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mariacallous · 5 months ago

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In January 2020, Mexico made history as the first Latin American country to adopt a feminist foreign policy. Pioneered by Sweden six years earlier in 2014, feminist foreign policy (FFP) initially began as a niche effort in the Nordic region. For many years, Sweden stood alone on the global stage, emphasizing that its FFP focused on enhancing women’s “rights, resources, and representation” in the country’s diplomatic and development efforts worldwide. That effort was the result of the vision and leadership of Sweden’s foreign minister at the time, Margot Wallström, although there was widespread support for the policy across the government and it was continued by subsequent ministers.

It would be another three years before other nations followed suit: In 2017, Canada announced a Feminist International Assistance Policy. At the end of 2018, Luxembourg’s new coalition government committed to developing a FFP in their coalition agreement. And in 2019, Mexico and France pledged to co-host a major women’s rights anniversary conference in 2021 while beginning to explore the development of feminist foreign policies simultaneously.

I had an inside view on that process having convened the existing FFP governments and numerous international experts just before Mexico’s announcement. Together, we developed a global definition and framework for FFP. As I wrote for this magazine in January 2020, this approach was largely followed by the Mexican policy. The goals for Mexico in adopting an FFP were to increase the rights of women and LGBTQ+ individuals on the world stage, diversify their diplomatic corps, boost resourcing for gender equality issues, and ensure that internal policies within the foreign ministry aligned with this approach, including a zero-tolerance policy toward gender-based harassment.

Now, under the leadership of a new female foreign minister, Alicia Bárcena, and following the election of Mexico’s first woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum, I was excited to travel to Mexico City in July as it hit another milestone: becoming the first country outside Europe to host the annual ministerial-level conference on FFP. It was an opportunity for me to take stock of what Mexico has achieved since it adopted an FFP, and to see what progress it has made toward its goals.

Initially convened by Germany’s Annalena Baerbock in 2022 and then by the Dutch last year, Mexico took a unique approach to the conference by focusing it on a specific policy issue—in this case, the forthcoming Summit of the Future. This conference, taking place at the U.N. General Assembly in September, aims to begin laying the groundwork for the successor goals to the Sustainable Development Goals framework. It is already a fraught and polarized process, and progressive leadership is sorely needed.

Last week provided clear evidence that Mexico is making progress in modeling that leadership—including in consistently advocating for progressive language in often contentious international multilateral negotiations, such as the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP). For example, in its interventions at the latest COP, Mexico placed human rights, intersectionality and gender equity at the heart of climate action and recognized the role of women environmental defenders and Indigenous women in a just transition.

“Mexico is often a lone voice in holding the line on critical human rights, Indigenous rights and gender equality language at the climate talks, even among the FFP countries,” said Bridget Burns, the executive director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization who has spent the last 15 years organizing women’s rights activists in climate negotiations and attended the July conference to speak on the sustainable development panel.

Mexico’s decision to link their hosting of the FFP Conference to the Summit of the Future—as evidenced in an outcome document they published and are circulating for signature ahead of the General Assembly’s high-level week in September—challenged FFP governments to engage a feminist approach in mainstream foreign policy dialogue, not just in gender-related discussions like the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. “The Summit of the Future aspires to a better tomorrow, but lofty goals won’t translate to real systemic change without feminist civil society,” said Sehnaz Kiymaz, senior coordinator of the Women’s Major Group.

On the multilateral front, Mexico has shown leadership by co-chairing the Feminist Foreign Policy Plus Group (FFP+) at the UN, alongside Spain. This body held the first ministerial-level meeting on FFP at the General Assembly last year and adopted the world’s first political declaration on FFP. Signed by 18 countries, governments pledged “to take feminist, intersectional and gender-transformative approaches to our foreign policies,” and outlined six areas for action in this regard. This was the first time FFP countries publicly pledged to work together as a group to address pressing global challenges through a feminist approach. While smaller subsets of this cohort have worked together multilaterally to condemn women’s rights rollbacks in Afghanistan or in support of an international legal framework on the right to care and be cared for, the first big test of this more systematic approach will be the forthcoming Summit of the Future, where feminists have been advocating for gender to be referenced as a cross-cutting priority.

Mexico has also recently ratified two international instruments to directly benefit women: Convention 189 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) on domestic workers and Convention 190 of the ILO on violence and harassment in the workplace. Under the mantle of its FFP, Mexico has championed the importance of care work in the advancement of women’s rights and countries’ development at the U.N. Human Rights Council and at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean through the Global Alliance for Care Work.

While international women’s rights activists at the conference largely gave positive feedback on Mexico’s track record, the response from Mexican civil society was more critical. Activists organized a side event to present their more skeptical view of Mexican FFP. María Paulina Rivera Chávez, a member of the Mexican coalition and an organizer of the event, argued a conference could only go so far. “It is fundamental to decenter the state, understanding that feminist foreign policies must be horizontal,” she said.

A major theme of that side event and of Mexican activists’ interventions in the official ministerial conference was the incongruence of the Mexican government’s leadership on feminist approaches internationally while women’s human rights at home have suffered. Such criticisms of the Andrés Manuel López Obrador government are not unfounded. In one particularly troubling interview a few years ago, he suggested that Mexico’s high rate of femicide—11 women are murdered daily, with rates on the rise compared to other crimes—was merely a false provocation by his political opponents. Negative biases against women are pervasive in Mexico, with 90 percent of the population holding such biases.

Mexico has made strides in improving gender equality in other areas, however. Women now make up half of the Mexican legislature and have been appointed to lead high-level institutions, such as the Supreme Court, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Central Bank, with cascading positive effects on gender equality. Bárcena, for instance, clearly asserted from her first speech on the job that Mexico’s FFP would remain a top priority. This is no accident. At the federal level, significant efforts have been made to enforce gender parity laws and implement more than 80 percent of the legal frameworks promoting, enforcing and monitoring gender equality as stipulated by international benchmarks. Mexican women have also seen some improvements in maternal mortality rates, access to internet services, and protections to the right to abortion, with numerous national commitments to improve gender equality, such as measures to alleviate the burden of care on women.

But while there has been an increase in the number of women in the legislature and government positions, women from Indigenous, Afro-descendent, and working-class backgrounds continue to be underrepresented in political roles. And there has been a steady increase over the last decade in femicides, disappearances and sexual violence which Mexican feminist organizations and international actors have found are directly linked to the militarization of law enforcement under the guise of Mexico’s war on drugs and organized crime.

Additional criticisms of the Mexican FFP itself include the foreign ministry’s insularity and reluctance to engage with Mexican feminist activists in the development and implementation of its FFP. There was also a hesitation by the previous foreign ministry leadership to collaborate with Inmujeres, Mexico’s gender ministry, preferring to keep control of the FFP within the foreign ministry alone. It is not uncommon for gender ministries to be excluded in foreign policymaking as they are often perceived as lacking the necessary expertise or authority on foreign policy. However, Inmujeres is an exception in this regard and the criticism was valid. This was on my mind as I participated in the conference last month, and straight out of the gate I could observe a clear departure from the past approach under Bárcena’s leadership: The foreign ministry officially partnered with Inmujeres to co-host the conference, and the heads of both agencies were equally prominent voices throughout the three-day event. Similarly, the foreign ministry also made efforts to engage Mexican feminist civil society in conference planning, inviting civil society to a consultation day in the weeks leading up to the conference.

Following the right-wing electoral successes and likely abandonment of FFP in countries like Sweden, Argentina, and potentially the Netherlands, the success of a Mexican model of FFP is all the more important. Mexican activists I spoke with expressed optimism about Bárcena’s leadership, which they had not extended to her predecessor. Certainly, there is some cynicism about whether Mexico’s next president, a woman, will be any better on the issue of femicide than her mentor and predecessor, López Obrador, but there is some room for hope. If the leadership of a female foreign minister like Bárcena has been more effective in mobilizing political and convening power behind FFP, there’s potential that Sheinbaum will also show more interest than her predecessor.

While Mexican civil society has critiqued that Sheinbaum did not present a plan on how she would continue and improve the country’s FFP and repair the government’s relationship with feminist civil society, Sheinbaum’s plan—entitled 100 Pasos Para La Transformación—takes a human rights-based approach to gender equality. This is promising, because political approaches, which are more common, tend to reduce the human rights of women, girls, and gender-diverse persons as a means to an end, such as better economic, education, or health outcomes. The plan proposes measures to alleviate the care burden on women, safeguard sexual and reproductive health and rights, protect LGBTQ+ communities, promote gender parity in cabinets, improve land rights for rural women, reduce femicides, and more.

That Sheinbaum has not explicitly addressed the importance of Mexico’s FFP is not necessarily surprising. Most feminist and women’s rights organizations are understandably more focused on issues within their own borders, and foreign policy rarely drives political power and the focus of the electorate. Discussion of feminist foreign policy is thus typically the domain of the foreign minister and in some cases other relevant ministers—such as international development in Germany, or the trade ministry in Sweden under its previous government. (Canada’s Justin Trudeau stands out as a rare exception, having championed feminism and Canada’s feminist approach to policymaking at the Group of Seven and international gender equality forums throughout his tenure as prime minister.)

But even without top-down leadership from a president, savvy officials within the Mexican foreign and gender ministries are using FFP to make progress. While there has not yet been a public accounting of the progress made in implementing FFP, the clear leadership Mexico is demonstrating on the world stage in key negotiations, its successful conference, and the anticipated new government set the stage for Mexico to boldly advance its FFP. It will serve as a valuable example to the world.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 months ago

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Dr. Seuss knew what was up.

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 29, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 30, 2024

Republican presidential nominee former president Donald Trump offered Americans his closing argument in the 2024 presidential race on Sunday, October 27, at Madison Square Garden. At a rally that evoked a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939, Trump’s warm-up acts set the terms of Trump’s final pitch to voters by calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean” and railing against “f*cking illegals.” They called Vice President Kamala Harris “the Antichrist” and “the devil,” and called former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “a sick son of a b*tch.” When Trump took the stage about two hours late, he echoed the warm-up acts, and then reiterated that he believes fellow Americans are “the enemy within.”

