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Six months into Russias invasion of Ukraine, Slovak leaders joined their counterparts around the world on August 24, which is Ukrainian Independence Day, to reassert their full support for the eastern neighbour. Russias invasion took place 54 years after Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia on the evening of August 20, 1968. The occupation lasted for more than two decades. With Russias attack on Ukraine, we are reminded again that the fight for freedom and democracy never ends, Slovak President Zuzana aputov tweeted on August 21.

A day before Ukrainian Independence Day, the Slovak Defence Ministry struck a deal with Germany that will also help Ukraine. While Slovakia will receive 15 German tanks, Ukraine will obtain 30 older infantry fighting vehicles from Slovakia by the end of this year. Since the start of the invasion, on February 24, Slovakia has spent 154 million on military support for Ukraine, the Defence Ministry announced. We will stand by Ukraine until dictator Putin and his army leave Ukraines territory, Prime Minister Eduard Heger said in a Facebook video.

At home, the preacher-like prime minister was still unable to resolve the coalition crisis. Over the past week, Heger suggested several technocratic solutions that he believes might help enhance relations within his four-party coalition government. However, he refuses to remove Igor Matovic, the finance minister and his partys boss, from the cabinet the number-one condition laid down by Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), one of the four coalition parties.

SaS chair Richard Sulk, who serves as economy minister, has already announced he is going to resign next Wednesday, as he cant see any way out of the current impasse. Three other SaS ministers, who look after justice, foreign affairs and education, will leave the government as well. SaS voters are, nevertheless, split on whether the party should leave the government, a poll showed this week. Ahead of the new school year, which will see thousands of Ukrainian children attend Slovak schools, and at a time of rising energy bills, ongoing high-profile corruption investigations and the war across the border, a minority government scenario is not what Heger had been hoping for.

Original post:
Democracy Digest: Signs, Trains and Espionage in Czechia - Balkan Insight

C Uday Bhaskar

Director, Society for Policy Studies

WITH the Supreme Court agreeing to hear a petition challenging the remission by the Gujarat Government of the 11 convicts in the tortuous Bilkis Bano rape and murder case, the sense of national dismay and outrage that followed their release on August 15, soon after the Red Fort speech of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is now tempered by a sliver of hope. A slender hope, that the highest court will ensure that justice is not sullied or denied to a hapless victim who was subjected to the most horrific and diabolical degree of sexual assault in 2002 during the Gujarat riots.

Bilkis Bano, a pregnant young mother, was among the many victims engulfed by the post-Godhra anti-Muslim hatred that seized Gujarat at the time. She was forced to witness her family members being violated, seven brutally killed and her infant childs head smashed by the perpetrators. The fact that the murderers were neighbours of the victim added to the diabolical nature of this crime.

While there are many dimensions and layers to the Bilkis saga and a saga it is if the chronology of this episode is recalled in detail the current socio-political context accords this case a seminal quality. August 15 marked the 75th anniversary of India attaining freedom in 1947 and Prime Minister Modi in his expansive address to the nation dwelt on Indias many achievements and the potential of the nation and hailed India as the mother of democracy.

A special mention was made by Modi of Indias feminine power and his agony about the treatment accorded to women was palpable when he added with anguish: What I wish to share is that it hurts me to say that we have witnessed a perversion in our day-to-day speaking and behaviour. We have been casually using expletives and cuss words which are abusive and against our women. Can we not pledge to get rid of every behaviour, culture that humiliates and demeans women in our daily life?

That very afternoon (August 15), the Gujarat Government approved the application for the remission of the life sentence of the 11 convicts and they walked out of the Godhra sub-jail as free men.

To compound this unprecedented act of according clemency to those convicted of the most heinous crimes (gang-rape and murder, including that of a three-year-old child), the freed convicts were met with garlands by their supporters an event reported with some unbridled glee in certain sections of the Indian audio-visual media.

The subtext was that the convicts did not deserve the punishment meted out to them by a Bombay court and that justice had finally been awarded to them!

The contrast between what Modi said about women in general and his exhortation that they not be demeaned and humiliated was stood on its head by the Gujarat Government with impunity as it took recourse to a legal technicality. But what is even more shameful is that not a single representative of the government chose to deplore or chastise this travesty of justice in relation to the Bilkis case.

