TURKIYE

Labor and Freedom Alliance votes to enter the election as a coalition

The Labor and Freedom Alliance decided to enter the election with the same name. "We will share our common stance on the presidential election as soon as possible," the Alliance said.

ANF
ANKARA
Friday, 17 Mar 2023, 11:59

The Labor and Freedom Alliance published its final declaration after a meeting on Thursday.

The statement said: "The components of the Labor and Freedom Alliance are the Labor Movement Party (EHP), the Labor Party (EMEP), the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), the Socialist Assemblies Federation (SMF), the Workers' Party of Turkey (TIP) and the Social Freedom Party (TOP). As co-chairs, presidents and spokespersons, we met in Ankara to discuss the topics on the agenda, including earthquake and flood disasters, deepening crises, presidential and parliamentary elections.

The government's anti-people policies based on corruption and plunder threaten the present and future of society by causing crises. The destruction, loss of life and property in the Maraş Pazarcık-centered earthquakes of 6 February and the floods in the Urfa and Adıyaman on 15 March were the most obvious and tragic indicators of these policies. We totally reject the evaluation of the disaster as a "natural disaster or destiny plan". As the Labor and Freedom Alliance, we are committed to changing this government that is hostile to the people and nature and the order that paved the way for disasters, to hold those responsible accountable and to build a new life worthy of human dignity.”

The statement continued: “We are on the eve of an election that will change Turkey. With the awareness of our historical and political responsibility that will turn the expectations of society into hope and build a democratic and free future, we say that:

-A will has emerged to expand the process that we started as a struggle alliance into an electoral alliance. We have therefore decided to enter the election as the Labor and Freedom Alliance. Technical work will be based on the ways and methods that will protect and develop the gains of all the powers that are components of the alliance, especially the HDP.

-We had a wide-ranging discussion about the presidential election. After the earthquake, we decided to re-evaluate the presidential candidate selection process. We have decided to share our common stance, which emerged as a result of the discussion we had on Thursday, with the public at a press conference to be held in a very near future.

- In an atmosphere where political bans and lawsuits, violence and oppression continue to increase, we continue our joint efforts with all segments of society to guarantee a safe election process and ballot box security.

We will fill the squares on Newroz and 1 May with the strength we derive from the struggle of the women who turned the streets purple on 8 March. Together with all the forces of democracy, we will win. We will end the one-man regime.”

Socialist Alliance of Australia expresses solidarity with the HDP

The Socialist Alliance of Australia joined the global calls for an end to the repression of the HDP.

ANF
NEWS DESK
Thursday, 16 Mar 2023, 09:54

The Erdoğan government in Turkey has used a corrupted judiciary to carry out a sustained campaign of persecution against the HDP over many years.

The Socialist Alliance of Australia joined the global calls for an end to the repression of the HDP.

In a previous statement, the Socialist Alliance said: "The anti-democratic and hate-mongering regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is determined to suppress the HDP and all other expressions of popular democracy in Turkey and has used a corrupted judiciary to carry out a sustained campaign of repression against the HDP and its allies over many years.

The HDP's leaders, parliamentarians, mayors and other local government representatives have been removed from office and imprisoned after they were democratically elected.

Even more rank and file activists of the HDP have been brutally assaulted and imprisoned.

The Erdoğan regime seeks to criminalise the HDP for standing up for peace, democracy and justice – and particularly for speaking up for the rights of the Kurdish people."

Solidarity with Kurdistan event in Slovenia

In Maribor, the second biggest city in Slovenia, a public event took place, talking about the achievement of the Kurdistan Freedom Movement.

ANF
MARIBOR
Friday, 17 Mar 2023

In Maribor, the second biggest city in Slovenia, a public event took place to talk about the achievement of the Kurdistan Freedom Movement.

It was not the first time internationalists came to talk about the achievements of the revolution in this city of former Yugoslavia.

The event was held in the framework of Defend Kurdistan's call for action days to protest the use of chemical weapons by the Turkish State in Kurdistan. As the event took place on the anniversary of the massacre of Halabja in South Kurdistan in 1988 it was also intended to be a commemoration of the victims of chemical warfare in Kurdistan.

The main part of the presentation was about the liberation paradigm of Abdullah Öcalan and the struggle of the Kurdish people. As was highlighted during the event, the continuous attacks by Turkey, Iran and its international collaborators are mainly aiming at destroying the hope that the revolution, based on the paradigm of Democratic Modernity in Kurdistan and beyond, has given to anti-system forces all over the world.

Last Tuesday a similar event took place in the Mediterranean city Koper. The solidarity group Rojava kliče! that organised the event, underlined the difficult situation in Kurdistan in the wake of continuous attacks by the Turkish and Iranian states against the people's will for freedom and the devastating earthquake. And also distributed books with Öcalan's thoughts and collected donations for Heyva Sor a Kurdistan.

 

Pacific Island Nations Commit To A Fossil Free Pacific And A Path To 100% Renewables

Friday, 17 March 2023
Press Release: 350.org

Port Vila, Vanuatu – Today, Pacific Island governments committed to create a “Fossil Fuel Free Pacific” and agreed on new Pacific-tailored development pathways based on 100% renewable energy.

Vanuatu and Tuvalu hosted the 2nd Pacific Ministerial Dialogue on Pathways for the Global Just Transition from Fossil Fuels in Port-Vila, Vanuatu, during a state of emergency after the country was hit by two severe cyclones and an earthquake in 48 hours.

Six Pacific countries – Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Tonga, Fiji, Niue, and the Solomon Islands – agreed on the “Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific” which cements the region’s leadership in the global phase out of fossil fuels, and exemplifies Pacific innovation in making the just transition to accessible renewable energy.

