What he sees is Israel!
"Poland’s new ‘Holocaust law’ comes up against massacre of Jews in 1941" by James McAuley Washington Post February 22, 2018
JEDWABNE, Poland — The Jews who survived the axes were burned alive in a shed on the outskirts of town. The Germans had just recaptured the area from the Soviets, but it was not the Germans who bolted the doors, poured the gasoline, and lit the fire.
On July 10, 1941, villagers here turned against their neighbors — although some would later claim they were taking orders from the Germans. Szczepan Sulewski, a retired baker, remembers running over from a neighboring village to watch the incineration of the Jews. Now 88, he does not remember why the Jews had to burn; he remembers only the screams and how difficult it was, as a boy of 10, to catch a glimpse of the fire.
‘‘Everybody lived well with the Jews,’’ he said in his smoke-filled living room, a nervous grin on his face. ‘‘You could do business with the Jews.’’
Talk about playing into the stereotypes.
What happened at Jedwabne, where more than 300 Jews perished, profoundly challenges a national narrative that portrays Poland as a victim: first of Nazi Germany, then of Soviet Russia. Disputes over the massacre seemed to reach an uneasy truce more than a decade ago, but now a new ‘‘Holocaust law’’ has exploded the powder keg of historical memory again.
All of a sudden, it seems, Jedwabne never happened. The muddy path to the shed is yet another road to nowhere.
Starting in March, publicly invoking Polish complicity in Nazi atrocities will be a punishable offense. Israel has likened the provision to ‘‘Holocaust denial’’ and the United States says it is an attack on ‘‘academic inquiry.’’
OMG!
They take that position when questioning the narrative of the Holocaust™ -- not the actual event, mind you -- is a jail-able offense in Europe.
Since it rose to power in 2015, the populist right-wing Law and Justice party has shown a clear interest in reshaping the way history is presented and understood.
In the past two years, the government has sanitized the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk to emphasize Polish heroism, commissioned a new Warsaw museum to venerate the ‘‘cursed soldiers’’ who continued fighting Communism after 1945, and has sought to recast the history of the Solidarity movement.
‘‘Currently, the history of World War II in the West concentrates on the Holocaust. But other aspects — other victims — are forgotten,’’ said Mateusz Szpytma, the deputy president of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, a government-funded research organization devoted to investigating crimes committed on Polish soil between 1939 and 1989.
‘‘As a nation, we as Poles — we are the victims of the Second World War, but if you emphasize only our negative relations with the Jews, and in such articles where the only word used is ‘Nazi’ and not ‘German,’ what you’re seeing now is essentially a self-defense mechanism,’’ he said.
Polish identity has leaned heavily on collective suffering and even a sense of martyrdom, sociologists say.
In the 19th century, the romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz, a towering figure here who is a mainstay on nearly every school reading list, called his perennially occupied country the ‘‘Christ of Nations’’ whose suffering would somehow save Europe. Many appear to have internalized the metaphor.
As elsewhere in Eastern Europe, 45 years of Communist rule also took its toll on the Polish view of history: The postwar government exploited anti-Nazi sentiment, invoking a black-and-white version of a war against foreign fascism. Even in the face of naked Polish anti-Semitism — as in the 1946 Kielce pogrom and a 1968 anti-Jewish purge — the collective understanding of the past never strayed far from Polish victimhood.
Same with Israel.
Related: Poland remembers 1968 student protests, anti-Semitic purge
‘‘National narratives — national mythologies — are very difficult to change,’’ said Geneviève Zubrzycki, a sociologist who has written extensively on nationalism and religion in postwar Poland. ‘‘It’s very difficult to be both martyr and perpetrator.’’
Palestine.
Similar controversies, Zubrzycki said, have erupted for decades: the Carmelite nuns who opened a convent near Auschwitz in the mid-1980s and the crosses displayed at Auschwitz in the late 1990s were attempts to assert Polish control over a place the world had declared a site of Jewish suffering.
But the new ‘‘Holocaust law’’ represents a ‘‘crucial difference,’’ said the historian Jan Gross, whose best-selling 2000 book on the Jedwabne massacre — ‘‘Neighbors’’ — triggered the most intense debate over Poland’s wartime past, at least until now.
‘‘You have now empowered a regime that is openly drawing on xenophobic nationalism in Polish society as a means of legitimizing its power,’’ he said in a telephone interview. ‘‘And the main pull of this xenophobic nationalism is anti-Semitism.’’
