"Trump disavows nuclear deal and denounces Iranian leaders" by Mark Landler New York Times October 13, 2017
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday made good on a long-running threat to disavow the Iran nuclear deal that was negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama. But he stopped short of unraveling the accord or even rewriting it, as the deal’s defenders had once feared.
In a speech that mixed searing criticism of Iran with more measured action, Trump declared his intention not to certify Iran’s compliance with the agreement. Doing so essentially sends to Congress a decision about whether to reimpose sanctions on Iran, which would blow up the agreement, as he laid out a broader strategy for confronting Iran.
The president derided the deal as “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.” But he added, “What’s done is done, and that’s why we are where we are.”
Trump said he would ask Congress to establish “trigger points,” which could prompt the United States to reimpose sanctions on Iran if it crosses thresholds set by Congress.
“In the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated,” Trump said.
Those could include continued ballistic missile launches by Iran, a refusal to extend the duration of constraints on its nuclear fuel production, or a conclusion by US intelligence agencies that Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in less than a year.
Trump denounced the Iranian government, saying it financed terrorist groups, imprisoned Americans, plotted attacks on troops, and fomented civil wars in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria.
“Given the regime’s murderous past and present,” he said, “we should not take lightly its sinister vision for the future.”
(Insert polite but unenthusiastic applause here)
Enacting new legislation on the agreement would require 60 votes in the Senate, meaning Republicans would need to pick up some Democratic support.
Trump argues his strategy is far tougher on Iran than the Obama administration was. The policy “focuses on neutralizing the government of Iran’s destabilizing influence and constraining its aggression, particularly its support for terrorism and militants,” the White House said in a summary issued Thursday evening.
The nuclear deal is the latest international agreement that Trump has tried to exit, amend, or water down, including the Paris climate accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The closest analogy to this deal may be NAFTA, the trade agreement that Trump once threatened to rip up and is now undergoing a painstaking renegotiation.
Might even die.
In this case, however, Iran has said that it will not take part in any renegotiation of an accord it also hammered out with three European countries, as well as with Russia and China. Persuading the Europeans — Britain, France, and Germany — to reopen the negotiations could prove almost as difficult.
Getting Congress, which is deeply divided on the Iran deal, to agree on additional legislation also may prove difficult.
Although some Republicans are eager to undermine the deal, Democrats are equally determined to preserve what they view as another legacy of the Obama administration that Trump is trying to dismantle.
On Thursday evening, Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, released a potential blueprint toward imposing an automatic return of sanctions if Iran was believed capable of producing a nuclear weapon within a year, or if it violated other restrictions.
Corker worked on the proposal with administration officials and Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, who is a hard-liner on Iran policy, and predicted it could earn bipartisan support. It suggests that Corker’s personal feud with Trump will not obstruct their cooperation on this issue.
AH!
You see who really pulls the strings of this behind all the smoke, sound, and fury of the pre$$ illusion and show.
Trump’s decision came after a fierce debate inside the administration, according to a senior official familiar with the discussions and who agreed to describe them on condition of anonymity.
Related: "Even skeptics agree Iran is abiding by the agreement, but none of that should obscure crucial realities here: We now have a relatively stable situation with Iran, and for all the complaints that the deal doesn’t last forever, it includes a quarter century of comprehensive inspections. Should the IAEA determine that Iran is cheating on the agreement, we’d still be in a better position to deal with that problem. Mattis, the administration’s indispensable man on national security matters, has now presented the president with a way to save face. Trump should now say that, whatever his personal feelings, he needs to respect the judgment of his national security experts. It’s a way out of a dilemma a responsible leader would never have put himself in....."
Proving no one can serve two masters.
The president also faced a growing chorus of outside voices urging him not to withdraw from the deal, including Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister and defense minister known for his hawkish views on Iran.
A key part of the power puzzle and configuration.
To emphasize the depth of European concern, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Theresa May of Great Britain, and President Emmanuel Macron of France issued a rare joint rebuke of Trump’s decision Friday evening.
