Russian paratrooper says it was weeks before he realized that Russia hadn't been attacked and that he had actually invaded Ukraine

Jake Epstein

Thu, August 18, 2022 

A Russian soldier patrols a destroyed part of the Illich Iron & Steel Works Metallurgical Plant in Mariupol, in territory under the government of the Donetsk People's Republic, eastern Ukraine, Wednesday, May 18, 2022.AP Photo

• A former Russian paratrooper said he didn't understand why his unit invaded Ukraine.

• Pavel Filatyev told the Guardian that it took him weeks to realize Russia wasn't under attack.

• The Kremlin peddled a propaganda narrative that it started the Ukraine war to defend itself.

A former Russian soldier who invaded Ukraine as part of an airborne unit said it took him weeks to realize the war was unprovoked and that his homeland was not under attack.

Pavel Filatyev served with the Russian military's 56th Airborne Regiment, part of the country's elite airborne forces based in Crimea. He spent weeks fighting in southern Ukraine and recounted his experiences in a 141-page memoir titled "ZOV" in reference to Russia's pro-war symbol. He published his experiences on social media in early August.

In a recent interview with the Guardian from Moscow, 33-year-old Filatyev described how his VDV unit entered Ukraine in late February with no information about logistics or objectives and little understanding about what had ignited the war in the first place.

"It took me weeks to understand there was no war on Russian territory at all, and that we had just attacked Ukraine," Filatyev told the Guardian.

In the lead up to the Russian invasion, the Kremlin's propaganda operation worked overtime trying to peddle quite a few baseless narratives they could use to justify military action against Ukraine.

False narratives from Russian President Vladimir Putin included blaming NATO expansion and characterizing it as a security threat, claiming without evidence that Ukraine was committing genocide against ethnic Russians, arguing that Ukraine is not a real country, and unsubstantiated concerns over nuclear weapons.

For weeks, Western intelligence and leaders warned that Russia would use these false narratives to justify invading Ukraine, which Putin's troops went on to do.

In his newly released memoir, Filatyev described how his elite unit was tired, underfed, and poorly equipped when they stormed into Ukraine. He said he was deployed to the war with a rusty rifle that jammed and came with a broken strap.

Filatyev said that when his unit arrived in Kherson — the first major Ukrainian city to fall to Russia, his fellow soldiers acted "like savages" and looted food, computers, valuables, and clothes.

"We didn't give a damn about anything, we'd already been pushed to the limit. Most had spent a month in the fields with no hint of comfort, a shower or normal food," the ex-paratrooper said.

"Everything around gave us a vile feeling," he wrote. "Like wretches, we were just trying to survive." Insider has not been able to independently verify the details of what happened in Kherson from Filatyev's memoir, though the Guardian was able to review documents reportedly proving his service.

Filatyev recounted that he was wounded during an artillery fight and evacuated out of the conflict after his eye became dangerously infected. Amid concerns that he could face some sort of punishment for his revelations, he left Russia this week.

'Soulless': NYT publishes scathing Jared Kushner book review

Dylan Stableford

·Senior Writer

Wed, August 17, 2022 

The New York Times on Wednesday published a scathing review of Jared Kushner’s upcoming memoir.

“Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo,” Dwight Garner, a Times book critic, writes in his review of “Breaking History,” due out next week.

Garner describes Kushner’s writing as “soulless” and compares it to a “college admissions essay.”

Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, served as his senior adviser in the White House.

In the memoir, Garner writes, Kushner appears to be unaware that “he was in over his head, unable to curb his avarice, a cocky young real estate heir who happened to unwrap a lot of Big Macs beside his father-in-law, the erratic and misinformed and similarly mercenary leader of the free world.”

Jared Kushner looks on as President Trump speaks in the Oval Office, Sept. 11, 2020. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Pool/Getty Images)

“‘Breaking History’ is an earnest and soulless — Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one — and peculiarly selective appraisal of Donald J. Trump’s term in office,” Garner writes. “Kushner almost entirely ignores the chaos, the alienation of allies, the breaking of laws and norms, the flirtations with dictators, the comprehensive loss of America’s moral leadership, and so on, ad infinitum, to speak about his boyish tinkering … with issues he was interested in.

“This book is like a tour of a once majestic 18th-century wooden house, now burned to its foundations, that focuses solely on, and rejoices in, what’s left amid the ashes: the two singed bathtubs, the gravel driveway and the mailbox,” Garner continues.

The Times review mocks Kushner for including in his memoir “every drop of praise he’s ever received” for his work in the West Wing.

“A therapist might call these cries for help,” Garner writes.

HarperCollins Publishers

The Times review also mocks Kushner for his recollection of wooing Ivanka Trump while he was in Europe on Rupert Murdoch’s yacht:

We were having lunch at Bono’s house in the town of Eze on the French Riviera, when Rupert stepped out to take a call. He came back and whispered in my ear, “They blinked, they agreed to our terms, we have The Wall Street Journal.” After lunch, Billy Joel, who had also been with us on the boat, played the piano while Bono sang with the Irish singer-songwriter Bob Geldof.