This, for many historians, is the root of the law, which, they say, subtly and falsely equates Polish and Jewish suffering.
‘‘Every Jew who was born a Jew was doomed to die. That wasn’t the case with the Poles,’’ said Pawel Spiewak, the director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.
There they go again.
A new high school curriculum devotes 15 lessons to World War II — only one of which deals with the Holocaust. Many educators fear a rising tide of revisionism.
I've already had all my epiphanies.
‘‘When we read the curriculum, what we see is either that we were brave and good or that we lost everything in dramatic circumstances — that’s the picture of Poles we get. There’s no grayness,’’ said Slawomir Broniarz, the president of the Polish teachers union, which has formally condemned the new law.
‘‘Suddenly we are back to Communist times, and everything is ideology.’’
--more--"
Yes, the "new law, however, has sparked a crisis with Israel, but Polish and Israeli representatives met Thursday in Jerusalem to resolve the standoff."
Good thing Poles are white:
"African asylum seekers facing expulsion have embraced Israel" by Aron Heller Associated Press February 23, 2018
HERZLIYA, Israel — Even as he faces a potential deportation from Israel, 30-year-old Eritrean asylum seeker Johny Goytiom Kafl brims with satisfaction as he looks out upon thousands of fellow protesters rallying against the impending expulsions, all while peacefully secured by police.
It’s such displays of civil action that he most admires about his adoptive home of the past nine years since he escaped one of the world’s most oppressive regimes, and then faced torture, kidnapping, and abuse during his exodus throughout Africa.
‘‘You are treated like a human being in Israel,’’ he said in fluent Hebrew. ‘‘Here I am not afraid. In Eritrea, I was afraid.’’
OMG!
Go ask an Arab or Palestinian.
Kafl and tens of thousands of other Africans now fear their stay in the Holy Land is coming to an abrupt end. Israel has given many of them until April 1 to leave for an unnamed African destination — known to be Rwanda — in exchange for $3,500 and a plane ticket. Otherwise, they face open-ended incarceration.
Is that an April Fools joke?
If not, they will know what it is like to be Palestinian.
Seven people from Eritrea were jailed this week, Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad said Thursday.
Israel considers the vast majority of the nearly 40,000 migrants to be job seekers and says it has no legal obligation to keep them. The Africans, nearly all from dictatorial Eritrea and war-torn Sudan, say they fled for their lives and face renewed danger if they return.
As the world grapples with the worst refugee crisis since World War II, the issue has struck a raw nerve in Israel — a nation established on the heels of the Holocaust.
Critics at home and in the Jewish American community have called the government’s proposed response unethical and a stain on Israel’s image as a refuge for Jewish migrants.
That's the problem, don't you see? It's all about imagery and illusion in my pre$$.
The problem here is the Zionist Khazar racism and supremacism is there for all to see. This as those same forces preach diversity and tolerance to the rest of us.
The optics of black asylum seekers accusing the country of racism has turned into a public relations liability for Israel, and groups of Israeli doctors, academics, poets, Holocaust survivors, rabbis, and pilots have all appealed to halt the plan. But the government remains steadfast, bristling at what it considers cynical comparisons to the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany.
Well, if the shoe fits.
The other thing in reading this is how the concern has now shifted from the plight of the refugee -- something that fills my jew$paper here at home -- to the "public relations liability for Israel." Don't they ever read themselves?
The Africans started moving toward Israel in 2005 after neighboring Egypt violently quashed a refugee demonstration and word spread of safety and job opportunities in Israel.
Related: "Egypt’s president said Thursday that he considered any defamation of the country’s security forces to be ‘‘high treason’’ and would not allow it, in an apparent warning to the media. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s warning came as security forces enter the fourth week of a campaign against militants led by the Islamic State group in the northern Sinai Peninsula. Unlike past campaigns, the declared aim is to eradicate the militants, with tens of thousands of troops thrown into battle backed by armor, fighter jets, helicopter gunships, and navy vessels. ‘‘It’s no longer a question of freedom of speech,’’ said el-Sissi, a former general who led the military overthrow of an elected Islamist president in 2013 and was elected the following year. He suggested that media should be given access to the front lines ‘‘so they can see your children, Egypt’s children, offering their lives for your sake and for Egypt to have security and peace.’’
Israel is helping out.
Tens of thousands crossed the porous desert border before Israel completed a barrier in 2012 that stopped the influx.
See:
Oh, it's okay for Israel to have a wall (or two), huh?
