Democracy gone Astray: Thursday, October 12, 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 12, 2023

Jim Jordan, Who's Running For Speaker, Played A Key Role In Trump's 2020 Election Plot

WASHINGTON ― Staunch conservative Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is in the spotlight after launching a bid for the speaker’s gavel this week, a race that is sure to provide even more drama and chaos than the unprecedented ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

But one critical aspect of Jordan’s history that has been omitted by most Beltway publications is the prominent role he played in spreading lies about the 2020 election and rallying supporters to contest the results. The extraordinary effort led by former President Donald Trump, who has endorsed Jordan’s bid for speaker, led to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The Internal Revenue Service has placed a tax lien on Rudy Giuliani’s Florida condo in another sign of the longtime Donald Trump ally’s growing financial difficulties.

The condo, part of a complex built in 1969, is located around three miles north of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Giuliani owes about $550,000 in income taxes to the IRS, according to a filing signed in late August. That’s in addition to a variety of legal bills that are reportedly mounting as the former New York City mayor faces criminal election interference charges in Georgia and other legal woes.

Just hours after Kevin McCarthy was deposed as House speaker, the “draft Trump” movement began.

“I called him and I said, ‘Sir, I’m nominating you for the speaker of the House,’” said Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), describing a Tuesday call to former President Donald Trump. “I said, ‘I think that you would do a great job fixing the brokenness we see in the Congress.’”

So began a wild 48-hour scramble that saw Trump openly pondering a quixotic bid to become the first nonmember to be elected speaker before his political advisers and House allies managed to convince him it was a terrible idea.

An extraordinary rally in Warsaw last Sunday drew crowds of up to 800,000 opposition supporters, many waving Polish and EU flags, on to the streets of the capital. The prevailing atmosphere was one of peaceful concern for the fate of the country. As one of the biggest demonstrations in Poland’s recent history, it was a stunning show of support for the opposition Civic Coalition and its leader, former prime minister Donald Tusk, as he prepares to challenge the rightwing populist governing party Law and Justice in elections on 15 October.

Mary Trump suggested embarrassment is at the root of Donald Trump’s abrupt departure from his civil fraud trial.

“He showed up in New York voluntarily because he knew how important this fraud trial is not only to his reputation but to the core of his own beliefs about who he is,” the former president’s niece, a psychologist and author, said in her Substack newsletter on Thursday. “He left because he knew nothing he did — the pouting, the angry stares, the media hits — was working.”

The October 3 raids on the news website “NewsClick” and the arrest of its founder, Prabir Purkayastha and human resources head, Amit Chakravarty, are the latest attempts by the Indian government to decimate independent and critical media in the country.

The use of draconian anti-terror laws against the media organisation and its journalists is an alarming reminder of the Indian government’s determination to crack down on free press and systematically stifle dissenting voices.

Kyiv, Ukraine – “Russian warship, go f*** yourself!” is the phrase dating back to the first days of the Russia-Ukrainian war, that spawned countless memes and bumper stickers.

It is what Ukrainian servicemen stationed on the Zmiiny Island, or Snake Island, in the Black Sea replied to the Russian warship’s urge to surrender.

But by early 2022, the Russian Black Sea Fleet based in annexed Crimea, seemed to have gained absolute control over Ukraine’s territorial waters in the Black Sea and its smaller, shallower sibling, the Sea of Azov.

Former President Donald Trump reportedly shared details about America’s nuclear submarine program with an Australian billionaire, who then went on to tell journalists, foreign officials and others about the sensitive information, according to multiple reports.

ABC News first reported that special counsel Jack Smith had learned about Trump’s disclosure to the billionaire — a cardboard magnate named Anthony Pratt — as part of his investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents. Trump allegedly told Pratt several government secrets about the submarines during an event at his Mar-a-Lago club and residence in Florida, where the billionaire is a member.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is asking a federal judge to dismiss criminal charges against him based on his actions leading up to his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt because, as president, that coup attempt should be considered part of his presidential duties.

Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and John Lauro, in Thursday’s 52-page filing to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, attempted to minimize Trump’s actions leading up to the violent assault on the Capitol that day and that, regardless, the law allowed Trump to act based on his belief that the election had been stolen from him.

