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So remarkable is the fine print in Canadas new law that Stalin and Mao would have been proud sponsors of such a law.

The annual Ides of March lamentation about the death of democracy in India has resumed in earnest. The reason: Sweden-based think-tank V-Dem has released its latest annual report n freedom and democracy around the world. The cover title is quite fancy: Democracy Report 2024: Democracy Losing & Winning At The Ballot. The authors were not surprised in the least when V-Dem reiterated its stance that India has descended almost irretrievably to become an electoral autocracy. In late 2021, the people who wrote the then annual report had already passed judgement that the Election Commission of India is no longer an independent body and has been subverted by the Narendra Modi regime. The authors wouldnt waste anybodys time by quoting chapter and verse the blithering nonsense written in the latest report. Some gems are enough. For instance, analysing South Asia, the experts at V-Dem write: The level of democracy enjoyed by the average human being in the region is now down to levels last seen in 1975almost half a century ago. That was when the Vietnam War ended and when Indira Gandhi declared a state of Emergency in India. India, with 1.4 billion citizens, it seems, is primarily responsible for the decline in democracy witnessed in South and Central Asia.

Quite predictably, the legions of critics whose life in India is dedicated to demonising Narendra Modi, have found yet another weapon to lash out at him and his government. According to them, Modi has subverted every democratic institution including the Election Commission and even the Supreme Court ever since he became Prime Minister in 2014. In fact, they insist he has been displaying authoritarian and fascist traits ever since he became the Chief Minister of Gujarat. Once again, the authors wont waste time analysing this irrational hatred towards a political leader. We are more interested in the astonishing claim made by V-Dem, and vociferously supported by its fans in India that democracy in Canada is genuinely liberal and far superior to democracy in India. Going back to actual facts, that is such a brazen lie that only liberals think they can hoodwink people by parroting it ad nauseam.

For those not following the state of democracy in Canada, its Parliament is enacting a new law that is called the Online Harms Bill or Bill B-63. Ostensibly, the new law is meant to protect children and other vulnerable groups from online predators. But so remarkable is the fine print in the new law that Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong would have been proud sponsors of such a law in the contemporary world. Under this law, hate speech has become a criminal offence and can even lead to a life sentence. How is hate speech defined? It is content that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or a group of individuals based on their race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics and disability. Judges in Canada will have the discretion to determine if an individual has committed a criminal offence by indulging in this kind of online hate. Anyone can file a complaint against any fellow Canadian citizen under this law and apart from jail, judges will have the discretion to impose a penalty ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 that will be handed over to the complainant. There is no provision to punish the complainant even if she has levelled blatantly false accusations of online hate. A new Canada Human Rights Tribunal is being set up to receive such complaints and process them, even in secret and without knowledge of the accused if the complainant wishes to remain anonymous.

What would happen if such a law were passed by Indian Parliament under a fascist Narendra Modi? Some examples will suffice. DMK leaders Udhayanidhi Stalin and A. Raja could potentially face life in prison for hate against Sanatana Dharma. Lalu Prasad Yadav too could be convicted under this law for mocking and insulting the marital status of Narendra Modi. Rahul Gandhi too would be in serious trouble for asking why most people with the Modi surname are thieves. On can go on and on. The new Canadian law has a provision which is even more frighteningly Orwellian and dystopian. A person can be punished in advance by a judge if there is an apprehension that the accused might commit the crime of online hate at a future date. A potential victim can approach the court under this law and the potential criminal can be sentenced to house arrest and wearing electronic monitoring devices at all times. Failure to comply will result in a one-year jail term.