Joseph Sikulu, 350.org Pacific Managing Director says,

“We welcome the Pacific leaders’ decision to commit to a Fossil Free Pacific and dramatically scale up the deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency. There is no pathway to 1.5 degrees that doesn’t dramatically power down fossil fuels and power up just, equitable and renewable energy. Our people need global leaders to now follow the leadership and innovation of Pacific representatives at the Pacific Ministerial Dialogue in dramatically phasing out fossil fuels. But our people also need energy to power their homes, their fishing boats and their schools, which is where we are ready to work with governments in their commitment to progress the development and implementation of fossil free development pathways at the grassroots level.”

The Pacific region has consistently led the world in climate ambition and the political will to transition away from climate-destroying fossil fuels. This includes Vanuatu’s push for an advisory opinion on climate change from the International Court of Justice, the development of a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and Tuvalu’s recent joining of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance as a core member. All of this is despite almost no historical responsibility for the climate crisis and a constant battle on the frontlines of increasingly devastating climate impacts.

Brianna Fruean, Samoan Pacific Climate Warrior says,

"International climate negotiations are failing us. This dialogue of Pacific Ministers is stepping outside of the box and acknowledging that we must try new ways to save ourselves – and that is going to require a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. While the guilty continue to reap profit off the expansion of fossil fuels behind our backs, the meeting is bringing renewed energy to Pacific leadership that will not just echo across our islands but drive action with our allies globally.”

But in order to make the transition swiftly and in a just and equitable manner, the Port Vila Call for a Just Transition also calls for expanded public and private finance for the just transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy at the scale required, with innovative, simplified mechanisms and reforms of existing financial institutions.

Cansin Leylim, 350.org Associate Director of Global Campaigns says:

"Pacific Island nations are once again showing immense leadership in the fight against the climate crisis, a crisis they had no part in creating, yet are suffering the worst impacts. Pacific leaders have told us time and again – in order to stay below 1.5 degrees, the historically responsible countries need to immediately commit to a fossil fuel free future without loopholes. This means ensuring adequate and grant-based climate finance is swiftly mobilised to both adapt to the crisis and limit the heating to survival limits, ensuring energy independence and resource resilience with renewable energy."

© Scoop Media

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Lebanon central bank head attends corruption hearing - sources

A view shows the exterior of Lebanon's Central Bank building in Beirut, Lebanon March 21, 2022. 

REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo

Central bank head's brother also investigated

Laila Bassam and Timour Azhari, Reuters News

March 16, 2023LEBANON

Lebanon's central bank governor Riad Salameh attended a court hearing in Beirut on Thursday which was also witnessed by European investigators looking into whether he embezzled vast sums of dollars in public funds, two judicial sources said.

The 72-year-old Salameh, whose 30-year tenure at the bank is to end this summer, had missed a session on Wednesday after his lawyer objected to the French and German officials' presence.

But the presiding judge dismissed that.

Salameh is being investigated alongside his brother in Lebanon and at least five European countries over accusations of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars.

He denies wrongdoing and says the accusations are part of an attempt to scapegoat him for Lebanon's financial meltdown.

His brother Raja, who also denies wrongdoing, is meant to appear in front of a Lebanese judge on Friday, also with European investigators present.

Lebanon is also trying to freeze the pair's assets.

Last year, prosecutors in Germany said Salameh was a suspect in a case that led to the freezing of some 120 million euros($132 million) of Lebanese assets abroad.

Salameh's intention to leave the bank at the end of his sixth term in July would mark a milestone in a national financial crisis resulting from decades of profligate spending, corruption and unsustainable policies by Lebanon's leaders.

Salameh's support among Lebanon's elite is starting to erode. (Reporting by Laila Al Bassam and Timour Azhari; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

CAPITALI$M IS GLOBALISM

TCS, Infosys have highest exposure to US regional banks: J P Morgan

Top Indian information technology firms Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys have the highest exposure to regional banks in the US that are gripped by a financial turmoil, analysts at JP Morgan said.

By: Reuters
Updated: March 17, 2023 

Regional banks in the US account for 2-3% of their revenue, JP Morgan said, adding that the exposure to the recently collapsed Silicon Valley Bank could be 10-20 basis points for TCS, Infosys and LTIMindtree. (File image)

Top Indian information technology firms Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys have the highest exposure to regional banks in the United States that are gripped by a financial turmoil, analysts at J.P.Morgan said on Friday.

Regional banks in the United States account for 2-3% of their revenue, J.P. Morgan said in a note, adding that the exposure to the recently collapsed Silicon Valley Bank could be 10-20 basis points for TCS, Infosys and smaller rival LTIMindtree, with the Tata group company in the lead.

All three companies might need to set aside provisions in the fourth quarter due to their exposure to SVB, J.P. Morgan said in a note.

“The collapse of SVB, Signature Bank and concerns of liquidity across U.S. and the European Union can further soften tech spends by banks over the short term in a year with slowing growth in bank tech budgets,” J.P. Morgan, which has an “underweight” rating on the sector, said.

India’s IT industry is already facing a challenging macroeconomic environment in its key markets of Europe and the United States, where technology spending is contracting amid delays in decision-making on long-term deals as the pandemic-led surge in demand faded.

The banking crisis could delay deal ramp-ups, impacting revenue conversions over the next two quarters, and push back new order closures that could hurt revenue over the next four quarters, J.P. Morgan said.

Indian IT firms draw the bulk of their revenue from the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector.

