t have asked for more from New Hampshire.

A warm August evening, free of the monsoons of early summer. A full, friendly audience, seated outdoors at the Elks Lodge in Salem. An aide handing out signs and water bottles. A glowing introduction from the state’s popular Republican governor. Even the pro-Trump heckler, parked down the hill on the roadside, gave Christie’s sharp tongue an easy target.

It all looked perfect, but it was a lot less than that, because it was all a reminder of glory days.

KYIV — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s choice for the country’s new defense minister sends two clear signals to Ukraine’s allies and adversaries: Kyiv is serious about cleaning up corruption, and steadfast about regaining Crimea from Russian control.

Rustem Umerov, whom Zelenskyy has put forward to replace Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, is a Crimean Tatar with deep business and political experience, including chairing Ukraine’s commission monitoring international financial and military aid to the country’s war effort. As head of the State Property Fund since last year, he has revitalized the country’s privatization efforts.

Ukraine is threatening to take Brussels and EU member countries to the World Trade Organization if they fail to lift restrictions on its agricultural exports to the bloc this month.

The country's grain exports — its main trade commodity — are currently banned from the markets of Poland, Hungary and three other EU countries under a deal struck with the European Commission earlier this year to protect farmers from an influx of cheaper produce from their war-torn neighbor.

The White House has been gradually preparing for a GOP impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden and increasingly feels that it will benefit more from the probe than Republicans will.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t quiet resignation and frustration inside the building.

While West Wing advisers believe independent and swing voters will ultimately turn against GOP leaders for using impeachment as political payback against the president, they also are bracing for a time-consuming, draining probe — one that could create negative headlines and has the potential for unexpected outcomes.

In a dusty workshop, a unique group of Ukrainian weapons experts race to produce artillery guns that will never be fired, radar trucks that cannot detect anything, and missiles without explosives.

The pieces are decoys that aim to draw Russian fire, wasting enemy ammunition, missiles and drones while protecting real equipment and the soldiers manning it.

The team’s skill, honed over more than a year, is shaping plastic, scrap wood, foam and metal into copies of advanced weapon systems, precise enough to convince Russian operators of drone cameras and battle-seasoned troops on the ground that they are real military targets.

For the second time in about a month, the heavy gears and winches that drive Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s brain seized up in front of news cameras. While taking questions from reporters on Wednesday in Covington, Ky., and asked about running for reelection in 2026, the top Republican powered down for 30 seconds as if an unseen hand had removed the lithium ion battery from his chassis. Attempts by an aide to reboot him seemed to succeed as he muttered, “OK,” and gave brief answers before retiring from the scene.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo confirmed Sunday she was hacked by Chinese actors shortly before visiting the country this past week.

“They did hack me, which was unappreciated, to say the least. I brought it up, clearly. Put it right on the table,” Raimondo told host Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

White House domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden said Sunday that she’s convinced that the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare drug price negotiation program will be upheld in court.

Speaking on “The Katie Phang Show” on MSNBC, Tanden said, “There is nothing in the Constitution that stops Medicare from negotiating drug prices. We really, we feel very strongly about our ability to win these lawsuits because this is just a basic principle.”

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said Sunday that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is “perfectly capable” of continuing his work after freezing for the second time during a press conference last week.

“I spoke with Mitch yesterday afternoon … and he said he was in good shape,” Rounds told host Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Rounds said McConnell told him that after sustaining a concussion in March, he was warned of possible lightheadedness in the future and to stay aware of it.

Moscow launched a barrage of drone attacks early Sunday at a port in Ukraine's Odesa region used by Kyiv to export grain, a day ahead of talks between Russia and Turkey where reviving a U.N.-backed grain deal will be high on the agenda.

Kyiv's air defenses shot down 22 out of the 25 Iranian-made drones destined for the Danube River port infrastructure, Ukraine's air force said on Telegram on Sunday. At least two people were reported injured.

