It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, September 16, 2022
In ad blitz, watchdog group projects political heft of nonreligious Americans
The campaign includes billboards featuring portraits of residents of the swing states of Michigan, Louisiana, Missouri and others, and the legend 'I’m an atheist and I vote' along highways in their respective regions
. A variety of the new billboards featuring nonreligious Americans created by Freedom From Religion Foundation. Images courtesy of FFRF
(RNS) — The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a nonprofit watchdog on separation of church and state issues, has launched a campaign aimed at calling attention to the growing political voice of nonreligious Americans.
This effort, which will launch officially on Saturday (Sept. 17) to honor the 235th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, is a continuation of the organization’s “independence from religion” campaign that began on the Fourth of July.
The campaign will include billboards featuring portraits of residents of the swing states of Michigan, Louisiana, Missouri and others, and the legend “I’m an atheist and I vote” along highways in their respective regions.
The faces on the billboards belong to Jamie Hamel, an ICU nurse in Oklahoma; Jim Haught, a 90-year-old retired newspaper editor; Charis Hoard, a student who recently received a master’s degree in Ohio; and Charles L. Townsend, a former member of the state Legislature in New Hampshire.
Full-page ads will follow beginning Sunday in The Washington Post and 44 other newspapers declaring, “The ‘Nones’ (those of us unaffiliated with religion) are now 29 percent of the U.S. population. We are the largest ‘denomination’ by religious identification.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation said the campaign is calling attention to the “growing and increasingly overt calls to Christian nationalism” as well as the actions of the U.S. Supreme Court that “privilege religion and eviscerate individual rights for religious reasons.”
“That’s why our secular voices must be heard,” the organization’s co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor said in a statement, adding that secular voters are “the true ‘values voters.'”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation said it has more than 38,000 members throughout North America and in 2020 released data that showed 98% of its members support the abortion rights granted by the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.
In 2020, American Atheists released“Reality Check: Being Nonreligious in America,” a report that found that nonreligious people care about maintaining secular public schools, oppose religious exemptions that permit discrimination and support access to abortion and contraception.
The report was based on a survey of nearly 34,000 nonreligious people living in the United States.
SCOTUS
Yeshiva University is forced to accept an LGBTQ club But it’s unclear for how long. David H. Zysman Hall at Yeshiva University in New York City,
taken on Oct. 25, 2014. Photo by Gigi Altarejos/Creative Commons
September 15, 2022
(RNS) — The U.S. Supreme Court surprised some observers Wednesday (Sept. 14) by deciding by a 5-4 vote against issuing an injunction against a New York state judge’s ruling that Yeshiva University, an Orthodox Jewish school in Manhattan, must recognize an LGBTQ club on campus.
With conservative Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh joining the court’s three liberals, does this signal that there’s now a majority on the court for allowing anti-discrimination laws to trump religious liberty in certain cases?
Probably not.
In all likelihood, the decision reflected concern — expressed publicly by Roberts and Elena Kagan of late — about the court’s so-called shadow docket, an increasingly frequent mode of ruling, in which cases are dealt with outside normal procedure. Here, an unsigned majority opinion told the university to go back and seek injunctive relief from New York’s own appellate courts, and made clear that the review should be “expedited.”
If the state courts decline to intervene, Yeshiva would then be able to appeal to the Supremes, who could issue an injunction — if they agree to take the case. That they would do so is the safest of bets, since four justices wanted to issue an injunction right now, and to take a case four is all you need.
Writing for the four dissenters, Justice Samuel Alito claimed that being made to recognize the club, the YU Pride Alliance, would require Yeshiva to accept an interpretation of Torah that the university finds unacceptable, and that it would consequently be deprived of its free exercise of religion. “The loss of First Amendment rights for even a short period constitutes irreparable harm,” he wrote, a necessary standard that justifies injunctive relief.
Whether that’s the case is debatable. New York Judge Lynn Kotler wrote in her June decision at trial, “By following the law and granting the YU Pride Alliance formal recognition and equal access, Yeshiva need not make a statement endorsing a particular viewpoint.”
Moreover, Kotler pointed out, LGBTQ clubs have existed in a number of Yeshiva graduate schools for more than 30 years, quoting an explanation contained in a 1995 letter by the university’s public relations director:
Yeshiva University is subject to the human rights ordinance of the City of New York, which provides protected status to homosexuals. Under this law, YU cannot ban gay student clubs. It must make facilities available to them in the same manner as it does for other student groups.
The YU Pride Alliance may be seeking more in the way of recognized status than these other clubs. Nevertheless, it seems a stretch to judge the university to be suffering irreparable harm while it seeks judicial redress, denying all the while that it accepts the Pride Alliance’s interpretation of Torah.
Be that as it may, Yeshiva’s central legal hurdle is the result of its choosing, back in the 1960s, to redefine itself legally as a purely educational rather than a religious organization. It thus made itself ineligible for an exemption from the anti-discrimination rules of New York City’s Human Rights Law.
If and when the justices get the case back, there’s nothing that says they couldn’t decide that the university’s religious claims outweigh its official status in New York law. Indeed, Kotler herself acknowledged Yeshiva’s “proud and rich Jewish heritage and a self-described mission to combine ‘the spirit of Torah’ with strong secular studies.”
