#read autocracy recently

[pharmasrightarm]

just a couple of bros

[jwood718]

A series of links led me to this: Southern Poverty Law Center's article and list of anti-LGBTQ+ groups active in the United States, and their influence on legislation in this country and internationally, and the increasing anti-trans rhetoric, and action, purveyed by them.

SPLC pulls no punches when calling-out people and groups that promote hate in the name of anything else (parents' rights, Christianity, etc) and the same goes here. The list is accompanied by a map featuring how many anti-LGBTQ+ groups are active in each state.

Some highlights:

"In 2023, the number of anti-LGBTQ hate groups listed by SPLC increased by about one-third, to 86. This is the highest number of anti-LGBTQ groups SPLC has ever listed. The increase is largely the result of the activities by groups often described as 'family policy councils,' which operate at the state level in ways that mimic the national organizations Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom...

...the weaponization of pseudoscience as a tool of trans suppression and the targeting of fundamental freedoms like free speech, expression, and assembly through book and drag bans has become a more prominent feature in recent years...

In April 2023, the Heritage Foundation published its 'Mandate for Leadership,' a 900-page handbook that lays out the implementation strategy of its presidential transition plan known as 'Project 2025.' The project represents a dramatic reshaping of the federal government by recruiting and vetting conservative ideologues for positions in a hypothetical 2025 Republican presidential administration. It also represents a dramatic confirmation of the anti-science and anti-LGBTQ focus of the contributors to the plan. Namely, on page 1 of the Mandate for Leadership, Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation claims that 'children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.' By page 5, Roberts claims, 'pornography' is 'manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children' and argues that such manifestations be outlawed. Roberts also argues that 'the people who produce and distribute [such materials] should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.'"

And of course it gets better. I didn't know, but am not surprised to read, that anti-trans rhetorical hate has now been morphed into a version of the "great replacement" conspiracy theory: children, including children of gay or lesbian couples, "...are being replaced or 'transed' against their will by gender-affirming health care and LGBTQ-inclusive educational curricula."

Fuck: anything to rile up people and get them to vote in autocracy.

Full story

[reasonsforhope]

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has galvanized Ukrainian society in many unexpected ways, but perhaps one of the most remarkable is how it has advanced the rights of LGBTQ people.

On Tuesday, in a move that would have been nearly unthinkable a year ago, a Ukrainian lawmaker introduced legislation in the country’s parliament that would give partnership rights to same-sex couples. This legislation, along with a prohibition against anti-LGBTQ hate speech abruptly adopted in December, reflects a sharp rejection of Russia’s effort to weaponize homophobia in support of its invasion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said repeatedly that he attacked Ukraine last year partly to protect “traditional values” against the West’s “false values” that are “contrary to human nature” — code for LGBTQ people. Perhaps he hoped this would rally conservative Ukrainians to Russia’s side — it’s a tactic Kremlin allies have tried repeatedly over the past decade. But this time, it instead appears to be convincing a growing number of Ukrainians to support equality and reject the values Putin espouses.

--

Recent History

I could not have imagined the LGBTQ movement building such momentum when I first visited Ukraine as a reporter in 2013. Ukraine was then on the verge of consummating its long-negotiated “association agreement” with the European Union, a step Russian President Vladimir Putin bitterly opposed. As the deadline to sign the agreement approached, an oligarch close to Putin funded a campaign with billboards reading, “Association with EU means same-sex marriage.” Anti-EU protesters dubbed the EU “Gayropa.”

This effort failed to dissuade Ukrainians from a European path...

But the past decade has also seen Ukrainians standing firm in their commitment to democracy, and a growing understanding that this includes protections for fundamental rights.

There was an explosion of organizing by LGBTQ people in the years that followed the Revolution of Dignity, and some slow advances were made. But it’s been the stories of queer Ukrainians fighting and dying in the war with Russia that have truly helped other Ukrainians to see them as full citizens.

Pictured: Territorial Defense member Romanova shows a unicorn insignia, a mythical creature that has become a symbol of the LGBTQ community. This patch, which depicts a "valiant" unicorn breathing fire, has become the unofficial symbol of Ukraine's LGBTQ+ military.

Today

Ukraine’s current LGBTQ rights debate is unprecedented; never before has a country under siege had such visibly out soldiers who have so few formal rights under their own country’s laws. LGBTQ rights supporters have successfully framed the question on same-sex partnership as whether Ukraine will recognize LGBTQ people as equal citizens, which has become the norm throughout much of the European Union, as well as North and South America. They are successfully flipping the proposition that, as one Ukrainian politician once infamously put it, that “a gay cannot be a patriot.” ...

“I actually think that the Russians did a good job in terms of raising awareness and changing attitudes towards the LGBT community in Ukraine,” Sovsun told me in an interview. “The more Russia insists on [homophobia] being a part of their state policy, the more rejection of this policy [there] is from inside Ukraine.”

The aspiration of many Ukrainians to join the European Union has also helped move more Ukrainians to become supportive of queer peoples’ rights, as Ukraine attempts to define itself as a European democracy in contrast to Russian autocracy. A study conducted last May by the Ukrainian LGBTQ organization “Nash Svit” and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found nearly 64 percent of Ukrainians said queer people should have equal rights. Even among respondents who said they had a “negative” view of LGBTQ people, nearly half said they still supported equal rights.

The current push for same-sex partnership rights began with a school teacher from Zaporizhzha named Anastasia Andriivna Sovenko. In June, Sovenko registered a petition with Ukraine’s government demanding same-sex couples be granted partnership rights. It said simply, “At this time, every day can be the last. Let people of the same sex get the opportunity to start a family and have an official document to prove it. They need the same rights as traditional couples.”

Sovenko said she was inspired to file the petition after reading a story about different-sex couples getting married before one partner went off to war. It felt unfair to her that queer people couldn’t take the same step to protect their rights. Signatures quickly poured in, stunning even Sovenko herself...

Under Ukrainian law, the president is required to formally respond to any petition that gets 25,000 signatures, and the partnership petition quickly cleared that threshold. But in a sign that the politics of the issue remains complicated, Zelenskyy ruled out full marriage rights in his response, arguing that this required a constitutional change that could not be carried out under the rules of martial law. Instead, [Zelensky] punted to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, to examine the creation of civil unions. His language implied support, but he stopped short of using presidential powers to make it a reality.