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy “shouldn’t be running for president,” calling him “a cheerleader” for former President Donald Trump.

Ramaswamy, Hogan said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” “is up there being a cheerleader and a fill-in for Trump. He shouldn’t be running for president, he should, you know, he obviously is trying to apply for a job for Trump.

“But if you’re in there running for vice president, or you’re trying to be a Cabinet secretary, or you’re trying to become famous, or write a book or get on television, you should get the heck out of the race,” Hogan said.

During my 10 years as a Moscow-based journalist, I struggled to imagine how and when I would eventually leave Russia.

Half Russian myself, I had moved there in 2013, keen to learn more and report on a country that I felt was often misunderstood by many in the West.

In the end, the decision was made for me last month when a representative of Russia’s foreign ministry called to tell me that my visa would not be renewed and I had six days to leave.

Rustem Umerov, who is poised to become Ukraine’s new defence minister, is a leading member of the Crimean Tatar community who has represented his country in sensitive negotiations with Russia.

In a video address on Sunday night, Volodymyr Zelenskiy named Umerov as the successor to Oleksii Reznikov, who is stepping down after 22 months in the job.

Umerov was born in Soviet Uzbekistan, the country his family had been exiled to under Stalin, and moved back to Crimea in Ukraine as a child when the Tatars were allowed to return in the 1980s and 1990s.

Ukrainian generals claim they have breached Russia's formidable first line of defences in the south, as the counter-offensive launched earlier this summer may be poised to gather pace.

Since June, Kyiv's territorial gains have been very small - but is Ukraine finally at a turning point?

"Yes, it's true," says Yuriy Sak, an advisor to Ukraine's defence minister, when asked if the breach had happened.

Ukraine's Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov has confirmed that he is leaving his post.

Mr Reznikov had led the ministry since before the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Mr Reznikov's dismissal on Sunday, saying it was time for "new approaches" in the defence ministry.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to meet Vladimir Putin on Monday, hoping to persuade the Russian leader to rejoin the Black Sea grain deal that Moscow broke off from in July.

The meeting, to take place in Sochi on Russia’s southern coast, comes after weeks of speculation about when and where the two leaders might meet. Erdogan previously said Putin would travel to Turkey in August.

The AFL-CIO, the country’s largest federation of labor unions, did not make any demands of President Joe Biden in return for the group’s earliest-ever endorsement of a presidential candidate, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler told HuffPost in an interview last week.

Shuler, instead, believes that Biden’s record helping labor unions was more than enough to secure its early endorsement, which it coordinated in June with numerous member unions and several unions that are not in the AFL-CIO, such as the Service Employees International Union and the National Education Association.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) thinks there are serious questions about whether Donald Trump is even eligible for the office of president.

On Sunday, the California congressman said that there is “pretty clear” evidence Trump is in violation of the 14th Amendment’s third section, which blocks anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from serving in elected office.

Schiff explained why there is a “valid argument” for keeping Trump off the ballot while appearing on MSNBC following earlier reports that election officials across the U.S. are bracing themselves for legal challenges to Trump’s 2024 presidential candidacy.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) seemed defensive after being called part of the “hardcore fringe” of the Republican party following her vow to vote against government funding if House Republicans do not open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

The Georgia lawmaker claimed she was being persecuted for having “the audacity” to ask questions as she railed against the White House in a Saturday thread on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

The Israeli prime minister has said he wants Eritreans involved in a violent clash in Tel Aviv to be deported immediately and has ordered a plan to remove all of the country’s African asylum seekers.

The remarks on Sunday followed bloody protests by rival groups of Eritreans in south Tel Aviv the day before that left dozens of people injured. Eritreans, supporters and opponents of Eritrea’s government, faced off with construction lumber, pieces of metal and rocks, smashing shop windows and police cars. Israeli police in riot gear fired teargas, stun grenades and live rounds while officers on horseback tried to control the protesters.

