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The 42nd Session of the Congress will take place from 22-24 March. A debate on the situation in Ukraine will take place on Tuesday afternoon, March 22nd. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been invited to address the Congress by video conference and the Congress will adopt an institutional declaration.

Also on the agenda are reports on the application of the European Charter of Local Self-Government in Germany, Luxembourg, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The competent ministers have been invited to participate in the debates: Juliane Seifert, Germany, Taina Bofferding, Luxembourg, Sleyman Soylu, Turkey, and Michael Gove, United Kingdom. Congress members will also consider reports on the observation of the latest local elections in Armenia and Georgia, and local and regional elections in Denmark, and Morocco. They will hold two debates: one on the use of deliberative methods in European municipalities and regions, in which the Mayor of the City of Mostar Mario Kordi will participate, and the other on the situation of independent candidates and opposition in local and regional elections.

Debates are also planned on the participation of children in the sustainable development of their cities, democratic pluralism in regional governance, regions and diaspora, rural youth and the role of local and regional authorities, as well as on "Fake news, threats and violence - pressures on mayors in the current crises in Europe". In addition, as at every session since the launch of the Congress' "Rejuvenating Politics" initiative in 2014, youth delegates will participate in the debates.

Among the invited personalities are also Mariastella Gelmini, Minister of Regional Affairs and Autonomy, on behalf of the Italian Chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers, Tiny Kox, President of the Parliamentary Assembly, Marija Pejinovi-Buri, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Roberto Gualtieri, Mayor of Rome, Italy, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, President of the European Committee of the Regions, Jean-Claude Marcourt, President of the Conference of European Regional Legislative Assemblies (CALRE) and President of the Walloon Parliament, Belgium, and Stefano Bonaccini, President of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR)

Agenda and documents: 42nd Session webpage

Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine | special page

Originally posted here:
Congress 42nd Session: situation in Ukraine; local democracy in Germany, Luxembourg, Turkey and the UK; fake news, threats and violence against mayors...

The New York Times finally admitted Thursday that at least some of the emails found on a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden at a Delaware repair shop are authentic.

Now that President Joe Biden has been in office for more than a year, confirmation that the president's son used his access to his father for financial gain is hardly newsworthy. But when the New York Post first broke the story less than a month before Election Day in 2020, the story was very much newsworthy and also very damaging to the left-liberal media's preferred candidate, then-former Vice President Biden.

But the threat to democracy posed by what happened to the story of Hunter Biden's laptop is not contained in the way the Left's mouthpieces chose to cover it or ignore it. That NPR refused to cover the story at all, instead issuing a tweet calling it a pure distraction, speaks to the organization's credibility, but it is not a threat to democracy. That CNN called the story a manufactured scandal created by the right-wing media machine says much about that network, but it is not a threat to democracy either.

What threatens democracy are Big Tech companies that denied access to their platforms to suppress the story and ban the New York Post entirely. Twitter not only blocked users from sharing the specific story but also locked the New York Post out of its account for weeks.

Facebook suppressed users from sharing the story because, as Facebook Policy Communications Director Andy Stone said at the time, this story is eligible to be fact-checked by Facebooks third-party fact-checking partners. Stone, who worked for Democrats Barbara Boxer and John Kerry before moving to Facebook, never produced a fact-check that discredited the New York Posts story.

News organizations are free to investigate or not investigate whatever political scandals they want. It is a free county, and there are plenty of other news outlets around. Readers are free to read what they want and abandon outlets that won't cover the news. We encourage people to pick and choose.

But more and more people get their news from Big Tech platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. The Federal Trade Commission has determined that Facebook has a monopoly on the personal social networking market. If Democratic operatives such as Stone are making the decisions about which stories are suppressed and which are promoted, that is a big problem for our democracy.

There are no easy answers. The FTC is seeking to force Facebook to sell Instagram and WhatsApp, but it is hard to see how that would solve the censorship problem. Other people want to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields online platforms from lawsuits stemming from content posted by users. But getting rid of Section 230 could prompt Facebook and Twitter to censor more than they do now of what their users say.

We hope Facebook and Twitter will learn from their botched response to the Hunter Biden laptop story, admit they were wrong, and explain how they intend to do better in the future. If they dont, something far more draconian than antitrust suits and the repeal of Section 230 is coming.

Read the rest here:
Hunter Bidens emails expose the Big Tech threat to democracy - Washington Examiner

I saw The Kashmir Files. The incidents that it vividly and truthfully portrayed were not new to me as I had read several books and heard first hand accounts of the victims and have written many articles on this site on Kashmir. But for most Indians and the world the truth has finally been revealed.

