Democracy gone Astray: Thursday, October 05, 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.]

Thursday, October 05, 2023

Elon Musk 'Committing Evil' By Blocking Internet Access, Top Ukrainian Advisor Says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Elon Musk said he refused a Ukrainian request to activate his Starlink satellite network in Crimea’s port city of Sevastopol last year to aid an attack on Russia’s fleet there, saying he feared complicity in a “major” act of war.

The billionaire businessman made the comment on his social media platform X after CNN cited a excerpt from a new biography of Musk that says he ordered the Starlink network turned off near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt the Ukrainian sneak attack.

US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have pledged to deepen ties between their two countries, as the leaders held direct talks ahead of a Group of 20 summit in New Delhi at the weekend.

In a joint statement on Friday, shortly after Biden landed in the Indian capital, the US and India reaffirmed their support for “a free, open, inclusive, and resilient Indo-Pacific” as members of the Quad alliance, which also includes Australia and Japan.

Kim Jong Un has marked the 75th anniversary of the founding of North Korea with a parade of paramilitary forces and promises to deepen ties with China and Russia.

The North Korean leader attended the midnight parade on Friday in Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square which was also attended by a visiting Chinese delegation and Russian diplomats, the country’s state Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Saturday.

The U.S. military is preparing to cut its presence in Niger nearly in half in the next few weeks, as troops move out of the capital of Niamey amid widespread protests, according to two Defense Department officials with direct knowledge of the move.

DOD recently began repositioning a number of forces away from the airport at Niamey to a second, smaller base at Agadez, some 500 miles away, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters on Thursday. As a result, the overall number of troops in Niger could drop from 1,200 before the July 26 coup to somewhere “right in the middle” of 500 to 1,000 in the next few weeks, said one of the DOD officials, who like others interviewed for this story was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive plans.

Cuban authorities said they arrested 17 people in connection to a human-trafficking ring that allegedly coaxed young Cuban men to fight for Russia against Ukraine.

Earlier this week, the Cuban foreign ministry exposed a Russian trafficking operation used to entice Cubans into the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine. Cuba condemned the recruitment racket and the interior ministry said authorities were working to “neutralize and dismantle” the network.

The fate of mifepristone, the abortion drug used widely for over two decades across the United States, may rest in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court if its members decide to take up requests from the drug’s manufacturer and the Justice Department.

Both Danco Laboratories and the Biden administration have asked the high court to overturn a lower court’s ruling that would limit access to the medication nationwide. That ruling is currently on hold.

Former President Donald Trump told the judge overseeing his election interference trial in Georgia that he may try to move the case to federal court.

“President Trump hereby notifies the Court that he may seek removal of his prosecution to federal court,” his lawyers said in a court filing to Judge Scott McAfee on Thursday.

In Pierre Poilievre, Canada has a radical free market zealot whose policies will be disastrous for the poor, working and middle classes.

Indeed, if the Conservatives are victorious in the next election, Poilievre will be the most right-wing prime minister in our modern history. Think the gutting of social welfare from the Paul Martin budgets of the early 1990s meets a supercharged dismantling of the fiscal capacity of government à la Stephen Harper.

Poilievre, to the credit of his communications team, has managed to dress up his right-wing program with populist rhetoric that resonates during a time of rising economic insecurity. But scratch the surface and the neoliberal playbook of slashing social spending, tax cuts for business and the wealthy, and abandoning people to market inequities is plain to see.

Elon Musk’s X sued California on Friday, challenging the constitutionality of a state law establishing new transparency requirements for social media companies, including how they police disinformation, hate speech and extremism.

X, the social media platform once called Twitter, said the law, known as Assembly Bill 587, violates its free speech rights under the US constitution’s first amendment and California’s state constitution.

In a complaint filed in federal court in Sacramento, California, X said the law’s “true intent” was to pressure social media companies into eliminating content the state found objectionable.

WASHINGTON (AP) — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem endorsed former President Donald Trump at a party fundraiser in South Dakota Friday night that doubled as an opportunity for Noem to showcase herself as a potential vice presidential pick.