“Every citizen is an inseparable part of civil society, he is entitled to all the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in the referral."

-via Politico, 3/7/23

Notes:

While the fight is still ongoing, I can't underlie enough how massive this shift in public opinion is. Russia and Ukraine have generally been incredibly unsafe places to be LGBTQ, including in very recent history. This is huge, and it sounds like it will only get bigger.

This could also help bring about a wider sea change throughout Eastern Europe, which in general has a very pervasive culture of homophobia, often tied in with both religious conservatism and ethno-nationalistic conflict, though thankfully things have been improving significantly over the last decade.

[jewishfem]

by siding with fascist rhetoric to suit your hatred of trans people

I do not side with fascist rhetoric.

According to Wikipedia, fascism is a “far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race,” and none applies to who I'm siding with.

far-right: radical feminism, which is what I ascribe to the most (though not completely) is a leftist movement in the way they oppose conservative notions about the female sex, which unfortunately have recently been re-adopted by many leftist circles.

authoritarian: the group which I, according to your view, belong to encourages listening and reading things written by the other sides; silencing women is unacceptable in theory and is criticized when practiced. It doesn't silence males either, it simply doesn't include them.

Ultranationalist: radical feminism views nationalism (and by this, also ultranationalism) in a very critical and negative way. It does so imperialism and militarism as well.

Dictatorial leader: there are no dictatorial leaders to radical feminism, neither does gender critique have such leaders.

Centralized autocracy: there is no regime to gender critique and radical feminism. Can you name an autocrat?

Militaristism: as said before, radical feminism condemns the militaries in the world, not only as opposition to nationalism, but also because of the misogyny in these organizations and bodies, the fact that soldiers not rarely rape women of the enemy side and even among the ranks. Abolition of the military is not a central part of radical feminism, but it definitely is critiques regardless.

Suppression of opposition: this is pure projection. Doctors and other professionals who dare rejecting the ideas of the trans/gender movement (be it hrt or surgeries) are threatened with losing their jobs. Women like jkr who merely stated sex is real was bombarded with violent, disgusting, and absolutely vile threats and messages. Every disagreement with trans/gender claims are referred to as transphobic. Meanwhile gender critical people and radical feminists learn from critique of their work and respond rather than silence.

Belief in natural social hierarchy: gender critique and radical feminism go exactly against that and claim the social hierarchy between men and women is extremely unnatural. Many radfems and gender critics also see other social class hierarchies as unnatural, though that activism is not within the bounds of either gender critique nor feminism (women's liberation), but rather other ideologies like marxism and the likes.

subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race: radical feminism and gender critique do not belong to any state nor race, these are merely ideologies and movements inspired by these ideas. They view racism as a separate form of oppression which intersects with feminism, but also believe that feminist struggle is not about liberation of or the erasing of race, because it's focused, as said before on women and girls' liberation.

I highly recommend you read through blogs such as @radicallyaligned which, in my opinion, is the bestsource for learning about radical feminism and gender critique.

You'll realize we do not hate trans people as a whole, we hate individuals like Dana Rivers, Eli Erlick, and Stacie-Marie Laughton among very many others fetishists, pedophiles, and other perverts. We hate those spewing rape threatsband idolization of it. Here are some articles (last reblog has working links afaik), plus of course, these:

Rape:

Sexual harassment idolization:

Silencing:

Misc:

As said, if you want to learn more about gender critique and radical feminism, check out the blog i mentioned. If you wish to learn more about what we hate about the gender ideology, aside from prominent males there having been accused or charged with sexual and other violent crimes, just ask. I didn't want to include all the HRT studies and the likes so this answer doesn't get too long. I know you don't send these asks bona fide, but i don't mind having a debate over that.

[sigridstumb]

Make your plan to survive U.S. authoritarianism now

I recently read Radly Balko's latest newsletter, Lines in the Sand, and I urge you to do so as well.

Trump and his people are clearly stating, in interviews, how they will establish an authoritarian regime and who they will use the power of the state to punish. I know it's not a hundred percent, but if you are reading this on my Tumblr, you are probably one of the people the second Trump regime wants to silence, punish, and/or eradicate.

Three senators and nine members of the House are prepared to pursue a Trump autocracy. He has a plan this time to gut the bureaucratic infrastructure of the federal government and replace career workers with political flunkies who will do whatever he wants.

It's going to be a nightmare if he wins. Which he is slated to do as of right now. Do everything you can to prevent this, if you are in the U.S. Get out the vote. Door-knock. Organize. Join your union, or try to form one. Meet your neighbors. Prepare to take people in. Vote. Vote. Vote.

Good luck to us all.

[warsofasoiaf]

What's you're opinions about Bernie Sanders? He's the only modern day politician who i can resonate with along with on the wild fields of American politics, even when I as a person isn't American itself.

Overwhelmingly negative. I'm already distrustful of solidarity-based politics in general and find socialism to be a failed economic system, so it's perhaps unsurprising that I'm so negative.

Sanders largely provides superficial readings of economic woes and has largely ineffective proposals for dealing with them. Modern populism on both sides of the fence is long on style and short on substance, and Sanders is no exception. Sanders can shout "billionaires" and "capitalism" until he turns red into the face, but his policy proposals are flimsy and unlikely to help the working class that he purports to fight for.

While progressive economic policy is largely a contradiction in terms at best, in recent times the progressive movement has largely been dominated by intellectual pseudoscience movements like MMT, which I've spoken before about the failures of here and here. The theory lacks a credible theory of inflation and relies instead on a vibes-based greedflation thesis, which is intellectually exhilarating because it foists the blame on those evil businesses, but factually false. When the MMT'ers were given broad control over monetary policy, their large-scale printing of money helped precipitate the 2021 inflationary crisis, and they ignored every single conventional economist saying that this was precisely what would happen. Worse, the proponents of the theory are not cognizant of the inflationary effects of their theory despite the empirical evidence both historically and recently - and their policy proposal to reinstitute broad price controls as a solution to the 2021-2023 inflationary crisis simply shows a lack of effective and workable policy solutions to economic problems (and was a chutzpah defense if I've ever heard one). So with a refusal to create testable models and a stunning lack of receptivity to empirical data, it's not likely to produce rational or effective policy. Contrarily, conventional macroeconomic wisdom proved effective in taming inflation while avoiding recession - it's actually quite remarkable how effective it has been.