The racism and fascism Trump’s MAGA Republicans displayed at Madison Square Garden is usually expressed within their media bubble, where it passes for normal conversation. The backlash against it among people in the real world appears to have shocked the Trump campaign so much that the candidate is running away from his own closing argument.

On Monday, Trump felt obliged to tell an audience in Georgia, “I’m not a Nazi.” The Trump campaign has made it a point never to apologize and never to explain, but on Monday it broke that rule, trying to distance itself from performer Tony Hinchcliffe’s comments about Puerto Rico.

This morning, Trump announced he would hold a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. He showed up more than an hour late for the assembled press, then began the event by undermining faith in the election, claiming the campaign is going “very well; there are some bad spots in Pennsylvania where some serious things have been caught or are in the process of being caught,” although it was unclear what he meant.

He went on to deliver such a litany of lies that CNN cited them as a reason to cut away from the speech. Trump chose not to acknowledge the offensiveness of the Madison Square Garden event, saying ““The love in that room, it was breathtaking—and you could have filled it many many times with the people that were unable to get in.”

Tonight, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris offered her own closing argument to the American voters. Once again taking her campaign directly to Trump, she held a rally at the Ellipse near the White House, where Trump spoke to his supporters on January 6, 2021, before sending them off to the U.S. Capitol to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Joe Biden president.

More than 75,000 attendees in the Ellipse and standing on the Mall near the Washington Monument waved flags and held up signs with “USA” printed on them as Harris spoke in front of a backdrop of the White House, on a stage with a line of American flags.

“One week from today, you will have the chance to make a decision that directly impacts your life, the life of your family, and the future of this country we love,” she said. “[I]t will probably be the most important vote you ever cast. And this election is more just than a choice between two parties and two different candidates. It is a choice about whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American or ruled by chaos and division.”

Harris outlined Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and noted that he is “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power.” She continued: “Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That is who he is. But America, I am here tonight to say: that is not who we are.” She called for Americans “to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division.”

The vice president described herself as “someone who has spent most of my career outside of Washington, D.C.,” a former prosecutor who cares that all people are treated fairly and that those who “use their wealth or power to take advantage of other people” are held to account.

She promised to “work every day to build consensus and reach compromise to get things done…. [to] work with everyone—Democrats, Republicans, and Independents—to help Americans who are working hard and still struggling to get ahead.” She vowed to lower costs by delivering tax cuts to working people and the middle class, ban price gouging on groceries, lower the cost of prescription drugs, provide down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, and build millions of new homes.

She promised to fight for a child tax credit and to lower the cost of child care, as well as allowing Medicare to cover the cost of home aides for seniors.

She promised to “fight to restore what Donald Trump and his hand-selected Supreme Court Justices took away from the women of America.” “[W]hen Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom nationwide,” she said, “as President of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law.”

She promised to “work with Democrats and Republicans to sign into law the border security bill that Donald Trump killed.” She promised to “remove those who arrive here unlawfully, prosecute the cartels, and give border patrol the support they so desperately need. At the same time,” she said, “we must acknowledge we are a nation of immigrants.” She vowed to “work with Congress to pass immigration reform, including an earned path to citizenship for hardworking immigrants like farmworkers and our Dreamers.”

“As Commander in Chief,” she said, “I will make sure America has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.… I will strengthen—not surrender—America’s global leadership,” and stand with America’s allies because “our alliances keep American people safe and make America stronger and more secure.”

While Trump offers “more chaos, more division, and policies that help those at the very top and hurt everyone else,” Harris said, “I offer a different path. And I ask for your vote. And here is my pledge to you: I pledge to seek common ground and commonsense solutions to make your life better…. I pledge to listen: To experts, to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make, and to people who disagree with me…. I pledge…to approach my work with the joy and optimism that comes from making a difference in people’s lives. And I pledge to be a president for all Americans. And to always put country above party and self.”

“I love our country with all my heart,” she said, “And I believe in its promise. Because I’ve lived it…. And I see the promise of America in all of you…. I see it in the young people who are voting for the first time who are determined to live free from gun violence and to protect our planet, and to shape the world they inherit.

“I see it in the women who refuse to accept a future without reproductive freedom, and the men who support them. I see it in Republicans who have never voted for a Democrat before but have put the Constitution of the United States over party. I’ve seen it in Americans, different in many respects, but united in our pursuit of freedom, our belief in fairness and decency, and our faith in a better future.”

“Nearly 250 years ago, America was born when we wrested freedom from a petty tyrant. Across the generations, Americans have preserved that freedom, expanded it, and in so doing, proved to the world that a government of, by, and for the people is strong and can endure. And those who came before us—the patriots at Normandy and Selma, Seneca Falls and Stonewall, on farmlands and factory floors—they did not struggle, sacrifice, and lay down their lives only to see us cede our fundamental freedoms…only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant.

“These United States of America: we are not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised: a nation big enough to encompass all our dreams, strong enough to withstand any fracture or fissure between us, and fearless enough to imagine a future of possibilities.

“So, America, let us reach for that future. Let us fight for this beautiful country we love. And in seven days, we have the power—each of you has the power—to turn the page and start writing the next chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.

“I thank you all,” she said. “God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.”

In Las Vegas, Nevada, today, the Harris campaign placed a giant political advertisement on the Sphere, the music and entertainment venue owned by the same family that owns Madison Square Garden. The globe showed stars and stripes, pictures of Vice President Harris, the words “Harris-Walz,” “November 5,” “Vote for Freedom,” “Vote for Opportunity, “Vote for our Future,” “Vote for Kamala,” “Vote for a New Way Forward.” “Vote for Reproductive Freedom,” “When We Fight, We Win,” and “When We Vote, We Win.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Dr.Seuss #Nazi rally #Madison Square Garden #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Vote for our Future #Reproductive rights #fascism #global leadership #political cartoons

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yourreddancer · 2 months ago

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Heather Cox Richardson 10.29.24

She promised to fight for a child tax credit and to lower the cost of child care, as well as allowing Medicare to cover the cost of home aides for seniors.

“I thank you all,” she said. “God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.”

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justinspoliticalcorner · 7 months ago

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Rachel Savage at The Guardian:

Final results from Wednesday’s seismic South Africa elections have confirmed that the African National Congress (ANC) party has lost its majority for the first time in 30 years of full democracy, firing the starting gun on unprecedented coalition talks. The ANC, which led the fight to free South Africa from apartheid, won just 159 seats in the 400-member national assembly on a vote share of just over 40%. High unemployment, power cuts, violent crime and crumbling infrastructure have contributed to a haemorrhaging of support for the former liberation movement. The pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA) won 87 seats, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) – a new party led by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s bitter rival, the former president Jacob Zuma – took 58, and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a Marxist-Leninist party led by the ousted ANC youth leader Julius Malema, took 39.

The ANC also lost its majority in three provinces: Northern Cape; Gauteng, which is home to the commercial centre Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria; and KwaZulu-Natal, where MK was the largest party. “What this election has made plain is that the people of South Africa expect their leaders to work together to meet their needs,” Ramaphosa told an audience of politicians, diplomats and civil society leaders after the official results announcement, as thunder rumbled outside. “They expect the parties for which they have voted to find common ground, to overcome their differences, to act and work together for the good of everyone.” Ramaphosa also joked, to laughter from the crowd, that he wished it was true when the electoral commission chair accidentally said that he was announcing the 2029 election results. The president faces questions about his future, though, as the ANC turns to the task of coalition building. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Zuma’s MK party said they had boycotted the election results event.

Zuma had warned before the results announcement that it should not go ahead, saying “people would be provoked”, raising the spectre of the deadly riots that broke out when he was sent to prison in 2021. The position of Ramaphosa was not on the table during the coalition talks that will now take place, the general secretary of the ANC said before the final results were announced. ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula told a press conference at the election results centre: “If you come to us with a demand that Ramaphosa must step down as the president, that is not going to happen … It’s a no-go area. You come to us with that demand, forget it.” MK leaders have said they will not work with the ANC while it is led by Ramaphosa, who Zuma is hell-bent on exacting revenge against. Zuma was president from 2009 to 2018 and was forced to resign by the ANC amid corruption allegations, which he denies.

[...] A tie-up with the DA could be favoured by the more business-friendly wing of the ANC. However, such a coalition would face criticisms from the many black South Africans who see the white-led DA as favouring the interests of white people, which the DA denies. Some analysts have said that bringing in a third, black-led party could help the ANC head off those criticisms. DA leaders have said a coalition is an option, as well as a “confidence and supply” arrangement with an ANC minority government and staying in opposition. Another option for the ANC, and one that is likely to be preferred by the left wing of the party, is to link up with the EFF. That option would need another partner to clear the 50% needed, however. Often mentioned is the Inkatha Freedom party (IFP), which took 17 seats, and, like the MK, gets most of its support from Zulu people.

For the first time since the end of Apartheid in South Africa, the African National Congress won’t have a majority. The ANC, however, will continue to have the most seats, and need to form a coalition, likely with either the Democratic Alliance (DA) or the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and/or uMkhonto weSizwe (MK).

#2024 Elections #South Africa #African National Congress #Democratic Alliance #Cyril Ramaphosa #Jacob Zuma #2024 South African Elections #uMkhonto weSizwe #Inkatha Freedom Party

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warningsine · 7 months ago

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Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed when his helicopter crashed on May 19, 2024 in a mountainous border region, was a consummate loyalist whose passing will be a severe blow to the country’s conservative leadership.

The discovery of wreckage and bodies followed an overnight search operation hampered by weather and terrain. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced that there would be a five day period of public mourning in the country.

As an expert on Iran’s domestic politics and foreign policy, I believe concern in Tehran may extend beyond the potential human tragedy of the crash. The change forced by it will have important implications for an Iranian state that is consumed by domestic chaos, and regional and international confrontation.

Who was Ebrahim Raisi?

Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Raisi acted as an assiduous apparatchik of the Islamic Republic and a prominent protégé of Khamenei, who as supreme leader holds ultimate power in the Islamic Republic.