Within BFSI, their exposure to the U.S. banks is on average 62% and Europe 23%, J.P. Morgan said.

LTIMindtree this week said it had negligible exposure to U.S. regional banks, including SVB.

TCS chief Rajesh Gopinathan quits; K Krithivasan to take over

 

Delhi Capitals partners with Satya Nadella to buy stake in Seattle franchise

The Capitals already owns teams in men’s T20 leagues in South Africa and the United Arab Emirates as well as in the Women’s Premier League in India

• Chandrashekar Bhat
 
• 17 March, 2023

Satya Nadella (Photo: Getty Images)

Delhi capitals have bought a stake in the Seattle franchise of a new Twenty20 tournament in the United States as Indian Premier League (IPL) teams continue to expand their global footprint.

Delhi Capitals co-owner GMR Group has partnered with a group of investors that includes Microsoft Corp’s India-born CEO Satya Nadella to run Seattle Orcas in Major League Cricket (MLC), which begins in July.

The Capitals already owns teams in men’s T20 leagues in South Africa and the United Arab Emirates as well as in the Women’s Premier League in India.

“We see America as the new frontier for cricket’s growth globally, and the Pacific Northwest provides an incredible opportunity for us to bring the resources of GMR Sports to the region …” Kiran Kumar Grandhi, Managing Director and CEO of GMR Group, said in a statement on Thursday (16).

Delhi’s IPL rivals Kolkata Knight Riders, one of the early investors in MLC, own the Los Angeles franchise and are also building a 10,000-capacity stadium in southern California.

Mumbai Indians have bought the MLC’s New York franchise while Chennai Super Kings have teamed up with a local investor to acquire the Texas franchise, ESPNcricinfo website reported.

The inaugural edition of the six-team MLC tournament will be played between July 13-30 in Dallas.

(Reuters)

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Mozambicans march to honor protest rapper after his death

Mozambicans are planning marches across the country to honor Azagaia, a popular protest rapper and fierce government critic, who died last week

Tom Gould


Mozambique Protest Rapper
(Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Mozambicans are planning marches across the country to honor Azagaia, a popular protest rapper and fierce government critic, who died last week.

Memorial marches are planned in every major city on Saturday for the musician who died after an epileptic seizure at the age of 38.

The nationwide demonstrations follow Azagaia’s funeral procession on Wednesday, in which thousands marched through the streets of Maputo, the capital, chanting protest slogans such as “resistance” and “power to the people.”

Riot police used tear gas to disperse the crowd as it tried to carry Azagaia’s coffin past Ponta Vermelha, the official residence of the president.

Such mass demonstrations critical of President Filipe Nyusi's government are rare in Mozambique.

“Azagaia was a hero of the people. More of a hero than the president, that is why we are taking him to the president’s house,” said Walter, a demonstrator who refused to give his last name for his safety. Speaking before the procession was dispersed, he said: “Nothing like this (march) has ever happened before.”

Azagaia, whose real name was Edson da Luz, was known for openly condemning government corruption in his music and garnered a large following, particularly among young people.

Commemorative marches are planned on Saturday in all of Mozambique’s 11 provinces, with tens of thousands expected to attend. However, police have refused to authorize a demonstration in the northern province of Cabo Delgado where the government has been fighting an Islamic extremist insurgency since 2017.

Authorities have told organizers in Cabo Delgado's cities of Montepuez and Pemba that marches may be allowed on another day when public emotions have calmed down.

Mozambique has sometimes seen protests over the prices of fuel and bread but such mass demonstrations celebrating opposition activists are unusual.

The day after Azagaia died, a vigil was held in Maputo where hundreds came to hear tributes, many of which explicitly criticised the ruling party Frelimo.

”(Azagaia) never sided with any political party because he was the voice of the people,” Tirso Sitoe, an organiser of the vigil, told The Associated Press. “He showed us that things have not changed since independence (in 1975). The only thing that has changed is the colour of (the rulers’) skin.”

Azagaia achieved a passionate following, and notoriety, with songs such as “Povo no Poder” ("Power to the People") which was released in 2008 during protests over rising fuel prices. The rapper accused politicians of stealing from ordinary people to fund their lives of luxury. It has since become an anthem of opposition to the government. Other songs commented on issues such as police brutality and drug trafficking.

In recognition of his popularity, Mozambican officials paid tribute to Azagaia.

“Mozambican music and culture are in mourning,” Mozambique’s minister of culture, Eldevina Materula, said.

Nonetheless, while he was alive Azagaia was often treated with hostility by the government. His songs were generally censored on state media and the Attorney General’s Office accused him of inciting violence following the release of “Povo no Poder.”

Iran has agreed to halt weapons shipment to Houthis, says WSJ

Anwar Iqbal Published March 17, 2023 

In this July 8, 2020 photo, Houthi fighters man a machine gun mounted on a military truck as they parade during a gathering of Houthi loyalists on the outskirts of Sanaa, Yemen. — Reuters/File

WASHINGTON: Iran has agreed to halt covert weapons shipments to its Houthi allies in Yemen as part of a China-brokered deal to re-establish diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

This “move could inject new momentum into efforts to end one of the region’s longest-running civil wars”, said the newspaper while commenting on the development.

For years, Saudi Arabia and Iran have backed opposing sides in the Yemen conflict, fueling a war that has had disastrous humanitarian consequences and spilled beyond the country’s borders.

US and Saudi officials, who spoke to WSJ, said if Tehran stopped arming the Houthis, it “could put pressure on the militant group to reach a deal to end the conflict”.