European leaders also said they would carry on with an agreement and they challenged Trump’s authority to scuttle a deal that is enshrined in international law via a UN resolution.
Expect another wave of terror attacks then.
In Moscow, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin of Russia, warned that any move to spike the deal ‘‘would undoubtedly hurt the atmosphere of predictability, security, stability, and nonproliferation in the entire world.’’
He's sort of the Hank Fonda character, isn't he?
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The Saker asks:
"..... The big question is obvious: is that just hot air or will a war happen?
At the risk of deepening what still might be my mistaken prognosis of 2007 I will say that yes, the USA will probably attack Iran. Since there is exactly ZERO chance of Iran caving in to the latest US-Israeli threats, not attacking Iran will now represent a major loss of face and humiliation for Trump and his Neocon masters. So the USA will go to war yet again, not for any rational reason, but solely because Bibi Netanyahu “owns” Trump and Israel “own” the USA. Yes my dear Americans, far from being “the land of the free and the home of the brave” the USA is a subservient colony of a tiny state in the Middle-East which also happens to be the last officially racist state on our planet. Which makes you neither brave, nor free. Sorry.
The only good news is that once the Neocons fail, there will be political hell to pay for them. Oh sure, their plan is not even to win. What they want is inflict as much damage as possible on Iran (like they did in Lebanon and Gaza), kill as many Iranians as possible, destroy as much of the Iranian infrastructure as they can, before dumping Trump and blaming it all on him. Their hope is that the US Ziomedia will then lynch Trump for starting an unwinnable war against Iran while they, the Neocons, quietly slip away and let Trump face the music. Trump will be impeached, possibly jailed, while Bibi Netanyahu will either get reelected personally, or appoint the next guy in charge.
Maybe. I will never commit the mistake of underestimating the stupidity and ignorance of brainwashed people our society is so good at generating, but I will add that this plan also involves a huge risk: if, in the age of the still-not-quite-Big-Brother-controlled Internet the American people finally connect the dots and find out that they fought and lost many wars on behalf of a small cabal of racist Zionists who despise them, then there is a real possibility of a huge blowback against the (aptly-named) Zionist Occupation Government (aka ZOG) which, in turn, might open a Pandora’s box of questions, including what really happened on 9/11.
But that is still a distant possibility at most.
Right now what we are looking at is a slow but steady move towards a US attack on Iran.....
--MORE--"
No Peace Prize for Trump.
On the road to war:
"Kurdish troops withdraw from Kirkuk area" by Loveday Morris Washington Post October 13, 2017
BAGHDAD — Kurdish forces withdrew from the edges of a disputed region in northern Iraq, after Iraqi forces demanded that the Kurds withdraw from oil fields and military bases around the contested city of Kirkuk.
Lieutenant General Wasta Rasul said Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga evacuated positions southwest of city, the Associated Press reported.
The Kirkuk area, with about 10 percent of Iraq’s oil reserves, has long been contested between Baghdad and Irbil, but the province has become even more of a flash point since Kurdistan voted in favor of independence in a referendum last month.
At the center of the military conflagration are areas that forces loyal to the central government in Baghdad occupied before the Islamic State’s advance in 2014, but lost as Iraqi forces collapsed en masse in northern Iraq.
Kurdistan sees Kirkuk — ethnically and religiously mixed and home to Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Assyrian Christians, Sunnis, and Shiites — as a historically Kurdish city where demographics were shifted by a campaign of ‘‘Arabization’’ under Iraq’s former dictator, Saddam Hussein. Baghdad contests that claim.
Relations between Baghdad and Irbil have deteriorated in recent weeks after the semiautonomous government in the north defied the vehement opposition of Baghdad, as well as that of the United States and its neighbors, to hold a vote on independence.
Baghdad has blocked international flights to Irbil in retaliation and has threatened to take over border crossings.
‘‘I call on our brothers of the peshmerga to hand over these areas and not to drag the country into internal war,’’ said the militia commander, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject. He said Iraq demanded that oil fields and military bases, including the 12th division headquarters, all be handed over.
In Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi took to Twitter on Friday to dismiss reports that Iraqi forces were planning to attack Kurdistan as ‘‘fake news’’ with a ‘‘deplorable agenda,’’ but the country’s interior minister, Qassim al-Araji, said that there was a ‘‘process of redeployment’’ underway that would see Iraqi forces return to the positions they held in the area before the Islamic State’s advance in 2014, when the Iraqi army collapsed in huge areas of the country’s north.
Kimberly Kagan, president of the Institute for the Study of War, said, ‘‘I think the Kurds are reading the tea leaves correctly.’’
Just who in the hell is the Institute for the Study of War anyway?
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"Terrified civilians fleeing ISIS holdouts in Raqqa" Associated Press October 13, 2017
BEIRUT — Scores of civilians including women and children are fleeing the last few remaining neighborhoods held by the Islamic State in Syria’s northern city of Raqqa, ahead of an expected final push by US-backed fighters seeking to retake the city.
A new video that emerged Friday shows desperate, terrified residents emerging from destroyed districts, some of them collapsing on the ground in exhaustion as they arrive.
They seemed to be taking advantage of a slowdown in the fighting and airstrikes by the US-led coalition amid efforts to ensure the safe evacuation of an estimated 4,000 civilians who remain trapped in the city.
The coalition has said ISIS militants are holding some civilians to use as human shields, preventing them from escaping as the fight enters its final stages.
The city, on the banks of the Euphrates River, has been badly damaged by the fighting, and activists have reported that more than 1,000 civilians have been killed there since June.
The video released by the Turkey-based Kurdish Mezopotamya Medya on Friday showed petrified residents running toward safety, some clutching babies or wounded people.....
The propaganda pre$$ has shown its videos to be unreliable, sorry.
Beyond that, they always wave women and children at you as support for the war wanes and the losses on the battlefield mount.
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************
"North Korea renews Guam threat before joint naval exercise" by Choe Sang-Hun New York Times October 13, 2017
SEOUL — As the United States and South Korea prepared for next week’s joint naval exercise, North Korean officials on Friday renewed their threat to launch ballistic missiles near Guam, a US territory in the western Pacific.
The drill, which involves aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, is scheduled to begin Monday in waters east and west of South Korea. The 10-day exercise will check the allies’ “communications, interoperability, and partnership,” the US Navy’s 7th Fleet said in a statement.
The nuclear-powered submarine Michigan arrived at the South Korean port of Busan on Friday. US and South Korean warplanes will also join the exercise, which takes place amid heightened tensions over North Korea’s advancing nuclear missile program.
In recent months, President Trump and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, have amplified their countries’ military standoff by exchanging bellicose statements and personal insults.
Although both South Korea and the United States insist next week’s drill is defensive in nature, North Korea considers such war games rehearsals for invasion.
It remains unclear whether North Korea will lash out with a weapons test during the exercise, as it often has in the past.
On Friday, a researcher at the Institute for American Studies at the North Korean Foreign Ministry warned that the joint exercise, as well as a flight by two US B-1B bombers over South Korea on Tuesday, compelled the North to “take military counteraction.”
The researcher, Kim Kwang Hak, did not elaborate but, “We have already warned several times that we will take counteractions for self-defense, including a salvo of missiles into waters near the US territory of Guam,” Kim Kwang Hak, the North Korean researcher, told the North’s official Korean Central News Agency on Friday.
North Korea has made similar threats against the United States for decades, but Trump has added to tensions in recent weeks by employing similarly tough talk.
Despite Trump’s tough talk, John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, said Thursday that North Korea’s nuclear threat was “manageable” for now.
Kelly added that Americans should be concerned that the North is getting closer to achieving the ability to hit the mainland United States with its missiles. He said there was already “great concern” about Americans living in Guam.
Also Friday, South Korea’s meteorological authorities said that they detected a small quake near the North’s underground nuclear test site, but that it was not caused by a man-made explosion. They have detected three similar tremors from near the test site since the North’s nuclear test on Sept. 3, in which North Korea said it detonated a hydrogen bomb.