As his rivals held town halls and meet-and-greets in early voting states, Trump was headlining the South Dakota Republican Party’s “Monumental Leaders Rally” in Rapid City. Noem appeared alongside the former president at the paid event, creating an image that Noem’s allies had hoped would look like a presidential ticket, according to two senior Republicans familiar with her thinking who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement.

Michigan, home to one of the most MAGA-crazed GOP bases in the country, is set to host the premier Senate showdown between loyalists to former President Donald Trump and establishment Republicans focused on electability above all else.

At stake is whether Republicans can successfully expand the Senate map to Michigan, where Democrats have mostly coalesced behind Rep. Elissa Slotkin in the race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow. Establishment Republicans in Washington, D.C., and in Michigan think they’ve found the candidate — former House Intelligence Committee chairman and Trump skeptic Mike Rogers — to turn the blue-tinted swing state into a battleground.

A federal judge on Friday denied Mark Meadows’ request that his case be moved out of Georgia and into federal court.

Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, has been charged with two felonies for his role in the Trump campaign’s effort to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results in his favor.

Meadows, who is facing trial along with Trump and 17 other defendants in the case, quickly filed an appeal to the decision by U.S. District Judge Steve Jones.

Russia has maintained its bombing campaign against Ukrainian food exports with the fourth drone attack in five days on grain silos and other infrastructure around the port of Izmail along the Danube river.

The governor of the Odesa region, Oleh Kiper, said Thursday’s attack lasted three hours, and the general prosecutor’s office said two truck drivers were hurt and several homes were damaged by blast waves. The Ukrainian military said agricultural facilities were damaged but did not give details.

Vice President Kamala Harris said it would be a “huge mistake” for Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim John Un to meet following a warning by U.S. officials that arms negotiations between the countries are “actively advancing.”

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that the two leaders are planning to meet this month in Russia, likely in Vladivostok. Putin is seeking more weapons for his country’s war in Ukraine, and Kim is looking for “advanced technology for satellites and nuclear-powered submarines” and food, according to the Times.

Justice Samuel Alito, part of the U.S. Supreme Court’s six-judge conservative majority, said Friday he had no intention of stepping back from considering a case involving a lawyer with whom he had spent several hours in interviews earlier this year and who had written two articles in defense and praise of Alito.

“There is no valid reason for my recusal in this case,” Alito wrote in a statement released Friday with the court’s periodic listing of cases it will take up or reject considering.

More than four years ago, then-President Donald Trump declared an ambitious goal that had bipartisan support: ending the HIV epidemic in the United States.

Now, that Trump program is one of several health initiatives targeted for substantial cuts by members of his own party as they eye next year’s elections.

Pushing a slate of conservative political priorities that also takes aim at sex education for teens, health worker vaccine mandates, and more, Republicans in the House of Representatives have proposed a spending bill that would cut $1.6 billion from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — one-sixth of the agency’s budget.

Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to disable Starlink satellite communications near the coast of Russian-occupied Crimea last year to sabotage a planned Ukrainian drone strike.

Musk was worried the drone submarine attack, which was targeting the Russian naval fleet in Sevastopol, would escalate tensions and potentially lead to a nuclear war, according to an extract from historian Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography “Elon Musk.”

DERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Here in Hershey, the once-sleepy south-central Pennsylvania town built on chocolate, drivers must now navigate a recently constructed roundabout on the “West End,” an ongoing and massive mixed-use development project. It’s essentially a new suburb, built from scratch, designed to attract and accommodate local population growth. But this controversial project — new roads paved over a beloved field traversed by herds of deer — isn’t fueled by Hershey’s global snacking company, the giant nearby amusement park of the same name, or the hospitality industry. Instead, it’s radiating out of Penn State Health, the hilltop headquarters overlooking the town created by a risk-taking confectioner more than a century ago.

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump hosted a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser for disgraced former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club Thursday night as Giuliani struggles to pay his mounting legal bills.

Giuliani, a longtime Trump ally who also served as his lawyer, is facing a barrage of legal fees, fines, sanctions and damages related to his work helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election and other cases.

