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    [post_date] => 2022-03-01 08:30:39
    [post_date_gmt] => 2022-03-01 08:30:39
    [post_content] => 

Fired from their jobs, their bank accounts frozen, facing death threats, the country's 270 female judges are in exile or in hiding.

Only six months ago Tayeba Parsa, 34, a female judge in Afghanistan, was determined to keep advancing women’s rights despite threats that Kabul would soon fall to the Taliban.

“There were times when I was really scared, but I always went to work,” Parsa tells me by phone from Warsaw. She has been living there with her elderly father and husband since last August, when the Taliban took over Kabul, waiting for news of a student visa from a country willing to take her in. “It was my profession, I loved my job, I studied for years to become a judge. I didn’t want to give it up.”

In the six months since the Taliban took over, the rights of women in Afghanistan have been all but eliminated. Girls older than 12 have few opportunities to obtain an education, while women fighting to hold on to any progress made over the last two decades face threats, prison, and often death. In this reality, women who not only have a higher education than most, but also practiced law in a position of authority over men, run the risk of execution without trial. In January 2021, unknown assailants on a motorcycle gunned down two Afghan women judges who were on their way to work.

When Parsa fled Afghanistan she gave up not only her career, but her entire life as she knew it.

“I was at home for three days when we heard news that the Taliban were at all checkpoints,” she says. “I collected all my documents and started destroying case notes to hide my identity.”

A former judge in the commercial division of the appeals court of Kabul province, Parsa is a member of the International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ) and volunteered to act as communications officer for the local branch. This association automatically placed her at higher risk. 

“The Taliban consider every Afghan who collaborates with foreigners an infidel, a traitor,” she says. “When I was a judge, I was receiving constant anonymous death threats.” To avoid being targeted by the Taliban, Parsa and her fellow judges hid their identities when going to work and avoided riding in officially marked cars. She says she knew the dangers and accepted them. 

“You never knew if you were going to come home,” she said.

In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, all women and girls are at risk. But no one is more in danger than women lawyers, judges, journalists, and police officers. Women in key positions of power were especially targeted by this regressive militant group, which seeks to enforce an extremist interpretation of Islam. As soon as the Taliban took over, the women lost their jobs and saw their bank accounts frozen. They knew their lives were in imminent danger. 

Afghan women judges were instrumental in challenging their deeply patriarchal society by demonstrating that violence against women and girls is not only wrong, but a punishable criminal offence. Putting aside fears for their own safety, they convicted and sentenced the men who stood trial in their courtrooms for rape, kidnapping, murder, forced marriage, or preventing women from going to school. 

The new Taliban government has released criminals whom Parsa, and approximately 270 other female judges, had sentenced to prison after they were convicted of crimes. With these men now free to take revenge, the women were in grave danger.

Nabila, who requested that her last name be withheld, was a family court judge who granted divorce petitions to many women. 

“Afghan law stipulates that a wife can request a divorce if her husband has been jailed for more than five years,” she tells me. “Some of these men were dangerous criminals who had committed serious crimes like murder and kidnapping. I granted these divorces according to the rule of law, but when the Taliban arrived, they released many of these criminals who came looking for me. I was no longer safe.”

Nabila is one of 26 female Afghan judges and lawyers who, along with their families, arrived in Athens from Afghanistan via Georgia this past September. While she, her husband, and their three children were eligible for evacuation, their immediate families remain behind. They fear reprisals against them and worry about their day-to-day living conditions, with a worsening humanitarian crisis on the ground.

“We’re always calling them, always checking up on them,” she said, adding that her relatives have had to change homes frequently for their safety. 

International sisterhood 

The International Association of Women Judges, which represents more than 6,500 judges in over 100 countries, has been instrumental in helping their Afghan colleagues get out of the country and in amplifying their message. 

Mona Lynch, a Supreme Court judge in Nova Scotia and regional director of the International Association of Women, emphasized the urgency of getting those women out of Afghanistan. 

“We have been trying to assist them in any way we can over the past few months,” she says. “These brave women have contributed for 20 years to maintaining the rule of law and stable governance in Afghanistan.” 

“None of them wanted to leave their country, they simply had no choice,” said Judge Lynch. “And the ones still left behind are getting more and more desperate as the circumstances deteriorate. They need help and we need to be their voice.”

Education is everything 

While waiting in Poland, Parsa has been using her free time to improve her English. After applying for scholarships at German, French, and American universities she obtained a visa for the UK, which she accepted—but at a cost. 

“I’m happy because it’s an English-speaking country, and I can’t imagine the additional hurdle of learning another language right now, but the visas are only for me and my husband. I would have to leave my father behind. I don’t know what to do.” 

She hopes to return to Afghanistan one day and help rebuild the country, but right now it’s only a vague dream, fueled by cautious optimism.

“The situation as it is right now won’t stand,” she says. “It’s intolerable, there’s no rule of law. Trials are being conducted by illiterate people. I want to be the voice of all Afghan women judges, those who are still there, still in hiding, still in danger, and those who have been evacuated but haven’t been offered visas,” she said, making a plea for the international community to help extricate the women still in hiding in Afghanistan, and to help settle permanently the women who got out but are still waiting for visas.

Nabila’s husband Asadullah, who is a construction engineer, has been translating parts of the conversation in his fluent English. In answer to the interviewer’s question, he described Afghanistan’s immediate future as “dark,” adding that this was the case “especially for women."

“I believe in women’s rights, they’re half of society,” he says. “I have three daughters and I saw a dark future for them there. My girls would not have been able to attend school. The Taliban may have promised that they can go, but I don’t believe them.”

Life in Limbo in Athens

Some 200 female Afghan judges, Nabila among them, are hoping Canada will fast-track their arrival, since they qualify under a resettlement program for Afghan refugees in danger for having held leadership or human-rights positions. 

Greece has welcomed more women fleeing Afghanistan than any other country so far. Amed Khan, an American philanthropist who was instrumental in helping many Afghan judges find a temporary home in Greece, said in an article for The Greek Reporter that it reflected an openness he saw from smaller governments that was missing from the world’s biggest economic powers.

“The only political leadership I’ve seen is from smaller countries like Greece, Albania, Qatar, North Macedonia; it’s not the G7,” said Khan. “A lot of countries made a lot of money in Afghanistan and now they want to wash their hands and look for the next opportunity.”

Despite her gratitude, Nabila wants to put down permanent roots and is waiting eagerly for news of permanent resettlement. She is worried about the children being unable to attend school in Greece, because they are in the country on temporary visas.

A painfully slow process 

Few countries have provided easy pathways for these women. They are scattered with their families in more than 17 countries around the world, and only a small number have been resettled permanently in their final destinations. 

The American Bar Association has created the Afghanistan Response Project and the International Association of Women Judges has launched a fundraising campaign, but these efforts rely more on individual goodwill than government assistance.

The Canadian government has expanded its special immigration program to include women leaders and human rights defenders, as well as persecuted minorities, but advocates say the process is too slow. Immigration Minister Sean Fraser recently suggested that it could take up to two years for the government to meet its promise of resettling 40,000 Afghan refugees. Fewer than 7,000 have arrived in Canada so far. 

And so these women wait, stuck in limbo. They can’t dream or plant roots in a temporary home. They worry about their future.

“These are professional, talented, brave women,” Parsa tells me. “They fought for the rule of law in Afghanistan. They stood strong against threats and political pressure. They’re educated and driven, they deserve to be offered scholarships and a new life, they are the future of Afghanistan.”

[post_title] => Afghanistan's female judges lost everything when the Taliban took over [post_excerpt] => In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, all women and girls are at risk. But no one is more in danger than women lawyers, judges, journalists, and police officers. Women in key positions of power were especially targeted. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => afghanistans-female-judges-lost-everything-when-the-taliban-took-over [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3908 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

Afghanistan’s female judges lost everything when the Taliban took over

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    [post_date] => 2022-02-17 19:58:26
    [post_date_gmt] => 2022-02-17 19:58:26
    [post_content] => 

After two years of living under stringent pandemic protocols, Canadians are fed up. They might not agree with the freedom convoy's politics, but they understand their feeling of resentment.

“You’re taking the swastika out of context!”

I sat there wondering if someone had dosed my coffee with LSD. 

“Excuse me?”

I could feel her seething on the other end of the telephone as she prepared to walk me through the ins and outs of Nazi iconography etiquette. Annette is a patient woman. She runs a private daycare in the suburbs north of Montreal — the kind of place that teaches toddlers to use sign language so they can tell their parents when they’re thirsty or need a fresh diaper.

But the swastika thing is testing her limits. 

Two weeks ago, when a group calling itself the “Freedom Convoy” flooded downtown Ottawa with tractor trailers and an estimated 8,000 protesters, people were seen flying a Canadian flag with swastikas etched into it. There were a few, actually.

When I mentioned this to Annette, asking her why a protest about ending vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions seemed like such an inviting place for extremists, she took a deep breath. Annette, who supports the convoy, told me the symbol of the Third Reich on Parliament Hill wasn’t meant to be taken literally.

“It’s not a Nazi swastika, well it is but it’s not a pro-Nazi swastika. Okay, that sounds bad. It’s a comment on how Canada has become a fascist state with all these COVID restrictions.”

“So it’s an ironic swastika?” I replied.

“Yes,” she said, sounding relieved.

“But what about the actual Nazi flag?”

I swear I heard Annette’s palm hit her forehead. We agreed to change subjects.

The problem with Canada’s Freedom Convoy isn’t people like Annette. Well, it is and it isn’t.

Annette is triple vaccinated. She respects all of the COVID protocols and even voted for Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government three times. But after two years of living with the ebbs and flows of a virus and restrictions that can feel improvised at the best of times, Annette is fed up. Which is understandable. 

In Quebec—which has the most stringent COVID protocols of any province—an estimated two million people have contracted the Omicron variant since it arrived last fall. That’s roughly a quarter of my home province’s population. Of course, this is just an estimate since the latest wave wiped out Quebec’s testing capacity.

Annette’s frustration is perfectly normal. Where things get more complicated is that while the Freedom Convoy is supported by a small but sizeable minority of Canadians from all walks of life, it’s being led by a coalition with ties to American extremists like the Three Percenters militia, QAnon and even one former Trump staffer who’s helping with strategy on the frontlines.

But there are distinctly Canadian elements to the convoy as well. Alberta’s ultra-conservative “WEXIT” secessionists and Quebec’s Europe-inspired far right are both flying their colours on Parliament Hill. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention sightings of a few Proud Boys at the rally two weeks ago. Founded by Canadian Gavin McInnes, the Proud Boys were recently designated a terrorist group by Trudeau’s government because of their penchant for insurrection and political violence.

The convoy’s logistics and messaging is handled by a group called Canada Unity, which is a mishmash of classic Canadian grievances — the Liberal government has never had a strong presence in Conservative strongholds like the prairies and rural Ontario, which only fuels a sense of mutual resentment — the French populist gilets jaunes (Yellow Vest) movement  and American-style alt-right tactics. 

Far-right activist Pat King is a major figure in the WEXIT campaign, which advocates for Alberta to secede from Canada; many in the oil-producing province resent their tax dollars going to the federal government’s coffers. Western alienation has been a central theme of Canadian politics since Trudeau’s father Pierre Elliot Trudeau was prime minister in the 1970s.

What’s different from past western protest movements is that Albertans are finding common ground with Quebec conservatives. Traditionally, these two groups aren’t even on speaking terms—partly because they speak different languages, but also because each sees the other as taking up too much space in the national conversation. But they appear to be finding common ground over their shared resentment of Trudeau and his multiculturalist view of Canada.