Should that be sufficient reason to ignore its actual legal status as a college and not a religious institution? And, if so, are there any grounds for rejecting any institution’s sincerely held religious claims to exemptions from anti-discrimination laws? If there are, the Supreme Court as currently configured has yet to articulate them.
Poll: Jewish voters are highly motivated and concerned about American democracy
Religion News Service - Yesterday
(RNS) — A national survey by the Jewish Electorate Institute finds that Jewish voters are highly motivated to go to the polls in November, with concerns over the future of democracy and abortion as the top issues driving their choices.
In keeping with decades-long patterns, the poll, based on online interviews with 800 Jewish registered voters conducted Aug. 25 to Sept. 1 by GBAO Strategies, shows that Jewish voters lean overwhelmingly toward the Democratic Party. The poll found 70% of Jewish voters said they planned to vote for Democratic candidates and 24% plan to vote for Republican candidates. (Five percent were undecided.)
The Jewish Electorate Institute describes itself as independent and nonpartisan.
Disapproval of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the right to abortion, was resounding: 82% of Jewish registered voters disapproved, and 56% said the decision adds to their motivation to vote.
Jim Gerstein, founding partner of GBAO Strategies, said Democrats have increased their strength among Jewish voters by 10% since its last poll in April, largely driven by the abortion issue. (The court issued the ruling in June.)
“Abortion has completely transformed the 2022 midterm elections,” he said in a press briefing. “The Jewish vote is not immune to that.”
American Jews have become especially vocal on abortion. On Wednesday (Sept. 14), activists, rabbis and members of Congress stood outside the U.S. Capitol and blew the shofar or ram’s horn to proclaim their support for abortion rights. On Tuesday, Jewish abortion rights activists met with second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, who is Jewish, to argue that various state-level abortion bans violate the religious freedom of many U.S. Jews.
Related video: Rise of political extremism ‘overshadows’ political party agendas ahead of midterms
Judaism broadly teaches that abortion is not only permitted, but sometimes required when the life of the pregnant person is at risk.
But while abortion is a driving issue, especially among younger Jews, the threat to democracy appeared to be an even larger impetus to vote. The poll found 74% of Jewish voters watched the Jan. 6 committee hearings on TV, with 39% saying they watched them “very closely.” The hearings motivated 57% of them to vote, the poll said.
The threat to democracy was not as big an issue among voters of all faiths and none, according to an NBC News poll from August, which showed only 29% of registered voters calling threats to democracy the most important issue facing the nation.
“The Jan. 6 issue is driving Jewish voters much more so than the general population,” Gerstein agreed.
Perhaps not surprisingly, 79% of Jews had an unfavorable opinion of former President Donald Trump, with 19% approving of him.
“As long as you see these levels of unfavorability among Jewish voters toward the Republican Party and its leadership,” Gerstein said, “they are not going to make inroads with the Jewish vote. In order for that to change, there would need to be significant changes in the Republican Party’s positions, brand and image.”
In other findings, the poll showed near-unanimous support for gun safety measures, with 96% of Jewish voters supporting comprehensive background checks for gun purchases and 91% supporting raising the minimum age to purchase a gun from 18 to 21.
It also showed that 92% of Jewish voters are concerned about antisemitism and by a 50%-20% margin, they trust Democrats more than Republicans to fight it.
Some 68% of Jewish voters also favor reentering the Iran nuclear deal.
The survey’s margin of error rate was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Yesterday A Polish pop star who said the writers of the Bible had been intoxicated on wine and cannabis has had her conviction for blasphemy overturned.
Dorota Rabczewska, known professionally as Doda, was fined by a Warsaw court a decade ago for making the comments in an interview.
But the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg said her statements were protected by her right to free speech.
It ordered the Polish authorities to pay her €10,000 (£8,680) in damages.
The damages amount to more than nine times the fine she was ordered to pay by the Warsaw court.
The original charges stemmed from a TV interview with the 38-year-old singer that was broadcast in 2009.
During the transmission, she said that although she believed in a "higher power", she was more convinced by dinosaurs than by the Bible.
She added: "It is hard to believe in something written by people who drank too much wine and smoked weed."
She was charged the following year and found guilty in 2012 by the Warsaw District Court, which imposed a fine of 5,000 zloty (£915; €1,060).
The court in Strasbourg ruled that although her statements could shock believers, it had not been established they would stir up violence or hatred and were therefore protected by her right to free speech.
As well as being one of Poland's most successful pop singers, Doda is also known as a songwriter, actress, music producer and television personality.
She rose to fame as lead singer with the rock band Virgin before going solo.
Defying warnings, Jews embark on Ukraine pilgrimage
AFP - Yesterday 4:33 AM Thousands of Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jews have vowed to brave the dangers of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and make a pilgrimage there during the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashana.
Among those who said they would not be deterred by the war or by government travel warnings and head to the Ukrainian city of Uman was Avraham Burstein, 51, a musician and actor.
"It is like being in love, I simply have to go," he said as he tuned his accordion at his Yiddish music school in Jerusalem.
Burstein has travelled to Uman, some 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of Kyiv, every year since 1989, only missing the pilgrimage once, in 2020, when the Covid pandemic shut down international travel.
That year he still attempted to enter Ukraine and "tried from eight different countries", he chuckled, insisting that this year he would make it to Uman for the holiday which begins on September 25.