“You finish ‘Breaking History’ wondering: Who is this book for? There’s not enough red meat for the MAGA crowd, and Kushner has never appealed to them anyway,” Garner concludes. “He’s a pair of dimples without a demographic. What a queasy-making book to have in your hands.”

Pope Francis’ Man in Canada Marc Ouellet Accused of Sexual Abuse by Former Intern

Barbie Latza Nadeau
Wed, August 17, 2022 a


Remo Casilli/Reuters

ROME—A prominent cardinal who has been short listed as pope in the last two conclaves has been accused of sexual abuse by a former intern. Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who most recently accompanied Pope Francis on his apostolic voyage of penance to Canada, has been accused of massaging, kissing, and groping the buttock of a 23-year old female who was his pastoral intern in 2008.

The accusation is part of two class-action lawsuits brought by 193 victims against 116 members of the Brothers of the Christian Schools of Francophone Canada on Tuesday. A judge in Quebec has already authorized the suits to go forward, prompting the Arsenault Dufresne Wee Avocats law firm of Montreal to present documentation, including accusations against Ouellet.

The prominent Canadian cardinal is named in the first of the two lawsuits, which accuses another 87 prelates and staff at the school of rampant abuse. The woman who accuses Ouellet is identified only as “F.” in the brief.

The Vatican Welcomes Back Cardinal Pell After Stunning Sex Abuse Reversal in Australia

The alleged victim described Ouellet as being the “most important person in the diocese” at the time they met at a dinner at the Sisters of Charity in Beauport, Quebec in August 2008. At some point after the dinner, F. said Ouellet massaged her shoulders and back, which left her “frozen in the face of this intrusion and didn’t know how to react,” the lawsuit states.

A few months later, F. said Ouellet kissed her cheek and hugged her with “familiarity, even though they had only seen each other once or twice before, and held her firmly against him, caressing her back with his hands.”

Two years later, in 2010, the lawsuit alleges Ouellet told her that he could hug and kiss her again because there is “no harm in spoiling yourself a little.” It was at that time he “slid his hand along F.’s back to her buttocks,” according to the suit. “That day, more than during previous meetings, F. understood that she must flee Cardinal Marc Ouellet as much as possible. The uneasiness she feels is more present than ever.”

Then 25, the alleged victim said she complained about the cardinal’s unwanted advances but was rebuked, told that he was just “very friendly” and that she was by no means the first or only woman to have this sort of “problem” with the high-ranking cleric.

It would be 10 years later, in 2020, when F. said she started having flashbacks during a sexual assault training session and then understood that Ouellet’s advances “constitute non-consensual touching of a sexual nature and therefore, sexual assault.”

Before joining the lawsuit, F. said she wrote to Pope Francis personally as she watched Ouellet’s trajectory advance in the Holy see. She was told that the matter was assigned to Father Jacques Servais, but, according to the lawsuit, that to date “no conclusion concerning the complaints against Cardinal Marc Ouellet has been transmitted to F.”

The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for a comment about Ouellet or Francis’ reaction to the lawsuit.

The head of Canada’s survivor network, known as SNAP, said the latest accusation was predictable. “Ouellet oversees the Dicastery of Bishops, meaning he’s the guy picking new Bishops. What hope do we have for leadership in the church?” Leona Huggins, leader of SNAP Vancouver, said in a statement. “We also must question who among the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops knew of his behavior and said nothing? Did some of them want to, but were afraid it would have repercussions on their career? Imagine then what it would be like for victims to step forward.”

It is unclear if Ouellet will face a similar fate as Cardinal George Pell, another high-ranking cardinal who was removed from his duties while the investigation into his alleged sexual assault played out in court. Pell was convicted and later acquitted of historic sex abuse and remains a close confidante of Pope Francis in Rome.

Biden can still stop Trump, and Trumpism – if he can find a bold plan and moral vision

The US president has been struggling and his divisive rival still has the Republican party in his grip. But there are reasons for hope

Illustration by Guardian design; Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty; Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty

Robert Reich
Mon 8 Aug 2022

Will Joe Biden be re-elected in 2024? With his current approval rating in the cellar, most pundits assume he will be toast by the next presidential election. At 81, he would also be the oldest person ever elected president, slightly exceeding the typical American’s lifespan.

So, the conventional thinking goes, Biden will be demolished by Donald Trump (or a Trump surrogate such as the Texas senator Ted Cruz or the Florida governor Ron DeSantis), thereby subjecting the US and the world to an even crazier authoritarian than Trump 1.0.

But that’s way too simplistic. In reality, Biden’s current approval rating isn’t much different from Ronald Reagan’s about this point in his presidency when he was grappling with inflation and the inevitable buyer’s remorse that voters feel a year and a half into a presidency. Two and a half years later, Reagan had won 49 states in his re-election bid against Walter Mondale. (Reagan was then 73, just short of the typical American’s lifespan at the time.)

Trump’s popularity has plummeted since the 2020 election – a casualty not just of most Americans’ outrage at his big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him and his role in the January 6 insurrection, but also of the poor showing (and terrifying
characteristics) of many of his endorsees in recent Republican primaries. The televised hearings by Congress’s select committee investigating January 6 have also reduced Trump’s standing with most voters.