Dmitry Muratov, one of Russia’s best-known journalists, has been added to the country’s list of foreign agents, less than two years after the Kremlin praised the principled reporting that saw him awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

Muratov, the former editor of now-shuttered liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was included in an update Friday evening to the Russian Ministry of Justice’s register of journalists, politicians and activists that Moscow claims are acting on behalf of hostile states.

SAN FRANCISCO — Silicon Valley billionaires behind a secretive $800 million land-buying spree in Northern California have finally released some details about their plans for a new green city, but they still must win over skeptical voters and local leaders.

After years of ducking scrutiny, Jan Sramek, the former Goldman Sachs trader spearheading the effort, launched a website Thursday about “California Forever.” The site billed the project as “a chance for a new community, good paying local jobs, solar farms, and open space” in Solano, a rural county between San Francisco and Sacramento that is now home to 450,000 people.

Russia's diplomats were once a key part of President Putin's foreign policy strategy. But that has all changed.

In the years leading up to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, diplomats lost their authority, their role reduced to echoing the Kremlin's aggressive rhetoric.

BBC Russian asks former Western diplomats, as well as ex-Kremlin and White House insiders, how Russian diplomacy broke down.

Moscow has put into service an advanced intercontinental ballistic missile that Russian President Vladimir Putin has said would make Russia’s enemies “think twice” about their threats, according to reported comments by the head of the country’s space agency.

Yuri Borisov, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said Sarmat missiles have “assumed combat duty”, according to Russian news agency reports on Friday.

Alexei wasn’t sure if he had entered the right cinema auditorium as he put down the popcorn and plunged into his chair. The room was dark and quiet, with only three other audience members scattered across the large Moscow theatre that could fit more than 100 people.

It was a Friday evening and Alexei had come to see The Witness, Russia’s first feature-length film about its invasion of Ukraine that premiered across the country on 17 August.

Ukrainian forces have decisively breached Russia’s first defensive line near Zaporizhzhia after weeks of painstaking mine clearance, and expect faster gains as they press the weaker second line, the general leading the southern counteroffensive has said.

Brig Gen Oleksandr Tarnavskiy estimated Russia had devoted 60% of its time and resources into building the first defensive line and only 20% each into the second and third lines because Moscow had not expected Ukrainian forces to get through.

A Florida redistricting plan pushed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis violates the state constitution and is prohibited from being used for any future U.S. congressional elections since it diminishes the ability of Black voters in north Florida to pick a representative of their choice, a state judge ruled Saturday.

Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh sent the plan back to the Florida Legislature with instructions that lawmakers should draw a new congressional map that complies with the Florida Constitution.

WASHINGTON — While Donald Trump wants to take his case for returning to the White House to some 200 million American voters, he may first need to win over five — a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.

As the 2024 presidential primaries near, the former president, already under four criminal indictments, is likely to face yet another legal challenge that appears headed for the courts: whether the Constitution’s ban on insurrectionists seeking office applies to his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt.

At last week’s GOP debate in Wisconsin, Mike Pence spoke for the most minutes, but the candidate who talked the loudest and tangled most aggressively with the rest of the presidential hopefuls was 38-year-old billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy railed against everything from the “hoax” of climate change, to U.S. aid to Ukraine, to “woke” politics and social justice movements, firmly claiming his stake in the modern GOP’s know-nothing firmament. In the wake of that debate, his support has solidified among a not-insignificant swath of likely GOP primary voters. In late July, a New York Times poll found Ramaswamy’s support at a mere 2 percent; in August, even before the debate, his numbers started moving up toward 10 percent. Since the debate, many polls have indicated that he has emerged as a credible candidate. He’s now the third-placed GOP contender, slightly behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and massively behind Donald Trump. Some polls have even shown him in second place.

A “grateful” Tucker Carlson said that when he and executive producer Justin Wells were let go from Fox News, Elon Musk called Wells with an invitation to move to his social media platform — where Carlson now hosts a show.

