BANGKOK: Thailand’s main opposition Move Forward Party (MFP) will select a new leader on Thursday, a senior official said, before it relaunches under a new name to counter a court-mandated dissolution.
The Constitutional Court in Bangkok, Thailand’s top court, voted unanimously on Wednesday to dissolve the MFP, the vanguard of the country’s youthful pro-democracy movement, and ban its executive board members from politics for 10 years.
Those banned include 43-year-old Pita Limjaroenrat, who led the reformist MFP to a shock first place in a general election last year after striking a chord with young and urban voters with his pledge to reform Thailand’s strict royal defamation law.
“Today there will be an internal meeting among 143 people to agree on the selection of a new leader and party committee,” MFP deputy leader, Sirikanya Tansakul, who is expected to succeed Pita, told Thai television on Thursday.
“We are moving to a new home,” she said.
Pita’s bid to become prime minister was blocked by conservative forces in the Senate. A fragile coalition of army-linked parties took office instead under Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin.
The European Union, the United States, the United Nations and human rights groups blasted the court’s decision, which the EU said harmed democratic openness in Thailand.
The MFP said soon after the ruling that it would relaunch under a new name on Friday.
Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, who led the MFP’s predecessor, the Future Forward Party (FFP), before it was dissolved by the Constitutional Court in 2020, said the new party had the opportunity to become even stronger.
“We want to build a mass party where people actively participate in politics,” he said in a post on social media platform X.
“A strong mass party is the only weapon the people have to create change,” he said, adding that the new party would focus on elections due in 2027.
Thailand, Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy, is known for chronic political instability, with a dozen coups since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932.
The Constitutional Court is due to deliver another major decision next Wednesday, this time on accusations that Srettha had violated ethical rules by appointing a minister who had served time in prison.
An unfavorable ruling could force Srettha out of office after just a year.
Thai media have touted Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the daughter of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, as a potential successor to Srettha.
Thai opposition to choose new leader, relaunch after court dissolution
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Thai opposition to choose new leader, relaunch after court dissolution
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- The Constitutional Court in Bangkok voted unanimously on Wednesday to dissolve Move Forward Party
- Pita Limjaroenrat’s bid to become prime minister was blocked by conservative forces in the Senate
US Republicans fuel migrant fears with bogus cat-eating tale
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- “Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us,” Senator Ted Cruz posted over an image of kittens
- Some right-wing social media accounts had amplified a news report about a woman in Ohio allegedly eating and killing a pet cat
WASHINGTON: Top US Republicans peddled false claims denigrating immigrants Monday, saying Haitian arrivals are stealing and eating pets — a conspiracy theory, debunked by authorities, that went viral as Donald Trump stokes fears ahead of November’s election.
Trump running mate J.D. Vance and Republican lawmakers, officials and influencers have pushed unfounded rumors out of Springfield, Ohio that have thrust the city’s growing Haitian population into the center of the US presidential race.
“Protect our ducks and kittens in Ohio!” Republicans on the US House Judiciary Committee posted on their X account, with an obviously fake image of Trump rescuing a white duck and a striped cat.
“Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us,” Senator Ted Cruz posted over an image of kittens.
Republicans appeared to be using the stories, which have clear racial undertones, to fuel a political attack against Trump’s rival Kamala Harris to suggest she has failed to rein in illegal immigration during her three-plus years as US vice president.
Immigration is seen as a critical issue in a nail-biter of an election, and the two candidates square off Tuesday night in their first and potentially only presidential debate.
Some right-wing social media accounts had amplified a news report about a woman in Ohio allegedly eating and killing a pet cat. And while no evidence emerged linking the woman to migrants or the Haitian community, footage of her arrest was widely shared by influencers.
City law enforcement quickly debunked the conspiracy theories. “There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” Springfield police said in a statement, adding there have been no verified instances of immigrants engaged in illegal activities like squatting in front of residents’ homes.
But the disinformation posts have snowballed, having been viewed millions of times. X owner Elon Musk, who recently endorsed Trump and has 197 million followers on the platform formerly known as Twitter, has reposted some of the images.
Vance, who is from Ohio, took to X to claim that “Haitian illegal immigrants (are) draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio.
“Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”
Trump himself weighed in Monday, posting on Truth Social: “20,000 Haitian migrants were dumped into the small town of Springfield, Ohio,” referring to the large influx of migrants from the impoverished Caribbean nation in recent years.
Social services, schools and housing have been stressed in the city for years, with some pointing to migration as a factor. The issues have been brought up at city functions, including an August 27 Springfield City Commission.
Leading Democrats largely have not addressed the pet theft claims.
Trump’s rhetoric on elections turns ominous as voting nears in the presidential race
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- White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that Trump’s rhetoric was dangerous: “This is not who we are as a country. This is a democracy”
With early voting fast approaching, the rhetoric by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has turned more ominous with a pledge to prosecute anyone who “cheats” in the election in the same way he believes they did in 2020, when he falsely claimed he won and attacked those who stood by their accurate vote tallies.
He also told a gathering of police officers last Friday that they should “watch for the voter fraud,” an apparent attempt to enlist law enforcement that would be legally dubious.
Trump has contended, without providing evidence, that he lost the 2020 election only because of cheating by Democrats, election officials and other, unspecified forces. On Saturday, Trump promised that this year those who cheat “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” should he win in November. He said he was referencing everyone from election officials to attorneys, political staffers and donors.
“Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country,” Trump wrote in the post on his social media network Truth Social that he later also posted on X, the site once known as Twitter.
The former President’s warning — he prefaced it with the words “CEASE & DESIST” — is the latest increase in rhetoric that mimics that used by authoritarian leaders.
To be clear, Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden in both the Electoral College and in the popular vote, where Biden received 7 million more votes. Trump’s own attorney general said there was no evidence of widespread fraud, Trump lost dozens of lawsuits challenging the results and an Associated Press investigation showed there was no level of fraud that could have tipped the election. Additionally, multiple reviews, recounts and audits in the battleground states where Trump contested his loss all confirmed Biden’s win.
Trump, who has spoken warmly of authoritarians and mused recently that “sometimes you need a strongman,” has already pledged to prosecute his political adversaries if he returns to power. His allies have drawn up plans to make federal prosecutors more able to target the president’s opponents.
In one possible conservative outline for a new Trump administration known as Project 2025, a former Trump Justice Department official writes that Pennsylvania’s top election official should have been prosecuted for a policy dispute — — in deciding that voters there have a chance to fix signature errors on their mail ballots.
Trump has disavowed Project 2025, but his rhetoric matches that example, said Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department official and Biden White House staffer who now teaches law at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles.
“He is increasingly showing us what type of president he hopes to be, and that involves using the Justice Department to punish people he disagrees with — whether they committed crimes or not,” Levitt said.
Levitt said he was skeptical that a Trump Justice Department would be able to simply file charges against people who contradicted his election lies, but he and others said the suggestion was dangerous nevertheless.
“Threatening people with punishment for cheating is deeply disturbing if ‘cheating’ simply means that you don’t like the outcome of the election,” Steve Simon, a Democrat who is Minnesota’s secretary of state and the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said in a post on X.
Trump’s campaign said the former president was simply talking about the importance of clean elections.
“President Trump believes anyone who breaks the law should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including criminals who engage in election fraud. Without free and fair elections, you can’t have a country,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Trump already has lodged threats against people who engaged in no apparent illegal activity during the 2020 election. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg, in 2020 donated more than $400 million to local election offices to help them deal with the pandemic. In a book released earlier this month, Trump threatened that Zuckerberg will ” spend the rest of his life in prison ” if he makes any more contributions.
Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State, said in an interview Monday that Trump’s comments have prompted election officials, already reeling from years of threats due to Trump’s false claims of 2020 corruption, to increase their level of vigilance and security planning.
“That is a level of vitriol and threats that we have not seen before, and it is very alarming and concerning,” Benson said. “We worry that individuals will read that rhetoric and take it on themselves to exact the vengeance prior to the election — or immediately following, if their candidate doesn’t win — that their candidate has called for.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that Trump’s rhetoric was dangerous: “This is not who we are as a country. This is a democracy.”
Stephen Richer, the Republican Recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who’s been repeatedly attacked by Trump and his supporters for standing by the accuracy of that county’s 2020 vote count, took to X to point to one election official who has been charged for her actions that year — Tina Peters. The former clerk of Mesa County in Colorado was convicted in August of helping activists access her county’s voting machines to try to prove Trump’s lies.
“She was on your side of this,” Richer wrote to Trump in his post. Earlier this summer, Richer was defeated in the Republican primary in his bid for reelection.
Trump’s call for police officers to watch polling stations in case of fraud in November came Friday as he addressed a gathering of the Fraternal Order of Police, an organization that has endorsed him.
“I hope you can watch and you’re all over the place. Watch for the voter fraud. Because we win. Without voter fraud, we win so easily,” he told the officers. “You can keep it down just by watching. Because believe it or not, they’re afraid of that badge. They’re afraid of you people.”
What he’s suggesting could violate several federal and state laws against voter intimidation — some of which specifically prohibit uniformed officers from being at the polls unless they are responding to an emergency or casting a ballot themselves, according to Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at the Campaign Legal Center.
