World Politics

[blue_gold_84]

https://apnews.com/article/turkey-elections-erdogan-presidency-parliament-6291df76874c24550008c80b5c168992

Quote

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has ruled his country with an increasingly firm grip for 20 years, was locked in a tight election race early Monday, with a make-or-break runoff against his chief challenger possible as the final votes were counted.

The results, whether they come within days or after a second round of voting takes place in two weeks, will determine if a NATO ally that straddles Europe and Asia but borders Syria and Iran remains under Erdogan’s control or resumes the more democratic path promised by his main rival, opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

This year’s election largely centered on domestic issues such as the economy, civil rights and a February earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people. But Western nations and foreign investors also awaited the outcome because of Erdogan’s unorthodox leadership of the economy and often mercurial but successful efforts to put Turkey at the center of international negotiations.

With the unofficial count nearly completed, voter support for the incumbent had dipped below the majority required for him to win reelection outright. Erdogan had 49.3% of the vote, while Kilicdaroglu, had 45%, according to the state-run news agency Anadolu.

 

[JCon]

1 minute ago, blue_gold_84 said:

https://apnews.com/article/turkey-elections-erdogan-presidency-parliament-6291df76874c24550008c80b5c168992

 

They'll find enough votes for Erdogan. They always do, 

[Tracker]

 

                              

[Mark F]

South Africa is a mess.

Legislation proposed:

 

"The (hiring) quotas seem especially targeted at the groups defined by the regulations as ‘coloured males,’ ‘coloured females,’ ‘Indian males’ and ‘Indian females.’ People from these communities suffered discrimination under the previous regime, and now they are being re-victimised by a democratic government that has learnt all the wrong lessons from the past,” Steenhuisen said in a statement.

“In sectors like agriculture, forestry and fisheries, mining and quarrying, manufacturing, finance, arts, and science, the ‘targets’ set for coloured employees in provinces like Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West is 0.0%, effectively banning these groups from employment.”

He added that in Gauteng, employment by people classified by the state as coloured is sometimes limited to below 1%. In the case of employees classified by the state as Indian, the targets are often as low as 0.1% across economic sectors.

https://www.news24.com/news24/politics/parliament/absurd-and-perverse-da-on-draft-ee-targets-20230515

had to look up coloured.

"Coloureds (Afrikaans: Kleurlinge or Bruinmense, lit. 'Brown people') refers to members of multiracial ethnic communities in Southern Africa who may have ancestry from more than one of the various populations inhabiting the region, including African, European, and Asian."

People being classified, by ethicity, by the state.  in S. Africa. the world is nuts.

ruling party can not keep  the power on for more than two hours. they have permanent rolling blackouts.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Mark F

[Tracker]

The wave of treason cases that swept Russia after the start of the war in Ukraine has reached the largest center of the domestic defense industry.

 

 

[Mark F]

Seems big.

 

 

Edited May 18, 2023 by Mark F

[Wideleft]

36 minutes ago, Mark F said:

Seems big.

 

 

I realize "evil" is often too strong a descriptive for a human being, but the shoe fits with Erik Prince.

[Tracker]

37 minutes ago, Mark F said:

Seems big.

 

 

About freaking time. I hope he gets the max.

[Tracker]

23 hours ago, Tracker said:

The wave of treason cases that swept Russia after the start of the war in Ukraine has reached the largest center of the domestic defense industry.

 

 

For those who have not been following Russian war effort/politics, these men were primarily responsible for developing the Kinzal (dagger) missiles which were promised to be hypersonic and so fast that defending against them would be impossible. Turns out that they were fast but not fast enough to avoid being shot down by conventional anti-aircraft missile systems- like the US Patriot system. Apparently massive amounts of rubles have disappeared from R&D programs in Russia, but these clowns were somehow not smart enough to get the hell out of Russia before bring discovered.

[HardCoreBlue]

5 hours ago, Tracker said:

About freaking time. I hope he gets the max.

My guilty pleasure would be hoping his sister somehow had her tentacle in this as well.

[Wideleft]

35 minutes ago, HardCoreBlue said:

My guilty pleasure would be hoping his sister somehow had her tentacle in this as well.

Her fortune is from dad's Amway money, so close enough.

[Tracker]

Kremlin’s ‘Presidential Academy’ Gets Hit With a Mass Purge

A prestigious Kremlin-funded university that trains up Russia's top civil servants is about to fire all of its employees living abroad, according to current and former employees, in what appears to be Moscow’s latest wartime attempt to secure a vice-like grip around possible dissent.

The Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of Russia (RANEPA) is targeting employees who left during Russia’s war in Ukraine in 2022 and 2023, in addition to those who have been living elsewhere for longer, according to a report from Agentsvo, or The Agency. Sources told the outlet that “the order came from above,” without specifying further.

The firing spree follows a series of crackdowns on liberal elements of the university. Yulia Galyamina, a former professor in the Department of the Theory and Practice of Media Communications at RANEPA, was fired in recent months after she called for protests against the war last year. Russia alleged she was a foreign agent. The school’s former rector, economist Vladimir Mau, left the university after being accused of embezzlement and being interrogated for several days.

Although he had signed a letter in support of Russia’s war, he had reportedly stopped trying to fit into the system, Meduza reported. Instead, he had tried to reform the system from within, according to the Financial Times.

Authorities have also recently searched the homes of Mau and Maxim Dulinova, the head of RANEPA’s Federal Education Development Institute.

The moves comes as the Kremlin is searching for alternative ways to clamp down on any appearance of disintegrating support for the war in Ukraine. According to a new intelligence assessment released this week, the Kremlin is likely banning senior officials from leaving their posts—an apparent effort save face as Russian forces fail to make significant gains in the war.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-purges-russian-presidential-academy-after-major-crackdowns-on-dissent?ref=home?ref=home

[Tracker]

King Charles Reportedly Strikes Deal With Queen’s Dresser to Keep Quiet
.

What price keeping quiet? How about a nice house of your choice? The Mail on Sunday reports that Queen Elizabeth’s former dresser Angela Kelly has been presented with a new grace-and-favor home in the north of England—after she was forced out of her Windsor digs—on agreement that she won’t reveal any more royal secrets. The Mail says a senior Palace aide acting for King Charles presented Kelly with a new non-disclosure agreement to sign as part of the deal.
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II sits next to Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and Caroline Rush, Chief Executive of the British Fashion Council, and royal dressmaker Angela Kelly as they view Richard Quinn's runway show before presenting him with the inaugural Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design as she visits London Fashion Week, in London, Britain February 20, 2018.
A source told the Mail that the agreement was essentially a “gagging order,” preventing Kelly from using the words “king” and “palace” for commercial purposes.

Kelly was expected to write a third book about her royal role, but the Mail says the agreement may impinge on, if not outright, torpedo that. Charles, the paper says, wanted to both honor his late mother’s wishes by providing Kelly with a home, while stopping the leak of any more royal dish.

 

[Tracker]

Russian Deputy Minister Dies Suddenly After Slamming ‘Fascist Invasion’ of Ukraine

A senior Russian lawmaker who was reportedly critical of the invasion of Ukraine died over the weekend, the Russian government confirmed, in the latest unexpected fatality of a prominent figure since the war began.

In a statement, Russia’s Ministry of Science and Higher Education confirmed that Deputy Science Minister Pyotr Kucherenko died on Saturday. The ministry said he “became ill” while on board a plane carrying Russian delegates home after a business trip to Cuba. The flight made an emergency landing in southern Russia but doctors couldn’t save him, the ministry added.

[Tracker]

There are credible reports that the "Free Russia" partisans who have been waging guerrilla warfare against mostly Russian infrastructure targets until now have amassed large enough numbers to change tactics. Along with Russian soldiers who have abandoned their units, they are in the process of seizing control of the Russian oblast (province) of Belgorod which lies on the northeastern border of Ukraine. The Russian soldiers apparently brought a lot of weaponry including armoured vehicles and Putin is having to divert military resources there. Many of both the deserters and loyal soldiers have come from Bakhmut and further reports indicate that the Ukrainian army is now moving back into Bakhmut, even though there is hardly a wall still standing in the city which formerly had 70,000 inhabitants.

 

[Tracker]

The Russian media said they had completely pushed back the liberators of Russia. The governor of Belgorod said a few minutes ago that new liberating units are pushing even deeper into Belgorod.

[Tracker]

                                                                        This Could Explain A Lot:

 

                                     

[Wideleft]

This could go in the Canadian or US Politics threads as well because it deals with the rise of fascism.  Since it's specifically about Russian fascism, I'll leave it here.

Russia’s Frighteningly Fascist Youth

A new generation of Russians glorifies war, death, and Vladimir Putin.