Most of those travelling are, like Burstein, members of the Breslov branch of haredi Judaism, loyal followers of Rabbi Nachman, from Bratslav in modern-day Ukraine, who died in 1810.
Nachman was the founder of an ultra-Orthodox movement that settled in Uman in the early 1800s. Before his death, he asked that his followers visit his tomb to celebrate Jewish holidays.
"For us, it would be nice if he was buried in London, or in Amsterdam, even in Berlin," said Burstein. "But he chose to be there, and he asked us to come every year for Rosh Hashana, so we have to go."
- 'Let me go' -
The pilgrimage was greatly suppressed during the era of the Soviet Union, and it was only after its collapse in 1991 that the annual visits began to balloon into the tens of thousands.
"All my life growing up, I prayed to God: please one time let me go to Rabbi Nachman's grave, just one time," said Burstein.
"It was so difficult" because of the stringent Soviet restrictions on entry, he said. "North Korea was easier to go to. It was like the moon."
A file picture from September 13, 2015 shows ultra-Orthodox Jews pray in the Ukrainian city of Uman
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid this month urged citizens to avoid Uman, warning of a "life-threatening danger", and the Ukranian embassy in Israel last week issued a similar warning.
Uman was badly hit by Russian missiles in the early weeks of the war, and just last month a civilian was killed by a Russian missile in the district, according to a statement from a regional official, Ihor Taburets, posted on messaging service Telegram.
A file picture from September 13, 2015, when thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews flocked to Uman to pay homage to their spiritual leader and celebrate the start of the Jewish new year
Burstein said he could "understand the prime minister and president asking us not to go -- they are responsible for the security of the people".
But he argued that, given the frequent security incidents in his home country, "if you are coming from Israel, you don't worry about the danger".
- Sold-out flights -
Direct flights to Kyiv have been cancelled since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, yet thousands of pilgrims have already set out on their journeys.
One haredi travel agent in Jerusalem, who asked not to be named for fear of rebuke in the community, said flights to countries bordering Ukraine had largely sold out for the rest of the month.
At Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport last week, flights to Moldova and Romania were packed with Breslov haredim heading for Uman.
"Why should we be worried? If you believe in God you're not afraid of anything," Avraham Elbaz told AFP as he checked in for his flight to the Moldovan capital Chisinau.
In September 2020, thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews were trapped for days between the borders of Belarus and Ukraine after Kyiv refused to allow them entry due to the Covid pandemic.
Before the pandemic, more than 50,000 pilgrims travelled annually during Rosh Hashana, said Gilad Malach, director of the Ultra-Orthodox in Israel programme at the Israel Democracy Institute think-tank.
He estimated that anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 pilgrims would attempt the journey this year.
"The majority, when there are restrictions, understand the reasons not to go, whether that is Covid-19 or the war," Malach told AFP.
"But for the hardcore hasidim, it's one of the basic commitments that they have," he added, saying their belief is that "you should do anything to get there".
"The more it is forbidden or hard, the more you are appreciated as a follower if you succeed in overcoming the obstacles and visiting the grave."
For Burstein, the war has only heightened the journey's importance.
"We hope that because of our prayer there, we can bring peace to the world," he said.
gb/bs/rsc/jsa/fz
Russian teachers have been asked to give up a part of their salaries and donate it to Russian soldiers invading Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that Ukraine has retaken around 1,500 square miles of Ukraine back from Russia.
According to Important Stories, the teachers are unsure what their money will be spent on, with no guidance as to what the "Cultural Development of the Youth of Podolsk" supports.
A journalist at Important Stories wrote to one of the reported founders of the foundation asking specifically where the money will go.
"At the moment, the city administration is negotiating with the competent state authorities about how, where and to whom [to transfer the money]," Dmitry Nikolaev responded. "Once this has been decided, the purchase and shipment/delivery will take place."
Nikolaev added, according to Important Stories, that once the goods are shipped, the city will notify everyone who donated.
Thirty-three Russian regions have already pledged 4.8 billion rubles, Important Stories reported, but according to military expert Pavel Luzin, it still won't be enough.
"Now the practice will expand," he told Important Stories, "because there isn't much money in the budget."
Don't want Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine? Send your kids - Wagner By AARON REICH - A service member of pro-Russian troops stands inside a residential building in Volnovakha
Russia is recruiting prisoners who volunteer to fight in its ongoing war in Ukraine through the Wagner mercenary company, and those who don't want prisoners to fight should send their children to fight instead, Russian oligarch and Wagner co-owner Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a statement Thursday.
The statement, uploaded to the Russian social media platform VKontakte by Prigozhin's company Concord, was made in response to a question from a journalist from the Russian news outlet Komsomolskaya Pravda, which is not to be confused with the similarly named Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda.
The journalist inquired about reports that prisoners are being recruited to fight.
"Of course, if I were a prisoner, I would dream of joining... in order to not only redeem my debt to the Motherland, but also to repay it with interest," said Pirogzhin, a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Regarding those who don't want prisoners to be recruited to fight in Ukraine, Pirogzhin said: "Send your children to the front. Either private military contractors and prisoners, or [send] your children - decide for yourself."