Diaz said those laws emerged from the nation’s fraught history of law enforcement officers abusing their power to stop Black people from voting.
“We have to remember that history when we think of the presence of law enforcement at the polls,” he said. “Even the best-intentioned officers who are there really just to keep people safe with no ill will, their presence might be perceived by voters in a way that is different than they intended.”
Ukraine summons Iranian diplomat as Tehran denies missile transfer to Russia
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KYIV: Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Monday it had summoned a senior Iranian diplomat to warn of “devastating and irreparable consequences” for bilateral relations if reports that Tehran had supplied Russia with ballistic missiles were correct.
A senior Iranian official denied the reports earlier on Monday, describing them as “psychological warfare.” A European Union spokesperson described the information as “credible.”
CNN and the Wall Street Journal reported last week, citing unidentified sources, that Iran had transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, as Moscow continues to wage war in Ukraine more than two and a half years after its 2022 invasion.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said on Telegram it had summoned Iran’s charge d’affaires, Shahriar Amouzegar, and warned him in “harsh form” about the consequences for relations if delivery of the missiles was confirmed.
Earlier, Brig. Fazlollah Nozari, a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander, was quoted by the Iranian Labour News Agency as saying: “No missile was sent to Russia and this claim is a kind of psychological warfare.”
“Iran does not support any of the parties to the Ukraine-Russia conflict,” Nozari said.
Western and Ukrainian officials have dismissed such denials in the past, saying there is overwhelming evidence that Iran has supplied items such as Shahed drones to Russia.
EU foreign affairs spokesperson Peter Stano said in an email: “We are aware of the credible information provided by allies on the delivery of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia.”
He said that if confirmed, “this delivery would represent a substantive material escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.”
EU leaders had previously made clear they would “respond swiftly and in coordination with international partners, including with new and significant restrictive measures against Iran” to such a step, Stano added.
Another European official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the US had shared information on the reported transfer with allies and was likely to make it public soon.
“I cannot confirm the reports that the transfer has happened,” White House spokesperson John Kirby said in Washington. Such a scenario would have a deleterious effects on both Ukraine and the Middle East, he added.
’SUBSTANTIAL ESCALATION’
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had seen the report but that not all such reports were correct.
“Iran is our important partner, we are developing our trade and economic relations, we are developing our cooperation and dialogue in all possible areas, including the most sensitive ones,” Peskov told reporters.
Ukraine said last week that deepening military cooperation between Tehran and Moscow was a threat to Ukraine, Europe and the Middle East, and called on the international community to increase pressure on Iran and Russia.
Any Iranian transfer of ballistic missiles to Russia would mark a sharp escalation in the Ukraine war, the United States said on Friday.
That language was echoed on Monday by a NATO spokesperson, who said the Western military alliance was aware of the media reports but would not be drawn on whether they were accurate.
“As Allies have stated previously, any transfer of ballistic missiles and related technology by Iran to Russia would represent a substantial escalation,” the spokesperson said.
Moscow has accused Kyiv’s allies of escalating the war by providing weapons used in Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, and has threatened to respond.
Kremlin opponent Kara-Murza urges against ‘face-saving exit’ for Putin in Ukraine war
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- Vladimir Kara-Murza, who had been serving a 25-year sentence in a Siberian penal colony on treason and other charges after denouncing the invasion of Ukraine
PARIS: A leading opponent of Vladimir Putin, freed in a prisoner swap last month, on Monday urged the West against allowing the Russian leader any “face-saving” way out of the war against Ukraine, saying the end of his quarter-century of rule was the only solution for peace.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, who had been serving a 25-year sentence in a Siberian penal colony on treason and other charges after denouncing the invasion of Ukraine, was one of 16 Russian dissidents and foreign nationals freed on August 1 in the largest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War.
In an interview with Agence France-Presse in Paris, Kara-Murza, 43, predicted he would be able to return to his homeland as the “regime” of Putin would not last.
Arriving in France after visits to countries including Germany, he acknowledged there was “fatigue” in Western societies over the war sparked by Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine but insisted the “Putin regime must be defeated.”
“It is very important that Vladimir Putin is not allowed to win the war against Ukraine,” said Kara-Murza, who met with French President Emmanuel Macron later Monday.
“It is very important that Vladimir Putin is not allowed to have a face-saving exit from this war in Ukraine.”
The Cambridge-educated Kara-Murza lashed out at Western “realpolitik” in dealing with Russia under Putin, which he said had made the Russian leader “the monster he is today.”
“Enough of realpolitik,” he said.
“If, God forbid, the Putin regime is allowed to present the outcome of this war as a victory and survive in power, all this means is that a year or 18 months from now we will be talking about another war, conflict or another catastrophe.”