This is also about how democracy failed in the state that was captured by the worst elements of radical Islam with the help of Pakistan and worse the politicians who ruled the state happened to be in bed with both Pakistan and the Separatists who hated India.

The end result was that the original inhabitants of Jammu and Kashmirthat contributed most to Indias philosophy and language-Sanskrit- were ethnically cleansed from their land by Islamists. Just like the Jews who constantly got discriminated against time and again, the Kashmiri Hindus had seven Exoduses from the time of the Islamic invasion of India to the 1990s, where the state I was married in was destroyed and turned into a highly radicalised Islamist society. The only state in India where cinema was banned and where the mosques blared messages for Hindus to leave Kashmir but leave their women behind. It was even more direct with the posters and rallies that rang with the slogan Convert, Leave or Die. It was Indias Kristallnatch where Hindu shops and houses were looted and burnt; targeted killings were the order of the day and neighbours turned hostile. It almost seemed that doctors, teachers, bureaucrats, policemen were brainwashed against Hindus overnight. How could this have happened? But it did and for decades.

I am ashamed to say even Hindus and Muslims of India looked the other way. The media, the state and Central government were complicit as were the so called Liberals. The few voices that rose up were instantly quelled. The environment was such that nobody really cared as the Kashmiri Hindu vote bank was minuscule, while the Muslim vote bank in India, even after Partition was sizeable.

Jinnahs two nation theory that insisted that Muslims and Hindus could not live together and that is why India had to be partitioned into West and East Pakistan, did not work out as a change of populations. In spite of the cruel dismemberment of India, more Muslims stayed in India than went to Pakistan.

The frightening fact after viewing Kashmir Files, is that there are still apologists who come on mainstream media and try to sell the dubious legend that Kashmiris were not driven out by genocidal diktats but went off their own free will. They even try to blame the Governor of Kashmir Jagmohan who first under Rajiv Gandhi the PM, warned him in several letters that the separatist forces, radical Islamists and Pakistan were creating havoc in the valley, but according to sources, Rajiv said that Farooq Abdullah was a friend and he did not want to hear anything against him.

This at a time when Kashmiri Hindus were being discriminated at work places, made to give up their land and homes under the Draconian Roshini Act that was clearly for the Muslims of the state and against the Hindus.

This was the not the first time it had happened. Farooq Abdullahs father Sheik Abdullah, who Nehru made the virtual PM of Kashmir also had a land reform act where several thousand Hindus lost their land and livelihoods to Muslims.

It was politics, Pakistan and and the personal agenda of Muslim leaders that brought about the horrifying genocide of Kashmiri Hindus. But it is still possible to have a Reconciliation pact between the original inhabitants of Kashmir and the Muslims, as long as we dont allow the old political games and Pakistan to create an Islamist narrative.

Vivek Agnihotris film is a warning of what can happen when the state absolves its responsibility along with the Centre to protect its citizens. The Kashmir Files is now in theatres all over the world. I pray that policy makers, people of all faiths and the media see it, not with any biases but as justice and recognition to a people wronged. Just as the Holocaust is seen today.

Unless every citizen of India recognises this film for the truths it tells and reaches out to those who have been deprived of their homeland for 32 years, there can be no justice or reconciliation.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

Read more:
The Kashmir Files Where democracy failed - Times of India

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

I think he is a war criminal, President Joe Biden said Wednesday of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden was responding to a reporters question following a White House event. Earlier, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, ruling on a complaint filed by Ukraine, directed Russia to immediately suspend the military operations that it commenced on 24 February 2022 in the territory of Ukraine. The vote on the court was thirteen in favor, with Russia and China against. On the same day, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan visited Poland and Ukraine as part of his investigation into possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Ukraine. His investigation bypassed the usual months-long authorization process at The Hague after 39 member nations of the ICC requested expedited action.

The Rome Statute, the UN treaty that governs the ICC, has 123 signatory nations, but neither Russia nor the United States is among them, rejecting the courts jurisdiction. Ukraine is also not a party to the ICC, but has allowed it to investigate events within its territory from November, 2013 onward, encompassing the violent Euromaidan protests and the ensuing armed conflict in the Donbas region.

I wish to send a clear message, ICC Prosecutor Khan said in a statement. If attacks are intentionally directed against the civilian population: that is a crime that my Office may investigate and prosecute. If attacks are intentionally directed against civilian objects, including hospitals: that is [also] a crime.

Accounts of the staggering brutality of the invasion increase daily. In Mariupol, a maternity and childrens hospital was bombed last week. This week, also in Mariupol, the Donetsk Regional Theater of Drama was hit. Hundreds of civilians, including children, were sheltering there. The Russian bombardment of Ukrainian civilians has been wanton and relentless, and has included the use of cluster bombs. Overall deaths among the civilian population are estimated well into the thousands. More than 3 million people have fled the country, with UNICEF estimating that the war has created one child refugee per second.