"Send your children to the front. Either private military contractors and prisoners, or [send] your children - decide for yourself." Russian oligarch, Putin confidant and Wagner co-owner Yevgeny Prigozhin Russia recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine
There have already been numerous allegations by Ukraine and other international intelligence reports that Russia is working to recruit prisoners through mercenary groups like Wagner to shore up its heavy losses in the ongoing war , which Russia refers to as a "special military operation."
According to Ukrainian intelligence reports, after signing and fulfilling the contracts with the private military company convicts are promised full amnesty after six months of service. They further claimed that the crime committed by convicts is irrelevant, even if it is murder or other serious crimes.
Wagner has reportedly been taking part in this, as they have also suffered significant losses during the war. Also, despite Prigozhin's claims, UK intelligence claims that Russia's military has lowered its standards for recruits and the training is rushed.
According to reports by the Latvia-based Russian independent investigative news outlet The Insider, Prigozhin personally goes to prisons to recruit prisoners, with Putin having supposedly personally authorized it.
"The prisoners want to leave... get out, go anywhere. Because any place on Earth is better than a Russian prison." Olga Romanova
Why are Russian prisoners going to fight in Ukraine?
The Insider also claims that there is a preference for recruiting prisoners convicted of murder. According to the Russian human rights NGO Russia Behind Bars, so far, up to 10,000 prisoners have already been recruited, including murderers, rapists and one "cannibal maniac."
According to Russia Behind Bars head Olga Romanova in an interview with Lithuania-based Russian dissident news YouTube channel Popular Politics, Prigozhin has also said Wagner is just looking for cannon fodder who charge forward, and any convict that tries to desert will be shot.
This was further detailed in a video showing someone believed to be Pirogzhin telling prisoners about the terms of their recruitment.
"No one retreats, no one surrenders," the person resembling Pirogzhin says, according to The Insider, adding that execution follows.
The video in question was also mentioned by the Pravda journalist to Pirogzhin, who referred to the person as "someone similar to Pirogzhin."
However, Romanova stressed that it seems most prisoners aren't being forced to join the war but are instead willingly volunteering, and not even for the money.
"The prisoners want to leave... get out, go anywhere," she explained to Popular Politics. "Because any place on Earth is better than a Russian prison."
Roman Meitav contributed to this report.
Russian inmates ‘told they’ll be freed if they survive six-months on Ukraine frontline’
Miriam Burrell - Yesterday -
The founder of Russia’s pro-Kremlin Wagner mercenary group has attempted to recruit prisoners to fight Putin’s war in Ukraine, in leaked video footage.
Yevgeniy Prigozhin can be seen addressing a large group of detainees in footage shared on Twitter.
English subtitles appear to show Mr Prigozhin telling the inmates, who stood in a circle around him, that he represents a private military company.
Mr Prigozhin told prisoners their sentences would be thrown out in exchange for service with his group for six months.
“While you’re with us for a half a year, you’re always in the combat zone,” he told the group.
“No one falls back. No one retreats. No one surrenders into capture,” the subtitles said.
“During training you’ll be told about two grenades you must have with you when surrending,” he said.
The minimum age the Wagner group is recruiting is 22 years old, he said, and the maximum age is 50, depending on prisoners’ physicality.
Mr Prigozhin also warned the prisoners against drugs, alcohol and sex with “local women, flora, fauna, men....anyone” on the frontlines.
Anyone interested would have to undergo a phsyical test and possibly a lie detector test, he warned.
Speaking in what appeared to be a prison exercise yard, the mercenary boss also alluded to the difficulties Russia has faced in invasion, saying “this is a hard war, not even close to the likes of Chechnya and the others”.
It is unclear who filmed the video, when it occurred or how it was released.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence said in July that Russia had likely tasked mercenaries to hold sections of the frontline in Ukraine due to a “major shortage” of combat infantry.
Greater reliance on paid fighters from the Russian private military company Wagner Group for frontline duties rather than their usual work in special operations was seen as a further sign that Russia’s military is under stress six months into the war.
“This is a significant change from the previous employment of the group since 2015, when it typically undertook missions distinct from overt, large-scale regular Russian military activity,” the Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update on July 30.
“Wagner’s role has probably changed because the Russian MoD has a major shortage of combat infantry however Wagner forces are highly unlikely to be sufficient to make a significant difference in the trajectory of the war.”
Meanwhile in August it was reported that Ukrainian missiles are reported to have hit a base belonging to pro-Russian Wagner Group mercenaries in the east of the country.
One Ukrainian politician said long-range HIMARS rockets were used in the attack on the city of Popasna.
Wagner group head filmed recruiting Russian convicts Yesterday
The founder of Russia's shadowy Wagner mercenary group has appeared in leaked footage attempting to recruit prisoners to fight in Ukraine.
In filmed footage, verified by the BBC, Yevgeniy Prigozhin can be seen addressing a large group of detainees.
Mr Prigozhin told prisoners their sentences would be commuted in exchange for service with his group.
The video would confirm long-running speculation that Russia hopes to boost its forces by recruiting convicts.
While Russian law does not allow commutation of prison sentences in exchange for mercenary service, Mr Prigozhin insisted that "nobody goes back behind bars" if they serve with his group.
"If you serve six months (in Wagner), you are free," he said. But he warned potential recruits against desertion and said "if you arrive in Ukraine and decide it's not for you, we will execute you".