King also organized attacks on anti-racist demonstrators last year in northern Alberta, referring to his roughneck crew as “Patriots” — which certainly rings a bell to American ears. He says Muslim immigration will lead to the “depopulation of the caucasian race” which is a common theme for both the American and European far right. James Bauder, a leader of the far-right movement Canada Unity (in which King is also active), authored a “Memorandum of Understanding” that would force Canada’s unelected head of state, Governor General Mary Simon, and its unelected senate to negotiate with protesters and ultimately force Canada’s elected government to “resign their lawful positions” if they don’t meet the convoy’s demands.

A constitutional lawyer friend who looked through the document called it “somewhere between political witchcraft and January 6 fan fiction.”

Here, too, Canadians feel the influence of their southern neighbours, where far right activists and conspiracy theorists justified their attempt to overturn the presidential election on January 6, 2021 with an archaic and inconsistent reading of the U.S. Constitution.

And then there’s the question of who’s funding this thing. Political parties in Canada don’t raise money at nearly the rate of their American counterparts. Elections are almost entirely funded by the state and overseen by a robust arms-length entity, Elections Canada. For context, the Conservative Party of Canada raised $13 million in the second half of 2020 — more than any other party in the country during that period.

In the U.S. that kind of cash barely finances a down ballot congressional race.

So how is it that Canadians, who are notoriously thrifty when it comes to politics, put together a $10 million war chest for the Freedom Convoy in under two weeks? Most of that money, raised on the American GoFundMe platform, was frozen by the company because there was no way of tracking how it would be spent.

The federal government has since called on GoFundMe executives to testify before Parliament as to the source of this cash.

Determined not be thwarted by financial oversight, the Freedom convoy turned to GiveSendGo — the Christian platform that collected millions in donations for Kyle Rittenhouse — to keep their movement alive. It didn’t take long for millions more in donations to pour into the Convoy’s cause. This isn’t typical of Canadian politics.

QAnon slogans like “Free the Children” and “WWG1WWA” are scattered throughout the Ottawa site, alongside signs calling for Trudeau to be jailed and tried for treason, which bring some real “lock her up” vibes.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the Freedom Convoy is the ease with which journalists are harassed, attacked and threatened by supporters. In Alberta—where satellite protests are being staged—a reporter from CTV News tweeted a picture of himself removing the station’s logo from its TV truck to avoid being targeted by mob violence.

“It’s just not safe right now,” CTV reporter Justin Thompson wrote.

In Ontario, supporters of the convoy smashed the windows of a van belonging to Radio Canada, the French-language national broadcaster. The Quebec-based TVA Nouvelles started sending security guards alongside its reporters when covering the convoy’s Ottawa encampment. Meanwhile, the Canadian Association of Journalists reports that members covering the protest have been spat on and shoved, and have received countless death threats since the outset of the movement.

Last week, during a “press conference” organized by the convoy’s leaders, CTV News was barred from the event because organizers wanted to “(teach) the fake news industry what news is.” Again, this must sound familiar to Americans.

I’ve written just one article about the Freedom Convoy and some of its more enthusiastic supporters have threatened to stab, shoot, and hang me.

Adding another degree of American weirdness to the mix, former Trump administration advisor Paul Alexander has been on the frontlines of the protest, helping with strategy and sitting in on meetings with leadership.

For the residents of Canada’s notoriously boring capital city, life has been upended. A friend of mine, who works as an interpreter on Parliament Hill, told me she doesn’t feel safe at night walking past the encampment. But she also says she’s been so angry that she flips them off on her way to work every morning and struggles to suppress the urge to instigate a fight with them.

“I’m just looking for an excuse to throw a punch,” she said.

Here’s something an American audience might not realize. Canadians are perfectly capable of committing political violence independently of any outside influence. Though we may not have the American appetite for revolution, this country’s wealth is derived from stolen Indigenous land and ongoing colonial violence. But I digress.

Which brings me back to Annette.

We grew up in the same small town, where a huge percentage of our parents worked in the machine shops building airplanes for Bombardier, an aeronautics giant based out of Quebec. That changed after 9/11, when Canada’s aeronautics industry collapsed. Thousands of workers were laid off and while unemployment approached historic lows ahead of the pandemic, the years of a steady, well-paid job and access to home ownership feel like something that’s dying with our parents’ generation.

This too mirrors the economic anxiety of our southern neighbours. The Obama presidency may have turned the tide on the 2008 housing market collapse but income inequality persists and average household wealth hasn’t returned to pre-recession numbers.

So a lot of people — like Annette’s machinist husband — are living through an endless cycle of being laid off, hired again and then tossed back to the wilderness when the economy takes a dip. Meanwhile, companies like Bombardier get giant government bailouts even though they fail to meet benchmarks, continue laying off workers and rewarding their inept executives with millions in bonuses.

Add two years of COVID-19 to that and it seems only to have accelerated the frustration in Annette’s household.


“It’s time for this to end, I don’t recognize life in this country anymore,” she said. “We’re told to put our lives on hold and then start again and then put them back on hold. We have a set of rules that are constantly changing. Some of us have been vaccinated three times. What’s the end game here? Why are we being treated like idiots?

“I’m not a violent person, I am against the violence in the Freedom Convoy but I’m also angrier than I’ve ever been.”

U.S. influence among supporters of the Freedom Convoy is obvious but much of the anger fueling these protests has elements of western-Canadian alienation, resentment for a Liberal government that’s been in power 21 of the last 30 years and anxiety over a rapidly changing Canadian economy. Some of the far right elements of the movement have an American feel to them but there’s an anti-immigrant, Islamophobic segment of the protest that mirrors European conservative movements like Brexit, Front National or Éric Zémmour’s ultra nationalist Reconquête party.

The most worrisome aspect of the protest is how rapidly it was embraced by American conservatives with deep pockets, access to weapons and a wealth of knowledge about attacking democratic institutions. 

Perhaps it’s just the LSD in my coffee making me paranoid but that seems like a dangerous combination. After all, we share the world’s longest international border.

[post_title] => The Freedom Convoy's politics are fringe, but the average Canadian's frustration is real [post_excerpt] => Here’s something an American audience might not realize. Canadians are perfectly capable of committing political violence independently of any outside influence. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => the-freedom-convoys-politics-are-fringe-but-the-average-canadians-frustration-is-real [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3855 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

The Freedom Convoy’s politics are fringe, but the average Canadian’s frustration is real

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    [post_date] => 2022-02-03 15:34:20
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    [post_content] => 

For decades Johnson glided through life on his charisma and connections, enjoying a reputation as a genial buffoon. But now his lies and hypocrisy are finally catching up with him.

Boris Johnson, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, has had a storied career. He was once a journalist who, though fired for making up quotes and even whole stories, continued to rise in the profession. He was a Member of Parliament, then Mayor of London for two terms, then went back to Parliament, where he eventually became foreign secretary, before finally getting to the prime minister’s office.

Now it seems that Johnson’s time in 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s official residence, might well be cut short, following a still unfolding scandal about boozy illegal parties during the country’s national lockdowns.

In a video recording that was leaked in December, a spokeswoman is seen giggling at a mock press briefing as she practices lying about the parties. Since then, the media has reported a tsunami of leaks about at least 16 parties having taken place in other government departments while pandemic rules were so strict that the law even forbade more than two people walking together in the park. In a matter of days, fury spread across the country.

The details were vivid. Aides at 10 Downing Street smuggled in suitcases filled with bottles of wine. There was a drunken party on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral, at which the Queen herself was photographed sitting masked and alone at her own husband’s funeral, as per pandemic protocol. Some of the partygoers got so inebriated one night that they broke the backyard swing set, which had been set up for Johnson’s son to play on.

Each time the media reported yet another party, people shared on social media what they had been doing on that pandemic lockdown day. At best, people sat alone in their apartments with nothing to do; at worst, they were unable to attend the funerals of loved ones because of the stringent restrictions.

The scandal has, so far, caused one member of Parliament to leave the Conservatives for the Labour party and several others to publicly call on Johnson to resign. Sue Gray, a senior and well-respected civil servant, was asked to write an official report on the illegal events.

Days before she was due to publish her report, the Metropolitan Police announced they would be conducting their own investigation into alleged breaches of lockdown rules. This means that Gray’s full report will have to wait, but a redacted version published last week hit out against "failures of leadership and judgement" in Downing Street.

Dominic Cummings, a political consultant whom Johnson hired as his senior advisor when he became prime minister in 2019, and later fired in 2020 for briefing the press against him, is widely believed to be the source of the leaks about the parties. Cummings, who was Johnson’s closest advisor during and before the election, is known for being vengeful.  This sequence of events also felt, in hindsight, a bit inevitable.

Boris Johnson has been caught lying in person and in print countless times and he has always got away with it. He has had three wives, heaven knows how many mistresses, and, allegedly, does not even know how many children he has fathered. He is untrustworthy, unserious, gaffe-prone and easily distracted; and yet, somehow, because of his charm and shamelessness, he kept falling upward.

His rise once seemed inevitable, given his class background (and the British are ever obsessed with class) and connections. The son of a politician, he spent his formative years at Eton College, Britain’s most elite private school, famously attended by both Prince William and Harry and 19 other British Prime Ministers. There, he became secretary of the debating society and editor of the school newspaper. This trajectory wasn’t surprising; as a profile from the Sunday Times once explained, “[their father] Stanley deliberately created a family atmosphere in which beating the others at running, jumping, eating the hottest mince pies, coming first at school or simply having the blondest hair entirely captured the lives of all four children.”

The Johnsons were bred to want it all. After Eton, Johnson “went up” to the University of Oxford, where he was elected president of the Oxford Union (the university’s prestigious debating club). A brief dip followed, when he was fired from an internship at the Times for making up some quotes.

Never down for long, Johnson bagged himself a job at the right-leaning Daily Telegraph instead, having met its editor while at Oxford, and took it from there. He soon became the paper’s Brussels correspondent and took to writing outlandish stories about the European Union to please its eurosceptic readers, in a bout of ham-fisted foreshadowing.

At the time, the EU was growing and important questions were being asked about what its future should be, what its members wanted and what its place should be in the world. Instead, Johnson wrote pieces on Italians wanting smaller condoms (false); about an EU spokesperson living in a castle (false); and other made up stories of that caliber.

By the end of the 1990s, Johnson started to show political ambitions. According to Jim Pickard, Chief Political Correspondent for The Financial Times, Johnson said he wanted to become a politician  because “no one puts up statues to journalists."

It was a bold move but not a surprising one; after all, many well-connected, posh British men before him managed the move from journalism to politics, no matter how ill-suited to either job they were.

Johnson, who seems to revel in his image as a genial buffoon, once called Black people "piccaninnies" with "watermelon smiles" and gay men “tank-topped bumboys.” He has said that women who wear the hijab look like “letterboxes.” And yet, his foppish charm, bumbling charisma and semi-celebrity status meant he was elected mayor of London in 2008.

During the 2012 Olympics he got stuck on a zipwire while wearing a hardhat and clutching a plastic UK flag in each hand, in an incident that many believe was a stunt because, while he looked quite silly, he did not seem the least bit flustered.

While mayor, Johnson had an affair with a woman who worked in tech and was accused of giving her access to contacts and public funds. The story only came out relatively recently, as Jennifer Arcuri, the woman in question, decided to tell her story to the media. So far, there have been no serious consequences for Johnson.

In 2016 Johnson was back in Parliament when then-Prime Minister David Cameron called a referendum on whether the country should remain in the EU. Johnson huffed and puffed and then he came out in favor of Brexit. He later admitted that he’d written two columns for that day’s Telegraph, one supporting each side, as he could not make up his mind.