The New York attorney general, Letitia James, told reporters on Wednesday that “the Trump show is over” as the third day of the former US president’s civil fraud trial wrapped up in Manhattan.

James and Trump both returned to the trial a day after Trump ran afoul of the judge by denigrating a key court staffer in a social media post.

Outside court, James called Trump’s appearance at the civil trial – which he is not required to attend – a “political stunt” and a “fundraising stop”.

Vladimir Putin has claimed that the plane crash that killed Yevgeny Prigozhin was caused by hand grenades detonating inside the aircraft, and suggested the Wagner boss may have been on drugs.

Prigozhin died when his business jet crashed on 23 August, two months after he staged an aborted mutiny against Russian military commanders in which his Wagner mercenary troops briefly took control of the southern city of Rostov and advanced towards Moscow. Two other top Wagner commanders, Prigozhin’s four bodyguards and a crew of three were also killed.

Four Palestinians have been killed in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank, three at the hands of Israeli soldiers, and one by an Israeli settler, according to the Israeli military and medical officials.

Two of the men were killed near Shufa village in the Tulkarm area, Israel’s military said on Thursday, adding that a gunfight had erupted after soldiers identified a “suspicious vehicle”, and the two men shot at the settler.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that Russia could return to nuclear weapons testing and might withdraw its ratification of a landmark nuclear test ban treaty.

In an address on Thursday that touched on topics such as nuclear weapons, energy, and the war in Ukraine, Putin also said that Russia had tested a new nuclear-powered missile delivery system but had not decided whether to resume the testing of explosives.

“I think no person of sound mind and clear memory would think of using nuclear weapons against Russia,” Putin said in the speech at a forum of foreign policy experts in Sochi.

At least 51 people have been killed and six wounded in a Russian missile attack on a northeastern village, Ukrainian officials say.

Oleh Syniehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region, said the afternoon strike on Thursday hit a cafe and a store in the village of Hroza, about 30km (20 miles) west of the front-line town of Kupiansk, with many civilians present at the time of the attack.

He added that a six-year-old child was among the dead.

Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, has removed headlines from article previews in posts on the platform, placing a huge barrier on access to news and information from media outlets in the right-wing billionaire’s latest attack on journalism.

For many users, links to news articles on the website now look similar to a post with an image attached, but with small text showing the domain of the linked article in the bottom left corner. Users can still access the article by clicking on the image, but the headlines and subheadlines are now stripped from the preview, rendering many posts from news outlets, journalists, and other users confusing and without context.

Presidential candidate Cornel West is leaving the Green Party and will continue his bid for the White House as an independent candidate.

“As Dr. West’s campaign for president grows, he believes the best way to challenge the entrenched system is by focusing 100% on the people, not on the intricacies of internal party dynamics,” said the West campaign in a statement.

West, an outspoken progressive and longtime university scholar, has ruffled feathers among Democrats, who view him as a potential spoiler for President Joe Biden’s reelection chances. West has batted back the idea he might pull support from Biden in multiple interviews, saying the Biden campaign is free to court the voters flocking to him.

In the hours after the House of Representatives’ historic vote to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership, a photo began circulating online of the cover of Young Guns, the splashy policy treatise authored by then-Reps. Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy in 2010. The irony of the photo was clear enough: The book, which featured a gleaming group portrait of the three self-declared standard-bearers of the Republican Party, was intended to introduce the rising stars of the GOP to the American people — but now, just 13 years after its publication, the book had become a visual obituary for the party’s past.

A U.S. F-16 fighter jet shot down a Turkish drone that was flying over a base in northeast Syria where American forces are located, a Pentagon spokesperson said Thursday.

At 7:30 a.m. local time, U.S. forces observed unmanned aerial systems conducting airstrikes near Hasakah, in northeast Syria, including some just a kilometer away from the American troops, Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters during a briefing. The airstrikes were inside a declared U.S. restricted operating zone, and the troops relocated to bunkers, he said.

The idea of former President Donald Trump as speaker of the House has some pro-Trump Republicans excited — and at least one Democratic leader notably less so.

“If Trump becomes Speaker of the House, the House chamber will be like a Trump rally everyday!!” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote Thursday in a post on X. “It would be the House of MAGA!!!”

