Democracy gone Astray: Tuesday, October 10, 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 10, 2023

Trump’s business empire could collapse ‘like falling dominoes’ after ruling

Donald Trump’s real estate empire could collapse “like falling dominoes”, experts believe, following a New York judge’s ruling that the former president’s business fortune was built on rampant fraud and blatant lies.

According to Michael Cohen, his former attorney and fixer, Trump is already effectively “out of business” in New York after Judge Arthur Engoron on Tuesday rescinded the licenses of the Trump Organization and other companies owned by Trump and his adult sons, Eric and Don Jr.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) reportedly wants to meet with President Joe Biden in an apparent bid to renegotiate their months-old budget deal as McCarthy desperately seeks to appease House Republican hard-liners — who are demanding radical spending cuts — and avert a government shutdown as soon as Oct. 1.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wasn’t having McCarthy’s new demand, though.

There is absolutely no way Albertans will fall for it.

Unless they do.

And if they do, every Canadian will feel the impact.

Premier Danielle Smith’s push for an Alberta pension plan is based on so much wishful thinking, imaginary numbers and outright chutzpah you’d think it’s surely doomed to failure.

It was advertised as a protest focused on children and families. But at a rally in Vancouver, an antisemitic slur was hurled. In Ottawa, a flag with a Nazi swastika was displayed at a park. And at protests across Canada, protest signs equated education and advocacy about LGBTQ2S+ issues with pedophilia.

Last week, protests co-ordinated under the banner of “1 Million March 4 Children” took place in cities and towns across Canada. In many cities, including Vancouver, those protests were met and outnumbered by counter-protests supporting the rights of queer people, especially trans youth.

Sen. Bob Menendez is remaining defiant and has doubled down on his vow to remain in Congress as a growing number of fellow Democrats in Congress, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) of New York and other influential figures, are calling on him to resign.

The Democrat from New Jersey faces federal charges alleging that he and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bribes from the Egyption government in exchange for political favors. In his first press conference since federal prosecutors announced the charges with an indictment on Friday, Menendez said he believes he will be exonerated and reiterated his vow not to resign.

Today, as Jewish communities across the world gather together for Yom Kippur’s collective rituals of atonement, I am thinking about how, in Jewish tradition, words are said to have a sacred power.

In the first chapter of the Torah, God creates the world itself through the power of speech. In the book of Exodus, the Israelites speak as one people at Sinai, thereby entering into a covenant with God. It is said that on Yom Kippur, the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple and utter the otherwise unspeakable Name of God — and at that moment the fate of the very world hung in the balance.

Jill Joy pointed her cellphone camera at the security guards gathered near the doors to the middle school auditorium, where the Webster Central School District Board of Education meeting was about to start. Panning the scene for her livestream viewers that cold evening in February 2022, she noted, “They’ve brought in extra security. Say ‘Hi,’ you fucking tools.”

Joy was among a group of parents in suburban Rochester, New York, who’d dubbed themselves ROC for Educational Freedom. Two years earlier, in 2020, they’d created a Facebook group to organize against what they perceived as “drastic” and “deranged” COVID-19 safety measures in suburban Monroe County school districts. Then in the summer of 2021, Joy landed in a local news story when she stood before the Webster school board cupping her hand over her young daughter’s mouth to mimic a mask. “If you saw this, you would see that this is abuse and you would stop it,” she’d declared.

The only thing he heard them say was “shoot him.”

There were two of them, Paul Joyal says, lying in wait in the shrubs outside his suburban Maryland home on the night of March 1, 2007. Days earlier, Joyal, a consultant and intelligence specialist with years of experience in the former Soviet Union, had appeared in a “Dateline NBC” episode about the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB agent widely believed to have been killed by the Russian government under Vladimir Putin.

“A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you and we will silence you,” Joyal had said on the show. Now he was coming home after a meeting with another celebrated exile: Oleg Kalugin, the one-time KGB general and business partner of Joyal. The pair had met up for a drink in the restaurant at the International Spy Museum, where Kalugin served on the board.

NEW YORK — A state judge Tuesday found Donald Trump and his company liable for fraud for inflating his net worth in order to deceive banks and insurers, resolving one of the key claims in a civil fraud lawsuit brought by the New York state attorney general just days before a trial is set to start.