Before becoming president in 2021, Raisi held various positions inside the judiciary under the purview of the supreme leader. As a prosecutor, and at the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, he sat on the committee that sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death.

The executions earned him the nickname the “Butcher of Tehran” and subsequently subjected him to sanctions by the United States and to condemnation by the United Nations and international human rights organizations.

Since 2006, Raisi served on the Assembly of Experts, a body that appoints and supervises the supreme leader.

And despite being seen as lacking charisma and eloquence, it was thought that Raisi, 63, was being groomed to succeed the 85-year-old Khamenei as supreme leader.

A checkered domestic record

Domestically, Raisi’s presidency was both the cause and consequence of a legitimacy crisis and societal chaos for the regime.

He controversially won the 2021 presidential election after a high number of candidate disqualifications by the Guardian Council, which vets candidates, and a historically low voter turnout of less than 50%.

To appease his conservative base, Raisi and his government reinvigorated the morality police and reimposed religious restrictions on society. This policy led to the Women, Life, Freedom protests sparked by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini in 2022. The demonstrations proved to be the largest and longest in the Islamic Republic’s near 50-year history. They also resulted in unprecedented state repression, with over 500 protesters killed and hundreds more injured, disappeared and detained. Throughout the protests, Raisi demonstrated his loyalty to the supreme leader and conservative elites by doubling down on restrictions and crackdowns.

Meanwhile, under Raisi, Iran’s economy continued to suffer due to a combination of government mismanagement and corruption, along with U.S. sanctions that have intensified in response to Tehran’s domestic repression and overseas provocations.

Confrontation over rapprochement

Domestic turmoil under Raisi’s presidency was accompanied by shifts in Iran’s regional and international role.

As supreme leader, Khamenei has the final say on foreign policy. But Raisi presided over a state that continued down the path of confrontation toward its adversaries, notably the U.S. and Israel.

And whether out of choice or perceived necessity, Tehran has moved further away from any idea of rapprochement with the West.

Faced with increased U.S. sanctions, Iran under Raisi has been reluctant to revive the nuclear deal. Instead, Iran has increased uranium enrichment, blocked international inspectors, and become a nuclear threshold state.

Raisi also continued the “Look to the East” policy of his predecessor, Hassan Rouhani. To this end, he and his government pursued greater rapprochement with China.

Beijing, in turn, has offered an economic lifeline by importing Iranian oil and brokering a diplomatic agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March 2023.

Meanwhile, under Raisi’s presidency, Iran continued to serve as an ally and funder of anti-US and anti-West conflicts, delivering combat drones to Russia for use in Ukraine and providing arms to various regional proxies in the Middle East.

Since the war in Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023, Iran under Khamenei and Raisi had maintained a delicate balance between enabling its regional proxies to counter Israel and the United States while avoiding a direct confrontation with both countries, who are conventionally superior foes.

This balance was momentarily disrupted when the Islamic Republic directly attacked Israel with drones and missiles for the first time in history in April in retaliation for a strike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus.

Raisi – although not directly responsible for foreign policy – had been a key supporter of the Iranian regime’s attempts to further distance itself from the established international order and seek alliances with countries similarly antagonistic toward the West.

Helicopter crashed close to Iranian border

At the time of the helicopter crash, Raisi and his colleagues were returning from a dam inauguration ceremony held in neighboring Azerbaijan. The ceremony was presumably intended for Iran to ingratiate itself with Azerbaijan, having earlier taken an ambiguous, if not adversarial, position in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict – which ended in a convincing Azerbaijani victory in late 2023.

What a change in president could mean

In Raisi, Supreme Leader Khamenei had a longtime loyalist, regime insider and a prospective successor.

Under the Iranian constitution, any death of a president results in the first vice president serving as interim president. In this case, that means Mohammad Mokhber, who is a politician much in the same making of Raisi, and who has been a prominent member of the Iran team negotiating weapons deals with Moscow.

Iran will also have to hold presidential elections within 50 days. It remains to be seen who the supreme leader would give the nod to as a future president and potential successor.

But it is all but certain that conservatives in Tehran will continue to circle the wagons, given the internal and external pressure they face.

Domestically, this could take the form of greater state repression and election manipulation. Regionally and internationally, I believe it could mean forging stronger ties with budding allies and pursuing calculated confrontation against traditional adversaries.

#iran #ebrahim raisi #Ali Khamenei

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uomminecraftsociety · 8 months ago

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2024 UK Local Elections

So every set of elections we have in the UK, I kind of go crazy, pull an all nighter just following the election results by filling my own spreadsheet. But you know what... I'll shitpost election results here.

THESE ARE NOT RESULTS AS OF YET, THESE ARE AS OF YET UNANNOUNCED

Also, none of what I say really matters, I'm not an analyst or anything, just a guy who follows elections too excitedly.

Now granted, I don't know how late I will be able to follow the election results for, especially with how long it will take the election results will take to come in. I also can't follow all the elections so here are the ones I will be following:

Police and Crime Commissioners

Conservatives won 29 of the commissioner positions in 2021.

Labour won 7 of the commissioner positions in 2021, 3 of which were in Wales

Plaid Cymru won 1 of the commissioner positions in 2021

These elections generally cover rural areas, hence why it is so Conservative. These are areas which Labour would like too see gains in if they are to win the next general election, as many are predicting them to.

Council Elections

There are many council elections occurring, too many to properly follow but here are the ones I will be following:

Dudley - Currently Conservative but only just, a good indication of how much of a swing will occur.

Bristol - The results for the constituencies within Bristol for the upcoming general election could be quite an interesting one as many parties have shown promising results in recent council elections, this could be a good indicator for where the city could go.

Peterborough - Currently Conservative, with a mix of support for other parties, a good measure on how strong strong the swing to other parties are.

North Hertfordshire - No overall control, with very close results in 2021 between Labour, Conservative and Lib Dems, similar to Peterborough, would be a good indication of where new support lies.

Local elections which likely would likely lead to a conservative minority or even a mild conservative

Gloucester - Conservatives have 26 of a required 20 seats, with Lib Dems next largest 16 seats behind.

Havant - Conservatives have 28 of a required 19 seats, with 24 more seats than 2nd place Labour.

Greater Manchester Council elections will of course be followed as well:

Bolton - Labour minority, many parties in opposition with strong presence from Reform which could see an increase of support with the current swing.

Bury - Labour Majority, with Conservative minority and a similarly large local interest party.

City of Manchester - Strong Labour majority.

City of Salford - Strong Labour majority.

Oldham - Light Labour majority, Labour did poorly in recent neighbouring Rochdale by-election

Rochdale - Labour Majority, aforementioned by election results were poor.

Stockport - Liberal Democrats the largest party in minority with Labour close behind

Tameside - Strong Labour majority

Trafford - Labour Majority

Wigan - Strong Labour Majority

Mayoral Elections

All of the mayoral elections will be followed, though most noteworthy are:

Tees Valley - Strong support for the incumbent Tory candidate.

West Midlands - Less strong Conservative presence but often reported that their image in the area is independent of the party.

East Midlands - New mayoral position, probably would have gone conservative in 2021 if it were to run, but not strong support.

North East - New mayoral position, mostly Labour support and would probably stay that way.

York and North Yorkshire - Historically strong Conservative support, probably will stick that way. Region has Rishi Sunak's seat.

London Assembly and Mayoral Elections

What it says on the tin. All 3 polls will be followed.

Blackpool South By-Election

Probably will go Labour's way considering it recently flipped to the Conservatives, historically was Labour and the Conservative running there left on a scandal. Though as always, interesting to see the election swing.

#2024 uk local elections uomc #council elections #mayoral elections #police and crime commissioner elections #by elections

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ultrajaphunter · 2 years ago

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Pennsylvania Settles Voter Roll Lawsuit with Judicial Watch Removes 180,000 Inactive Names from Registration Rolls (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it settled its federal election integrity lawsuit against Pennsylvania and five of its counties.

Pennsylvania admitted in court filings that it removed 178,258 ineligible registrations in response to communications from Judicial Watch.

The settlement commits Pennsylvania and five of its counties to extensive public reporting of statistics regarding their ongoing voter roll clean-up efforts for the next five years, along with a payment to Judicial Watch of $15,000 for legal costs and fees. In November 2021, Judicial Watch filed an amended complaint in an ongoing National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) lawsuit.

The amended complaint sought to compel Pennsylvania and five of its counties (Luzerne County, Cumberland County, Washington County, Indiana County and Carbon County) to comply with their voter list-maintenance obligations under Section 8 of the NVRA (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, et al.(No. 1:20-cv-00708)). In the settlement agreement, Pennsylvania agreed to publish the total number of registered and eligible voters (active and inactive) in the five counties by June 30 of each year on the Department of State’s website, for the next five years.

It also agreed to publish the total number of address confirmation notices sent to registered voters and the number returned as undeliverable or not responded to.

It also will publish the total number of voters removed from the registration rolls on account of death, or for failing to respond to an address confirmation notice and failing to vote in the two most recent federal general elections. Judicial Watch alleged a “multi-year failure” to take reasonable steps to maintain accurate voter registration lists as required by federal law.

On April 22, 2021, Judicial Watch sent a notice-of-violation letter to the Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth setting forth a range of violations by the Commonwealth and 27 identified counties.

In September 2021,

Pennsylvania informed the court: Upon receiving the [April 22, 2021] letter, the Secretary [of the Commonwealth] immediately took action by investigating the issues raised and working with the identified 27 counties to remove outstanding inactive voters who had failed to return a confirmation notice and did not participate in the subsequent two consecutive federal elections.

With the Secretary’s assistance, the counties removed every single inactive voter eligible for removal from the rolls.

The total inactive voters removed was 178,258.

Separately, a 2020 letter from Judicial Watch to Allegheny County, Pennsylvania led to the removal of 69,000 outdated registrations.

