Category Archives: News

Quiet fixer in Donald Trump’s campaign: His son-in-law, Jared Kushner

The New York Times reports: International diplomacy is a world of careful rituals, hierarchy and credentials. But when the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, wanted to communicate with Donald J. Trump, he ended up on two occasions in the Manhattan office of a young man with no government experience, no political background and no official title in the Trump campaign: Jared Kushner.

Mr. Kushner held court at length with Mr. Dermer, doing his best to engage in the same sort of high-level conversation that the ambassador conducted with career diplomats and policy experts from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

A 35-year-old real estate developer, investor and newspaper publisher, Mr. Kushner derives his authority in the campaign not from a traditional résumé but from a marital vow. He is Mr. Trump’s son-in-law.

Yet in a gradual but unmistakable fashion, Mr. Kushner has become involved in virtually every facet of the Trump presidential operation, so much so that many inside and out of it increasingly see him as a de facto campaign manager. Mr. Kushner, who is married to Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, helped recruit a sorely needed director of communications, oversaw the creation of an online fund-raising system and has had a hand in drafting Mr. Trump’s few policy speeches. And now that Mr. Trump has secured the Republican nomination, Mr. Kushner is counseling his father-in-law on the selection of a running mate.

It is a new and unlikely role for Mr. Kushner, a conspicuously polite Harvard graduate whose prominent New Jersey family bankrolled Democrats for decades and whose father’s reputation was destroyed, in a highly public and humiliating manner, by his involvement in electoral politics.

Now, in a Shakespearean turn, Mr. Kushner is working side by side with the former federal prosecutor who put his father, Charles Kushner, in prison just over 10 years ago: Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, whom Mr. Trump named as a top adviser. Mr. Kushner originally voiced objections to Mr. Trump about the appointment, but Mr. Kushner and Mr. Christie have since become wary allies in seeking to impose greater discipline on Mr. Trump’s unconventional campaign.

Much about the Trump candidacy seems at odds with Mr. Kushner’s personality and biography: An Orthodox Jew and grandson of Holocaust survivors, Mr. Kushner is now at the center of a campaign that has been embraced by white nationalists and anti-Semites. [Continue reading…]

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I governed in Iraq, and saw the lack of postwar planning first-hand

Emma Sky writes: Although I opposed the Iraq war, I went on to serve in Iraq longer than any other British military or civilian official. When I testified before the Iraq inquiry on 14 January 2011, I explained how in 2003 I had responded to the government’s request for volunteers to administer Iraq for three months before we handed the country back to the Iraqis.

I felt I had useful skills to contribute, after a decade in Palestine working on capacity building and conflict mediation. And I did not want the only westerner Iraqis would meet to be a man with a gun.

Before I went out to Iraq I was not briefed, and had no idea what my job was going to be. I received a phone call from someone in the British government telling me to make my way to RAF Brize Norton, jump on a military plane and fly to Basra, where I would be met by someone carrying a sign with my name on it and taken to the nearest hotel.

It sounded plausible. It was June 2003. The invasion was three months previous. The war was apparently over. I assumed the British government knew what it was doing – it had just not told me. So I followed the instructions. But I arrived in Basra airport to find no one expecting me, no sign with my name. [Continue reading…]

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After invoking Article 50, UK could still rescind notice to withdraw from EU, say French legal sources

The Guardian reports: [At a] hearing of the Treasury select committee, leading constitutional lawyers revealed that the French government legal service has informed the French government that the UK would be entitled to rescind a notice to withdraw even though it had invoked article 50.

Such flexibility would mean that even if it was triggered, the UK could reverse a decision to withdraw, if either parliament or a second referendum endorsed the step.

Michael Dougan, professor of European law at Liverpool University, also pointed out that any UK application to join Norway as a signatory to the European economic area (EEA) agreement – a means of maintaining access to the EU single market – could be vetoed by any single one of the remaining 27 EU member states, the four members of the European free trade area (Efta) and the European parliament, meaning 31 different institutions or states could block the UK signing the EEA.

The EEA is seen by some as the best stopping off point for the UK, since it retains UK access to the EU single market, but all EEA members are required to apply the principle of the free movement of people. [Continue reading…]

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Dutch Pegida leader and expelled German deputy hunt migrants on Bulgaria border

The Telegraph reports: The former frontwoman of Germany’s Pegida anti-Muslim movement and a leader of its Dutch offshoot have travelled to Bulgaria to hunt down migrants attempting to cross the border from Turkey, it has emerged.