Now, if you happen to have even a modicum of common sense, how is this new Canadian law not a direct and murderous assault on free speech, civil liberty and democracy? The mainstream media in Canada is so beholden to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his gang of liberals that they are hailing it as a momentous victory for human rights and democracy. The critics who are slamming this law as an affront to democracy have been banished from mainstream media platforms. They use social media platforms to highlight their concerns. But then, under the new law, some liberal Canadian judge can send the dissenters to jail for online hate. Can you call any country that has a draconian law like this a democracy by any yardstick? Yet, you have experts at think-tanks like V-Dem gushing about the success of liberal democracy in Canada, while they moan about the descent of a once liberal India into an electoral autocracy. Of course, there are thousands of secular liberals in India who unhesitatingly share the worldview of V-Dem. What can one say about these gymnastics over free speech and democracy?

The authors would conclude by highlighting another stupendous act of double standards. When Indian farmers protested against the three farm reform laws and effectively blockaded the national capital region for almost a year, causing untold misery to hundreds of thousands of commuters, Justin Trudeau publicly supported them and warned India against curbing the rights of farmers to protest. What happened at the end? The farm reform laws were withdrawn and even those arrested for wanton acts of violence had their cases withdrawn. Trudeau became a completely different animal when truckers in Canada launched protests against strict and rigid restrictions imposed on movements because of the Covid pandemic. They started a Freedom Convoy. Not only were the protestors arrested under national security laws but they were de facto branded as terrorists. Even their bank accounts were frozen and confiscated.

But who is the fascist who suppresses free speech and protests? Modi, of course. And who is the living epitome of liberal free speech? Why, Trudeau of course.

Yashwant Deshmukh is Founder & Editor in Chief of CVoter Foundation and Sutanu Guru is Executive Director.

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You really think democracy is safer in Canada than in India? - The Sunday Guardian

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

Haiti and Honduras have made headlines in the last few weeks. Honduras former president, Juan Orlando Hernndez, was just convicted in a US court of drug trafficking. He faces life in prison. Haiti is a nation without a government, as armed groups have united against the US-backed, unelected Prime Minister installed after the assassination of their president in 2021. In both cases, what is missing from mainstream news coverage is the role of US intervention that brought them to this point.

The crisis in Haiti is a crisis of imperialism, University of British Columbia Professor Jemima Pierre, a Haitian American scholar, explained on the Democracy Now! news hour. In her NACLA Report article headlined, Haiti as Empires Laboratory, she describes her home country as the site of the longest and most brutal neocolonial experiment in the modern world.

Haiti was the worlds first Black republic, founded in 1804 following a slave revolt. France demanded Haiti pay reparations, for the loss of slave labor when Haitis enslaved people freed themselves. For more than a century, Haitis debt payments to France, then later to the US, hobbled its economy. The United States refused to recognize Haiti for decades, until 1862, fearful that the example of a slave uprising would inspire the same in the US.

In 1915, the US invaded Haiti, occupying it until 1934. The U.S. also backed the brutal Duvalier dictatorships from 1957 to 1986. Jean-Bertand Aristide became Haitis first democratically-elected president in 1991, only to be ousted in a violent coup eight months later. The coup was supported by President George H.W. Bush and later by President Bill Clinton. Public pressure forced Clinton to allow Aristides return in 1994, to finish his presidential term in 1996. Aristide was reelected in 2001.

Democracy Now! traveled to C.A.R. in 2004 covering a delegation led by Transafrica founder Randall Robinson and U.S. Congressmember Maxine Waters who defied US policy and escorted the Aristides back to the Western Hemisphere. Aristide confirmed to Democracy Now! then that he had been ousted in a coup dtat backed by the United States. Aristide then went to live in exile in South Africa for the next seven years.

In response to allegations that gangs are currently controlling Haiti, Professor Pierre said, The so-called gang violence is actually not the main problem in Haiti. The main problem in Haiti is the constant interference of the international community, and the international community here is, very explicitly, the U.S., France and Canada.

The Biden administration is reportedly now considering the transfer of Haitian asylum seekers to the controversial U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba a repeat of some of the worst U.S. policies in its long history of exploitation of Haitians.

