Democracy gone Astray: Friday, September 06, 2024

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, September 06, 2024

Israel vows ‘unrelenting’ attacks as dozens reported killed in Gaza strikes

Israel has promised “unrelenting” attacks to eliminate Hamas, as Palestinian authorities reported dozens of people killed in the latest air strikes on Gaza.

At least 28 people were killed overnight in strikes on several homes in a district near Rafah, southern Gaza, Palestinian officials and medical sources told Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum in Gaza.

At least 14 others were also killed after an explosion at a fuel station following an Israeli strike in Khan Younis in the south of the enclave, Palestinian authorities told Abu Azzoum.

Deir el-Balah, Gaza – Welcome to Gaza, a place where every phone call bears the news of somebody being killed, every message conveys the destruction of a friend’s home, and each air strike sends tremors of fear through your heart.

In this land, “home” is no longer a sanctuary for living and relaxation; it’s a precarious existence, subject to sudden devastation without warning.

The biggest hope one clings to is simply staying alive with their family, avoiding the heart-wrenching loss of a loved one or facing a collective demise.

These are terrible times, bleak times, and Ukraine’s Stolen Children is one of many films continuing to shed light on the growing list of horrors blighting the world. Veteran journalist and film-maker Shahida Tulaganova tells the horrifying story of the thousands of children reported missing from Ukraine in 2022, who were taken away in the months after Russia invaded the country.

Some things are apparently even too messy for former President Donald Trump.

Trump told reporters Friday he was staying out of the nine-way race among House Republicans to become speaker and replace the deposed Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

The search for a successor will enter its fourth week on Tuesday as Republicans went back to the drawing board Friday after Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) ignominiously exited the race after his fellow House Republicans voted to rescind their nomination of him.

Depending on how you feel about Donald Trump, today was either an embarrassment of riches or just an embarrassment.

The former president was in Derry, New Hampshire, on Monday to hold a rally and to sign up for the New Hampshire presidential primary, The Associated Press reported.

At the end of 2015, I worked with Israeli journalist Amir Tibon on a long story about the devolving relationship between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. My role was to help report out the U.S. side of that fracturing relationship, relying on my sourcing inside the Democratic Party and the White House. I still remember what a privilege it felt like to work with Tibon, whose own sourcing on the Israeli side gave us a window into the strategic thinking of Bibi and his inner circle that one simply never sees here in the U.S. Instead, all we get is a flattened gloss on Netanyahu as a tough guy and a political survivor.

Republican infighting showed no sign of abating over the weekend as Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) issued a blistering letter to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and seven others in the conference who voted to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

The sarcastic missive, shared online by several congressional reporters, was in response to a Friday letter from Gaetz and six of the seven others to their colleagues.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Sunday weighed in on why he has not endorsed former President Donald Trump as his preferred Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election.

“Well, the campaign is still going,” McCarthy told NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “There’s a very good chance I would endorse President Trump.”

WASHINGTON — Republicans announced Friday that they had uncovered a “direct payment” to President Joe Biden — exactly the kind of evidence they’ve sought linking Biden to his family’s foreign business deals.

But the March 2018 payment came from Joe Biden’s brother James, not a Ukrainian oligarch or Chinese tycoon, and the check was marked as a “loan repayment.”

The blockaded Gaza Strip has been hit by one of the deadliest nights of Israeli bombing so far in the war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, as two more hostages were freed amid reports that talks to secure the release of dozens of others were under way.

At least 400 Palestinians were killed in Gaza in the last 24 hours, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and 70 were killed overnight on Sunday in bombardments of the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp and streets close to two hospitals in Gaza City.

In an obvious effort to inoculate himself against being identified as an enemy of the Canada Pension Plan, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre Friday inserted himself into the open-letter uproar over the Alberta government’s plan to force the province’s citizens out of the CPP with a statement of his own.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent a forceful open letter to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith vowing to defend the CPP and Canadians’ pensions. Smith responded with an open letter of her own, accusing the PM of fear-mongering and warning of unspecified “serious legal and political consequences.”