Attorney General Tish James’ office “has submitted conclusive evidence” that the former president and his co-defendants overvalued their assets by between $812 million and $2.2 billion from the years 2014 to 2021, the judge, Arthur Engoron, wrote in a court filing. “Even in the world of high finance, this Court cannot endorse a proposition that finds a misstatement of at least $812 million to be ‘immaterial.’”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation Monday prohibiting schools from banning books because they highlight race, sexual orientation or other protected characteristics, a rebuttal to efforts in Florida and other GOP-led states to severely restrict students’ reading materials.

The legislation authored by state Assemblymember Corey Jackson (D) enacts a financial penalty against school districts that make “efforts to categorically exclude” books related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and other demographics that have faced discrimination.

DETROIT ― President Joe Biden visited striking United Auto Workers members outside a General Motors parts distribution center in Belleville, Michigan, on Tuesday, making him the first sitting president to join a picket line.

“Stick with it, because you deserve the significant raise you need and other benefits,” he said through a megaphone to a few dozen UAW members.

UAW President Shawn Fain, who accompanied him on the visit, thanked the president for his solidarity after publicly extending an invitation to Biden to join a picket line.

Eric Trump seemed a little unhappy with the New York legal system on Tuesday.

Apparently, that’s what happens when a judge decides that your family business has repeatedly committed fraud.

On Tuesday, Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that former President Donald Trump and other members of the Trump Organization consistently overvalued his assets and net worth in order to get better deals from banks, insurers and other businesses.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was one of many people calling for New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez (D) to resign, but it only took two words to get him to change his mind.

Menendez was indicted last week on bribery charges. On Saturday, McCarthy called for the senator’s resignation, saying that the indictment was “very damaging” and that the evidence presented by prosecutors “seems pretty black and white.”

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) this week said February 2024 could be the key month for the GOP to move past Donald Trump.

Ryan, speaking at the University of Wisconsin, expressed hope that Republican rivals to front-runner Trump would by then consolidate behind the one showing the most momentum — and deprive Trump of the nomination.

China has said its recent military activity around the self-ruled island of Taiwan was intended to “combat the arrogance” of alleged separatists.

Beijing claims the democratic island, which lies about 160 kilometres (100 miles) from China’s eastern coast, as its own and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve its goals.

It claims President Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are “separatists” and has sought to isolate the island internationally since she was first elected in 2016, mounting large-scale drills after her meetings with prominent United States politicians Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy.

Scientists investigating the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines have revealed key new details of explosions linked to the event, which remains unsolved on its first anniversary.

Researchers in Norway shared with the Guardian seismic evidence of the four explosions, becoming the first national body to publicly confirm the second two detonations, as well as revealing a detailed timeline of events.

Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House, a New York judge ruled on Tuesday in a strongly worded rejection of the former president’s bid to throw out a civil lawsuit against him.

Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump and executives from his company, including his sons Eric and Donald Jr, routinely and repeatedly deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork.

Extremist Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) ranted against Army Gen. Mark Milley in a Sunday newsletter that included multiple homophobic digs.

Gosar claimed that National Guard assistance at the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack was “delayed” by Milley, the outgoing chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He accused Milley of scheming with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to undermine Donald Trump.

NEW YORK (AP) — A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House, and he ordered some of the former president’s companies removed from his control and dissolved.

Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.

Russia’s defence ministry has released footage showing Viktor Sokolov, the commander of its Black Sea fleet, attending a defence board meeting via video call, a day after Ukraine claimed Sokolov was killed in an attack on the fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol.

In the video, Sokolov was seen apparently taking part in a video conference with the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and senior admirals and army chiefs.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) this week mounted an unexpected defense of Sen. Bob Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat recently indicted on extensive bribery charges.

Menendez faces allegations that he accepted various bribes, including $480,000 in cash and $100,000 in gold bars, in return for improperly using his influence to benefit and enrich several New Jersey businessmen.

Although many of Menendez’s Democratic colleagues have suggested he resign, no Republican senators have called on him to step down, according to Business Insider.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said Tuesday that Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) should resign as he faces federal corruption charges.