Tatjana Festerling called on the “men of Europe” to travel to Bulgaria and join local vigilantes attempting to hunt down migrants.

Ms Festerling, who came to international notoriety earlier this year when she called for asylum-seekers to be shot if they attempted to cross the German border, was expelled from her post as Pegida’s deputy leader two weeks ago.

She boasted on her Facebook page on Friday of spending a day with the “Bulgarian Military Veterans Union”, a paramilitary group of vigilantes who patrol the border searching for illegal immigrants. Ms Festerling said she was accompanied on the trip by a leader of the Dutch offshoot of Pegida, Edwin Wagensveld.

She posted pictures of herself and Mr Wagensveld posing alongside men in military-style uniform, their faces masked with balaclavas, holding up a banner which read “Fortress Europe”. Requests for comment made to the Dutch branch of Pegida have not yet been returned. [Continue reading…]

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David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage described as ‘rats fleeing a sinking ship’ after Brexit vote

The Independent reports: David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage have been described as “rats fleeing a sinking ship” following their resignations in the immediate aftermath of Britain’s historic European Union referendum.

Guy Verhofstadt, the former Prime Minister of Belgium who now heads up the alliance of Liberal and Democrats for Europe, made the comparison the day after Mr Farage resigned as the leader of the UK Independence Party, saying “he couldn’t possibly achieve more”.

Mr Verhofstadt: “The Brexiters do not have a clue what needs to be done. Cameron, Johnson and Farage behave like rats fleeing a sinking ship.”

His unflattering depiction of the three senior British politicians came as Jean-Claude Junker, president of the European Commission, accused the former London mayor Mr Johnson and Mr Farage of quitting when things got difficult. “The Brexit heroes of yesterday are now the sad heroes of today,” Mr Juncker told a session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. [Continue reading…]

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Britain will still be in EU in 5 years’ time, says Austrian minister

Financial Times reports: Britain will still be a member of the EU in five years, Austria’s finance minister has predicted, arguing the economic volatility unleashed by the Brexit vote will prompt a rethink by the country.

Hans Jörg Schelling told Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper that the reaction of financial markets and business since the June 23 referendum result had been a “salutary shock” for the UK.

The longer the uncertainty lasted, the greater would be the damage for the rest of Europe, the Austrian finance minister warned. But the impact would be “very much greater” in Britain.

In five years’ time, “there will still be 28 member countries [in the EU],” Mr Schelling said in an interview published late on Monday. “Great Britain will remain a member in the future.” [Continue reading…]

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UK government faces pre-emptive legal action over Brexit decision

The Guardian reports: A prominent law firm is taking pre-emptive legal action against the government, following the EU referendum result, to try to ensure article 50 is not triggered without an act of parliament.

Acting on behalf of an anonymous group of clients, solicitors at Mishcon de Reya have been in contact with government lawyers to seek assurances over the process, and plan to pursue it through the courts if they are not satisfied. The law firm has retained the services of senior constitutional barristers, including Lord Pannick QC and Rhodri Thompson QC.

Their initiative relies upon the ambiguous wording of article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, which sets out how states could leave the EU. The first clause declares: “Any member state may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.”

One of the grounds of a likely challenge to the referendum is that it is merely advisory and the royal prerogative cannot be used to undermine parliamentary statute. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS bombing in Baghdad casts doubt on Iraqi leader’s ability to unite

The New York Times reports: As grief-stricken Iraqis held a candlelight vigil Sunday night at the site of a car bombing that killed more than 150 people, workers often using the flashlights from their cellphones were still pulling bodies from the rubble.

As Sunday gave way to Monday morning, with bodies still buried, some began expressing their grief through politics, waving banners listing the dead and demanding that officials, including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, resign.

The attack in a shopping area in the Karada neighborhood was the deadliest in Baghdad in many years, and after the final death toll is known it could become the deadliest ever.

As bloody as it was, the bombing in Baghdad was but the worst of a wave of global terrorism in recent days attributed to militants aligned with the Islamic State. Seemingly unconnected to any political purpose and intended to kill indiscriminately, be it by gunfire, explosions or, in the case of a restaurant in Bangladesh, an arsenal including swords, the violence has cut across religions, national identities, ages and professions.

The violence touched people from all parts of the globe. More than 40 were killed at Istanbul’s main airport last week — Saudis, Iraqis and citizens of Iran, China, Tunisia and Ukraine, though most were Turkish. Among the dead were taxi drivers, an interpreter helping tourists, a customs officer and an airport worker who was looking forward to his wedding, which would have been at the end of this week.