Some earthquake experts have attributed the recent tremors to underground cave-ins caused by that powerful test. Commercial satellite images have also found evidence of landslides near the North Korean site, raising fears of radioactive fallout if the North conducts another nuclear test there.
The previous test compelled Washington to accelerate its global campaign to exert sanctions and pressure on North Korea.
On Thursday, the United Arab Emirates said it would stop issuing new visas to North Korean workers. Kuwait and Qatar have taken similar steps in recent weeks. Several thousand North Korean workers have been working in Middle East construction sites, earning badly needed cash for their government.
Trump said Friday that he is open to the possibility that negotiations can steady tensions between the United States and North Korea. But Trump also appeared to suggest he was keeping military options open.
Trump told reporters at the White House: ‘‘If it’s going to be something other than negotiation, believe me we are ready more so than we have ever been.’’
Trump was responding to a question about his comment last week before a dinner with military leaders when he referred ambiguously to ‘‘the calm before the storm.’’
I'm starting to take that as a wink-wink, nudge-nudge regarding an upcoming false flag of monstrous proportions. That's why he has been wrapping himself in the flag.
He said Friday he is ‘‘always open’’ to negotiations, but added, ‘‘We’re going to see what happens with North Korea.’’
After terrorists disguised as Syrian refugees have snuck in a nuclear bomb from Iran?
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Good thing the chief-of-staff has true grit:
"John Kelly: The Boston native in charge of bringing order to President Trump’s White House" by Annie Linskey Globe Staff October 05, 2017
WASHINGTON — If only taming an erratic billionaire and reality-TV-star-turned-president, a boss who is distracted and unpredictable, a leader who has issued bellicose threats, were as simple as cutting through red tape.
So far, to the public at least, General John F. Kelly is best known for a series of outtakes — moments when the camera has focused on his seemingly anguished facial expressions while Trump has said something controversial.
The new chief of staff is often painted as an outsider, but he does have a deep well of experience to draw on to put the White House on firmer ground. He has been a fixture in Washington power circles long enough to make the speaking rounds at top Beltway institutions — even Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, was invited to one event. He has forged ties among members of the House and Senate, with whom he has traveled or met in far-flung, war-torn countries.
And his time in the military taught him to create order from chaos, a skill badly needed in a White House roiled by competing factions and populated by outsiders who have no idea how to get things done in Washington.
OMFG!
He and Trump have some traits in common, most importantly: “Neither is particularly ideological,” said Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican and one of the people who recommended that Kelly join the Trump administration.
He's the Iran hawk.
Cotton has noticed welcome changes since Kelly took over in late July. “The president still calls regularly,” Cotton said. “And sometimes at odd hours. But it’s less common that I don’t have notice that the call is coming.”
When he visits the White House, Cotton also sees a difference, and added: “Kelly is running a slightly more buttoned-up type of ship.”
That doesn’t mean he’s been able to steer the ship into calm waters.
The Trump administration faces massive criticism for the slow response to the humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned over his use of costly charter planes at taxpayer expense. Top White House aides reportedly used personal e-mail accounts to do government work; a Senate candidate Trump backed in Alabama lost his primary; a third attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act died in the Senate.
And all of that was just in the last two weeks.
Kelly quickly engineered a shake-up after Trump moved him from Homeland Security.
Related: "President Trump will nominate his deputy chief of staff, Kirstjen Nielsen, as his next secretary of Homeland Security, the White House announced Wednesday. Nielsen formerly served as John Kelly’s chief of staff when he held the position of Trump’s first DHS secretary. She moved with Kelly to the White House when Trump tapped him to serve as his own chief of staff, and was quickly named principal deputy. Nielsen, an expert in homeland and national security policy, previously served as a special assistant to former president George W. Bush and worked for the Transportation Security Administration....."
(Blog editor just shakes head; it's now the W. Bush regime 2.0)
At the White House, he replaced Reince Priebus, the former head of the Republican National Committee, whose inability to exert control over the staff contributed to the president’s rocky start. Predictably, Kelly is winning as many enemies as friends.