Meanwhile, Biden is scoring some legislative victories, including a major bill to subsidise semiconductor chip making in the US. And now, following a hard won Senate vote at the weekend, Biden has substantial bragging rights over a much larger bill to slow climate change, lower the cost of prescription drugs and make health insurance more affordable.
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​The president ​has also been getting kudos for the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaida successor to Osama bin Laden, in a spectacularly discreet US drone strike that resulted in no other casualties.


Yet a basic problem ​remains ​for Biden. ​The Democratic party he knew when he was elected to the Senate 50 years ago, from blue-collar, working-class Delaware, is not the Democratic party that elected him in 2020. It’s now largely composed of young adults, college-educated voters and people of colour.

In the intervening years, many working-class white voters who were once loyal Democrats joined the Republican party. As their wages stagnated and their jobs grew insecure, the Republican party skilfully and cynically channelled their economic frustrations into animus toward immigrants, Black people and Latinos, LGBTQ people, and “coastal elites” who want to control guns and permit abortions.

These so-called culture wars have served to distract such voters from the brute fact that the Republican party has zero ideas to reverse the economic trends that left the working class behind.

The wars have also distracted attention from the near record shares of national income and wealth that have shifted to the top; as well as the Republicans’ role in tax cuts on the wealthy, their attacks on labour unions and refusals to support social benefits that have become standard in most other advanced nations (such as paid sick and family leave, universal healthcare and generous unemployment insurance).

During his 36 years in the Senate, followed by eight as Barack Obama’s vice-president, Biden surely became aware of the loss of these working-class voters. And he must have known of the Democrats’ failure to reverse the trends that left them behind and regain their loyalty.

Democratic administrations expanded public health insurance, to be sure. But they also embraced global trade and financial deregulation, took a hands-off approach to corporate mergers, bailed out Wall Street and gave corporations free rein to bash labour unions (reducing the unionised portion of the private-sector workforce during the past half century from a third to 6%). It was a huge error – politically, economically and, one might even say, morally.

What accounted for this error? I saw it up close: the Democratic party’s growing dependence on campaign money from big corporations, Wall Street and wealthy Americans – whose “donations” to both parties soared.

Bill Clinton styled himself a “new Democrat” who would govern from above the old political divides – “triangulate”, in the parlance of his pollster, Dick Morris. In practice, he auctioned off the White House’s Lincoln bedroom to the highest bidders, made Wall Street’s Robert Rubin his chief economic adviser, advocated and signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, opened the US to Chinese exports and cleared the way for Wall Street to gamble.

‘The televised hearings have also reduced Trump’s standing with most voters.’ A House select committee hearing on 21 July. 

Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Obama brought into his administration even more Wall Street alumni and made Larry Summers his chief economic adviser. Obama promptly bailed out the banks when their gambling threatened the entire economy, but asked nothing of them in return. Millions of Americans lost their homes, jobs and savings, yet not a single top Wall Street official went to jail.

Small wonder that by 2016 two political outsiders gave dramatic expression to the populist bitterness that had been growing – Bernie Sanders on the left and Donald Trump on the right. At the time, they even spoke the same language – complaining of a “rigged system” and a corrupt political establishment, and promising fundamental change.

Biden saw all this unfold. He came to publicly regret his vote to ease banking rules. He never celebrated the virtue of free markets. He has been far closer to organised labour and more comfortable with non-college working-class voters than either Clinton or Obama. “I am a union man, period,” he has repeatedly said.

He’s no free trader, either. Biden proposed relocating supply chains for pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and medical supplies to the US, and imposing tax penalties on companies that relocate jobs abroad and credits for those that bring them home. He has kept in place most of the trade restrictions that Trump placed on China.

During the 2020 presidential campaign Biden was billed as a “centrist” seeking bipartisan solutions. But he had big, non-centrist ambitions. Seeking to be a “transformative” president, he openly sought a New Deal-style presidency. Once in office, he proposed the largest social agenda in recent American history.

That Biden failed to get much of this agenda passed in his first term was due less to his own inadequacies than to the Democrats’ razor-thin congressional majorities, and the party’s own compromised position within the power structure of the US.

But Biden’s and the Democrats’ deepest challenge was, and continues to be, voters’ distrust of the system. All political and economic systems depend fundamentally on people’s trust that its processes are free from bias and its outcomes are fair. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him has contributed to the distrust but is not responsible for it. Only about a third of Americans believe him.

The real source of distrust is the same force that ushered Trump into the White House in 2016: four decades of near stagnant wages, widening inequality, a shrinking middle class, ever more concentrated wealth at the top and growing corruption in the form of campaign cash from the wealthy and corporations.