Kara-Murza, a dual Russian and UK national, said he would be “honored” to go to Ukraine and meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky, adding that he was in favor of building bridges between Russia’s pro-democracy movement and Ukraine.
“We will have to find ways of living together and of overcoming this horrendous tragedy that the Putin regime has unleashed,” he said.
“It is not going to be an easy process, it’s not going to be a quick process, but we know that it’s possible.”
He said he felt a “special kind of solidarity” with Ukrainian officers who were held in his Siberian prison camp, even though they were not allowed to speak to each other.
Kara-Murza said he had been “absolutely certain” he would die in the penal colony in the Omsk region — until one morning he was suddenly put on a plane to Moscow and then with other prisoners involved swapped in the Turkish capital Ankara.
“Nobody has ever asked our consent,” he said. “They herded us on a plane like cattle and threw us out of Russia.”
Macron applauded the Kremlin opponent for his “courage” during their meeting late Monday, while reiterating “France’s support for all defenders of human rights and freedom of expression,” the presidency said in a statement.
Kara-Murza earlier said he had no doubt he would return to his country.
“Not only is the Putin regime not forever, I think... it will be over in the very foreseeable future,” he said.
“And we will have a mammoth task ahead of us in rebuilding our country from the ruins that Putin is going to leave.”
Pointing to the collapse of Tsarist rule in 1917 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kara-Murza said that “major political change in Russia comes suddenly, unexpectedly and no one is ever prepared for it.”
Kara-Murza, who sees as his mentor the campaigner Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in Moscow in 2015, brushed off fears for his own safety outside Russia.
“Security is not a word that comes into the vocabulary of somebody who is in opposition to Putin’s regime in Russia,” said Kara-Murza, who was the target of two poisoning attacks against his life even before his arrest in 2022.
“Whether Putin likes it or not, the future is coming,” he said.
Kara-Murza recalled his own shock at hearing about the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a remote Arctic prison camp in February.
“I heard the news on the radio,” he said. “I don’t think I have the words to describe the feeling,” he said, adding that at first he could not believe it.
“After months and months in solitary confinement, your mind starts playing tricks on you,” he said. “I thought that maybe I’d made all of this up.”
He said he was confident Navalny was killed on the orders of Putin.
“Any Western leader who shakes hands with Vladimir Putin is shaking hands with a murderer.”
His wife Yevgenia, who tirelessly campaigned for his release, said “rage” against the “crimes” committed by the Kremlin in Ukraine and Russia had sustained her.
“The rage that I’ve been feeling for all these years... outweighs any fears that I can experience,” she said, pledging to continue to fight for the release of other political prisoners.
Vladimir called himself “the luckiest man in the world.”
“I would not be sitting here speaking with you today if it wasn’t for Yevgenia,” he said.
Jailed movie producer Weinstein undergoes heart surgery
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NEW YORK: Disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein, 72, was rushed from a New York prison to hospital for emergency heart surgery on Monday, US media reported.
ABC News quoted Weinstein’s representatives as saying he was taken to New York’s Bellevue Hospital “due to several medical conditions.”
“We can confirm that Mr. Weinstein had a procedure and surgery on his heart today however (we) cannot comment any further than that,” the statement from Craig Rothfeld and Juda Engelmayer said.
Weinstein is being held at the Rikers Island prison, where he is serving a 16-year sentence after being convicted on rape charges by a California court.
He had also been convicted by a New York court in 2020 of the rape and sexual assault of actor Jessica Mann and of forcibly performing oral sex on a production assistant. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison in that case.
An appeals court, however, overturned that conviction in April, a shock reversal in one of the defining cases of the #MeToo movement.
He is now awaiting retrial in that case.
Prosecutors say they may bring new sexual assault charges against him ahead of the retrial, and Weinstein was due to attend a procedural hearing in that case on Thursday.
His lawyers have argued for a retrial in the California case, too.
Arthur Aidala, Weinstein’s lawyer, said in July that his client’s health had been deteriorating in prison.
The once-powerful film mogul has made court appearances in a wheelchair, looking frail and pale.
“He’s not a young man, he’s a sick man,” Aidala said at the time. “His diabetes is going through the roof.”
In 2017, the allegations against Weinstein helped launch the #MeToo movement, a watershed moment for women fighting sexual misconduct.
More than 80 women accused him of harassment, sexual assault or rape, including prominent actors Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd.
Weinstein says that any sexual relations in question were consensual.
He and his brother Bob co-founded Miramax Films in 1979, a major Hollywood studio behind such diverse hits as “Pulp Fiction,” “There Will Be Blood,” and “Shakespeare in Love.”