Honduras, meanwhile, currently has a democratically-elected president, Xiomara Castro. Her husband, Manuel Mel Zelaya, was elected president in 2006, then ousted in a US-backed coup in 2009. In the following years, Honduras descended into a narco-state, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee violence, seeking asylum in the United States and elsewhere.

In 2013, Juan Orlando Hernndez was elected president amidst allegations of campaign finance violations, then again in 2017 in an election widely considered fraudulent. Shortly thereafter, his brother Juan Antonio Hernndez was arrested in Miami for drug trafficking. Then, following Xiomara Castros election, Juan Orlando Hernndez himself was arrested and extradited to the US for cocaine trafficking. On March 8th, he was convicted in US federal court, and is currently awaiting sentencing.

The evidence was chilling, history professor Dana Frank, who was in the courtroom, said on Democracy Now! This litany of assassinations of prosecutors, assassinations of journalists, corruption of the police, the military, politicians, the president, his brother, you name it. And it was like the curtain was drawn back, and you could see the day-to-day workings of this tremendous violent, corrupt mechanism that was the Juan Orlando Hernndez administrationthis was what happened after the 2009 coup that opened the door for the destruction of the rule of law in Honduras.

US intervention in Haiti, Honduras and other countries is one of the principal drivers of people seeking asylum in the United States, as they flee violence, poverty and persecution at home. This point is almost never mentioned in the US press. To understand and ultimately solve the immigration crisis, Americans need to understand what their government has long done in their name, with their tax dollarsarming and propping up brutal regimes abroad.

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Haiti, Honduras, and US Hegemony - Democracy Now!

WASHINGTON, D.C. A unanimous panel of three North Carolina judges this morning sided with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D), striking down a new Republican-sponsored power grab law that would have removed the governors authority to make appointments to the state board of elections and instead granted it to the GOP-controlled Legislature.

In addition to stripping Coopers appointment power, the law would have required state and county boards of elections to have an even number of Democratic and Republican-appointed members, increasing the potential for deadlock. The now-struck down law departed from the current structure that allows a majority of state and county board members three out of five to be from the governors political party.

The law would have also given the Legislature the final say on appointing leadership positions to state and county boards of elections if board members were unable to reach a decision and also prevented the governor from removing members from state and county boards for any reason.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections oversees election administration and works in conjunction with the states 100 county boards of elections that are engaged in conducting local elections, preparing ballots, operating voting sites and more.

Prior to todays ruling permanently blocking the power grab law from taking effect, the legislation remained temporarily blocked due to a decision from the same three-judge panel, which granted Coopers request for a preliminary injunction in late November 2023.

The panel consisting of two Republicans and one Democratic judge today held that the law infringes upon the Governors constitutional duties and is a stark and blatant removal of appointment power from the Governor that must be permanently blocked.

Todays ruling is not the first time that North Carolina courts have found Republicans power-grabbing attempts unconstitutional. Back in 2017, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in favor of Cooper who filed a similar lawsuit seeking to thwart an earlier attempt by Republicans to restructure North Carolina election boards.

A vast majority of North Carolina voters have also opposed such efforts, voting in 2018 to soundly reject a proposed constitutional amendment that would have overhauled the structure of state and county election boards and transferred appointment power to the Legislature.

In response to todays ruling, Cooper said in a statement that Republican leaders should stop their efforts to control the ballot box and sow chaos before the November elections. Bipartisan courts and voters have repeatedly rejected these clearly unconstitutional attempts to seize control of elections.

Read the order here.

Learn more about the case here.

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Democracy Alerts - North Carolina Court Strikes Down New Election Law That Would Strip Power From Democratic ... - Democracy Docket

In a three-day election that leaves no room for doubt, Russian President Vladimir Putin is poised to win a fifth term on Sunday, allowing him to stay in power until 2030 and, should he run again, to 2036.

But many analysts believe the 71-year-old autocrat will rule this nation of 146 million people for life.