If Democrats retain control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections (possible but unlikely, given the usual pattern in which the party in control loses it), Biden could still become a transformative president in the last two years of his first term if he focuses like a laser on reversing these trends. Even if Democrats do not hold on to Congress, Biden could be a moral voice for why these trends must be reversed and the system transformed. It is the president’s best hope for being re-elected in 2024.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley

While Biden is tackling inflation and shaping a green economy for the US, Britain is being left behind

The Inflation Reduction Act is a big win for jobs and the environment, but Truss and Sunak have nothing similar to offer

‘The bill makes the single largest climate investment in US history, with $369bn for climate and clean energy.’ Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

Carys Roberts

THE GUARDIAN
Wed 10 Aug 2022

Over the weekend, US Democrats overcame months of political struggle to pass the Inflation Reduction Act in the Senate, marking a major victory for the president, Joe Biden, and for “Bidenomics” before the US midterms.

The bill makes the single largest climate investment in US history, with $369bn for climate and clean energy. It is expected to enable the US to get two-thirds of the way towards its Paris agreement commitments while reducing energy costs. It lowers health costs for millions of Americans. It seeks to tackle inflation by directly reducing costs for individuals and by reducing the deficit through closing tax loopholes and increasing tax on corporates and the wealthy.

The act is far from perfect. It is the diminished descendant of the failed Build Back Better Act, a $2tn package that would have radically extended childcare, free community college and subsidised health insurance, but which ultimately failed to secure the support of the Democrat senator Joe Manchin (a necessity given the evenly divided Senate). Winning political support for the act has required rowing back on climate ambition and more extensive plans to reduce costs for families; allowing further drilling for fossil fuels; and carve-outs to protect private equity profits from the corporation tax element of the act. For this reason, the act will and already has come under intense criticism from activists and climate groups

However, in the face of fierce political opposition it is a major – even landmark – achievement. It is also a win for the activists and economists who have been persistently pushing and providing ideas for the Biden administration to pursue an alternative approach to the economy and environment: market-shaping green industrial strategy to create good, green jobs; social investment; worker power and incentives for employers to offer decent pay, apprenticeships and profit-sharing with communities; higher taxes on the wealthy to reduce inflation and contribute to the costs, including through a new tax on share buybacks which only serve to boost investors’ incomes. These ideas are no longer stuck on the bench.

Historically the US and UK have taken a shared, leading role in the intellectual development and political implementation of new ideas and policy paradigms. Whether we think about the postwar Keynesian consensus, the neoliberal revolution of Thatcher and Reagan or the third way politics of Clinton and Blair, both countries have tended to move in lockstep. Yet right now, in the context of the Inflation Reduction Act in the US and the Conservative party leadership race in the UK, our policy paths are diverging.

The US has further to go than the UK when it comes to reducing climate emissions and building economic justice. The US has significantly higher levels of emissions (on an absolute and per capita basis) than the UK and the US is also the world’s biggest producer of fossil fuels. Similarly, inequality in the US is starker, and poverty deeper than in the UK. Put simply: the land of opportunity is not delivering for too many American citizens.

But Democrat leaders are pushing through a bold agenda to break through deep political polarisation and reset the shape and direction of what US economic success looks like. The irony when we compare this with the UK is that the conditions are far more favourable here for action commensurate to the scale of the climate and nature crisis, an economic strategy that prioritises everyday people and places over wealth and profits, and for extending collective provision of the things and services we all rely on. We have a head start in terms of the social democracy basics. In sharp contrast to the US, there is more consensus across parties on the need for the government to take action on the climate and nature crises. Action taken now would be far less likely to be wiped away by an opposition win than the fragile progressive gains in the US.

The Conservatives, who have held power for more than a decade, have in recent years flirted with some of those ideas – from May’s mission-oriented industrial strategy to Johnson’s net zero and levelling up pledges – recognising the electoral benefits of doing so. Yet at this moment, the Conservatives are plunging in the opposite direction to their US counterparts, and debating – in the middle of sharply rising inflation and a cost-of-living emergency – policies that are catnip for the Tory membership such as grammar schools and corporation tax cuts, rather than looking around the world or at the evidence on how to address the pressing problems of our time. Truss, widely seen as the frontrunner, has fallen back on outdated tropes of financial support as handouts and has virtually nothing to say on how she would achieve net zero, both for its own sake and as a response to the cost-of-living crisis. Nothing of substance is being suggested to address the creeping, real privatisation of the NHS as those who can go private rather than languish on a waiting list.

It would be wrong to point at the US and claim it has its house in order or that lessons can be read in a simplistic way. But Biden and the activists and researchers around him are ambitiously forging a new kind of economic policymaking that seeks to rapidly decarbonise, reduce pressures on family purses through collective provision, and tax wealth and profits to fund this and quell inflationary pressures. The UK government – whoever it is headed by – should take note of the new economics rather than be left behind.

Carys Roberts is executive director of the Institute for Public Policy Research

A strong geomagnetic storm is heading toward Earth, space forecasters say

Dylan Stableford

·Senior Writer

Wed, August 17, 2022 

A strong geomagnetic storm caused by the sun could impact Earth later this week, space weather forecasters say.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center on Wednesday issued a geomagnetic storm watch following recent explosions on the sun that have triggered strong solar flares and multiple “coronal mass ejections” that could reach the planet on Thursday.