However, if his economic policy is bad, his foreign policy is downright atrocious, and even among Bernie supporters, most of them tend to gloss over his foreign policy failures (and during 2016, he largely directed people to ignore foreign policy questions). I've repeatedly made the joke that Sanders is the most enthusiastic supporter of Latin American autocracy since Henry Kissinger, but it's actually not hyperbolic. Sanders has routinely gone to bat for dictators in Latin America provided they're left-wing and repeats their talking points regardless of how true they are. He's gone so far as to raise money for Daniel Ortega even after it was made clear that the money was going toward his campaign of shooting and bombing Native American populations and openly celebrating Ortega's jailing of opposition journalists. He's made mention of reconsidering our relationship with the Saudis due to their human rights violations, but when the dictator is left-wing, suddenly Sanders's firmly-held principles and "moral foreign policy" go out the window.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[pluralsword]

Upcoming Chapter 18 of Addendum

For everyone waiting on Chapter 18, we made a lot of headway on it recently, it is 2/3rds done currently :3 Hope and plan to release soon. Most of this chapter is a Rampage point of view (who we write as transmasc and his sister Trans-Mutate as transfemme, both part of the Anti-Functionist resistance known as the Delta League or the Anti-Vocationist League, back during the era of the autocracy of Nova Prime. the art we posted here is an edit of a larger piece from chapter 13), it's really amusing to us to write from his perspective how idw1 optimus early in the Great War has no way to conceive of a transmasculine cybertronian because that's the level of conceptual damage and societal harm the legacy of functionism has caused with it's pushing for an androcentric world of only cybertronian maleness as genderlessness assigned guys.

If you haven't heard of Addendum (an IDW1 Arcee novel fanfic) and are wondering what we're on about, you can check it out here and read the released chapters here, and here's a blurb over generalities of what the fic is:

It is a fanfic revolving around IDW1 Arcee, that seeks to add to her already detailed and beautiful arc of a trans woman errant warrior sage coming to terms with xemself (we're affirming her/xem in the text here since in this fic unlike canon xey eventually want to use xey pronouns too but face immense challenges to that as the story will show) and deciding to trust people and herself. We love her transformations very dearly, and wanted to further reconcile xeir appearance in Spotlight: Arcee with her later writing (canon did a rather fabulous job in this respect in Phase 2 and 3 that makes rereading her story from first issue in 2008 to last a real joy for us), drawing on wisdom gathered through study and experience, and imagination to connect the dots. As you can tell just from the appearance of Codexa and others in the story, this revisiting of IDW1 Arcee’s tale is in part made possible by later writing of gal transformers who we adore, and we will note we draw from ones from all across the decades of fiction of Transformers. What can we say, we love them, and know so much more about ourselves than we ever would have because of them. There are also a lot of trans / gender expansive headcanons tossed in here for bots across the gender spectrum. They're transformers. Emphasis on trans.

[spiderlegsmusic]

Weaponized incompetence isn’t a thing. Sorry…there are people with severe brain traumatic injuries who are lucky they don’t shit themselves because they no longer have short term memories and if they ask you for a list please be patient with them because they literally don’t remember what they did yesterday.

Yes, I’m speaking about me because I like being helpful around the house but I’ve lost the ability to retain anything I learn over the past year and a half, since I had my brain bleed (a form of aneurysm) my “incompetence” stems from the inability to retain recent memories.

Why don’t we talk about weaponizing terms to overstate hurdles for roommates, partners, lovers, whatever in getting along. Just because someone doesn’t clean as diligently as you do or asks your for a list so they can be more thorough helping around the house, it’s not an attack. Weaponized is a specific “attack” term. Using it figuratively instead of literally is a mistake. When someone can’t do something as well as you do, they aren’t attacking you. Their incompetence isn’t Weaponized. In the old days people would say they aren’t as good at cleaning or don’t see something as dirty like a neat freak does.

I enjoy cleaning to be honest, but let’s say you’re going shopping and I’m staying home to clean and we haven’t been living together long, asking you what you consider clean and asking for a list of what you expect to be done by the time you get home isn’t an attack. Stop using “Weaponized (anything)” just because you don’t get what you want. Forgetting to vacuum isn’t an attack on you. It’s just regular incompetence. Try being easier to get along with.

Ok so I haven’t experienced this term thrown at me personally but I’ve seen, read, heard it misused like crazy. I guess I expect to the first time I do something wrong in a domestic setting. People getting mad at someone who wants to help, tries to help, but doesn’t help to the level the other person expects and since this the age of new made up terms (thanks psychology, you’re doing a great job! More depressed people now than ever in history—we need more bullshit terms!), then they get accused of weaponizing their inability to clean as well as the other person. It’s ridiculous.

We have an asshole running for president who wants to destroy democracy. They have already begun taking our rights away from us. Women in my state used to the right to determine healthcare for themselves. The bad guys took that right away. I think maybe we should focus more on taking our rights back and codifying them rather than focusing on bullshit psychobabble terms meant to divide people. If you focus on divisive language instead of unifying language, you are shooting yourselves in the foot.

If trump wins, terms like Weaponized incompetence will be the least of your worries. Start thinking of what terms like authoritarian, autocracy, dictatorship, detention camps mean…

[mariacallous]

In late November, at a meeting with “soldiers’ mothers,” Vladimir Putin told a woman whose son had purportedly died in Ukraine that “we all leave this world sooner or later,” and that her son “didn’t leave this life in vain” because he “accomplished his mission” rather than “dying from vodka or something.”

Russian propagandists have increasingly voiced ideas like this one in recent months. In early January, for example, TV host Vladimir Sovolyov said on the air that Russians shouldn’t fear death because “we’re going to end up in heaven,” while actor Dmitry Pevtsov said in December that Russians know how to “love, befriend, and die” like nobody else. The trend has prompted some Russian sociologists to start using the term “death propaganda.”

Historian and sociologist Dina Khapaeva spoke to the independent Russian outlet Verstka about the “joy of death” as an integral part of Kremlin propaganda, and the logical extension of Russia’s state ideology. Meduza has summarized the interview in English.