In Thursday’s episode of his online program, Carlson told Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy that Fox dropped Wells “within four minutes” of his own surprise firing from the network earlier this year.

Russia has added respected journalist and Nobel prize co-recipient Dmitry Muratov to its list of foreign agents, a label authorities commonly use to stifle critics.

The move targeting the editor of Russia’s top independent publication, Novaya Gazeta, is part of a wider crackdown on respected civil society institutions that has accelerated with Moscow’s assault on Ukraine.

Despite Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s attempt to appear moderate by calling for a 15-week abortion ban, the Republican governor is quietly funding anti-choice extremist lawmakers, many of whom have said they believe life begins at conception.

Spirit of Virginia, Youngkin’s political action committee previously known as Virginia Wins, donated nearly $100,000 to anti-choice down-ballot Republican candidates in the state so far this year, according to campaign finance records. The governor created the PAC in 2021 to support Republican candidates at every level of government. Youngkin, a former CEO of a global investment firm, was the sole contributor to the PAC when Spirit of Virginia first launched. He remains a major donor and was behind over $295,000 in donations in the 2022-23 fiscal year.

ATLANTA (AP) — Rudy Giuliani on Friday pleaded not guilty to Georgia charges that accuse him of trying, along with former President Donald Trump and others, to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state.

In filing his not guilty plea with the court, the former New York mayor and Trump attorney also waived his right to appear at an arraignment hearing set for Sept. 6. He joins the former president and at least 10 others in forgoing a trip to Atlanta to appear before a judge in a packed courtroom with a news camera rolling.

A federal judge sentenced two more high-ranking Proud Boys to prison on Friday over the far-right street gang’s outsize role in the planning and execution of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Dominic Pezzola, who breached the Capitol by smashing a window with a stolen police riot shield, was sentenced to 10 years behind bars in a D.C. District Court, four months after he was found guilty on obstruction and other charges related to the attack. Ethan Nordean, the gang’s most notorious bruiser ― known for numerous violent assaults at political rallies in the Donald Trump era ― was sentenced to 18 years in a second hearing Friday afternoon.

Police don’t suspect foul play killed Dan Rapoport. Some friends aren’t so sure.

Almost exactly a year before the plane crash that killed mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, local police in D.C. were called to investigate the case of another former Moscow businessperson who also fell from the sky.

Twelve months later, the plunge from an M Street apartment building of Dan Rapoport, a Soviet-born U.S. citizen who made a mint in post-communist Russia before souring on the regime, remains unexplained.

A conservative super PAC is launching a major ad campaign urging voters to pick someone other than Donald Trump in next year’s Republican presidential primary.

Americans for Prosperity Action, a super PAC backed by billionaire conservative activist Charles Koch, is spending $1.68 million on ads in North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee, according to Carolina Journal.

All three are among the 15 “Super Tuesday” states, or states that will host nominating contests on March 5. Given the number of states in play, a strong showing can make a candidacy, while a weak one can kill it off.

The White House on Thursday took issue with what they described as the “hardcore fringe” of the Republican Party following comments by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) threatening she won’t vote to keep the government open unless the GOP-controlled House of Representatives launches an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

“The last thing the American people deserve is for extreme House members to trigger a government shutdown that hurts our economy, undermines our disaster preparedness, and forces our troops to work without guaranteed pay,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement.

A man who is now an official for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was caught on video urging police to kill themselves near the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, NBC News reported Thursday.

Dylan Quattrucci, the deputy state director of Trump’s campaign in New Hampshire, made the obscenity-laced rant after Trump loyalists stormed the building to disrupt a congressional session to certify Joe Biden’s winning Electoral College count for the presidency.

Joe Biden has said he hopes Xi Jinping will attend the G20 leaders summit in India next week, following reports the Chinese president will skip the meeting.