A spokesman for the Iranian delegation to the United Nations declined to comment when WSJ asked whether Tehran would suspend arms shipments. Tehran publicly denies that it supplies the Houthis with weapons.

Last week, Saudi Arabia and Iran signed a China-backed agreement to re-establish diplomatic ties seven years after they were severed. This prompted speculations that Iran would now press the Houthis to end attacks on Saudi Arabia.

One Saudi official told WSJ that the kingdom expects Iran to respect a UN arms embargo meant to prevent weapons from reaching the Houthis. “A cutoff of weapons supplies could make it harder for the militants to strike the kingdom and seize more ground in Yemen,” WSJ commented.

Hans Grundberg, the special UN envoy for Yemen, flew to Tehran earlier this week to discuss Iran’s role in ending the war, and then on to Riyadh. Tim Lenderking, the special US envoy for Yemen, met Saudi officials in Riyadh on Wednesday to make another attempt to reinvigorate stalled peace talks.

The top priority is to extend a cease-fire that has held in Yemen for nearly a year. The formal truce expired in October, but the rival factions have continued to largely honour the cease-fire. Diplomats want a new deal on extending the cease-fire before the start of Ramadan next week.

More than 150,000 people have died as a direct result of the war. Airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition killed thousands of Yemeni civilians, fueling calls for the US and its allies to cut off military support to Riyadh.

In the past three months, the US military and its allies have claimed seizing four ships off the Yemen coast carrying more than 5,000 assault rifles, 1.6 million rounds of ammunition, dozens of antitank missiles, and fertilizer, which can be used to make explosives.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2023

After the Saudi-Iran deal, will Tehran force the Houthis to peace talks?

It is clear that the Houthis have a relationship with the Islamic Republic and that the Saudi-Iran deal could change the course of the conflict in Yemen, expert says.

By MOHAMMED SAYERS/THE MEDIA LINE
Published: MARCH 17, 2023 

Newly recruited Houthi soldiers march during the funeral of Houthi fighters killed during recent fighting against government forces, in Sanaa, Yemen, December 6, 2021.
(photo credit: REUTERS/KHALED ABDULLAH)


UN envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg arrived in the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Sunday as part of his efforts to put an end to Yemen’s nearly decade-old civil war. Grundberg met with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian for consultations over the situation in Yemen, including the latest prospects for peace, a possible prisoner exchange and the country’s humanitarian crisis. During the meeting, Amir-Abdollahian said the Islamic Republic backs any negotiations which would help establish peace and stability in Yemen.

The visit to Tehran came just days after Saudi Arabia and Iran signed an agreement ending the years-long diplomatic rift between the two countries.

The Iranian mission to the United Nations also reaffirmed that Amir-Abdollahian promised UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to host talks that would put an end to the crisis in Yemen

Iran's links to Yemen's Houthis

Many analysts and observers see a strong relationship between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Ansar Allah movement, the armed wing of the de facto authority in Yemen (DFA) - which rules the north of the country, known collectively as the Houthis.

This relationship is seen in speeches by Houthi officials, including the leader of the movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. It is also evidenced by attempts to smuggle weapons from Iran into Yemen, as well as the presence of Iranian military experts in Yemen.

Houthi police troopers sit atop an armored personnel carrier securing a rally held to mark the Ghadeer day, in Sana'a, Yemen on July 17, 2022 

(credit: REUTERS/KHALED ABDULLAH)

Many observers believe that the Saudi-Iran agreement will have an effect on the decisions and actions of the DFA, and that it will compel the Houthis to agree to enter into peace negotiations.

Wedad al-Qadi, a lecturer at Sanaa University who specializes in political sociology, told the Media Line that it is clear that the Houthis have a relationship with Iran and that the Saudi-Iran deal could change the course of the conflict in Yemen.

“The Houthis implicitly admitted the existence of a relationship with Iran, just like the Lebanese Hezbollah group did.”Wedad al-Qadi

“The Houthis implicitly admitted the existence of a relationship with Iran, just like the Lebanese Hezbollah group did,” she said.

Qadi says that any change in Iran’s policy in the region will be implemented by its proxies, including Ansar Allah, Hezbollah and the Popular Mobilization Forces.

“The same applies to the members of the internationally recognized government (of Yemen) – their polices will match those of Saudi Arabia’s new policies toward the Houthis; if the conflict between them is over, then so will the conflict between their proxies,” she concluded.

There also appears to be a connection between the changes in Yemen’s civil war and the Saudi-Iran deal.

First, there was the truce between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, followed by the Oman-sponsored talks between the internationally recognized government of Yemen (IRG) and the Houthis. After that, the Saudi-Iran agreement became public and, around the same time, the ongoing negotiations in Geneva between the Houthis and the IRG began to resolve some thorny issues including the issue of prisoners of war on both sides.

Houthi officials have denied the existence of any relationship or influence of the Saudi-Iran deal on the Houthi’s decision to participate in the talks. “That decision depends on sovereign conditions stipulated by Ansar Allah,” according to Sharaf al-Mahdi, a DFA supervisor in the Council of Ministers in Sanaa.

Mahdi told The Media Line that “the recent negotiations between the Ansar Allah group and the IRG aims mainly at concluding the prisoners issue.” He added that “any future talks regarding political settlement is conditioned on the Gulf state’s exit from Yemen,” referring to Saudi Arabia, which leads a coalition of Arab countries in support of the internationally recognized government of Yemen.