But Israel has struggled with what to do with those already in the country, alternating between plans to deport them and offering them menial jobs in hotels and local municipalities.
Can you get any more racist?
Kafl, like many of his compatriots, fled Eritrea to escape its lifelong military conscription in slavery-like conditions and fears death if he returns.
He has experienced both sides of Israel. His asylum request is still pending, and he has been locked up in a massive detention center in the remote southern desert. But he is also deeply grateful to the many Israelis who welcomed him and sympathized with his plight. He said he hopes to one day return the favor if the Eritrean regime is ultimately toppled.
‘‘I knocked on the door of the country and said, ‘Save me.’ I will never forget the soldier who said, ‘Welcome,’ gave me food, and called for a doctor. I got his kind of respect in Israel, not in Eritrea,’’ he said.
But the government has denounced their prolonged stay and recently voted to begin deporting them to African countries with which they have reached secret agreements. They are believed to be Rwanda and Uganda, close allies.
Why does Israel have to keep so many things secret?
--more--"
Well, this won't be if the name is attached:
"US weighs Sheldon Adelson’s offer to fund embassy in Jerusalem" by Josh Lederman Associated Press February 23, 2018
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering an offer from Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson to pay for at least part of a new US Embassy in Jerusalem, four US officials said.
Lawyers at the State Department are looking into the legality of accepting private donations to cover some or all of the embassy costs, said the officials, who weren’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly and demanded anonymity.
Hey, why not, huh? Let's take the mask off. Let's admit this government is in the pocket of the Zionist settler movement.
The discussions are occurring as the administration plans a ribbon-cutting for a scaled-down, temporary embassy that will open in May — more than a year ahead of schedule.
In one possible plan, the administration would solicit contributions not only from Adelson but potentially from other donors in the evangelical Christian and American Jewish communities, too.
That first group a bunch of dupes as they pursue their religious beliefs.
One official said Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate and staunch supporter of Israel, had offered to pay the difference between the total cost — expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars — and what the administration is able to raise.
Under any circumstance, letting private citizens cover the costs of an official government building would mark a significant departure from historical practice.
Is it even legal? I mean, they are all over Trump for emoluments.
In the Jerusalem case, it would add yet another layer of controversy to President Trump’s politically charged decision to move the embassy, given Adelson’s longstanding affiliation with right-wing Israeli politics.
The new embassy cleared a final bureaucratic hurdle this week when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed off on the security plan for moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city.
In a letter being sent Friday to Congress, the State Department said the interim facility’s inauguration will coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence on May 14.
‘‘It’s the right thing to do,’’ Trump said Friday of his decision to move the embassy.
Adelson’s unconventional offer was made around the time Trump announced in December he would move the embassy to the disputed city of Jerusalem. It would address the president’s stated distaste for shelling out eye-popping sums for overseas diplomatic facilities.
Although Trump has promoted the Jerusalem move as fulfilling a key campaign promise, he also was outspoken last month in blasting the $1 billion price tag for a new embassy in London.
Adelson, who donated $5 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, is one of the Republican Party’s biggest donors and a major supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Adelson also finances Israel Hayom, a pro-Netanyahu newspaper that is distributed free throughout Israel.
Allowing donations from Adelson or others would come with significant political risk for Trump.
Why? I have yet to see one comment from a Democrat.
The president already faces major criticism from Palestinians and others who say his decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem — also claimed by the Palestinians for the capital of their future state — tipped the scales unfairly in Israel’s favor.
The Palestinians aren't seen nor heard.
How quickly to move the embassy has been a source of intense debate within Trump’s administration, officials said. Tillerson, who opposed moving the embassy in the first place, advocated a go-slow approach and said it could take years. But Ambassador David Friedman, who lobbied Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, has pushed to move it sooner.
Tillerson buckled under the pressure like the Valdez hitting a reef. Tells you who is really calling the shots.
To enable a May opening, the administration settled on a phased approach to building out the embassy at an existing US facility in Jerusalem’s Arnona neighborhood that currently handles consular affairs like passports and visas.
Initially, the United States will merely retrofit a small suite of offices there to accommodate Friedman and one or two top aides such as his chief of staff. The rest of the staff will remain at first in America’s current facility in Tel Aviv.
Over time, the Arnona facility will be expanded accommodate a regular contingent of embassy personnel by the end of 2019, officials said. Ultimately, the embassy will likely expand into an adjacent property that currently houses a home for senior citizens but is set to come under US control in the next few years.