Two activists from a Jewish-Arab peace movement were recently detained in Israel for putting up posters with a message that the police deemed to be offensive. The message was: “Jews and Arabs, we will get through this together.”

The activists, members of Standing Together, had their posters confiscated, as well as T-shirts printed with peace slogans in Hebrew and Arabic.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Sunday he has “completely recovered” following troubling incidents this summer when he froze and was unable to speak in front of reporters.

“I’m fine. I’m completely recovered, and ... just fine,” McConnell, 81, told CBS “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan. “I’m in good shape, completely recovered, and back on the job.”

The lawmaker sparked serious concerns about this health earlier this year during press conferences in July and August. During the first, McConnell abruptly stopped speaking and was unable to begin again before he was escorted away by aides. A month later, the same thing appeared to happen while he was answering questions about his reelection plans.

Former Israeli military, political and intelligence officials have expressed doubts over the leadership of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as debate rages inside the country about the response to the Hamas attacks on 7 October that killed 1,400 Israelis.

Former prime minister Ehud Barak described the terrorist attack as “the most severe blow Israel has suffered since its establishment to date”. “I don’t believe that the people trust Netanyahu to lead when he is under the burden of such a devastating event that just happened under his term,” he told the Observer.

Israel has said it is intensifying attacks on northern Gaza and warned that anyone who stayed risked being considered as “an accomplice in a terrorist organisation”, as airstrikes continued on Sunday in the south, where civilians had fled hoping to survive the war.

A second trickle of aid was allowed into Gaza from Egypt on Sunday, but the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that the humanitarian situation was now catastrophic for the 2.3 million people trapped inside the territory.

Peacekeepers, Fatah or anarchy: what would follow an Israeli ‘victory’ in Gaza?

For two weeks Israel has pounded Gaza with missiles, as it gathers tanks and troops for a ground invasion with one stated goal, to destroy Hamas.

It is a deceptively simple target, one which sounds urgent and necessary to many in a nation profoundly traumatised by the massacres of 7 October, hoping to reclaim their sense of security, and a military determined to restore its damaged authority.

It's not clear if Pierre Poilievre had already devised a position on Alberta's proposed quitting of the Canada Pension Plan, but the Conservative leader issued one barely a day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proclaimed his own stance.

The Liberals' unusually forceful opposition to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's pension ambition has doubled as a political wedge against Poilievre. Alongside trying to criticize the CPP-weakening gambit itself, Liberals applied pressure on Conservatives to squeeze their leader through one of three doors:

A United Nations investigation has found further evidence that Russian forces committed “indiscriminate attacks” and war crimes in Ukraine, including rape and the deportation of children to Russia.

“The collected evidence further shows that Russian authorities have committed the war crimes of wilful killing, torture, rape and other sexual violence, and the deportation of children to the Russian Federation,” a United Nations commission of inquiry on Ukraine said in a report submitted to the UN general assembly.

Ramallah, occupied West Bank – Israel has arrested so many Palestinians in the two weeks since the start of its bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip that it has doubled the number of Palestinians in its custody.

There were about 5,200 Palestinians in Israeli prisons prior to October 7 when the Palestinian armed resistance group Hamas launched an attack on Israel, which responded almost immediately with a relentless bombing campaign.

I am a journalist, writer and justice activist from Bosnia and Herzegovina. I was deeply affected by the genocide in my country in the 1990s. Many of my family members were taken to concentration camps, and some of the most gruesome crimes of the era were committed in my hometown.

Also, for decades, I worked as a strategic communications expert in transitional justice contexts across the world, from Syria to Sri Lanka.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) is the natural front-runner to be the next man up in the GOP’s three-week-long search for a new speaker, except for one glaring problem: former President Donald Trump.

Trump allies in the media started blitzing Emmer with attacks Friday, hoping to derail his House speakership bid before it can truly begin, all while boasting that the ex-president agrees with them. “Tom Emmer is Nancy Pelosi in a Suit,” one far-right news outlet declared, referring to the former Democratic speaker.

