Category Archives: News

Senior Palestinian figure Dahlan urges exit from peace talks over Trump’s Jerusalem move

Reuters reports: Influential exiled Palestinian politician Mohammed Dahlan said on Wednesday Palestinians should reject any future peace talks and halt security coordination with Israel over U.S. plans to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Dahlan was speaking via his Twitter account shortly before Trump confirmed in a speech that Washington was breaking with longstanding U.S. policy by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the U.S. Embassy to the city from Tel Aviv.

Palestinian leaders have denounced the planned move and said it could have dangerous consequences, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said immediately after Trump’s speech that the president’s announcement was a “historic landmark” and urged other countries to follow suit.

“I call for withdrawal from the absurd and endless negotiations with Israel after the principle of inviolability of the status of Jerusalem has been breached,” said Dahlan, an elected member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party central committee.

“I call for ending all forms of coordination, especially security coordination, with Israel and USA,” he added from the United Arab Emirates, where he had lived since a quarrel with Abbas drove him out of the Palestinian territories in 2011. [Continue reading…]

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Time Person of the Year 2017: The silence breakers

Time reports: Discussions of sexual harassment in polite company tend to rely on euphemisms: harassment becomes “inappropriate behavior,” assault becomes “misconduct,” rape becomes “abuse.” We’re accustomed to hearing those softened words, which downplay the pain of the experience. That’s one of the reasons why the Access Hollywood tape that surfaced in October 2016 was such a jolt. The language used by the man who would become America’s 45th President, captured on a 2005 recording, was, by any standard, vulgar. He didn’t just say that he’d made a pass; he “moved on her like a bitch.” He didn’t just talk about fondling women; he bragged that he could “grab ’em by the pussy.”

That Donald Trump could express himself that way and still be elected President is part of what stoked the rage that fueled the Women’s March the day after his Inauguration. It’s why women seized on that crude word as the emblem of the protest that dwarfed Trump’s Inauguration crowd size. “All social movements have highly visible precipitating factors,” says Aldon Morris, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University. “In this case, you had Harvey Weinstein, and before that you had Trump.”

Megyn Kelly, the NBC anchor who revealed in October that she had complained to Fox News executives about Bill O’Reilly’s treatment of women, and who was a target of Trump’s ire during the campaign, says the tape as well as the tenor of the election turned the political into the personal. “I have real doubts about whether we’d be going through this if Hillary Clinton had won, because I think that President Trump’s election in many ways was a setback for women,” says Kelly, who noted that not all women at the march were Clinton supporters. “But the overall message to us was that we don’t really matter.”

So it was not entirely surprising that 2017 began with women donning “pussy hats” and marching on the nation’s capital in a show of unity and fury. What was startling was the size of the protest. It was one of the largest in U.S. history and spawned satellite marches in all 50 states and more than 50 other countries.

Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice, was one of roughly 20 women to accuse the President of sexual harassment. She filed a defamation suit against Trump days before his Inauguration after he disputed her claims by calling her a liar. A New York judge is expected to decide soon if the President is immune to civil suits while in office. No matter the outcome, the allegations added fuel to a growing fire. [Continue reading…]

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Twelve Senate Democrats call on Franken to resign amid further allegations of sexual harassment

The Washington Post reports: A dozen Senate Democrats called Wednesday for Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) to resign amid mounting allegations of sexual harassment, raising the possibility he will become the second lawmaker to step aside over recent accusations of inappropriate behavior.

Franken’s office said he would make an announcement about his political future on Thursday. No other details were provided.

In a campaign started by Democratic women, nearly a dozen senators said Franken should leave Capitol Hill. Franken faces multiple accusations of inappropriate touching and unwanted advances. He has denied intentional wrongdoing and has apologized.

“Enough is enough,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) told reporters at a news conference. “We need to draw a line in the sand and say none of it is okay, none of it is acceptable. We as elected leaders should absolutely be held to a higher standard, not a lower standard, and we should fundamentally be valuing women. That is where this debate has to go.” [Continue reading…]

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Flynn said Russian sanctions would be ‘ripped up,’ whistle-blower says

The New York Times reports: Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, told a former business associate that economic sanctions against Russia would be “ripped up” as one of the Trump administration’s first acts, according to an account by a whistle-blower made public on Wednesday.