Retrofitting just a few offices can be accomplished at minimal cost. But expanding into a full-fledged complex housing the bulk of America’s diplomatic staff in Israel would easily cost more than $500 million dollars, officials familiar with the process said. Particularly pricey are the strict security requirements for embassies that are written into US law.
It’s unclear how much of the cost Adelson might be willing to cover.
The White House declined to comment. An Adelson spokesman didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
The State Department said it had ‘‘nothing to announce’’ and ‘‘no confirmation or details about this hypothetical proposal.’’ Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein added that there had been no ‘‘formal talks’’ about funding with private citizens.
They staff the bureaucracies of both the executive and legislative branches
It’s not clear if there is any precedent, nor whether government lawyers would give the green light to accept Adelson’s or anyone else’s donations for the embassy.
Kathy Bethany, the former cost management director for the State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, said she couldn’t recall the US government ever accepting donations to build embassies during her tenure, which ended in 2014.
‘‘I don’t know how well that would work,’’ Bethany said. ‘‘Would we be beholden to putting their name on the building? I’ve never heard of that.’’
The Adelson Embassy.
Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
--more--"
And if you had any doubts about USrael:
"Israel, US troops train together to counter missile threats" Associated Press March 09, 2018
HATZOR AIR BASE, Israel — If war breaks out in the Middle East, US and Israeli forces are preparing to one day fight alongside each other to defend Israel against missile attacks from across the region.
Nearly 5,000 Israeli and American troops have been training together in Israel for that very scenario. The ‘‘Juniper Cobra’’ exercise includes field training, computer simulations, and live-fire drills of missile-defense systems.
‘‘We will practice, train shoulder to shoulder, the same as we will fight in crisis times,’’ Brigadier General Zvika Haimovich, chief of Israel’s air defense command, said at the Hatzor air base in Israel.
Israel has made missile defense a priority since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein bombarded the country with 39 Scud missiles during the 1991 Gulf War.
Today, the threat is far more formidable. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah is now believed to possess well over 100,000 rockets and missiles capable of striking virtually anywhere in Israel.
Haimovich said Juniper Cobra is not aimed at any particular adversary. Instead, it is meant to simulate ‘‘very complex scenarios’’ that include simultaneous attacks from enemy countries and militant groups.
He said the threats include multiple salvos, more accurate rockets and missiles, and a ‘‘multidirectional threat.’’
--more--"
***********
"21 people sought treatment after ex-spy poisoning" by Associated Press March 09, 2018
LONDON — A British police official on Thursday updated the number of people who sought treatment after a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy, saying ‘‘around 21’’ had been given medical help and support.
OMG!
The casualness with which they announced this can only lead one to believe their is something fishy.
Previously, authorities had said only that ‘‘several’’ people had sought treatment.
Police haven’t provided details on the nerve agent that was used.
That's odd. New York Times had the case solved yesterday.
British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said that whoever is behind the attack is guilty of a ‘‘brazen and reckless act.’’ She said Britain would respond strongly when it is clear who’s to blame.....
MI-5?
--more--"
Yesterday's World lead has become a brief?
As for the blame:
Montenegro police: US Embassy attacker ex-soldier
It had Russian approval.
"US says troops can stay in Syria without new authorization" by Charlie Savage New York Times February 22, 2018
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has decided that it needs no new legal authority from Congress to indefinitely keep US military forces deployed in Syria and Iraq, even in territory that has been cleared of Islamic State fighters, according to Pentagon and State Department officials.
In a pair of letters, the officials illuminated the Trump administration’s planning for an open-ended mission of forces in Syria beyond the Islamic State fight. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson foreshadowed the plan in a speech last month, saying that troops will stay in Syria to curb Iran and prevent the Syrian government from reconquering rebel-held areas.
That is why people like me never wanted you guys starting any of these.
Though Tillerson also cited a need to mop up the remnants of the Islamic State group and keep from leaving a vacuum in which the group could regenerate, other administration officials put far greater emphasis on the extremists. In the letters, they said that the continued potential threat from the Islamic State provided a legal rationale for the Trump administration to keep troops deployed there indefinitely.
It would be nice if the U.S. wasn't also creating the threat that justifies staying.
“Just as when we previously removed US forces prematurely, the group will look to exploit any abatement in pressure to regenerate capabilities and reestablish local control of territory,” wrote David Trachtenberg, the deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.