In Bangladesh, young men, many of them from privileged backgrounds, used guns, bombs, knives and swords in an assault on foreigners at a popular restaurant on a Friday night. They killed 22 people, many in gruesome fashion. The dead included nine Italians, one of whom was pregnant; seven urban planners from Japan; a Bangladeshi woman who worked for art galleries; a 19-year-old Indian woman attending the University of California, Berkeley; two other college students; and two police officers.

In Iraq, the victims were all Iraqis. Desperate to respond to the public’s grief and anger, Mr. Abadi tried to assuage Iraqis’ desire for revenge by promising to speed the executions of Islamic State militants on death row. Later in the day, the Justice Ministry announced that five convicted terrorists had been executed, and images of their hangings were shown on state television. [Continue reading…]

 

 

 

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‘Saddam has gone, and we have one thousand Saddams now’

Jeremy Bowen reports: Many people I have spoken to have already made up their minds about the impact of the invasion on Iraq. One of these is Kadhim al-Jabbouri, a man who became a symbol of the Iraqi peoples’ rejection and hatred of Saddam Hussein.

On 9 April 2003, the American spearhead reached central Baghdad. Hours before they arrived, Kadhim, who was a champion weightlifter, decided to bring down the big bronze statue of Saddam Hussein that stood on a plinth in Firdous Square.

Kadhim owned a popular motorcycle shop and was a Harley-Davidson expert. For a while he fixed Saddam’s bikes, but after the regime executed 14 members of his family he refused any more work. The regime’s response to his effrontery was to put him in jail for two years on trumped-up charges.

Kadhim is a survivor. In prison, he started a gym and a weight-lifting club, and was eventually released in one of Saddam’s periodic amnesties.

But on the morning of 9 April, Kadhim wanted his own personal moment of liberation and revenge. He took his sledgehammer and began to swing it at the plinth beneath the towering bronze dictator.

Journalists came out of the Palestine Hotel on the square and started broadcasting and taking pictures. Kadhim says their presence protected him from Saddam’s secret policemen, who melted away as the sound of American guns came closer.

When the Americans arrived they looped a steel cable round the bronze Saddam’s head and used a winch to help Kadhim finish the job. It all happened live on international TV. The image of furious and delighted Iraqis slapping the fallen statue with their shoes went around the world.

Kadhim said his story was told to President George W Bush in the Oval Office. But he now wishes he had left his sledgehammer at home.

Kadhim, like many Iraqis, blames the invaders for starting a chain of events that destroyed the country. He longs for the certainties and stability of Saddam’s time.

First, he says, he realised it was not going to be liberation, but occupation. Then he hated the corruption, mismanagement and violence in the new Iraq. Most of all he despises Iraq’s new leaders.

“Saddam has gone, and we have one thousand Saddams now,” he says. “It wasn’t like this under Saddam. There was a system. There were ways. We didn’t like him, but he was better than those people.” [Continue reading…]

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ISIS extends reach as it suffers defeats

The Wall Street Journal reports: During a rare spate of attacks in Jordan recently, Western officials in the capital Amman intercepted messages from Islamic State leaders urging supporters to spread terror at home rather than join militants across the border in Syria.

That call, which was sent to all the group’s affiliates, and a similar appeal in a public speech by an Islamic State spokesman were followed by attacks outside the boundaries of its self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq. In the past week, supporters with suspected or confirmed ties to Islamic State have launched deadly strikes in Turkey, Iraq and Bangladesh.

Islamic State is increasingly reverting to less expensive but spectacular guerrilla maneuvers, calling on supporters to launch assaults while its costly makeshift army faces retention problems and casualties, Western officials said. It is expanding its global scope, inspiring groups and individuals spread across several continents, even though they may have different agendas and operational methods.

The frequency of attacks outside Syria and Iraq has increased in tandem with battlefield and territorial setbacks that have deprived the militants of key sources of income such as oil. The group’s shift in tactics has been prompted by those territorial losses, U.S. officials and security advisers say. [Continue reading…]

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Three suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia extend global wave of bombings and a bloody week

The Washington Post reports: Suicide bombers suspected of links to the Islamic State struck for the fourth time in less than a week, targeting three locations in Saudi Arabia in an extension of what appeared to be a coordinated campaign of worldwide bombings coinciding with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The triple attacks Monday ranged across the kingdom: near a U.S. consulate in Jiddah, a mosque frequented by Shiite worshipers in an eastern district, and at a security center in one of Islam’s holiest sites, the historic city of Medina. The Saudi Interior Ministry told the state-run television station that four security guards died in the Medina attack and five were injured. [Continue reading…]

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Syria: Abductions, torture and summary killings at the hands of armed groups

Amnesty International reports: Armed groups operating in Aleppo, Idleb and surrounding areas in the north of Syria have carried out a chilling wave of abductions, torture and summary killings, said Amnesty International in a new briefing published today.