Exceptions do exist and to her credit, an IAS officer of the Telangana cadre, Smita Sabharwal, shared her disbelief in a tweet where she noted: As a woman and a civil servant I sit in disbelief, on reading the news on the #BilkisBanoCase, we cannot snuff out her right to breathe free without fear again, and call ourselves a free nation. Further, a handful of women BJP members and Devendra Fadnavis, a senior Maharashtra BJP leader, have condemned the remission, but they are exceptions.

Civil society was up in arms and at last count, over 10,000 citizens have issued a statement urging the SC to revoke the remission of the 11 convicts. This case will soon be heard by the highest court.

The Bilkis saga has a distinctive relevance at multiple levels for India@75, now seeking to burnish its profile as an exemplar of democracy and freedom. One relates to the arduous path that a rape victim has to undergo to obtain justice from an insensitive and venal investigative machinery comprising the police-and-local-politician combine; and when this is finally awarded outside of the state after years of litigation, a casual executive decision snatches away whatever modicum of justice that the victim has received from a higher judicial body.

Godhra 2002 has also shaped the Indian political trajectory and of Modis ascendancy within the BJP. His rise from being the Chief Minister of Gujarat at the time to his assumption of office as Prime Minister in 2014 is illustrative of this orientation. It is instructive to note that the collective Indian response to another horrific gang-rape in 2012, the Nirbhaya case, was very different. The national outrage was tsunami-like and the institutional redress relatively swift.

This begs that uncomfortable but inescapable question of whether the Bilkis case has elicited an ostrich-like response only because of her religious identity, that she is a Muslim first and her Indian citizenship discounted? This kind of collective moral amnesia among the majority community and state complacence or, worse, state complicity, have shrouded pogroms in India. The inexcusable 1984 Sikh killings in the aftermath of PM Indira Gandhis assassination testify to this pattern.

How the Supreme Court deals with the remission of the Bilkis Bano case convicts is a bellwether for the judiciary and will shape the Indian journey towards 2047, the centenary of the mother of democracy. Will the state be Janus-like: a constitutional hare when the forum mandates such fidelity and a rabid communal hound when dictated by opportunistic electoral compulsions? And will the judiciary remain mute to such duplicity?

Even as India appears to be jettisoning Mahatma Gandhi and his commitment to religious harmony and tolerance, the resolution of the Bilkis case will also be a test of the Ambedkar tripod: to what degree has India@75 been faithful to the pursuit of liberty, equality and fraternity?

Fraternity remains stubbornly elusive for a large cross-section of India and the caste-creed-religion tag remains tenaciously alive in the body-politic. Whether the vulnerable Indian citizen is doomed to remain the eternal supplicant to the vagaries of the State and its elite or he can claim the status of the much-cherished freedom that August 1947 heralded will define the texture of the worlds largest democracy as it ambles towards the centenary, fettered by its own certitudes.

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Bilkis Bano case is bellwether of democracy - The Tribune India

This will be an unusual column, in the first person at parts and a bit longer, to reflect upon what traveling this year has taught this writer about our democracy.

Until this past 12 months, I hadnt traveled much outside of the USA, but in October, I had the opportunity to go to Rome. I took students to Greece in March. Then I spent most of two months in Scotland, Ireland, England and Iceland. At some point in every country, someone from that area ventured a timid version of the following question: Is America OK?

In Rome, our tour guide pointed out what we all couldnt overlook, the trash overflowing out of every dumpster and she faulted the citys mayor. But elections are next week, she assured us. She steered us away from a protest in one square and explained that people were unhappy with the prime minister but elections were coming. As I strode next to her, asking how Italians felt after the pandemic, she turned the tables on me. What do Americans think about your government? Are you OK? I didnt know how to answer.

In Greeces National Gardens, another guide probed, Your 2016 election surprised people in Greece. She said. What happened?

When we landed in Glasgow in late May, the taxi drivers accent made it hard to read his angle when he asked, How is America doing? Uber drivers, taxi drivers, strangers in pubs, even a monk all asked then ventured opinions.

Why were they probing for my perspective? Each had their own motivation, perhaps pinging my responses to compare to what they saw in the news or to their own government. Maybe its because what happens in America affects them. Im not sure how much they look to the US as a safeguard of democracy. At least one driver seemed amused that the former president insists he won the last election in spite of what the courts and local officials say. I couldnt help but ask what they thought of Boris Johnson.