According to a January 14, 2020, CBS news report, “This mountain of faulty registrations has now courted the attention of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch.” David Voye, Elections Manager for the county told CBS,

“I would concede that we are behind on culling our rolls,” and that this had “been put on the backburner.” Allegheny County later confirmed to Judicial Watch on January 31, 2020 that the removals had occurred. “Pennsylvania’s election rolls are cleaner – and will remail cleaner – thanks to Judicial Watch.

This federal lawsuit settlement is good news for voters in Pennsylvania who want to ensure that only eligible voters are on voter rolls,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

“Judicial Watch’s remarkable run of litigation successes resulted in well over 2 million ineligible registrations being removed from voter rolls across the nation in the last two years!” Judicial Watch is a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights.

As part of its work, Judicial Watch assembled a team of highly experienced voting rights attorneys who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and cleaned up voter rolls in California, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, among other achievements.

In March 2023, Colorado agreed to settle a Judicial Watch NVRA lawsuit alleging that Colorado failed to remove ineligible voters from its rolls.

The settlement agreement requires Colorado to provide Judicial Watch with the most recent voter roll data for each Colorado county each year for six years.

In February 2023, Los Angeles County confirmed removal of 1,207,613 ineligible voters from its rolls since last year, under the terms of a settlement agreement in a federal lawsuit that Judicial Watch filed in 2017. Judicial Watch settled a federal election integrity lawsuit against New York City after the city removed 441,083 ineligible names from the voter rolls and promised to take reasonable steps going forward to clean its voter registration lists. Kentucky also removed hundreds of thousands of old registrations after it entered into a consent decree to end another Judicial Watch lawsuit.

In February 2022, Judicial Watch settled a voter roll clean-up lawsuit against North Carolina and two of its counties after North Carolina removed over 430,000 inactive registrations from its voter rolls.

In March 2022, a Maryland court ruled in favor of Judicial Watch’s challenge to the Democratic state legislature’s “extreme” congressional gerrymander.

In May 2022, Judicial Watch sued Illinois on behalf of Congressman Mike Bost and two other registered Illinois voters to stop state election officials from extending Election Day for 14 days beyond the date established by federal law. Robert Popper, a Judicial Watch senior attorney, leads its election law program.

Popper was previously in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, where he managed voting rights investigations, litigations, consent decrees, and settlements in dozens of states.

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diarrheaworldstarhiphop · 1 year ago

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I love el salvador because its proof that you can literally just disregard left wing ideology completely, do the exact opposite of what (((they))) say we can't/arent allowed to do, and the end result is objective improvement lol based president bukakke is /ourguy/

lol

>>Despite Bukele presenting his administration as “populist” he is anything but a political outsider or a champion of “the people.” After getting kicked out of the then-ruling Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) for allegedly assaulting a female party official, Bukele, a former advertising executive, joined the Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA) whose founding members came from the aforementioned Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). Furthermore, Bukele’s rise to power took place during an election in which nearly 50% of eligible Salvadoran voters abstained. It’s even possible that Bukele was appointed in response to the FMLN government’s friendlier relationship with China. For example, in exchange for breaking ties with Taiwan and recognizing Beijing as the official capitol of China, FLMN received $150 million and a donation of 3,000 tons of rice from the Chinese Communist Party. Likewise, during the Trump administration’s 2019 attempt to oust Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro on behalf of the neoliberal reactionary Juan Guaido, the FMLN took the side of the Chavistas.

In America, Bukele is best known for establishing Bitcoin as Salvadoran legal tender alongside the US dollar. Cryptobros like to portray this as an attempt by a “based” technocrat unpersuaded by “ideology” to get his nation off of fiat currency and away from the control of central banks. This narrative is a total inversion of the truth; In 2020 Bukele sent 40 soldiers into the Legislative Assembly building and forced opposition politicians at gunpoint to approve a loan request of $109 million from the American government for his “Territorial Control Plan.” This plan, using COVID-19 as a pretext, deployed thousands of military personnel to work alongside local police in establishing martial law throughout El Salvador. Bukele’s government insists this led not only to a successful quarantine but a significant reduction in homicides by organized crime. However, the Territorial Control Plan relies on alliances with Salvador’s gangs, as a report by El Faro exposed. “The pandemic was a blessing for Bukele,” Carlos López Bernal, a professor of history at the University of El Salvador, told The Guardian. “He presented an apocalyptic scenario to which the only solution, supposedly, was to give the president everything he asked for. More money and more power.”

In 2021, Bukele’s party “won” a supermajority in El Salvador’s congress, supposedly with 65% of the vote. He then fired five Salvadoran Supreme Court Justices and the attorney general before the Legislative Assembly voted to accept Bitcoin as legal tender. This decision was influenced by Bukele’s close relationship to Strike CEO Jack Mallers, the descendant of Chicago finance royalty and a member of Forbes 30 under 30. According to Slate: “Bukele’s government rolled out a digital crypto wallet in app form, called Chivo (Salvadoran slang for cool), which came preloaded with $30 of Bitcoin to encourage adoption. Many who downloaded it found it confusing and buggy, or that their $30 had already been stolen by identity thieves. A study by economists at the University of Chicago, Penn State and Yale found that of those who managed to access it, most cashed out their $30 and didn’t use Chivo again.”

Towards the start of May, cryptocurrency experienced its worst crash yet. This ongoing crash has already wiped out $400 billion in market capitalization and bankrupted innumerable investors. As Slate notes, “El Salvador is on the verge of defaulting on its debts, which amount to close to 100 percent of its gross domestic product. This is exacerbated by the loss of value of the country’s Bitcoin holdings, which Bukele bragged he would trade with public funds on his phone while in the bathroom. As of now, he has personally cost the Treasury about $40 million—an amount equal to its next foreign debt payment, due to bondholders in June.”

Just before the epic crypto crash, Bukele unveiled plans for a city, “funded by the sale of a Bitcoin bond and powered by geothermal energy from the nearby Conchagua volcano.” Now, the country’s bonds are trading at 40% of their original value. But like any good con artist, cult leader, or multi-level marketing guru, Bukele has doubled down on his Bitcoin “gamble.” In the midst of the crypto crash, El Salvador hosted a “financial inclusion conference” attended by “44 central bankers from developing countries around the world.” This conference was organized by the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, formed in 2008 by central bankers in Mexico, Kenya, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand in “close collaboration” with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2013, Bill Gates spoke at a meeting hosted by the United Nations General Assembly to tout the merits of “digital financial inclusion” via digital payment systems. The invite reads: “Today 2.5 billion adults are excluded from the formal financial services sector. Yet governments, the development community and the private sector make billions of dollars in cash payments to people in emerging economies, many of them poor and financially excluded. Shifting these salaries, pensions, social welfare stipends and emergency relief payments from cash to electronic has the potential to improve the livelihoods of low-income people by advancing financial inclusion and helping people save.

During the upcoming United Nations General Assembly, UNDP, UNCDF and the Better Than Cash Alliance are hosting an event on how partnerships between governments, private sector and development organizations are helping to promote inclusive growth. It will focus on how digital payments can catalyze financial inclusion, and as a result, can be a driver of inclusive growth and development.”

In January 2021 the Bank of International Settlements issued a report stating, “Most central banks are exploring central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and their work continues apace amid the Covid-19 pandemic. As a whole, central banks are moving into more advanced stages of CBDC engagement, progressing from conceptual research to practical experimentation.” Since 2017, “the share of central banks actively engaging in some form of CBDC work grew by about one third and now stands at 86%.” The BIS report found that 56 central banks are now researching or developing some form of digital currency.

During the early stages of the pandemic in 2020 programmers well versed in COBOL, a 40 year old programming language, were in high demand. This demand mainly came from state governments, who still use COBOL to dispense unemployment benefits. “Literally, we have systems that are 40-plus-years-old,” New Jersey governor Chris Murphy told CNBC. “There’ll be lots of postmortems. and one of them on our list will be, how did we get here where we literally needed COBOL programmers?” Murphy’s concerns were echoed by Kansas governor Laura Kelly: “So many of our Departments of Labor across the country are still on the COBOL system; you know very, very old technology.” Connecticut, California, New York, and Pennsylvania “still rely on decades-old mainframe systems based on the COBOL language as well.”

If all of this still sounds banal or benign to you, consider the following: PRISM, the massive NSA surveillance machine “exposed” by Islamaphobic Ayn Rand fanboy and descendant of numerous lifelong feds Edward Snowden, is the direct descendant of PROMIS, a tracking software developed by a “former” NSA fed working in the private sector through his firm Inslaw. Inslaw originally developed PROMIS to help the Department of Justice and local law enforcement agencies across America “update” their prehistoric filing systems in the mid-1980s. PROMIS was later stolen by Mossad spies and infamously distributed by Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell, before making its way back to its homeland. In the meantime, the same NSA that was building PRISM and had produced PROMIS was working on the hash algorithm that made Bitcoin possible.

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Covid Imperialism, Crypto Colonialism, and the Real “Great Reset” – Beyond_Lies_The_Wub (wordpress.com)

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blondietalks · 1 year ago

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Twitter censorship of Donald Trump, is it a violation of the “free speech” principle and democracy?

Hey guys! This week on my Digital Communities thread, I’ll be writing regarding political engagements on social media – more specifically, Twitter’s censorship of Donald Trump. Does banning Donald Trump violate the First Amendment of the Constitution regarding free speech?

This post will investigate whether or not this controversial figure should exercise their freedom of speech. It is important to explore the implications of Twitter's censorship on the political engagement of Donald Trump and the public sphere.

Before the Storm: Trump’s Uproar on Twitter

Trump made his debut appearance on Twitter on the 4th of May 2009 – a bland tweet to remind his followers to tune in the show Late Night with David Letterman as he was the show guest. As per all important figures, the start of their presence on social media were usually handled by their hired staff. But once Trump learned to voice his opinion on the platform, his Twitter insanity started in 2011 where he encapsulates his true persona for the rest of the world to see.

Trump was notoriously acknowledged on Twitter for his constant targeting of celebrity drama at the start of 2011 (Singer & Emerson, 2018). Back in 2012 when the Twilight lead actors broke up, Trump was fully invested in their relationship as shown on his Twitter account below.