A group of Democratic senators has introduced legislation that would drastically alter how often Supreme Court justices are chosen, and limit the cases justices can hear after a certain time on the bench.

The new legislation, sponsored by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), and Alex Padilla (D-California), is called the Supreme Court Biennial Appointments and Term Limits Act. A number of Democratic senators have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill. It has not yet been endorsed by any Republicans.

In retaliation against the Palestinians in Gaza for Hamas’s October 7 killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians, Israel has intensified its 16-year siege of Gaza to a “complete siege.” Israel is slaughtering civilians, cutting off their food, water, electricity and fuel, ordering more than 1 million of them to leave their homes and then bombing their evacuation routes, and trapping them with nowhere to escape.

Israeli forces are amassing tanks on the border in preparation for an imminent invasion. The United States is sending massive firepower to help Israel.

On 7 October, hours after the surprise offensive by Hamas that left 1,400 Israelis dead, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, took to the airwaves to declare war on Hamas and issue a warning to Palestinians in Gaza: “leave now”. The question of where 2.3 million Palestinians, the vast majority of them refugees who have lived under a brutal siege and blockade for the past 16 years, should go to was left unsaid.

Israel proceeded to unleash an unprecedented aerial assault, dropping 6,000 bombs on the densely populated enclave in the first five days alone. Then came the order: a directive for the 1.1 million people in northern Gaza to evacuate to the south within 24 hours.

The climate for media and free speech in India is in a dangerous place. The country is already ranked 161 out of 180 countries in the press freedom index, but the actions of prime minister Narendra Modi’s government in the past few weeks have shown how many more clampdowns await. Desperately in need of distraction tactics – given the many failures in governance, tackling inflation or delivering jobs – the regime is after a fresh dose of sound and fury against political opponents.

The image of haggard doctors standing amid bodies and rubble following the explosive strike on al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza has sent shock waves around the world, which was still reeling from horrific Hamas-led attacks and the relentless Israeli bombardment and siege of Gaza. In the past two weeks, thousands of Israeli and Palestinian civilians have been killed with a speed and brutality that was previously unimaginable in Israel and Palestine. There is little sign that the spiral of mass killing will subside soon. Instead, there are clear warning signs that further atrocities are imminent.

You cannot think straight when you’re in pain. That’s truer still when the pain is combined with fury at those who caused it. There’s a reason we speak of “blind rage”: when anger descends, we cannot see what’s in front of us. And if that’s true of individuals, it’s truer still of nations.

That was the message Joe Biden brought when he travelled to Israel this week. Drawing on his own experience of multiple bereavements, he consoled Israelis grieving for the more than 1,400 civilians killed by Hamas in the 7 October massacre and those waiting for word on the 203 hostages, including young children and the elderly, still held in Gaza. In what has become his signature style, Biden shared in their pain.

Finnish police have said a Chinese ship whose movement coincided with the time and place of the suspected sabotage of a pipeline between Finland and Estonia that was damaged this month is now the focus of their investigation.

After a leak led to the shutdown of the Balticconnector pipeline on 8 October, Finnish authorities have been investigating the damage they say was caused by “external” activity.

HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas judge has ruled that Infowars host Alex Jones cannot use bankruptcy protection to avoid paying more than $1.1 billion to families who sued over his conspiracy theories that the Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax.

The decision is another significant defeat for Jones in the wake of juries in Texas and Connecticut punishing him over spreading falsehoods about the nation’s deadliest school shooting. U.S. District Judge Christopher Lopez of Houston issued the ruling Thursday.

Donald Trump just became his own hypeman in the trials he faces for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The ex-president promised yet again on Friday to produce irrefutable evidence in court that he got robbed of a victory after lying about his election loss for three years.

“Massive information and 100% evidence will be made available during the Corrupt Trials started by our Political Opponent,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We will never let 2020 happen again. Look at the result, OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED. MAGA!!!”