“Stepping down is not an admission of guilt but an acknowledgment that holding public office often demands tremendous sacrifices at great personal cost,” Booker said in a statement. “Senator Menendez has made these sacrifices in the past to serve. And in this case he must do so again. I believe stepping down is best for those Senator Menendez has spent his life serving.”

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson fired back at Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) on Monday night after the lawmaker said the two once dated.

Gaetz made the claim in response to accusations of uncomfortable behavior in a new book from Hutchinson, who served in Donald Trump’s White House as an aide to then-chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) repeatedly refused to endorse Donald Trump’s third run for president in an interview on Fox News on Monday.

Instead, the former Trump White House press secretary ― whose two-year tenure in the role was characterized by her peddling of the then-president’s untruths and defense of his outrageous comments ― went off on tangents promoting her work in her state.

Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich first asked Sanders when she was “going to endorse somebody for 2024.”

The identities of any jurors in former President Donald Trump’s election interference case in Georgia will be kept secret until the trial ends, a judge ruled Monday.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the sweeping racketeering case against Trump and his 18 co-defendants, issued the order amid concerns about the safety of prospective jurors.

The state of drought in British Columbia is at a critical point, and government officials are watering down their responsibility to act.

This points to widespread governmental policy failures in climate change, forest and mining practices, and emergency management. Front and centre of this failure are decades of water mismanagement, including regulations that absolve B.C.’s most prolific water users from paying the true cost of water extraction.

Recently, the B.C. government heeded calls to create a Watershed Security Fund, contributing $100 million. While this is a positive step forward, it is a drop in the bucket for what is needed to invest in our watersheds. The provincial government should immediately commit to a minimum of $500 million and work with the federal government to match these contributions.

MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan slammed the “very real wake of destruction” that Rupert Murdoch is leaving behind as the billionaire media baron prepares to step down as Fox Corp. and News Corp. chair.

“It’s difficult to sum up Murdoch’s unremittingly toxic and pernicious record, to encapsulate the sheer power of Murdoch to do damage to our politics, our media, our world,” Hasan wrote in an essay published on the MSNBC website on Sunday, an adapted version of a monologue he gave on his show in April.

Crypto king or conman: is Sam Bankman-Fried about to be sent down for a century?

Sunil Kavuri is not a novice investor. Sure, he hasn’t always been involved in finance: 20 years ago, he was a model. He and his identical twin brother were the stuff of local newspaper human-interest stories, straight-A lads from Rugby in Warwickshire who got firsts in economics, were both on the way to do master’s degrees in finance at Cambridge and got picked up by O2 to do the adverts for Big Brother. You might remember the ad: two floppy-haired guys horseplaying on a sofa.

After that, though, Kavuri worked for Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and then JP Morgan, leaving in 2012 to do his own investing. In 2015, he started investing in cryptocurrencies, mainly bitcoin, which he saw as “digital gold”: “It has all the attributes of gold, but it’s easier to store, so it’s better than gold.” The premise of bitcoin is that the supply is fixed at 21m, so it’s a finite resource. “I saw bitcoin as a better, more portable version,” he says. “It has finance supply, it’s perfectly divisible, it’s fungible.”

But then, in the autumn of 2022, the value of crypto nosedived. As a creditor of the crypto exchange platform FTX, founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, Kavuri lost $2.1m (£1.8m). He is trying to retrieve those funds as part of a class-action lawsuit.

MSNBC’s “The Mehdi Hasan Show” laid bare the delicate dance that Donald Trump is attempting on abortion issues.

Trump, the 2024 Republican front-runner, is “trying to paint himself as a moderate when it comes to abortion ahead of the 2024 election,” the show captioned a supercut it aired on Sunday.

Former President Donald Trump warned that media organizations he believes are “corrupt and dishonest,” like NBC News and MSNBC, will “pay a big price” if he is reelected next year.

In one of several angry posts to his TruthSocial account on Sunday, Trump said these media companies “should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason.’” He also questioned whether they deserve “free” access to U.S. airwaves.

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson said the Trump White House was consumed by a sense of paranoia, adding that her former boss Mark Meadows destroyed several documents in the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Hutchinson wrote in her new book that Meadows “burned so many files” in his home’s fireplace that his wife shared her frustration about the high cost of having to dry clean his suits to rid them of the “bonfire” smell, according to The New York Times.

