The 2026 Russian Parliamentary Elections: Pre-Determined by Vladimir Putin

    The results of the 2026 Russian Parliamentary Elections last week were a foregone conclusion under tyrant Vladimir Putin, the ex-Soviet intelligence officer who has ruled the Russian Federation since 1999.  Putin’s party won a majority of the votes and seats as elections in Russia are not free and fair.  Basic freedoms are hardly tolerated and only parties that are not sharply critical of Putin are permitted to participate in the elections.  Opposition leaders, human rights advocates, critics, journalists, whistleblowers and anyone Putin feels threatened by are persecuted, imprisoned, driven into exile or murdered, either in Russia or abroad.  “Systemic opposition” parties that allow the Kremlin to make it appear as if Russia has competitive elections among multiple parties win votes and seats in the Russian Parliament, but never enough to threaten the regime.  Indeed, the two largest, the Communists and the ultra-nationalists serve the purpose of making Putin seem moderate by contrast.  There are smaller center-left and center-right parties, as well as other parties across the spectrum or single-issue parties, but they collectively only win a few seats, if any.  The main center-right systemic opposition party did gain in votes and seats, but it is regarded by the Russian opposition, which is mostly on the center right, as a spoiler.  

    Although opposition parties sometimes win local elections, there are no free and fair national elections in Russia and there will not be any as long as Czar Putin rules.

Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks on America

     

    Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks by al-Qaeda Islamists on America that killed nearly 3,000 people.  We Americans pause on September 11, as I always post on this date, to remember the victims of the massacre, and to give thanks to the many who have helped prevent another attack on such a scale for a quarter century. 

      As I have posted, the September 11 attacks sparked the Global War on Terrorism, which although the name of the war has long fallen out of use, continues sporadically against al-Qaeda or its offshoot, the Islamic State, or other Islamist terrorists, on battlefields around the Islamic world, in addition to various other successful anti-terror methods that are still in use.  The first battlefield was Afghanistan because its de facto regime led by the Islamist Taliban militia had provided safe haven for al-Qaeda’s leadership that had planned the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia with hijacked civilian airliners, another of which was forced down by passengers in Pennsylvania.  The United States led an international coalition, joined by Afghan allies, to overthrow the Taliban, which fell by 2002, and against al-Qaeda, whose leadership was annihilated. 

    The Taliban returned to power in 2021 after a premature American withdrawal (the disastrous Trump-Biden withdrawal that I have posted about), but al-Qaeda, though still a threat in its various forms and global affiliates, has been seriously weakened and Afghanistan has not again become a safe haven for terrorists with a global reach.  The international community, which does not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, would not allow Afghanistan to become again a threat to the world.  Because the lack of U.S. or allied military and intelligence organizational presence in Afghanistan hampers the ability to detect any reconstitution of al-Qaeda in the Central Asian State, continued vigilance is necessary.

    There continues to be armed resistance in various forms to the Taliban across Afghanistan, which the international community ought to support, at least morally, if not materially, and at least privately, if not officially.  The resistance, which favors a return to constitutional representative government and liberty for all, is growing in size and reach, while the Taliban have lost their only ally, Pakistan.  Although the overthrow of the repressive Taliban might be difficult to achieve, it would at least help weaken the Islamist militia to prevent them from becoming a regional threat, and represent a greater consistency in American foreign policy to stand for freedom and against Islamist rule.  But the rapid fall of the terrorist-sponsoring Baathist Assad regime of Syria in December 2024 suggests, even the most repressive dictatorships can suddenly collapse.  A second overthrow of the Taliban regime, whose leading Mullah al-Qaeda has sworn its personal loyalty to, would be another major victory in the War on Terrorism.

Blog and Personal Notes

    

    Blog Note: I was finally able to work around the glitch the last few years that prevented line-spacing and indentation in my posts to this blog.  It also prevented the insertion of hyperlinks.  I shall endeavor to update the previous posts the last few years for which the proper typesetting was precluded.  I apologize for any difficulty in reading those posts, which I tried to minimize in various ways.

    Thank you for visiting my blog.  Please continue to visit it regularly. 

    Personal Note: Meanwhile, I have completed my contributions to the history book for the 275th anniversary of my County.  I shall provide an update when it is published.