WASHINGTON ― House Republicans hit the reset button on their search for a new House speaker and will try again next week to find a leader, after Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) bid came to a whimpering end Friday.

Republicans voted against keeping Jordan as their speaker-designee by a margin of 86 to 112, lawmakers told reporters after their meeting in the Capitol basement. Jordan then accepted the result.

“We put the question to them. They made a different decision. I told the conference that I appreciated getting to work with everyone, talking to everyone,” Jordan told reporters after the vote.

The United Nations on Friday called for an independent international investigation into a devastating blast at a packed hospital in Gaza City earlier this week, as the conflict between the Israeli military and Hamas rages on.

Palestinian officials in the besieged Gaza Strip blamed an Israeli strike for the explosion at al-Ahli Arab Hospital, while the Israeli army said it was caused by an errant rocket fired by the armed group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which denied the assertion. Israel’s ally the United States has also put the blame on Palestinian fighters, while Arab states have blamed Israel.

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump was fined $5,000 on Friday after a disparaging social media post about a key court staffer in his New York civil fraud case lingered on his campaign website for weeks after the judge ordered it deleted.

Judge Arthur Engoron avoided holding Trump in contempt, for now, but reserved the right to do so — and possibly even put the 2024 Republican front-runner in jail — if he again violates a limited gag order barring people participating in the case from personal attacks on court staff.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) on Thursday signed an executive order banning “woke” and “anti-women” words from state documents. The culture war salvo got a thumbs-down from the ACLU and LGBTQ+ advocates.

Sanders, a Republican who served as White House press secretary under Donald Trump, aimed her wrath at inclusionary language, specifically around gender and childbirth.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) slammed her own conference on Thursday as the House descended further into chaos.

“Our conference has a responsibility to the American people, to our districts, to work together and unify, and this conference is absolutely broken,” she said.

A US Navy warship has intercepted missiles and drones launched from Yemen by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement, US officials say.

A Pentagon spokesman said the missiles had been launched "potentially towards targets in Israel".

The USS Carney, a guided-missile destroyer, was operating in the northern Red Sea on Thursday.

The Pentagon also said US troops in Iraq and Syria had been attacked several times in recent days.

An eerie image has emerged in recent days in a sandy industrial zone in the southern Gaza Strip.

Hundreds of tents have been set up in Khan Younis, aligned in neat rows, for the thousands of recently displaced Palestinians who have fled the indiscriminate Israeli bombardment over their homes in the northern Gaza Strip.

According to the United Nations, at least one million Palestinians in the besieged coastal territory – half of the total population – have been displaced over the past two weeks.

European leaders must not “fall” for the tactics of Vladimir Putin, the Czech president, Petr Pavel, has said, two days after Hungary’s prime minister shook hands with Russia’s leader.

Viktor Orbán, in a rare move for the leader of a country that belongs to the EU and Nato, met Putin in Beijing on Tuesday for what the Hungarian leader’s office described as a discussion on energy cooperation and peace.

Australia’s government has determined that it is not necessary to cancel a Chinese company’s lease of a major port following a national security review.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s office said on Friday that the review found there was a “robust regulatory system” in place to manage risks to Port Darwin and other critical infrastructure and that “existing monitoring mechanisms are sufficient and will be ongoing”.

Joe Biden’s trip to the “Jewish state” was supposed to match the one he made earlier this year to war-torn Ukraine in terms of symbolism and substance, considering it was only the second time an American president visited a war zone not under the control of the US military. Indeed, during his trip, the American president expressed similar sympathy and unconditional support for Israel as he had done for Ukraine.

But unlike his trip to Eastern Europe, where during a stop in Poland Biden successfully rallied NATO against Russia, the president’s Middle East trip was undermined by the cancellation of a scheduled Arab-American summit in Jordan, following the bombing of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital Baptist in Gaza that killed almost 500 Palestinians. The Arab leaders condemned Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, and rejected America’s proposals for a “humanitarian corridor” that would de facto lead to the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland.