Category Archives: Lands

FBI is set to give Congress documents related to Russia dossier, Ryan says

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Federal Bureau of Investigation is expected to hand over to Congress documents related to a controversial and unverified dossier on President Donald Trump by next week, ending a long-running impasse between lawmakers and federal law enforcement.

Speaking to reporters, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that the FBI had agreed to provide documents long-sought by Congress in a variety of investigations under way, including information about a 35-page research document containing unverified allegations about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia.

“The point of these investigations is to find the truth and to make sure if laws were violated or mistakes were made, they’re not made again. And transparency is what gets you that,” Mr. Ryan said.

“The FBI got in touch with us yesterday afternoon. They have informed us that they will comply with our document requests and they will provide the documents that Congress has been asking for by next week. And we expect the FBI to honor that commitment,” Mr. Ryan said. [Continue reading…]

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Iraq’s prime minister wins support for his decisive approach to the Kurds

The Washington Post reports: Once derided as a “traffic warden” by members of his own party, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has won public and political praise for sending troops to reclaim disputed territory after the Kurdish independence vote last month.

The action has earned the Iraqi leader the prestige that eluded him after successive victories against the Islamic State. Even some of his traditional critics have called his decision “wise” and “shrewd.”

By moving forcefully, Abadi has burnished his nationalist credentials and quieted potential challengers in next year’s elections who are backed by Iran and espouse policies of Shiite dominance, analysts and Iraqi politicians said.

For the United States, Abadi’s surging popularity is probably the silver lining of a crisis that has pitted two of its closest political and military allies — the Iraqi government and the Kurds — against each other. Many Iraqi politicians say Abadi has all but assured his reelection next year. [Continue reading…]

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Catalan leader will let lawmakers decide on independence

The New York Times reports: After a chaotic day of wavering, Catalonia’s separatist leader, Carles Puigdemont, announced on Thursday that he would place a decision on independence from Spain before the region’s Parliament.

The move by Mr. Puigdemont virtually ensures that the central government in Madrid will take control of the restive region, using its emergency constitutional powers.

Mr. Puigdemont made the announcement before a scheduled appearance before the Catalan Parliament on Thursday evening. He said he had made the decision after failing to secure a commitment from the central government that it would not take control of the region if he called early elections.

“There are none of the guarantees that justify convening elections today,” Mr. Puigdemont said during a brief televised address from his government headquarters. “I tried to obtain the guarantees,” he said, but “I didn’t get a responsible answer from the Spanish government, which has instead used this option to add to the tension.”

He added: “It is now for Parliament to decide its answer to the application” of Article 155 of the national Constitution.

The Catalan Parliament met later Thursday, and might vote on a declaration of independence on Friday, shortly after the Spanish Senate approves emergency measures to impose Madrid’s direct rule on Catalonia. [Continue reading…]

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The recruitables: Why Trump’s team was easy prey for Putin

Alex Finley writes: By now, it should be clear to anyone following the news that Russian intelligence made a formidable effort to approach the Trump campaign and assess the potential to manipulate its members. As a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, I can tell you that Russian security services would have been derelict not to evaluate the possibility of turning someone close to Trump. While the question of collusion remains open, it’s beyond dispute that Russia tried to get people around the president to cooperate. The June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower is indication enough, but other encounters bolster the argument.

How do you get someone to do something they should not do?

Generally, an intelligence officer looks for a person’s vulnerabilities and explores ways to exploit them. It usually comes down to four things, which—in true government style—the CIA has encompassed in an acronym, MICE: Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego. Want to get someone to betray his country? Figure out which of these four motivators drives the person and exploit the hell out of it.

It is important to note, too, that a person might not know he is doing something he shouldn’t do. As former CIA director John Brennan testified in May, “Frequently, people who go along a treasonous path do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late.” Sometimes, such people make the best assets. They are so sure in their convictions that they are acting in their own best interest or in the best interest of their country that they have no idea they are being completely manipulated.

The Russians know all this, too. [Continue reading…]

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China enshrines ‘Xi Jinping Thought,’ elevating leader to Mao-like status

The New York Times reports: China’s Communist Party on Tuesday elevated President Xi Jinping to the same exalted status as the nation’s founding father, Mao Zedong, by writing his name and ideas into the party constitution.

The historic decision, at the end of a weeklong party congress, sent a clear signal to officials throughout China that questioning Mr. Xi and his policies would be ideological heresy.

The decision solidified Mr. Xi’s position as China’s most powerful leader in decades after only five years of leading the country, making it harder for rivals to challenge him and his policies.

While there may be no “Little Red Book” of quotations for mass consumption like in the bygone Mao era, Mr. Xi’s thinking will now infuse every aspect of party ideology in schools, the media and government agencies.

In the near future, Chinese people are likely to refer to Mr. Xi’s doctrines as simply “Xi Jinping Thought,” a flattering echo of “Mao Zedong Thought.” [Continue reading…]

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Breakdown in North Korea talks sounds alarms on Capitol Hill

NBC News reports: Diplomatic efforts between the United States and North Korea are in peril with Pyongyang shunning talks in response to President Donald Trump’s increased public attacks on Kim Jong Un, according to multiple U.S. government and congressional officials.

Joseph Yun, a top American diplomat to North Korea, has been warning of the breakdown in meetings on Capitol Hill and seeking help to persuade the administration to prioritize diplomacy over the heated rhetoric that appears to be pushing the two nuclear powers closer toward conflict, sources familiar with the discussions told NBC News.

The warnings from Yun and Congressional officials come as the president prepares for his first official trip to Asia next month and as tensions between the two nations are near an all-time high. Officials throughout government worry that a lack of diplomacy increases the risks of military action in the region.

They also explain some of the alarmist comments that have been made by Republican and Democratic Senators in recent weeks, most notable Foreign Relations Committee chair Sen. Bob Corker who has said repeatedly that the president is undercutting diplomatic efforts. [Continue reading…]

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Bangladesh is now home to almost 1 million Rohingya refugees

The Washington Post reports: Wednesday marks the two-month anniversary of attacks in Burma, carried out by a small band of Rohingya militants, that triggered a massive and indiscriminate retaliation from the Burmese military and the exodus of most of the Muslim minority ethnic group from the country.

Some 604,000 people, mostly Rohingya, have fled to neighboring Bangladesh since Aug. 25, where they have joined more than 300,000 who fled in earlier waves of ethnic violence over the past three decades. With thousands still crossing the border each day, the total number of Rohingya refugees is expected to cross the 1 million mark in the coming days or weeks.

Roughly half a million Rohingya are thought to still be in Burma, where many live in camps for displaced people. Human rights organizations have documented the wholesale incineration of Rohingya villages across three townships (akin to counties) of Burma’s Rakhine State, where the majority of Rohingya once lived. In interviews in Bangladesh refugee camps and over the phone while still in Burma, Rohingya have offered searing testimony of extensive crimes against humanity carried out by the Burmese military. [Continue reading…]

Quartz reports: Each time the Rohingya flee Myanmar’s western Rakhine state—and there have been numerous such flights in recent years—Bangladesh, one of the world’s most congested countries, has to figure out how to best support them on its limited land.

There are temporary camps in the country’s southeasternmost areas, Nayapara and Kutupalong, set up in the 1990s and now housing about 30,000 registered residents, according to the UNHCR, the United Nations’s refugee agency. But these are longtime Bangladesh residents—the majority of them were born in the country or came as children. Newer arrivals have set up temporary shelters, and the situation is unsustainable.

Plans to build a giant new camp have been announced, while one proposal floated publicly two years ago has surfaced again—resettle people on a brand-new island in the Bay of Bengal. In late September, the country said that if repatriation moved too slowly, it would take steps to move people there. Called Thengar Char, the island Bangladesh is considering using has appeared only recently as Himalayan sediments carried to the sea by the Meghna River collected and settled, forming a land mass. Bangladesh calls these newly surfaced land accretions char (pdf, p4)—and some of them are so new that even identifying them on a map can be difficult. [Continue reading…]

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Trump administration is delaying Russia sanctions that Congress demanded

Vox reports: President Donald Trump’s administration missed its deadline to implement sanctions on Russia — and Republicans in Congress are starting to worry about why.

“I’m going to get on the phone with someone,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who played a key role negotiating the sanctions bill as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters on Wednesday. The bill was a direct punishment for Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

The law, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress and which Trump signed into law in early August, required the administration to identify which Russian entities would be penalized with new sanctions by October 1. They still have not done so. The State Department has said it is “working to complete the process and provide the public guidance to the relevant people just as soon as possible.”

Republicans have stopped short of claiming that the administration’s delays have been strategic. “We’re going to check into it,” Corker said. “I don’t have any way of evaluating whether it’s purposeful or not purposeful.”

But it’s no secret that Trump, who has emphasized wanting a warmer relationship with Russia, did not want to sign the bill into law — and did so grudgingly. At the time, he released a statement claiming he is much better at dealmaking than Congress is and angrily tweeted that Republican lawmakers were ruining his relationship with Russia. [Continue reading…]

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Key Russia probe splinters as Grassley, Feinstein set own paths

Bloomberg reports: The Senate Judiciary Committee’s bipartisan Russia probe has fractured, with Chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein saying they’re each going to set their own path on the investigation.

The two senators spoke on the Senate floor Tuesday, where they agreed to pursue different issues without giving up on the original probe — into the reasons President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey and Russian attempts to interfere in the election.

Feinstein of California said she doesn’t understand a push by Republicans to once again investigate Hillary Clinton’s emails or pursue a 2010 Obama-era deal by a Russian-backed company to purchase American uranium mines.

“We have kind of agreed that each side is going to do its own thing,” she said. “I think they want to do some things that we don’t want to do. And that is go into the emails, and go into the uranium thing.”

Grassley spokesman Taylor Foy said Wednesday that the chairman will continue his broad focus on multiple administrations, “even if the ranking member is only willing to focus on President Trump and unwilling to examine the role of the DNC and Clinton campaign,” referring to the Democratic National Committee.

Their remarks signal a significant rupture to what has been a bipartisan probe, which kicked off in June with some fanfare. At the time, Grassley’s move appeared to indicate new trouble for Trump, with the independent-minded chairman potentially opening up new — and more public — lines of inquiry into his campaign and his administration. [Continue reading…]

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Where Europe went wrong

Paul Taylor writes: Sometimes an outsider’s eye perceives symptoms of decay more clearly than those who live in the midst of Europe’s daily churn.

In “Fractured Continent: Europe’s crises and the fate of the West,” veteran U.S. journalist and think tanker William Drozdiak shows how three flawed projects launched at the end of the Cold War — the euro, the Schengen zone of passport-free travel, and the eastward enlargement of the EU and NATO — have stumbled into trouble, opening deep rifts in Europe.

“Today, the dream of European unity has begun to wither away, and the future stability of the Continent is clouded in uncertainty,” Drozdiak says in an assessment that contrasts starkly with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s recent assertion that Europe has the wind back in its sails.

Compounding the crises, the former Washington Post foreign correspondent says the United States’ disengagement has left Europeans adrift where previously a steadying hand from Uncle Sam often helped navigate the Continent through troubled waters. Drozdiak is a lifelong Atlanticist steeped in the late Richard Holbrooke’s vision of the U.S. as a benevolent, hands-on European power. He warns that, in the absence of strong American leadership, Europe risks being consumed by its old demon: nationalism.

Drozdiak points to a deep-seated EU methodological problem: the habit of setting out to achieve ambitious objectives with half-baked plans forged in late-night compromises, without anticipating what would happen when things go wrong.

Adopting a single currency without a fiscal union or a lender of last resort; opening internal borders without joint action to protect Europe’s external frontiers; bringing former Soviet satellites into the Western orbit without anticipating a hostile Russian backlash — in each case, Europe’s leaders appear to have been naively optimistic and unprepared.

Drozdiak stops short of predicting whether the EU will fall apart, pitching Europe back into conflict, or seize the chance to pull itself together in a salutary response to Trump and Brexit. But he makes clear the key lies chiefly in Berlin, “the new epicenter of power.” [Continue reading…]

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Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort faces another money-laundering probe

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office is pursuing an investigation into possible money laundering by Paul Manafort, said three people familiar with the matter, adding to the federal and state probes concerning the former Trump campaign chairman.

The investigation by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York is being conducted in collaboration with a probe by special counsel Robert Mueller into Mr. Manafort and possible money laundering, according to two of these people.

A spokesman for Mr. Manafort declined to comment. Mr. Manafort has previously said he did nothing wrong.

The continuing Manhattan U.S. attorney’s probe, which hasn’t been previously reported, is unfolding at the same time the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office pursues an inquiry involving Kushner Cos., owned by the family of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Mr. Trump has interviewed and is poised to nominate candidates to lead the prosecutorial offices in both Manhattan and Brooklyn. The probes could complicate the confirmation process, especially because Mr. Trump is considering individuals with ties to his personal lawyer and to a political ally.