He then became the most visible face for the Vote Leave campaign. Johnson rode around on a big red bus claiming that post-Brexit Britain would spend an extra 350 million pounds a year on the national health service—which never happened—and compared the EU to Adolf Hitler. Three years later, he campaigned for prime minister on a platform of “get Brexit done.”

His decision to bring in Dominic Cummings, who is such a divisive figure that David Cameron called him a “career psychopath,” as his most senior adviser could yet prove to be his undoing.

The incompatibility of their personalities led to many fights, while Cummings’s abrasive style alienated everyone around him. The real problem, however, stemmed from his repeated clashes with Carrie, Johnson’s third wife.

A former Conservative adviser herself, she wielded—and still wields—considerable power in Number 10, a fact that Cummings resented. Forced to pick between the maverick and the spouse, Johnson eventually sided with the latter, and fired Cummings in late 2020.

It was always clear that Cummings would eventually take his revenge; the only question was when and how.

Since the “partygate” revelations became the top story in the British media, Cummings has repeatedly attacked Johnson for lying about the events to Parliament. In the prime minister’s defence, lying and charming people is something he has always been good at—and, until now, has nearly always been able to get away with.

The British people seem finally to be fed up with his charismatic clown persona. Millions of law-abiding citizens were unable to see their friends and families for months on end; people died alone and people gave birth alone; and meanwhile, in the corridors of power, people danced and drank until dawn. Johnson's profuse apologies are seen as transparently mendacious and insincere.

Whether Johnson will survive this scandal is still an open question, with not even the most seasoned political analysts taking bets. If the police do find evidence of criminal behavior, and if more revelations come out in the next few weeks, he might be ousted by his own party.

As of February 3, two top aides have quit, citing Johnson having been caught lying as their reason. Meanwhile, 11 Conservative Members of Parliament have called for a vote of no confidence against Johnson. If a total of 15 percent follow suit, MPs will then have to vote on whether they have confidence in their leader. If the prime minister wins the no-confidence vote, the MPs cannot challenge him again for a year; if he loses it, a leadership contest starts immediately. As of this writing, it is impossible to predict what will happen next.

Still, there are some years to go until the next election, and illegal parties during the pandemic aren’t the only problem Britain is facing. Rising inflation and skyrocketing energy bills means the country is heading for a dire cost of living crisis, and no-one seems to know how to deal with it. The Labour Party is climbing back up in the polls, slowly but surely, but these are not their problems quite yet; instead, what the U.K. needs right now is a sharp and well-functioning government.

[post_title] => Why 'Partygate' could be the end of Boris Johnson's political career [post_excerpt] => A tsunami of revelations about drunken late-night parties at the prime minister's official residence during Covid lockdown have enraged the public, alienated members of his own party, led two top aides to quit, and might ultimately spell the end of Boris Johnson's term in office. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => why-partygate-could-be-the-end-of-boris-johnsons-political-career [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3819 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

Why ‘Partygate’ could be the end of Boris Johnson’s political career

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    [post_date] => 2022-02-03 10:39:07
    [post_date_gmt] => 2022-02-03 10:39:07
    [post_content] => Journalists have been silenced with a campaign of intimidation, censorship, arrests, detention—and murder.

One year since a democracy-suspending coup, press freedom is dying in Myanmar. A military campaign of intimidation, censorship, arrests, and detentions of journalists has more recently graduated to outright killing, an escalation of repression that aims ultimately to stop independent media reporting on the junta’s crimes and abuses.

In January, military authorities abducted local news reporter Pu Tuidim shortly after he interviewed members of the anti-coup Chinland Defense Force armed group in the restive Chin State. Soldiers confiscated his laptop computer, used him as a captive human shield in a live-fire combat zone, and then summarily executed him, dumping his bound corpse in the muddy outskirts of a local village, his editor at the Khonumthung Media Group told CPJ.

Pu Tuidim’s murder followed the killing of two other Myanmar journalists in December, including one independent photographer who was picked up for photographing an anti-coup silent protest in the commercial capital of Yangon, held at a military interrogation center, and then pronounced by a military hospital as dead without explanation to his family.

A third reporter, Sai Win Aung, was killed on Christmas Day in a military artillery attack in Kayin State while reporting on the plight of internally displaced people in border areas that have become full-blown war zones since the coup. His editor told CPJ it is unclear if he was targeted in the shelling attack, but the reporter had weeks earlier fled Yangon for the insurgent-controlled frontier region after coming under military surveillance for his news reporting.

READ MORE: In Myanmar, the internet is a tool and a weapon

Myanmar’s generals, already the target of Western sanctions for their rights abuses, have a cynical incentive to suppress reporting that exposes their daily assault on Myanmar’s people. The Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, an independent rights monitoring group based in Thailand, reported on January 28 that the junta has killed 1,499 and detained 8,798 since last year’s February 1 coup. Those imprisoned include dozens of journalists, CPJ research shows, making Myanmar the world’s second-worst jailer of journalists in 2021, trailing only China, after having none in jail in 2020. The majority are being held on bogus charges under the penal code’s vague and broad Article 505(a), which effectively criminalizes critical news reporting as causing instability or purveying misinformation. Most were detained after reporting on anti-military street protests.
The generals are reaching next for an online kill switch. New proposed cybersecurity legislation aims to make virtual private networks (VPNs) illegal, a bid to stop Myanmar citizens from accessing banned websites and social media including Facebook, which many news organizations, including small local language outfits in ethnic areas, use as their sole platform for posting news. The legislation also gives junta authorities arbitrary powers to access user data, ban content, and imprison regime critics. If passed, a near certainty without an elected legislature in place, the law will give the junta the legal tool it needs to roll back the press freedom gains achieved between 2012 and the coup, a period where hundreds of independent media outlets bloomed from the darkness of an earlier era of military dictatorship, when all broadcast media was soldier-controlled and all newspapers were forced to publish as weeklies to give censors time to cut their content. Nothing more belies the junta’s claim that it is only holding power for an interregnum period to prepare for a return to democratic elections, originally in 2022, now supposedly in 2023, than its ongoing and intensifying assault on the free press – a crucial pillar in any functioning democracy that holds its leaders to account. The effect of the military’s repression is seen clearly in the rising tide of journalists who are fleeing for their lives to face uncertain futures across the country’s borders with India and Thailand, in the growing number of once-vibrant news publications that have gone dark through shuttered bureaus, halted printing presses, and abandoned web sites and Facebook-hosted news pages. That’s, of course, not to say the flame of press freedom has been completely extinguished in today’s benighted, military-run Myanmar. Tech-savvy reporters have launched upstart news publications that continue to defy bans, threats, and even the murder of their reporters to publish the news and keep the world informed of  abuses and atrocities that may be driving their nation towards full-scale civil war. Myanmar’s journalists and independent news outlets have a long and storied history of evading military censorship to get out the news. The next chapter in the history is now being written as a new generation of undercover journalists risk their lives for exile-run and other unauthorized publications to report the news the junta is desperately trying to suppress. And therein lies the hope for a one-day revitalized democratic Myanmar. This article was originally published by the Committee to Protect Journalists. It is reproduced here with permission.  [post_title] => Myanmar's military has crushed press freedom [post_excerpt] => One year since Burma's military staged a coup, it has crushed the country's free media with a campaign of intimidation, censorship, arrests, detention—and murder. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => a-year-after-myanmars-military-coup-the-countrys-independent-media-has-been-crushed [to_ping] => [pinged] => https://conversationalist.org/2021/02/12/in-myanmar-the-internet-is-a-tool-and-a-weapon/ [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3775 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

Myanmar’s military has crushed press freedom

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    [post_date] => 2022-02-03 01:15:03
    [post_date_gmt] => 2022-02-03 01:15:03
    [post_content] => Zemmour's racism and anti-immigrant positions are not new, but his misogyny reveals where the ideological fault line lies between the new and the old far right.

Éric Zemmour, a prominent French journalist and television personality who espouses extreme-right views, announced in November that he would be a candidate for president of the Republic. He doesn’t yet have enough signatures to run in the April election, but his potential candidacy has captured enormous media attention, revealing significant support from the far right and even from some subcultures of the moderately conservative right.

Zemmour has almost no chance of being elected president, though he might poach some votes from Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Rassemblement National (RN, or National Rally; formerly the FN, or National Front). Nevertheless, a trickle of ministers and smaller political parties continue to join his newly established Reconquête (Reconquer) party, even as he is involved in a series of high profile scandals involving several accusations of sexual assault, an extramarital relationship with a much younger woman, and three court cases on accusations of inciting racist hatred.

While he has won supporters for his extreme positions on Muslims and immigration, Zemmour polls low with women. Marine Le Pen has reorganized her campaign accordingly, and Zemmour —with seven accusations of sexual assault currently pending and more than a few misogynist tracts under his belt—was obliged, for reasons of realpolitik, to declare himself a “feminist, like the next man.”

A darling of the culture wars

Zemmour, 63, rose to prominence in the 1990s as a columnist and commentator. Back then he espoused a “union of the right”—i.e., a coalition of the moderate right Républicains and the far-right Front National (FN). He became a darling of the culture wars with his essay Le Premier Sexe (2006), a gender panic polemic on the purported “feminization” of men in France. The book—yes, its title is a riposte of Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist book The Second Sex—sold over 100,000 copies.  He followed this with a novel, Petit Frère (2008), in which he attacked “anti-racist angelism," and then a trilogy that sold even better than Le Premier Sexe—Mélancolie française (2010), in which he recounts the history of France; Le Suicide français (2014), where he argues that the French nation has become degenerate since the student-led uprisings of 1968; and Destin français (2018), a sort of autobiography in which he describes various historical events that have influenced his worldview. He ends the final essay with a polemic against the growing influence of Islam on French society. Zemmour’s most recent book, La France n’a pas dit son dernier mot (France Hasn’t Had Its Last Word), published in 2021, sold 165,000 copies within three weeks. Cherished by his followers as “an intellectual” and tolerated by others as a kind of maverick TV personality—a buffoon, perhaps, like the former journalist Boris Johnson, or like Donald Trump—Zemmour is, thanks to his many books, a frequent guest on television news and culture programs. He uses these prime-time opportunities to air his views on the decline of French society, the clash of civilizations, immigration and assimilation, national preference, and national identity. He is one of the figures responsible for bringing the “great replacement theory,” the fear that France’s “native” (white) population will be replaced by (brown) non-European people, into the mainstream discourse. Whilst lamenting the passage of France’s heroic age—Napoleon, etc.—Zemmour manages to align himself with both President Charles de Gaulle, who led the French resistance during the Nazi occupation of France, and the Nazi collaborator Marshall Philippe Pétain, Vichy France’s chief of state. This pairing is an ingenious move, presenting two historical figures who represented opposing political views as representatives of France’s lost past, when strong men took charge. Jean Marie Le Pen, the former leader of the far-right FN, made the mistake of expressing his support for Pétain while denouncing de Gaulle—at a time when de Gaulle was still an extremely popular figure in France. Zemmour expresses support for both men, which is novel.