John Odom, a major Republican donor, has been a top backer of Louisiana gubernatorial candidate Jeff Landry. He’s dined with Landry, talked with him on the phone and attended one of his annual “Alligator Hunt” fundraisers. In all, he’s given $100,000 to his political operation.

But now Landry, the state’s attorney general and frontrunner in the race, has done something that, for Odom, is unforgivable.

He hired former Donald Trump 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as a political adviser.

Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) confused her Jewish holy days on Sunday, prompting ridicule and criticism on social media.

Greene marked Yom Kippur with an image of a Hanukkah menorah.

“To all those preparing for the solemn day of Yom Kippur, I wish you a meaningful fast,” Greene captioned the picture on X, formerly Twitter.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) led the criticism.

NEW YORK (AP) — The second Republican presidential debate will be broadcast Wednesday on Fox Business Network and Univision, but the exclusive online live stream will take place on Rumble, an alternative video-sharing platform that has been criticized for allowing— and at times promoting — far-right extremism, bigotry, election disinformation and conspiracy theories.

By bringing viewers to Rumble to watch the GOP debate, as it did with the first one last month, the Republican National Committee is driving potential voters to a site crawling with content that flouts the rules of more mainstream ones such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

The Philippine coastguard has removed a “floating barrier” installed by China in a disputed area in the South China Sea, calling it a “decisive action” in “upholding international law”.

Authorities carried out “a special operation” that was “in compliance” with the instructions given by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, Philippine coastguard spokesperson Jay Tarriela posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday evening.

“The barrier posed a hazard to navigation, a clear violation of international law. It also hinders the conduct of fishing and livelihood activities of Filipino fisherfolk in BDM, which is an integral part of the Philippine national territory.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) is defending herself after causing a publicized disturbance.

The lawmaker was spotted vaping at the touring production of “Beetlejuice” in Denver last week and allegedly groping her date before being thrown out of the venue. Boebert, whose estranged husband blames himself for their divorce, explained the incident Friday.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed several bills Saturday aimed at strengthening the state’s protections for LGBTQ+ people, a day after issuing a controversial veto that was criticized by advocates.

The new laws include legislation that focuses on support for LGBTQ+ youth. One law sets timelines for required cultural competency training for public school teachers and staff, while another creates an advisory task force to determine the needs of LGBTQ+ students and help advance supportive initiatives.

A third requires families to show that they can and are willing to meet the needs of a child in foster care regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Hillary Clinton thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin will be eager to interfere with U.S. presidential elections again in 2024.

During an appearance on “Inside With Jen Psaki” on Sunday, the former secretary of state said she was positive that Putin meddled in past elections and that she’s sure he is ready to sow discord during next year’s voting cycle.

A leading Uyghur professor who disappeared six years ago is reported to have been sentenced to life in prison by Chinese authorities for “endangering state security”.

Rahile Dawut, 57, who specialises in the study of Uyghur folklore and traditions and is considered an expert in her field, lost an appeal over her sentence after being convicted in 2018 on charges of promoting “splittism”, according to the US-based Dui Hua Foundation human rights group.

Political assassination is a practice as old as human society, although the term itself derives from the 12th-century Persian Order of Assassins, first described by Marco Polo. Julius Caesar, Thomas Becket, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Leon Trotsky, John F Kennedy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Olof Palme and Yevgeny Prigozhin were victims of notorious political assassinations. They had one thing in common: all were high-profile targets.

For years, groups at the vanguard of the anti-vaccine movement had been operating with relatively small budgets and only a handful of staff.

Now, they’re awash in cash.

The Covid-19 pandemic has produced a remarkable financial windfall for anti-vaccine nonprofits. Revenue more than doubled for the Informed Consent Action Network and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense in 2021 compared to the year prior, according to a POLITICO analysis of tax filings. The nonprofits that survived on operating budgets of around a few million dollars just a few years prior are now raking in more than $10 million each.

It came as little surprise that the darker corners of the internet were ablaze with conspiracy theories this week, after Russell Brand used his YouTube channel to call the allegations of sexual assault and rape against him a “coordinated attack” and a “serious and concerted agenda” to control his voice.