Great Britain was gussied up for the Queens Jubilee Weekend when I landed. Flowers cascaded down storefronts celebrating her. Though the monarch opens Parliament and has the mandate to govern, neither she nor any other monarch has intervened in Parliament matters for 300 years. While in Scotland in June, we spent a morning watching BBC as members of Johnsons party called for a no-confidence vote regarding Johnson. The former prime minister Theresa May dressed up in a ball gown to cast hers. Johnson survived though we learned that Scottish members of Parliament, called MPs, had voted against him.

The taxi driver in Glasgow among others said that though they disliked Johnson, they thought he was a proven leader. A few weeks later, while we were in Dublin, Johnson was forced to resign. Too many of his lies caught up with him. On top of his denials that he attended office parties during the lockdown, Johnson denied knowing that one of his appointees had assaulted associates. Yet Dubliners and Londoners both decried his resignation as a shame, citing his staunch support of Ukraine.

Its worth noting that the BBC sounded awfully partisan in its reporting about Johnson, as if wishing him out of office. I know a lot of Americans who think the media did that to Donald Trump. Rory Stewart, a former UK Secretary of State for International Development and Conservative Party MP thats the same party Johnson headed told Yale News on July 12 that Johnson was doing extraordinary damage to our government and our unwritten constitution. I was this many years old when I learned that some democracies dont have written, codified constitutions. Five in fact: the UK, Israel, Canada, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia.

In conversation, my British acquaintances compared their prime minister to our recent presidents. In my head, I had assumed our democracies were more alike, but I soon learned democracies come in all stripes the Pew Research Center reported in 2019 that about 57% of the worlds nations were democracies of some kind, though about 28% have slid backwards into blend of democracy and autocracy.

The most stable democracies have five qualities that most of us learned first in high school: checks and balances to prevent one person or group from being too powerful; freedom of speech and association because we have different views and the point of democracy is to air these, to form coalitions or parties, and work out differences without resorting to violence; free and fair elections where all adult citizens can vote for who they want and can trust the outcome of elections; transparency and openness so people know who is responsible for decisions and can hold them accountable; finally, active participation by the public so elected officials truly represent their constituents.

That brings us to two kinds of democracy: representative, like our federal government, or direct democracy. More on that later. Both the UK and USA are representative and balance powers with two houses in their legislatures. The UK House of Commons and House of Lords make up its legislature. It has a prime minister and a figurehead in the monarch.

The UK has more representatives for its population than the USA. The House of Commons has 650 representatives so every MP (Member of Parliament) represents about 100,000 constituents. (There are just under 67.5 million people in the UK this year.) That said, the US House of Representatives has 435 members for all 330+ million Americans. That means each of our representatives has to do their best for about 764,000 people.

We have 100 senators in our upper chamber to their 760 members of the House of Lords. Notably, until 1913 neither Americans nor the British elected members of their upper chamber. We started directly electing senators after the passage of the 17th Amendment. The British MPs in the House of Lords are appointed or simply inherit their membership. Our Senate was designed to have two members equally represent each state to counterbalance populism and to give equity to the voices of less populous states.

The takeaway is that there are loads more of us for every US Congressperson which underscores how critical our active participation is. Youve heard the adage to be a smart consumer because businesses dont look out for the little guy. Advocate for yourself and do your research. When it comes to representation, we might apply similar strategies. Advocate for your perspective. Speak up. Speak loud. Speak often, or they wont hear.

It might be different if we lived in a direct democracy, but the Founding Fathers figured that would fail. James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper 55, Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates; every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob. In short, not even a country run by the wisest could govern themselves peaceably. We all just see the world in different ways. We need democracy to work out how to live together.

Interestingly, some New England towns like Switzerland govern by direct democracy, and 27 of our states have options for limited direct democracy. For example, the recent Kansas vote on an amendment that would have further regulated abortion was decided by the people. An overwhelming majority of Kansans came out to vote against it. In contrast, Hoosier representatives debated, wrote, and passed the new law restricting most abortions in our state.

This is how direct and representative democracy can play out. When legislation is mitigated by representatives, then voters are trusting people who have various philosophies on how to do their job. Some legislators believe they have a duty to represent the views of the people who elected them, setting aside their personal judgment or beliefs. Some believe that their partys manifesto is the mandate they must follow, so they usually vote with the party. Others believe it is their responsibility to trust their own best judgment or moral/ethical framework to do what is best for the people, regardless of what polls say a majority wants.