NOAA defines a geomagnetic storm as “a major disturbance of Earth's magnetosphere that occurs when there is a very efficient exchange of energy from the solar wind into the space environment surrounding Earth.”

“The largest storms that result from these conditions are associated with solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) where a billion tons or so of plasma from the sun, with its embedded magnetic field, arrives at Earth,” NOAA explains.

While most of this week’s disturbances are expected to have little to no impact, there is a chance that the expected storm could reach a level of 3 out of 5 on the geomagnetic storm severity scale.

NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center issued a geomagnetic storm watch on Tuesday. (NOAA)

That could cause power grid fluctuations and briefly disrupt satellite, radio and GPS communications, NOAA said.

The geomagnetic storm’s arrival also means that the northern lights could be visible as far south as Iowa on Thursday.

According to the official space forecast, the auroras “might be seen over the far Northeast, to the far upper Midwest, across portions of the north-central states, and perhaps over the northwest section of Washington state.”

While auroras are not uncommon, the likelihood of a collision of multiple coronal mass ejections — a celestial event referred to as “cannibal coronal mass ejections” — has some sky watchers anticipating a brighter than usual light show.

In July, the northern lights were “so bright that photographers captured the colorful show even in the heart of Seattle, where light pollution typically mutes visibility,” Fox Weather’s Andrew Wulfeck said.

Solar flares are seen in this composite image of the sun released by NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center on Tuesday. (NOAA)

Others are just excited about the solar eruptions.

“The sun just hurled a plume of cool, dark plasma into space,” astronomer Tony Phillips wrote in a blog post. “Don’t miss the impact.”

If you do miss it, though, don’t worry too much. NASA said last month that in the current solar cycle, “solar events will continue to increase as we near solar maximum in 2025.”

Anti-Putin Investment Banker Found Dead Under Mysterious Circumstances in D.C.

Allison Quinn
Wed, August 17, 2022 

via Facebook

A well-known investment banker who spoke out fiercely against Russia’s Vladimir Putin after opening a popular nightclub in Moscow has been found dead in Washington, D.C.

Dan Rapoport, a Latvia-born American businessman who expressed support for Russia’s opposition while based in Moscow as the managing director of a brokerage firm there, was found dead on Sunday evening in front of a luxury apartment building, according to an incident report provided to The Daily Beast by the D.C. Metro Police Department.

Rapoport, 52, was rushed to a hospital but was ultimately pronounced dead.

The incident report noted that police officers at the scene were responding “in reference to a jumper.” He was found with orange flip-flops, a black hat, Florida driver’s license, and $2,620 in cash. A spokesperson for MPD told The Daily Beast that a death investigation was still underway, and Rapoport’s cause of death has not yet been determined.

His wife, Alyona Rapoport, was quoted telling Russia’s RBC news agency that the couple was due to meet again soon after their plans were disrupted by the all-out war in Ukraine, Alyona’s homeland and where the two had been residing in recent years.

“We were supposed to meet, he had scheduled meetings and made plans,” she was quoted saying. “Dan evacuated us from Kyiv and returned there to help my country. Next we were supposed to meet in the U.S.,” she said.

She disputed claims made by journalist Yunia Pugacheva that Rapoport had left behind a suicide note with cash and released his dog into a nearby park after splitting with Alyona earlier and being spotted in London.

“There was no note, no suicide, no trip to London, no departure,” Rapoport told RBC.

Born in Riga, Latvia, when the country was still part of the Soviet Union, Rapoport worked at several Russian financial institutions in the late 90s and early 2000s before opening the famous Soho Rooms in Moscow in 2007. As Russia’s opposition gained influence after Putin’s return to the Russian presidency in 2012, Rapoport was linked to the now-imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, whom he is said to have thrown his support behind. Rapoport, who has also been linked to numerous online posts condemning Putin, left Russia in June 2012 and lived for several years in D.C. before famously selling his home there to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner for $5.5 million.

He then moved to Kyiv in 2016 and got involved in local politics. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Rapoport was regularly quoted in Ukrainian media denouncing the Kremlin, and he made his support for Ukraine clear on social media, where he posted a selfie wearing a traditional Ukrainian vyshyvanka in the colors of the American flag and posted a Ukrainian flag as his background photo.

His final post on Facebook, three days before he died, appeared to also reference the senseless war in Ukraine: The photo of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now was captioned with the famous lines, “The horror, the horror.”

MODI'S THUGEES
India frees 11 Hindu men who sexually assaulted pregnant Muslim woman, killed 7 of her family members in 2002


Michelle De Pacina

Wed, August 17, 2022 

A court in India ordered the release of 11 Hindu men who gang-raped a pregnant Muslim woman in 2002 and killed seven of her family members.

Themen involved in the Bilkis Bano case were freed on remission on Monday from Gujarat’s Godhra town jail as India celebrated the 75th anniversary of the end of British rule.

The men were previously convicted in early 2008 and given life sentences for the rape of Bano, a then-21-year-old pregnant Muslim woman, amid the Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002. She was five months pregnant at the time of her rape.