In 1994, a Russian Orthodox bishop named Ioann Snychov published a book called “The Autocracy of the Spirit.” In it, he argued that terror is the best way to govern the Russian people, using Ivan the Terrible as an example: the famously brutal 16th-century tsar, in Snychov’s telling, was a “naturally soft and gentle” ruler who suffered greatly when he had to dole out punishment. The sect Snychov founded advocates for the canonization of all of Russia’s leaders.

Snychov’s ideas were embraced by other extreme figures like Eurasianist philosopher Alexander Dugin, who has written, among other things, that the task of the Russian people is to bring about a “purifying apocalypse.”

According to historian and sociologist Dina Khapaeva, these concepts and others like them have helped fill a void in Russia over the last few decades: the ideological one left in the wake of the Cold War and the chaotic 1990s.

“When Putin came to power, he needed some kind of ideology to rely on,” Khapaeva told the outlet Verstka. “‘Westernism,’ with its human rights and valuing of every life, wouldn’t work. The ideas of alternation of power and political competition, so important for Western ideologies, ran counter to the president’s aims. Communism wouldn’t work either, since the communists were his main political domestic opponents. Then radical nationalists and Orthodox extremists came to his aid. For Putin, they were understandable and organic with their anti-Western and autocratic ideas.”

In Khapaeva’s view, it doesn’t matter whether Putin has actually read the works of Russia’s far-right thinkers or whether he’s receiving them second-hand. The net effect is clear: “Putin and the Kremlin’s ideologues are systematically using [these ideas] and passing them off as their own.”

And the culmination of years of Russia’s top leaders giving these “radical nationalists” their attention, according to Khapaeva, has been an official rhetoric that holds dying for the country as an unmitigated good.

“Instead of a meaningless, hopeless, impoverished life, Russians are being offered a chance to die ‘for the Motherland.’ [By that measure], what matters most is that [the country’s] enemies be destroyed. And the fact that this requires people to die in the process isn’t so important,” she said.

While this messaging has undeniably come in handy for Putin since he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Khapaeva said, his promotion of the idea that Russians should embrace martyrdom is nothing new.

“The idea of a ‘death cult’ and a ‘purifying apocalypse’ has long been deeply integrated in the Putinist discourse. You’ll even find it in his speeches from the 2010s: ‘We [Russians] will go to heaven, while they’ll just croak,’ and ‘What good is a world without Russia?’” she said.

According to Khapaeva, Russia’s politics of historical memory have developed along two main lines under Putin: “re-Stalinization” and “neo-medievalism.” “You can see this clearly in the way the memories of Ivan the Terrible and Stalin are perpetuated,” she said. “Numerous films that show these figures in a positive light have been made with state money.”

But at the same time, Khapaeva told Verstka, the rehabilitation of these former Russian rulers isn’t a sign that Putin wants to return to a past era. On the contrary, she said, “the glorification of Medieval Russia and Stalinism are tools for promoting anti-democratic values common to both Putin and those dark periods of Russian history.”

And these tools have worked. “Just look at the scale of the anti-war protests,” said Khapaeva. “Throughout the entire country, only a few thousand people went out to protest, and they were easy to suppress. The protests in the U.S. after the start of the war in Iraq were several times larger. And that’s no surprise: in totalitarian societies, which I believe Russia has been since 2014, people value their own lives much less than in democratic ones. What hope for the future can a person have in a society that denies the value of human individuality?”

Once a society has reached that point, Khapaeva said, a war like the current one in Ukraine is all but inevitable. To explain why, she cited a book published in 2006 by former Russian State Duma Speaker Mikhail Yuryev called “The Third Empire: Russia as it Ought to Be.” A “utopian” fantasy novel, the book is narrated by a Latin American subject of a new Russian empire who recounts the process by which Moscow took over the globe throughout the first half of the 21st century.

“It begins with the capture of Crimea, then wars against Georgia and Ukraine. And it ends with the conquest of America and Western Europe. In Yuryev’s imagining, Russian civilization brings treasures to the West — for example, potluck-style class-based banquets that are required for everyone in the empire and that end in drunkenness and brawls, ‘though usually without malice,’” she said.

According to Khapaeva, the book’s author had close ties to members of Putin’s inner circle, and likely even Putin personally in the mid-1990s.

“The aggressive militarism that’s enshrined in this book became the basis of Russia’s state ideology at the very start of Putin’s rule. [Namely, the idea that] the country should be feared, and that that’s the source of its greatness. […] When the president refers to a new atomic weapon as a gift for the country, is that not the best possible example of how little he values the lives of his compatriots? The current war is a consequence of this ‘cult of death,’ not its underlying cause.”

Russia isn’t the first country to be “infected” by such a “death cult,” Khapaeva noted: “This cult cost the Germans alone no less than 10 million human lives, [though] it’s not appropriate to compare the current Russian ideology to German national socialism or communism. Both of these ideologies were focused on the future, [while Russia’s] neo-medieval ideology looks to the past.”

On the other hand, she said, even outside of Russia, a lack of regard for human life has “turned into a commodity on the entertainment market” in recent decades. “The legacy of the 20th century — the Holocaust, the Gulag — dealt a strong blow to people’s faith in man and humanity,” she said. “As a result, in philosophy, in a number of social movements, and in popular culture, there’s been a rejection of the idea that everything should be done ‘for the sake of humanity.’ What kinds of stories find success in popular culture? Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic [stories, and stories about characters] who deny the supreme value of human life: mass murderers, cannibals, zombies, vampires.”

But while Western society at large still maintains a clear distinction between the value of human life in popular media, on one hand, and in the “real world” (i.e. in government and legal systems) on the other, Khapaeva said that’s not the case in Russia.

“The uniqueness of the Russian situation is that a mix of ‘Orthodox extremism,’ imperial ideology, and an apocalyptic mood has become part of the official state discourse,” she said.

Because millions of people in Russia have now been fed a steady diet of this rhetoric for a significant portion of their lives, according to Khapaeva, it would be “naive” to think undoing its effects will be easy. In fact, in her view, there’s only one thing capable of bringing lasting change.

“It appears that a military defeat and the terrible, radical consequences it will bring to the country is the only thing capable of sobering Russians and causing them to rethink their place in the world,” she said. “That’s likely the only way to heal them from this imperial virus, from this medieval desire to die for the subjugation of other peoples. And then, probably, Russians will be able to think in a new way about what’s worth living for and what’s worth dying for.”