Each of these has a name, and each may have a value, but what is critical is that representatives are humans, just like us. Weve given them certain powers with their position, but we should never give up our own agency and power. Thats why active participation matters. We might think our letter is just one drop of water in an ocean, but our calls, letters, and votes add up.

The League of Women Voters, a non-partisan, multi-issue organization encourages informed and active participation in government, works to increase public understanding of major policy issues and influences public policy through education and advocacy. All men and women are invited to join the LWV where hands-on work to safeguard democracy leads to civic improvement. For information, visit the website http://www.lwvmontcoin.org or the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County, IN Facebook page.

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Thinking about democracy from two sides of the pond - Journal Review

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Every year since 1970s, the State Department has published a document called "World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers." You probably haven't read it, but it is interesting. It's a detailed accounting of global arms sales, what weapons were sold and where they wound up after they were. The U.S. government published this report in the interest of transparency and then continued to publish it through multiple politically charged scandals and conflicts that would include through Iran Contra, two separate wars in Iraq and all 20 years that we occupied Afghanistan. A report like this would be especially useful to have right now and would be critical to have as the Biden administration sends billions in high-tech military equipment every month to corrupt oligarchs in Eastern Europe.

Where are all of those weapons systems going? We should know the answer to that, but we don't know because this year, for the very first time in half a century, the Biden administration has stopped releasing that information. They never explained why they stopped. They just stopped and no one pushed them. Now you'd think this would be a scandal. If there's one thing the news media exists to do, it's to fight for the release of relevant government records because in a democracy, you have a right to know what is being done in your name, but not anymore. That information is classified, Mr. Citizen, so you don't get to find out where those billions of dollars of weapons that you're paying for are going. Who's getting them? What are they doing with them? You don't get to know.

You don't get to learn about anything about Ashley Biden showering with her father. You can get arrested for that. You don't get to know how many FBI assets were in the crowd on January 6 and what they were doing. As we just noted, you don't get to read the affidavit justifying the FBI's indefensible raid on the home of Joe Biden's primary political opponent. In fact, you don't even get to know why you're not allowed to know because that information has been redacted too. What are you a Russian agent? Stop asking. Didn't used to be this way at all. It's unrecognizable. A lot has changed in a very short time.

WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY KARINE JEAN-PIERRE DEFENDS BIDEN'S 'SEMI-FASCISM' CLAIM ABOUT 'MAGA REPUBLICANS'

The federal investigation into Hunter Biden and his tax affairs has reached a "critical stage," a source told Fox News, as officials are looking into whether to charge President Bidens son with various tax violations, possible foreign lobbying violations and more. ((Randy Holmes via Getty Images))

So. it turns out, looking back 18 months, the 2020 election was the most consequential election of our lifetimes. You assume Joe Biden was incapacitated and couldn't change much. Well, true, he is incapacitated, but the people behind him most definitely are not. They are more ideological and more aggressive than ever. Now it turns out among those people is our largest and most heavily armed federal law enforcement agency. That would be the FBI. The FBI is not allowed to insert itself into domestic politics. That would violate the U.S. Constitution. It is completely illegal, but for several years it has become increasingly clear that that is exactly what the FBI is doing, actively working on behalf of the Democratic Party, mocking the rule of law, subverting our democracy from within far more effectively than any foreign government ever could.

If that sounds like an overheated claim, and it definitely does sound like an overheated claim, unfortunately, you should know it's entirely true. We know that for a fact. Here's how we know and we learned it yesterday. Weeks before the 2020 election, the FBI pressured social media companies to kill the story of Hunter Biden's laptop. Why? Because that was a story that might have prevented Joe Biden from becoming president. That happened and we know this not because The New York Times investigated it. They didn't bother. They didn't bring you a special report in yesterday's paper giving you the details. The New York Times would never do that, even if they knew it to be true and they may. No, we know this instead, because Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook blithely admitted it almost parenthetically during an interview with Joe Rogan. Watch this.

JOE ROGAN: There was a lot of attention on Twitter during the election because of the Hunter Biden laptop story. The Post, so you guys censored that as well?

MARK ZUCKERBERG:So, we took a different path than Twitter. I mean, basically the background here is the FBI, I think basically came to us, some folks on our team was like, "Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert." We thought there wasa lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump.. that's similar to that, so just be vigilant.