Mr. Flynn believed that ending the sanctions could allow a business project he had once participated in to move forward, according to the whistle-blower. The account is the strongest evidence to date that the Trump administration wanted to end the sanctions immediately, and suggests that Mr. Flynn had a possible economic incentive for the United States to forge a closer relationship with Russia.

Mr. Flynn had worked on a business venture to partner with Russia to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East until June 2016, but remained close with the people involved afterward. On Inauguration Day, as he sat behind the president listening to the inaugural address, Mr. Flynn, according to the whistle-blower, texted the former business associate to say that the project was “good to go.”

The account is detailed in a letter written by Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. In the letter, Mr. Cummings said that the whistle-blower contacted his office in June and has authorized him to go public with the details. He did not name the whistle-blower. [Continue reading…]

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Trump Jr. cites attorney-client privilege in not answering panel’s questions about discussions with his father

Politico reports: Donald Trump Jr. on Wednesday cited attorney-client privilege to avoid telling lawmakers about a conversation he had with his father, President Donald Trump, after news broke this summer that the younger Trump — and top campaign brass — had met with Russia-connected individuals in Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.

Though neither Trump Jr. nor the president is an attorney, Trump Jr. told the House Intelligence Committee that there was a lawyer in the room during the discussion, according to the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California. Schiff said he didn’t think it was a legitimate invocation of attorney-client privilege.

“I don’t believe you can shield communications between individuals merely by having an attorney present,” he said, after the committee’s lengthy interview with Trump Jr. “That’s not the purpose of attorney-client privilege.” [Continue reading…]

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Trump to plunge Middle East into ‘fire with no end’ with Jerusalem speech

The Guardian reports: A cacophony of angry and despairing voices across the Middle East and the world have urged Donald Trump not to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel at a planned speech on Wednesday, warning him that any such announcement would destroy the peace process, strengthen the extremists and weaken the US’s standing in the world.

The pope issued an unusually heartfelt plea to the president to respect the status quo on the city, and to conform with UN resolutions. He told thousands of people at his general audience: “I cannot keep quiet about my deep worry about the situation that has been created in the last few days.”

Pope Francis said he hoped “wisdom and prudence prevail, in order to avoid adding new elements of tension to a global panorama that is already convulsed and marked by so many cruel conflicts”.

The spokesman for the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said the US was “plunging the region and the world into a fire with no end in sight”. He added that the Organisation for Islamic Co-operation would meet in Istanbul on 13 December in a special session to co-ordinate a response. [Continue reading…]

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Donald Trump’s Jerusalem statement is an act of diplomatic arson

Jonathan Freedland writes: Not content with taking the US to the brink of nuclear conflict with North Korea, Donald Trump is now set to apply his strategy of international vandalism to perhaps the most sensitive geopolitical hotspot in the world. With a speech scheduled for later today that’s expected to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and reaffirm a pledge to move the US embassy to the city, he is walking into a bone-dry forest with a naked flame.

For the status of Jerusalem is the most intractable issue in what is often described as the world’s most intractable conflict. It is the issue that has foiled multiple efforts at peacemaking over several decades. Both Israelis and Palestinians insist that Jerusalem must be the capital of their states, present and future, and that that status is non-negotiable.

But it’s not just important to them. The Old City of Jerusalem contains the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest mosque in Islam, to say nothing of its enormous significance to Christians, meaning that even the slightest move there is felt by billions. It is a place where diplomats have learned to tread with extreme care. There is a reason why no US administration, no matter how pro-Israel, has changed its policy toward the city in the nearly 70 years since Israel’s founding.

But here comes Trump, oblivious to precedent and indeed history – even in a place where history is a matter of life and death – stomping through this delicate thicket, trampling over every sensitivity. The risk is obvious, with every Arab government – including those loyal to Washington – now issuing sharp warnings on the perils of this move, almost all of them using the same word: “dangerous”.

Let us be clear. Most advocates of an eventual two-state solution believe the only way to resolve the Jerusalem issue is for it to serve as the capital of both states: East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Then, and only then, would be the right moment to start moving embassies and issuing statements of recognition. Until that day, any act that pre-empts an agreement between the two parties on the city’s future is reckless and needlessly incendiary. [Continue reading…]

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Palestinians burn pictures of Trump as Israel braces for violent protests

Times of Israel reports: Palestinians burned pictures of US President Donald Trump in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Tuesday night, as anger ramped up over an expected announcement by Trump Wednesday of US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Israeli troops girded for the possibility of violence.