“This is too far-fetched; we are an independent state with full sovereignty. The Saudi-Iran deal has no impact on Ansar Allah’s vision for Yemen’s crisis. The Yemeni issue is not Iran’s issue.”Sharaf al-Mahdi

When confronted with the idea that the war in Yemen is tied to the Saudi-Iran deal, Mahdi vehemently rejected the premise. “This is too far-fetched; we are an independent state with full sovereignty. The Saudi-Iran deal has no impact on Ansar Allah’s vision for Yemen’s crisis. The Yemeni issue is not Iran’s issue,” Mahdi said.

Official Houthi spokesperson Mohamed Abdel Salam tweeted praise for the Saudi-Iran normalization, saying that it is time for the resumption of normal relationships in the region and the Iranian “scarecrow” used to provoke the war on Yemen is no longer valid.

The meetings between the IRG and the Houthis are still in progress in Geneva within the framework of negotiations aimed at concluding an agreement on an exchange of prisoners of war, setting up a mechanism for paying public sector employees’ salaries, and resolving economic issues before entering into a comprehensive political settlement.

Yemenis hope that this round of negotiations will bring peace to the war-torn country which has been described by the UN as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

WE'RE A REPUBLIC NOT A DEMOCRACY

The Federalist Society Isn’t Quite Sure About Democracy Anymore

After recent Supreme Court wins, the society’s youth arm debates the next stage for the conservative legal movement.


Despite accusations from liberals that the Federalist Society is merely the eggheaded puppet of the Republican Party, many of the society’s members genuinely view themselves as independent-minded intellectuals. | POLITICO illustration/Photos by iStock

LONG READ

By IAN WARD
03/17/2023
Ian Ward is a contributing writer for POLITICO Magazine.

AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas sun was just beginning to rise over central Austin as groups of neatly-dressed law students arrived at the AT&T Hotel and Conference Center, a beige monolith plopped on the southwestern corner of the University of Texas’s sprawling campus. Once inside the lobby, the students ascended two flights of stairs, crossed a courtyard, descended two more flights of stairs and rode two escalators down to a subterranean ballroom, where members of one of the most maligned organizations in American politics were gathering for breakfast.

It was the start of the second day of the Federalist Society’s National Student Symposium — an annual gathering of conservative and libertarian law students hosted by the conservative legal behemoth  — and as I sidled up to one group of attendees, I got the sense that they were caught off guard to find a reporter in their midst.

“People think we’re some sort of shadowy cabal, but all we really do is invite speakers to campus and then go to Chipotle for tacos,” one of the attendees, a first-year law student from Georgetown University, assured me as we drank coffee and picked at mini croissants. “Or least, that’s all I’ve seen of FedSoc so far.”

And to be fair, the symposium — which is part academic conference, part high-powered networking event, and part extended cocktail party — was hardly shrouded in mystery. At a reception the night before, gaggles of fresh-faced law students had sipped frozen margaritas and piled their plates with barbecue from a nearby buffet. Many of the students accessorized their suits and cocktail dresses with cowboy boots and Stetsons. Peals of laughter rippled around the room. It was the type of event where you’d expect everyone to slink back to the hotel afterward to get drunk and hook up, except that most of the students I talked to were either married or engaged. A few of the young attendees had brought their infant children along with them.

But the event, which took place the first weekend in March, wasn’t merely a multi-day schmooze-and-booze fest, either. Built around a series of panel discussions with prominent legal scholars, lawyers, and federal judges, the annual gathering offers up-and-coming conservative lawyers a prized opportunity to rub elbows with the leading lights of the conservative legal movement — and, as an added benefit, to meet face-to-face with potential future employers. This year’s symposium wasn’t lacking in political star power, either, with Texas’ Republican Gov. Greg Abbott slated to give a keynote address to cap off the programming on Saturday evening.

“The people I met at student conferences a decade ago are now sitting federal judges,” said Josh Blackman, a professor at the Southern Texas College of Law and a fixture of the Federalist Society speaking circuit. “The people you meet here and the networks you build up over years — they’re very, very important.”  

“The people I met at student conferences a decade ago are now sitting federal judges.”

Josh Blackman, professor, Southern Texas College of Law

This year’s gathering was even more important than most. As the first student symposium since the Supreme Court handed conservatives a historic package of victories on gun rights, religious freedom, environmental deregulation, and, of course, abortion, the weekend offered a window into the shifting priorities and preoccupations of the youngest and most elite members of the conservative legal movement, at a time when the future of the movement as a whole is quietly unsettled. 

The first major clue about those preoccupations came from the symposium’s theme, which the organizers had designated as “Law and Democracy.” As the programming unfolded over the next day and a half, it became alarmingly clear that, even among the buttoned-up young members of the Federalist Society — an organization not known for its political transgressiveness — the relationship between those two principles is far from settled. From radical new theories about election law to outlandish-seeming calls for a “national divorce” the symposium-goers were grappling with ideas that raised fundamental questions about American democracy — what it means, what it entails, and what, if anything, the conservative legal movement has to say about its apparent decline.

‘That Ship Has Sailed’

As the symposium kicked off in Austin, another group of conservatives was gathering halfway across the country in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. where the annual Conservative Political Action Conference was getting underway. The reports coming out of CPAC were worrisome for establishment conservatives: Before a visibly thinned-out audience, the MAGA faithful dutifully leaned heavily into culture war tropes and parroting Donald Trump’s baseless claims about fraud in the 2020 election. 

In Austin, meanwhile, there were no red, white and blue sequined blazers — or at least none that I saw — and Donald Trump’s name went almost entirely unspoken, except for the occasional mention in hushed tones. 

“I don’t know where I’d be if Trump hadn’t won,” I overheard one Federalist Society staffer confide to a colleague as we milled around the foyer outside the main ballroom, apparently referring to the 2016 election. “Probably working some corporate job that I’d hate.” 