According to The Economist (2021), Trump had tweeted over 46,000 times up until the start of 2021. Even when you purposely avoid his account on Twitter, the 45th U.S. President will take it as a challenge to creep up into your feed. Nobody tweets more than Donald J. Trump, not even a person going through the five stages of grief.

Trump’s Twitter Ban

On the 8th of January 2021, Trump was suspended on multiple social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch and TikTok – but this post will focus on his Twitter ban. Twitter staff had banned his account and over 70,000 accounts for spreading acts of far-right extremism (Romano 2021).

The tweet that got him permanently suspended is his support for Capitol rioters who infiltrated the United States Capitol on the 6th of January 2021. The riot started due to Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was not legitimate when Biden won. According to Duignan (2021), the rioters smashed the windows and vandalised the offices in the capitol to show their rage against the election.

Does banning Trump Violate the Freedom of Speech?

Many audiences have debated whether it is fair or not to suspend Trump from his audiences following the incident, some claiming that it violates the First Amendment regarding the freedom of speech.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.

In simpler words, the First Amendment ensures you the freedom to speak without any consequences from the government. In my opinion, banning Trump on Twitter does not violate the freedom of speech because Twitter, or any other social platforms are not the government. The First Amendment has no leverage on whether or not these social media platforms must allow everyone to use them. Twitter is owned by a company which in turn makes it a private property with the privilege of making their own regulations on what people can do on their site.

Deplatforming Donald Trump and its kind

So, what is the rationale of banning Trump in the first place anyway?

All of these events that went down which resulted in the ban of Donald Trump and thousands of other far-right accounts on Twitter unveil one simple fact: kicking people off social media isn’t about free speech, it’s about deplatforming extremist communities from mainstream Internet spaces to decrease their influence and take away their ability to recruit violent behaviour as shown by the Capitol attack. Demonstrating zero tolerance towards bad behaviour by banning people off social media sets a reminder to everyone to just behave better online. One of the examples of how deplatforming helped reduce hate speech online is when Reddit banned multiple infamous subreddits in 2015 (Romano 2021). In 2017, a study done on the communities on Reddit showed a decreased amount of hate speech when the platform is regulated and is restrictive in allowing toxic spaces on their platform.

However, deplatforming does not fully cleanse the online public sphere from hate speech. These extremists will find a way, a different platform that is less restrictive and much laxer to continue their “prophecies”. It’s the very existence of these alternate channels that proves that free speech still exists and is not violated.

The Conclusion

To conclude this week’s topic, Trump’s evolution on Twitter in the end got him banned from the platform. It is important to recognise that deplatforming does not violate free speech, but it is an effort done by responsible tech companies to eradicate forms of hate speech, violence and extremism. Whether or not my opinion is correct, it is ultimately my opinion, and it is ultimately up to Tumblr to rationalise if I am allowed to spread my intervention on their platform.

List of references

Duignan, B 2021, ‘January 6 U.S. Capitol attack’, Britannica, 4 August, viewed 9 October 2023, <https://www.britannica.com/event/January-6-U-S-Capitol-attack>.

Romano, A 2021, ‘Kicking people off social media isn’t about free speech’, Vox, 21 January, viewed 9 October 2023, <https://www.vox.com/culture/22230847/deplatforming-free-speech-controversy-trump>.

Singer, PW Emerson, B 2018, ‘The little-known story of Donald Trump’s first tweet’, Time, 2 October, viewed 9 October 2023, <https://time.com/5412016/donald-trump-realdonaldtrump-twitter-first-tweet/>.

The Economist 2021, ‘How Donald Trump evolved into a prolific, angry Twitter user’, The Economist, 12 January, viewed 9 October 2023, <https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/01/12/how-donald-trump-evolved-into-a-prolific-angry-twitter-user>.

#MDA20009 #Week5

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dankusner · 13 days ago

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Culture of Corruption

Intentionally weak government oversight gives Illinois public officials cover for misconduct

While a plethora of inspectors general and ethics commissions across Illinois’ levels of government gives the appearance of robust protections, the shortcomings enable public officials to operate in an atmosphere of impunity, which the Tribune is examining in its ongoing series “.”

Paper tigers

Carol Pope lasted only about two years as the Illinois General Assembly’s inspector general before quitting in frustration.

When Pope, whose job was to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by legislators and their staffers, asked for more autonomy amid a burgeoning corruption scandal in the legislature, lawmakers instead passed a law limiting her powers.

The legislative inspector general “has no real power to effect change or shine a light on ethics violations,” Pope, a former state prosecutor and judge, wrote in a scathing resignation letter in 2021.

“The position is essentially a paper tiger.”

In Chicago, aldermen shut down the inspector general’s office charged with overseeing the City Council nearly a decade ago after the first occupant, attorney Faisal Khan, repeatedly butted heads with council members as Khan looked into complaints of misconduct.

Like Pope, Khan viewed the elected officials’ actions as thinly veiled attempts to protect themselves from scrutiny.

“This office wouldn’t be closing if they wanted oversight,” he said at the time.

The frustrations Pope and Khan experienced in being the internal watchdogs for two notoriously crooked government bodies underscore a key factor in Illinois’ pervasive political corruption:

Public officials create systems of oversight that often thwart meaningful accountability for elected officials and government employees.

A Tribune review of Illinois and Chicago ethics laws found consistent weaknesses in the systems, including:

Significant restrictions on the types of alleged misconduct the watchdogs are permitted to investigate, A lack of transparency when wrongdoing is uncovered because of serious limitations on how and when the results of investigations can be made public, and A limited ability to impose sanctions or discipline on those found to have broken laws or government ethics guidelines, particularly when the subject of an investigation is an elected official.

While a plethora of inspectors general and ethics commissions across Illinois’ various levels of government gives the appearance of robust protections, the shortcomings enable public officials to operate in an atmosphere of impunity, which the Tribune is examining in its ongoing series “Culture of Corruption.”

Chicago still has an overarching inspector general who can conduct independent inquiries into most aspects of city government, including the council.

But the office generally cannot name names in its reports, and City Hall can ignore its findings.

Inspectors general and ethics boards must have real power to hold officials accountable for the oversight system to work, Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg told the Tribune.

Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg told the Tribune that inspectors general and ethics boards must have real power to hold officials accountable, as the “false appearance of oversight might be worse than none at all.”

“The false appearance of oversight might be worse than none at all because it sets up one more government institution which people have no reason to trust,” Witzburg said.

“This is exactly why the independence of oversight agencies must be so fiercely guarded. Whenever the overseen are able to control oversight, we ought to be worried about whether it is a facade.”

Designed to fail

For decades, Illinois politicians looking to spin themselves out of a scandal have turned to the same playbook:

Promise reform while setting up a system that doesn’t solve the problems that caused the scandal in the first place.

Establishing an inspector general’s office is in the playbook’s first chapter.

For example, when Richard M. Daley became mayor in 1989, the city was still reeling from a federal investigation that took down several members of the City Council.

Daley proposed an inspector general’s office to investigate wrongdoing in city government, but in approving the position council members excluded themselves from being investigated.

By the time the idea of an aldermanic watchdog was revived in 2010, two decades had passed and a dozen more City Council members had been sentenced to prison.

Yet the resulting ordinance placed strict limits on the authority of the new inspector general.

15:39 — "authority"

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Among them:

In order to investigate an alderman or members of their staff, the office first had to get the approval of the Chicago Board of Ethics, which in the preceding 23 years hadn’t reported a single case of wrongdoing by an alderman even though more than 20 council members were convicted of crimes during the same period.

Within six years, the council took away the office’s funding and shut it down, while transferring some of its powers to the city inspector general.

The system of oversight at the state level has also had a rocky history.

In 1984, Republican Gov. James Thompson created the state’s first inspector general post and appointed Jeremy Margolis, an acolyte from Thompson’s days in the U.S. attorney’s office.

Thompson gave the office wide-ranging powers but did not permit it to investigate lawmakers or public officials.

Rather, the state IG was to focus on overseeing the regulation of businesses such as nursing homes and firms that dispose of toxic waste.

Perhaps its most notable effort was investigating a deadly salmonella outbreak tied to tainted milk.

Some observers considered the office’s creation as nothing more than a political move meant to counterbalance the investigative efforts of an attorney general’s office being run by a Thompson rival, Democrat Neil Hartigan.

Indeed, when Margolis left to head the Illinois State Police, he took with him oversight of many of the issues he’d dealt with as inspector general and the office went dormant.

It wasn’t the last time an elected official appointed an ally to be a watchdog.

Republican George Ryan installed childhood friend Dean Bauer as inspector general for the secretary of state’s office, which Ryan ran for most of the 1990s.

While Bauer’s job was to police secretary of state employees and root out misconduct, federal prosecutors said he instead buried internal accusations about a licenses-for-bribes scandal out of fear it would be tied to Ryan.

Dean Bauer, center, shown in 2000 with attorney Ed Genson, served as inspector general for the secretary of state’s office under George Ryan, a childhood friend. Prosecutors charged Bauer as part of a licenses-for-bribes scandal that ultimately also led to Ryan’s conviction. (Phil Greer/Chicago Tribune)

Bauer, who pleaded guilty in 2001 to a federal felony count of obstructing justice, ultimately admitted he’d instructed a secretary to destroy documents subpoenaed by federal investigators.

One of the documents showed Bauer halted an inquiry into stunning allegations that a fiery 1994 crash in Wisconsin that killed six children from Chicago was caused by a driver linked to the scandal.

The Bauer case and Ryan’s subsequent federal corruption conviction spurred another call for reforms, which was embraced by Ryan’s successor as governor, Democrat Rod Blagojevich.

Blagojevich’s plan included mandating inspectors general for each of the five statewide elected offices — governor, attorney general, secretary of state, comptroller and treasurer — and for the General Assembly.

Two new ethics commissions would oversee the IGs’ work:

one commission for the five executive branch inspectors general and the other for the legislative branch.

Blagojevich trumpeted the measure as “revolutionary ethics reform.”

But again, the system had major flaws.