[kryptonitecore]

Re-Read: Transformers: Primacy

Primacy is a bit of a disappointing way to end this trilogy, as I think it’s the weakest part - it continues some of the ideas of Autocracy and Monstrosity, but what really killed it for me was the characterisation. The challenges to Optimus’ character are rapidly eroded, but it’s Hot Rod/Rodimus and Megatron who are really in trouble.

Hot Rod shows up, having apparently completed Autobot training in the background, and is now completely and unambiguously in support of Optimus. Any skepticism regarding the Autobot cause and its connections to the old Senate have disappeared while he was off page, and his actively Decepticon-leaning sympathies have also disappeared right along with it. In fact, to prove that Hot Rod has moved on, there is a brief and mostly one-sided confrontation with Slinger, his friend and one of the few survivors of Nyon, who has recently joined the Decepticons. Rather than dig into this, the writer makes Slinger abruptly hostile and he disappears from the book until he can be brought back for a death scene where he confesses how wrong he was. (Slinger and Fasttrack can both join the ‘former friend to Decepticon to corpse’ club!). Facetiousness aside, I think the real issue was the feeling that this story wanted Hot Rod to be a different kind of character than Autocracy and Monstrosity had created - for example, pairing up Grimlock and Hot Rod as grizzled veteran and inexperienced, optimistic kid just does not work for me considering Hot Rod’s past as an insurgent, everything that happened to Nyon, etc. I just feel that once you’ve been forced to destroy an entire city, you may no longer qualify for ingenue roles.

Megatron is similarly a point of strange characterisation. Characters making mistakes is not necessarily a problem, but having a supposedly intelligent, strategic character who is intended to serve as a major villain repeatedly make daft choices? Less good, and it is especially not good when the behaviour of the character is described differently from what actually happens in the story. The writers continue to define Megatron’s version of villainy in terms of dominance and control, the implication (to me, at least) being that he is precise and focused in a way that other villains, like Scorponok, were not. However, Megatron’s actual behaviour and dialogue in the comic does not live up to that - he repeatedly takes massive risks or makes obvious tactical errors, relies on fear and blunt, brutal tactics, and can be quite self-indulgent. Although obviously mistakes and character flaws are fine, I think the writers settled for mistakes that were just too, too obvious in terms of tactics and created a bit of a clash between what they wanted Megatron to be and where the plot actually took the character.

First up, there is the decision to place Pentius’ spark inside of Trypticon. Megatron is aware that Pentius is actively malevolent, but seems to find no potential drawbacks to placing his spark inside the most powerful physical body available and only afterwards does he apparently think to ask ‘How am I to trust you?’. He is then shocked when the evil alien whom he had been able to control on Junkion because Pentius was literally a head on a chain, can suddenly be far more independent and dangerous when placed into a giant hell-dinosaur. Later things are smaller, but moments like Megatron only realising that acid rain would damage his air force as well as the Autobots’ halfway through a battle added to the impression that the writers were scrambling for a way to end the series quickly.

Optimus fares better. For example, his enjoyment of the mission to the pole has interesting implications for his tendency to isolate himself, but the flaws or challenges that gave him a lot of texture in Autocracy and Monstrosity have been shaved down - his main personal issue in this book seems to be a generalised sense of the pressure that comes with leadership. Compared to the Optimus of Monstrosity, this is a very smooth Optimus. Overall, the story seems more interested in propping up Optimus as the hero - Omega Supreme’s interactions with him spring to mind - but that comes at the cost of the specificity that previous books had given the character, which is a shame, as I think they helped me appreciate him more.

In fact, a lack of specificity is the cause of a lot of my problems with this book. The battles between Trypticon and Metroplex are so huge that it is difficult to really engage with them, they take place on a disaster movie scale, but named characters are in little danger and I wasn't attached enough to Iacon or Harmonex to really feel their destruction. Other threats are similarly poorly defined, like Pentius, and resolved through vague solutions, like Optimus showing Megatron the Matrix, which apparently removes or destroys Pentius' spark or its connection to Megatron for reasons that are sort of unclear.

There are still things to enjoy about this book and I fully intend to read it again at some point, but the plot holes and characterisation are glaring enough that it is definitely weaker than its predecessors.

Well, that was the last of the -acies series and I’m actually glad I read them, even if this last instalment didn’t do as much for me. Time to move on to Spotlight: Thundercracker!

[nicklloydnow]

“Watching events unfold this weekend in Israel, I thought back to a feeling that I first felt more than two months ahead of Russia launching its war in Ukraine. That same sense of dread is, if nothing, more firmly entrenched in my chest today. The feeling is still nebulous. It’s as if we are all watching a catastrophic car crash and simply don’t have the vocabulary to describe it.

(…)

“Autocracy versus democracy” does not usefully describe the moment. It feels like a discarded line from some kind of late-night brainstorming session. Its purpose was ostensibly to organize thinking — to name a threat and to allow for collective action. In the cold light of day, it reads like self-regard.

(…)

But many woke up on Saturday to the palpable fear of a real threat. Towns and small cities overrun by well-organized militia. Scores of civilians shot dead. Hostages abducted. As I write this on Monday night, the IDF is still fighting battles in Israeli population centers. Soon enough, it will be waging a Stalingrad-like fight in Gaza, doling out horrific human costs in pursuit of retribution. And that’s if no other nasty surprises are looming. The prevailing consensus is that 9/11 is the correct historical parallel for Israel. If Hezbollah enters the fight in the coming days, the 1973 Yom Kippur War will be a more apt comparison.

(…)

No, it’s not about democracy versus autocracy. The wheels are coming off. Our predecessors bequeathed to us a period of unprecedented tranquility. They were not infinitely wise in getting us here — no wiser than we are. But we grew up used to it in ways they could never imagine. We assumed order was normality, that peace was what naturally arose when power-hungry hyperpowers minded their own business. A better and more just world was there for the taking, if only we were moral enough to push for it.

The overarching metaphor in one of Robert Kagan’s recent books is fundamentally correct: order is a garden to be tended, but the jungle is the norm. I still hold that his moralistic “authoritarianism versus democracy” paradigm is misguided. Morality has nothing to do with it. Pessimism about progress — a conviction that nothing is permanent — is a far better guide.