The picture-burning protest came hours after Trump told the leaders of the Palestinian Authority and Jordan in phone calls that he intends to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, despite intense Arab and Muslim opposition to a move that would alter decades of US policy and risk potentially violent protests.

Trump is to publicly address the question of Jerusalem on Wednesday and US officials familiar with his planning said he would declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, though he would not order the embassy move immediately.

Palestinian factions have called for protests against the moves, which would de facto recognize Israeli sovereignty over the city despite Palestinian claims to part of it. [Continue reading…]

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Trump tells Palestinians, Jordanians and Egyptians he intends to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem

The Washington Post reports: The Palestinian, Jordanian and Egyptian governments said that President Trump called them Tuesday to inform them he intends to relocate the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, a step that could upend the White House’s peace efforts and spark regional unrest.

“Mr. Trump told our president he was going to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,” said Nabil Shaath, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who said Abbas had personally briefed him on the call. Trump did not give a time frame, Shaath said.

Trump also told Abbas that, in exchange, the United States would make future moves that he thought would please the Palestinian people, although he did not offer details, according to Shaath. “Our president said, ‘You don’t have anything that would make up for this on Jerusalem.’ He said, ‘Definitely, we will not accept it.’ ”

Abbas warned Trump that he was “playing into the hands of extremism,” but Trump “just went on saying he had to do it,” Shaath said. [Continue reading…]

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George Soros ‘comes from another world that I don’t identify with’ and is going to hell, says Roy Moore

JTA reports: Roy Moore, the controversial Alabama Senate candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump, said George Soros’ agenda is “not our American culture” and suggested the Jewish billionaire philanthropist was headed to hell.

Moore, a Republican, on a radio program Monday was asked about The Ordinary People Society, an organization that seeks to register Alabama felons to vote under a law enacted in May that restores voting rights to those convicted of an array of felonies.

Bryan Fischer, the host of the American Family Radio program who is friendly with Moore, asked the Senate candidate what he thought of George Soros, “who seems to think that if you register felons to vote, they will vote for the Democrat.” Soros is not funding the initiative; Fischer had apparently read a Breitbart News story posted online Sunday that sought to link The Ordinary People Society to a number of Soros-funded groups.

Moore, whose campaign has been dogged by accusations that he committed sexual assault against two teenagers and wooed other girls when he was in 30s, rejected the notion that felons would only vote for Democrats, but agreed that “Soros was trying to alter the voting populace” in Alabama.

“He is pushing an agenda and his agenda is sexual in nature, his agenda is liberal, and not what Americans need,” said Moore, not explaining what it is about Soros’ agenda that is “sexual.” He added, “It’s not our American culture. Soros comes from another world that I don’t identify with.”

Soros, a Hungarian survivor of the Holocoast, is an American citizen who moved to New York in 1956.

“No matter how much money he’s got, he’s still going to the same place that people who don’t recognize God and morality and accept his salvation are going,” Moore said. “And that’s not a good place.” [Continue reading…]

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Weinstein’s complicity machine

The New York Times reports: Harvey Weinstein built his complicity machine out of the witting, the unwitting and those in between. He commanded enablers, silencers and spies, warning others who discovered his secrets to say nothing. He courted those who could provide the money or prestige to enhance his reputation as well as his power to intimidate.

In the weeks and months before allegations of his methodical abuse of women were exposed in October, Mr. Weinstein, the Hollywood producer, pulled on all the levers of his carefully constructed apparatus.

He gathered ammunition, sometimes helped by the editor of The National Enquirer, who had dispatched reporters to find information that could undermine accusers. He turned to old allies, asking a partner in Creative Artists Agency, one of Hollywood’s premier talent shops, to broker a meeting with a C.A.A. client, Ronan Farrow, who was reporting on Mr. Weinstein. He tried to dispense favors: While seeking to stop the actress Rose McGowan from writing in a memoir that he had sexually assaulted her, he tried to arrange a $50,000 payment to her former manager and throw new business to a literary agent advising Ms. McGowan. The agent, Lacy Lynch, replied to him in an email: “No one understands smart, intellectual and commercial like HW.”