DEMOCRATS OPPOSED TO BIDEN STUDENT LOAN HANDOUT PREVIOUSLY SUPPORTED SEPARATE DEBT CANCELLATION BILL

Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg looks on during the VivaTech (Viva Technology) trade fair in Paris, on May 24, 2018. (GERARD JULIEN/AFP via Getty Images) (GERARD JULIEN/AFP via Getty Images)

Oh, so Zuckerberg, just to be clear, you just saw it, but let's just unwind what we saw. Zuckerberg was asked, "Why did you censor the story about Hunter Biden's laptop?" And he said "some folks from the FBI came to us and indicated there was about to be a dump of Russian propaganda." Now, there is still rewriting of history going on in which some are claiming, some on Facebook are claiming actually, that the visit from the FBI had nothing to do with the Hunter Biden laptop, but the answer you just saw was in response to a question about the laptop and the censorship of it and the answer was Russian propaganda, Russian disinformation.

Neither of those terms has an agreed upon meaning. They don't actually mean anything. What's Russian propaganda? Is it true? That should be the only question that any news or information company, including Facebook, ever asked. Is it true? Truth is the defense. No. It's Russian propaganda. Again, a term without a meaning. So, we wanted to know more. We reached out to Mark Zuckerberg after that interview and he responded to us to his credit.

Zuckerberg confirmed that the FBI didn't put any of these warnings about Russian disinformation propaganda in writing. Of course, they didn't. Nothing in writing and that makes sense. If you're the FBI, you wouldn't want to put that in writing because you were, of course, lying. At the moment, the FBI was warning Facebook about a propaganda dump that obviously would include Hunter Biden's laptop, they had Hunter Biden's laptop in their possession. So, they knew perfectly well it was authentic because anyone who looks at it does. We have looked at it and it's instantly obvious this is real and of course, we now know conclusively it is real.

BIDEN SEEMINGLY APOLOGIZES TO WHITE HOUSE STAFF AFTER TAKING TOO MANY MEDIA QUESTIONS: I SHOULDNT DO THAT

So, that laptop was not censored because it was propaganda, whatever that means. By the way, the FBI should never be in the information control business anyway. It was censored because it might hurt Joe Biden and the FBI is the government agency that pushed for it to be censored. Has that ever happened in the United States, ever? That is the definition of police state behavior: a government agency independently decides it's going to determine the outcome of a supposedly democratic election.

So, why is it nearly two years until we learn this? Well, it turns out Facebook is a very political place. The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, paid hundreds of millions of dollars to affect the outcome of the election. Famously, we've reported on that and then, of course, there were Democratic Party operatives working within Facebook. So, on October 14, the Facebook communications official and former Democratic Party operative called Andy Stone claimed that Facebook was censoring this story because of Facebook's "standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation" whatever that means, but that was their initial explanation.

It wasn't until late October that Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the company, publicly mentioned the FBI's involvement for the first time and here's what he said, "We relied heavily on the FBI's intelligence and alerts, both through their public testimony and private briefings that they gave us." He testified to that, but at the time, Mark Zuckerberg didn't mention anything but the FBI warning Facebook about, "Russian propaganda specifically."

BUTTIGIEG EMPHASIZES INFLATION ALLEVIATION AND NEW FLIGHT PROCEDURES WHILE PROMOTING NEW GRANT

Why didn't he say anything? That's odd because in October 2020, right before the election, weeks before a presidential election, every media outlet in the country and then candidate Joe Biden himself were using the very same line, "It's Russian misinformation, it's propaganda" and not surprisingly or coincidentally, dozens of former intelligence officials were saying the same thing. We can't play this enough. Here it is.

PETER STRZOK, 2020: When you look at this computer store owner in Delaware who allegedly received Hunter Biden's laptop, that is more in line with that when you think about somebody who's a useful idiot, that's kind of the entry point that is kind of, again, a classic indicator of the potential presence of disinformation.

KASIE HUNT, 2020: Right-wing media has been focused on Hunter Biden, this laptop that intelligence officials have warned is likely Russian disinformation .

NICOLLE WALLACE, 2020:Law enforcement is actively investigating whether the alleged Hunter Biden emails are linked to any foreign intel ops.

WHITE HOUSE OFFICIALS STAND TO BENEFIT FROM BIDEN STUDENT DEBT HANDOUT: WATCHDOG GROUP

JASON JOHNSON, 2020:The story is preposterous. So, we're supposed to believe that Hunter Biden, in a drunken stupor, dropped off his laptop inapparently a QAnon repair office.