My friend and former colleague Walter Russell Mead penned a prescient column earlier this year. He put his finger on the failings of the Biden administration’s fundamentally optimistic worldview. He pointed out that China, Russia and Iran are eating away at the existing order.

From the outset, the administration knew that the American-led world system was in trouble, but it underestimated the severity of the threat and misunderstood its causes . . . Two years later, the Biden administration is struggling to manage the failure of its original design . . . Russia isn’t parked, Iran isn’t pacified, and the three revisionists are coordinating their strategy and messaging to an unprecedented degree.

The Biden folks really are the third Obama administration. They fundamentally believe that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. At the limit, they see our primary task is to make sure we don’t stand in the way.

It’s time to abandon those good feelings. Our holiday from history is over. Or at least it needs to be over.

The Wall Street Journal ran a strong editorial today calling on the United States to get on a solid war footing. I’ve made a similar case for months now. Given how the Ukraine War has progressed, I’ve argued that President Biden needs to stand in front of the nation and tell the American people that the free lunch is over. We can no longer enjoy the massive “peace dividend” we reaped in 1991. It’s time to embrace that the world is dangerous and unforgiving. Prepare for the storms that are coming.

(…)

The Europeans were perhaps rattled in the first weeks of the war, when everyone thought Kyiv would fall in a fortnight. Even German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was saying how German thinking about security was undergoing an epochal transformation. That didn’t last. And even reports that Russia is by some measures now militarily outproducing both the United States and Europe combined hasn’t altered the mood.

Make no mistake, this isn’t just European decadence. We here in the United States are no less complacent. We talk about shared values and how we must support the Ukrainians until the end. But (not-so) secretly, we are glad that they are dying instead of us. Apart from a handful of military veterans and foolhardy enthusiasts, there are a vanishingly few people putting their lives on the line for a common moral cause. Though we say this is our fight, it’s really not.

Why? We come full circle. “Democracy” is not a real cause, “autocracy” is not a real threat. Or, to put it more carefully, that binary does not resonate today in ways that would have you put your life on the line. Not in the way it did during the Cold War, anyway. Safe peaceful street protests against domestic despots-in-waiting? Sign me up. I’d love to re-enact 1989. But as a unifying narrative with real stakes? It’s misaligned. It misidentifies the problem in some non-trivial way. Everyone feels that disconnect, and shrugs when it is invoked. This is not an assertion, just an empirical observation.

But something is happening. I feel it. I think many others feel it. The jungle is growing back. And we naive civilized folks, we couldn’t even start a fire without matches, much less feed or defend ourselves in the wilderness.”

“The larger context is that the U.S. and its allies now face two regional wars provoked by rogue states that are increasingly aligned. Israel and Ukraine are on the front lines, but the risk of an expanded conflict is real. Iran is feeding weapons into Vladimir Putin’s invasion in Ukraine. Mr. Putin is a junior partner of the Chinese Communist Party, which could try to exploit the moment in the Pacific.

The strategic and political point is that the return of war against Israel isn’t an isolated event. It’s the latest installment in the unraveling of global order as American political will and military primacy are called into question.

The President now has an obligation to increase the defense budget and stop treating the U.S. military as a political wedge to feed the American welfare state. For three years Mr. Biden has proposed cuts in defense spending after inflation, even as the world has become more dangerous.

The President can stop the budget games—the demands that every dollar on U.S. forces be matched with another for solar panels or food stamps—and work with Republicans to rebuild U.S. military power. That package should include aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. It should feature a generational effort to expand U.S. munitions inventories, from 155mm artillery to sophisticated long-range antiship missiles. Ditto for a plan to build more U.S. attack submarines for the Pacific.

Already officials are leaking that the U.S. may struggle to supply both Israel and Ukraine with artillery or other weapons while also deterring China. But America can either meet the moment or regret it later when the world’s rogues attack other allies, or U.S. forces deployed abroad, or even the homeland.

(…)

As for Republicans in Congress, they will have to get serious about governing and elect a new Speaker with dispatch. They need to isolate the Steve Bannon acolytes who treat shutting down the government for no good reason like a personal power play. Americans may be among Hamas’s hostages, and the GOP should support Mr. Biden if he sends a military mission to rescue them. The world needs to see that the U.S. can unite in a common security purpose.

(…)

The growing global disorder is a result in part of American retreat, not least Mr. Biden’s departure from Afghanistan that told the world’s rogues the U.S. was preoccupied with its internal divisions. But too many Republicans are also falling for the siren song of isolationism and floating a defense cut in the name of fiscal restraint. The Hamas invasion should blow up dreams the U.S. can “focus on China” and write off other parts of the world.

Donald Trump didn’t rebuild U.S. defenses as much as he claims, and his political competitors should say so. Former Vice President Mike Pence was correct when he said over the weekend that the awful scenes abroad are what happens when political leaders are “signaling retreat from America’s role as leader of the free world.” Nikki Haley sounded similar notes.

They seem to know what time it is. The rest of Washington needs an alarm clock.”

“Exactly 37 years ago, on a bleak outlook overlooking the Atlantic, the two remaining Cold Warriors met in Reykjavik and proposed the almost unthinkable — to rid the world of all nuclear weapons.

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev began a dialogue that set in motion a series of summits that would ultimately not achieve this bold objective but resulted in what many historians cite as the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

However, the question remains: to what end?

While the Cold War came to a close, the threat of nuclear war did not. The global nuclear arsenal had reached its peak in 1986 with over 63,000 weapons in circulation compared to 12,500 today, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

But the number of missiles is immaterial, as today’s weaponry is five times more lethal than Big Boy and Fat Man — the two bombs dropped on Japan at the end of WWII.

In addition, the range and mobility of the current arsenal have expanded significantly with the ability to reach any destination — from London to Moscow to Washington — in a matter of minutes, wiping out millions of people instantaneously.

(…)

The subsequent arms race that ensued between America and the Soviet Union led to the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD, that served to handcuff both sides with the premise that “if you fire on me, I’ll fire on you.”

A flawed concept to be sure. Yet the MAD strategy (which it truly is) remains the primary nuclear conflict deterrent today.

Adding to this MADness is the nonchalant manner that a large part of the world has adopted toward the threat of a nuclear conflict.

The possibility has shifted to the back of our collective psyches allowing us to focus on more important issues crowding our agenda.