The briefing ‘Torture was my punishment’: Abductions, torture and summary killings under armed group rule in Aleppo and Idleb, Syria offers a rare glimpse of what life is really like in areas under the control of armed opposition groups. Some of them are believed to have the support of governments such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the USA despite evidence that they are committing violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war). It also sheds light on the administrative and quasi-judicial institutions set up by armed groups to govern in these areas.

“This briefing exposes the distressing reality for civilians living under the control of some of the armed opposition groups in Aleppo, Idleb and surrounding areas. Many civilians live in constant fear of being abducted if they criticize the conduct of armed groups in power or fail to abide by the strict rules that some have imposed,” said Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International. [Continue reading…]

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Might the content of Hillary Clinton’s emails matter more than the location of her email server?

The Washington Post reports: FBI Director James B. Comey said Tuesday that his agency will not recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server as secretary of state but called Clinton and her staff “extremely careless” in handling sensitive material.

The announcement means that Clinton will not have to fear criminal, legal liability as her campaign moves forward, though Comey leveled sharp criticism at the past email practices of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and called into question many of the defenses she has raised in recent weeks. [Continue reading…]

Karoli Kuns, managing editor of Crooks and Liars, who says that in 2008, she was “one of the most ardent Hillary Clinton haters on the planet,” decided last year to read her emails during their “slow-drip release.” In January, using the pseudonym Anna Whitlock, she wrote: In those emails, I discovered a Hillary Clinton I didn’t even know existed.

I found a woman who cared about employees who lost loved ones. I found a woman who, without exception, took time to write notes of condolence and notes of congratulations, no matter how busy she was. I found a woman who could be a tough negotiator and firm in her expectations, but still had a moment to write a friend with encouragement in tough times. She worried over people she didn’t know, and she worried over those she did.

And everywhere she went, her concern for women and children was clearly the first and foremost thing on her mind.

In those emails, I also found a woman who seemed to understand power and how to use it wisely. A woman of formidable intellect who actually understood the nuances of a thing, and how to strike a tough bargain.

I read every single one of the emails released in August, and what I found was someone who actually gave a damn about the country, the Democratic party, and all of our futures. [Continue reading…]

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As PM orders removal of British-made fake bomb detectors, Iraqis say ‘corruption is the greatest threat we face’

The Guardian reports: For the past nine years, Iraq’s security forces have tried to stop car bombs with a British-made bomb detector wand that was long ago proven to be fake. A day after a car bomb killed at least 149 people in central Baghdad, the country’s prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi, has demanded their withdrawal.

After the single deadliest attack in Iraq this year, Abadi also ordered a renewed corruption investigation into the sale of the devices from 2007-10, which cost Iraq more than £53m and netted the Somerset businessman James McCormick enormous profits, as well as a 10-year jail sentence for fraud.

The cost to the Iraqi public will remain incalculable: the vast majority of the bombs that have killed and maimed at least 4,000 people since 2007 have been driven straight past police or soldiers using the devices at checkpoints.

Their withdrawal follows years of insistence by interior ministry officials, who bought the wands at vastly inflated fees, that they were effective in sensing odours from explosive components.

Near the scene of Sunday’s bomb attack in the suburb of Karrada, which was claimed by Islamic State, Iraqis reacted with derision at the ban, which follows years of complaints from citizens and warnings by both the British government and US military that the wands have no scientific value.

“This should have happened a long time ago,” said Sheikh Qadhim al-Sayyed, standing near the scorched remains of a shopping district in Karrada, just south of the Tigris River. “There isn’t a person in the country who thinks they work. No one here is responsible for what they do. It should be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Corruption is the greatest threat we face.” [Continue reading…]

On JANUARY 23, 2010, the New York Times reported: The director of a British company that supplies bomb detectors to Iraq has been arrested on fraud charges, and the export of the devices has been banned, British government officials confirmed Saturday.

Iraqi officials reacted with fury to the news, noting a series of horrific bombings in the past six months despite the widespread use of the bomb detectors at hundreds of checkpoints in the capital.