About an hour later, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took to the social media platform to ridicule the idea.

European leaders have rallied around the Ukrainian president in the face of US jitters over defence funding, promising to never waver in their support for the country.

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said the gathering of 47 European leaders was testimony to the strength of support in the fight to defeat Vladimir Putin.

It was a moment of humiliation for Moscow. The headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet – a building of elegant white columns overlooking the Crimean port of Sevastopol – was ablaze. Smoke billowed into a blue sky. First one, and then a second Storm Shadow missile slammed into its roof. Video captured the impact: a precise, deadly, thunderous strike.

The attack on 22 September killed 34 officers, including Viktor Sokolov, the fleet’s commander, according to Ukraine. Russia denied this, releasing footage of Sokolov, suggesting he was still alive. Whatever the truth of the admiral’s fate, the blow deep into enemy territory was of major significance. It was further proof that Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion, 19 months on, had not gone to plan.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) desperately wants Donald Trump to be the next speaker of the House, but on Thursday, she inadvertently made the case why he should not be chosen for the office.

Greene has been tweeting out support for Trump as speaker ever since Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was ousted from the job.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A man illegally brought a loaded handgun into the Wisconsin Capitol, demanding to see Gov. Tony Evers, and returned at night with an assault rifle after posting bail, a spokesperson for the state said Thursday.

The man, who was shirtless and had a holstered handgun, approached the governor’s office on the first floor of the Capitol around 2 p.m. Wednesday, state Department of Administration spokesperson Tatyana Warrick said. The man was demanding to see the governor, who was not in the building at the time, Warrick said.

Nancy Pelosi and her long-time deputy Steny Hoyer have been ordered to leave their workspaces in the US Capitol by acting House Speaker Patrick McHenry.

Both were told that the locks on their office doors would be "re-keyed".

The evictions come after Kevin McCarthy was removed from the chamber's plum post on Tuesday and Mr McHenry was appointed in the interim.

Russian and Ukrainian forces remained largely static on the battlefield in the 84th week of the war after a month of vigorous Ukrainian advances that saw Kyiv break through the first of three Russian lines of defence on the southern front.

Still, Ukraine proved it could hold onto its gains against Russian counterattacks and even made a few advances.

Russian forces appeared to have lost a kilometre-long (0.6-mile-long) trench west of Verbove, a village on the front line of the main Ukrainian thrust through Russian defences in the Zaporizhia region in southeastern Ukraine.

Russia may use sea mines against civilian shipping in the Black Sea, including by laying them on the approach to Ukrainian ports, the United Kingdom has said citing intelligence sources.

The warning comes as Ukraine’s navy said that 12 cargo vessels were ready to enter a fledgling Black Sea shipping corridor on their way to Ukrainian ports, a significant increase in maritime traffic to Ukraine in defiance of a de facto Russian blockade of the country’s sea ports.

The 2024 elections are more than a year away, but former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is already deploying disinformation about voter fraud and claiming that Democrats are trying “steal” the election, setting the stage for players in the right-wing cottage industry known as the “election denial industrial complex” to once again profit from riling up voters and casting doubt on any result that is not favorable to Trump and the GOP.

Senior advisers to the Trump campaign posted a statement to social media on Monday calling on the Republican National Committee (RNC) to essentially shut down the ongoing GOP primary race so the party can preemptively nominate Trump and “refocus its manpower and money on preventing Democrats’ efforts to steal the 2024 election.”

In a landmark move, the eastern Indian state of Bihar has announced the findings of the first-ever caste census since the country’s independence in 1947. The survey found that over two-thirds of the state’s population of over 130 million belonged to “backward” or marginalised communities.

As part of the decades-old government affirmative action, marginalised communities have been categorised as backward, extremely backward, scheduled caste (the former “untouchables”) and scheduled tribe (the Indigenous communities). India is one of the most unequal countries in the world with the bulk of the resources and jobs controlled by the privileged castes.

The New York attorney general, Letitia James, told reporters on Wednesday that “the Trump show is over” as the third day of the former US president’s civil fraud trial wrapped up in Manhattan.

James and Trump both returned to the trial a day after Trump ran afoul of the judge by denigrating a key court staffer in a social media post.

Outside court, James called Trump’s appearance at the civil trial – which he is not required to attend – a “political stunt” and a “fundraising stop”.