He also informed prisoners of Wagner's rules banning alcohol, drugs and "sexual contacts with local women, flora, fauna, men - anything".
Speaking in what appeared to be the penal colony's exercise yard, the mercenary chief also alluded to the difficulties Russia has faced in the protracted conflict, telling potential recruits that "this is a hard war, not even close to the likes of Chechnya and the others".
It is unclear who filmed the video, when it occurred or how it was released.
But the BBC has geolocated the footage to a penal colony in Russia's central Mariy El Republic. Analysts did this by conducting a reverse image search a church visible in the background of the video, which matched to penal colony number six.
A screengrab on the recruiter's face was also run through facial recognition software tools, returning a positive match with an actual photo of Mr Prigozhin. What is the Wagner Group?
Separately, sources confirmed to the BBC's Russian service that the person in the video was likely Mr Prigozhin.
"This is his voice. His intonation. His words and manner of speaking... I'm 95 percent sure that this is him and this is not a montage," one source told the BBC.
"Very similar, his manner, and his voice is very similar," another said.
The 61-year-old's own company, Concord, refused to deny that he appeared in the footage, noting the "monstrous" similarity when approached by Russian state media.
Mr Prigozhin - who is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin - has previously denied links to the Wagner group, whose forces have been deployed in Ukraine, Syria and several African conflicts.
But in the video, the oligarch can be seen telling inmates that he is a "representative of a private war company".
"Perhaps you heard the name - Wagner Group," he asks the group of prisoners.
He said recruits must be in "good physical shape", before revealing that the first 40 recruits from a penal colony in St Petersburg were deployed during an attack on Vuhlehirska Power Station in eastern Ukraine last June.
He said the prisoners had stormed the Ukrainian trenches and attacked Kyiv's troops with knives. Three of the men - including a 52-year-old who spent more than 30 years in detention - were killed, Mr Prigozhin said.
Later in the video, he warned the convicts, who are all sporting black jump suits, that they will be expected to kill themselves with hand grenades if they are at risk of being captured.
The Wagner group's origins are shadowy, but it is believed to have been formed by an ex-Russian army officer, Dmitri Utkin.
The collective is believed to have been deployed to Ukraine since 2014, and since Russia's invasion in February Ukrainian forces have carried out strikes on what they say were Wagner bases in occupied eastern Ukraine.
In August, US defence officials said up to 80,000 Russian troops have been killed or injured since the war began in February, and Moscow has reportedly turned to Wagner to fill the gap left by the heavy casualties.
Last month, independent Russian media spoke to inmates held in facilities in different locations in Russia who told them that Mr Prigozhin had personally visited their facility to recruit inmates to join the fight in Ukraine.
Short of soldiers to send to war, Russia’s mercenaries recruit in prisons
To address Russia’s shortage of soldiers to send to war in Ukraine, the Wagner mercenary group seems to be making an offer that it hopes convicted criminals can’t refuse: a get out of jail card.
“After six months [at war] you receive a pardon, and there is no option for you to return to prison,” a man dressed in tan-colored fatigues said, addressing a crowd of Russian inmates standing underneath a poster that read “Choose life.” “Those who arrive [at the front line] and say on Day 1 it’s not for them get shot,” the man added.
The recording pitch, captured on video, surfaced Monday night on Russian Telegram channels, and the man in fatigues making the offer appears to be Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the billionaire nicknamed “Putin’s chef” who is also the reputed financier of the Wagner private military company.
With Russian President Vladimir Putin refusing to declare a national draft, fearing such a move would be politically toxic, Wagner has been playing an increasingly crucial and public role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It is not clear when the video was filmed, but it appears to provide the first on-record evidence of a recruitment strategy that has been rumor for months: soliciting prisoners to trade prison garb for military uniforms as a way of replenishing Russia’s ranks on the battlefield.
Russia’s shortage of reinforcements was apparently part of the reason Moscow’s troops were unprepared for a Ukrainian counteroffensive in recent days that ousted Russian occupying fosters from most of the northeast Kharkiv region. The successful Ukrainian counteroffensive has only added to Russia’s woes, with some analysts saying Russia is no longer capable of offensive operations, but can only defend the territory it now controls.
Prigozhin, whose chef nickname comes from the lucrative catering contracts awarded to him by the Kremlin, is known as an active supporter of Putin’s political goals, and he is wanted by the F.B.I. for allegedly interfering in U.S. elections. For years, though, he has denied links to Wagner, despite mounting evidence that he is profiting from the deployment of mercenaries to the Middle East and Africa to surreptitiously promote Moscow’s agenda.
But in the video, he starts his pitch by saying openly that he represents Wagner and is looking for recruits as the war in Ukraine “is tough and doesn’t even compare to the Chechen wars or any others.”What is the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary entity in Ukraine?
Prigozhin’s catering company, Concord, coyly said in a Thursday statement that it “can confirm that the person in the video bears an enormous resemblance to Yevgeny Viktorovich [Prigozhin].”
“Judging by his rhetoric, he somehow deals with implementing the tasks of the special operation, and does so successfully … in addition, the person speaking in the video has a great delivery, just like Evgeny Viktorovich [Prigozhin] does,” the company said in its statement.
Another equivocate statement posted by Concord’s press service came from Prigozhin himself: “If I were a prisoner, I would dream of joining this friendly team in order to not only redeem my debt to the Motherland, but also to repay it with interest.”