A special purpose grand jury convened in Georgia recommended a slew of additional indictments that went beyond those sought last month by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

According to the grand jury’s report, made public Friday, the panel believed multiple others should be criminally charged for plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both Republicans from Georgia.

In December 2021, President Joe Biden hosted an event billed as a “Summit for Democracy”. Biden opened his address to the summit by describing his motivation for holding it: “in the face of sustained and alarming challenges … democracy needs champions”.

Since that time Biden has embraced, as allies, autocrats and would-be autocrats all over the world, including the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, who US intelligence has said was responsible for the brutal murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. More recently, Biden invited Benjamin Netanyahu, who is presiding over the destruction of Israel’s democracy by targeting its judicial system, for an official visit to the United States.

When Elon Musk posted a personally crafted 280-character “peace plan” for the war in Ukraine last October, a Ukrainian diplomat offered a carefully considered review. It ran to a full two words: “Fuck off”. This week’s allegations that Musk shut down his Starlink system (on which the comms-shattered Ukraine relies to defend itself against Russia) right in the middle of a counteroffensive last year – apparently deliberately to neuter it – forces a new question. When he does finally make it there in his big space rocket, will even Mars be far enough for Elon Musk to fuck off to?

How long is 671 days? In the context of modern history, it is perhaps the equivalent of a few seconds. But for me, it accounts for a period of time during which more has happened to Ukraine than many countries go through in a century. It is also the number of days that I served as my country’s minister of defence.

I took up the position on 4 November 2021, when Ukraine had been facing Russian hybrid warfare for eight years. Within 112 days, the Kremlin had begun full-scale warfare – unknown to Europe since the second world war. Ukraine became the first state in the world forced to wage war against an aggressor in five domains at once: land, air, water, and the informational and cyber environments.

A senior Ukrainian official has accused Elon Musk of “committing evil” after a new biography revealed details about how the business magnate ordered his Starlink satellite communications network to be turned off near the Crimean coast last year to hobble a Ukrainian drone attack on Russian warships.

In a statement on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk owns, the Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote that Musk’s interference led to the deaths of civilians, calling them “the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego”.

Elon Musk says he refused to give Kyiv access to his Starlink communications network over Crimea to avoid complicity in a "major act of war".

Kyiv had sent an emergency request to activate Starlink to Sevastopol, home to a major Russian navy port, he said.

His comments came after a book alleged he had switched off Starlink to thwart a drone attack on Russian ships.

As Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022, marking the start of Europe’s biggest war since World War II, countries around the world came under pressure to choose between the Western-backed Kyiv on the one hand and Moscow on the other.

For more than 18 months since then, New Delhi has managed the tightrope balance between the two sides, carefully avoiding a direct condemnation of old friend Russia. But as leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) nations arrive in the Indian capital on Friday for their annual summit, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi might be forced to show his hand.

Russian authorities are holding local elections in occupied parts of Ukraine in an effort to tighten their grip on territories Moscow illegally annexed a year ago and still does not fully control.

The voting for Russian-installed legislatures in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions has already begun and concludes Sunday. The elections have been denounced by Kyiv and the West.

“It constitutes a flagrant violation of international law, which Russia continues to disregard,” the Council of Europe, the continent’s foremost human rights body, said this week.

Ukraine’s former defence minister has warned his western counterparts that negotiations with Moscow will not bring peace, and that Vladimir Putin remains determined to destroy Ukraine entirely and to “assimilate” its citizens into the Russian Federation.

In an article for the Guardian, Oleksii Reznikov says any “deal” with the Kremlin would not end the conflict. “Russia demands the recognition of the occupied territories of Ukraine as its territory in exchange for the end of the war,” he writes.

Former Vice President Mike Pence dismissed former President Donald Trump’s argument that the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade contributed to the GOP’s disappointing performance in last year’s midterm elections.

“The former president actually suggested that we lost elections in the midterms because we overturned Roe v. Wade, I don’t believe that for a second,” Pence told Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt on Thursday. “I think when you stand on the right to life and you stand with principle and compassion and demonstrate a willingness to put our arms not just around the unborn, but around newborns, around women in crisis pregnancies we can continue to win hearts and minds.”