Under Kelly’s short reign many of the populists and more controversial Trump aides have left, including Anthony Scaramucci, the communications director whom Kelly fired swiftly; Stephen K. Bannon, once Trump’s chief strategist; Sebastian Gorka, a frequent surrogate; and Keith Schiller, a longtime Trump Organization employee who, at the White House, was best known for delivering a letter telling Trump’s FBI director James Comey that he was fired.
That last one really rattled Trump.
Trump’s base, fearful that Kelly is part of a plan by bureaucrats to neuter Trump, is not pleased. Bannon’s media organization, Breitbart News, is blasting out negative headlines about Kelly, including one titled: “Chief of Staff Ensuring Exposure to Populist Nationalism Now Close to Zero.”
Even those who acknowledge the White House is operating more smoothly under Kelly worry that the new chief of staff is exacting a high price for orderliness.
“If the cost is the dissolution of the Trump agenda, and he becomes another establishment Republican and nothing changes in Washington, what was the point of the election?” said Roger Stone, a Trump confidant.
I'm tired of all this phony-bulloney, alleged deep-state shenanigans that are nothing but smoke, sound and fury. Sorry.
How Trump is responding to Kelly’s organizing efforts is a subject of constant debate in Washington.
“I know when he was secretary of homeland security, that rapport was definitely there, they got on very well,” said Gorka, who is now the chief strategist at a new group called the Make America Great Again Coalition. “Talking to people still inside the building, clearly the general has imposed his structure on the building. I’m not sure the president is happy with the way he is being, quote-unquote, managed.”
He's an Israeli tool. That's how and why he got the job. He's our first Zionist Crime Boss president. All the rest is clutter and babble.
Part of Kelly’s aura comes from the sacrifice that his family has already made for the country. In November 2010, one of his sons, Second Lieutenant Robert M. Kelly, died in southern Afghanistan while leading a platoon of Marines. John Kelly, then a lieutenant general, became the highest ranking service member to lose a child in Iraq or Afghanistan.
“John rarely mentions it and is never maudlin about it,” said former defense secretary Ashton Carter .
He does not have to. Every military or former military service member interviewed for this story mentioned the death. They also universally recounted how Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a person who has long been close with the Kelly family, was the one to knock on Kelly’s door and inform him of the death.
It’s trite to say that patriotism runs deep with America’s generals. Allies say Kelly is the embodiment of the stereotype.
He's ‘bigger than life’ and says “bureaucracies protect [their] rice bowl.”
Little anti-Asian bias there?
“Our culture is one of a bias for action,” Kelly said at a December 2014 human rights summit in Washington. “Of not being tied down by who is really in charge of the thing.”
One example he likes to recite is from Iraq in 2008, when Sunni leaders cooperated with American forces to push out Al Qaeda fighters. Kelly wanted to further good will with the sheiks and kick-start an agricultural economy. But, as a self-described city boy from Boston, he wasn’t sure how to do that.
He asked for help, and was sent several people from the Department of Agriculture. “They were bureaucrats from Washington,” Kelly recounted at the human rights summit. “They were no better at chickens than I am. And chickens, to me, you get in a grocery store.”
Kelly turned to a program at Texas A&M University, which sent a team to help with what amounted to an exercise in the sort of foreign nation-building Trump denounced in the 2016 campaign. The livestock was in bad shape. Herds of sheep had teeth ground from the sand, suffered from poor nutrition, and were infected with parasites. Farmers needed tractors, new seeds, and fertilizer.
Kelly was gung-ho about fixing it.
“He was bigger than life,” said Benji Parham, who was sent by Texas A&M to assess agricultural needs in Anbar and other parts of Iraq. “When he walked in he was bigger than John Wayne.”
How inspirational!