It was not supposed to be this way. Under Russias constitution, Putins term in power was supposed to end in 2008 but under a tricky bait-and-switch, he effectively ruled Russia as prime minister for four years, swapping places with Dmitry Medvedev. Putin returned as president in 2012, sparking massive protests that changed nothing.

In 2020, Putin engineered changes to the constitution in a nationwide vote marred by irregularities that allowed him at least two more six-year terms.

Putin has centralized power, invaded Georgia and Ukraine, and destroyed the Russian opposition. The two most charismatic opposition leaders are dead: Boris Nemtsov was gunned down near the Kremlin in 2015, and Alexei Navalny survived a state-ordered poisoning in 2020 but died in prison last month. His widow says he was killed on Putins direct order. Other opposition figures are either in prison, silenced or have fled the country.

Having cleared the field, the Kremlin responds indignantly to suggestions that Russias democracy is fake. Last week, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would not tolerate such criticisms. Our democracy is the best and we will continue to build it, he said.

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Why does Putin always win? What to know about Russia's pseudo election. - The Washington Post

WASHINGTON, D.C. On the heels of a recent shakeup in its senior leadership, the Republican National Committee (RNC) today filed a federal lawsuit in Michigan seeking to purge allegedly ineligible registrants from the states voter rolls.

Following a swift overhaul in the past week, the RNCs former leadership has now been replaced primarily with close allies of former President Donald Trump. With former North Carolina GOP chair Michael Whatley and Trumps daughter-in-law Lara Trump at the helm as co-chairs, the RNC has assumed an avowedly more offensive election integrity strategy.

In an interview with the Washington Post on Tuesday, Trumps campaign advisor, Chris LaCivita stated that [t]he RNCs new posture as it relates to litigation is much more offensive and much less defensive. Lara Trump, who appeared on Fox News the same day, told Sean Hannity that the RNC is devoting massive resources to the organizations first ever election integrity division.

The new Michigan case is the third anti-voting lawsuit filed by the RNC just this year and many more are expected to be filed ahead of the 2024 elections. The complaint, which was filed on behalf of both the RNC and two Republican voters, alleges that Michigans top election officials are failing to properly maintain clean and accurate voter registration records in violation of a federal law known as the National Voter Registration Act.

The complaint claims that at least 53 counties across the state have more active registered voters than adults over the age of 18 and an additional 23 counties have active voter registration rates that exceed 90% of adults over 18. Based on these statistics, the RNC maintains that Michigans number of registered voters is impossibly high and inflated.

The lawsuit goes on to raise concerns how the states purported failure to maintain accurate voter lists undermines the integrity of elections by increasing the opportunity for ineligible voters or voters intent on fraud to cast ballots. Citing scant evidence, the complaint adds that [v]oter fraud is very real in Michigan. Several recent elections have suffered from voter fraud.

Just two weeks ago, a federal judge tossed out a very similar lawsuit brought by the right-wing Public Interest Legal Foundation that mounted claims against Michigans voter list maintenance program. In its rejection of that lawsuit, the court held that [t]he record demonstrates that deceased voters are removed from Michigans voter rolls on a regular and ongoing basis, adding that [f]rom 2019 to March 2023, Michigan cancelled between 400,000 and 450,000 registrations because the voters were deceased.

Against the backdrop of the RNCs new lawsuit, Republicans and right-wing activists are engaging in a nationwide, conspiracy-ridden effort both in and out of the courtroom to purge eligible voters from the rolls. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) is currently working to reinstate the voter registrations of over 1,000 individuals residing in Detroit-area suburbs, whose registrations were improperly canceled as a result of a right-wing voter purge scheme.

As of today, the RNC is involved in 23 anti-voting lawsuits across 14 states, many of which seek to restrict the voting process in key swing states including Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin ahead of the 2024 elections.

Read the complaint.

Learn more about the case here.

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On the Heels of Recent Shakeup, RNC Files Lawsuit in Michigan Seeking to Purge Voters - Democracy Docket