Shortly after Biden called Putin a war criminal, his administration walked back the statement. State Dept. spokesperson Ned Price and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Biden was speaking from the heart, while the official U.S. government process to assess war criminality was ongoing.

There is good reason for Washington officialdom to be circumspect with accusations of war crimes. If a man in the Kremlin can be charged with war crimes for ordering an illegal invasion, what is to stop the same charges from being levied against a man in the White House for doing the same thing? Former President George W. Bush did just that in 2003. Bush said in a statement on February 24th, I join the international community in condemning Vladimir Putins unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine.

Historian Andrew Bacevich knows a thing or two about war. He was a U.S. Army officer in Vietnam. His son, also an Army officer, was killed in Iraq in 2007.

Not for an instant would I want to minimize the horrors that are unfolding in Ukraine today and the deaths and the injuries inflicted on noncombatants, Bacevich said recently on the Democracy Now! news hour. But lets face it, the numbers are minuscule compared to the number of people that died, were displaced, were injured as a consequence of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistanin the vicinity of 900,000 deaths resulted from our invasion[s]. I understand that Americans dont want to talk about that, dont want to remember that, the political establishment wants to move on from that. But there is a moral dimension to the Ukraine war that should cause us to be a little bit humble about pointing fingers at other people.

Indeed, Bidens own Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, had to edit her March 2nd remarks to the General Assembly. She said, We have seen videos of Russian forces moving exceptionally lethal weaponry into Ukraine, which has no place on the battlefield. That includes cluster munitions and vacuum bombs which are banned under the Geneva Convention.

The phrase, which has no place on the battlefield was struck from the transcript, reflecting the U.S. refusal to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The U.S. used cluster bombs in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq and as recently as 2009 in Yemen in an attack that killed 55 people.

If international law is to count for anything, it must be enforced equally. No one, in Russia, the United States or elsewhere, is above the law. The United States should join the civilized world and sign the international treaties on the ICC, cluster munitions, and landmines.

Read this article:
War Criminals Must Be Held Accountable, Whether in Russia, the U.S. or Elsewhere - Democracy Now!

InDigital Technology and Democratic Theory, editorsLucy Bernholz, Hlne Landemore and Rob Reich bring together contributors to explore how new digital technologies are reshaping our understanding of democracy and democratic theory. This original and important contribution promotes cross-disciplinary scholarship on questions of democracy in the digital age, writesRahel S.

Digital Technology and Democratic Theory. Lucy Bernholz, Hlne Landemore and Rob Reich (eds). University of Chicago Press. 2021.

How do new digital technologies shape and reshape our understanding of democracy and democratic theory? Current discussions about the domination of global platforms reveal the need to engage with this question more thoroughly. By any measure, the edited volume Digital Technology and Democratic Theory is an important contribution to a field previously overlooked by democratic theorists. In an age in which digital environments create new barriers to equal rights and political participation, the volume carefully assembles an array of cross-disciplinary perspectives and asks the question: is there a need for a digital democratic theory?

Much has been written about the democratic challenges brought by new digital technologies. While scholars of race and technology studies, media studies and critical algorithms studies have been researching the effects for some time, the silence of democratic theorists is puzzling. The urgency and directness of Digital Technology and Democratic Theory edited by Lucy Bernholz, Hlne Landemore and Rob Reich attempts to end this silence. The central aim of the volume is threefold: firstly, exploring the political consequences of digital technologies; secondly, enriching our understanding of the limits and possibilities of the deployment of digital technologies in the political realm; and thirdly, investigating how democratic governance might support the design of new technological objects and infrastructures.

Digital Technology and Democratic Theory is an original work, covering a range of different concepts and practices with notable precision. While some scholars aspire to use digital technologies to enhance e-voting or move beyond the nation state to globalise democratic governance, others underscore the need for online deliberation and the crowdsourcing of civic expertise and judgment. Still others promote the ideas of technologically empowered forms of non-elected democratic representation or regulative reforms such as open-data and transparency initiatives, a data tax and democratic currencies.

Photo byROBIN WORRALLonUnsplash

Conceptually, the book hovers between a Habermasian paradigm of deliberative democracy, a pragmatists lineage, the Schumpeterian model of democracy and participatory and direct forms of democracy. Some contributors to the volume analyse the intersection between democratic theory and digital technology mostly through the lens of procedural fairness while others emphasise the importance of outcome quality. Others again focus on the informational conditions of a healthy digital public sphere or aspire to (re-)define citizenship beyond the sporadic activation of citizens as voters.

