Democracy gone Astray: Thursday, September 21, 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, September 21, 2023

Sweden to give 'new information' on Assange rape probe

The Swedish Prosecution Authority said Monday it will provide an update with "new information" this week on a probe into a 2010 rape allegation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The investigation concerns events which took place in August 2010 after a Swedish woman met the Australian at a WikiLeaks conference in Stockholm.

Assange has always denied the allegation.

A former British army officer who helped found the White Helmets volunteer search-and-rescue organisation in Syria was found dead in Turkey on Monday.

The body of James Le Mesurier, founder and CEO of Mayday Rescue group, was discovered near his home in central Istanbul’s Beyoglu district by worshippers on their way to a mosque, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivian President Evo Morales announced his resignation Sunday under mounting pressure from the military and the public after his re-election victory triggered weeks of fraud allegations and deadly protests.

The decision came after a day of fast-moving developments, including an offer from Morales to hold a new election. The crisis deepened dramatically when the country’s military chief went on national television to call on him to step down.

“I am sending my resignation letter to the Legislative Assembly of Bolivia,” the 60-year-old socialist leader said, portraying his departure as the culmination of a “coup d’etat.”

He added: “I ask you to stop attacking the brothers and sisters, stop burning and attacking.”

The super-rich are preparing to immediately leave the UK if Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister, fearing they will lose billions of pounds if the Labour leader does “go after” the wealthy elite with new taxes, possible capital controls and a clampdown on private schools.

Lawyers and accountants for the UK’s richest families said they had been deluged with calls from millionaire and billionaire clients asking for help and advice on moving countries, shifting their fortunes offshore and making early gifts to their children to avoid the Labour leader’s threat to tax all inheritances above £125,000.

Russian military police deployed on the streets of Syria‘s northeast border town of Kobane on Thursday under a deal with Turkey to drive out Kurdish fighters.

Moscow will send a further 276 military policemen and 33 units of military hardware to Syria in a week, Russia’s RIA news agency cited a defence ministry source as saying.

Their arrival marked the start of a mission by Russian and Syrian security forces to push Kurdish fighters 30km (19 miles) into Syria under an accord reached between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

A large rectangle of red dirt on the flat expanse of West Texas’ Permian Basin reminds Sadrac Garcia every day of what his family has lost. A few months ago, he could stand on the small porch of his brother Juan’s double-wide and peer into the window of their parents’ trailer a few meters away. Until 2017, three generations of Garcias lived on these couple of acres. The family is slowly selling off the homes and the land, an attempt to move on after their father, Isac Garcia-Wislar, died in the custody of a local jail.

Vote-splitting is at the heart of many heated election season discussions of strategic voting.

It's most often cited by Liberals late in campaigns as a reason for progressive voters to rally around their party. Vote NDP or Bloc or Green, the argument goes, and you may end up electing a Conservative.

Centre-left vote-splitting may well have helped the Conservatives this election in key battleground regions such as Ontario and suburban Vancouver.

Russian forces have begun to deploy towards the Turkey-Syria border, as part of deal to remove Kurdish troops.

Units have already entered the two key border towns of Kobane and Manbij.

Under the deal agreed by Russia and Turkey, Kurdish fighters were given 150 hours from noon on Wednesday to pull back 30km (18 miles) along the border.

Election 2019 is like Thanksgiving; a couple of days before the big event, you pick your turkey and hope for the best.

(Yes readers, only journalists, pollsters and candidates’ mothers think about elections 40-plus days before the event. The real world only talks turkey as the ballot box looms.)

That said, I predict this federal election will be marked by lower voter turnout than in 2015 and vote fracturing on all sides. Why? There is no tyrant to depose, just a moderately disappointing prime minister.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is urging foreign militaries to leave Syria as Turkey has come under increased scrutiny for waging a military offensive in the country.

“Everyone who is illegitimately on the territory of any state, in this case Syria, must leave this territory. This applies to all states,” Putin told state news agencies RT, Sky News Arabia and Al Arabiya in an interview, according to Reuters.

LISBON — The Socialist Party of Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa scored a comfortable victory in Sunday’s general election but failed to secure an absolute majority in parliament.

The result opens up the possibility of a renewal of Costa’s partnership with parties on the far left, which has allowed a Socialist minority government to rule for the past four years.

“The Socialist Party has clearly won this election and strengthened its political position,” Costa told cheering supporters in the early hours of Monday morning. “The Portuguese want a new, stronger Socialist government, able to govern with stability.”

According to a report from the Daily Beast, a witness who was taking part in a U.S. trial aimed at Russian corruption — and who fell from a window to his death — reportedly had his name exposed in emails connected to alleged pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign operative Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Emails uncovered by the Beast point the finger directly at Veselnitskaya, who met with Don Trump Jr. at Trump Tower in 2016 that became a major part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian involvement in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow is helping China build a system to warn of ballistic missile launches.