“I hope he attends,” Biden told reporters on Thursday in Washington, as some US officials played down the chances of a Xi-Biden meeting in New Delhi, suggesting it would be more likely at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or Apec, conference in San Francisco in November.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Wednesday warned looters that his state’s residents could gun them down if they catch them invading their properties following the devastating impact of Hurricane Idalia.

“I’ve seen signs in different people’s yards in the past after these disasters, and I would say it’s probably here: ‘you loot, we shoot,’” he said during a press conference in Perry. “You never know what’s behind that door if you go break into somebody’s house.”

Two leaders of the Proud Boys street gang were each sentenced Thursday to more than a decade in prison for their role in the planning and execution of the violent plot to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021.

Joseph Biggs, an Army veteran and former correspondent for Alex Jones’ Infowars, was sentenced to 17 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly in Washington on Thursday. In a separate hearing later that day, Zachary Rehl, former head of the Philadelphia chapter of the Proud Boys, was sentenced to 15 years by Kelly.

Cold War liberalism was a catastrophe—for liberalism. This distinct body of liberal thought says that freedom comes first, that the enemies of liberty are the first priority to confront and contain in a dangerous world, and that demanding anything more from liberalism is likely to lead to tyranny.

This set of ideas became intellectually trendsetting in the 1940s and 1950s at the outset of the Cold War, when liberals conceived of them as essential truths the free world had to preserve in a struggle against totalitarian empire. By the 1960s it had its enemies, who invented the phrase “Cold War liberalism” itself to indict its domestic compromises and foreign policy mistakes. That did not stop it from being rehabilitated in the 1990s, when it was repurposed for a post-political age. A generation of public intellectuals—among them Anne Applebaum, Timothy Garton Ash, Michael Ignatieff, Leon Wieseltier, and many others—styled themselves as successors to Cold War liberals, trumpeting the superiority of Cold War liberalism over illiberal right and left while obscuring just how distinctive it was within the broader liberal tradition. 1989 ushered in the global triumph of freedom, but on Cold War liberalism’s distorted terms.

Peter Navarro, an ex-adviser to Donald Trump, apparently isn’t happy he won’t be able to assert a claim of executive privilege when his trial for contempt of Congress starts on Tuesday.

In fact, he attempted to take out his anger on a demonstrator’s protest sign ― only that didn’t work out so well.

Navarro was indicted in June 2022 on charges that he refused to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Don’t expect President Joe Biden to talk about the indictments of former President Donald Trump anytime soon, MSNBC’s Jen Psaki said this week.

“It would be hurting them, in my view, if the president was aggressively commenting on the specifics of these trials and all of these developments,” the former Biden White House press secretary told political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen on the latest episode of his podcast.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) is not “fit for office” after McConnell on Wednesday appeared to freeze in front of reporters when asked if he would run for reelection in 2026.

“Severe aging health issues and/or mental health incompetence in our nation’s leaders MUST be addressed,” Greene wrote Wednesday on X, formerly Twitter.

Embattled Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas revealed he took three trips in 2022 on Republican megadonor Harlan Crow’s private plane in an annual financial disclosure form made public Thursday.

Thomas said he flew on his billionaire friend’s plane partly due to security concerns after the leak last spring of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned nationwide abortion rights.

Michigan Republican Tudor Dixon says that former President Donald Trump advised her to soften her message on abortion during her failed gubernatorial bid last year, but that her campaign “could not pivot in time.”

“You came to me and you said, ‘You got to talk differently about abortion.’ And we could not pivot, we could not pivot in time,” she said during an interview with Trump on her podcast, which aired Tuesday.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who has faced intense scrutiny and criticism in recent months for receiving undisclosed luxury travel, reported taking three private jet trips courtesy of billionaire Harlan Crow last year, according to disclosure forms made public Thursday.

Thomas also acknowledged he’d “inadvertently omitted” bank accounts now valued at more than $100,000 from his annual financial disclosures dating back to 2017, due to what he called “a misinterpretation of the rules.”