[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Russia’s Connection To Brexit Is ‘Opaque And Complicated,’ Journalist Says, NPR, 21 Mar 2019:
Katya Banks
While there are entirely legitimate interests for Britain to leave the E.U., The Russian Federation has had an interest and potential significant influence on the leave campaign as well.
“Ex-Mercenary CEO Erik Prince Admits To Trump Tower Meet With Don Jr., Saudi Emissary”
9 Mar 2019: Erik Prince, former head of mercenary business Blackwater, revealed in a bombshell interview Friday that he attended a meeting in Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. and a representative of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to discuss “Iran policy” during the presidential campaign.
The interview marked the first time Prince has publicly acknowledged such a meeting. Prince said in congressional testimony in 2017 that he had no “official” or “unofficial” role in the campaign — other than a “yard sign” and writing “papers” — according to the transcript of his testimony before the House intelligence committee. Nor did he mention the meeting in his testimony, according to transcripts.
The New York Times reported last year that Prince organized the 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump’s eldest son and Lebanese-American businessman George Nader. Nader revealed at the meeting that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia wanted to aid Trump in his bid for the presidency, according to the newspaper.
The meeting also reportedly included now-top White House aide Stephen Miller and Israeli social media expert Joel Zamel.
The August meeting is yet another secret huddle with a representative of foreign governments that may have provided illegal international aid to sway the American election. Just months earlier Donald Jr. and the president’s son-in-law and now senior White House aide Jared Kushner met at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer connected to the Kremlin.
Prince, brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, acknowledged the meeting in an on-camera interview on Al Jazeera’s “Head to Head” aired Friday (above).
Asked by host Mehdi Hasan why he didn’t reveal the meeting in his congressional testimony, Prince insisted he had. When his actual response was read back to him, he suggested the transcript was “wrong,” drawing titters from the interview audience.
He later also insisted that “not all of the discussion that day was transcribed.”
Head to Head@AJHeadtoHead
Erik Prince responds that the U.S. Congress “got the transcript wrong” when asked why he didn’t tell the House Intel Committee about an Aug 2016 meeting he attended at Trump Tower. @Mehdirhasan goes ‘head to head’ with Erik Prince NOW @AJEnglish.
9:25 PM - Mar 8, 2019
A lawyer for Trump’s son confirmed to the Times after its story that “prior to the 2016 election, Donald Trump Jr. recalls a meeting with Erik Prince, George Nader and another individual who may be Joel Zamel.”
The Trump administration later harshly cracked down on Iran, terminating American participation in the international nuclear pact with the nation over the strenuous objections of Europe and Iran — and pleasing the Saudis and gulf allies.
The existence of the Trump Tower meeting — and what may have been discussed or promised — raises questions about the president’s confounding lack of action against Saudi Arabia after the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which American intelligence officials determined was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Kushner met with the crown prince and other officials in Saudi Arabia earlier this week. Against all protocol, American embassy staffers told The Daily Beast that they were shut out of meetings and were not provided details of what had been discussed. The private huddles followed revelations that the president ordered Kushner to be given top-level security clearance over the objections of the FBI.
Hasan also challenged Prince’s description of Iraqis in his memoir as “barbarians.” Prince responded that he had no problem calling terrorists barbarians. But Hasan pointed out Prince’s team had not been sent to “liberate” terrorists but Iraqi civilians.
I asked Blackwater founder Erik Prince about calling Iraqis “barbarians” and about the murder & manslaughter that happened on his watch in Iraq.
You should really listen to his replies. (Watch the whole @AJHeadtoHead with him this Friday on @AJEnglish)
Blackwater employees opened fire in a crowded square in Baghdad in 2007, killing 17 Iraqi civilians and seriously wounding 20 others. Three guards were convicted in 2014 of 14 manslaughter charges, and another of murder in an American court.
Cohen was sentenced in December to three years in prison for his role in making illegal hush-money payments to two women to help Trump in 2016 in violation of campaign laws, and for lying to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower project in Russia.
Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, once said he would take a bullet for Trump, who called his former close confidante a “Rat” on Twitter in mid-December.
Posted by DanielS on Sunday, 24 February 2019 20:57.
Lega and Five Star ties to Russia invokes a specter that haunts Kaczyński
Euractive, “Trans-Europe Express – Friends won’t be friends” 22 Feb 2019:
By Gerardo Fortuna with Alexandra Brzozowski
First official projections of seats in the new European Parliament have shown two right-wing ruling parties, Italy’s Lega and Poland’s PiS, as the second and third-biggest single party in the next Parliament, but the highly anticipated ‘Italo-Polish axis’ doesn’t seem to pan out.
Earlier this week (18 February), the European Parliament released the first survey on what the next European chamber could look like, based on a cross-section of national polls ahead of the European elections in May.
Updated projections will be presented to the public in the coming weeks, but at the current stage, the most significant starting point for analysis is that Matteo Salvini and Jarosław Kaczyński appear to be two top dogs ahead the election night.