MAY 21, 2023, 7:00 AM

The term “fascism” may have a vexed history, but this paradox—war is peace—is central to its political philosophy. Umberto Eco, the Italian philosopher, noted that one of the key facets of fascism was the constant war that had to be waged to prove that the nation was always on the path toward a cleansing regeneration. “Pacifism is bad; life is permanent warfare,” he wrote in the mid-1990s. But why should Putin, a 21st-century autocrat seemingly without real internal threats to his power and ruling a country fueled by income from abundant natural resources, be attached to such a vision?

 

The British scholar Roger Griffin argues that fascism seeks to regenerate the nation through war. It aims to destroy elements of modernity in order to create a new world order in response to the “degenerative forces of conservatism, individualistic liberalism, and materialist socialism.” The obliteration of morally degenerate enemies and moral orders by an ethnonationalist society totally dedicated to this goal is meant to bring about a new era in history. That new era, however, only ever recreates a supposedly lost past: a time of mythical, wondrous harmony when a nation and its subjects were culturally and militarily powerful. For Russia, this fantasy era picks apart and reassembles chunks of the medieval, tsarist, and Soviet past, where symbol and myth transcend historical reality. The longed-for utopia can only ever exist as fictional spectacle, performed for and by the public. It is pure fairy tale.

Putin’s Russia has bolted the fascist dream onto a distinctly modern popular culture. Modern fascist culture, Danish scholar Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen argues, spreads itself not through formal political parties and institutions—21st-century Nazi parties or Brownshirts—but through popular and internet culture. There are no closed doors beyond which fascist ideology cannot reach. Parties are no longer needed to create mass movements when social media groups can be created, joined, and eviscerated at the click of a mouse. Fascist governments and their subjects continually construct and reconstruct themselves—and do the opposite to their enemies—online and in “real life.” In online spaces where performance and public display easily overpower everyday reality, fascism is apt at staging what Bolt Rasmussen calls “a simulacrum of society.”

 

 

From Foreignpolicy.com

https://archive.ph/5O8Dt#selection-1069.0-1081.22

 

Edited May 25, 2023 by Wideleft

[Tracker]

New Anti-Israel Axis Pushes Netanyahu to ‘Brink’ of War

Israel fears that a growing anti-Israel alliance in the Middle East is now strong enough to spark an outbreak of war in the region.

Recent months have seen strengthening alliances and unprecedented coordination between Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria while Benjamin Netanyahu’s chaotic right-wing coalition struggles to maintain its authority in Israel.

The possibility of a localized war has been exacerbated by recent cross-border clashes between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Palestinian military groups in Gaza and in Lebanon as well as clashes with Hezbollah and Iranian proxies across multiple borders.

Assaf Orion, a Brigadier-General in the IDF reserves, told The Daily Beast that “Israel is on the brink and facing the abyss.”

The Israeli military believes that a surge in low-level attacks in response to Israel’s treatment of Muslims and their holy sites demonstrates increasing unity between a range of militant groups. Last month’s rocket attacks launched at Israel by Hamas from southern Lebanon reportedly took place while the commander of Iran’s Quds Force hosted senior officials from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah at Iran’s embassy in Beirut.n

This axis of antagonists has rarely cooperated so directly in the past.

Orion, who is a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, said that Israel was now engulfed in an unprecedented and perilous situation and these confrontations could escalate into a conflict.

“As more and more proxies have larger arsenals and communicate and coordinate more closely the chances are growing,” he told The Daily Beast. “There is a growing assessment that the theater was on the verge of a large-scale conflagration, including the possibility of its spillover into Israeli territory.”

During the last few months Israel has been involved in several cross-border clashes with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Islamic Jihad in Gaza while also carrying out numerous strikes on Iranian militias in Syria.

This month, Islamic Jihad in Gaza shot hundreds of rockets into Israel following the death of Islamic Jihad hunger striker Khader Adnan who was protesting his administrative detention, or detention without trial, in an Israeli jail.
Israeli security forces expel worshippers from the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City on April 5, 2023, a move denounced as an "unprecedented crime" by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.
That followed the launches from Lebanon in April, which appeared to be carried out with the support of Iran-backed Hezbollah. Those rockets were fired in response to the brutal invasion of Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque by Israeli security forces, during which worshippers were clubbed and beaten up.

“It seems the appetite for low-level skirmishes and challenges is growing because in the last two months we also saw Hezbollah carry out an ED [explosive device] attack in Israel,” said Orion.