“This company not only caused grave and massive losses of funds, but it has caused grave and massive losses of the lives of innocent Iraqi civilians, by the hundreds and thousands, from attacks that we thought we were immune to because we have this device,” said Ammar Tuma, a member of the Iraqi Parliament’s Security and Defense Committee.

But the Ministry of the Interior has not withdrawn the device from duty, and police officers continue to use them. [Continue reading…]

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UK free movement deal possible, hints French presidential favourite

The Guardian reports: Alain Juppé, the frontrunner in next year’s French presidential elections, is to visit London and has suggested a deal may be possible on free movement of workers that will allow the UK access to the single market.

Juppé is quoted in the Financial Times as saying the issue is up for negotiation. The politician from the mainstream French right will visit London on Monday and is certain to be pressed to give a fuller explanation about how much flexibility of movement he envisages. His remarks do not tally with the position of either the European commission or the German or French governments.

Juppé is also expected to seek assurances about the status of French citizens living in the UK after the frontrunner for the Tory leadership, Theresa May, said the status of existing EU migrants would be a factor in any negotiations on the terms of a British withdrawal from the EU.

Her remarks were supported by the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, who said it would be absurd to give assurances on the status of EU citizens in the UK before similar assurances came from the EU about UK citizens. Hammond has been a leading UK voice arguing for a trade-off in talks between access to the single market and free movement of EU citizens.

The EU is uneasy about giving the UK any concessions on free movement since it is likely to lead to calls for similar treatment from other nationalist politicians in Europe.

The EU has been refusing any concessions for the Swiss on free movement despite a referendum in 2014 insisting the government impose immigration controls. Switzerland is wary of losing access to the European single market, and may have to hold a second referendum if no deal is offered by the EU. [Continue reading…]

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EU tells Swiss no single market access if no free movement of citizens

The Guardian reports: The European Union is to show its determination to make no concessions to the UK on Brexit terms by telling Switzerland it will lose access to the single market if it goes ahead with plans to impose controls on the free movement of EU citizens.

The Swiss-EU talks, under way for two years but now needing a solution possibly within weeks, throws up the exact same issues that will be raised in the UK’s exit talks – the degree to which the UK must accept free movement of the EU’s citizens as a price for access to the single market.

The Swiss are desperate to strike a deal in order to give its politicians time to pass the necessary laws to meet a February 2017 deadline imposed by a legally binding referendum in 2014.

The former president of the FDP-Liberal Radicals, Philipp Müller, on Sunday said the Brexit threat should serve as a warning to the Swiss, amid suggestions in Brussels the prospect of UK-EU exit talks meant there was less willingness to give ground on freedom of movement. [Continue reading…]

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At least 82 killed as ISIS bombing targets Ramadan shoppers in Baghdad

Reuters reports: At least 82 people were killed and 200 injured in two bombings that hit Baghdad around midnight Saturday, nearly all of them in a blast targeting a busy shopping area as they celebrated Ramadan, police and medical sources said Sunday.

A refrigerator truck packed with explosives blew up in Karrada in central Baghdad, killing 80 people and injuring at least 200. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, in a statement circulated online by supporters of the ultra-hard line Sunni group. It said the blast was a suicide bombing.

Karrada was busy at the time as Iraqis eat out late during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which ends next week. Police said the toll could rise as more bodies could be lying under the rubble of devastated buildings.

The bombing is the deadliest in the country since Iraqi forces last month dislodged Islamic State militants from Falluja, their stronghold just west of the capital that had served as a launch pad for such attacks. [Continue reading…]

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Bangladeshis behind restaurant killings, international link probed

Reuters reports: Seven militants who killed 20 people at a restaurant in Dhaka were local Bangladeshis and authorities had tried before to arrest five of them, police said, as investigators probed for possible links with international Islamist extremist groups.

The gunmen stormed the upmarket restaurant in the diplomatic zone late on Friday, before killing mostly non-Muslim hostages, including at least nine Italians, seven Japanese and an American.

Islamic State claimed responsibility, warning citizens of “crusader countries” that their citizens would not be safe “as long as their aircraft are killing Muslims”, the group said in a statement. It also posted pictures of five fighters grinning in front of a black flag who it said were involved in the attack, according to the SITE monitoring website.

The claims have not been confirmed, but Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told Reuters late on Saturday that neither Islamic State nor al Qaeda was involved. He reiterated the government’s line that home-grown militants were responsible for a spate of killings in the country over the past 18 months.

“This was done by JMB,” Khan said, referring to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, which claims to represent Islamic State in Bangladesh. [Continue reading…]

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