Since the cold war, only the United States and Russia have had such systems, which involve an array of ground-based radars and space satellites. The systems allow for early spotting of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

As the People’s Republic of China commemorates its 70th anniversary, as many as 80 million Chinese will not be around to observe the festivities. They perished in the first few decades of communist rule in China, victims of the murderous ideological orgies of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward.

The astounding number of deaths attributed to Mao, more than the entire populations of all but a few countries in the world, makes him the greatest mass killer in human history.

China’s military has shown off a new hypersonic ballistic nuclear missile believed capable of breaching all existing anti-missile shields deployed by the U.S. and its allies.

The vehicle-mounted DF-17 was among weapons displayed Tuesday in a massive military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese state.

The Russian state directed and ran the military coup in Crimea and its subsequent annexation in 2014, Ukraine has told the European court of human rights.

The case in Strasbourg is one of a series brought by the Ukrainian government designed to expose alleged Russian state complicity in human rights abuses. It has the potential to embarrass Vladimir Putin and lead to Ukrainian demands for reparations from Russia.

Russia rejects allegations it was responsible for the annexation and sought on Wednesday to strike out the case in an attempt to stop it proceeding to its next stage – gathering of direct evidence.

In 2018, the International Energy Agency (IEA) made a prediction that had the potential to disrupt the auto industry: by 2030, there would be nearly 125 million electric vehicles owned by people around the world, they said. That was a significant increase compared to the 3.1 million electric vehicles globally owned in 2017.

“The uptake of electric vehicles is still largely driven by the policy environment,” the IEA said in the report. “The 10 leading countries in electric vehicle adoption all have a range of policies in place to promote the uptake of electric cars.”

Newly collated evidence documenting Russian military involvement in the conflict in Ukraine will be used to bolster legal claims against the Russian state by Ukrainian volunteer fighters.

Forensic Architecture, a London-based research group, has collected and catalogued evidence of Russian military involvement in the battle of Ilovaysk in August 2014, including the presence of a model of tank used only by the Russian armed forces at that time.

On August 10, opposition supporters held a mass protests in the Russian capital, Moscow, for the fifth consecutive weekend. The current wave of protests was triggered by the decision of the electoral commission to disqualify opposition candidates from running in the elections for the Moscow City Duma, a powerless legislative body that rubber stamps Mayor Sergey Sobianin’s policies.

While organisers of the previous two demonstrations were not able to obtain official permits from the municipality to hold them, which resulted in a mass crackdown, this Saturday, the demonstration was authorised and attracted a large crowd of between 50,000 and 60,000 people.

MOSCOW — Bloodied protesters, a hunger strike, police raids, more than a thousand arrests, a mysterious “illness” afflicting the Kremlin’s most prominent critic — a long-simmering dispute over a local Moscow election boiled over this weekend into a major political crisis for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

After a weekend of demonstrations, featuring thousands of anti-government protestors and sometimes violent clashes with police, Alexei Navalny, the opposition’s best-known figure, was hospitalized Sunday after suffering what health officials said was an “allergic reaction” while in police custody.

Russian authorities detained more than 1,000 protesters in Moscow on Saturday, in an attempt to quash a recent surge in protest mood that has spooked the Kremlin. Police also arrived at the homes of multiple opposition figures with search and arrest warrants, and called the editor-in-chief of the country’s leading independent television station in for questioning.

Opposition politicians called Saturday’s protest in response to a decision not to allow a number of independent candidates to stand in a September election to Moscow’s municipal parliament. Last weekend, the Russian capital saw the largest anti-government demonstration for years over the issue.

Just a day after former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified before the House of Representatives, the Senate Intelligence Committee has released its own much-anticipated report on Russia's interference in the 2016 election.

The report is the first of five volumes set to be released. It is centered around Russia's targeting of American election infrastructure.

And while the report makes clear that it found no evidence to suggest that any actual vote tallies were changed in a way that would affect the outcome of the 2016 election, it details a more expansive foreign effort to "intrude" into the election system than has previously been revealed.

Ukraine has released the crew of a Russian tanker detained over its alleged role in a naval confrontation that led to Moscow’s seizure of three Ukrainian vessels last November, according to Russian media reports citing the country’s embassy in Ukraine.

The state-run RIA Novosti news agency said on Thursday that the sailors were released amid threats from retaliation of Moscow, with Russia’s Foreign Ministry warning Ukraine there would “soon be consequences” if any Russian crew members were “taken hostage”.

More than a year after he resigned from the Senate amid sexual misconduct allegations, Al Franken describes what happened to him as a kind of violence.

The junior senator from Minnesota, Franken announced his resignation in 2017 after eight women accused him of kissing or touching them in ways that made them uncomfortable. The first woman to come forward publicly, Leeann Tweeden, provided a 2006 photograph of Franken pretending to grab her breasts while she was sleeping.