Mr. Weinstein’s final, failed round of manipulations shows how he operated for more than three decades: by trying to turn others into instruments or shields for his behavior, according to nearly 200 interviews, internal company records and previously undisclosed emails. Some aided his actions without realizing what he was doing. Many knew something or detected hints, though few understood the scale of his sexual misconduct. Almost everyone had incentives to look the other way or reasons to stay silent. Now, even as the tally of Mr. Weinstein’s alleged misdeeds is still emerging, so is a debate about collective failure and the apportioning of blame. [Continue reading…]

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Russia probe tests Pence in-the-dark defense

CNN reports: New revelations about Michael Flynn’s lies to the FBI are laying bare Vice President Mike Pence’s in-the-dark strategy when it comes to Russia’s election meddling, raising new questions about whether he could have been left in the dark as he has argued for nearly a year.

Advisers have long insisted that Pence was unaware Flynn spoke to then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak about a new set of US sanctions on the day they were announced last December.

But court filings unsealed last week, paired with new details about President Donald Trump’s own knowledge of events, indicate a wide circle of advisers were aware that Flynn raised the issue when he spoke by phone to Moscow’s envoy — even as Pence reportedly remained in the dark.

The new questions raised by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation signal what could be a pivotal moment in Pence’s careful calibration of trying to keep a safe distance from the Russia probe even while maintaining his credibility for being left out of the loop by the West Wing.

Pence — who was in charge of Trump’s transition — knew Flynn had contacted Russia, but was left unaware of the sanctions discussion, according to transition officials. It’s led to anxiety within Pence’s circle that he’ll eventually be called to sit for an interview with Mueller. [Continue reading…]

If Pence has to choose between lying to Mueller or betraying Trump, that’ll be the day Pence’s unwavering loyalty evaporates.

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Donald Trump Jr. asked Russian lawyer for info on Clinton Foundation

NBC News reports: Donald Trump Jr. asked a Russian lawyer at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting whether she had evidence of illegal donations to the Clinton Foundation, the lawyer told the Senate Judiciary Committee in answers to written questions obtained exclusively by NBC News.

The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told the committee that she didn’t have any such evidence, and that she believes Trump misunderstood the nature of the meeting after receiving emails from a music promoter promising incriminating information on Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump’s Democratic opponent.

Once it became apparent that she did not have meaningful information about Clinton, Trump seemed to lose interest, Veselnitskaya said, and the meeting petered out. [Continue reading…]

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Mueller subpoenaed Trump Deutsche Bank records, source says

Bloomberg reports: Special prosecutor Robert Mueller zeroed in on President Donald Trump’s business dealings with Deutsche Bank AG as his investigation into alleged Russian meddling in U.S. elections widens.

Mueller issued a subpoena to Germany’s largest lender several weeks ago, forcing the bank to submit documents on its relationship with Trump and his family, according to a person briefed on the matter, who asked not to be identified because the action has not been announced.

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer John Dowd disputed that account, saying he had been told by Deutsche Bank that no such subpoena had been issued.

“We have confirmed that the news reports that the Special Counsel had subpoenaed financial records relating to the president are false. No subpoena has been issued or received. We have confirmed this with the bank and other sources,” Dowd wrote in an email.

When approached about the Dowd comment, the person familiar with the matter reiterated that the bank had received a subpoena. Handelsblatt reported the subpoena earlier Tuesday. [Continue reading…]

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Trump administration pushes back against narrative of imminent Syrian military victory in civil war

The Washington Post reports: The government of Bashar al-Assad, lacking manpower, reliant on allies and almost broke, is no longer capable of a military win in Syria’s civil war, U.S. officials said Monday, pushing back against Russian and Syrian assertions that victory is only a matter of time.

Senior officials described a severely weakened Syrian state, grappling with challenges including loss of oil revenue; severe infrastructure damage; increasing reliance on outside powers for cash, food and fighters; and a military barely able to keep multiple armed groups at bay.

“When we look at what it would take to make a victor’s peace sustainable in any country, the Syrian regime does not have it,” one official said during a briefing for reporters, speaking on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the Trump administration. “They’re not wealthy, they’re not rich in manpower, they’re not rich in other capabilities, and the grievances, if anything, are sharper now than they were at the beginning of this conflict.”

Describing the Trump administration’s assessment of the Syrian war, officials cited a recent battle to recapture Bukamal, along the Syria-Iraq border, that included almost no Syrian government units.