A racist's racist

Zemmour is the son of Jewish immigrants from Algeria and is himself a practicing Jew who attends an Orthodox synagogue. That has not stopped him from aligning himself with the antisemitic far right, or from saying that Pétain was right to deport non-French Jews to concentration camps—because in doing so he saved some French-French Jews (of the 75,000 Jews deported from France, 72,500 were murdered) . Zemmour has transitioned smoothly from being an “outspoken” voice in the discourse around political correctness as it morphed into what we now call a “debate” on “cancel culture.” Today he is a comfortable anti-feminist, traditionalist, misogynist, homophobe, anti-abortionist, and a “critic” of the legacy of the social movements of the 1960s. He also deplores gender studies and writes in Le Premier Sexe that rape trials qualify as the “judiciary surveillance of desire.” In the months before he announced his candidacy, Zemmour reveled in several personal and legal scandals that further raised his public profile. In September Paris Match’s cover showed him frolicking in the sea with Sarah Knafo, his 28 year-old assistant and campaign manager, whom he has known since she was 13 years old (she is the daughter of family friends). Zemmour recently confirmed that Knafo is his “companion” and is pregnant with his baby, to the delight of the press, which speculates endlessly about Mylène Chichportich, his wife of 40 years: Is she suffering or indifferent as she stands silently at his side? While Knafo is something of a protégée to Zemmour, she is in her own right a perfectly terrifying and precocious extreme right militant. As a university student she was active in the FN and in a student association called Critique of European Reason, through which she got down with the sovereigntists and Euroskeptics, and met prominent right wing thinkers like Alain Finkielkraut. At 25 she did an internship at the French embassy in Tunis. She then authored a “handbook,” based on what she’d learned in North Africa about migration routes, on how to facilitate the deportation of undocumented migrants from France. His frequent trips in and out of court keep the press talking about Zemmour, too. His January 17 conviction for inciting racial hatred was his third. A judge fined him 10,000 euros ($11,400) for having said, on live television, that unaccompanied migrant minors “have nothing to do [in France], they’re rapists, assassins, that’s all they are, you have to send them back to where they came from.” Meanwhile, at one of his November rallies, Zemmour’s militia-style bodyguards beat up an anti-racist activist in a brawl reminiscent of Trump rally scenes.

A radical ideologue

French commentators have pointed out that the country’s media is falling into the trap of giving free publicity to Zemmour, just as the U.S. media made the mistake of broadcasting Trump’s rallies live without commentary and of reporting incessantly on his tweets, giving him massive free publicity on mainstream evening and cable news programs. Like Trump, Zemmour overwhelms the media with provocative soundbites, which are often in the form of attacks on journalists. As a result, media outlets are drowning in a sea of far-right madness—reporting and broadcasting Zemmour’s racist, sexist, and fascist comments repeatedly, without analysis or critique. The fact that Zemmour’s ideas are splayed bittily across television and internet platforms, and that only certain people read his books from beginning to end, works to obscure their character as a complete ideology. His misogyny, abhorrence for the student-led uprisings of 1968, dislike of modernity, and hatred of Muslims are connected and inform each other. A quick online search brings up a list of citations to go with each of Zemmour’s ideas, presented like an inventory of the contents of a bag belonging to the fasciste du jour. Zemmour deliberately muddies the extremism of his complete ideology by presenting his ideas in a willfully confusing, often “third positionist” manner— i.e., expressing right wing ideas in the language of left-wing ones. For example, in his books he offers a critique of the monogamous couple and, ostensibly, praise for polyamory. But this is not advocacy for free love. Rather, it is an expression of approval for a premodern society in which married men had multiple mistresses and in which women had no means of leaving an unhappy marriage. In French third positionism is roughly translated as confusionniste — which is a better term, perhaps, because the deliberate effort to create confusion is a salient and defining characteristic of contemporary fascism. Writing about Zemmour is challenging because it’s almost impossible to avoid the trap of either reproducing his ideas without comment, or presenting them with expressions of shock and outrage. In either case, the writer is amplifying Zemmour’s ideology, thus giving him yet more free publicity. Zemmour and his fellow far right television personalities have succeeded in shifting the Overton window of the French discourse. Fueled by the country’s growing and fertile climate of Islamophobia, which is partly a reaction to a series of high profile, violent terrorist attacks over the last six years, the center and center-right are now taking positions that were once considered far right. In a recent illustration of this shift, Macron’s government drafted and passed the Loi de Séparatisme, a law to “strengthen republican values.” The law targets and seeks to repress the Muslim community and its cultural expression, which conflicts with France’s aggressive secularism. As such, it is a populist attempt to exploit, or give lip service to, the idea that a cultural “great replacement” has happened, or is happening, in France. It is perhaps surprising that the extreme right—identitarian and antisemitic as it is—might choose Éric Zemmour over Marine Le Pen. Zemmour, though born in France, is the offspring of an Algerian-Berber Jewish immigrant family, while Le Pen is white and descended from France’s best-known fascist dynasty. Zemmour’s background has been a subject of conversation on fan forums for Papacito (a far-right influencer with a popular YouTube channel who supports Zemmour) and on gaming websites, where eager 20-year-old neo-Nazis agree that while his Jewishness is a bit of a problem, he’s kind of an Ubermensch.

The fault line in the far right

Physically, Zemmour cuts a slight figure, with, as Harrison Stetler put it, “massive ears folding out around [a] receding jaw.” He bears no physical resemblance to the towering Aryan figures of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson, or to the topless horse rider Vladimir Putin. His possible success amongst extreme right voters — a smattering of ultra-conservative Christians, neo-Nazi groups, far right influencers, lapsed FN or Républicains voters—seems to be derived from his capacity to embody discursively a kind of straight talking, Trumpian masculinity (and whiteness), not seen in French politics since Jean-Marie Le Pen led the FN. He espoused a more overt brand of racism than that of his daughter Marine, the heir to the party’s leadership. Marine Le Pen, meanwhile, has in recent years made a dive for the center, trying to clean up her party and kicking out embarrassing family members such as her niece (who now wants to run with Zemmour) and her father, who infamously described the Holocaust as “a detail of history” and, as a French military officer, tortured people during the Algerian war. The effect of Marine’s efforts to take the party mainstream was to alienate her most right-wing voters, who have become disillusioned with her perceived political correctness. While Le Pen herself has said she is “against gay marriage,” she has also pink-washed her party in an effort to appeal to LGBT groups and even has several gay deputies. Recently Le Pen revealed that for the last five years she has been living in secret with a woman, her “childhood friend” Ingrid. “There are no men in my house, even the cats are female,” Marine said in a widely watched TV interview broadcast in early November. The critical fault line between Zemmour and Le Pen is, clearly, misogyny. Zemmour positions himself against a “cosmopolitan” political correctness that purportedly welcomes homosexuality and feminizes extreme right politics. Those who oppose Marine Le Pen’s leadership of the FN perceive her as having emasculated her daddy’s once-great party. One might wonder what is more prominent in Zemmour’s ideology—a hatred of women, or a hatred of Muslims and immigrants? But this would be the wrong question. Zemmour’s essay Le Premier Sexe shows his misogyny and his racism to be, if not interchangeable, on a continuum with one another. It shows the strong link between “theories” of feminization and the great replacement, which usually advances the racist theory that Muslims, Jews, and other non-white people will soon replace white people. It starts out as a great replacement theory about gender, advancing the idea that French men have become feminized through a culture that elevates “feminine values.” Men, he writes, are allowing themselves to be replaced by women and become total pussies, whereas a real man is a “sexual predator, a conqueror.” It is of course a polemic: his histrionic dismay at the purported fragility of contemporary French men is motivated by his belief in a naturalized masculine power (and violence), ready and waiting to be resuscitated. His essay is a spurious patchwork of loosely connected observations on advertising, football, cinema, sport, dubious “facts” and statistics, and hardcore conspiracy theories. He advances the theory that the purported feminization of men is due to the influence of “single mothers, sixty-eighters and feminists,” plus a homosexual conspiracy that wants to denaturalize sex and create a society segregated along the lines of gender. According to Zemmour, the plot is to eradicate male body hair because it would remind men of their natural “bestiality, virility,” and to set up conspiratorial alliances in cities between immigrants, single women, and gays. The speed with which he moves from roots to rootless cosmopolitans is, frankly, startling. By the end of Le Premier Sexe all this scattered madness joins up with his other great preoccupation—Muslims and immigrants. The great replacement of gender becomes just the great replacement, tout court. Hurtling through an account of the liberalization of divorce and abortion, he claims that French men have “laid their phalluses down,” thus declaring France “an open land, waiting to be impregnated by a virility from outside.” This has happened, he writes, because Christianity is a pussy religion. Outside of the Western world, he writes, men defend their dominant position “like a treasure” and refuse to align the “status” of their women with that of the Europeans. The argument is not simply that white French men are becoming more like women, but that they will be replaced by a masculine revolution of foreign (Muslim) men who are concentrated in France’s suburbs. Despite the book’s highly misogynistic character, which shows Zemmour’s hatred for women and especially feminists, part of his argument is that Black and Arab men, with their machismo and their desire to dominate, present a danger to…Western white women and feminists. Zemmour can claim as much as he likes that he is now a feminist. His entourage of female influencers, FemmesAvecZemmour (WomenWithZemmour), are flocking to make the same racist argument about women’s safety in an effort to make a feminist of old Zemmour. But Zemmour is quite different from other leaders. He manages to present himself as a real man, a man’s man, a man who speaks his mind, while remaining, a wily, self-satisfied intellectual who espouses a hardcore and explicit ideology. Whether he becomes a candidate in the presidential election or not, it’s quite clear that his prominence is symptomatic of a rightward shift in France, and in any case such extreme right mobilizing has already made its impact on the policies of the center. [post_title] => Softbois in France: a feminist perspective on the rise of Éric Zemmour [post_excerpt] => Zemmour's racism and anti-immigrant positions are not new, but his misogyny reveals where the ideological fault line lies between the new and the old far right. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => softbois-in-france-the-rise-of-eric-zemmour-from-a-feminist-perspective [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3767 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

Softbois in France: a feminist perspective on the rise of Éric Zemmour

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    [post_content] => 'When there’s ambiguity, some governments will take advantage of that and try to use it to clamp down on speech.' —Human Rights Watch

Cybercrime is on the global agenda as a United Nations committee appointed to develop a treaty on the topic plans for its first meeting amid pandemic-related delays. The process is slated to take at least two years, but experts warn that such a treaty–initially proposed by Russia–could hand new tools to authorities looking to punish those who report the news.

The issue stems from competing definitions of cybercrime—one narrowed on malicious hacking of networks and data, the other encompassing any crime facilitated by a computer. It matters because many authorities around the world already invoke cybercrime or cybersecurity laws to punish journalists— not for secretly hacking into networks or systems, but for openly using their own to publicize wrongdoing.

“When there’s ambiguity, some governments will take advantage of that and try to use it to clamp down on speech,” Deborah Brown, senior researcher for digital rights at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Brown has written about a global surge in national cybercrime laws undermining human rights. “It’s important to look not just at what’s being proposed at the global level, but at how national governments are interpreting their own laws,” she told CPJ.

Cybercrime laws criminalize topics like false news in NicaraguaNigeria, and Sudan, among other countries. Journalists have been arrested on cybercrime charges in Iran for reporting on the economy; in Pakistan for investigative and political commentary; and in Benin, for alleged defamation.

In 2011, CPJ warned about Russia’s push, along with China and a handful of other UN member states, to propose an “information security” code to combat online information that could incite terrorism or undermine national stability, charges both countries have levied against journalists.

“This has been part of Russia’s agenda for a while, and China has also been pushing for a treaty that would achieve similar goals—simply to extend more state control over the internet,” said Sheetal Kumar, head of global engagement and advocacy at Global Partners Digital, a London-based organization advocating digital rights.

CPJ emailed the Russian and Chinese permanent missions to the UN in New York to request comment but received no response.

Cybercrime measures can affect the press even if they don’t explicitly criminalize speech. According to Kumar, some seek to undermine encryption, a privacy feature that helps journalists protect files and communicate privately with sources and colleagues. CPJ has reported on journalists facing trumped-up hacking charges in retaliation for reporting, like Egypt’s Nora Younis. Journalists in the U.S. have told CPJ that the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act criminalizes data-gathering and verification activities that ought to be considered a routine part of reporting the news. In one recent local U.S. case, Missouri governor Mike Parsons said on December 29 that he expected prosecutors to charge St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Josh Renaud under a state anti-hacking statute for publicizing a local government website vulnerability that had exposed teachers’ Social Security numbers.