Hundreds of Israeli troops with bulldozers tore down homes in the Palestinian village of Sur Baher despite local protests and international criticism.

Residents of the village’s Wadi al-Hummus neighbourhood told local media on Monday that 16 residential buildings with about 100 apartments were being demolished.

“Preparations started past midnight as hundreds of armed Israeli occupying soldiers/ bulldozers stormed the town. Families threatened with demolitions were woken up/ moved out of their homes,” said a tweet by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

Over the weekend, Andrew Anglin was in a celebratory mood, thanks to Donald Trump’s racist tweets telling congresswomen of color to go back to their native countries.

Then, on Monday, the hammer fell on the notorious neo-Nazi troll and publisher of The Daily Stormer. A judge in Montana, ruling in a lawsuit brought by a Jewish woman from Whitefish and the Southern Poverty Law Center, determined that Anglin owed the woman $14 million in damages for the “troll storm” he unleashed on her in early 2017.

ZWOLLE, the Netherlands – For Roma and Traveler communities in the Netherlands, things were meant to get better.

Across the Continent, Europe’s largest minority group faces restrictions on their way of life, in particular their tradition of living in caravans. In July last year, the Dutch interior ministry set out to protect their rights by asking local authorities to halt the practice of limiting parking sites for their caravans.

Turkey on Friday received its first shipment of a Russian air defense system as calls grew to follow through on warnings to levy sanctions against the NATO ally and possibly eject Ankara from the new F-35 fighter jet program.

The Turkish Defense Ministry announced that the S-400 system was delivered to an air base near Ankara, according to multiple reports.

The Trump administration did not immediately take action, despite repeated warnings it will punish its longtime ally if it turned to Moscow for the high-tech anti-missile system, which is seen as a threat to the NATO alliance.

Emily Doe was nearly exiled from Maplewood, Missouri, because crisis hotline volunteers sent police to her home too many times within one year.

Emily, who’s bipolar and suffers from anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, called a crisis hotline because she was suicidal. Crisis volunteers sent emergency personnel to her house on three different occasions, and in one instance, she was taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation and treatment.

China has demanded that the United States “immediately cancel” a potential $2.2bn arms sale to Taiwan, including battle tanks and anti-aircraft missiles.

The move would be Washington’s first big-ticket military sale to the democratically-governed island in decades, and comes amid deteriorating ties between the US and China, the world’s two largest economies that have been locked in an acrimonious trade war.

China has accused protesters who vandalised Hong Kong's parliament on Monday of "serious illegal actions" that "trample on the rule of law".

A group of activists occupied the Legislative Council (LegCo) building for several hours after breaking away from a peaceful protest.

Hundreds of police used tear gas to disperse demonstrators.

The Chinese government urged the city to investigate the "criminal responsibility of violent offenders".

First came the confession.

On Wednesday, a man with extensive neo-Nazi ties confessed to assassinating Walter Lübcke, a popular, pro-migrant politician from the central German city of Kassel.

Lübcke was murdered at his home on June 2. Authorities said he died after being shot in the head at close range.

OSAKA, Japan (AP) — For many he’s an international pariah, but you wouldn’t know it by the lavish reception Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has received at the G-20 summit this week.

He beamed as he stood front and center, sandwiched between President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for a group photo. He exchanged an impish grin as he sat down next to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He posed with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and a group of flag-waving kids ahead of an earlier signing ceremony for $8 billion in deals.

Analysts have rebuked the economic part of the United States‘s Middle East peace plan for failing to address the main problem that has heavily curbed the Palestinian economy – the 52-year-old Israeli military occupation over the Palestinian territories.

The economic plan was released by the White House on Saturday and is set to be presented during a US-led workshop in Bahrain on June 25-26.

Vladimir Putin has banned Russia’s airlines from flying to Georgia, a day after a Russian lawmaker’s visit to the country prompted violent clashes between protesters and police.

The ban is a serious escalation in tensions between the neighbouring countries, which fought a war in 2008. The suspension of flights is designed to put pressure on Georgia’s tourism industry, which accounted for 7.6% of the country’s GDP in 2018. More than 1.4 million Russians visited Georgia last year.

United Nations officials alleged that Syria‘s and Russia‘s forces may be deliberately targeting hospitals and schools in the rebel-held northwest of Syria as a tactic aimed at “terrorising” civilians.

Both Syria and Russia denied the accusations on Tuesday.

UN aid chief Mark Lowcock told the UN Security Council since late April the World Health Organization had confirmed 26 incidents affecting healthcare facilities in the Idlib region.

Imagine the following series of events happening to you:

You and a friend are walking peacefully down a residential street in the middle of the day, when a police car pulls next to you and orders you to “get the fuck on the sidewalk.” After you walk a few steps more, the cop suddenly puts his car into reverse and maneuvers it in front of you to block your path — stopping the car just inches from your friend.

