Democracy gone Astray: Friday, October 13, 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.]

Friday, October 13, 2023

EU ‘very close’ to finalising Russian diamond ban, says Belgian PM

Western countries are “very close” to finalising a ban on Russian diamonds from retail markets in countries that are already sanctioning Kremlin assets, the Belgian prime minister has said.

In a move that will cut off another vital source of revenue for Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine, Alexander de Croo said a year-long attempt by the European Union and G7 countries to reliably trace diamonds coming from Russia was almost complete.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said he fears that the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel and US politics could threaten military support for his country, as he made a surprise visit to Brussels where Nato defence ministers are meeting.

“I want to be honest with you, of course it is a dangerous situation for people in Ukraine,” he said on his first visit to Nato headquarters since Russia’s 2022 invasion, making an in-person plea for continued assistance at a time when turbulence in the US Congress threatens to disrupt aid for Kyiv and the world’s attention is drawn to the crisis unfolding in the Middle East.

Nato has promised a “determined” response if damage to an undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia proves deliberate, as investigators said traces of an “external, mechanical force” had been found on the seabed.

Amid widespread media speculation about the likelihood of Russian sabotage, Risto Lohi of the Finnish national bureau of investigation told a press conference in Helsinki on Wednesday: “There is reason to suspect an external force … caused the damage.” The force, he added, “appears to have been mechanical, not an explosion”.

WASHINGTON ― Republicans picked their replacement for former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Wednesday but stopped short of holding an official vote on the House floor out of fear he might not have the votes.

After Republicans selected Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) as their nominee for speaker in a closed-door meeting, infighting threatened to bring about an embarrassing repeat of the marathon vote series it took to get McCarthy elected in January.

On October 7, Hamas launched a massive military operation into Israeli territory. The shooting of thousands of rockets into Israel was followed by an attack by land, air and sea, with fighters penetrating deep into territory under Israeli control. They attacked military installations and temporarily took over various settlements. The death toll among Israelis has exceeded 1,200, including more than 120 soldiers; dozens of Israeli hostages were also taken into the Gaza Strip.

The planning of the operation took somewhere between a few months and two years, per different accounts from Hamas leaders. The depth and magnitude of the attack were unprecedented and took Israel by surprise. It was a reaction to changing regional dynamics and growing Israeli aggression.

Special counsel Jack Smith is demanding to know whether former President Donald Trump actually plans to argue in court — as he and his legal team have suggested they will — that he was simply following advice from his lawyers when he attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Several lawyers in Trump’s circle, including then-Attorney General William Barr, have already said they told the former president that his attempts to overturn the election were unfounded because there was no evidence of widespread election fraud.

Alex Jones intends to resist efforts by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to compel him to testify in this month’s trial of two Donald Trump co-defendants, his attorney said Tuesday.

Norm Pattis, an attorney for the far-right broadcaster, said Jones has nothing to offer in the trial — and that even if a court were to order him to testify, he would simply plead the Fifth, as he did when subpoenaed to testify to the House Jan. 6 select committee last year.

“We’re not going to help Fani’s fantasy life come true any more than we did that of the J6 committee,” Pattis said.

The U.S. could soon have two aircraft carriers in the eastern Mediterranean, according to Defense Department officials, a move that would mark a major escalation in U.S. military power in the region as fighting intensifies between Israeli forces and Hamas militants.

The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, along with its associated warships and fighter jets, was already scheduled to depart from Norfolk, Va., this week and may be ordered to deploy to the waters off the coast of Israel, according to two DOD officials who were granted anonymity to discuss future operations.

Israel’s ongoing shelling of the Gaza strip has killed at least six Palestinian journalists over the past few days, press freedom watchdogs say.

On Tuesday, journalist Saeed al-Taweel, editor-in-chief of Al-Khamsa News, was killed while reporting, along with two other members of the press. “Unfortunately, they have sent a warning notice to the Hiji building just now that it will be bombed,” al-Taweel said shortly before being killed, according to Al Jazeera. “The area has been evacuated entirely. Women, men, the elderly, kids have all completely fled the area.”