But journalists could be even more vulnerable if a global convention entrenches a broader definition of computer-enabled cybercrime, according to Brown at HRW. “The [UN] treaty has the potential to criminalize certain behavior and content online,” she said.

“Jordan, Indonesia, Russia, China, and others want to see a much broader scope [for the treaty] with so-called morality crimes, disinformation – more content-based crimes,” Kumar said, citing national statements submitted ahead of the convention. CPJ has documented journalists imprisoned under both Jordan’s Cybercrime Law and Indonesia’s Electronic Information and Transactions Law in the past.

Three journalists who have been arrested under cybercrime laws:

[caption id="attachment_3752" align="alignleft" width="400"] Maria Ressa at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, April 4, 2019.[/caption]
  • Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October, is battling a spate of spurious libel charges under the Philippines’ 2012 Cybercrime Prevention Act in connection with reporting by her news website, Rappler, and could face a six-year prison sentence if one conviction from 2020 is not overturned on appeal.
  • Bangladeshi reporter Ruhul Amin Gazi has been jailed for over a year without trial because a 2019 report about an executed opposition leader published by his employer, the Bangla-language Daily Sangram newspaper, was available on the internet, triggering a criminal complaint under the Digital Security Act, Rezaur Rahman Lenin, an independent academic and activist based in Dhaka who has followed the case, told CPJ. Local courts deny bail to those charged under the law so often that the prosecution itself is a punishment, Lenin said.
  • Nigeria’s Cybercrimes Act criminalizes using computers to transmit information that could cause annoyance or that the sender knows to be false; Luka Binniyat, a Nigerian journalist who contributes to the U.S.-based outlet The Epoch Times, was arrested under the Cybercrimes Act in November 2021 and continues to be held in advance of a February 3 court hearing.
Many UN member states are calling for increased international cooperation in cybercrime investigations, which could see more information about alleged criminals shared across borders, according to Kumar. “What’s good is that a number of states have said they want a rights-respecting approach,” she said. “But the devil is in the detail. You’re asking for increased [law enforcement] powers, you’re also saying human rights need to be protected. That’s where the issues will lie.” This article was originally published by the Committee to Protect Journalists.  [post_title] => The UN's push for a cybercrime treaty could endanger the security of journalists [post_excerpt] => 'When there’s ambiguity, some governments will take advantage of that and try to use it to clamp down on speech.' —Human Rights Watch [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => the-uns-push-for-a-cybercrime-treaty-could-endanger-the-security-of-journalists [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3748 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

The UN’s push for a cybercrime treaty could endanger the security of journalists

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    [post_content] => The trials of the women, though on vastly different charges, demonstrate clearly that there are two classes of victims: those for whom the wheels of justice grind slowly; and those for whom they move quickly.

On the first weekday of the new year a California jury handed down a verdict in United States vs. Elizabeth Holmes, finding the Theranos founder guilty of four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud against investors. Just a few days earlier, a New York City jury found Ghislaine Maxwell, the disgraced British socialite who procured girls for Jeffrey Epstein to abuse sexually, guilty of sex-trafficking. The timing of the two decisions aimed at powerful women made them collectively feel like a good omen, as if 2022 was shaping up to be the Year of Accountability. 

According to the evidence presented by prosecutors in both cases, the verdicts seemed fair and the juries thoughtful. (John Carreyrou, the former Wall Street Journal reporter whose investigative series on Theranos brought down the company, said in the final episode of Bad Blood, his podcast series about the Elizabeth Holmes trial, that the jury had been “unusually thoughtful.”) Holmes was found guilty of defrauding investors but cleared of the charges against patients. Maxwell, for her part, was convicted of five of the six counts with which she was charged for aiding and abetting Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of minors in the 1990s. 

As different as the charges were, both trials raised uncomfortable questions about gender, underscoring how seriously our legal system takes protecting the interests of rich white men. Remember that Maxwell is the only person to have faced federal prosecution for her involvement in Epstein’s vast criminal enterprise—besides Epstein, who died in prison in what was ruled a suicide. Holmes is a “unicorn”—the first Silicon Valley CEO to be convicted of white collar crime, who also happens to also be a female founder, an under-represented demographic that receives just 11 percent of VC funding. “I wonder if [Holmes would] be going to prison if she didn’t have ovaries,” mused NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway on his podcast, Pivot

Like the last prominent female CEO convicted of white collar crime—Martha Stewart, who in 2004 was found guilty of obstruction of justice and sentenced to five months in prison—Holmes became a cautionary tale about a woman who flew too close to the sun, inspiring both a media frenzy and a content extravaganza. The rise and fall of Holmes, a billionaire (on paper) entrepreneur who was once heralded as the next Steve Jobs, has generated two prominent podcasts, a best-selling book, a documentary, a TV series on Hulu debuting March 3 that stars Amanda Seyfried, and a recently announced Apple Original Films adaptation of Carreyrou’s book, Bad Blood, starring Jennifer Lawrence. (Martha Stewart’s case, which took place before the podcast revolution, also inspired best-selling books—including a how-to guide written by Stewart herself while she was under house arrest—and a made-for-TV movie starring Cybill Shepherd.)    

Things get a bit more complicated—both with the Stewart comparisons and the idea that Holmes’s case contains broader lessons for the tech industry—when you consider the specifics of what she promised, and what Theranos actually delivered. As I have noted before, Theranos wasn’t a tech company, despite how it was pitched to investors. Holmes wasn’t trying to hawk a ride-sharing app or a social network or a coworking space. She was pitching a medical device that purported to diagnose diseases from a drop of blood with greater accuracy than traditional laboratory tests requiring larger samples. And unlike Martha Stewart, whose crime was relatively minor—she lied to investigators about a suspiciously well-timed sale of stock—Holmes lied to patients and investors, with life-altering implications.  

Theranos’s product never worked, which set Holmes apart from her Silicon Valley peers. Holmes told investors that Theranos’s “minilab” device could run thousands of blood tests, even though it never could run more than 12. She implied that it was being deployed on the battlefield and in Medevac helicopters, when she never had a deal with the Department of Defense beyond an exploratory conversation. One patient, Erin Tompkins, testified that she ordered a Theranos test at Walgreens, and was misdiagnosed as having HIV. “I was quite emotional about it,” she said, adding that she tried to call the company but never got beyond a customer service representative. Another patient, Brittany Gould, took the stand to say that a Theranos test result indicated that she was miscarrying, which would have been her fourth miscarriage in a row. Thankfully, a nurse practitioner encouraged her to get a second test, which confirmed that Gould’s baby was healthy. 

[caption id="attachment_3721" align="alignleft" width="640"] (l to r): Bill Clinton,
Elizabeth Holmes, and Jack Ma at the Clinton Global Initiative on September 29, 2015.[/caption] As disturbing as that all sounds, it was the charges that stemmed from lying to the investors—not to the patients—that caused the jury to return a guilty verdict. To be sure, the defense successfully blocked testimony about the emotional impact of getting false test results, so it may have been harder to convince the jury to convict on those counts. Juror number six, a man named Wayne Katz, explained to ABC News that the jury ultimately felt that the CEO was “one step removed” from patient victims, so they weren’t directly defrauded in the same way as investors like the billionaire DeVos family, which put $100 million into Theranos; Daniel Mosley, a lawyer who invested $6 million; or PFM Health Sciences LP, a hedge fund that invested $96 million. For whistleblower Tyler Shultz—grandson of former Secretary of State George Shultz, who was on the company’s board—the verdict was mostly cause for celebration. But, as he told John Carreyrou on his Bad Blood podcast, he and his former colleague Erika Cheung were not motivated to put their “necks out on the line” so they could avenge aggrieved billionaires. They were trying “to save patients from potentially getting bad medical results.”   It would be a travesty if Elizabeth Holmes were to wind up being the only Silicon Valley hype artist called to account for lying to investors or a range of other crimes. Elon Musk, for example, got a slap on the wrist for tweeting that he was taking Tesla public—a lie that sent the stock soaring—settling with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $40 million and agreeing to make some performative changes at the company. Travis Kalanick never faced criminal charges for any of the multiple scandals at Uber, which included price gouging, a culture of rampant sexual harassment and a failure to vet drivers, which led to high profile incidents of drivers committing sexual assault on female passengers. Neither has Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, even though his platform’s algorithm has weaponized disinformation, leading to disastrous outcomes ranging from a genocide in Myanmar, manipulation of the 2016 U.S. presidential election by a Russian troll farm, and the coordination of the assault on the Capitol by white nationalists on January 6, 2021.   Holmes has yet to be sentenced. Each of her four fraud counts carries a 20-year maximum, but those sentences are likely to be served concurrently. She will probably get off with a much lighter sentence, as the judge takes into consideration factors such as her being the mother of an infant. Maxwell, who faces up to 65 years in prison, is awaiting sentencing, though her lawyers are currently trying to throw the whole verdict out on a technicality after a juror told a media outlet that he was a victim of sexual abuse. 
It has long been said that “the wheels of justice turn slowly,” but by looking at these two cases it’s clear that the relative slowness of that turning seems to depend on who the victims are. In the Maxwell case, where the victims were sexually abused underage girls, the crimes went uninvestigated for decades, until Julie K. Brown, a journalist with the Miami Herald, wrote a series that led to Epstein’s second arrest in 2019. (In 2008, Epstein famously cut a deal with prosecutors in Palm Beach, in which he pleaded guilty to soliciting a prostitute and served just 13 months in jail with extensive “work release.”) By contrast, Holmes was indicted for fraud more quickly–about three years after the first of John Carreyrou’s troubling reports were published in the Wall Street Journal Ultimately, it is a good omen that Maxwell and Holmes, with their fleets of high-priced lawyers to match their unjustified entitlement, were both charged with crimes they obviously committed. But going forward, unless the complaints of teenage sex-trafficking victims and patients who got bad, potentially life-altering test results are treated with the same urgency as those of billionaire investors who lost money on a scam, the Year of Accountability will just have to wait. [post_title] => The year started out well for justice, but less so for accountability [post_excerpt] => The trials and convictions of Ghislaine Maxwell and and Elizabeth Holmes show us that there are two classes of victims: those for whom the wheels of justice grind slowly; and those for whom they move quickly. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => the-year-started-out-well-for-justice-but-less-so-for-accountability [to_ping] => [pinged] => https://conversationalist.org/2021/09/27/elizabeth-holmess-legal-strategy-part-svengali-part-cant-touch-this/ [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3712 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

The year started out well for justice, but less so for accountability

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    [post_content] => Officially, Dodik's secessionism is in reaction to a new law that bans genocide denial. But his true motives are more cynical and venal.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) appears to be coming apart at the seams. The Balkan state is currently embroiled in its worst political crisis since the 1992-1995 war, the bloodiest on European soil since the Second World War. The current tumult was triggered by Milorad Dodik, a Bosnian Serb nationalist politician and notorious demagogue, who has been leading calls for Republika Srpska (RS), the Serb-majority region established after the war, to “pull out” of the country’s central institutions—its armed forces, intelligence agency, and tax authority. Most recently, he and his party, the SNSD, have expanded their secessionist rhetoric to include the state police, the border police, and even the country’s constitutional court.

Dodik and his party are paving the way for the RS entity to secede from BiH in all but name. His calls to quit the state’s central institutions are a violation of BiH’s constitution and of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, which played a key role in ending the Bosnian War. According to that agreement, BiH is governed by a complex ethnic-based power system, which includes a tripartite presidency, wherein one Bosniak, one Serb, and one Croat simultaneously serve on the body and arrive at decisions via consensus. Or, at least, that is the theory. In practice, the system is marred by dysfunction and near constant obstruction, especially by Dodik and the SNSD.

