Seeing as the soft underbelly was anything but....
"With eye on China, Vietnam may let US military return" by Jane Perlez New York Times May 19, 2016
CAM RANH BAY, Vietnam — The ghosts of the Vietnam War have finally faded at the strategic port of Cam Ranh Bay. More than 40 years ago, US forces left this massive base where Marines landed, B-52s loaded up for bombing raids, and wounded American soldiers were treated.
Now, some Vietnamese say they are yearning for the US military to return.
President Obama is scheduled to arrive Sunday in Vietnam, the third visit by a US president since the war ended.
Did you see his arrival?
The big question Obama is expected to answer is whether Washington will lift a partial arms embargo and allow Vietnam to buy lethal weapons from the United States. The Communist government has long asked for the ban to be revoked, and US military access to Cam Ranh Bay could be part of the payoff.
For the White House, the decision on lifting the embargo has come down to a debate over trying to improve Vietnam’s poor human rights record versus enabling Vietnam to better defend itself against an increasing threat from China in the South China Sea.
Washington has for years made lifting the ban contingent on Vietnam’s improving human rights for its people, and has prodded Vietnam to allow more freedom of speech and to release political prisoners.
But as tensions with China have escalated in the South China Sea, the sentiment in the Obama administration has shifted toward lifting the ban, American officials familiar with the discussions said.
Vietnam’s government, pressed by an ever more powerful China, knows it cannot stand up to Beijing alone and is cautiously moving toward increased ties with the United States.
Despite their shared communist ideology, Vietnam and China fought over islands in the South China Sea in the 1970s and ’80s. Two years ago, China sent an oil rig into disputed waters close to the Paracel Islands, which are claimed by both countries, leading to clashes at sea and anti-Chinese riots in Vietnamese cities.
That was quickly tamped down.
More recently, China has built artificial islands with military runways just 300 miles from the Vietnamese coast.
Vietnam’s needs dovetail with those of the United States, which has been encouraging maritime states in Southeast Asia to better defend themselves, an effort partly aimed at keeping the United States from being dragged into a direct naval conflict with China.
Yeah, they would rather have proxies or others start it.
The prospect of access to Cam Ranh Bay, where the Vietnamese have built a new international port, provides another enticement for lifting the ban.
A US presence there would allow US forces to use the port on the western edge of the South China Sea, complementing US facilities in the Philippines on the sea’s eastern edge.
“If the United States can get regular access to Cam Ranh Bay, it would be very advantageous to maintaining the balance of power with China,” said Alexander L. Vuving, a Vietnam specialist at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.
The Vietnamese, who shun alliances and forbid foreign bases, have made clear they would not entertain exclusive use of the facilities by the United States but would allow it to share the base with others. Singaporean and Japanese vessels this year were the first to use the facility.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in a Senate hearing last month that he favored lifting the embargo. But the human rights side of the equation remains problematic for a country Human Rights Watch describes as one of the world’s most repressive.
Oh, they can ea$ily overlook that. They always have.
Last week, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, Tom Malinowski, met with human rights leaders and government officials in Hanoi for a final human rights assessment before the Obama visit. The State Department said Malinowski urged Hanoi to “release political prisoners without condition” and make other human rights improvements.
Vietnam still has more than 100 political prisoners, activists here say, including bloggers and lawyers whose only crime was to criticize the government.
A US official who was briefed on the visit said there had been positive signals from the Vietnamese. Blinken had praised the government in a speech last month for “some progress” on human rights, notably allowing independent trade unions for the first time.
See?
Already laying the groundwork for the lifting, and even opponents of the government agree.
Surprisingly, a leading dissident has come out in favor of lifting the arms embargo, telling Malinowski the issue should not be linked to the release of political prisoners.
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"Vietnam arms embargo to be lifted, Obama says in Hanoi" by Gardiner Harris New York Times May 23, 2016
HANOI — President Obama, at a news conference in Hanoi on Monday, portrayed the decision as part of the long process of normalizing relations between the two countries after the Vietnam War.