In 2003, Gov. Rod Blagojevich, left, held a news conference on an ethics reform package. He was introduced by Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn, right, who later became governor after Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office.

The watchdogs were prohibited from launching investigations until they received formal complaints.

And when they found wrongdoing, the rules generally prohibited them from making those findings public.

That was particularly true for wrongdoing involving lawmakers because a majority vote from an eight-member panel of four Democrats and four Republicans — almost exclusively sitting legislators — was required before reports could be released, a system virtually designed to deadlock.

Hidden findings

A year after the Blagojevich ethics laws took effect, the state’s newly revamped inspector general’s office for the governor’s administration issued a 10-page report titled “A Celebration of Integrity.”

The report provided a variety of statistics about the office’s investigations, how many complaints were filed and the general types of allegations.

But nowhere did it detail what actual wrongdoing was found or even what recommendations the office offered to correct the dishonesty.

Defenders said the lack of transparency was meant, in part, to protect people from political retribution and smear campaigns.

But even some supporters of the ethics overhaul said obscuring so many details undermined the law’s main goal — to increase public confidence in government.

Then-state Sen. Kirk Dillard, a Hinsdale Republican, summed up the problem:

“I can’t tell from the statistics whether someone stole 18 cents or $18 million, although even if it’s a penny, it’s wrong.”

While the secrecy might have protected some innocent state employees from untrue innuendo, it mostly benefited the governor and his administration.

And the only way the public could learn details of an inspector general’s findings was if a journalist or some other party managed to obtain a copy of the report.

In 2006, the Tribune pried loose a report that found the Blagojevich administration had “complete and utter contempt” for a law giving military veterans preference in hiring and a court ruling barring political considerations when filling most jobs.

The report, which was revealed shortly after it became public that the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago was looking into “endemic hiring fraud” under Blagojevich, stated the governor’s intergovernmental affairs office was “the real machine driving hiring” at the Illinois Department of Employment Security from nearly the time he took office.

The inspector general’s office recommended discipline, “up to and including discharge,” for six employees.

But when the Tribune obtained the report nearly two years later, half of those individuals still worked for the department, including one who’d been promoted.

The hiring issues weren’t among the charges filed against Blagojevich when he was arrested almost exactly 16 years ago — charges that eventually sent him to federal prison in 2012.

But the findings were listed in the articles of impeachment upon which the Illinois House convicted the governor in early 2009 before the Senate removed him from office.

After Blagojevich became the first person in Illinois to be expelled from the governor’s mansion, calls for reform rang out again.

Blagojevich’s successor, Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, convened a reform commission that suggested numerous changes to strengthen the state’s ethical guardrails.

One was to require the release of reports in cases where an inspector general found wrongdoing, including publishing the names of high-level state employees and others found to have engaged in prohibited activity.

The panel also recommended giving the inspectors general power to initiate their own investigations and look into anonymous tips.

Additionally, the group said state officials who appoint IGs should have to get state Senate approval before removing them.

Once again, however, the proposals ended up being watered down.

While Quinn signed a law allowing the watchdogs to initiate investigations without receiving a formal complaint and requiring the release of reports that resulted in an employee being fired or suspended for three days or more, he gave the ethics commissions for the executive and legislative branches wide latitude in determining what information could be redacted from the released reports.

Allowing inspectors general to launch their own probes has produced some results.

Over the past two years, for example, the inspector general for agencies under the governor has uncovered more than 300 cases in which state employees fraudulently obtained federal loans through the pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program, either by inflating previous earnings of their side businesses or making up the businesses altogether.

Many of those employees have been fired or resigned before they could be terminated.

But the law Quinn signed ignored the recommendation to require Senate approval for firing watchdogs, an issue that resurfaced in Springfield a year later when Quinn removed the inspector general he’d inherited from Blagojevich.

The move came on the same day Quinn learned the inspector general had dinged the governor’s chief of staff for sending political emails from a government account.

Quinn denied any connection between the two issues.

The Quinn-era changes also did nothing to increase transparency surrounding investigations into alleged wrongdoing by members of the General Assembly.

About a week after the state’s first legislative inspector general, Thomas Homer, left office in 2014, the Tribune published a story based on an unreleased report that blasted Democratic Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and allies for the “timing and persistence” of job requests to Metra.

Madigan himself had asked for the investigation amid fallout from a scandal in which Metra’s ousted CEO publicly accused the speaker of pressuring the commuter rail agency over jobs and raises for political allies — echoing allegations in Madigan’s ongoing bribery and racketeering trial at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.

Thomas Homer, shown at a 2013 meeting of the Regional Transportation Authority board, was the state’s first inspector general for the Illinois General Assembly. He left the post the following year.

Although Madigan said the report from Homer showed he hadn’t broken any laws, Homer in the leaked document detailed incidents such as Metra’s chairwoman leaving a meeting in the speaker’s Capitol office with the names of two rail agency employees Madigan wanted to see promoted written on a sticky note.

The speaker “should have realized, given his influential position, that by making the requests at the conclusion of meetings with Metra officials to discuss funding and other legislative issues, he would be creating reciprocal expectations,” Homer wrote.

Chicago has had similar issues with transparency.

As a candidate for mayor in 2019, former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot promised reforms on how inspector general reports were handled, including making them more transparent.

Under the law at the time, Chicago’s inspector general could release only abridged summaries of cases, with anonymized information about misconduct.

Once elected, Lightfoot successfully pushed aldermen to change city law so inspector general reports could be made public.

But instead of leaving the decision on whether to release a full report in the inspector general’s hands, the Lightfoot-backed law gave that power to the mayor’s corporation counsel.

What’s more, only reports detailing felonies or deaths were eligible for release.

Under the new law, the Lightfoot administration released IG reports on three controversial incidents that occurred before she became mayor:

a report on the police murder of Laquan McDonald, an investigation into the deaths of two cops and a probe into a fatal altercation involving a Daley nephew.

What her administration did not release were any reports from incidents during Lightfoot’s tenure, including a wrongful 2019 police raid on the home of social worker Anjanette Young.

It also did not release a report on a 2020 environmental disaster in the Little Village neighborhood when a developer dusted the Mexican immigrant community with toxic powder during a badly executed implosion.

Lightfoot faced significant pressure from community groups, elected officials and media to release the reports, but her administration said it couldn’t do so under the terms of the city ordinance — terms she had drawn up herself.

Slaps on the wrist

When watchdogs do ferret out misconduct, the consequences for those who break the rules often are insignificant.

In Chicago, a Board of Ethics created in 1987 can fine elected officials and city employees for violations of the city’s ethics code.

But the board didn’t issue its first major fine until 30 years later — after the Tribune revealed how corporate executives, campaign contributors and others had lobbied Mayor Rahm Emanuel via his personal email accounts.

The Board of Ethics levied an eye-popping $90,000 fine against a former Uber executive and smaller penalties for others who sought to influence Emanuel.

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The executive paid his fine, but after an initial wave of headlines the board dropped three fines against two of the mayor’s friends and an alderman’s husband.

The board chairman, William F. Conlon, expressed hesitancy to issue any more heavy fines.

The penalties, Conlon said, should not be “unreasonable or vindictive.”

While the ethics board has made some strides in recent years — it has fined the city treasurer and several aldermen for misconduct — it is still considered weak and has caved to demands from powerful figures, including the mayor.

In one key moment during Lightfoot’s tenure, the mayor tried to weaken a newly passed ordinance that banned aldermen from being lobbyists and prohibited elected officials outside the city from lobbying Chicago officials.

Lightfoot’s change would have allowed outside elected officials to lobby in Chicago as long as the public body they represented didn’t have pending or recurring matters involving the city.

That would have saved Gyata Kimmons, a trustee in south suburban Flossmoor, from having to choose between his lobbying career and his elected post.

In the meantime, the Chicago Board of Ethics had a choice to make.

Would it enforce the law and anger Lightfoot as well as aldermen who supported Kimmons, or wait?

The board bowed to the mayor’s wishes.

Executive Director Steve Berlin said at the time that his office wouldn’t enforce the law until Lightfoot’s ordinance was considered.

Kimmons continued lobbying City Hall and even emailed Lightfoot directly on behalf of a real estate company that had tenants at O’Hare International Airport.

Aldermen later voted down the mayor’s legislation, and Kimmons quit his trustee position to continue lobbying.

In an email to the Tribune, Berlin disputed that the board of ethics “caved” to Lightfoot, saying the board “made a considered decision, as it always does.”

Steve Berlin, Chicago Board of Ethics executive director, listens during a meeting at City Hall on March 21, 2017.

The board faced another embarrassing moment this year after it tried to sanction City Hall lobbyists who donated to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s campaign fund.

The contributions violated an executive order from 2011 that bans registered lobbyists from making such donations.

The board had to vacate its determination, however, after a lobbyist objected and the mayor’s Law Department hired an outside firm to review the matter.

That firm found the ethics board didn’t have the power to enforce the order.

Aldermen later voted to make the lobbyist donation ban a city law while also expanding its reach to include mayoral candidates and giving the board enforcement power.

But the incident highlighted how loopholes can allow ethics scofflaws to escape punishment.

In the executive branch of state government, the Executive Ethics Commission is tasked with reviewing the outcomes of inspector general investigations and determining whether to levy fines or recommend any other discipline when employees violate certain provisions of state ethics law, such as engaging in political activity on state time.

In the two decades since its creation, the commission has levied more than $565,000 in fines, including a $2,500 penalty against one of its former members in 2013 for attending a prohibited campaign event for a Chicago aldermanic candidate while serving on the commission.

But the vast majority of the fines — nearly $480,000 — came in just five cases where former state employees violated a law limiting how quickly they could start new jobs with companies that do business with the state.

In those cases, the commission can assess fines up to three times the new job’s annual compensation.

The five state inspectors general can recommend sanctions when they uncover wrongdoing not covered by state ethics law, but they have no enforcement power, leaving the ultimate decision up to top state officials.

Often, employees who break the rules are able to resign or retire before facing punishment.

In about half of the roughly 200 cases where the inspector general for agencies under Gov. JB Pritzker found wrongdoing in the state budget year that ended June 30, the employee in question resigned or retired, according to the inspector general’s annual report.

