World Briefing: October 23, 2024
Russian President Vladimir Putin will reportedly meet with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on the sidelines of BRICS summit in Kazan. Ukraine has slammed the meeting: “The UN secretary general declined Ukraine’s invitation to the first global peace summit in Switzerland. He did, however, accept the invitation to Kazan from war criminal Putin.” Guterres was in Johannesburg last year for the summit but Putin did not attend due to fears that he’d be picked up on an active ICC arrest warrant. The UN chief is widely disliked in Ukraine for appearing to be cozy with the Russian side and for a bungled UN response to Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine
Russia, China and Iran are intent on fanning divisive narratives to divide Americans ahead of the November 5 US presidential elections and may consider fomenting violence after voters go to the polls, US intelligence officials said on Tuesday. The officials, briefing reporters on US election security, said foreign actors could consider physical threats and violence, and are highly likely to conduct disinformation operations to create uncertainty and undermine the election process. “Foreign actors, particularly Russia, Iran and China, remain intent on fanning divisive narratives to divide Americans and undermine Americans’ confidence in the US democratic system. These activities are consistent with what these actors perceive to be in their interests, even as their tactics continue to evolve,” said one official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). That official said influence actors “particularly from Russia, Iran and China” have learned from previous US elections and are better prepared to exploit opportunities to stoke unrest. - Reuters
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump faces a growing pile of missed payments for rallies and legal bills during his current bid for the presidency, previous campaigns, and in the private sector. Trump owes cities across the country for costs associated with staging a rally, including security costs, public safety expenses, allocation of resources and, in some cases, facility rentals. One of the bills he owes is to the City of Prescott Valley in Arizona. City officials told Al Jazeera that Trump’s campaign has not paid the full costs of his local rally in 2022. The city said it is still owed $25,737.32. A city spokesperson told Al Jazeera that they had asked the campaign to pay up front for the most recent rally held earlier this month. This is far from the only outstanding bill the Republican nominee owes in this swing state of Arizona. The city of Mesa invoiced the campaign for an October 2018 rally. Its attorney followed up a few months later, in December, for payment of $64,477.56, but with no success. - Al Jazeera
Donald Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff has said the former president is a fascist who has spoken admiringly of Adolf Hitler and would seek to govern as a dictator, according to new reports. John Kelly, a retired four-star general who was Trump’s homeland security chief and later ran his White House, made the comments in interviews published by The New York Times late on Tuesday. In a rare intervention just two weeks ahead of the US presidential election, Kelly told the newspaper the former president fit the dictionary definition of “fascism”. “It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterised by a dictatorial leader, centralised autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” Kelly said. “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.” - FT
The owner of the Los Angeles Times has blocked the paper from endorsing a candidate for president this year. Last week, the LA Times published its electoral endorsements for the 2024 election. And while the paper noted in its first line that it is “no exaggeration to say this may be the most consequential election in a generation,” that was the only mention of the presidential race in its endorsements. The paper’s editorial board, which has endorsed Democratic candidates in every presidential race since it first endorsed then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, was preparing to do so once again this election. But according to two people familiar with the situation, executive editor Terry Tang told editorial board staff earlier this month that the paper would not be endorsing a candidate in the presidential election this cycle, a decision that came from the paper’s owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a doctor who made his fortune in the healthcare industry. The paper did not explain its decision, though it noted at the bottom of its online endorsement page that “the editorial board endorses selectively, choosing the most consequential races in which to make recommendations.” - Semafor
VW’s chief marketing officer and head of product strategy for China, Jochen Sengpiehl, had fun in Thailand and upon his return to China was drug-tested and found to have marijuana and cocaine in his system, reports the Financial Times. He was subsequently deported. This news has been going around chat groups for a few days; it is known that the PRC will sometimes tests arrivals from Thailand for drugs. It does not matter if the drugs you took while outside of China are legal wherever you were; if you test positive while in the PRC you will be in trouble. Given that marijuana is now legal in much of the US, PRC immigration could really cause problems for some arrivals from flights from the US, especially from California. And if they decide to take a hair sample for testing, as Shanghai authorities have a history of doing in clubs, then any drug use from months before may implicate you. - Sinocism
