Putin may be the biggest dupe of his fake election landslide

With official results showing he won nine out of 10 votes, has the Russian autocrat overplayed his hand?

BY EVA HARTOG

“The most important outcome of any Russian election is legitimacy,” Vladimir Putin told Russia’s top election officials when they gathered at his residence outside Moscow in November. “That is the foundation of political stability.”

On Sunday, after three days of voting, those same officials declared a landslide victory for the president.

Why Dutton is going nuclear
The opposition leader thinks he can sell nuclear power to the public. The energy industry remains unconvinced by the business case.

BY Jennifer Hewett

Peter Dutton believes he has found a politically saleable energy formula. It includes the now familiar condemnation of Labor’s “reckless” policy and warnings of catastrophic consequences in making power “exorbitantly expensive and the grid unreliable”. The shiny new element is the Coalition’s commitment to establishing nuclear power.

https://www.afr.com/business-summit/why-dutton-is-going-nuclear-20240312-p5fbs1

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that by criticizing democratic processes in other states, all while using their own administrative resources to suppress one of American presidential candidates, Washington has become a laughing stock of the rest of the world.

Speaking to the journalists at his campaign headquarters in Moscow on early Monday morning, after the preliminary results indicated his victory with over 87% of the vote in the country’s presidential elections, the Russian leader said that the "whole world is laughing at what is happening” in the US.

“We are behaving with more restraint than their opponents in other countries, but this is just a catastrophe, not a democracy – that’s what it is,” Putin said.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said he will propose a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine during the Summer Olympic Games, set to take place in Paris between July 26 and August 11.

In an interview with Ukrainian media on Saturday, Macron was asked whether France, as the host of the games this year, will follow tradition and seek “a ceasefire during the Olympics.” The journalist was apparently referring to the Olympic Truce, a period of conflict cessation which historically began seven days before the games and ended seven days after so that the athletes could safely travel to and from the Olympics. 

“It will be requested,” the French leader responded.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said that interest accrued from Russian assets frozen in the EU will be used to purchase weapons for Ukraine.

Soon after Russia launched its military operation against Ukraine in February 2022, Western countries froze approximately $300 billion of funds belonging to the Russian Central Bank. Of that sum, the Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear holds around €191 billion ($205 billion), which has accrued nearly €4.4 billion in interest over the past year.

Speaking at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Berlin on Friday, Chancellor Scholz said: “We will use windfall profits from Russian assets frozen in Europe to financially support the purchase of weapons for Ukraine.”

Unpredictability has become a feature of life in Russia. 

But that does not apply to elections. 

When Russian state TV flashed initial results showing that Vladimir Putin had won re-election with nearly 88% of the vote, this official landslide came as no surprise. 

James Eastwood and his union colleagues got to their office one Tuesday afternoon to find that someone had broken in. The intruder hadn’t taken personal valuables or expensive equipment: all they had done was pull down the pro-Palestine posters in the window.

The break-in didn’t come as a huge shock to Eastwood, co-chair of the University and College Union (UCU) branch at Queen Mary University in east London. 

By Anita Mureithi
Open Democracy

The Israel Files is a new MintPress series exploring and highlighting the many revelations about the Israeli occupation of Palestine that WikiLeaks documents disclosed. It hopes to shed light on many of the most important and underreported revelations the publishing group exposed.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in ScheerPost as a reprint from MintPress News on September 29, 2022. We are reposting it now because of its relevance. 

     By Alan MacLeod / MintPress News

One of the most dangerous things that a government can do is present a glossy picture of the economy at a time when families and small businesses are suffering. Governments are always optimistic, but sending euphoric messages tends to backfire, especially when the situation for the middle class is complicated.

Daniel Lacalle

In the United States, the Biden administration’s message of “the strongest economy in decades” is not just an exaggeration; it may anger voters who suffer the burden of negative real wage growth, accumulated inflation, and higher taxes.

SOME PEOPLE HAVE ARGUED THAT PUTIN SHOULD NOT HAVE “INVADED” UKRAINE OUT OF HIS OWN FREE WILL. HE HAD A CHOICE NOT TO. OTHERS, MUCH CLEVERER THAN GUS, SUCH AS PROFESSOR JOHN MEARSHEIMER SAY THAT PUTIN “DID NOT HAVE ANY CHOICE”… 

After escaping an abusive partner more than a decade ago, Adriana Carrington felt life was just getting back on track.

She had worked through years of therapy, finally got a mortgage for a new home, and started her own business.

But she says the tax office has now derailed her life by hitting her with an alleged tax debt dating back to the 2008-09 financial year — a debt she never knew existed.

We have previously discussed the unrelenting attacks by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his allies on free speech. There has been a steady criminalization of speech, including even jokes and religious speech, in Canada.

The Georgia judge overseeing Donald Trump's trial on charges of trying to overturn his election defeat says lead prosecutor Fani Willis can remain on the case, but a deputy with whom she had a personal relationship stepped down in keeping with the judge's order.

Nathan Wade, the special counsel hired for the case, resigned on Friday in an open letter to Willis.

Ukraine must regain control over all the territories it once held, including Russia’s Crimean Peninsula, French President Emmanuel Macron has said. Otherwise, no “lasting peace” will be possible, he claimed.

The president made the remarks on Thursday in an interview with broadcasters TF2 and France 2, bluntly describing Russia as France’s “adversary.” At the same time, he insisted that Paris has not been “waging war on Russia” but merely “supporting” Kiev in the conflict.

QUESTIONING THE TV ACTORS: You know that all the news that’s fit to print is just a cog in the never-ending government-funded propaganda machine. From local news to international commentary the bought and paid for ‘repeaters’ of the world have let down their viewers and readers, time after time. 

“Zero. They’re in it for the clicks, or to set the propaganda of the day, not for the truth,” responded one reader.

By Ad Washbro