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Related:
"The cycles of chaos and rhetorical attacks that have been a hallmark of Donald Trump’s presidency reached another peak this week, forcing a rare public appearance Thursday by chief of staff John Kelly, who appeared before the White House press corps in a bid to smooth the waters. Speaking publicly for the first time in months, the retired Marine general dismissed reports that he was unhappy in his White House job and that he was on the verge of quitting or being fired. He sought to give the impression that all was normal in recent days while the president was publicly feuding on Twitter with the National Football League, all of Puerto Rico, his own secretary of state, and Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee — to name just a few....."
Also see:
"Trump said late Thursday that a meeting with his military leaders was “the calm before the storm,” but what he meant by the comment remained unclear, both to the press assembled in the room and to members of his staff.
When pressed for more details, the president said, “you’ll find out,” a declaration that comes amid foreign policy challenges around the world.
Trump’s comment, before a planned dinner with military leaders and their spouses, raised questions about whether the administration was planning some kind of military action. Several aides said afterward they had no idea to what he was referring.
The president also faces an Oct. 15 deadline to recertify a nuclear weapons deal with Iran, which was negotiated under Obama. The president is expected to decline to recertify the agreement, which would essentially allow Congress to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions.
In his remarks to senior military leaders before the dinner, Trump outlined the challenges facing the United States.
“We have had challenges that we really should have taken care of a long time ago, like North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, ISIS, and the revisionist powers that threaten our interests all around the world,” Trump said.
“Tremendous progress has been made with respect to ISIS, and I guess the media is going to be finding out about that over the next short period of time,” he said.
He also denounced Iran, saying it should not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons, and offered another stark warning to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
‘‘We cannot allow this dictatorship to threaten our nation or allies with unimaginable loss of life,’’ he said, vowing to ‘‘do what we must do to prevent that from happening and it will be done, if necessary.’’
In a separate development......"
"Floods and landslides kill 54, leave 39 missing in Vietnam" Associated Press October 13, 2017
HANOI — Floods and landslides have killed at least 54 people in Vietnam and left another 39 missing since a tropical depression hit the country earlier this week, in one of its worst natural disasters in years, officials said Friday.
The heavy rain in the central and northern regions disrupted transportation in some areas, hampering efforts to rescue the missing.
The storm, which hit central Vietnam on Tuesday, also injured 31 people, submerged more than 30,000 houses, and damaged infrastructure and crops, the Vietnam Disaster Management Authority said in a statement Friday.
Disaster official Nguyen Thi Lien from northern Yen Bai province, where six people died from the floods, said 580 soldiers and police and more than 2,000 residents have been mobilized to search for 16 others still missing in the province.
‘‘Transportation to and from the southern district of Tram Tau was cut off by landslides and floods, making it impossible to send additional search forces to look for six people still missing there,’’ Lien said, adding that the search operations in the district are relying on local military, police, and villagers.
Another tropical depression has been upgraded to a tropical storm, Khanun, which swept through the Philippines’ northern island of Luzon early Friday and is moving in the South China Sea toward Vietnam, according to national weather forecasters.
The storm could bring more rain and misery to the central and northern regions already soaked by rain and flood waters.
Vietnam is ranked the seventh most disaster-prone country in the world, and disasters over the past two decades have caused more than 13,000 deaths and property damage in excess of $6.4 billion, according to Achim Fock, acting country director for the World Bank in Vietnam.
Speaking at a conference in Hanoi on Friday marking International Day for Disaster Reduction, Fock said it is time for Vietnam to prepare seriously to reduce its climatic vulnerability.
‘‘If Vietnam does not invest in disaster resilience today, it misses an opportunity for social, economic, and environmental progress that will have impacts for years to come,’’ he said, according to a copy of the speech provided by the World Bank.
Gee, odd timing, almost as if someone had ordered up some rains and generated a storm to emphasize the point.
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I wonder if all the unexploded ordinance is washed away, too.
"Philippines retreats from threat to expel EU envoys" New York Times October 13, 2017
MANILA — The Philippines backed away Friday from President Rodrigo Duterte’s threat the day before to expel European ambassadors, his spokesman said, after apparently misunderstanding the source of criticism of his deadly drug crackdown.