“The decision to lift the ban was not based on China or any other considerations,” he said, with the Vietnamese president, Tran Dai Quang, standing stiffly by his side. “It was based on our desire to complete what has been a lengthy process of moving toward normalization with Vietnam.”
What is with the pathological lying anyway?
Obama insisted that the move should not be interpreted as carte blanche for weapons sales to Vietnam and that the United States would review future arms sales to “examine what’s appropriate and what’s not,” as it does with any country.
“We’re going to continue to engage in the case-by-case evaluation of these sales,” Obama said. “But what we do not have is a ban that is based on an ideological division between our two sides.”
As for human rights, he said, “this is an area where we still have differences.”
The only one with a rubber stamp is Israel.
Human rights advocates, who had asked Obama to hold off on lifting the ban until Vietnam had released some prominent political prisoners and promised to stop the police beatings of protesters, condemned the decision.
“President Obama just gave Vietnam a reward that they don’t deserve,” said John Sifton, the Asia policy director of Human Rights Watch.
Quang defended his country’s rights record.
“The consistent position and viewpoint of the Vietnamese government is to protect and promote human rights,” he said, adding, “those achievements have been highly recognized and appreciated by the international community.”
US officials portrayed lifting the embargo as part of a strategy to help Vietnam defend itself against an increasing threat from China in the South China Sea. Analysts have speculated that in return, Vietnam would grant the United States access to the deepwater port at Cam Ranh Bay.
While there were no statements about such a deal on Monday, Obama did announce commercial deals worth more than $16 billion, including one in which Boeing will sell 100 aircraft and Pratt & Whitney will sell 135 advanced aircraft engines to VietJet, a privately owned low-cost airline.
Related: "Boeing Co. won an $11.3 billion order from Vietnam’s only private airline, dealing a blow to rival Airbus Group SE in a battle over the growing market for low-cost air travel in Asia. VietJet Aviation Joint Stock Co. will buy 100 737 Max jetliners, the budget carrier said Monday during a visit by US President Barack Obama. The deal will add diversity to a fleet that has consisted entirely of Airbus planes. Boeing’s win with VietJet marks a shift for discount carriers that typically stick with a single aircraft type to reduce costs for spare parts and pilot training. The airline, which is less than five years old, agreed as recently as November to buy 30 A320neos from Airbus. Based in Toulouse, France, Airbus said it counts VietJet “as an existing customer for our A320 family.” The new 737 Max 200s will be delivered starting in 2019, VietJet and Boeing said in a joint statement."
Obama said that improved ties with Vietnam made sense for the United States, since it was a fast-growing country in one of the fastest-growing regions of the world.
He predicted that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal among 12 nations that has very little chance of passing Congress before the election in November but that would benefit Vietnam greatly, would someday become law.
“I remain confident we’re going to get it done, and the reason I remain confident is because it’s the right thing to do,” he said, acknowledging that “the politics will be noisy.”
All three remaining presidential candidates in the United States — Donald Trump for the Republicans and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders for the Democrats — oppose the pact.
Obama’s trip to Vietnam is part of an effort by this Southeast Asian nation to recalibrate its relationship with China, its giant neighbor in the north. China remains Vietnam’s largest trading partner and an ideological ally, but reaction to the decision on Monday was subdued.
“The arms embargo is a product of the Cold War and should never have existed,” Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, said during a regular news briefing in Beijing. “We welcome normal relations between Vietnam and the United States.”
But beneath the polite response are deep concerns in Beijing about the intentions of Vietnam. And Vietnam, while seeking to defend itself from China, is unlikely to completely sever itself from China’s orbit.
Obama also announced on Monday that the two sides had formalized an agreement to allow the opening of Fulbright University Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City, the first independent university in Vietnam in which the government will have no role in creating the curriculum or teaching students.
The university’s chairman, Bob Kerrey, a Vietnam veteran and a former senator of Nebraska, said the school may start teaching undergraduates in the fall of 2017.
Obama also said that for the first time, Peace Corps volunteers will be posted to Vietnam and focus on teaching English.