The symposium, however, mirrored CPAC’s ambivalent assessment of the future of American democracy — even if that ambivalence was expressed in slightly more elevated terms. 

To those who have followed the Federalist Society closely since its triumphs at the Supreme Court last year, the symposium’s focus on law and democracy may hardly seem incidental. Since its founding in 1982, the Federalist Society has championed “judicial restraint,” the notion that judges should limit their roles to interpreting the law as written, leaving the actual business of lawmaking to democratically elected legislatures. 


During the first weekend of March, 2023, the Federalist Society’s National Student Symposium gathered at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law for the first time since the Supreme Court handed conservatives a historic package of victories. | Ian Ward/POLITICO

That approach made sense for conservatives when they still saw the federal judiciary as a liberal force dragging the country to the left. But now that conservatives have secured a solid majority on the Supreme Court — and voters in several red states have soundly rejected hard-line positions on abortion — a spirited debate is underway within the Federalist Society about the wisdom of deferring to democratic majorities as a matter of principle.

“From our very beginning, there has been an aspect of judicial restraint, and there has been an aspect that it’s judges’ jobs to interpret the Constitution, that whatever it says, that’s what they should do — and those two can sometimes be in tension,” said Eugene Meyer, the president and CEO of the Federalist Society, as we spoke in a back hallway of the conference center. 

I had only convinced Meyer to talk with me after assuring him and his handler that I wasn’t trying to back him into answering specific questions about cases currently before the Court. At Meyer’s urging, the society goes to great lengths to emphasize that it does not take policy positions or weigh in on the merit of individual cases, preferring to present itself as a neutral “debate society” for right-leaning intellectuals. But Meyer — who tapped his foot nervously as we spoke — was willing to admit that the intellectual winds within the organization are shifting.

“I think it would be fair to say there’s been some movement over time more in the direction of interpreting the Constitution and less in the direction of pure judicial restraint.”

Eugene Meyer, president and CEO, Federalist Society

“I think it would be fair to say there’s been some movement over time more in the direction of interpreting the Constitution and less in the direction of pure judicial restraint,” he told me.

When I spoke with Blackman, the Southern Texas law professor, he noted that that tension was neatly captured in two of the headline-making decisions that went conservatives’ way in the last Supreme Court term. In the Dobbs ruling, the conservative majority returned the abortion question to state legislatures, limiting federal judges’ role in determining the extent of reproductive rights. Meanwhile, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen —  which struck down a New York law that set the requirements for individuals to receive a concealed carry permit for handguns — the Court trumped the decision of a state legislature in favor of conservatives’ preferred reading of the Second Amendment. 

But Blackman’s assessment of the direction of the intellectual current within the Federalist Society was even more candid than Meyer’s.

“The norm that judges be restrained and moderate — that ship has sailed,” he said. 

Inside the cavernous ballroom, panelists took turns delivering their remarks from a raised platform, flanked on one side by the American flag and by Texas’s Lone Star Flag on the other. The symposium is hosted by a different law school every year, but there was a tidy irony to the fact that this year’s gathering landed in Texas, which has in recent years seen an influx of conservative transplants seeking refuge from what they see as the insanity and insipient authoritarianism of Blue America.

“Democracy is what philosophers call an ‘essentially contested concept,’” said Daniel Lowenstein, a professor of law emeritus at UCLA and an expert in election law, during a panel on Friday evening. “Differences that seem on their surface to concern the meaning of the word ‘democracy’,” he added, are actually struggles to advance particular and controversial political ideas.”

What democracy does not mean, Lowenstein argued, was “plebiscitary democracy,” or simple rule by democratic majorities. Citing the Federalist Papers — the namesake of the Federalist Society — Lowenstein suggested that governance based on simple mathematical majorities would enable “tyrannical domination of the minority by the majority.” 

“The assumption that only plebiscitary forms [of government] are truly democratic is fallacious, and should be openly and directly contested by those supporting non-plebiscitary positions,” he added. 

Behind me, somebody whispered, “We’re a republic, not a democracy” — a tongue-in-cheek slogan that some conservatives have adopted as a way to slyly signal their approval of minority rule.

Later on in the same panel, Joel Alicea, a law professor at the Catholic University of America, diagnosed the apparent threats facing American democracy today — political violence, abuses of governmental power, and attempted election subversion, to name a few — as symptoms of a deeper malaise. 

“At this point in our society, we can’t even agree whether somebody is a man or a woman, which suggests such a deep level of moral disagreement — and even disagreement about basic notions of reality — that to say that society can form an overlapping consensus is hopelessly naive,” he said. Faced with such fundamental disagreements, Alicea said that citizens have to choose between two approaches: coercion, suppressing disagreements by means of force and intimidation, or conversion, the slow and steady work of persuading people who disagree with you to come around to your point of view. 

Alicea advised the attendees to embrace conversion rather than coercion, but in the question-and-answer session after the panel, an audience member proposed a third option: a full-scale national divorce, of the sort recently proposed by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.


This year’s gathering landed in Texas, which has in recent years seen an influx of conservative transplants seeking refuge from what they see as the insanity and insipient authoritarianism of Blue America. | Ian Ward/POLITICO

On the dais, the panelists squirmed at the invocation of such pedestrian political ideas, and Alicea offered some high-level philosophical objections to the idea that America should fracture into independent ideological entities. But the question seemed to linger in the room: If the disagreements over democratic first principles are as serious as Alicea had suggested, then was the idea of a wholesale political rupture really so radical? 