The inquiry in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office is being conducted at least in part by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Monteleoni, previously a member of the money-laundering and asset-forfeiture unit, who joined the public-corruption team in recent months, according to people familiar with the matter. [Continue reading…]

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Standing up to Donald Trump and the meanness that he has promoted across America

Ronald A. Klain writes: For decades, conservatives labored to make their movement more humane. Ronald Reagan put a jovial face on conservative policies — more Dale Carnegie than Ayn Rand; George H.W. Bush promised a “kinder, gentler” tenure; George W. Bush ran on “compassionate conservatism.” As a progressive, I opposed many of their specific proposals. But as a country, we benefited from a debate between competing ideas — liberal and conservative — on how to soften the hard edges of American life and create a more inclusive country.

That was then. Today, we are living the Politics of Mean. In the Trump presidency, with its daily acts of cruelty, punching down is a feature, not a bug. And the only thing more disquieting than a president who practices the Politics of Mean are the voters who celebrate it.

President Trump’s decision to put some 700,000 “dreamers” in limbo, his snarling statement that athletes protesting policing abuses are “sons of bitches,” his opposition to bipartisan efforts to maintain health coverage for low-income families, his feud with a Gold Star widow are all recent examples — not of conservative policies — but of a basic nastiness. Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans still lack water, most are without electricity, leptospirosis is spreading, and Trump talks about withdrawing federal aid and belittles local leaders. Nine months into his presidency, Trump is not even paying lip service to the compassionate ideals — such as improving low-performing schools or combating homelessness — that previous Republican presidents pursued.

Trump always will be Trump. He won the White House on a campaign of insults and taunts, urging rally attendees to punch protesters and threatening to jail his opponent. We have known who he is. But what is his presidency saying about the rest of us? [Continue reading…]

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Corruption: $300M Puerto Rico recovery contract awarded to tiny utility company linked to major Trump donor

The Daily Beast reports: Puerto Rico has agreed to pay a reported $300 million for the restoration of its power grid to a tiny utility company that is primarily financed by a private-equity firm founded and run by a man who contributed large sums of money to President Trump, an investigation conducted by The Daily Beast has found.

Whitefish Energy Holdings, which had a reported staff of only two full-time employees when Hurricane Maria touched down, appears ill-equipped to handle the daunting task of restoring electricity to Puerto Rico’s more than 3 million residents.
Much larger utilities are more commonly used following natural disasters on the scale of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island last month.

The private-equity firm that finances Whitefish, HBC Investments, was founded by Joe Colonnetta, who serves as its general partner.

Federal Elections Commission data compiled by The Daily Beast shows Colonnetta contributed $20,000 to the Trump Victory PAC during the general election, $2,700 to Trump’s primary election campaign (then the maximum amount permitted), $2,700 to Trump’s general election campaign (also the maximum), and a total of $30,700 to the Republican National Committee in 2016 alone.

Colonnetta’s wife, Kimberly, is no stranger to Republican politics either; shortly after Trump’s victory, she gave $33,400 to the Republican National Committee, the maximum contribution permitted for party committees in 2016.

Joe Colonnetta is not the only Republican connection to the controversial Whitefish contract. On Monday, The Washington Post reported that Whitefish Chief Executive Officer Andy Techmanski is friends with Trump administration Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Moreover, Whitefish is located in Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Monatana. [Continue reading…]

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White paranoia: Majority of white Americans think they’re discriminated against

NPR reports on a poll in which 55 percent of its white respondents believe there is discrimination against white people in America today. The responses can be broken down into three categories: Ask [68-year-old Tim] Hershman [of Akron, Ohio] whether there is discrimination against whites, and he answered even before this reporter could finish the question — with an emphatic “Absolutely.”

“It’s been going on for decades, and it’s been getting worse for whites,” Hershman contended, despite data showing whites continue to be better off financially and educationally than minority groups.

Even though Hershman believes he has been a victim of anti-white discrimination, he wasn’t able to provide a specific example. He describes losing out on a promotion — and a younger African-American being selected as one of the finalists for the job. But the position eventually went to a white applicant, who was also younger than Hershman.

Representing Category 2 is 50-year-old heavy equipment operator Tim Musick, who lives in Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. He says anti-white discrimination is real, but he doesn’t think he has ever really felt it personally.

“I think that you pretty much, because you’re white, you’re automatically thrown into that group as being a bigot and a racist and that somehow you perceive yourself as being more superior to everybody else, which is ridiculous,” Musick said, speaking during his lunch break at a construction site.

“I’m just a man that happens to have been born white,” Musick continued.

He also makes it clear, however, that he is not comparing what happens to whites to the African-American experience.

“I don’t know what it feels like to be a black man walking around in the streets, but I do know what it feels like to be pegged, because of how you look, and what people perceive just on sight,” said Musick, who has the stocky build of a retired NFL lineman and a shaved head under his hard hat.