Lega and PiS are expected to win 27 and 22 seats, respectively, becoming the second and the third-biggest party within the hemicycle. The first, as usual, will be Germany’s conservative CDU.
A pact between the two right-wing parties is looking more and more lucrative for both and initial contact was already made by Salvini himself, who flew to Warsaw in January to meet Kaczyński, who essentially leads PiS from the background, without being its formal chairman, and test the waters for a possible Eurosceptic alliance.
During the visit, Salvini hailed a new ‘Italo-Polish axis’ to replace the dominant French-German one, sparking a “European spring”. At the time, this looked like the beginning of a political earthquake but, as it turns out, the Warsaw talks seemed more like a one-time thing.
There was no follow up in the weeks after and the settlement of an Italo-Polish axis now seems to be dead in the water, or at least postponed for after the elections.
There’s a red flag that shows that the parties have come to a standstill. In Poland, Salvini was asked if he was thinking about running for the European elections together with his current government’s ally in Italy, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. He said that there was no need to run together with them and some observers noted that it was because, with Kaczyński, Salvini wouldn’t need Di Maio.
But according to the Italian press, this week Lega proposed Five Star Movement to join them, even in a political group within the European Parliament, but got nyiet as an answer.
If Lega is considering getting someone else on board, distances with the European conservatives on certain topics – above all Russia – are turning out to be unbridgeable.
At the current stage, conservatives need Salvini to replace the Tories, rather than the other way around, as good performance is expected also for Le Pen’s Rassemblement National.
Background:
“The League, for example, has regularly protested European Union sanctions against Russia. In March 2017, League chief Matteo Salvini even signed a cooperation agreement with United Russia.”
“Evidence of the 5 Star Movement’s friendly ties with Russia is also abundant. Both former Vice President Joe Biden and Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have identified 5 Star as a conduit for Russian electoral interference, e.g. in Italy’s December 2016.”
The Hill, “Putin is the real winner of the Italian elections”, 3 March 2018:
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 23 February 2019 20:41.
Occidental Dissent, “President Trump Reverses His Plan To Withdraw From Syria”, 22 Feb 2019:
As I said in December, the Israel Lobby, the Pentagon and the GOP establishment would find some way to pressure Trump into reversing his withdrawal of troops from Syria:
“WASHINGTON — First, President Trump was going to pull all 2,000 American troops out of Syria immediately. Then he was going to slow down the withdrawal. Then he was going to leave troops in neighboring Iraq.
Now, in the latest about-face, Mr. Trump has agreed to leave about 400 troops in Syria — 200 in a multinational force in the northeastern part of the country and another 200 at a small outpost in the southeast, where they will seek to counter Iran’s influence throughout the country.
His decision to commit what one senior administration official described on Friday as a “couple hundred troops” to the multinational force, operating south of the Turkish border, came after European allies refused to send troops if the United States would not.
Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, pressed the president to make the decision on Thursday, this official said, amid signs that the Pentagon’s negotiations to put together a stabilization and monitoring force were foundering on European resistance. …”
Such has been the story of the Trump administration:
– Big Ag and the Chamber of Commerce have gotten Trump to support increasing legal immigration
– Republican senators loudly condemned Trump for withdrawing from TPP and renegotiating NAFTA until he essentially replaced NAFTA with TPP
– The tax reform bill passed without closing the carried interest loophole
– The GOP Congress punted on funding the border wall half a dozen times
– Various immigration bills like Kate’s Law have died in the Senate
– Trump was persuaded to sign the 2018 Omnibus and to cave on the shutdown by Republican senators
– The GOP Congress passed heavy sanctions on Russia and Trump yielded to pressure from conservatives to arm Ukraine and expand NATO
– Trump was convinced by Ryan and McConnell to prioritize their agenda of health care, tax reform and welfare reform
At the end of the day, conservatives in Congress have prevailed on nearly every issue, and Trump has walked back his populist promises over and over again.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 31 January 2019 15:24.
Donald Trump is President of The United States because he vowed to overturn the Iran Deal for Israel. Overturning the deal was not in the interest of most of the world, except for Israel, Saudi Arabia and The Russian Federation. By contrast, the rest of the world was served by the deal in its business resource interests and more - while the focus on commerce and modernization served not only practical and humanitarian ends but also contributed to a gradual process of liberalizing Iran away from Islam.
Britain, France and Germany are taking steps in their rational interests to skirt the sanctions:
Skirting U.S. sanctions, Europeans launch trade mechanism for Iran
PARIS/BERLIN (Reuters), 31 Jan 2019: France, Germany and Britain have set up a mechanism for non-dollar trade with Iran to avert U.S. sanctions, although diplomats acknowledge it is unlikely to free up the big transactions that Tehran says it needs to keep a nuclear deal afloat.
Lega and Five Star ties to Russia invokes a specter that haunts Kaczyński