“Those who do not want mercenaries or prisoners to fight … who do not like this topic, send your children to the front,” Prigozhin said. “It’s either them or your children, decide for yourself.”
Wagner has been leading a double effort to recruit men all over Russia in what the experts called “a shadow mobilization” as Putin has rebuffed calls for national mobilization from several hawkish Russian officials. Such a draft would almost certainly cause an uproar from the public that has been told for months that Moscow is running only a limited “special military operation” in Ukraine.
In addition to online ads and banners in dozens of cities inviting ordinary Russians to sign up, Wagner recruiters have been touring prisons seeking men between the ages of 22 and 50, but its recruiters say an exception is possible for older men if they are in a “good physical form.”Putin, tone deaf and isolated, pursues war ‘goals’ and refuses to lose
In the video, Prigozhin says the first batch of convicts fought in Ukraine on June 1 as Wagner was helping Russia take the Vuhlehirska power station in the Donetsk region. The mercenaries’ success in capturing the site was paraded on Russian state TV in the first public embrace of “the orchestra,” as the private army is often called, in reference to its namesake, right-wing German classical composer Richard Wagner.
“There were 40 people from St. Petersburg, [from a] high-security facility, recidivists,” Prigozhin said. “They entered the enemy trenches, cut them up with knives; there were three dead and seven wounded. Out of the three dead, one was 52 years old and had already served a 30-year-long sentence. He died a hero.”
Gulagu Net, a Russian human rights organization that helps convicts, first received calls and letters from inmates about Wagner’s recruitment efforts back in March. The head of Gulagu Net, Vladimir Osechkin, told The Washington Post in an interview last month that the effort was very limited at the time.
“Those were colonies for former law enforcement officers. … They were looking for those with combat experience, who took part in counterterrorism operations and various hostilities,” Osechkin said.
“We are talking special forces here, people who know what a weapon is,” he added. “They were told they would be commanders, that the motherland needs them, but as far as we understand, this campaign failed as they haven’t been able to recruit many of them.”
But as Russia’s campaign in Ukraine stalled since the initial gains in the spring, the effort to find fresh reinforcements took on new urgency.
The enlistment approach was two-pronged: Some convicts were offered support roles, such as digging trenches and doing various construction work near separatist-controlled areas in the eastern Donbas region. Others were recruited for units of 12 people tasked with “special combat missions,” even though they often had little military training.
“It all points to the fact that the Russian army has a personnel shortage, and they are trying to replenish it using prisoners whom they don’t care about,” Osechkin said.
Another civil rights organization, Russia Behind Bars, which has long investigated horrific conditions in Russian prisons, estimated that approximately 7,000 to 10,000 convicts have already been sent to fight in Ukraine.
Both organizations have voiced concern that prisoners are being tricked into joining a potential suicide mission with no legal guarantees, as well as concern about releasing potentially violent convicted criminals serving decades-long sentences for murder or aggravated assault.
“In addition to it being immoral and very dangerous, it also means that the concept of ‘crime’ no longer exists in Russia; they wiped their feet on the judicial system,” the head of Russia Behind Bars, Olga Romanova, wrote in a Facebook post.
According to Gulagu Net, Putin awarded at least one Russian convict who fought in Ukraine with a medal of bravery: Ivan Neparatov, a member of an organized crime group who served 12 years out of his 25-year sentence for murder, robbery and kidnapping.
On the video, Prigozhin told the inmates of the penal colony, which The Post identified to be in the small Mari El republic in central Russia, that he was looking for the most brazen “stormtroopers,” willing to be thrown into hot spots as infantry.
“You have five minutes to make a decision,” he said. “Regarding trust and guarantees, do you have anyone who can get you out of prison alive? Allah and God can get you out [dead]. I am taking you out of here alive. But it’s not always that I bring you back alive.”
Xi article gives insight into China’s direction ahead of party congress
The Chinese Communist Party is now the standard-bearer of the global socialism movement and must learn how to constantly self-correct itself to avoid the fate of the Soviet Union, Xi Jinping said in a recent article.
William Zheng - Yesterday - South China Morning Post
Qiushi – the party’s most authoritative theoretical journal – published the article on Wednesday, just a month ahead of the 20th Party Congress on October 16, which will confirm an unprecedented third term for Xi as its paramount leader.
The article is based on an internal speech given to party cadres in 2018, in which Xi reviewed past successes but also delivered stern warnings to the members, asking them to keep up the “revolutionary spirit” and be ever-ready for self-reflection and self-correction.
Short of that, “even the most powerful regime” would crumble and collapse, Xi said. He noted that the sudden collapse in the 1990s of the Soviet Union and the communist bloc had led to a period of unprecedented difficulty for the global socialism movement.
Many developing countries abandoned the socialist path to copy the Western model, he said Xi said China, through its 40-year, non-stop effort of reform and rejuvenation, has achieved great success and remarkable progress.
“Today there are about 130 socialist or communist parties active in 100 countries. Many developing countries look at China with envy and want to learn about our governance experience. Socialism with Chinese characteristics has become the standard-bearer of 21st-century socialist development.” Xi said.
“We have the responsibility, capability and confidence to make historic contributions to the progress of scientific socialism.”