Now for the third category — those who scoff at the notion that whites face racial discrimination.

That describes retired community college English teacher Betty Holton, of Elkton, Md.

“I don’t see how we can be discriminated against when, when we have all the power,” Holton said, chuckling in disbelief into her cellphone.

“Look at Congress. Look at the Senate. Look at government on every level. Look at the leadership in corporations. Look. Look anywhere.”

Holton asserts: “The notion that whites are discriminated against just seems incredible to me.” [Continue reading…]

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Russian propaganda traced back to Staten Island, New York

The Daily Beast reports: Russia’s propaganda campaign targeting Americans was hosted, at least in part, on American soil.

A company owned by a man on Staten Island, New York, provided internet infrastructure services to DoNotShoot.Us, a Kremlin propaganda site that pretended to be a voice for victims of police shootings, a Daily Beast investigation has found.

Every website needs to be “hosted”—given an Internet Protocol address and space on a physical computer—in order to be publicly viewed. DoNotShoot.Us is a website run out of the Kremlin-backed “Russian troll farm,” according to two sources familiar with the website, both of whom independently identified it to The Daily Beast as a Russian propaganda account. It was hosted on a server with the IP address 107.181.161.172.

That IP address was owned by Greenfloid LLC, a company registered to New Yorker Sergey Kashyrin and two others. Other Russian propaganda sites, like BlackMattersUs.com, were also hosted on servers with IP addresses owned by Greenfloid. The company’s ties to Russian propaganda sites were first reported by ThinkProgress.

The web services company owns under 250 IP addresses, some of which resolve to Russian propaganda sites and other fake news operations. Others are sites that could not be hosted at other providers, like “xxxrape.net.” There’s also a Russian trinket site called “soviet-power.com.” (The IP address that pointed to DoNotShoot.Us now resolves to a botnet and phishing operation, and is currently owned by Total Server Solutions LLC.)

The use of a tiny, no-questions-asked hosting company run by a man living in New York shows the Kremlin-backed troll farm’s brazen use of Americans and American companies to conduct its disinformation campaign. [Continue reading…]

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Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier

The Washington Post reports: The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump’s connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said.

Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.

After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the company in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before that agreement, Fusion GPS’s research into Trump was funded by an unknown Republican client during the GOP primary. [Continue reading…]

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Michael Bloomberg: Brexit is stupidest thing any country has done besides Trump

The Guardian reports: Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire media mogul and former mayor of New York, has said Brexit is the “single stupidest thing any country has ever done” apart from the election of Donald Trump as US president.

Bloomberg argued that “it is really hard to understand why a country that was doing so well wanted to ruin it” with the Brexit vote, in a series of outspoken remarks made at a technology conference in Boston a fortnight ago.

At that event, Bloomberg, 75, also warned that some workers at the financial media company that bears his name were asking to leave the UK and US because they think the two countries no longer like immigrants and are no longer welcoming. [Continue reading…]

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Kabul welcomes Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Afghan warlord who once shelled its citizens

The Guardian reports: When Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a fugitive Afghan warlord and former ally of al-Qaida and the Taliban, returned this year to the city he had once showered with rockets, he was welcomed at the presidential palace.

Hekmatyar had been on lists of internationally wanted terrorists for years but, since his return to Kabul in May, he has met scores of high-ranking diplomats, including the US, EU and Nato ambassadors, as part of his assimilation into mainstream politics.

Hekmatyar, whose crimes were pardoned in a peace deal with the government, now himself calls for the prosecution of war criminals. In two interviews with the Guardian – the first with international media since his return – he said he could unite Afghans and help facilitate negotiations with the Taliban.

When the Guardian put to him allegations of war crimes and torture, he dismissed them as “lies”. He also denied he is reviled for his history of human rights abuse, including the indiscriminate shelling of civilians, targeted assassinations and disappearances of political opponents.

“If you have made a survey and found a lot of people who have this point of view, please present it to us,” he said.

His longtime aide, Amin Karim, said protests against Hekmatyar’s return had been negligible. “How many? We counted 43 people,” he said.

As the leader of one of Afghanistan’s main political parties, Hezb-i Islami, Hekmatyar does have supporters. But he remains notorious both at home and abroad.

Now, however, he has joined a roster of ageing warlords in powerful positions inside and outside government whose main leverage is their potentially disruptive power bases, and who appear to contribute little to policymaking or state-building. [Continue reading…]

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