The possibility of dramatic changes to America’s democratic order also hung over a panel on election law, where Richard Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at New York University, briefed the audience on Moore v. Harper, a case that is currently awaiting judgment from the Supreme Court. The case, which arose from a challenge to North Carolina’s redistricting plan, is widely viewed by legal scholars as a referendum on the controversial independent state legislature theory, which posits that state legislatures should be allowed to exert broad control over the execution of federal elections. 

From the stage, Pildes — who testified about the dangers of the theory before the House last year —  seemed confident that the justices were not poised to endorse the theory in its most radical form. But even as the several panelists acknowledged the disruptive nature of the theory, none of them seemed eager to acknowledge that the four members of the Court who have flirted with the idea — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — all maintain close ties to the Federalist Society. 

That omission hinted at a deeper dilemma facing the Federalist Society. Despite accusations from liberals that the society is merely the eggheaded puppet of the Republican Party, many of the society’s members genuinely view themselves as independent-minded intellectuals, committed to the principles of individual freedom, judicial restraint and the rule of law. For the past two decades, the society’s members have pointed to those principles to justify the conservative movement’s efforts to weaken democratic norms and institutions, without having to go so far as to explicitly argue that a minority of Americans should be allowed to impose their will on the whole country. 

But now, as the American right lurches toward a more explicitly anti-democratic position,  the society’s members are face to face with a troubling possibility: that most conservatives couldn’t care less about their high-minded principles, and, even worse, that many of their allies view their attachment to those principles as a quaint — and slightly embarrassing — relic of the bygone era when conservatives still had to be coy about what they actually believed. And whether or not those criticisms are true, there was a definite sense of cognitive dissonance at the conference, where many of the panelists appeared willing to endorse the logic of anti-democratic arguments but shied away from those arguments’ more radical conclusions.

The next morning at breakfast, I met a law student from the University of Tulsa named James Carroll — who was, like me, one of the few male attendees not wearing a suit and tie. He told me he had grown up in Arizona before moving to Tulsa for law school, where he had fallen in love with Oklahoma, married his long-time girlfriend, and set down roots. He had recently accepted a job at the Tulsa County District Attorney’s office, where he had worked as an intern in law school. 

As we got talking, he described a vision of democracy that I hadn’t heard much of from the panelists the day before — democracy as something immediate, something pragmatic, something that people interact with in their daily lives and not just in philosophy textbooks.

“On the national level, democracy’s just a construct, but on the local level, it’s not a construct at all,” he said. 

I asked him what a functioning local democracy meant to him.

“Keeping your community safe, keeping murderers off the street, making sure people who need mental health support can get connected with those services,” he answered. He said his favorite part of his internship in the D.A.’s office during law school had been helping people who were struggling with mental health problems, and that his work on that issue had been part of what led him to join the office after graduation.

“Democracy,” he said, “works best on a small scale, in your community.”  

‘Maybe We Need More Shitposters’

The Federalist Society was founded by law students, and advancing the careers of ambitious, right-leaning lawyers has remained a major element of its work. That work begins on law school campuses, where local chapters host speakers and events, and it extends all the way to Washington, where the Federalist Society has become the GOP’s go-to clearinghouse for major judicial appointments. Although much of the national media attention has focused on the organization’s role in supporting Republican Supreme Court nominations, its presence on law school campuses has also been a source of controversy, especially since the Dobbs decision. Just last week, a Federalist Society event at Stanford Law School made national headlines after protesters heckled U.S. Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee to the Fifth Circuit, causing him to cut his remarks short.

In recent years, however, the Federalist Society has come under fire not only from its traditional opponents on the left, but also from some erstwhile allies on the right. According to these conservative critics, the Federalist Society has excelled at training monkish young lawyers to fill the ranks of the federal judiciary, but it has been less successful at inspiring those same professionals to eschew prestigious clerkships and partner-track jobs in favor of manning the front lines of an all-out war on the American political establishment. 

Or as Theo Wold, a former Trump administration official who now works for Idaho’s attorney general, recently put it during an interview on the American Moment podcast, which is popular with young conservatives, “Maybe [conservatives] don’t need any more well-credential lawyers. Maybe we need more shitposters from Twitter.” 



In recent years, the Federalist Society has come under fire not only from its traditional opponents on the left, but also from some erstwhile allies on the right. | Ian Ward/POLITICO

At the student symposium, none of the panels focused explicitly on shitposting — one breakout session provided an introduction to the Federalist Society’s lawyers division, and another offered advice on “becoming an academic” — but there was a palpable sense that many young attendees were hungering for some juicer political red meat.

“I think the students wanted it to be fierier than it was,” Carroll said, reflecting on the first panel. 

That hunger is partly a function of the iconoclastic energies that Trump introduced into the American right, and partly a function of generational divides within the conservative legal movement itself.

“I think the older generations had been beaten so many times that they felt sort of defeated,” Blackman, who is in his thirties, told me. “They lost Roe, they lost Casey and they weren’t so eager to overrule those decisions, so it was largely the younger generation — who didn’t have those sort of battle scars — who were pushing hard for the court to overrule Dobbs.” 

The students at the conference did get a taste of face-to-face conflict on Saturday evening, when a group of about 30 law students from a liberal student group at UT showed up outside the conference center to protest Greg Abbott’s speech. As the protesters waved hand-drawn signs and chanted “Get that sexist out of Texas!”, a small group of conference attendees gathered inside the hotel lobby to take jeering selfies with the protesters through the glass double doors. 

“I mean, I do support the First Amendment,” I overheard one conference-goer say, clearly relishing the opportunity to own the libs. 