A case in point is the most recent Republican presidential debate. While there were several questions around Taiwan and Ukraine, there was no specific reference to the “what if” of a nuclear engagement.

(…)

As a child of the Cold War, I can still remember the air raid drills in my community and hiding under my school desk.

That clear and present danger had lurked over the civilised world’s head but has since dissipated into the ether.

One would hope bright minds in political capitals around the world are gaming how to avoid a nuclear conflict.

But that notion calls to mind a moment when President Reagan after being briefed on the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction posed the simplest of questions, “What is Plan B?” to which his advisors had no answer.

And today as we celebrate their famous meeting in Iceland almost four decades later it is time again to ask our leaders — “What is plan B?””

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

What the Rioters in Brazil Learned From Americans

Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters showed that antidemocratic revolutions can be contagious too.

We memorize its opening sentences in school, throw quotes from it into speeches, and generally treat the American Declaration of Independence as a familiar source of reliable tropes. But when it was published in 1776, the declaration was a radical document, and its language inspired other radical documents. In 1789, French revolutionaries published the Declaration of the Rights of Man, declaring that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” In 1804, the leaders of the Haitian slave rebellion proclaimed the Haitian Declaration of Independence, vowing that “in the end we must live independent or die.”

The American Revolution also inspired scores of democratic and anti-colonial revolutionaries. Simón Bolívar, remembered as the Liberator in half a dozen South American countries, visited Washington, New York, Boston, and Charleston in 1807 and later recalled that “during my short visit to the United States, for the first time in my life, I saw rational liberty at first hand.” Visits to the U.S. inspired independence leaders from across Africa and Asia, and they still do. Would-be democrats from Myanmar and Venezuela to Zimbabwe and Cambodia reside in the United States, and study the institutions of the United States, even today.

That tradition was broken, not just by the Trump administration but by the claque of men around Donald Trump who began dreaming of a different kind of American influence. Not democratic, but autocratic. Not in favor of constitutions and the rule of law, but in support of insurrection and chaos. Not through declarations of independence but through social-media trolling campaigns. Many of the actual achievements of this claque have been negligible or, more likely, exaggerated for the purposes of fundraising. Steve Bannon once implied he had influence in Spain, for example, but actual members of the Spanish far right laughed at that idea when I asked them about it in 2019. Bannon’s attempt to set up some kind of alternative, far-right university in Italy ended in failure. At their conferences, on their social-media platforms, and on their countless YouTube channels, the leaders of what one might call the Autocracy International often seek to present themselves as the enemies of communism—even as most of the actual people who really do fight communism, whether in China or Cuba, keep their distance.

In Brazil, the Autocracy International has finally had a “success.” Although public institutions in the country’s capital have been attacked before, most recently in 2013, today’s events in Brasília contained some new elements. Notably, some of the protesters who today sacked the Brazilian Congress, presidential palace, and supreme court; beat up police officers; and broke security barriers were holding up signs in English, as if to speak to their fans and fellow flamethrowers in the U.S. The phrases #BrazilianSpring and #BrazilWasStolen have been spreading on Brazilian social media, again in English, as if some American public-relations company were pushing them. There are clear links, some via radical Catholic organizations, among far-right groups in Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Not long ago, members of some of those movements, including ex-President Jair Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo, met at a special edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Mexico City.

Continue reading.

[garudabluffs]

Journalist sounds alarm on dangers of propaganda, calling it ‘one of the worst crises for American democracy this century’ MAY 07,2024

Anne Applebaum is sounding the alarm.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and historian published an 8,000-word piece in The Atlantic this week, warning about “the new propaganda war” and the dangers disinformation poses to the free world. The cover piece — excerpted from her forthcoming book, “Autocracy Inc.” — spotlighted how autocratic forces across the globe, including Donald Trump in the U.S., are waging sophisticated information wars “to discredit liberalism and freedom.”

"In Applebaum’s eyes, the deployment of propaganda by authoritarians — and authoritarian wannabes such as Trump — is one of the most profound issues of our time.

“I think it is at the center of one of the worst crises for American democracy this century, certainly in recent decades,” Applebaum told me by phone Tuesday. “If we can’t agree on what happened yesterday, then how do we write legislation about it? If we don’t share the same reality in the democracy, then how do we debate how we should organize our world?”

“It’s incredibly undermining to democracy,” she added. “Democracies rely on people having a shared perception of the world.”

Which is why, Applebaum said, those who hunger for power seek to destroy the very notion of truth. Applebaum explained that Vladimir Putin’s Russia “pioneered” the “firehose of falsehoods,” a tactic that Trump has employed in the U.S. and others have used across the world to seize and maintain power."

"Outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post inexplicably decline to even identify networks such as Fox News as “right-wing” in their news reporting."

"When I asked her why the establishment press is not more aggressively covering the story of our time, Applebaum, however, appeared stumped.

“I don’t know why it’s not covered more,” the celebrated writer candidly told me. “It seems to me to be one of the very central issues of modern society.”

READ MORE Journalist sounds alarm on dangers of propaganda, calling it ‘one of the worst crises for American democracy this century’ (msn.com)

We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents.