Orion told the Daily Beast that Iran was carrying out low-level attacks through its proxies, Hezbollah in the north, Iranian militias based in Syria and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the West Bank by supplying them with weapons and funds.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-anti-israel-axis-in-the-middle-east-pushes-benjamin-netanyahu-to-brink-of-war?ref=home?ref=home

[Tracker]

The Taliban have declared war on Iran, Taliban leader Abdulhamid Khorasani announced. Looks like Russia may lose an important weapon source. The 
Taliban claim to have destroyed 18 Iranian border outposts so far. For those who are not aware of the history her, the CIA under the direction of the Reagan government, funded an unknown religious ascetic leader named Osama Bin Laden to organize resistance to the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. And the law of Unforeseen Consequences kicked in. 

 

[Tracker]

Turkey's Erdogan Wins Another Term As President, Extending Rule Into 3rd Decade
- ASSOCIATED PRESS
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won reelection Sunday, extending his increasingly authoritarian rule into a third decade as the country reels from high inflation and the aftermath of an earthquake that leveled entire cities.

A third term gives Erdogan an even stronger hand domestically and internationally, and the election results will have implications far beyond Ankara. Turkey stands at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and it plays a key role in NATO.

With more than 99% of ballot boxes opened, unofficial results from competing news agencies showed Erdogan with 52% of the vote, compared with 48% for his challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu. The head of Turkey’s electoral board confirmed the victory, saying that even after accounting for outstanding votes, the result was another term for Erdogan.

[Tracker]

Can we say ethnic cleansing?? The Russians have done this to Tatars, Poles and Latvians as well as Ukrainians;

 

Putin today signed a law allowing the deportation of Ukrainians from the occupied territories.

[Tracker]

Vladimir Putin issues 'dirty bomb' threat in response to drone strike on Moscow: report

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday rekindled his "threats" of a "dirty bomb" incident as a potential response to a drone strike on a residential building in Moscow that was reportedly carried out by Ukraine.

"Ukrainian citizens need to understand that there are other threats as well, for instance, attempts to disrupt the operation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant or use 'dirty' devices related to nuclear technology," Putin said in an interview with Director Svetlana Chupsheva General of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives according to The Washington Examiner. "We have talked about this more than once. We know what they have in mind."
Russian forces seized control of the facility in March 2022 shortly after Putin launched his illegal invasion of Ukraine, which has killed tens of thousands of people on both sides and spurned allegations of war crimes at the hands of Putin's troops.

Per The Washington Examiner, "Putin attributed such a plot to Ukrainian authorities, reiterating an accusation previously aired by Russian defense officials in October — and perceived around the world as a thinly veiled Russian threat of nuclear escalation in response to Ukraine's fall counteroffensive. He renewed that allegation moments after broaching the topic of retaliation for the Tuesday morning drone attack, which caused only 'minor damage' but shocked Moscow's government and paramilitary elites, as U.N. officials scrambled to avoid a military showdown for control of the plant."

Putin also claimed that Kyiv is trying to instigate Moscow into committing future attacks.

[Mark F]

election coming up in Cambodia. only one party.

 

"The Cambodian People’s Party has held an iron grip on power for decades and controls almost every level of government. Hun Sen, 70, an authoritarian ruler in a nominally democratic state, has held his position for 38 years."

Hun Sen worked for khmer rouge, pol pot.  

failure.

[blue_gold_84]

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-kyiv-attack-16ee160a9ac7fc27b9974c2887b15a8d

Quote

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday the United States won’t support peace talks in the war in Ukraine until Kyiv holds the upper hand, possibly after a Ukrainian counteroffensive that appears to be taking shape.

Blinken said heeding calls from Russia and others, including China, for a ceasefire and negotiations to end the war now would result in a “Potemkin peace” that wouldn’t secure Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity or enhance European security.

“Potemkin Village” was a tactic Russia’s 18th century government minister Grigory Potemkin used to build brightly painted village fronts to create an illusion of prosperity for Russia’s empress.

In a speech in Finland, which recently joined NATO and shares a long border with Russia, Blinken repeated the U.S. view that “a cease-fire that simply freezes current lines in place” and allows Russian President Vladimir Putin “to consolidate control over the territory he has seized, and rest, rearm, and re-attack — that is not a just and lasting peace.” Allowing Moscow to keep the one-fifth of Ukrainian territory it’s occupied would send the wrong message to Russia and to “other would-be aggressors around the world,” according to Blinken.