Back in the ballroom, Abbott leaned into the conservative culture war rhetoric, telling the audience that he was on “a recruiting mission” to enlist young conservative lawyers in the fight against “the social justice warriors and the anti-constitutionalists” who are seeking to subvert the rule of law and undermine America’s constitutional order. 

“Those who believe in the rule of law are outnumbered…but I believe we are still winning, because we are on the side of the righteousness,” Abbott thundered. It wasn’t entirely clear what he meant by “winning,” but the audience didn’t seem to mind. They offered up another round of thunderous applause. 

Abbott’s speech went on in more or less the same fashion for the next half-hour, bouncing between punchy anecdotes from his legal career and perfunctory exhortations to defend the country from tyrannical social justice warriors. The audience applauded and laughed through mouths of salad and dinner rolls, and the whole room leapt to its feet as Abbott’s remarks drew to a close.

As the ovation died down, I left the hall for the foyer, where a team of hotel staff was clearing cocktail tables and emptying garbage cans. On one side of the room, a group of women in evening gowns took pictures in front of a FedSoc-branded backdrop. At the other, a group of men gathered around a table for a drink.

As I made my way to the bar, the men raised their glasses for a toast. 

“To America,” said one of them. 

“To America,” said the others.

Former Ukrainian presidential advisor perfectly predicted Russian invasion in 2019

Oleksiy Arestovych, advisor to the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy predicted the war with Russia with stunning accuracy two years before it happened / wiki


By Cameron Jones in Kyiv

 March 16, 2022

In 2019 Oleksiy Arestovych, advisor to the Office of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, eerily predicted, with stunning accuracy, how events in Ukraine would unfold in 2022.

In an interview with Ukrainian news channel "Apostrophe.ua," Arestovych believed that Nato accession was Ukraine's only hope of securing its independence. "If we don't join Nato, it's gonna be absorption by Russia within 10-12 years," he said.

However, the choice was not simple and Ukraine has found itself stuck between a rock and a hard place, while also stating that any talk of Ukrainian accession to Nato would "provoke Russia to launch a large-scale military operation against Ukraine." Ukraine's price for joining Nato, he said, would be large-scale war with Russia.

Arestovych believed that Russia would have the goal of degrading Ukrainian infrastructure and turning the country into a "devastated territory" in order to make the territory of Ukraine "uninteresting" to Nato. Russia would seek to destroy as much of Ukraine as it could prior to it being accepted into Nato, due to Russia not wanting to confront Nato directly, Arestovych said. Ukraine becomes "uninteresting to Nato as a devastated territory," he said.

Arestovych predicted that a large-scale Russian invasion that ended with Russia's defeat and was followed by Ukraine entering Nato would be the best option and one that would secure Ukraine's independence.

Perhaps most spooky of all, however, was the almost pinpoint accuracy with which Arestovych predicted the nature of Russia's attack. He described an air offensive, followed by invasions from the four separate armies Russia had created on Ukraine's borders. The invasions would involve a siege of Kyiv, an encirclement of Ukraine's forces in Donbas, an advance out of Crimea aimed at securing the peninsula's water supply and another assault from the territory of Belarus. He believed Russia would seek to create other "people's republics" like those in Donetsk and Luhansk throughout Ukraine.

In 2019 Arestovych believed the possibility of the invasion was "99.9%." He said that the "period between 2020-2022 was the most critical" for the inevitable Russian assault on Ukraine.

Taliban threaten water resources of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan
Map showing the watershed of the Amu Darya (orange). / Shannon1, cc-by-sa 4.0

By bne IntelIiNews March 17, 2023

Afghanistan’s Taliban regime is pushing ahead with the construction of the 258-kilometre Kosh Tepa canal amid concerns in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan that the large hydraulic structure could deplete their water resources.

Water for the 100-metre-wide canal, expected to cost $684mn according to local reports, will be taken from the Amu Darya border river.

Construction began a year ago as the Taliban endorsed a project that is aimed at irrigating dry Afghan regions to the benefit of agriculture.

AKIPress reported on March 16 that the Kosh Tepa canal will not pose a substantial problem to Tajikistan, which, like Afghanistan, is located on the upstream part of the Amu Darya, but it could cause major difficulties for downstream Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Experts are said to fear the two countries may lose up to 15% of the irrigation water they draw from the river and watershed.

Afghan media have reported that the throughput capacity of the canal channel will be 650 cubic metres per second. Water would be taken for land in Afghanistan’s provinces of Balkh, Jawzjan and Faryab. Jawzjan and Faryab border Turkmenistan.

Kun.uz reported that upon project completion, Afghanistan’s consumption of water from the Amu Darya, historically known by its Latin name Oxus, may more than double per second.

Around 300 companies and 6,500 workers are said to be working on the canal construction. Completion of the project is scheduled for 2028.

The Taliban, ruling Afghanistan for a second time since August 2021 when the US and allies completed their withdrawal from the company, are struggling to govern a country never far from a complete economic and humanitarian catastrophe and riven by terrorist and militia groups opposed to Taliban rule from Kabul.

The Taliban’s administration is yet to win any recognition from neighbouring countries or other nations around the world.

Of Afghanistan’s neighbours, Uzbekistan has been the most positive about working on developing the crisis-ridden country with the Taliban. However, even Uzbekistan’s relations with the fundamentalist militant group have started to fray.

In early March, Russia and the six nations that border Afghanistan announced the formation of a discussion club for consultations on ways to bring about long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Some Taliban diplomats have been permitted to maintain a presence in capitals including Moscow, Tehran and Ankara despite the lack of diplomatic ties.