So, those are the shills who will say whatever they're told to say. Of course, no sober person would take them seriously and we missed the bigger story, too. We will admit that. At the time we imagined that this lie, that the laptop was Russian misinformation, was being pushed almost exclusively by Democratic partisans, but that's not true. It was much worse and much more threatening to our democracy, in fact, utterly corrosive of our democracy than that.

Again, our media attributed these claims to former Intel officials who wrote a letter about Russian disinformation, but no, it wasn't just former Intel officials spreading that lie. It was members of the U.S. government, federal bureaucrats, people who work for federal agencies, senior FBI leaders who are still at the FBI. They lied and they knew they were lying and they never took steps to validate this claim that it was Russian propaganda or Russian disinformation. On this show in October of 2020, we interviewed one of Hunter Biden's business partners, a man called Tony Bobulinski, and he verified the authenticity of that laptop.

BIDEN JOINS OTHER DEMS IN DISMISSING REPUBLICAN VOTERS, SAYS HE DOESN'T 'RESPECT THESE MAGA REPUBLICANS'

He had firsthand information. He had texts and emails that were on his phone and also on the laptop. So, we reached out to Tony Bobulinski last night and we asked him a very simple question. Did anyone from the FBI ever call you or your lawyer to find out since your name was all over the laptop, if those texts and emails were real? If they wanted to know if this was Russian disinformation, they would, of course, call you, but not one of them ever did. They knew it wasn't Russian disinformation. They knew it wasn't propaganda, and they knew it was completely real and they lied about it. Here's what Bobulinskitold us in October of 2020.

TONY BOBULINSKI: On May 13, that email was sent from James Gilliar to me. I didn't generate that email. James Gilliar generated that email and in that email, James Gilliar goes through intimate detail of what each individual's requests were from a compensation perspective and how the equity in the enterprise would be divvied up. Very important. May 13. That email was generated by somebody else to me. In that email there's a statement where they go through the equity. Jim Biden has referenced, as you know, 10%. Doesn't say Biden. It saysJim and then it has 10% for the big guy held by H. I 1,000% sit here and know that the big guy is referencing Joe Biden. That's crystal clear to me because Ilived it. I met with the former vice president in person multiple times and Ihad been meeting and talking with Hunter Bidenand Jim Biden and Rob Walker and James Gilliar.

So, to note the obvious, that's not some cable news mouth breather who's giving you his stupid partisan opinion about Hunter Biden's laptop. That's Hunter Biden's former business partner, who can prove he was Hunter Biden's former business partner. No one disputes he was Hunter Biden's former business partner. His name, his emails or texts are all over the laptop and yet somehow the FBI, the agency that sent a dozen agents to investigate a rope in a NASCAR garage, the agency that used hundreds of agents to hunt down grandmothers from the election justice protest on January 6, that same agency couldn't spare a single agent to make a telephone call to Tony Bobulinski to ask questions about the laptop. You claim it's propaganda, it's misinformation. Why don't you call the guy who's on it and ask him? They didn't bother. This is what the FBI has become: an agency that seeks to exert control over the information that you read in the media. What is this? Well, it's terrifying and again, this isn't speculation.

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: BREAKING THE WAVE

We just had it confirmed in public yesterday. These are people whose main goal is to ensure that they never lose power in Washington, interfering with our elections and not simply by hiding information, resorting to force because they know they can get away with it. Joe Biden's chief political opponent, right nowBiden says he's going to run again. Trump has indicated he's runningwill be Donald Trump and so they're targeting them. Is anyone noticing this? John Paul Mac Isaac, the computer repair shop owner who first obtained the laptop, says an FBI agent threatened him so he wouldn't go public with the laptop. In case you've forgotten, watch.

JOHN PAUL MAC ISAAC:The FBI met with me at my home and asked me about my concerns. I voiced my concerns and they I then shifted and said, "Hey, can I just want this out of my shop. At this point, just get it out of my shop and give me a phone number I can call should somebody come looking for it or wants to harass me about it" and they're like, "Yeah, we can't do that." When they showed up, instead of bringing in a tech guy with them, they brought a subpoena and they're like, "Yeah, we're just going to take everything." I was a bit uncomfortable, a little nervous, but then excited at the same time, so I kind of cracked a joke. I said, "Don't worry lads. When I write the book, I'll leave your names out of this" and that's when Agent Mike turned around and said, "Oh, it's in our experience that nothing ever happens to people that talk about these things."