Only 32 were fired, and one was suspended.

Even when misdeeds are uncovered at the highest levels of a state agency, the result can be little more than a slap on the wrist.

In a 2021 report, the inspector general found Illinois Department of Transportation Secretary Omer Osman had violated a long-standing policy by allowing high-ranking IDOT officials to delegate job duties so they could avoid triggering a revolving-door prohibition that would have kept them from immediately going to work for state contractors when they left the agency.

Osman, who gave investigators conflicting information, personally approved “blanket recusals” from certain duties for at least three employees who reported to him during his three-decade career at the agency, according to the report, a direct violation of rules designed to prevent corruption by keeping officials from benefiting financially off lucrative state contracts they oversee.

The report — which wasn’t released publicly until a review process was completed last year — recommended the governor’s office “take appropriate action regarding Mr. Osman,” without spelling out what that should be.

The appropriate action, as determined by Pritzker? Clarifying internal policies, then reappointing Osman when the governor won a second term in 2022. Pritzker also signed a series of budget bills that included raises for Osman totaling nearly 19%, increasing his pay to $220,500 per year.

On Tuesday, Pritzker’s office announced Osman was retiring after 35 years at IDOT. Osman is in line for a public pension starting at nearly $114,000 per year, according to an estimate from the State Retirement Systems.

Nothing to see here

Pope, the state legislative inspector general who resigned in frustration, wasn’t the first person to call for more independence for the office.

Homer, who investigated Madigan’s influence on Metra hiring, made a similar push as he left office in 2014.

The office subsequently sat vacant for nearly three years until an unaddressed sexual harassment complaint against a state senator led the legislature to appoint former federal prosecutor Julie Porter to fill the role temporarily.

After leaving the post in early 2019, Porter penned a blistering Tribune op-ed declaring the legislative oversight system “broken” and calling for greater independence.

During Pope’s tenure, when she discussed the Illinois legislature’s system with other inspectors general at a national conference, “they were all shocked, and none of them had to follow those types of restrictions,” she said in a recent interview.

“The same issues have been brought to the attention of the legislature for over 10 years now, and there’s been no movement,” Pope said. “There’s no appetite for real reform, and … I do understand it, but I don’t approve of it.”

The recent federal corruption investigation that hauled Madigan and several other lawmakers into court did result in some changes, such as giving the inspector general authority to begin investigating complaints without prior approval from the Legislative Ethics Commission.

But legislators limited the scope of those investigations to conduct directly related to officials’ public duties — placing personal and political misdeeds out of bounds.

In her resignation letter, Pope pointed out that the change in scope meant the office could no longer investigate issues “such as posting revenge porn on social media” or “failure to pay income taxes on non-legislative income” — both real examples of recent misconduct by members of the General Assembly.

In addition, legislators restored the requirement that the inspector general wait to start investigating an allegation — even one that’s made headlines — until someone files an official complaint. That may never happen if the victim or whistleblower fears retribution or lacks faith in the system.

But the current legislative inspector general, who took over from Pope nearly three years ago, told the Tribune these limitations haven’t been a problem.

“I haven’t found any restrictions. I really haven’t,” said Michael McCuskey, a former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for central Illinois. “What I’m looking for is a good complaint in writing.”

McCuskey, who was initially approved over Republican objections on a near-party-line vote in 2022 but reappointed the following year with only one vote in opposition, said he doesn’t think inspectors general should have unilateral authority to launch investigations in the absence of a complaint, particularly when it comes to issues that federal authorities are better equipped to handle.

“With the IRS, the FBI, the (U.S. attorney’s office for the) Northern District (of Illinois), they don’t want some rogue inspector general getting into their territory,” he said.

Since taking office, McCuskey has met with new lawmakers before they’re sworn in to educate them about the state’s ethics laws and tried to make himself a more visible presence around the Capitol.

In his view, turnover in the legislature in recent years has brought in many new members with “a different attitude.”

From 2022 through the end of this September, the office received 96 complaints alleging wrongdoing by lawmakers or legislative staff and referred a dozen more to other investigative bodies, according to quarterly reports to the legislature.

As of Sept. 30, the office had closed 20 of the 21 cases it opened without finding any wrongdoing worthy of referring to the Legislative Ethics Commission or the attorney general’s office.

“I haven’t had one that I thought should be published,” McCuskey said.

Not a single report on misconduct by a lawmaker or staff member has been made public in nearly five years, even as federal prosecutors have brought Madigan to trial and won guilty pleas or convictions in cases against a half-dozen other former lawmakers.

#Youtube

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mariacallous · 7 months ago

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Who Will Be in South Africa’s Next Government?

It’s official: The African National Congress (ANC) party will need to share power for the first time since apartheid ended in 1994 after losing its parliamentary majority in South Africa’s May 29 national election. The historic loss was in part due to former President Jacob Zuma’s 6-month-old uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party eating into ANC support. The ANC received 40.2 percent of votes, down more than 17 percentage points compared with the 57.5 percent it secured in the last national election in 2019. It now holds just 159 seats out of 400 in the National Assembly.

The center-right Democratic Alliance (DA) trailed in second place with 21.8 percent of votes (87 seats). Zuma’s MK gained 14.6 percent of votes (58 seats), becoming the third-biggest party in the National Assembly.

In Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal, the former president rejected the final tally, claiming vote-rigging, and threatened violence if South Africa’s Electoral Commission declared the results on Sunday as planned. “People would be provoked,” he said, referring to the violent riots that gripped the nation when he was sent to jail in July 2021. “Do not start trouble when there is no trouble.” MK won 45.3 percent of votes in KwaZulu-Natal—just under the 50 percent needed to govern the province outright.

Zuma’s earlier conviction means he is barred from taking a seat in the National Assembly, but he is still able to pull the strings from behind the scenes. “Love him or hate him, Zuma is the most consequential South African politician of his generation,” Sisonke Msimang wrote in Foreign Policy prior to the election. Another ANC splinter group, the radical left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), dropped to fourth place, with a vote share of 9.5 percent (39 seats).

“We suffered heavily, but we are not out,” ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said at a press conference on Sunday. “We are talking to everybody. There’s nobody we are not going to talk to.” The ANC now needs to form a coalition with one or more opposition parties and began talks on Monday.

The first option that’s popular with investors is a partnership with the pro-business DA. But factions of the ANC are ideologically opposed to the free market agenda promised by the DA. There’s a high potential for political infighting that could weaken any ability to govern cohesively. The DA does not support racial quotas in the workplace—introduced by the ANC—or the new government-funded national health insurance system.

The DA also opposes setting a minimum wage, which it says contributes to unemployment; meanwhile, the ANC believes a minimum wage shelters low-skilled Black workers from extreme poverty.

EFF leader Julius Malema warned the ANC against forming a coalition that would “reinforce white supremacy” and make it a “puppet of a white imperialist agenda”—referring to the DA, which is perceived as serving the interests of minority white South Africans. But the DA has drawn support from Black and mixed-race voters and is seen by most South Africans as governing the best-run province—the Western Cape and its capital, Cape Town.

In turn, DA leader John Steenhuisen has been open to an ANC partnership from the outset knowing that the party was unlikely to reach more than 22 percent of votes. He called an ANC-MK-EFF coalition a “doomsday” scenario.

An alternative to appease dissenting ANC members would be a coalition with the ANC, DA, and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), which draws its support mainly from ethnic Zulus in KwaZulu-Natal. This would give the three parties 66 percent of the national vote and a commanding majority in South Africa’s most populous province, Gauteng.

A coalition between the ANC and the EFF would intensify great-power competition in the region by further antagonizing the United States. The EFF has suggested nationalizing key institutions and redistributing minority white-owned land without compensation. The two parties currently run the Johannesburg city council together but have had violent clashes running Ekurhuleni, a municipality east of Johannesburg.

The EFF and MK advocate similar economic policies, but an alliance between MK and the ANC is at the moment unlikely due to the souring of relations between Zuma and ANC members. Zuma’s party has demanded that President Cyril Ramaphosa step down before any coalition talks, which ANC members have ruled out.

Coalitions have rarely worked in South Africa. Coalition governments that have previously governed major cities such as Johannesburg and Durban have been unsuccessful, as party rivalries often hampered the delivery of basic services. On a national level, this could affect the ability to swiftly introduce new policies and pass budgets to deal with the country’s immediate problems on the economy, energy, and jobs.

“The lack of ideological cohesion among parties has led to the rise of coalition politics in South Africa,” Ebrahim Fakir wrote in Foreign Policy just before the election. “The result is a governmental environment where oversight and accountability are minimal—and where policy implementation is erratic.”

Leaked ANC documents seen by South Africa’s Daily Maverick suggest the party may opt for a minority government with a more stable supply and confidence agreement struck with the DA and IFP, similar to the parliamentary system currently in place in Canada. The arrangement would mean that the parties agree to back the ANC on key policy votes in exchange for concessions on specific policies.

Regardless, experts suggest Ramaphosa’s time in office could be limited. No ANC president has ever served a full second term. Nelson Mandela chose not to run for a second term, while his successors Thabo Mbeki and Zuma were forced to step down as party leader before their final terms ended. Having presided over such a historic defeat for the ANC, pressure may increase on Ramaphosa to step down before his mandate ends.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 24, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the nation’s highest-ranking military officer and the principal military advisor to the president, secretary of defense, and national security council. The current chairman, Army General Mark Milley, has served in the military for 44 years, deploying in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Panama, Haiti, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, Somalia, and the Republic of Korea. He holds a degree in political science from Princeton University, a master’s degree in international relations from Columbia University, and a master’s degree from the U.S. Naval War College in national security and strategic studies.

Former president Trump chose Milley for that position, but on Friday night, Trump posted an attack on Milley, calling him “a Woke train wreck” and accusing him of betraying the nation when, days before the 2020 election, he reassured his Chinese counterpart that the U.S. was not going to attack China in the last days of the Trump administration, as Chinese leaders feared.