The volume dwells longest on the possibility of a digital public sphere. Following the footsteps of Jrgen Habermas, in their chapter Democracy and the Digital Political Sphere Joshua Cohen and Archon Fung, for example, characterise the overarching political problem as an erosion of reason in public life. The ideal of democratic society which combines mass democracy and public reasoning (27) becomes undermined, they claim, by powerful private corporations, online harassment, censorship, affective polarisation and homogeneous information spaces. As suggested by the authors, attempts at building a more democratic digital public sphere must be attentive to regulating speech and powerful private corporations; the productions of high-quality information, privacy and security; and the creation of a civic culture of responsible, democracy-reinforcing behaviour (43).

In Chapter Two, Open Democracy and Digital Technologies, Landemore makes a strong point of asking how representative democracy could be reinvented with the help of new digital technologies (65). What interests her primarily is the question of how the key institutional principles of her new model of open democracy can be facilitated using digital technologies. While her idea of openness refers to citizens having general access to power, the key principles of open democracy comprise participatory rights, deliberation, the majoritarian principle, democratic representation, and transparency (7). For Landemore, digital technology can advance open democracy because those technologies (namely, augmented reality tools) can enable much larger meetings of disembodied or reembodied (using pseudonym or avatars) individuals (73). It can further facilitate so-called mini-publics that gather a random sample of the entire demos (74) for deliberative exchanges.

In the chapter Democratic Societal Collaboration in a Whitewater World, David Lee, Margaret Levi and John Seely Brown convincingly explore the potential of digital technologies for scaling collaborative problem-solving. Seen through the lens of John Deweys model of democratic experimentalism, they understand civil society as a collective problem-solving endeavor and democracy as a form of self-governance (223) that enhances opportunities for civic learning and crowdsourced problem-solving.

Although the editors are right to point out that Digital Technology and Democratic Theory is just the beginning of a scholarly conversation, there is a significant problem with the volume. How power is embedded in new digital technologies is understudied. Though the volume hints at the ways digital technologies might affect the balance of power, for example, between experts and others as well as corporations and the state, it could have benefitted from more nuanced exploration of power dynamics. Lacking therefore is any sense of what the democratic problem in the digital age entails beyond concerns of transparency, accountability and legitimacy.

Undoubtedly, much excellent work has been conducted by the contributors to the volume on the deployment of new digital technologies in the political realm. While rendering digital technologies accountable and legible has come to be seen as the most efficient means of re-establishing democratic control, validating truth and the public good, the volume overlooks forms of power that constitute those technologies in their ownership, design and control. According to Cohen and Fung, for example, internet companies should help users behave as citizens by designing their platforms to foster participants democratic orientation (50).

While there is much to recommend in what deliberative and regulative strategies can and ought to achieve, privacy regulations and increased participation in the creation of data and processes of datafication dont go far enough. Democratic theorists also need to engage with the social and technical conditions under which digital technologies emerge and operate. The key task of scholarly work cant be limited to exploring the informational conditions of a healthy public sphere and infrastructure of civil society, as suggested in the introduction to this volume. Given that democracy and new digital technologies are twin objects of deep, though ambivalent, attachment in the contemporary liberal imagination, the task for democratic theorists must also expand in two ways: firstly, by understanding both terms democracy and digitalisation through the other; and secondly, by asking how liberal ideas shape and limit the way we think of both democracy and digitalisation.

Liberal democrats imagine digital technology through their understanding of democracy, and increasingly understand democracy through their encounter with technology. For example, scholars imagining digital technologies as democratic often raise the question of how those technologies can help in realising democratic ideals of inclusion and equality. What gets insufficient attention in Digital Technology and Democratic Theory, however, are the ways that those ideals are lodged within a long history of violence and exploitation. Thus, instead of turning a blind eye to the limits of democratic ideals, any call for designing democratic norms directly into algorithmic systems must come to terms with the ways those norms have often served to legitimise specific political settlements granting a certain freedom to those who are well-represented by those norms, while eradicating the experiences of others.

To conclude, Digital Technology and Democratic Theory is an important contribution to a rapidly emerging field. The original potential of the volume lies in promoting cross-disciplinary scholarship on questions of democracy in the digital age. Thus, for scholars and students of a variety of disciplines including media studies, social science and the humanities, as well as engineers, the volume is essential reading.

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Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

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Rahel S LSERahel S (@RahelSuess) is a political theorist and a postdoctoral visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the founding director of the Data Politics Lab (Humboldt-University of Berlin) and the founder of the journal engage.

Read more here:
Book Review: Digital Technology and Democratic Theory edited by Lucy Bernholz, Hlne Landemore and Rob Reich - London School of Economics