About 2,000 US troops are in Syria, where nearly all the territory once held by the Islamic State has now been liberated. Tillerson deemed the group “substantially, but not completely defeated,” warning that the insurgents remained a threat.
Trachtenberg wrote the letter to Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, who had asked the Trump administration to explain its understanding of its authority to stay on in Syria. The State Department sent him a similar letter, which also argued that international law provided a basis for US forces to remain in Syria — despite the lack of consent from the Syrian government — to protect Iraq and the United States from terrorists.
The lack of consent of the legitimately-elected government is key; it means the U.S. presence is an illegal occupation (like Israel's in the West Bank).
And both letters said US troops may strike at Syrian government or Iranian forces deemed to threaten Americans or Syrian rebel groups that are assisting the United States in fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
Act of war if they do.
Especially as a matter of international law, the administration’s theory for why the United States will have authority to keep carrying out such operations indefinitely amounts to “a tenuous legal justification atop of another tenuous legal justification,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former Justice Department lawyer.
Never stopped them before.
And in a statement addressing domestic law, Kaine said the executive branch was stretching its interpretation of its war authority too far.
Then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
He called on the Trump administration to seek new authorization for any continued, long-term mission in Syria and Iraq — especially “to strike pro-Assad forces in areas devoid of ISIS to protect our Syrian partners who seek Assad’s overthrow.”
Or what?
He also criticized the basis on which the administration ordered strikes on a Syrian government air base last April as punishment for using chemical weapons. At the time, President Trump claimed powers as commander in chief to issue the strikes rather than on any theory of congressional authorization.
Why didn't he criticize it at the time? Everyone was cheering him!
The senator accused Trump of “acting like a king by unilaterally starting a war.”
The executive branch’s core legal theory that it is authorized by Congress to fight the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria was first put forward by the Obama administration in 2014, when the Islamic State swept out of Syria and began rapidly conquering portions of Iraq. The United States started bombing Islamic State forces to curb their advances.
OOOOOOPS!
Under both Obama and Trump, the executive branch has argued that the war against the Islamic State is covered by a 2001 law authorizing the use of military force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks and a 2002 law authorizing the invasion of Iraq.
These presidents are all the same!
That theory is disputed. While the Islamic State grew out of an offshoot of Al Qaeda, the two groups by 2014 had split and become warring rivals. Before the rise of the Islamic State, the Obama administration had deemed the Iraq War over and largely withdrawn US troops.
Still, Congress has continued to appropriate funds for the operations, even as it has failed to enact any new or updated war authorization that specifically addresses the Islamic State. No court has addressed the question of whether the executive branch has legitimate authority from Congress to battle the Islamic State.
That way Congre$$ keeps the blood off its hands.
--more--"
Related:
Trump Seeks Congressional Funding for 60,000-Man Army to Overthrow Assad
He'll get it, and where is Turkey in all this?
Blocked by Russia, UN fails to pass Syria cease-fire resolution
"At the White House, President Trump blamed Russia, Iran, and the Syrian government for the recent violence in Syria, calling it a ‘‘humanitarian disgrace.’’ His comments came at a joint news conference with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia....."
They took turns praising each other.
Syria aid convoy on hold, UN calls for halt in fighting
It's never enough.
How Propaganda Vilifies Syria and Russia
Your “concerns have been noted.”
Also see: Korean Calm
Speaking of war crimes:
"US drone targeting Pakistani Taliban kills 21 in Afghanistan" Associated Press March 09, 2018
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — Two missiles fired from a US drone hit a militant facility in neighboring Afghanistan, killing 21 insurgents, including the son of the head of the Pakistani Taliban, two Pakistani intelligence officials and local Taliban commanders said Thursday.
The strike, which the officials said took place on Wednesday, targeted a compound frequented by Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan.
The intelligence officials said Fazlullah was apparently not there at the time of the strike in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, miles away from Pakistani border, but his son was killed.
Three Pakistani Taliban commanders also confirmed the strike and militant casualties.
The United States made no comment on the strike. There was also no immediate comment from NATO, Afghan authorities, or the government in Pakistan, where Afghan Ambassador Omar Zakhilwal met with Pakistan’s army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, on Thursday.
Zakhiwal tweeted that the two had a ‘‘comprehensive discussion on all key aspects’’ of Afghan-Pakistan relations.
Pakistan opposes American drone strikes inside its territory, saying they violate the country’s sovereignty.