What does he have to gain by pushing his war-scarred country dangerously close to the brink of another armed conflict? The answers are both cynical and predicated on a mix of political survival and ideology.

Officially, Dodik’s secessionist talk is based on his party’s rejection of a new law that criminalizes genocide denial. On July 23, 2020 the then High Representative, the Sarajevo-based international envoy who oversees the implementation of the 1995 peace agreement, Valentin Inzko, imposed a law banning the denial of all internationally recognized war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocides (like the Holocaust). This means that anyone who denies that Serb nationalist forces committed genocide against Bosniaks during the 1992-95 war is now committing a crime.

For Serb nationalist leaders in BiH, this is an outrage. Genocide denial is a staple of their politics; Dodik’s regime has even funded bogus “commissions” to cast doubt on the well-established and forensically proven fact that Serb nationalist forces carried out widespread atrocities against Bosniak civilians while under the command of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, both of whom were  convicted of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Their convictions are largely concerned with the 1995 genocide in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where Serb nationalist forces forcibly separated over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from refugees nominally under the protection of the UN, transferred them to nearby fields and industrial buildings, and gunned them down. The New York Times report on the killings, quotes human rights officers and diplomatic officials who described it as “the worst crime since World War II.” Most experts and scholars, however, consider the totality of the Serb nationalist war effort in BiH to have been genocidal in nature, and not isolated merely to the events in Srebrenica.

Read Jasmin Mujanovic's review of "Quo Vadis, Aida," a "shattering, essential" film about the Srebrenica killings. 

The Bosnian parliament failed to pass its own legislation banning genocide denial because of obstruction by Dodik’s SNSD bloc and their coalition partners in the Croat nationalist HDZ. While the HDZ is not a secessionist party, they do want to further the ethnic fragmentation of BiH through the creation of a so-called “third entity,” a kind of Croat-dominated RS. Such an entity existed briefly during the war; its entire senior leadership was also convicted of crimes against humanity. Because Dodik sees the HDZ’s goals as a means of further undermining the central BiH state, he is happy to champion the HDZ’s interests. In any case, Christian Schmidt, the new High Representative, has said the law imposed by his predecessor would remain in effect until parliament passed its own. Rather than engage in democratic niceties like parliamentary debate, Dodik has now shifted tactics to creating illegal parallel institutions. He has even threatened to recreate the “Army of the Republika Srpska” (VRS), the militia that committed the Srebrenica genocide. Dodik has governed BiH’s RS as a virtual autocrat since 2006. Prior to the genocide, the areas of northern and eastern BiH that now constitute the entity were wholly multiethnic; today they are almost wholly Serb-dominated. Dodik is currently a member of BiH’s tripartite state presidency and has no official function within the RS, but the Serb enclave is his personal fiefdom in all but name. Once an American-backed reformist who helped eject Karadzic’s SDS party from power, Dodik has spent much of the last 16 years reinventing himself as a hardline nationalist. That has also meant violently cracking down on civil society, creating a regime-controlled media apparatus, and centering all real power in the entity of his own person. Because of the Dodik regime’s near-authoritarian domination of the Serb entity, the SNSD is unlikely to lose power in the next BiH general elections, scheduled for October 2022. Moreover, because of the expansive power-sharing provisions of the Dayton constitution, Dodik and his Croat nationalist allies in the HDZ also (in)directly control large aspects of the state apparatus, a fact that has shielded leading figures in both parties from prosecution for a legion of criminal affairs and a smorgasbord of anti-constitutional activities. In October 2021, for instance, BiH’s BN TV reported that the SNSD government had allowed industrial grade oxygen tanks, unfit for human consumption, to be used in hospitals in the region. In December 2020, Dodik’s appointee on BiH’s central judicial oversight body was forced to resign in disgrace after he was caught on tape directing payoffs to underlings, and openly discussing how to sway justices. It is this trinity—sectarian ultranationalism, autocracy, and kleptocracy—that is the nucleus of Dodik the person, and the regime he has constructed in RS. He wants to dismantle the Bosnian state because he needs all three to survive politically and because of venal, financial self-interest. Dodik and his party have made the glorification of genocide denial one of their central ideological and electoral pillars. Without it, their political survival is in grave danger. The law banning genocide denial also creates politically and emotionally legitimate grounds for the High Representative to remove Dodik, which in turn would decimate his expansive criminal patronage networks. As noted in a January 5 U.S. Treasury Department brief, outlining the reasons for a new round of U.S. sanctions against him:

“Dodik…has established a patronage network in BiH from which he and his associates benefit. As one example of his corrupt actions, Dodik has provided government contracts and monopolies in the RS directly to close business associates. With his corrupt proceeds, Dodik has engaged in bribery and additional corrupt activities to further his personal interests at the expense of citizens in the RS.”

To be clear, the High Representative had grounds to remove Dodik already, but the SSND is hardly the only political party in BiH guilty of corruption, self-dealing, and abuse of office. Systematic genocide denial, however, packs a more robust, normative punch. This also explains why Dodik has resisted implementing the “5+2 Agenda,” the formula set out in 2008 for the phasing out of the Office of the High Representative (OHR). The two most important pieces of that checklist are: the dispute over state properties on RS territory, the most sensitive of which are military installations that belong to the Bosnian Armed Forces; and “the entrenchment of the rule of law.” Both items strike at the heart of Dodik’s authoritarian autonomy in BiH. If Dodik agreed to respect the presence of Bosnian military bases on RS territory and to abide by the rule of law, including an appropriate genocide-denial law, he could secure the OHR’s departure. But he would also be undermining his own authority by accepting the state’s primacy over his fiefdom. That is why he is trying to get rid of the OHR without implementing the 5+2 Agenda. Dodik ’s extremist gambit, however, reveals the true nature of his broader political project. He is not concerned about the anti-genocide law per se. He is worried because the OHR has shown that it is willing and still able to activate the Bonn Powers—i.e., its authority to use extra-constitutional powers to protect the integrity of the Dayton Accords—and this threatens Dodik’s own political survival.
What gives Dodik’s current efforts additional weight is not only that his party has begun using the RS assembly to formalize his purported “withdrawal” from state institutions, or his dismissing the legitimacy of Schmidt’s tenure at the OHR. That, in and of itself, does not make such acts legal. A sub-national assembly cannot unilaterally override the acts of a state parliament or the contents of international agreements—which is what the SNSD is doing—in any country on Earth, not even in BiH. But these actions indicate a degree of actual political courage Dodik’s regime has not hitherto displayed. Dodik feels he can afford to be bold because he enjoys the support not only of Moscow and Belgrade, but also of Hungary, which is a member of the EU and NATO;  he recently claimed to have the support of several additional EU member states. While the Russians had Schmidt barred from the UN Security Council—the first time a BiH High Representative was prevented from addressing the body—Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has said explicitly that he would prevent the EU from imposing sanctions against Dodik’s regime, even as his country pledged financial aid to the RS. Orbán, whose Fidesz party is notoriously racist, antisemitic, and anti-democratic, has also peddled thinly veiled Islamophobic conspiracy theories to buttress Dodik’s brinksmanship. Where BiH goes in the months ahead remains to be seen. Dodik and his partners in the HDZ might try to scuttle the country’s next elections, in order to further the narrative that BiH is a “failed state” that should be partitioned among neighboring powers, in line with the contents of a recent non-paper written by the cabinet of Slovenia’s Prime Minister, Janez Jansa, another Dodik ally. The U.S. has imposed new rounds of sanctions on Dodik; on Alternativa Television, a regime-controlled TV station that broadcasts pro-Dodik propaganda; and on Dodik’s former appointee to BiH’s judicial oversight body. The U.S. is expected to add more names to the list in coming weeks. The UK and Germany have also threatened their own measures, though they have not yet initiated them. In the interim, Zeljko Komsic, the Chairman of BiH’s presidency, has warned that unless the international community works with local authorities to stop Dodik, “force will have to be the response.” Komsic is not wrong. Whether because of his extremist politics or his criminal interests, Dodik is clearly replicating the 1992 march to war under presided over by Radovan Karadzic, the convicted genocidaire. For all his bravado, though, Dodik knows he does not have the necessary hard power to go up against the BiH security apparatus, as fragmented as it is. The fear, however, is that he is still gambling on the idea that if he concocts a serious enough crisis, Serbia and Russia will come to his aid—little green men and all. Such a scenario would create a vortex of instability and conflict in the strategic center of the Western Balkans that, as in the 1990s, would suck in neighboring states. With Russia threatening further aggression against Ukraine, the West can ill afford another security crisis in the volatile southeast of Europe. [post_title] => A genocide-denying autocrat is threatening to throw a lit match into Bosnia's tinderbox [post_excerpt] => Once a US-backed anti-nationalist reformist, Milorad Dodik has spent much of the last 16 years reinventing himself as a hardline nationalist politician. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => a-genocide-denying-autocrat-is-threatening-to-throw-a-lit-match-into-bosnias-tinderbox [to_ping] => [pinged] => https://conversationalist.org/2021/04/24/bearing-witness-to-genocide-quo-vadis-aida-is-a-shattering-essential-film/ [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3704 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

A genocide-denying autocrat is threatening to throw a lit match into Bosnia’s tinderbox

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    [post_content] => On the sad anniversary of the January 6, 2021 coup attempt, The Conversationalist's Executive Director has assembled a list of the best analysis she's read in the U.S.'s mainstream media. 

On the one-year anniversary of the January 6 coup attempt, I've assembled some of the best reporting and analysis reflecting on how the United States got to this point, and what comes next. The articles cover a range of topics and points of view, from Osita Nwanevu's systemic analysis to Margaret Sullivan's media criticism. Rebecca Solnit and Barton Gellman offer eloquent explainers on authoritarian lies, with Solnit's essay looking backwards to Birtherism, and Gellman looking ahead to 2024. Jennifer Rubin has an interesting read on how to fight her former party's extremism, and Vice has disturbing updates on Proud Boys embedding themselves in local community organizing. 

Why Republicans Keep Falling for Trump’s Lies

Rebecca Solnit’s New York Times essay on truth, lies, and authoritarian control is brilliant; George Orwell would have been proud. She begins by tracing the series of GOP lies leading from the Tea Party to Trumpism. Delving into notions of gullibility, cynicism and true belief, Solnit paraphrases Hannah Arendt: "among those gulling the public, cynicism is a stronger force; among those being gulled, gullibility is, but the two are not so separate as they might seem." Lucky for us, Solnit is comfortable with grey areas. Where many writers might be tempted to let the deluded off the hook, especially anti-vaxers now dying from COVID, Solnit digs into their complicity, "gullibility means you believe something because someone else wants you to. You’re buying what they’re selling." 

'Trump's next coup has already begun'

Barton Gellman’s piece for The Atlantic is a strong summary of the ongoing threat to the 2024 election; he explains why and how January 6 was a practice run for future GOP violence. This is a clear and cogent breakdown of how the Big Lie incites the GOP base to violently overthrow democracy. It is an urgent call to action, but also self-conscious about not entering crisis-mode sooner. Take, for example, the source with a "judicious temperament" who "cautioned against hyperbole" last year but is now on board with U.S. democracy's death throes. The extended illness isn't examined.  “Virtually no one a year ago, certainly not I, predicted that Trump could compel the whole party’s genuflection to the Big Lie and the recasting of insurgents as martyrs," writes Gellman. But he shouldn’t take pride in being a latecomer to an obvious crisis. There are entire fields dedicated to studying authoritarianism, extremism, propaganda, and personality cults. Those scholars haven't been silent. If being wrong is reasonable, I was a hysterical alarmist, because when Trump first ran I said he would never leave office peacefully, that it was the end of elections as we know them, and that his party-cult base would back him. 