But even among more mainstream voices, questions were raised about the timing. Toby Young, a former editor at the Spectator, asked if there was a “more innocent” reason why the Times, the Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches had “waited this long to produce their findings”, while the British business magnate Alan Sugar tweeted that it was “strange” that multiple people had come forward at the same time.

France will withdraw its ambassador from Niger followed by the French military contingent in the next months, Emmanuel Macron has said in the aftermath of the coup in the west African country that ousted the pro-Paris president.

The French president’s announcement appeared to end two months of defiance in which Paris’s ambassador had been kept in place in Niamey despite coup leaders ordering him to leave.

Vladimir Putin moved his $100m (£75m) superyacht from a German shipyard to Russia just weeks before he ordered the invasion of Ukraine, according to secret documents released in a new investigation.

A Russian anti-corruption organisation set up by the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny claims emails show that the Russian president ordered the urgent moving of the 82-metre superyacht, called Graceful, from a shipyard in Hamburg, where it was undergoing a $32m refit, by 1 February 2022.

NEW DELHI (AP) — The Group of 20 Summit, hosted by India earlier this month, couldn’t have gone better for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His pledge to make the African Union a permanent member became reality. And under his leadership, the fractured grouping signed off on a final statement. It was seen as a foreign policy triumph for Modi and set the tone for India as a great emerging power.

Special counsel Jack Smith has added a veteran war crimes prosecutor — who served as Smith’s deputy during his stint at the Hague — to his team as it prepares to put former President Donald Trump on trial in Washington and Florida.

Alex Whiting worked alongside Smith for three years, helping prosecute crimes against humanity that occurred in Kosovo in the late 1990s. The Yale-educated attorney also worked as a prosecutor with the International Criminal Court from 2010 to 2013. He has taught law classes at Harvard since 2007 as well, hired as an assistant professor by then-Dean Elena Kagan — now a Supreme Court justice — and rising to a visiting professorship in 2013.

Former President Donald Trump slammed President Joe Biden’s decision to join the United Auto Workers at the picket lines, calling on the union to endorse him and lambasting the administration’s electric vehicle policies as a “hoax.”

“Crooked Joe sold them down the river with his ridiculous all Electric Car Hoax. This wasn’t Biden’s idea, he can’t put two sentences together. It was the idea of the Radical Left Fascists, Marxists, & Communists who control him and who, in so doing, are DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY! Within 3 years, all of these cars will be made in China,” he wrote on Truth Social late Friday.

A Ukrainian missile attack on the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet headquarters on Friday killed and injured “dozens” of Russian troops, including a number of senior officials, Ukraine’s armed forces claimed on Saturday.

The claim, which couldn’t be verified, came as another rocket attack was launched on the Crimean city of Sevastopol, where the fleet is based, on Saturday. The Russia-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said on Telegram that debris from intercepted missiles fell near a pier during the latest assault.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine on Saturday morning launched another missile attack on Sevastopol on the occupied Crimean Peninsula, a Russian-installed official said, a day after an attack on the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet that left a serviceman missing and the main building smoldering.

Sevastopol was put under an air raid alert for about an hour after debris from intercepted missiles fell near a pier, Gov. Mikhail Razvozhayev wrote on the messaging app Telegram. He later added that another missile fragment fell in a park in northern Sevastopol, parts of which had to be cordoned off. Ferry traffic in the area was also halted and later resumed.

Former President Donald Trump has achieved a unique status in United States history. He is the first president to be indicted for conspiring to overturn a presidential election, defraud the U.S. and obstruct official proceedings by attempting to subvert the peaceful transfer of power.

It’s now a matter of public record that Trump faces four indictments and 91 felony counts for his criminal behavior. As Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman point out in The New York Times, the charges clearly depict how “Trump promoted false claims of fraud, sought to bend the Justice Department toward supporting those claims and oversaw a scheme to create false slates of electors pledged to him in states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.” And Special Counsel Jack Smith has shown that Trump’s lies played a central role in his “unprecedented assault” on the U.S. Capitol and democracy; indeed, he argues, Trump’s criminal actions were “fueled by lies.”