Dear Dr. Steve,

I paid $700 for a Thanksgiving turkey and as a result am now living in my car with a toothbrush, a can opener and a family of squirrels. Isn’t this Trudeau’s fault?

Signed,

Pierre

Canada’s federal police have opened a criminal investigation into a controversial plan to allow construction on greenbelt lands in Ontario, escalating a political scandal that has gripped the province and already forced a number of high-profile government resignations.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced on Tuesday that its sensitive and international investigations unit would investigate the C$8.3bn ($6.10bn) deal.

Frightened residents of Gaza have described bombardments striking residential buildings, hospitals and schools across the enclave amid growing concern over destruction of civilian infrastructure as Israel pledges to enforce a full siege.

Palestinian health officials said more than 900 people have been killed, with 4,250 wounded since Saturday.

Nidal Hamdouna, a humanitarian worker with Norwegian-Danish organisation Church Aid, said: “I believe this is the most serious escalation I will face. I was born here in Gaza, I witnessed the previous escalations.

Road 232, an Israeli highway, runs parallel to the blockaded Gaza Strip. It is surrounded by flat agricultural land in every direction, and from it the higher floors of the overcrowded enclave’s high rise buildings are clearly visible, about 3 miles (5km) away.

Now, the route appears to have become the new de facto boundary between territory controlled by Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement that launched a devastating surprise sea, land and air offensive on 20 neighbouring kibbutzim and Israeli towns last weekend. They slaughtered more than 1,000 people, and abducted dozens more to be used as bargaining chips. More than 900 people in Gaza have been killed in retaliatory Israeli airstrikes.

The current crisis at West Virginia University (WVU) is a case study demonstrating not only the telltale signs of manufactured neoliberal austerity, but also the underlying acceptance of right-wing extremist trends in higher education masquerading as “necessary” budget cuts for the financial survival of the university.

Just hours after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he would run for president as an independent, more than $11 million gushed to the coffers of the super PAC supporting him.

American Values 2024 said it raised $11.28 million in just six hours following Kennedy’s announcement in Philadelphia on Indigenous People’s Day, according to a press release.

“Millions of independent-minded Americans are seeing through the most powerful censorship and propaganda campaign against any candidate in American political history,” said Tony Lyons, a co-founder of the PAC, in the press release. “They are angry at the DNC for attempting to disenfranchise them, eager to support an honest Democrat and more open than ever before in American history to an Independent and honest candidate.”

Georgia prosecutors say a key Trump campaign legal adviser’s memos — which guided efforts to subvert the 2020 election despite former President Donald Trump’s defeat — cannot be shielded by attorney-client privilege because they were about politics, not law.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued Tuesday that the memos by Ken Chesebro, one of 18 defendants charged alongside Trump in a sprawling racketeering conspiracy related to the 2020 election, were not about a litigation strategy or legal advice, which would typically be protected by confidentiality rules.

President Joe Biden is facing mounting Republican pressure to take action against Iran in the wake of the latest violence in the Middle East, even as U.S. officials say they don’t have a smoking gun proving that Tehran played a direct role.

More than a dozen GOP senators are leading the charge, calling on the Biden administration to refreeze the $6 billion in funds released to Tehran in a prisoner exchange deal last month. The administration also faces calls to impose new sanctions on Iran or even take military action against Iranian targets.

Hamas’ assault on Israel has reanimated a proposal Israelis have loudly whispered about for weeks: that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would rid the government of religious Zionist parties in favor of a centrist coalition that includes liberals — former prime minister Yair Lapid (of Yesh Atid) and ex-defense minister Benny Gantz (of National Unity).

Besides bettering Jerusalem’s relations with the Biden administration, a centrist coalition led by Netanyahu’s Likud would help the embattled prime minister prosecute the war against Hamas, restore domestic comity and secure peace with Saudi Arabia. Israel’s worst security crisis in years gives Netanyahu the chance to make valuable friends at home and abroad — and to secure his legacy as the most important Jewish leader since Israel’s founding.

As Israeli troops massed on the border of the Gaza Strip and carried out an intense bombing campaign in response to the Hamas attack on border towns over the weekend, Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., called for more unchecked violence from the Israeli state.