Trump was reacting to a September 21 piece by Jeffrey Goldberg about Milley in The Atlantic, which portrays Milley as an important check on an erratic, uninformed, and dangerous president while also warning that “[i]n the American system, it is the voters, the courts, and Congress that are meant to serve as checks on a president’s behavior, not the generals.”

Trump posted that Milley “was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This was an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act. To be continued!!!”

In fact, the calls were hardly rogue incidents. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, another Trump appointee, endorsed Milley’s October call, and Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, who replaced Esper when Trump fired him just after the election, gave permission for a similar call Milley made in January 2021. At least ten officials from the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department were on the calls.

Trump is suggesting that in acting within his role and through proper channels, our highest ranking military officer has committed treason and that such treason in the past would have warranted death, with the inherent suggestion that we should return to such a standard. It seems much of the country has become accustomed to Trump’s outbursts, but this threat should not pass without notice, not least because Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) echoed it today in his taxpayer-funded newsletter.

In the letter, Gosar refers to Milley as “the homosexual-promoting-BLM-activist Chairman of the military joint chiefs,” a “deviant” who “was coordinating with Nancy Pelosi to hurt President Trump, and treasonously working behind Trump’s back. In a better society,” he wrote, “quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung. He had one boss: President Trump, and instead he was secretly meeting with Pelosi and coordinating with her to hurt Trump.”

Trump chose Milley to chair the Joint Chiefs but turned on him when Milley insisted the military was loyal to the Constitution rather than to any man. Milley had been dragged into participating in Trump’s march across Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020, to threaten Black Lives Matter protesters, although Milley peeled off when he recognized what was happening and later said he thought they were going to review National Guard troops.

The day after the debacle, Milley wrote a message to the joint force reminding every member that they swore an oath to the Constitution. “This document is founded on the essential principle that all men and women are born free and equal, and should be treated with respect and dignity. It also gives Americans the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly…. As members of the Joint Force—comprised of all races, colors, and creeds—you embody the ideals of our Constitution.”

“We all committed our lives to the idea that is America,” he wrote by hand on the memo. “We will stay true to that oath and the American people.”

Milley’s appearance with Trump as they crossed Lafayette Square drew widespread condemnation from former military leaders, and in the days afterward, Milley spoke to them personally, as well as to congressional leaders, to apologize. Milley also apologized publicly. “I should not have been there,” he said to graduates at National Defense University’s commencement. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.” Milley went on to defend the Black Lives Matter protesters Trump was targeting, and to say that the military must address the systematic racism that has kept people of color from the top ranks.

Milley’s defense of the U.S. military, 43% of whom are people of color, drew not just Trump’s fury, but also that of the right wing. Then–Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson made a special effort to undermine the man he said was “not just a pig, he’s stupid!” “The Pentagon is now the Yale faculty lounge, but with cruise missiles. That should concern you,” he told his audience. As Carlson berated the military for being “woke,” his followers began to turn against the military they had previously championed.

Trump has made it clear he intends to weaponize the government against those he perceives to be his enemies, removing those who refuse to do his bidding and replacing them with loyalists. Ominously, according to Goldberg, another area over which Trump and Milley clashed was the military’s tradition of refusing to participate in acts that are clearly immoral or illegal. Trump overrode MIlley’s advice not to intervene in the cases of three men charged with war crimes, later telling his supporters, “I stuck up for three great warriors against the deep state.”

Goldberg points out that in a second Trump administration packed with loyalists, there will be few guardrails, and he notes that Milley has told friends that if Trump is reelected, “[h]e’ll start throwing people in jail, and I’d be on the top of the list.”

But Milley told Goldberg he does not expect Trump to be reelected. “I have confidence in the American people,” he said. “The United States of America is an extraordinarily resilient country, agile and flexible, and the inherent goodness of the American people is there.” Last week, he told ABC’s Martha Raddatz that he is “confident that the United States and the democracy in this country will prevail and the rule of law will prevail…. These institutions are built to be strong, resilient and to adapt to the times, and I'm 100% confident we'll be fine."

Milley’s statement reflects the increasingly powerful reassertion of democratic values over the past several years. In general, the country seems to be moving beyond former president Trump, who remains locked in his ancient grievances and simmering with fear about his legal troubles—Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebsaeng of Rolling Stone recently reported he has been asking confidants about what sort of prison might be in his future—and what he has to say seems so formulaic at this point that it usually doesn’t seem worth repeating. Indeed, much of his frantic posting seems calculated to attract headlines with shock value.

But, for all that, Trump is the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. He has suggested that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s senior military advisor, has committed treason and that such a crime is associated with execution, and one of his loyalists in government has echoed him.

And yet, in the face of this attack on one of our key national security institutions, an attack that other nations will certainly notice, Republican leaders remain silent.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Mark Milley #TFG #history #January 6 #the US Miliary #January 6 2021

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brookstonalmanac · 18 days ago

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Events 12.10 (after 1950)

1953 – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill receives the Nobel Prize in Literature. 1963 – Zanzibar gains independence from the United Kingdom as a constitutional monarchy, under Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah. 1963 – An assassination attempt on the British High Commissioner in Aden kills two people and wounds dozens more. 1968 – Japan's biggest heist, the still-unsolved "300 million yen robbery", is carried out in Tokyo. 1978 – Arab–Israeli conflict: Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin and President of Egypt Anwar Sadat are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 1979 – Kaohsiung Incident: Taiwanese pro-democracy demonstrations are suppressed by the KMT dictatorship, and organizers are arrested. 1983 – Democracy is restored in Argentina with the inauguration of President Raúl Alfonsín. 1984 – United Nations General Assembly recognizes the Convention against Torture. 1989 – Mongolian Revolution: At the country's first open pro-democracy public demonstration, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj announces the establishment of the Mongolian Democratic Union. 1991 – Nursultan Nazarbayev is sworn in as the 1st President of Kazakhstan. 1991 – The Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic is renamed into the Republic of Kazakhstan. 1993 – The last shift leaves Wearmouth Colliery in Sunderland. The closure of the 156-year-old pit marks the end of the old County Durham coalfield, which had been in operation since the Middle Ages. 1994 – Rwandan genocide: Maurice Baril, military advisor to the U.N. Secretary-General and head of the Military Division of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, recommends that UNAMIR stand down. 1995 – The Israeli army withdraws from Nablus pursuant to the terms of Oslo Accord. 1996 – The new Constitution of South Africa is promulgated by Nelson Mandela. 1999 – Helen Clark is sworn in as Prime Minister of New Zealand, the second woman to hold the post and the first following an election. 2005 – Sosoliso Airlines Flight 1145 crashes at Port Harcourt International Airport in Nigeria, killing 108 people. 2014 – Palestinian minister Ziad Abu Ein is killed after the suppression of a demonstration by Israeli forces in the village (Turmus'ayya) in Ramallah. 2015 – Rojava conflict: The Syrian Democratic Council is established in Dêrik, forming the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces in northeast Syria. 2016 – Two explosions outside a football stadium in Istanbul, Turkey, kill 38 people and injure 166 others. 2017 – ISIL is defeated in Iraq. 2019 – The Ostrava hospital attack in the Czech Republic results in eight deaths, including the perpetrator. 2021 – A widespread, deadly, and violent tornado outbreak slams the Central, Midwestern, and Southern regions of the United States. Eighty-nine people are killed by the tornadoes, with most of the fatalities occurring in Kentucky, where a single tornado kills 57 people, and injures hundreds of others.

#Events

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news365timesindia · 1 month ago

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[ad_1] GG News Bureau Kolkata, 23rd November: Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) is poised for a clean sweep in the bypolls held in six assembly constituencies of West Bengal. This includes a decisive win in the Madarihat constituency in Alipurduar district, which the BJP had secured in the 2021 assembly elections. As of now, TMC candidates have been declared winners in Sitai, Madarihat, and Naihati, while the party is maintaining commanding leads in Haroa, Medinipur, and Taldangra. The November 13 bypoll results reaffirm the TMC’s dominance in the state, dealing a significant blow to the BJP’s efforts to regain ground in West Bengal. Seat-Wise Breakdown of Results Sitai: Sangita Roy won by a massive margin of 1.3 lakh votes, securing over 1.6 lakh votes compared to BJP’s Dipak Kumar Ray, who garnered just 35,000. Madarihat: Jayprakash Toppo defeated BJP’s Rahul Lohar by over 28,000 votes. Naihati: Sanat Dey emerged victorious against BJP’s Rupak Mitra with a margin of nearly 50,000 votes. Haroa: Sheikh Rabiul Islam is leading by over a lakh votes against AISF’s Piyarul Islam, with only one round of counting left. Medinipur: Sujoy Hazra is leading with a 30,000-vote margin against BJP’s Subhajit Roy, with four rounds of counting remaining. Taldangra: Falguni Singhababu holds a lead of over 25,000 votes against BJP’s Ananya Roy Chakraborty, with three rounds yet to be counted. TMC Celebrates as BJP Faces a Setback TMC supporters have begun celebrating the party’s sweeping success, gathering in front of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s residence in south Kolkata. Party workers are hailing the results as a rejection of opposition campaigns targeting the TMC government over allegations like the RG Kar Hospital rape and murder case. Broader Implications and National Context The bypolls were part of a nationwide electoral exercise covering 48 assembly seats and two parliamentary constituencies across 15 states. While TMC’s performance in West Bengal underscores its stronghold, the results also hold significance for the BJP, which has been attempting to challenge TMC’s dominance in the state. All results, including those from Maharashtra and Jharkhand, are expected to be declared by the end of the day, providing a clearer picture of the political landscape ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The post Trinamool Congress Sweeps West Bengal Bypolls, Set to Win All Six Seats appeared first on Global Governance News- Asia's First Bilingual News portal for Global News and Updates. [ad_2] Source link

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news365times · 1 month ago

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misfitwashere · 2 months ago

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October 29, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

OCT 30

She promised to fight for a child tax credit and to lower the cost of child care, as well as allowing Medicare to cover the cost of home aides for seniors.

“I thank you all,” she said. “God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.”

—

#heather cox richardson #letters from an american

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