The Trump administration believes that about 80 percent of the military manpower fighting in support of the Syrian government is made up of foreign forces from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraqi militias and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. [Continue reading…]

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Killing of Ali Abdullah Saleh changes dynamics of Yemen’s civil war

The Guardian reports: The killing of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former Yemeni president, removes the country’s most important political figure for four decades from a complex equation that has plunged the Arab world’s poorest nation into conflict and sparked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

His death marks a dramatic shift three years into a war in a state of stalemate. It risks the conflict becoming even more intractable.

Saleh was an important player in Yemen’s descent into civil war. His reluctant departure from power in 2012 – forced upon him by the Arab spring after 33 years of rule – brought his Saudi-backed deputy, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, into office.

But in 2014 Saleh forged an uneasy, unlikely alliance with his former enemies, the Houthis, to facilitate their takeover of Sana’a and ultimately to force Hadi to flee to Saudi Arabia.

It was an alliance doomed to fail, but few predicted the man who sided with the rebels he fought six wars against between 2004 and 2011 would eventually be killed by them.

While it lasted, the alliance benefited both sides. Saleh used Houthi firepower and manpower, while the rebels gained from Saleh’s governing and intelligence networks.

In the past week, that equation changed as Saleh moved to increase his power in Sana’a and signalled that he was swapping sides, seeking a dialogue with the Saudis and their allies, including the United Arab Emirates. There were reports that Saudi bombing of Sana’a in recent days was targeting Houthi areas in a move to help Saleh – but that did little to prevent the rebels killing him.

Without Saleh, the Houthis are strengthened – at least in the short term. “There’s a possibility that [Saleh’s] apparatus will be radically weakened, if not marginalised in the coming period; this leaves the Houthis as the key power in northern Yemen,” said Adam Baron, visiting fellow at European Council on Foreign Relations. [Continue reading…]

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It’s official: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Hariri not resigning after all

The New York Times reports: A month after he declared under Saudi Arabian pressure that he was quitting his post, Lebanon’s prime minister officially rescinded his resignation on Tuesday, closing a chapter in a curious political saga that threatened to destabilize Lebanon and transfixed the region.

The reversal by the prime minister, Saad Hariri, was considered a setback for Saudi Arabia and its brash young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who had summoned Mr. Hariri to Riyadh last month.

Western diplomats and Lebanese officials have said the prince coerced Mr. Hariri into announcing his resignation and effectively kept him under house arrest for more than two weeks, until an international diplomatic scramble brought him home.

The episode was widely seen as an attempt by Saudi Arabia to counter its regional rival, Iran, by collapsing Mr. Hariri’s government, which includes Hezbollah, the Shiite militia and political party that is Iran’s Lebanese ally.

But with Mr. Hariri and his government staying in place for now, that maneuver has failed, with Hezbollah’s position in Lebanon undamaged and possibly stronger. [Continue reading…]

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Trump may face a reckoning in case brought by female accuser

The Washington Post reports: In the weeks leading up to his election, Donald Trump went on a tear against a list of women who had accused him of touching them inappropriately. One was Summer Zervos, who had been a contestant on his reality television show.

“False stories. All made up. Lies. Lies. No witnesses. No nothing. All big lies,” Trump declared at a rally after the Californian made a statement alleging that Trump kissed and groped her in a 2007 encounter at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

“Total fabrication,” he told a cheering crowd in Gettysburg, Pa. “The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”

As the nation wrestles with a historic shift in how to address old charges of sexual misbehavior, allegations against Trump, which date to his days as a New York developer, have become part of the public debate. Trump has repeatedly said the accusations against him are groundless. But by turning personal and branding the women liars, Trump has perhaps unwittingly played into a cutting-edge strategy in the legal pursuit of sexual misconduct — claims of defamation such as those used against comedian Bill Cosby and in a lesser-known New York case, argued by two lawyers who are now representing Zervos.

The defamation suit filed in January in New York State Supreme Court by Zervos, a short-lived contestant on “The Apprentice,” has reached a critical point, with oral arguments over Trump’s motion to dismiss scheduled for Tuesday, after which the judge is expected to rule on whether the case may move forward.

If it proceeds, Zervos’s attorneys could gather and make public incidents from Trump’s past and Trump could be called to testify, with the unwelcome specter of a former president looming over him: It was Bill Clinton’s misleading sworn testimony — not the repeated allegations of sexual harassment against him — that eventually led to his impeachment. [Continue reading…]

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