An audio recording made by one of Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyers could seal the former president’s fate if used as evidence at his trial for allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House, former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman said on Wednesday.

“It’s going to be incandescent evidence,” Litman told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell of a voice memo made by Evan Corcoran noting a colleague had told him Trump would “go ballistic” if urged to comply with a subpoena to give up top-secret documents allegedly stashed at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis essentially told House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to stay in his lane in a blunt response to his demand for documents related to her case against Donald Trump.

“Your attempt to invoke congressional authority to intrude upon and interfere with an active criminal case in Georgia is flagrantly at odds with the Constitution,” she wrote in a nine-page letter to Jordan, a longtime Trump apologist.

NBC News posted the full letter online.

Elon Musk ordered his Starlink satellite communications network to be turned off near the Crimean coast last year to hobble a Ukrainian drone attack on Russian warships, according to a new biography.

CNN quoted an excerpt from the biography Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, which described how armed submarine drones were approaching their targets when they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly”.

The Georgia district attorney at the heart of former President Donald Trump’s latest indictment on Thursday rebuked House Republicans’ investigation into her office, accusing them of blatantly trying to obstruct a criminal proceeding.

Fulton County DA Fani Willis on Thursday sent a fiery letter to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, responding to his decision to launch an investigation into the Georgia office just hours before Trump appeared in court late last month on charges related to interfering in the 2020 election.

OTTAWA, Ont. — As Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre strides into his party’s convention with a surge ahead of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the polls, a prominent U.K. Brexiteer says conservatives around the world should take note.

Lord Daniel Hannan tells POLITICO that Poilievre is one of the most interesting center-right leaders “on the international stage right now” for having “already transformed the demographics of his party, reaching out to young people.”

Hannan will share his praise of Poilievre with Canadians as the closing keynote speaker at this week’s Conservative Party convention, a three-day confab in Quebec City that will invigorate a party dead-set on ousting Canada’s eight-year old Liberal government in the next election.

President Joe Biden is traveling to Beijing’s backyard to make his latest pitch that a U.S.-led global alliance is a safer bet for the world’s countries than China.

Biden is journeying to the G-20 grouping of nations in New Delhi this week, where he’ll talk up multilateral institutions to developing countries. Biden will then travel to Vietnam to formally strengthen ties with a Communist country growing fearful of China’s aggression and grateful for its economic windfall from the U.S.-China trade war.

CLEVELAND — Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh told a judicial conference on Thursday he hopes there will be “concrete steps soon” to address recent ethics concerns surrounding the court, but he stopped short of addressing calls for justices to institute an official code of conduct.

“We can increase confidence. We’re working on that,” Kavanaugh told the conference attended by judges, attorneys and other court personnel in Ohio. He said all nine justices recognize that public confidence in the court is important, particularly now.

Funny thing about summits of world leaders: Sometimes, not showing up is the best way to grab attention.

Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping’s expected absence at this year’s Group of 20 gathering, set for this weekend in New Delhi, has already thrown off the event’s momentum. Russian leader Vladimir Putin also won’t be there and even has some counterprogramming planned.

It’s Xi’s first time skipping the annual gathering, and aides are mum as to why; they’ll say only that Chinese Premier Li Qiang will represent Beijing.

WASHINGTON — Roughly three-fifths of Americans believe President Joe Biden was involved in his son Hunter’s foreign business deals, according to a CNN/SSRS poll released Thursday.

The survey result is a public relations coup for Republicans, who have made the alleged corruption of the Biden family the centerpiece of their congressional investigations and public messaging.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is urging her Democratic colleagues to ramp up the pressure on Sen. Tommy Tuberville as he continues to block hundreds of military promotions because of the Pentagon’s abortion policies.

While Democrats have individually spoken out against the Alabama Republican, “it’s time for us to turn up the heat on that and for all of the Democrats to be involved,” Warren (D-Mass.) said Thursday morning on MSNBC, adding that “there is no dissension” on the topic among Democrats.

OTTAWA, Ont. — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is launching a sweeping public inquiry into foreign interference in Canada, setting the stage for the next arm of a yearslong political fight over how the government has handled the charged issue.

Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc announced the formal independent inquiry Thursday after months of backroom negotiations between Canada’s main political parties over who will lead it and how it will work, and public jabs over whether the government was dragging its heels.

Vivek Ramaswamy says convicted felons should be allowed to carry weapons.

Appearing on former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s podcast, set to air on Thursday, the Republican presidential candidate was asked to flesh out what it meant to be a “Second Amendment absolutist,” as Ramaswamy has labeled himself.

“Everyone has a gun?” asked Cuomo, once a prominent figure in Democratic Party politics. “Everyone has an assault weapon? A former felon? No background check? Concealed carry?”

The border wall championed by President Donald Trump harmed the environment and trampled on Native American cultural sites, according to a report released on Thursday by the Government Accountability Office.

The 450 miles of barrier constructed during Trump’s time in office — one of his highest-profile actions — proceeded by waiving or disregarding environmental and historic preservation laws. But it’s now clear the wall interfered with endangered species, diverted water sources and caused other environmental damage, the federal watchdog said.

Peter Navarro, a former White House adviser to Donald Trump, has been found guilty on two contempt-of-Congress charges for defying a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 select committee.

A jury returned the unanimous conviction Thursday after a four-hour deliberation, which followed a two-day trial featuring testimony from three former Jan. 6 committee staffers. Each count carries a one-year maximum sentence, and Navarro intends to appeal the verdict.

GOP strategist Mike Murphy on Wednesday slammed ongoing Republican attempts to impeach Joe Biden, predicting they could lead to a total collapse of the party at the ballot box next year.

It’s an “incredibly stupid idea,” Murphy, a former adviser to Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) and the late Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), told MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle.

Donald Trump is troubled by the Georgia election interference case against him because of the woman leading it, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.

“I don’t think, in Trump’s mind, this case bothers him in terms of the facts and the details. The prosecutor bothers him. He has been complaining about Fani Willis for months and months,” Haberman told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday.

A former director of information technology at Mar-a-Lago won’t face criminal charges after cooperating with special counsel Jack Smith in his probe into former President Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, according to a new court filing.

Yuscil Taveras, who was identified as “Trump Employee 4” in the superseding indictment filed by Smith earlier this year, reached a deal with prosecutors after receiving a target letter saying he would be investigated for allegedly making misleading statements, according to the filing from the worker’s former attorney Stanley Woodward.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suggested the use of pardons and commutations in the cases of Proud Boys members and others sentenced for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. (You can check out his comments in the clip below.)

In an interview with Newsmax’s Eric Bolling on Wednesday, the GOP presidential candidate, weighed in on how he’d approach their sentences if he were elected president.

Judge Arthur Engoron on Wednesday denied a request by former President Donald Trump and other defendants named in the civil lawsuit overseen by New York Attorney General Letitia James to have next month’s trial postponed.

Lawyers for the defendants asked that the trial be delayed until at least three weeks after the court rules on both sides’ motions for summary judgment.

“A trial of this magnitude should not begin in chaos,” they wrote in a Tuesday court filing shared by Insider. “The Court and the Defendants are entitled to know the claims and issues to be tried sufficiently in advance to prepare adequately for trial.”

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said Wednesday that poetry is proof the Navy needs to root out “wokeness.” (Watch the video below.)

“We’ve got people doing poems on aircraft carriers over the loudspeaker,” he said to Laura Ingraham on Fox News Wednesday.

The right-wing senator has been widely criticized for blocking military promotions to protest the Pentagon’s policy of supplying service members with paid leave and travel costs to get an abortion in another state.

Donald Trump is winning the Republican nomination race in a walk, and it’s been quite the pleasant stroll.

That’s because his opponents can’t make the most compelling argument against Trump — namely, that for myriad, deep-seated reasons he’s poorly suited to represent the GOP and become the country’s president again.

So, the other top contenders are left with more glancing, indirect criticisms that don’t land with the same force, if they land at all. Trump’s opponents tend to say that he’s not electable, or he didn’t deliver on his promises, or we can’t argue about the past, or we can’t have our attention diverted by distractions or we need a new generation of leadership.