Auchincloss’s Monday comments came in response to Sen. Edward Markey’s calls for deescalation during a rally in Boston. “The United States and the international community must keep pushing for diplomacy and the ending of civilian casualties on all sides,” Markey said. “There must be a deescalation of the current violence.” The audience erupted in boos, prompting Auchincloss to speak up.

As the world learned over the weekend of Hamas’ surprise military incursion and hostage-taking in southern Israel and Israel’s subsequent airstrikes in Gaza, millions flocked to X for news.

But the site, formerly known as Twitter, has become a massive engine for false, fake and manipulated information, clouding the reality of events on the ground. In many cases, X users appeared to be following economic and political incentives to muddy the waters. And Musk’s overhaul of the site, several experts observed, could be fueling the widespread misinformation.

Former President Donald Trump used the ongoing conflict in Israel and the Gaza Strip to stoke fears on Monday about immigration into the United States, pledging to reimpose a travel ban on people coming from predominantly Muslim countries.

“As president, I will once again stand strongly with the state of Israel, and we will cut off the money to the terrorists on day one,” Trump, who is running for the 2024 GOP nomination, said during a campaign rally in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. He added he would “reimpose the travel ban on terror-afflicted countries.”

The Biden administration is surging weapons to Israel, rapidly sending air defenses and munitions in response to Israeli officials’ urgent requests for aid, a senior Pentagon official said Monday.

“Planes have already taken off,” the senior official, who was granted anonymity in order to speak about sensitive plans, told reporters.

The Defense Department is working across its enterprise, including U.S. Central Command, to determine which arms in U.S. inventory can be made quickly available for Israel’s defense, as well as pressing industry to expedite the delivery of pending Israeli orders for military equipment, the official said. DOD officials are in “constant, ongoing contact” with their Israeli counterparts as the needs of the conflict evolve.

U.S. and Israeli officials say they remain unsure whether Iran was definitively involved in Hamas’ surprise weekend attack on Israel, which has spiraled into one of the region’s worst spells of violence in decades.

“We have no evidence or proof” that Iran was behind it, but Israel also didn’t have intelligence to see the attack coming, Maj. Nir Dinar, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, told POLITICO on Monday. “We are 100 percent sure that the Iranians were not surprised.”

On the night of September 11, 2001, I sat on the stoop of my apartment building in Greenwich Village and drank some abominable wine coolers with my neighbors. I’d bought them from a nearby store that had already started wild profiteering and was charging three times the normal price. We were two miles north of the site of the World Trade Center; the neighborhood smelled of acrid smoke, which turned out to be preferable to the stench of burnt, rotting bodies that would develop later that week.

WASHINGTON ― As Republicans try to link President Joe Biden’s release of $6 billion of frozen Iranian money as part of a prisoner swap to the weekend terrorist attack on Israel, they continue to ignore the documented damage done to that country’s security by the de facto leader of their party, Donald Trump.

Less than four months into his term, the coup-attempting former president was bragging to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during their Oval Office visit about the quality of the briefings he was receiving, and as proof offered details about a secret Israeli intelligence operation into Syria.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spent the past three decades sounding the alarm about Iran’s nuclear programme and threatening to attack the country on countless occasions. Most recently in September, he said in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly that Tehran must face a “credible nuclear threat” before his office corrected the record to “credible military threat”.

After Hamas’s attack on October 7, Netanyahu may finally be able to act on his threats. The gruesome scenes in southern Israel have provided the Israeli prime minister with the necessary pretext and international backing for a wider response.

The recent explosion of violence in and around the Gaza Strip, triggered by a Hamas assault that killed hundreds of Israelis, including scores of civilians, has drawn the U.S. back into a region from which the Biden administration has spent years trying to pivot away from. The U.S. has reportedly begun to move naval assets into the Mediterranean to provide support for Israel’s military operation against Gaza, a full-scale invasion that will likely take weeks, if not longer, to complete.

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant used genocidal language and ordered mass war crimes in the occupied Gaza Strip on Monday in response to Hamas’s weekend assault and massacre of Israeli civilians, setting the stage for a large-scale escalation of the violence that has already led to the killing of at least 800 Israelis and more than 500 Palestinians.