The historic removal of the House speaker Kevin McCarthy has thrown further doubt over the future of US support for Ukraine and resistance against Russia’s invasion.

The latest tranche of $300m (£247m) in aid to Ukraine was approved overwhelmingly by the House last Thursday in a 331-117 vote, but all the 117 no votes were Republicans – more than half the party’s representatives. It was the far right of the party that ousted McCarthy and will be critical to the election of his replacement, as it is focused on cutting US funding for Kyiv.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) is already griping about the temporary new speaker of the House after inciting months of GOP infighting that led to the ouster of Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry is “moving in the wrong direction,” Gaetz said Tuesday. (Watch the video below.)

Eight breakaway Republicans, led by Gaetz, joined House Democrats in voting to dismiss McCarthy from the speakership earlier in the day. McHenry, a GOP representative from North Carolina, was announced as the fill-in.

“Fraud,” said the judge presiding over the case. “Staggering fraud,” said the attorney general who brought the case. “Year after year, loan after loan,” said the lawyer prosecuting the case. “This isn’t business as usual.” The trial of former President Donald Trump that started this week in New York, wishcasters have suggested of late, will prove once and for all that Trump is a cheat and a fake — that it will strike at the very heart of his core but counterfeit identity as a rich, omnipotent and masterful business boss.

It’s both obviously true and almost totally beside the point.

Manitoba has elected Canada’s first provincial First Nations premier, handing the progressive leader a legislative majority following a contentious election campaign.

Wab Kinew, the 41-year-old head of the leftwing New Democratic party (NDP), has led the province’s party since 2017. A former rapper, broadcast journalist and university administrator, Kinew said his newly elected government will focus on reopening three emergency rooms shuttered in recent years. He also said the province would invest in more social housing.

Twice in the past two weeks, Donald Trump has suggested violent consequences for those who dare to cross him.

Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff? He deserves to be executed, Trump charged. Milley’s backchannel communications, intended to reassure Chinese military leaders before and after the 2020 election, amounted to a treasonous act “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”

Jim Jordan of Ohio and Steve Scalise of Louisiana announced Wednesday they would seek to succeed Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the US House of Representatives, after the Californian was brutally removed by his own Republican party on Tuesday.

Jordan is chair of the powerful judiciary committee, while Scalise is the majority leader. Both had been named as potential successors to McCarthy, and they confirmed their intentions to run for the top House job a day after the speakership was declared vacant.

Back in January, when Kevin McCarthy started moving his stuff into the House speaker’s office before colleagues had actually voted him into the job, Matt Gaetz accused him of being “a squatter.”

That is the kind of raucous insult for which Gaetz has demonstrated special fluency. But give the Florida Republican his due: Squatter turned out to be a perfectly apt description of the now-former House speaker.

Fulton county prosecutors in Georgia have approached several defendants about plea agreements in the sprawling criminal racketeering case dealing with Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 election, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Tuesday.

Plea agreements are common in such cases accusing defendants of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) Act, where prosecutors will often try and get individuals at the lower level of a criminal enterprise to “flip” and assist the prosecution in exchange for a lighter sentence or immunity. The district attorney’s office has already reached immunity plea agreements with at least half of the fake set of electors in Georgia.

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial issued a gag order on Tuesday after the former president made comments about the judge’s clerk.

“Consider this statement a gag order forbidding all parties from posting, emailing or speaking publicly about any of my staff,” the judge, Arthur Engoron, said on Tuesday afternoon. “Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate and I will not tolerate them in any circumstances.

Armenia’s parliament has voted to join the international criminal court (ICC), obliging the former Soviet republic to arrest Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, if he were to visit the country.

Tuesday’s decision will further strain relations with Moscow, Armenia’s traditional ally. Ties are already badly damaged over the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine and Azerbaijan’s recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The blue and yellow flag still flies high over Britain’s town squares and public buildings, signalling our unwavering and enduring solidarity with Ukraine’s war effort.