He said the key to China’s success is its determination to charter its own course and not blindly follow others’ governance models. Although the party suffered many setbacks during the process, it eventually forged a unique development path through countless trials and tests.
Xi said such a “self-revolutionary” spirit must be maintained, and China must be confident and determined to follow its own path.
“Our destiny lies in the path we select. If we take the wrong path, we will not achieve our goals and may even break the great rejuvenation of Chinese civilisation,” he said.
“China’s success proves that socialism is not dead. It is thriving. Just imagine this: had socialism failed in China, had our communist party collapsed like the party in the Soviet Union, then global socialism would lapse into a long dark age. And communism, like Karl Marx once said, would be a haunting spectre lingering in limbo.”
He warned the party members not to take success for granted and said it would still take a long time for China to achieve its great rejuvenation.
“During this long period, how can we ensure that the communist party will not collapse and our political system will maintain its vigour? [It] is going to be a huge challenge and risk,” Xi said.
“The Soviet Union once was so powerful, now it is just a faint memory. If we don’t have a historical perspective and long-term planning, we will bring ruins up to ourselves.”
Apart from confirming Xi’s third term, the party will also amend its charter at the congress meeting. Most analysts believe the revision will see more of Xi’s governance philosophy and ideology incorporated into the party constitution.
This will further strengthen Xi’s position in the party – he is already the most powerful political leader since Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. It will also help to ensure his legacy will stay and guide the party.
Experts also believe the article was republished now to serve as a reminder to party members of the challenges they are facing and the consequences if they fail.
Xie Maosong, a senior fellow with the Taihe Institute and a senior researcher at the National Institute of Strategic Studies at Tsinghua University, said the next few years under Xi would be crucial, as China continues to face a difficult external environment, with the US leading a Western bloc to contain it “in almost every possible way”.
“The message to the party is that it needs to stay vigilant and alert, quickly learn from past mistakes and adapt, encapsulated in the party lingo as ‘self-revolution’, to prevail from the long marathon competing with the west,” Xie said.
“It is important for Xi to share his long historical perspective with all the party members ahead of the major party conference, and convince them that he will lead them to conquer all the adversities.”
Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore concurred.
“It is very clear that Xi firmly believes that China is the flag bearer of the world’s socialist movements to counter the west after the demise of the Soviet Union. The Qiushi article shows that his worldview has not changed since 2018 and likely will stay the same in the future.”
More from South China Morning Post:
Sweden’s election marks a new far-right surge in Europe
Ishaan Tharoor - Yesterday
Party leader of the Sweden Democrats Jimmie Akesson gives a speech during an election watch party at the Elite Hotel Marina Tower in Nacka, near Stockholm, on Sept. 11. (Stefan Jerrevang/TT News Agency/AP)
Another taboo in Europe is about to be broken. In Sweden, voters delivered a narrow mandate after elections on Sunday to a loose coalition of right-wing parties, including one with a neo-fascist past. On Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, a center-left Social Democrat allied to other left and green parties, conceded defeat. Her party had won 30 percent of the vote — making it still the single largest faction in parliament — but their coalition secured three fewer seats than their rivals to the right.
The kingmakers in Sweden are the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), a party founded in 1988 by ultranationalist extremists and neo-Nazis. Over the past decade, they have moved from the fringes of their country’s politics into the mainstream. This week, they secured some 20 percent of the Swedish vote, enough to make them the second-largest party in Sweden.
But they may not formally be in power. Such is the political stigma around them that they may remain technically outside a government led by the center-right Moderates and Liberals, yet crucially not in opposition. Coalition politics carry many complexities and wrangling over the new government may take weeks. Whatever the outcome, it seems the far-right SD believes it has a major seat at the table in a country long known for its progressive ethos and policies.
Akesson’s triumphalism has echoed across the continent. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right National Rally Party, hailed the SD’s success as a sign of nationalist resurgence. “Everywhere in Europe, people aspire to take their destiny back into their own hands!” she tweeted.
Related video: Sweden conservatives to form new govt after narrow election win
Le Pen, of course, knows her share of false dawns, having been repeatedly thwarted in elections no matter incremental gains in defeat. But far-right parties have in the past decade been the beneficiaries of the collapse of the so-called “cordon sanitaire” set up by more mainstream parties to block them from winning power, entering governing coalitions in Swedish neighbor Finland, Austria and Italy. And even when not in government, their agendas have made their way into governance — the center-left government in Denmark, for example, checked right-wing nativism by adopting the anti-immigration policies of their rivals.
Akesson doesn’t have the political alliances that Meloni does but shares an antipathy toward migration, Islam and the spectral “globalist” establishment that far-right campaigners across the West have harnessed in their bids for power. “They don’t include Islam in Swedishness,” said Andrej Kokkonen, a professor of politics at the University of Gothenburg, to my colleagues. “You don’t get to be a Swede and a Muslim at the same time.”
Ahead of the election, Andersson pointed to the toxicity of the SD’s legacy. “ There are rightwing populist parties in many European countries, but the Sweden Democrats have deep roots in the Swedish neo-Nazis and other racist organizations in Sweden,” she said last week on the campaign trail in an interview with the Guardian, highlighting an alleged incident where SD campaigners celebrated the Nazi invasion of Poland during World War II. “I mean, it’s not like other parties.”