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Yeah. So, in a free country, no one who obeys the law is afraid of law enforcement. That's true. No one should ever be afraid of the FBI except people who know full well they've committed federal crimes. Period, but in this country, let's be honest, everybody's afraid of the FBI because you know exactly what happens to you if you tweak the nose of the FBI or if you annoy Joe Biden. You get raided. You get hauled into the street inleg irons.

You get banned on social media. As Jen Psaki said from the White House podium last year, "We're flagging problematic posts for Facebook." Oh so it's White House, same administration which oversees the FBI, telling social media companies who's allowed to speak? It happened to Alex Berenson. It happened to Donald Trump. Now we know what happened to The New York Post and the people running the FBI, people who did that, are still there. This is a huge problem. This cannot be ignored any longer.

Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channels (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.

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Tucker Carlson: The FBI has been working on behalf of the Democratic Party - Fox News

Those who oppose marijuana policy reform would rather take voters out of the equation altogether.

By Paul Armentano, NORML

Those who wish to perpetuate the failed public policy of cannabis criminalization have lost the hearts and minds of the American public. And they know it.

With public support for marijuana policy reform reaching super-majority status in recent years, prohibitionists and other political opponents have largely abandoned efforts to try and influence public opinion. Rather, they are now relying on gamesmanship to prevent voters from weighing in on the issue. In some cases, they are even willing to overturn the will of the electorate to get their way.

This was the case last election. In Mississippi and South Dakota, reform opponents successfully litigated to nullify election results for a pair of marijuana legalization measures, thereby nullifying the votes cast by 73 percent and 54 percent of voters respectively.

That same year in Nebraska, members of the state Supreme Court struck down a proposed medical cannabis access initiative months after it had been approved by the Secretary of States office. Polling in the state showed that 77 percent of Nebraskans backed the initiative, but they never got the chance to show their support at the polls. Months later, Floridas Republican attorney general successfully brought suit to preemptively deny a proposed 2022 legalization initiative from appearing on the ballot.

Opponents are engaging in similar tactics this election cycle. In Arkansas, they are seeking to invalidate voters pending decision on a statewide proposal to legalize marijuana possession and retail sales. Although the measure will appear on the November ballot, it is now up to justices on the state Supreme Court to determine if the votes will ever be counted. In a filing before the court, opponents of the measure have cynically called upon judges to protect the interests and rights of [the minority of] Arkansans who oppose the legalization of recreational marijuana. (Statewide polling from earlier this year identified majority support for legalization among voters.)

In Missouri, representatives of a leading prohibitionist organization have joined legal efforts to try and disqualify a citizens initiative legalizing marijuana use by adults and providing legal relief for those with prior low-level convictions. Earlier this month, Secretary of State John Ashcroft issued a certificate of sufficiency to the Legal Missouri 2022 campaign, formally placing their initiative on the November ballot. But now opponents contend that election officials erred in doing so, opining that they may have miscounted. (Opponents basis for this claim appears to rest solely on initial media reports speculating that advocates risked falling short of signature requirements in one or two districts. Campaign proponents had vociferously denied these reports.) A statewide survey, published earlier this month, finds that 62 percent of registered voters back legalization.

Finally, in Oklahoma, election officials engaged in extensive delays prior to verifying that advocates had gathered the requisite quantity of signatures to qualify an adult-use legalization measure for the November ballot. Now officials are claiming that, because of those delays, there may be insufficient time to formally certify the measure ahead of the coming election.

In a healthy democracy, those with competing visions on public policy vie for voters support and abide by their voting decisions. In this case, however, it is becoming clear that those who oppose marijuana policy reform would rather take voters out of the equation altogether. Whether or not one personally supports or opposes cannabis legalization, these cynical and undemocratic tactics ought to be a cause of deep concern.

Paul Armentano is the Deputy Director of NORMLthe National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Lawsand he is the co-author of the book Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? (Chelsea Green, 2013).

Heres How Many Marijuana Shops New York Plans To Approve In Each Region Of The State In The First Licensing Round

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Marijuana Prohibitionists Have Lost The War Of Ideas And Are Now Attacking Democracy Itself (Op-Ed) - Marijuana Moment