The riots in Gujarat, which were considered some of India’s worst religious unrest in modern times, led to the deaths of more than 1,000 people, many of whom were Muslims. The violence was triggered by the deaths of 59 Hindu pilgrims on board a train that caught fire. Hindu right-wing groups blamed Muslim extremists for the incident.

Current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi previously led Gujarat as chief minister. Today, his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party continues to rule the state.

As Indian law allows convicts to seek remission after 14 years of jail time, the state government reportedly approved the men’s application for remission. The district jail advisory committee cited the time the men had spent in jail and their good behavior and recommended their release.

The men were also convicted of killing seven of Bano’s family, including her 3-year-old daughter Saleha, whose head was reportedly smashed on the ground.

On Monday, a media footage showed the 11 men being welcomed with confectioneries outside the jail upon their release.

11 convicts sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of gangrape and murder of 7 members of #BilkisBano's family walked out of a Godhra sub-jail today. The Gujarat government allowed their release under its remission policy. #2002GujaratRiots @TheQuint pic.twitter.com/u1dawz5zzm

— Himanshi Dahiya (@himansshhi) August 16, 2022

The decision sparked outrage from the victim’s family, lawyers and politicians.

“We have lost our family and want to live in peace, but suddenly this has happened,” Yakub Rasul, Bano’s husband, reportedly said. “We had no prior information about their release, either from the courts or the government. We only learnt about it from the media.”

The Hindu men’s release has also sparked criticism regarding the government’s stance on violence against women.

“The remission of the sentence of convicts of a gruesome crime like gang-rape and murder is morally and ethically improper,” senior lawyer Anand Yagnik said. “What is the signal we are trying to send?”

“How can justice for any woman end like this? I trusted the highest courts in our land. I trusted the system, and I was learning slowly to live with my trauma. The release of these convicts has taken from me my peace and shaken my faith in justice,” Bano reportedly wrote in a statement released on Wednesday.

“My sorrow and my wavering faith is not for myself alone but for every woman who is struggling for justice in courts,” she added. “No one enquired about my safety and well-being, before taking such a big and unjust decision. Give me back my right to live without fear and in peace. Please ensure that my family and I are kept safe.”

 

Featured Image via @himansshhi

Bilkis Bano: The pain of seeing my rapists go free

Geeta Pandey - BBC News, Delhi
Thu, August 18, 2022 

Bilkis Bano has said she wants her attackers to understand the severity of their crime

Bilkis Bano, who was gang-raped and saw 14 members of her family being murdered by a Hindu mob during the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in the western Indian state of Gujarat, is back in the headlines.

On Monday, 11 convicts who were serving life sentences for rape and murder in the case, walked out of prison to a heroes' welcome.

A video that has since gone viral showed the men lined up outside the Godhra jail while relatives gave them sweets and touched their feet to show respect.

In a late-night statement on Wednesday, Bilkis Bano called the decision to free the men "unjust" and said it had "shaken" her faith in justice.


"When I heard that the convicts who had devastated my family and life had walked free, I was bereft of words. I am still numb," she said.

"How can justice for any woman end like this? I trusted the highest courts in our land. I trusted the system, and I was learning slowly to live with my trauma. The release of these convicts has taken from me my peace and shaken my faith in justice," she wrote, appealing to the Gujarat government to "undo this harm" and "give me back my right to live without fear and in peace".

The article contains details that some readers may find disturbing

The decision to free the convicts was announced by the Gujarat government on Monday, as India celebrated its 75th anniversary of independence.

A senior official said a government panel had approved the application for remission as the men - first convicted by a trial court in 2008 - had spent more than 14 years in jail, and after considering other factors such as their age and behaviour in prison.

The move by Gujarat's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government - which is also in power nationally - has caused outrage in India. It's been criticised by opposition parties, activists and several journalists, who have called it unethical and a discrimination against India's minority Muslims. Attacks on the community have risen sharply since the BJP formed the federal government in 2014.

Many have also pointed out that the release was in contravention of guidelines issued by both the federal government and the Gujarat state government - both say that rape and murder convicts cannot be granted remission. Life terms in these crimes are usually served until death in India.

The biggest setback, predictably, has been for Bilkis Bano and her family.

The anger and despondence of the family is easy to understand considering the magnitude of the crime and the protracted battle they had to fight for justice.

The riots began after a fire on a passenger train in Godhra town killed 60 Hindu pilgrims

The attack on Bilkis Bano and her family was one of the most horrific crimes during the riots, which began after 60 Hindu pilgrims died in a fire on a passenger train in Godhra town.

Blaming Muslims for starting the fire, Hindu mobs went on a rampage, attacking Muslim neighbourhoods. Over three days, more than 1,000 people died, most of them Muslims.

Narendra Modi, who was then Gujarat chief minister, was criticised for not doing enough to prevent the carnage. He has always denied wrongdoing and has not apologised for the riots.

In 2013, a Supreme Court panel also said that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him. But critics have continued to blame him for the riots happening on his watch.

Over the years, the courts have convicted dozens of people for involvement in the riots, but some high-profile accused got bail or were exonerated by higher courts.