But that has hardly dented their appeal. The SD emerged as a major political force in Sweden, siphoning off rural votes that once would have gone to parties on the other side of the political spectrum. “Treating nationalists as pariahs has not prevented their rise,” observed the Economist. “On the contrary: elections in Europe now are often a case of loudly pitting the mainstream against the supposedly unpalatable and hoping that not too many voters pick the ‘wrong’ side. Simply hoping the nasties go away has not, in fact, made them go away.”
For more mainstream parties on the right, finding accommodation with the far right has become, in some instances, the only path to power. “If you want a government that is not based on the Social Democrats you need to cooperate with the SD,” said Anders Borg, a former finance minister for the Moderates, to my colleagues. “I cannot see any other viable election strategy.”
“In Sweden,” he added, “we isolated the SD and yet they grew to 20 percent as a lot of ordinary voters drifted toward them. At the same time, the SD has moved away from a fringe position toward being a more ordinary political party.”
That is the narrative surrounding other ascendant far-right parties in Europe, including Meloni’s Brothers of Italy. Meloni angrily rejects accusations of fascism and has cast herself as part of the political mainstream — cooling her Euroskepticism, supporting sanctions against Russia and prioritizing, at least for now, economic relief for Italians over a hysterical culture war.
If the Italian right wins power, Meloni will have to translate all the years of populist rabble-rousing into effective governance. That’s no small matter given the thicket of problems facing her debt-ridden country. “I cannot say that, faced with such a responsibility, my hands aren’t shaking,” Meloni told my colleagues.
How a neo-Nazi movement became Sweden's kingmakers
Yesterday
More than one in five Swedes voted for the radical anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats (SD) party in elections on Sunday.
Now the second-largest political party in the country, its anticipated 73 MPs are expected to play a crucial role in supporting a ruling right-wing coalition - if not a formal position in the government itself.
It would be the first time the nationalist party has come anywhere close to the levers of power in Stockholm.
A focus during the election campaign on issues around immigration and violent crime have put the SD's agenda at the heart of mainstream Swedish politics like never before.
It is a watershed moment for a party founded by Nazi sympathisers, shunned for decades by the mainstream - and now on the cusp of playing a kingmaking role in a country better known for its stable and predictable politics.
According to the latest election figures, the SD won 20.6% of votes cast on Sunday - making it the largest in a bloc of right-wing parties now with a collective majority in parliament.
"This is dramatic given that they only entered parliament in 2010," University of Gothenburg political scientist Johann Martinsson told the BBC.
"Sweden used to have an extremely stable and predictable political party system. Three elections later - and they are the second largest party," he says.
Martinsson describes the party as "primarily an anti-immigration, anti-multicultural, nationalist party" - but stops short of labelling them far-right.
Founded in 1988, the SD struggled for two decades to win enough votes to elect any MPs at all. But ever since entering parliament in 2010, the party has increased its share of three successive elections.
As of Sunday it had displaced the Moderates as the country's most popular right-of-centre party.
Martinsson says the results are a "dividing line" in Swedish history.
Its success has led to a fierce debate over how much the party has changed ideologically during its transformation from political pariah to power-broker.
Current leader Jimmie Akesson, who took over in 2005, unveiled a "zero-tolerance" policy against racism and extremism ten years ago - and in 2015 he even suspended the party's entire youth wing over its links to the far-right.
The party has also undergone an extensive rebranding: replacing its burning flame logo with a more innocent-looking flower and scrapping its "Keep Sweden Swedish" slogan.
Eurosceptics and anti-immigration: Akesson leads Sweden's soaring far right
But those changes have not been enough to end the accusations that the party poses a threat to Sweden's minority groups.
They include Willie Silberstein, the chair of Sweden's Committee Against Anti-Semitism - who has himself become a target of anti-Semitic abuse in recent days after using his position to publicly criticise the SD in a television interview.
"The Committee has a problem with parties that were founded by Nazis. That is not an opinion - that is a piece of fact," he told the BBC. "If one party is so full of people that need to be excluded because they are Nazis - it says something about that party."
Tweets and social media posts from party members - and sometimes even elected officials - continue to get the party in trouble.
In the height of the election campaign SD's legal spokesperson, the 26-year-old MP Tobias Andersson, tweeted a picture of a Stockholm underground train branded with the party's colours.
"Welcome to the repatriation express. Here's a one-way ticket. Next Stop Kabul," he wrote.
Some Swedish commentators criticised the post but party leader Akesson refused to apologise, arguing that it was intended to mock those who were offended by the party's posters according to news agency AP.
The party denies the accusations of racism.
"All that was before I was born," says Emil Eneblad, vice chair of the SD's youth movement Young Swedes.
"People accused us of bad stuff in the election, I don't think the fact that there were shady people in the party 30 years ago has affected our election standing," the 21-year-old campaigner told the BBC.
He claims the party had almost doubled its support among young people in Sunday's election - something he credits with focusing on three issues in particular: safety, employment, and immigration.
"Young people are looking for something else," he says.
Political scientist Johann Martinsson says that issues around immigration have been simmering for a long time, pointing out that Sweden has received among the highest number of asylum seekers per capita in the world over the last few years.
This, and a perceived increase in violent crime may explain the surge in support for the SD, a party which has not only campaigned on both issues for years, but has rose to prominence with its controversial claim that the two are inextricably linked.