Gallant said that he had ordered “a complete siege of the Gaza Strip,” which is home to 2.2 million Palestinians, nearly half of them children. “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” he said. “We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.”

PHILADELPHIA — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Monday that he will run for president as an independent, abandoning his quest to challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic Party nomination.

Kennedy, the son and namesake of an assassinated former U.S. senator and presidential candidate, revealed his new course of action at an early afternoon rally for hundreds of supporters on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall, a location he chose for its proximity to where the country was founded.

It only took a short time after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he was running for president as an independent on Monday for members of his family to denounce his candidacy.

Kennedy previously announced he would be running as a Democrat against Joe Biden, but the Democratic National Committee is refusing to schedule primary debates against the president.

Several Republican presidential candidates blamed President Joe Biden and his administration for Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel over the weekend.

The Israeli government has responded with a formal declaration of war against the militant group. The fighting has so far led to the death of more than 1,200 people and thousands wounded on both sides.

NEW YORK (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and scion of the storied Democratic dynasty, is expected to launch an independent or third-party presidential bid on Monday. Cornel West, a philosopher and Black social leader, made the same choice last week. And No Labels, a new political party, is intensifying candidate recruitment efforts.

While the politics are murky, the fresh frenzy of outsider candidates threatens to weaken both major parties as Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican former President Donald Trump tighten their grip on their parties’ presidential nominations.

HBO’s John Oliver on Sunday spotlighted the behavior of a GOP mayoral candidate in Franklin, Tennessee, as being “entirely emblematic of Republican politics, from the local level all the way up to the top.”

Real estate agent and town alderman Gabrielle Hanson has “branded herself as a hardcore MAGA candidate,” the “Last Week Tonight” host noted.

Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Sunday said Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s refusal to condemn Donald Trump’s violent rhetoric showed America is “living through real-time preparation for an authoritarian crackdown.”

Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told Kristen Welker of NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump’s floating of the idea of executing retired Gen. Mark Milley, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was “irresponsible.”

Robert F Kennedy Jr - the anti-vaccination activist, environmental lawyer and member of America's most famous political family - is running for president as an independent. Although his chances of capturing the White House are slim to none, he could impact a close race.

"If it becomes a choice between Trump and Kennedy, that's a really tough question," says Sherri Guoan. "In a perfect world, I would love for them to run together."

The Supreme Court’s latest term has just begun, and it is set to shove one of former President Donald Trump’s appointees into the spotlight: Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Since the court achieved its six-vote conservative supermajority in 2020, Kavanaugh has issued concurrences in high-profile decisions that provided guidance or guardrails on the majority opinions that he joined. In each case, Kavanaugh’s effort to guide future decisions and place himself at the center of the court will be tested in this term.

It has been a good week for Vladimir Putin. On Thursday, a Russian missile hit a cafe in eastern Ukraine, killing more than 50 people, including a six-year-old boy. On Monday, the Russian-leaning Robert Fico was elected prime minister of Slovakia, pledging to cut military supplies to Ukraine. In America, Republicans and Democrats are having fisticuffs over funding for Ukraine, a previously bipartisan issue becoming ever more polarised. Meanwhile, the EU admits it can’t match US levels of support.

The American Library Association (ALA) recently reported there have been 695 attempts to censor library materials and services, as well as documented challenges to 1,915 unique titles over a seven-month period in 2023.

According to the ALA report, “The majority of the targeted books were ‘written by or about a person of color or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.’ For example, in Iowa’s Urbandale Community School District, the Des Moines Register obtained a list of ‘374 books flagged for removal without knowing if the district even owned the books.’”

There are two key questions in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s surprise assault on Israel: what was the attack designed to achieve, and why now?

Even as the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel was at war with Hamas and the other Gaza factions, it is important to understand what Hamas’s military aims did not include. Hamas fights its periodic conflicts for political reasons, to shore up support in Gaza and elsewhere and to ensure its continuing relevance.

A Chinese dissident who was stuck inside a Taiwanese airport transit area after he refused to fly on to China says he has arrived in Canada after being granted asylum.