Extreme Nationalist Serbia and Ethnic Serbs Treat a War Criminal as a Hero

    Ratko Mladic, the ethnic Serb general known as the “Butcher of Bosnia” responsible for the policy of “ethnic cleansing,” for which he was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, died in prison last week.  The concerns I have posted about Serbian nationalism were validated by the treatment by him by ethnic Serbs in Bosnia and other States that became independent from Yugoslavia and by Serbia as a national hero. Serbia gave the war criminal a state funeral, ethnic Serbs outside Serbia praised him, and many thousands of Serbs paid respects to Mladic at his funeral. 

    Serbia, the dominant republic within the former Yugoslavia, was responsible for the bloody wars that resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia into each of its parts.  Serbia, which is Slavic and Orthodox, was led by a Communist dictator who fomented Serbian nationalism and hatred toward other ethnicities and religions to try to remain in power after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1991, which caused independence movements across Yugoslavia to break away from Belgrade’s dominance.  Serbia fomented ethnic Serb minorities in the other parts of Yugoslavia, such as in Bosnia, where Bosnian Serb leaders, through Mladic, attacked ethnic Croats, who are Slavic and Catholic, and Bosniaks, who are Slavic and Muslim, in a bloody civil war from 1992 to 1995.  Mladic was arrested in 2011, convicted in 2017 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and sentenced to life imprisonment.  Bosnia is divided into two main entities, one Serb and the other Croat and Bosniak.  

    Serbia, which has historically been friendly with Russia, continues to encourage ethnic divisions in Bosnia and Kosovo, where Albanians are the majority and Serbs a minority.  Serbia should not be allowed to join the European Union until it rejects extreme nationalism, accepts responsibility for its crimes, and clearly opposes Russian aggression and imperialism.

The Right-Wing Italian Government Has Set an Endurance Record

    Italian Prime Miniser Giorgia Meloni became the longest-serving premier in the history of the Italian Republic, which was formed in 1946, having served four years.  No Italian government has completed a five-year term.  But the significance of the record is exaggerated by the professional media, as is the usual reporting about Italy’s “instability” because hers is the 68th Government in its 80-year history.  Although Italy, which has always had a multi-party elective parliamentary system, has had many “governments,” which mean executives (i.e. administrations), it was stable in the sense that every government from 1946 to 1982 was led by the Christian Democratic Party, with only the coalitions with other parties changing.  The party returned to power later in the 1980s.  Often during their tenure as Prime Ministers, the same person has continued in office, with only a cabinet reshuffle.  Thus, some Premiers have served longer than Meloni consecutively, and others even longer when adding together their separate stints in office. 

    Meloni has tried to prove her party has rejected its neo-fascist past, but some party member or another regularly undermines her efforts.  She has led Italy’s most right-wing government in its republican history, with a relatively stable coalition between her right-wing party, the far-right Trumpist anti-migrant and pro-Russian League Party, and the center-right Forza Italia (Go Italy) party, which holds pro-European and American views and is conservative in the mold of Thatcher and Reagan. The opposition, which ranges from the center to the far left, is relatively divided.  Neither Meloni's coalition, nor the main center-left bloc of parties receive popular majority support, just as neither won a majority of votes or seats in the parliamentary elections, as her coalition benefited from a bonus awarded to the leading coalition.  Meloni’s government has enacted fiscal and other reforms required by the European Union to receive funds, reduced spending, kept taxes down, increased employment, cracked down on petty crimes, advocated for reforms of the EU, and backed Ukraine.  But without making any major reforms, Italy’s economic growth has been slow.  Meloni has violated human rights with her anti-migrant policies while Italy continues to suffer population loss.  She tried to parlay her similar views to Donald Trump and their personal friendship to benefit Italian-American relations, but her effort has ended in failure because Trump demands complete agreement on every issue.  

    Despite differences within her coalition, and an upstart neo-fascist party rising in the polls that is even more anti-migrant and openly pro-Russian, Meloni will probably continue to serve until her term ends while the opposition is unable to unite to gain majority support, which is more the reason for her stability than her mixed record.  Her government is proposing to amend the election law to favor her coalition in the parliamentary elections next year, which signals a lack of popularity and confidence in their chances.