Well, in theory, anyway. For you can feel the fatigue descending now, like heavy autumn mist pooling in the bottom of a valley; a sort of strange public torpor, quietly smothering the high emotion of the early days of the war. Having leapt too quickly at the assumption that Kyiv couldn’t possibly hold out against the mighty Russian army, British public opinion then swung wildly towards what has turned out to be an equally unrealistic idea, namely that plucky Ukraine could somehow achieve a David v Goliath victory over the rusting superpower within the year.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) is trying to boot House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from his leadership post over his deal with Democrats to prevent a government shutdown and claims that McCarthy cut a “secret side deal” with President Joe Biden on aid for Ukraine.

But at least one member of his own conference isn’t having it.

On the same Friday afternoon last November that Premier Doug Ford's government announced its plan to take certain developers' land out of the Greenbelt, it also made moves that benefited developers who own rural land on the outskirts of Ottawa and Hamilton.

It did so by expanding each city's boundaries, instantly turning certain parcels of agricultural land from rural to urban, opening them up to future housing development and sharply increasing their potential value.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government is "not looking to escalate" a diplomatic row with New Delhi, but declined to say whether Canada would match India's reported decision to ask for the removal 41 Canadian diplomats.

Trudeau made the comments on his way into the Liberal caucus meeting in Ottawa on Tuesday, hours after India told Canada that it must repatriate 41 diplomats by Oct. 10, according to a story first published in the Financial Times earlier in the day.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists who developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.

Professors Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman will share the prize.

The technology was experimental before the pandemic, but has now been given to millions of people around the world to protect them against serious Covid-19.

When 29-year-old accountant Cai Yutong pulled out her iPhone 13 at a Starbucks on the outskirts of Shanghai, her colleague sitting opposite her moved closer.

“You know, they are launching a new Huawei phone, right?” she asked, according to Cai who recounted the episode to Al Jazeera.

Huawei is a giant of China’s telecommunication and consumer electronics industry and a major producer of smartphones.

Before Cai could answer the question, her colleague had pulled out a Huawei mobile from her bag.

A defendant charged alongside former President Donald Trump in Georgia has pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Scott Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman, is the first person to reach a plea deal in the case, in which Trump and 18 others were charged with racketeering conspiracy for their efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Hall, 59, who was involved in a breach of election equipment, pleaded guilty Friday in Atlanta to five counts of conspiring to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties. The plea deal included an agreement to a sentence of five years of probation, a $5,000 fine and a letter of apology to the state.

A super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has begun polling his support as an Independent, one of the strongest indications to date that the long-shot Democrat is set to announce a party affiliation switch.

The poll, conducted by the firm John Zogby Strategies and commissioned by the American Values 2024 PAC, comes amid growing speculation — fueled by Kennedy himself — that he will leave the Democratic Party in the upcoming weeks.

But what the PAC found in its survey may be as notable as the tea leaves around a switch itself: Kennedy, as an Independent, would pull more support away from Republican Donald Trump than Democrat Joe Biden, according to the findings.

In Stalin’s Soviet Union, years into the Great Terror, the Soviet secret police began rounding up military leaders. In 1937, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky was arrested on manufactured charges of spying for the Nazis. After being tortured into confessing his “crimes,” he was summarily shot. Over the next two years, in the run-up to World War II, an estimated 35,000-plus Soviet military officers were shot, or sent to the Gulag, or simply dismissed from service. It was the logical endpoint of Stalin’s increasingly paranoid and ruthless leadership, a way of stamping out potential opposition from “enemies of the people” within the one institution in the country that might have been capable of standing up to Joseph Stalin’s totalitarian rule.

Five years ago, Jamal Khashoggi walked into Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul to pick up a document he needed in order to marry his Turkish fiancee. The journalist never walked out. Inside the consulate, he was ambushed by a 15-member Saudi hit team, who suffocated him and dismembered his body with a bone saw. The death squad then slipped out of Turkey on two charter planes owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

Since then, Mohammed bin Salman – Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler, who, according to US intelligence officials, approved Khashoggi’s assassination – has managed a near complete rehabilitation of his increasingly autocratic regime. Prince Mohammed has met with

Ukraine is set to receive billions of euros more in military aid, as well as training for fighter pilots, the EU’s top diplomat has said, after a “historic” meeting of EU foreign ministers in Kyiv.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, said on Monday the 27-nation bloc remained committed to helping Ukraine defeat a “brutal and inhumane” Russia.