Iran has declared it “will not wage war against any nation” after the US announced that a further 1,000 troops are to be sent to the Middle East amid rising tensions.

The US move, announced by the acting defence secretary, Patrick Shanahan, comes after the US blamed Iran for attacks on two oil tanker ships last week, which has raised fears of a confrontation, and Tehran declaring it had increased its rate of uranium enrichment.

Chinese president Xi Jinping will make his first state visit to North Korea this week in an attempt to defuse tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear programme, months after the last denuclearisation summit ended in failure.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said Xi, the first Chinese leader to visit North Korea in 14 years, would meet the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, on Thursday and Friday.

North Korea’s official KCNA also announced the visit, but gave no details.

There are approximately 1.3 billion people in India — and several hundred million cows.

The amount of methane gas those cows produce likely equals, or maybe even exceeds, all the carbon emissions of California, New York and Connecticut combined.

It would seem that, here in the U.S., our environmental warriors against greenhouse gas should be calling for an end to all these cows.

Ten days ago, the political lethargy which Russia had descended into since Vladimir Putin won another six years in power last year was unexpectedly disrupted. The arrest of a journalist triggered a chain of events that shook Russian society awake and pushed it to unprecedented action.

The story of shocking police transgressions and the mass mobilisation that they provoked is indeed worthy of a Hollywood political thriller production, but it also tells us something important about the state of affairs in Russia today.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the lefty lion of the House freshman class, has a new frenemy — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

Making birth control available over-the-counter is a mainstream idea with broad support among health providers. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that over-the-counter access to birth control pills “will help more women get the contraceptives they need, which have long been proven safe enough to use without a prescription — especially emergency contraception.”

The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has revealed he has signed a request for Julian Assange to be extradited to the US where he faces charges of computer hacking.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday, Javid said: “He’s rightly behind bars. There’s an extradition request from the US that is before the courts tomorrow but yesterday I signed the extradition order and certified it and that will be going in front of the courts tomorrow.”

Lawmakers say that any effort to give members of Congress a raise won’t pass unless both parties agree not to use the issue as a campaign weapon.

While no such agreement has been ironed out, there is a chance that there will be a bipartisan deal struck at some point this year.

Proponents of the pay hike acknowledge it’s not popular but argue that it is long overdue.

In April 2018, a steel pipe manufacturer called Wheatland Tube gave $1 million to the super-PAC supporting Donald Trump’s reelection and the campaigns of Trump-allied Republicans. Around the same time, the CEO of its parent company, Barry Zekelman, dined with Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. in a private dining room at the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington. The meeting went well for Zekelman, who runs Zekelman Industries, one of North America’s largest steel companies. On May 31, 2018, Trump announced a cap on steel imports from South Korea, which compete with Zekelman’s steel, followed by a 50 percent tariff on steel from Turkey, another competitor. Less than a week later, Wheatland Tube gave another $250,000 to the pro-Trump super-PAC, America First Action Inc., run by former aides to the president, then another $500,000 in October.

Russia is seeking to bolster its presence in at least 13 countries across Africa by building relations with existing rulers, striking military deals, and grooming a new generation of “leaders” and undercover “agents”, leaked documents reveal.

The mission to increase Russian influence on the continent is being led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman based in St Petersburg who is a close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. One aim is to “strong-arm” the US and the former colonial powers the UK and France out of the region. Another is to see off “pro-western” uprisings, the documents say.

A South Korean NGO says it has identified 318 sites in North Korea that have been used by the government to carry out public executions.

The Transitional Justice Working Group interviewed 610 North Korean defectors over four years for its report.

It documented decades of killings, for offences ranging from stealing a cow to watching South Korean TV.

Idlib, Syria – The blue tents of Syria‘s refugees near the tiny border town of Atmeh stretch as far as the eye can see.

Considered the largest congregation of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Syria, Atmeh hosts several clusters of tent cities at only a 20-minute drive from the Bab al-Hawa crossing between Syria and Turkey’s Hatay province.

Beijing has backed Hong Kong’s government over its controversial plan to allow extraditions to the Chinese mainland, saying it opposes “any outside interference” in the semi-autonomous territory.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Monday that Beijing would “continue to firmly support” Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, who earlier vowed to push ahead with the new laws despite massive protests against them.

MOSCOW — The arrest of a prominent investigative journalist on drugs charges triggered protests across Russia and abroad in what is being described as a watershed moment for the country’s beleaguered independent media.

Ivan Golunov, a reporter for Meduza, an opposition-friendly news site, was on his way to meet an unnamed source on Thursday afternoon when he was detained by police in central Moscow. Golunov, 36, is the author of a number of hard-hitting reports on alleged corruption by Russian officials and government-linked businesspeople.