If American democracy is going to survive, the media must make this crucial shift

Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for The Washington Post, addresses the mainstream media's failure to make the threat to democracy THE story. Why aren't more outlets openly pro-democracy? Quoting Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Thomas Zimmer, both prominent scholars of authoritarianism, Sullivan argues that the piecemeal approach to covering democratic decline is failing. While the media is finally taking note (she provides plenty of links to further reading) as we approach the one-year anniversary of the insurrection, most are still failing to center the most important political story in decades. Sullivan encourages publications and editors to take a stand for democracy. "Don’t be afraid to stand for something as basic to our mission as voting rights, governmental checks and balances, and democratic standards. In other words, shout it from the rooftops. Before it’s too late."

Trump isn't the only one to blame for the Capitol Riot

In an essay for The New York Times, Osita Nwanevu argues persuasively that the American political system is to blame for the structural advantages that bred Republican entitlement to power. Yes, January 6 was an attack on our democratic institutions, but "our institutions also helped produce that violent outburst by building a sense of entitlement to power within America’s conservative minority." Citing a laundry list of undemocratic institutions and rules, including the Electoral College, stacked courts, and the Senate filibuster, Nwanevu takes issue with the outsized political power of rural voters in sparsely populated states. Structural advantages insulate Republican demagoguery from criticism, radicalizing the party faster in the name of patriotism. Meanwhile, Democrats are still reluctant to consider systemic reforms that would help address the imbalance. 

Opinion: Polling on Jan. 6 shows the vast majority of Americans aren’t crazy

Jennifer Rubin, a formerly conservative columnist for The Washington Post, wants to look on the bright side of the fact that the majority of Republicans believe the election was stolen and that Democrats are illegitimately in control. She encourages Biden and the Department of Justice to be more outspoken, and connects Christian nationalism to the insurrection, noting the Christian symbols at the insurrection, a topic The Conversationalist has covered extensively. Being Jennifer Rubin, she also wants to build out the law enforcement capacity to deal with the threat, but fails to mention rising extremism within those institutions.

The Proud Boys Changed Tactics After Jan. 6. We Tracked Their Activity.

Vice reports on how the extremist Proud Boys retreated from the national stage after January 6 to focus on local organizing. There was some speculation that the Proud Boys were going to collapse after two major events—nearly 50 of them faced federal charges, and a report showed that their "chairman" was an informant for the feds. But they did not collapse. Instead, they took a three month break and then began embedding themselves further in local communities across the country. Since then they've joined anti-vax, anti-CRT groups showing up at school board and city council meetings, and made an effort to blend in with local far-right activism. As a result, their base of support has grown.  [post_title] => Media roundup: how should we analyze the impact of last year's attempted coup? [post_excerpt] => On the sad anniversary of the January 6, 2021 coup attempt, Anna Lind-Guzik has assembled a list of the best analysis she's read in the U.S.'s mainstream media.  [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => media-roundup-best-analysis-of-january-6s-impact-on-the-one-year-anniversary [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3682 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

Media roundup: how should we analyze the impact of last year’s attempted coup?

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    [post_content] => The current situation for journalists in Belarus is horrific enough, but will probably worsen. 

On May 23, Belarusian authorities caused a global outcry when they diverted a Lithuania-bound commercial flight to the Belarus capital of Minsk so they could arrest two passengers on the plane: self-exiled journalist Raman Pratasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega. This shocking tactic was seen as emblematic of just how far President Aleksandr Lukashenko is willing to go to capture and punish his critics.

The dramatic arrest should not have surprised anyone familiar with the vindictive nature of the Lukashenko regime. The Belarusian leader, who has run the country since 1994, launched an especially brutal crackdown against the media around the August 9, 2020, presidential election, which was widely seen as rigged.

Dozens of reporters were detained for reporting on mass anti-government protests after Lukashenko claimed victory in the contested vote; Belarus now has at least 19 reporters behind bars —up from 10 in 2020 —according to CPJ’s 2021 prison census. 

CPJ has documented the beatings of journalists in detention as well as the authorities’ attempts to close media outlets, block the internet, raid newsrooms, harass journalists, and keep bringing new charges against those in jail. Many journalists have been detained multiple times.

By late 2020, CPJ noted another change in the Belarusian authorities’ tactics: they started bringing criminal charges against journalists rather than just holding them in 15-day administrative detentions. In February, two journalists of the Poland-based online broadcaster Belsat TV were sentenced to two years in jail. The two were detained in November 2020 while livestreaming from a protest in Minsk. Katsiaryna Barysevich, a correspondent for Tut.by, one of Belarus’ largest media outlets, was also detained in November 2020 and sentenced in March this year to six months in jail on absurd charges of reporting on the death of protester Raman Bandarenka.

When Barysevich, whom CPJ honored with its International Press Freedom Award this year, was released from prison on May 19, she found out that her media outlet was shuttered, more than a dozen of her colleagues, including chief editor Maryna Zolatava, journalists Elena Tolkacheva and Volha Loika were in custody on tax evasion charges. Barysevich was unable to enter the Tut.by office. “I can’t get a document that proves my past employment with Tut.by because the office is sealed off, and there’s nobody in there. I cannot prove that I am unemployed now,” she told CPJ in June. (Several other Tut.by staff remain in detention and face serious charges. They are not listed in CPJ’s prison census because they did not work as journalists.)

Days after the authorities raided the Tut.by and Belsat offices in May, the arrest of Pratasevich reinforced the full extent of the brutal nature of the Lukashenko regime.

Pratasevich, who was made to appear on state TV and at press conferences after a publicized “confession,” is now under house arrest in Minsk, banned from seeing anybody and going outside. Agents from the KGB, Belarus’ national security agency, reportedly live with him in his room. Pratasevich’s parents, Dmitry and Nataliya, say they do not know what charges their son is facing and told CPJ they are concerned about him.
By late 2021, Belarusian authorities had closed down most prominent independent media outlets and popular social media channels, branding them “extremist.” The authorities also targeted organization that help journalists. The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), an advocacy and trade group that is a partner of CPJ, was ordered to close after 26 years of operations. Its leaders continue monitoring press freedom violations from inside Belarus. The Press Club Belarus, which assisted journalists with training, education and capacity building, was shuttered; its head Yulia Slutkskaya and other employees ended up behind bars. They were released only after asking for presidential pardon and paying large fines to cover the taxes they were accused of evading. In addition, Belarusian authorities took extra measures to ensure that the information about detainees does not get to local and international media. They forced many lawyers to sign non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from speaking on cases, and stripped some lawyers of their licenses. Belarus prison conditions are harsh. Journalists usually share cells with a dozen of other inmates, some with diseases, including COVID-19, or lice. Many have health issues but are not getting the medical treatment they need. Ksenia Lutskina, detained in December 2020 and facing seven years in jail in retaliation for her work as a journalist, has a brain tumor that is growing and causing bad headaches, her father, Aleh Lutksin, told CPJ. She’s been given painkillers but is not allowed to receive tests or medication she needs. (Belarus authorities have not responded to CPJ’s requests for information about any detainees.) The current number of journalists behind bars is the highest for Belarus in the three decades since CPJ launched its prison census. Many are facing lengthy prison sentences on retaliatory and anti-state charges, such as treason. The situation for journalists in Belarusian jails is likely to worsen. Every day, there are fewer media outlets and press freedom advocates to report on the journalists’ conditions, upcoming trials, and sentences. Those who continue to do so, like reporters at BAJ, are at risk of imprisonment. Lukashenko’s track record shows he can be expected to use every available tool to continue gagging dissident voices. *This article was originally published by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).  [post_title] => In Belarus, Lukashenko’s vindictiveness reaches new heights [post_excerpt] => The current number of journalists behind bars is the highest for Belarus in three decades. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => in-belarus-lukashenkos-vindictiveness-reaches-new-heights [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3675 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

In Belarus, Lukashenko’s vindictiveness reaches new heights

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    [post_date_gmt] => 2021-12-20 18:10:17
    [post_content] => The historic election marks the final stage in the transition away from Pinochet's dictatorship.

Hundreds of thousands of people flocked onto the streets of Chile’s cities on Sunday night to celebrate a history-making presidential election. The sounds of cheers and honking car horns were everywhere as, with 97 percent of the votes counted, Gabriel Boric, a 35-year-old former student leader who headed the leftist coalition Frente Amplio, became the country’s youngest president. The final polls heading into the election predicted a very close result, with the far-right Jose Antonio Kast, 55, slightly ahead of the much younger, progressive Boric. But the final tally was not even close: Boric won with 55.9 percent of the vote—12 percentage points ahead of Kast, who called Boric to concede at 7.10 p.m., after only 30 percent of the ballots had been counted.

[caption id="attachment_3644" align="aligncenter" width="740"] Jubilant Boric supporters poured onto the streets of Santiago on December 19, 2021.[/caption]

On Election Day I was in Concepcion, in south-central Chile, feeling anxious but also hopeful that the Chilean people would elect Gabriel Boric, the humane, democratic and environmentally conscious candidate. I was at a polling station as ballot counting began, watching as the numbers showed a consistent advantage for Boric. When the announcement was made that Gabriel Boric had been elected, becoming Chile's youngest president, I was euphoric.



The two candidates campaigned on polarized visions for their country.

Kast, a conservative Catholic with nine children, is a Pinochet supporter. He ran a right-wing populist campaign that promoted a continuation of neoliberal economic policies and climate change denial. He vociferously opposed gender equality and abortion rights and incited against impoverished Venezuelans and Haitians who sought a better life in Chile.

Read more: Chile faces its most consequential election since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship

Boric is a former leader of the 2011-13 student movement, which sought better and more affordable education for all; as a young politician, he was one of the architects of the 2019 Agreement for Social Peace, which led to the 2020 referendum for a new, more equitable constitution to replace the Pinochet-era one. His platform calls for an overhaul of the economy, ending the neoliberal policies that have made the country deeply unequal; Boric campaigned on making Chile a more unified society—one fully transitioned away from the legacy of the Pinochet regime.

The campaign

Sunday’s election marked the end of a long process that began with the July primaries. Boric surprised everyone by winning the leadership of the leftist coalition over the Communist candidate, Daniel Jadue. The polls had projected a win for Jadue, but he made some serious missteps with various gaffes, including antisemitic statements; Boric, meanwhile, came off as inclusive, charismatic, and knowledgeable during the debates. With his moderate yet innovative positions, like the importance of finding a balance between economic growth and a response to the climate crisis, he attracted the millennial voters who played a decisive role in his becoming the leftist coalition's candidate. A high turnout for the primaries, with more than 1.7 million voters casting a ballot, created a solid electoral base for the first round of the presidential election. Kast, on the other hand, did not participate in the right-wing party’s primary elections; nor was he a favorite in the polls at the beginning of the election campaign. His candidacy emerged from a political pact between conservative Christians and the new far-right Republican Party; he then went on to perform well during the first debates against Sebastian Sichel, his rival for leadership of the right-wing coalition. Sichel positioned himself as a center-right candidate, a move that proved to be a mistake: He pushed right-wing voters toward Kast, whom they saw as an “authentic” right-wing candidate. For the far-right, who supported the Pinochet dictatorship and opposed a new constitution, Kast represented both their natural political home, and the man who was more likely to bring a right-wing government to power. The center-right moved toward Kast because they saw him as the man most likely to be elected and they wanted a right-wing government at all costs, even if that meant tacitly supporting xenophobic proposals such as the construction of ditches in Chile’s north to prevent impoverished and desperate Venezuelan migrants from entering the country.

The race

In the weeks before Election Day on December 19, polls consistently showed Kast just slightly ahead of Boric in a very tight race. International legacy media outlets painted a picture of Chilean society polarized between two extremist candidates, although Boric’s views are hardly extreme—they would put him somewhere between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. In Chile, the influential right-wing media outlets played an outsized role in promoting Kast’s campaign with fake news that incited against Boric. Kast, for example, claimed several times that the bearded, tattooed leader of the leftist coalition used illicit drugs, a baseless lie that the right-wing media amplified until it gained such wide credence that Boric felt compelled to respond. During the December 13 debate against Kast he released lab results that proved he had no cannabis, amphetamines, or cocaine in his bloodstream. Besides creating a divisive and polarized atmosphere during the campaign, the far right’s aggressive rhetoric and fake news also disseminated fear of Boric’s purportedly “socialist” agenda. For example, Kast claimed that the Communist Party’s support for Boric was indicative of a dangerous, far-left agenda; evoking Venezuela’s socialist bogeyman, he said that Boric, if elected, would drag Chile into chaos. In fact, Boric is very much a moderate who has attracted broad support with a political platform that advocates policies similar to those of European social democratic parties. Voter turnout in Chile hovers at 50 percent, which increased this time in the second round. Some analysts predicted that Boric would inspire a surge in the youth vote, propelled by their concerns about the climate crisis and rising authoritarianism. While there is no data yet about age groups, overall voter participation did increase by more than one million over the first round. This election saw the highest electoral turnout in Chilean history, with Gabriel Boric receiving more votes than any presidential candidate in previous elections.

A historic election

Kast’s extreme views on women’s rights, gender equality, and LGBTQ rights inspired a diverse political movement in support of Boric’s candidacy. One of his proposals, for example, was to allow police to detain suspects for five days in undefined “confinement centers.” The far-right candidate thus galvanized significant sectors of voters to find common cause in combating the threat of far-right populism. The close relationship between the far right and religious fundamentalists alarmed feminists and other progressive movements, mobilizing them to organize and get out the vote.
But Chileans remain divided about the causes and outcomes of the 2019 social movement that sparked nationwide protests, which in turn led to a political agreement for the establishment of a constitutional process. The far-right opposes any structural change to Pinochet’s system. Boric and his broad coalition represent Chile’s majority, who aspire to a stable social and political transformation. They support the constitutional process and want a more equitable economic system that will replace Pinochet’s neoliberal legacy with a welfare state and sound environmental policies. Boric’s administration will seek to introduce an ecological approach to governing, and to implement transformative policies to pensions and healthcare, two of the pillars of the unequal and segregated Chilean system. Boric represents hope for a nation that wants more dignity, a fact that puts positive pressure on the future government: it needs to be humane, fair, and efficient. I believe the newly elected President Boric is more than ready to take on this immense challenge. [post_title] => Gabriel Boric becomes Chile's youngest president on a progressive mandate [post_excerpt] => The historic election marks the final stage in the transition away from Pinochet's dictatorship. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => gabriel-boric-becomes-chiles-youngest-president-on-a-progressive-mandate [to_ping] => [pinged] => https://conversationalist.org/2021/11/18/chile-faces-its-most-important-and-most-polarized-presidential-election-since-the-end-of-pinochets-rule/ [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3637 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

Gabriel Boric becomes Chile’s youngest president on a progressive mandate

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    [post_date] => 2021-12-09 18:38:43
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    [post_content] => The dominant religion of Russian officials is money. There are many ways to exploit that, starting with a long list of individually targeted sanctions.

Russia appears to be preparing for a full scale invasion of Ukraine. Satellite images show the  Kremlin has been moving military materiel to the border since October, while intelligence analysis posits that as many as 175,000 troops are headed for border-region Russian army bases. These developments have alarmed both Europe and the United States, with President Biden warning President Putin on Tuesday of “strong economic and other measures” during a two-hour video summit between the two leaders. 

The ongoing conflict began more than seven years ago, after the November 2013 Euromaidan Uprising that led to the popular ousting of Viktor Yanukovich, a fantastically corrupt president who had largely been Putin’s ally. The Russian president responded in March 2014 by invading and annexing Crimea, and destabilizing parts of the Ukrainian east. Now, a simmering conflict is poised to get much worse. How should  Western powers respond, particularly given that Ukraine is not a member of the EU or NATO?

First, we must dispense with the idea that we can and should do nothing. As someone originally from Ukraine I am a biased observer; but even when I set aside my desire to prevent Putin from killing my relatives, I can see dire consequences for ostensibly disinterested parties. Western states would prefer to pretend that the headache called Vladimir Putin didn’t exist, given all the other headaches they have to deal with — like the global pandemic and rising inflation — but deal with him they must.

A Russian invasion of Ukraine would cause instability throughout Europe and beyond, including a gas pipeline disruption and the loss of a buffer zone between NATO and an ever-belligerent Russia. Adventurism by leaders of other countries—such as Iran, for example—who would see the distraction and the dismay as an opportunity, would likely increase in scope. The current refugee crisis would grow exponentially, with disastrous repercussions. Markets would suffer, as would businesses and aviation.  

Russia’s other neighbors — including Central Asian regimes — could become increasingly unstable. Putin is using extreme measures in an attempt to bully Western powers into keeping Ukraine out of NATO; his fear is the prospect of seeing the Western alliance’s military forces right on his border, but this fear holds risks for the entire region. As long as there are no consequences to his actions, Putin will not stop. 

The Russian view of Ukraine, which was part of the czarist empire and the Soviet Union, is distorted by imperialist propaganda that describes it as both a nation of buffoons and a threat that Russia must pacify. Russia also sees Ukraine as the stage for another grievance—that of Western triumphalism following the end of the Cold War, which the United States described as a “victory.” To put the matter in crude but simple terms, America insulted Russia and Putin, the former KGB officer, wants revenge.

Putin seems to believe that demoralizing the United States, which has provided aid to Ukraine  since it became independent in 1992, would be a major win for Russia. Ukraine is poised to fight, even if their military is destined to lose an all-out war against Russia's, but images of carnage and violence don’t deter Putin easily. We must understand that the Russian president would be initially unmoved by the sight of Russian soldiers coming home in body bags. 

“Who the hell do Ukrainians think they are?” was something I often heard in elite Moscow circles— among businessmen, television personalities, politicians—after the ousting of Yanukovych and the launch of the 2014 war. Russia’s ruling elite disliked the idea of Ukrainians possibly enjoying a functioning democracy and a better standard of living than they had. Moscow sees a stable, prosperous Ukraine as hostile simply because its existence might cause ordinary Russians to ask questions about why they were comparatively worse off. 

Because Russia is an extremely unequal society, its elite sees ordinary citizens as less than human and thus not entitled to ask uncomfortable questions, which might lead to popular discontent. In order to maintain their position, the leadership is most likely to choose divide-and-conquer: Incite a bunch of ordinary Russians against Ukrainians, dial up anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western propaganda, and keep everyone distracted with a war. 

What’s to be done to prevent this looming nightmare that will involve both bloodshed and wider instability? 

First, the Western nations must stop behaving as though they are powerless. Putin sees Western consternation as a sign of weakness.

It’s important, furthermore, to understand that Putin is not an ideologue. He uses ideology as an effective shield, but in practice he’s just another kleptocrat—albeit one with nuclear weapons. Russia’s new elite is composed of his close friends and important functionaries, all of whom benefit financially from their relationship with the president; normal people loathe Putin’s friends because they are so overtly corrupt. That very justifiable hatred is one of Russia’s greatest vulnerabilities, and one of the saddest elements of modern Russian life, which is dominated by stress and suspicion. Putin is the single leadership figure that Russians look to today, but he cannot fix all their problems. Meanwhile, brewing discontent is ripe for exploitation.

Western powers must also draw clear red lines by naming consequences and then acting upon them if Putin refuses to back down. Cutting Russia off from SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication)—the international system that allows banks to carry out trans-border transactions—should absolutely be on the table. This would rattle the Russian economy and have an immediate impact on Russian citizens. Notice how you can’t send money to an Iranian bank from the United States? That’s because Iran has been cut off from SWIFT; this affects everyone in Iran, from the leadership to ordinary people on the street. 

A move to cut Russia off from SWIFT would also, of course, impact U.S. banks and German banks, which use it to communicate with Russia. But these banks are more insulated from financial pain because their economies are far more robust and integrated than Russia’s.

The Russian elite loves opulence. It stashes its assets (and, frequently, its children) abroad — popular spots include London and Paris, Manhattan and Miami, the Cayman Islands, and Cyprus. The dominant religion of Russian officials is money. There are many ways to exploit that, starting with a potentially very long list of individually targeted sanctions, such as those already levelled at dangerous Kremlin lackeys like businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been indicted in the U.S. for the role he played in meddling in the 2016 election; and propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov, the notorious state TV presenter who is Russia’s own Tucker Carlson, only virtually unopposed.

Another factor to consider is Moscow’s fragile relationship with Beijing, with the Kremlin particularly worried about China expanding its influence in Russia’s Far East, where there are real tensions between the local leadership and Putin’s central government. When you want to know what bothers the Russian government, look at what it is restricting or monitoring. The FSB, for example, controls the Russian census in order to cover up resentment of Moscow in different parts of Russia. I was in Moscow when the 2010 census was conducted, and saw how researchers noted that the number of people identifying as “Siberian” as opposed to “Russian” had spiked. Today, writing about these issues in Russia can easily land you on a watchlist. All of this demonstrates that Moscow is worried about Russian territorial integrity. 

Russian propagandists tend to yell at me when I make these observations; they are defensive because they know I am telling the truth. Moscow is wary of China’s ambitions in the Far East and elsewhere, how they might affect Russia’s position in areas ranging from the Arctic to outer space, and how an already resentful Russian society might react to their country’s declining position. Washington can leverage that fear in many ways, most saliently by playing up the fact that Moscow today is nothing but Beijing’s uneasy sidekick. Russia is poorer and more vulnerable than China. Its population is declining. In its desire for great power status, it is decidedly outmatched by Beijing. These facts already don’t sit well with Putin, but are particularly infuriating to Russia’s citizens. 

Engaging Russia directly would merely serve to create another vortex of violent instability. But Russian private military companies (PMCs) have their fingers in many pies — in countries like the Central African Republic and Venezuela, where they are interested in both resource extraction and political influence. Signaling that all of these ventures are fair game for hostile action might not have an immediate effect—Putin likes PMCs precisely because they are expendable—but many of the Russian leader’s friends have significant amounts of money tied up in these ventures; inflicting pain on them makes him vulnerable. 

Most importantly, we must not mythologize Putin. Nor should we adopt the approach of the notorious Fox TV commentator, Tucker Carlson, who claims that Putin is massing troops and materiel because he needs to “secure” his border with Ukraine. This is a cynical political move: Carlson’s ratings go up every time he trashes President Joe Biden. If Biden is opposed to Putin, Carlson will side with Putin, even at the cost of global stability and the international standing of the United States. If Putin came out and claimed he needed his “Lebensraum” now, Tucker would probably cheer him on, and that’s all you need to know about that. 

Instead of being like Tucker, we should simply see the depressing system Putin created in all of its stark, granular detail — and understand that it won’t stop after it devours Ukraine. The time to oppose it is now.
    [post_title] => To stop Putin, grab him by his wallet
    [post_excerpt] => Western leaders are conducting their foreign policy as though nothing can be done to stop Putin. This is a mistake: he's weaker and more vulnerable than he appears.  
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To stop Putin, grab him by his wallet