This included Maya Kodnani, an ex-minister and aide to Mr Modi, whom a trial court had called "the kingpin of the riots".

And now the men who wronged Bilkis Bano have also been set free.

I met Bilkis Bano in May 2017 at a safe house in Delhi, just days after the Bombay High Court had confirmed the life sentences of the 11 convicted in her case.

Fighting back tears, she recounted the horrors of the attack.

For three days in 2002, Hindu mobs went on a murderous rampage in Gujarat

The morning after the train fire, Bilkis Bano - then 19 and pregnant with her second child - was visiting her parents in a village called Randhikpur near Godhra with her three-year-old daughter.

"I was in the kitchen making lunch, when my aunt and her children came running. They said their homes were being set on fire and we had to leave immediately," she told me. "We left with just the clothes we were wearing, we didn't even have the time to put on our slippers."

Bilkis Bano was in a group of 17 Muslims that included her daughter, her mother, a pregnant cousin, her younger siblings, nieces and nephews, and two adult men.

Over the next few days, they travelled from village to village, seeking shelter in mosques or subsisting on the kindness of Hindu neighbours.

India Supreme Court rejects riots plea against Modi

Life sentences over 2002 India massacre

On the morning of 3 March, as they set out to go to a nearby village where they believed they would be safer, a group of men stopped them.

"They attacked us with swords and sticks. One of them snatched my daughter from my lap and threw her on the ground, bashing her head into a rock."

Her attackers were her neighbours in the village, men she had seen almost daily while growing up. They tore off her clothes and several of them raped her, ignoring her pleas for mercy.

Her cousin, who had delivered a baby two days earlier while they were on the run, was raped and murdered and her newborn was killed.

Bilkis Bano survived because she lost consciousness and her attackers left, believing she was dead. Two boys - seven and four - were the only other survivors of the massacre.

Mr Modi was chief minister of Gujarat state when the riots took place

Bilkis Bano's fight for justice was long and nightmarish. It has been well documented that some police and state officials tried to intimidate her, evidence was destroyed and the dead were buried without post-mortems. The doctors who examined her said she hadn't been raped, and she received death threats.

The first arrests in the case were made only in 2004 after India's Supreme Court handed over the case to federal investigators. The top court also agreed that courts in Gujarat could not deliver her justice and transferred her case to Mumbai.

Her fight for justice was also disruptive for her family - they've had to move home nearly a dozen times.

"We still can't go home because we're afraid. Police and the state administration have always helped our attackers. When we are in Gujarat, we still cover our faces, we never give out our address," her husband had told me.

Gujarat's leader 'allowed' riots

India riots whistleblower gets life in jail

During trial, there were calls for the death penalty for Bilkis Bano's attackers, including from herself.

But after the high court in Mumbai sentenced them to life, she told me she was "not interested in revenge" and "just want them to understand what they've done".

"I hope they will one day realise the enormity of their crime, how they killed small children and raped women."

But, she added, she wanted them "to spend their entire lives in jail".

On Tuesday, Mr Rasool told the Indian Express newspaper that his wife was "distressed and melancholic".

"The battle we fought for so many years has been wrapped up in one moment," he said.

"We have not even had the time to process this news and we know that the convicts have already reached their homes."

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HINDUISM IS FASCISM 

Unification Church followers decry 'biased' Japanese media




Unification Church followers hold signs during a rally in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022, protesting negative Japanese media coverage of their religion after the suspect in the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe blamed the church for his family’s troubles. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

KIM TONG-HYUNG
Thu, August 18, 2022 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Thousands of Unification Church followers rallied in South Korea on Thursday protesting negative Japanese media coverage of their religion after the suspect in the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe blamed the church for his family’s troubles.

The protesters, mostly Japanese followers who settled in South Korea after marrying Korean spouses, insisted the Japanese reports were being driven by anti-Unification Church pundits, lawyers and Protestant pastors who “groundlessly” blame their church for Abe’s death.

They said that such media reports and commentary have unsettled the church's Japanese followers, who already face social persecution and fears of being pressured by family members to recant their faith.

There have been cases where Japanese Unification Church followers were kidnapped or confined by relatives attempting to deprogram them from their religion. An extreme case involved a man named Toru Goto, who was confined in a Tokyo apartment for more than 12 years until 2008 as family members tried to force him to renounce his faith.

Protesters at the Seoul rally chanted slogans denouncing the situation in Japan as religious repression and waved signs written both in Korean and Japanese that read “Stop the assault on human rights” and “Never forgive the business of kidnapping and confinement.”

“Right now, all the believers the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification in Japan are being exposed to outdated witch hunting driven by biased and distorted media reports,” a tearful Yamada Taeko said on a stage, using the church’s formal name.

“We call for all media outlets to immediately take a leading role in ensuring that freedom of religion is properly protected in my beloved homeland Japan,” she said.

The Unification Church says there are about 10,000 Japanese-born followers currently living in South Korea after marrying Korean spouses. It had expected Thursday's protest to draw about 4,000 people.