--more--"
It's always been about the pipeline (and the opium fields the Taliban foolishly thought they could stamp out):
"Afghanistan breaks ground on 1,127-mile ‘peace pipeline’ New York Times February 23, 2018
KABUL — One of the boldest efforts to date to stabilize Afghanistan through economic development began Friday with a ceremonial start to construction on a $22.5 billion natural gas pipeline crossing the country’s war-ravaged south.
The pipeline, known as TAPI for its route through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, taking in some of the world’s most contested land, is an experiment in pipeline diplomacy of a type considered but ultimately rejected in other hot spots like on the Korean Peninsula.
Such so-called peace pipelines have been controversial. They were once also considered, but not built, as a solution to a long-simmering conflict west of here between Armenia and Azerbaijan, also involving Central Asian energy.
And yet they always seem to bring conflict.
Enemies forced to share energy infrastructure are as likely to blow it up or shut off supplies as make peace, experience in Eastern Europe has shown. Ukraine and Russia, for example, fought two so-called gas wars over prices and transit fees before a real war broke out in 2014.
Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopoly, has found no backing for its proposed trans-Korean gas pipeline crossing the Demilitarized Zone, which it says would ease tensions.
Still, leaders and ministers from Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India attending the groundbreaking ceremony Friday in Herat described hopes that trade and mutual economic benefit could overcome old conflicts.
“Afghanistan believes in a policy of connectivity, not separation,” Ashraf Ghani, the country’s president, told the gathered dignitaries. “South Asia is going to connect with Central Asia through Afghanistan, after a century of separation.”
Like a long straw sucking at the energy riches in Central Asia, the 1,127-mile-long pipe will connect the state of Punjab in northern India with the Galkynysh gas field in the desert in eastern Turkmenistan.
Plans call for an accompanying fiber-optic cable and eventually a railroad along part of the route, from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.
This is all about undermining China's Silk Road project, isn't it?
Afghanistan, which is promoting its location for trade as “the roundabout of Asia,” will benefit from construction jobs that could offer an alternative to war for young men and by withdrawing some of the gas as cheap fuel for power stations and heating.
Fortunately, illegal immigrants take up the former so American kids can enlist in the latter.
Once energy starts to flow, the country also expects about $400 million a year in transit fees, partly offsetting some of the international aid that now props up the government.
Like so many other energy infrastructure works in the region, the project is deeply entwined with politics.
--more--"
The whole thing could be a ‘Big Mistake’ because of whom they would have to work with.
"Murmurings of dissent upset China’s script for Xi’s power grab" by Steven Lee Myers New York Times March 09, 2018
BEIJING — For all the orchestration of public support for the proposed changes, dissenting voices continue to surface. For now, at least, they are sporadic and apparently spontaneous, amounting to a faint rumble. They suggest the stirrings of internal discontent — if not yet outright opposition that could build over time.
The murmurings of opposition suggest that Xi and his underlings have not yet fully sold the idea to a broader public — or even done much to explain it.
Far from debating the issue, state media has treated it as a routine matter. So did several delegates when asked about the change.
In the meantime, censors and law enforcement officials have been working overtime to stamp out public criticism, aiming to ensure that nothing clouds the pageantry of the gathering.
Everyone is so concerned with imagery!
According to rights activists, several people who have publicly mocked or criticized Xi’s plan have been detained or questioned in recent days.
Thankfully, that will never happen in AmeriKa.
The China Digital Times also reported that university professors had been warned not to debate the issue with students.....
Kind of like in Poland, huh?
--more--"
I'm sure he was just f***ing you.
Related:
"Former Donald Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci tore into White House Chief of Staff John Kelly on Thursday accusing him of blocking his access to the president at the White House and Davos and driving away Trump’s most important advisers at a critical moment when the White House is in chaos. “Does the president want to lose everyone because of General Jackass?” Scaramucci said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “The guy is a bad dude,” Scaramucci said of Kelly. “Fear and intimidation doesn’t work in a civilian organization. If he had any honor he’d resign.” He also said he doesn’t mind being quoted insulting Kelly. “At least I’m an honest front-stabbing dude,” he said. Scaramucci also took aim at Kelly during a brief interview on Fox News Wednesday night, then again during an appearance on CNN on Thursday morning. “If you want to kill Trump loyalists because you’re into martial law, go ahead and do that,” Scaramucci said.....”
Also see:
Billionaire Sheldon Adelson Aiding Zionist Group’s Push to Oust McMaster
Will This Neocon Warmonger Replace McMaster?
All at the behest of Kushner.