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/democracy-for-dummies/

Democracy For Dummies

I know him.  When he was a teenager, I crawled around in his head as his English Teacher.  Sadly, months ago, his wife of many years died unexpectedly.  A man in his 70s, he fell into a well of grief so deep he considered joining her.  I held my breath as he struggled to find his balance. Recovery came by inches, but it came.  Eventually, I could stop worrying. Still, reading his comments on social media, I wondered if the residue of his grief had turned to hate.    He’s not a bad man nor a foolish one, but he seemed to need a reservoir of anger to contain his misery.  Like our 45th President, Donald Trump, he focused on immigrants. They were criminals and rapists, he said, echoing the words of the former president. I told him my mother was an immigrant.  But he refused to connect the dots between his trust in me and my Costa Rican parent. She takes no offense. She’s dead. I could tell him that as the child of an immigrant, his prejudice offends me. But that’s not true, exactly. I’m not diminished by his bias. Instead, I feel pity for him, aware that his hatred burns inside him like hot tar and that he’s injuring himself more than those he wishes to harm. Self-torment is a condition common among most haters. Over time, their fury drives out other emotions. Compassion lost, they cling to their malice like voyagers tossed overboard at sea. Hatred becomes their ballast and their North Star. It distracts them from their disappointments.  It explains why fame and fortune have eluded them. When they hear the word welfare, they are quick to retort, “Nobody ever gave me a handout.”    The statement is false, of course. These malcontents received a free education. Their water is drinkable, and their roads and bridges are maintained.    True, these benefits come from public taxes.  But federal money isn’t shared equally. Some parts of the country receive a larger handout than others. Conservative states tend to be low-income states, and they pay less in federal income taxes, while people who live in those states are more likely to benefit from government support programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or SNAP, a nutrition assistance program.  My former student who is white and others of his ilk enjoy additional benefits as well. They can sit at a  lunch counter or use a public bathroom without fear of attack.  The employment they seek comes with the promise of advancement, while Immigrants take jobs so poorly paid, they must work more than one to put beans on the table.     The source of white contempt isn’t the absence of privilege.  It’s fear.  Forced to live cheek-by-jowl with foreigners, working-class white Americans …are more worried that they or their families will become victims of violent crime…they are more likely to live in neighborhoods with higher levels of social disorder… are also much more likely to believe that their families will fall victim to terrorism. What’s lost to their understanding is that immigrants share these fears. Yet rather than join hands for the betterment of all, those who are native-born chose to pledge their allegiance to the superrich. Donald Trump never knew a door that wasn’t open to him, unlike them. Yet somehow, he’s convinced these followers that he feels their pain and that he stands as a bulwark against systems that oppress them both. One of his supporters recently smiled into a television camera to say he’d take Trump’s autocracy over the ballot box any day.  “Sometimes people need to be spanked,” he avowed. Spankings aren’t meant for people who think like him, of course. They’re meant for people who believe in equality, diversity, and inclusion. He can’t envision a time when he might need a system of laws to protect him. His ignorance makes democracy fragile and joined with the ignorance of others, he encourages enough civil unrest to invite tyranny.  In this world, democracy has few friends, already. Even Nature abhors it. With few exceptions, democracy scarcely exists in the wild. Even so, my eighty-seven years on the planet have convinced me that though imperfect, democracy is the best way to protect the individual from the tyranny of the powerful.  E. Jean Carroll and her suit against billionaire Donald Trump is an example. Who doubts that absolute power corrupts absolutely? Those who seek it are the least to be trusted. As individuals, we accept the yoke of government as part of a social contract, relinquishing some rights in exchange for greater collective benefits. To this end, democracy best suits the individual’s purpose. Founded on the notion of equality, it entitles everyone to keep an eye on everyone else.

[eloiduarte]

Every time I see Sarah Kendzior's stuff online I am reminded of that embarrassing article she wrote once about how Steve Bannon was extremely dangerous because he compared himself to Lenin, which signaled his authoritarian goals. Anticommunist brainrot is so powerful that it can make you take a completely bullshit, self-aggrandising comparison from a third-rate racist conman completely at face value.

Now, this was years ago, and her more recent writings do a great job at calling out both heads of the tyrannical hydra that is the US political system. But there also bereft of a compelling vision for the future besides "autocracy isn't inevitable" and "no mafia state". No single person has all the answers, but I find it hard to believe her disdain for anticapitalist ideologies isn't related her lack of political imagination. This ultimately harms her work, which ends up reading like comfy gringo doomerism.

It also doesn't help that she's become very full of herself in her role as the Gringo Cassandra. Almost every article she writes contains some variant of "I saw this coming years ago and they all dismissed my warnings". Like there weren't plenty of people who were also correct before her. No, she has to be the only one who the downfall of the american empire coming. Otherwise she wouldn't be any special.

Why write this rant now? I guess my autistic ass got tired of people parroting how great and visionary she is when her political goals are actually very milquetoast. She may want the US to be free from its dying decrepit oligarchy, which is all well and good. But she also wants it to continue lording over the world, lest those pesky central asian autocrats get any ideas.

She doesn't seem to want an actually better world, but an optimized version of the current one.

[awaisdilshadme-blog]

Unraveling Pakistan’s Political Turmoil: A Call for Global Engagement

The pre-poll rigging in Pakistan, involving the expulsion of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) as a political entity, underscores the broader erosion of democratic principles nationally. The consequences are likely to be regional and even global if Pakistan’s slide towards autocracy continues. In the intricate tapestry of global geopolitics, the health of democracy in one nation often reverberates across borders. As Pakistan grapples with the complexities of its political landscape, currently embroiled in controversies surrounding elections to be held on 8 February 2024, the state’s machinery has constrained the largest political party—Pakistan Tehreek e Insaaf (PTI). Free and fair elections constitute a linchpin in shaping the political trajectory of any nation, and Pakistan stands as no exception to this rule. The significance of democratic processes goes beyond national borders, playing a pivotal role in ensuring both political stability and global credibility, particularly in strategic and economic relationships. They are of paramount importance for economic growth, attracting foreign investment, and enhancing the overall quality of life for citizens. A politically stable Pakistan assumes significance for regional security, given its geopolitical importance as a nuclear power and key transit state for resources into China Central Asia. The disqualification of Imran Khan from holding public office has already rattled internal political institutions. It is based on a controversial trail of 202 legal cases, including a Toshakhana reference (state gift) and a treason case. The charges underscore a concerning trend of legal maneuvers aimed at sidelining opposition figures. The enforced disappearances of PTI leaders, along with their coerced pledges of allegiance to synthetic political parties, which emerged a few months back in the Pakistani political arena, and their dissociation from politics, have contributed adversely to the erosion of democratic processes within the country. Peaceful protests organized by PTI have faced crackdowns, often marked by excessive force and arbitrary arrests, which highlight the broader suppression of democratic voices in the country. Limitations on media coverage of PTI’s activities, coupled with the intimidation of journalists critical of the government, pose threats to press freedoms and hinder public access to diverse perspectives. The institutional practices of gerrymandering and voter suppression have been specifically directed toward supporters of the PTI in pivotal constituencies. In its recent action, the Supreme Court of Pakistan took the unprecedented step of endorsing the decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to strip the PTI of its designated party symbol, the cricket bat. This development has restricted the PTI candidates from campaigning under a unified party symbol.

Read more: https://adnewsmafia.blogspot.com/2024/01/unraveling-pakistans-political.html