In a sign of the complexities of the relationship, the Chinese ambassador to Vietnam, Hong Xiaoyong, met on Thursday with Vietnam’s defense minister, Ngo Xuan Lich, in Hanoi. Both sides pledged to strengthen military ties, said Xinhua, the Chinese state-run news agency.
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Also see: As US works with Vietnam, questions linger about human rights
The Vietnamese returned the favor.
Related:
"President Obama won enthusiastic applause Tuesday with a supportive reference to Vietnam’s disputes with China, saying in a speech that “big nations should not bully smaller ones.”
OMG!
Does he even listen to himself, or does he just read whatever is in front of him?
Here is who laid the groundwork for his invasion:
"John Kerry, Vietnam War continue to be intertwined" by Carol Morello Washington Post April 27, 2016
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John F. Kerry is not the only participant under criticism. Some students at the University of Texas are calling for pickets to protest Henry Kissinger, who was secretary of state during a particularly bloody stretch in the long war. The event also will include political activist Tom Hayden, who is famous for going to Hanoi with his then-wife, actress Jane Fonda, in 1972 to commiserate with peasants whose dikes had been bombed.
Kissinger is a world-class war criminal and he's walking around free.
The library has reached out to service organizations, hoping hundreds of Vietnam veterans will attend, not just as participants but as honorees.
A commission established by Congress to commemorate the war will hand out lapel pins to veterans. Lynda Johnson Robb, the older daughter of Vietnam-era president Lyndon B. Johnson and the wife of Vietnam veteran and former Virginia governor Chuck Robb, will help distribute the pins.
Robb said she has been reading the letters her husband wrote her from the war zone, remembering how her father got up in the middle of the night to pray that the fighter jets would return safely. Vietnam, she said, ‘‘destroyed my father’s hopes and dreams for his domestic programs.’’
Well, he did it to himself. He didn't have to tell that whopper of a Tonkin lie.
Or did he?
‘‘This is an opportunity to honor and recognize our Vietnam veterans, who didn’t get the recognition they deserved,’’ she said of the symposium that she and her sister, Luci Johnson, will attend. ‘‘There are a lot of people that are coming to the end of their lives, and we want to thank them for what they did.’’
No disrespect intended for veterans, far from it, but this revisionism regarding Vietnam and AmeriKan militarism stinks of Nazism.
I don't think participation in the mass murder of millions of South Asians over a series of damnable lies should be viewed with any honor at all, although as far as blame goes the higher the better. Grunt enlistees and draftees were carrying out policy. That doesn't completely absolve them, but it puts larger things into perspective.
Knotts said some veterans remain angry with Kerry because of their experiences when they came home from the war.
‘‘It stems from the fact that many of the Vietnam vets when they came home were told to hide the fact they were vets,’’ he said. ‘‘It was to save themselves grief, mistreatment, negative attitudes, not getting hired in jobs, a general community stigma related to the war. They feel that they should have been honored for their service to country regardless of people’s feelings about the war.
Good thing we no longer have that and are in the throws of militaristic here worship these days. The Vietnam syndrome has truly been shattered.
‘‘So now they are unfettered. They feel they will not be kept from expressing opinions the way they were when they first came home.’’
Joe Galloway, a former war correspondent who co-wrote a book about a key battle, ‘‘We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young,’’ said it made sense for Kerry to appear at the event.
‘‘Kerry has all the reason in the world to be there,’’ Galloway said. ‘‘He was a Vietnam vet. He served honorably. He came home, he was against the war. So were a lot of vets.’’
The venue for this particular symposium is both an apt and an awkward fit. President Johnson’s achievements in civil rights legislation, heralded in a similar seminar at the library two years ago, were overshadowed by the grinding war.
When the LBJ Library was dedicated in 1971, Johnson said it illustrated the story of his time in office, ‘‘with the bark off.’’
Said Mark Updegrove, the library’s director. ‘‘If we looked at the triumph of civil rights, we have to look in the same comprehensive, unvarnished way at the trajectory of Vietnam. We are not in the business of hagiography. It was LBJ’s hope that his presidential records would be processed as soon as possible and give people a sense of what he did in the course of his tenure, and make of it what they will.’’