The church’s following in Japan and its deep ties with the country’s conservative politicians became a subject of intense media coverage since Abe’s assassination on July 8.

The suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, reportedly targeted the former prime minister over his alleged ties with the Unification Church, which the man hated because he believed his mother’s massive donations to the church ruined his family.

Abe, in a video message to the church-affiliated Universal Peace Foundation in September 2021, praised its work toward peace on the Korean Peninsula and its focus on family values. Some experts say Abe’s video appearance may have motivated his assailant.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reshuffled his Cabinet last week in an apparent bid to distance his administration from the Unification Church over its ties to Abe and senior ruling party members. Seven ministers were removed, including Abe’s younger brother, former Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, who admitted that church followers were volunteers in past election campaigns.

The South Korean church, known for its mass weddings and its late founder who called himself a messiah, built close ties with many Japanese conservative lawmakers. They include members of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed Japan almost uninterrupted since its inception in 1955.

The church was founded in Seoul in 1954 by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, whose staunch anti-communism gained strong backing from Japanese rightwing politicians, including Abe’s grandfather Nobusuke Kishi, who also was a prime minister.

The church’s fundraising was especially aggressive in Japan, according to its critics, because Moon taught followers there that they needed to give more money to atone for sins committed by their ancestors who colonized the Korean Peninsula, which was controlled by Tokyo from 1910 to 1945.

Brazil’s monarchy is gone but not forgotten

















Thu, August 18, 2022 

2H207D1 Dom Pedro I of Brazil (Dom Pedro IV of Portugal - 1798-1834) by John Simpson, oil on canvas, 1834. Pedro I was the founder and first ruler of the Empire of Brazil.

When celebrating milestone anniversaries, Brazil has an odd habit. In 1921, ahead of its centenary, it brought home the corpse of its last emperor, Pedro II. At 150 years it summoned the body of his father, Pedro I: for five months the military regime of the day lugged his coffin around the country in a cortege. Given that independent Brazil had just two monarchs, you might assume that no remains remain to be flown in for the country’s bicentenary on September 7th. Not so. On August 22nd Brazil will receive from Portugal, with full military honours, a glass jar filled with formaldehyde. Floating inside is a gory grey tentacular blob: Pedro I’s heart.

With two months left in a bitter presidential election campaign haunted by fears of unrest, the royal organ may escape widespread notice. For decades the monarchy, ousted by the army in 1889, has been simply an old relic. But although Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing president, is above all else smitten with the armed forces, he has grown close to those who would like to reinstate royal rule. Footsoldiers for this obscure movement have found new vigour in the slipstream of the president’s modern populism, entering the parliament and cabinet. Upon its arrival, the heart may further inflame monarchist passions.

Obtaining it took months of talks. It will spend just 20 days in Brazil before returning to Portugal, which was reluctant to part with it. But the sharing is apt, for Pedro I (pictured) was a royal with two homes. In 1807 his father transferred the royal court from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro as Napoleon’s army advanced. In 1822, after one Portuguese attempt too many to subdue the restless colony, it was he, at 23 years of age, who unsheathed his sword and uttered: “Independence or death!” After delivering Brazil its independence, he returned to Portugal and left his heart to the city of Porto in his will.

For Luiz Philippe, a royal descendant who is a congressman and an ally of Mr Bolsonaro, the heart’s display will shine a light on what he sees as an impressive record. The monarchy, the only one to reign in independent Latin America for any length of time, kept Brazil intact while Spanish colonies in the hemisphere splintered upon independence.

Moreover, campaigners contend, republican life since 1889 has been replete with coups, corruption and chaos. Suely Silveira says she became a monarchist when she “woke up and started to study history”. Republican Brazil has stalled, she says, while many parliamentary monarchies abroad have grown enviably rich. Of the nine presidents since the end of military rule, one died before taking office, two were impeached and five have faced investigation for graft. Monarchists wonder if the country might be sturdier with the calming influence of a king.

But those who believe the resurrection of the past is the answer to what ails Brazil are “reclaiming a past that never existed”, says Jurandir Malerba of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. A return to the ways of the 19th century sounds less enthralling to the millions of Brazilians who are indigenous or poor. In a referendum in 1993 voters were asked whether Brazil should be a republic or a monarchy. The republic won the day by 87% to 13%. Current polls show a similar landslide.

Militarists and monarchists, once opponents, get along better these days. In 2018 Mr Bolsonaro considered picking Mr Phillipe as his vice-president. Upon the death on July 15th of Luiz of Orléans-Braganza, the head of the defunct royal house, the president declared a day of official mourning.

The current would-be emperor is 81 and childless. But many monarchists think the third in line, Rafael Bragança, a 36-year-old consultant living in west London, is royal material. In Britain, Mr Bragança explains between sips of a double macchiato, he can admire a good constitutional monarchy in action, one that brings continuity and unity to a stormy political environment. Would he like to do the same at home? “I don’t want to impose anything,” he says, without skipping a beat. “There would need to be a plebiscite. But if it is needed, I’m there.”

© 2022 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.

From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2022/08/18/brazils-monarchy-is-gone-but-not-forgotten