The spokesman, Ernesto Abella, said the group “falsely portrayed itself as an EU mission.”
After visiting the Philippines this month, the European liberal advocacy group Progressive Alliance issued a statement saying it was “extremely alarmed” over “gross human rights violations” and hinting that the European Union might tighten its terms of trade with the Philippines over its spotty rights record.
“For so long as the president has tolerated these interferences, he has decided that these must stop,” Abella said Friday, “if only to preserve the integrity and dignity of our state.”
But as to whether the Philippines was forcing envoys to leave, he said, “We are not,” adding, “There’s no directive to do that.”
In Duterte’s angry pronouncement Thursday, the president said, “You think that we are a bunch of morons here. Because we can have the diplomatic channel cut tomorrow. You leave my country in 24 hours. All. All of you.”
Rights groups, among others, have broadly condemned the president’s brutal anti-drug campaign. But after the Progressive Alliance issued its statement, the EU sought to distance itself and said trade relations remained intact.
“The statements made by the Progressive Alliance during its visit to the Philippines were made solely on behalf of the Progressive Alliance and do not represent the position of the European Union,” the 28-nation bloc said.
The Philippines is also in the process of negotiating its trade agreement with the European Union. The country now receives preferential treatment, allowing more than 6,200 products from the Philippines to enter the bloc duty free.
If they sanction the Philippines, it just drives them closer to China and Russia.
The deal is under review, and the bloc’s report on the Philippines is expected as early as January.
The Philippines’ trade secretary, Ramon Lopez, who recently visited Europe, played down Friday the impact of Duterte’s statement, stressing instead a “lot of collaborative, positive efforts and programs” with the European Union.
Lopez said he told the bloc’s officials, “Please don’t be carried away by the international media releases, because you would really be concerned if you read them.”
He added, “We assured them that our president, No. 1, really does not want abuses like those,” referring to vigilante and police killings during Duterte’s tenure.
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***************
Got our own problems with them in this hemisphere:
"MS-13 leader gets 10-year federal prison sentence" by Travis Andersen Globe Staff October 13, 2017
The head of a local chapter, or clique, of the feared MS-13 gang received a 10-year prison sentence Thursday for various drug and gun offenses, as well as a sprawling RICO conspiracy that included assault, prosecutors said.
Santos Portillo Andrade, a 33-year-old Salvadoran national with a prior address in Revere, learned his fate during a hearing in US District Court in Boston.
His lawyer, Bernard Grossberg, lashed out at President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions when contacted for comment Friday.
“One of the several reasons that [Portillo Andrade] entered guilty pleas is that Trump and Sessions repeated ‘fake news’ re: MS-13 [and] poisoned the defendant’s constitutional rights to obtain a fair trial. Their rantings about MS-13 while trials are pending are further attempts to eviscerate guaranteed constitutional rights.”
Acting US Attorney William D. Weinreb’s office described Portillo Andrade as the leader of MS-13’s East Boston Loco Salvatrucha clique. Prosecutors said Portillo Andrade was one of 61 defendants indicted after a lengthy investigation into alleged leaders, members, and associates of MS-13. He’s the 19th suspect to be sentenced.
“According to court documents, MS-13 is a violent transnational criminal organization whose branches or ‘cliques’ operate throughout the United States, including Massachusetts,” the statement said. “MS-13 members are required to commit acts of violence against rival gang members to gain promotions and maintain membership and discipline within the group. Specifically, MS-13 members are required to attack and murder rival gang members whenever possible.”
Grossberg had downplayed his client’s leadership role in the clique in a prior statement to the Globe in June, after the gangster signed a plea agreement to resolve his case.
“The clique was made up of older guys who were not involved in the violence that other cliques practiced,” Grossberg wrote in an e-mail. “Santos became a so-called leader by default as no one else wanted the position. . . . The plea agreement was a compromise and the best disposition that the government would accept.”
Yeah, he's a good boy.
Portillo Andrade will be subject to deportation proceedings after he completes his bid.....
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The pathway to deportation begins here.