Chen Siming arrived in Taipei on 22 September, after travelling through Thailand and Laos. When he landed at Taipei’s international airport he refused to reboard, requesting assistance to resettle in a third country.

A few days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a boastful speech at the United Nations, announcing the establishment of a new Middle East centred around Israel and its new Arab partners, the Palestinians, whom he totally omitted from his fantasy regional map, dealt him and Israel a fatal blow, politically and strategically.

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas launched a meticulously planned, well-executed lightning incursion from Gaza into Israel, by air, sea and land. In tandem with thousands of missiles fired towards Israeli targets, hundreds of Palestinian fighters attacked Israeli military and civilian areas in the southern part of the country, which led to the killing of at least 100 Israelis and the capture of dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians as hostages.

When the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned Roe v. Wade, it greenlighted the kind of near-universal abortion restrictions that Idaho lawmakers had spent the previous two years crafting. Gov. Brad Little said the state should turn to helping women who might otherwise have terminated pregnancies.

“We absolutely must come together like never before to support women and teens facing unexpected or unwanted pregnancies,” said Little, a Republican who supports the abortion ban. About 1,700 to 2,000 people a year in Idaho had abortions before the court ruling. “Families, churches, charities, and local and state government must stand ready to lift them up and help them and their families with access to adoption services, health care, financial and food assistance, counseling and treatment, and family planning.”

For months, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his allies have defended Thomas’ practice of not disclosing free luxury travel by saying the trips fell under a carve-out to the federal disclosure law for government officials.

But by not publicly reporting his trips to the Bohemian Grove and to a 2018 Koch network event, Thomas appears to have violated the disclosure law, even by his own permissive interpretation of it, ethics law experts said. The details of the trips, which ProPublica first reported last month, could prove important evidence in any formal investigation of Thomas’ conduct.

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.

WASHINGTON — Despite facing decades in prison for the fallout from his last round of lies about the 2020 election, Donald Trump is already claiming — again without any evidence — that the 2024 election will be stolen from him, too.

At one campaign event after another, the former president claims that Democrats are already scheming to steal the election from him, and that the only way to stop them is to win so overwhelmingly to make it impossible for them to get away with it.

KYIV — Ukraine has hammered Russia's Black Sea fleet so hard that Moscow is shifting much of it away from Crimea, allowing Kyiv to reopen its ports to grain vessels despite Russia's blockade threats.

“As of today, Russia is dispersing its fleet, fearing more attacks on its ships. Some units are relocating to the port of Novorossiysk. They try not to visit Sevastopol so often because they don't feel safe there anymore,” Ukrainian navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk told POLITICO.

A senior Russian diplomat has said that Moscow will revoke its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), in a move Washington denounced as jeopardising the “global norm” against nuclear test blasts.

Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian representative to the international nuclear agencies in Vienna, was speaking after Vladimir Putin suggested Moscow might resuming testing for the first time in 33 years, signalling another downward turn in relations between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers

Donald Trump’s New York fraud trial will continue next week after an appeals court rejected the former president’s latest bid to halt proceedings.

Lawyers for Trump had argued that the court should wait for an appeal on a pre-trial ruling before moving forward. The trial started on Monday.

In a ruling last week, New York judge Arthur Engoron found the former president and others working for the Trump Organization guilty of financial fraud. Engoron ordered the dissolution of Trump’s companies in the state, effectively ending his ability to run his real estate business.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) didn’t mince her words about Rep. Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who is now running for the speaker’s gavel following the showdown that saw Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) voted out.

In a speech at the University of Minnesota on Wednesday, the former vice chair of the House Select Committee tasked with investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection said Jordan was the leader among those who were aware of former President Donald Trump’s plans to cling on to power despite losing the 2020 election.

The United Auto Workers union said General Motors has agreed to put the company’s battery plant workers under the union’s national contract, calling it a major victory in the ongoing strike against the “Big Three” automakers.

UAW President Shawn Fain said in a Facebook Live address to members Friday that GM had put the agreement “in writing.” The two sides have not yet reached a broader deal on a new four-year contract, but Fain called the battery plant provision a major step forward.