‘After sending his wife a Valentine’s Day message and appearing on camera on February 15th, Navalny reportedly “felt sick after a walk and lost consciousness.” Only a fool would take the Russia’s announcement at face value – it is clear that Alexei Navalny’s death was an assassination by the murderous regime of Vladimir Putin.
Like Boris Nemtsov before him, Navalny was a challenge to a political system that marginalizes its opposition and crushes all dissent. His bravery should be seen as an inspiration for Russian civil society and his memory will endure beyond the regime that killed him. As we mourn his death, we should also mourn the Russia that could-have-been. Even though Putin would never have allowed his victory, Navaly’s 2018 presidential campaign was the last opportunity to bring political change via the electoral process in Russia.
In a speech this morning at the Munich Security Conference, his widow Yulia Navalnaya called upon the international community to hold Putin accountable. With this in mind, we should turn our attention to the Americans that have enabled and encouraged Putin every step of the way. Tucker Carlson gushes over Moscow’s subway stations and potemkin McDonalds as Putin murders his chief political opponent. donald trump openly invites Russia to attack NATO members while personally torpedoing military aid to Ukraine. These useful idiots should be seen as accessories to murder….’ ( Alexander Vindman via Why It Matters )
Daily Archives: 17 Feb 24
trump is suddenly in need of a lot of cash. That’s everyone’s problem.
‘Two recent verdicts have now left donald trump on the hook for nearly half a billion dollars.
On Friday, a New York judge handed the former president a $355 million penalty, and banned him from serving in a leadership position in any business in New York for three years, for fraudulently inflating his net worth to lenders in order to receive more favorable loan agreements. And in January, a Manhattan jury ordered trump to pay the writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her after she accused him of raping her. (A separate jury in May had found trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the 1990s.)
Together, the damages from these two lawsuits are worth more than the amount of cash trump claimed to have on hand last April, potentially putting him in a financial bind as he also faces debt repayments and mounting legal fees. Even if he appeals these decisions, as he is expected to do, he still likely will have to front the money while that process runs its course, or secure a bond, which would come with its own conditions.
For a well-connected billionaire, that might usually amount to nothing more than a temporary inconvenience; after all, trump could always liquidate some of his assets or borrow even more money to cover his short-term obligations.
But trump isn’t just one of the country’s richest men, with an estimated net worth in the low billions; he’s also running to serve a second term as president of the United States. And for any candidate for public office — let alone the presidency — being cash-strapped while owing such significant amounts of money could be a serious liability.
“It’s pretty scary from an ethics perspective,” said Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog group that has chronicled trump’s abuses of power and filed lawsuits against him….’ (Vox)