In his speech, Kerry may reprise a theme he repeats often around the world, that diplomacy should be exhausted before young men and women are sent to war.
Or at least give the appearance of that so, you know, it doesn't look so bad when they begin the war.
‘‘The United States and Vietnam have again proven that former adversaries really can become partners, even in the complex world we face today,’’ he said during a visit to Hanoi last year. ‘‘And as much as that achievement matters to us, it is also a profound and timely lesson to the rest of the world.’’
Yeah, it all depends on the immediate needs regarding geopolitical maneuvers and whatever it takes for world domination.
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"Kerry recalls a war that shaped him, as combatant and protester" by Carol Morello Washington Post April 29, 2016
AUSTIN, Texas — Secretary of State John F. Kerry discussed the driving role of the Vietnam War in his life’s work at a conference on the war Wednesday night, talking in unusually personal terms about his experiences as a combatant and a protester.
Pfffft!
In a speech at the LBJ Presidential Library, Kerry had to pause and regain control of his emotions while recalling his most famous statement ever while testifying before a Senate committee after he returned from Vietnam and became a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
Kerry rarely discusses in public his time as an antiwar protester. His pointed remarks suggested that the poised, silver-haired diplomat who negotiates cease-fires and treaties is just an evolution from the angry, shaggy-maned protester who posed the rhetorical question of how to ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake.
Yeah, it's the process of him having been bought off over all these years after having been put forth as the leader of veteran opposition.
So the Skull-And-Boneset was on "our side" back then, huh?
Yeah, sure he was.
‘‘In 1971, when I testified against the war in Vietnam,’’ Kerry said, ‘‘I spoke of the determination of veterans to undertake one last mission so that in 30 years, when our brothers went down the street without a leg or an arm and people asked why, we’d be able to say ‘Vietnam’ and not mean a bitter memory . . ..’’
And forty years later he is saying propping up of the puppet government in Afghanistan, with all its corruption, is worth the blood of our soldiers.
Then Kerry stopped, seeming to choke back tears and taking a chug from a water bottle before he composed himself and completed the thought.
‘‘. . .. a bitter memory,’’ he continued, ‘‘but mean instead the place where America turned and where we helped it in the turning.’’
Did he go visit any graves or look at the birth defects caused by U.S. chemical warfare?
We helped Vietnam progress with that mass-murdering, environmentally befouling mission?
He's mentally ill.
Now, 45 years later, Kerry said, the corner has been turned in Vietnam, a country he will visit next month accompanying President Obama on a trip that will highlight mutual economic and strategic interests.
The few hours Kerry spent at the Vietnam War summit felt at times like paging through a Kerry scrapbook, infused with sights and sounds that reached deep into his memory banks.
‘‘So when we talk about the lessons of Vietnam — here’s number one: Whether a war is popular or unpopular, we must always — always — treat our returning vets with the dignity and respect they have earned by virtue of their service to the nation.’’
He says that, and then you take a look at the VA and shake your head.
Do these guys even smell the s*** they are spewing?
Kerry called for Americans to move forward from the war’s lingering pains and divisions.
He was one of the lucky ones, who returned from Vietnam whole. ‘‘I am now in a position of responsibility, to live my beliefs, to live my lessons,’’ he said....
Then why you helping start so many more as SecofState?
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He's come full circle and wherever he goes he brings conflict.
You know, there was another Kerry that served in Vietnam, former senator and 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey:
"Kerrey was a gung-ho Navy SEAL lieutenant when he led his squad, known as Kerrey’s Raiders, into Thanh Phong on Feb. 25, 1969. Their mission was to hunt down a Viet Cong leader believed to be operating in the village. The squad first encountered a hut they had not expected. To avoid giving away their position, they used knives to kill five people, witnesses said, slitting the throats of an elderly couple and stabbing their three grandchildren. Although Kerrey has taken responsibility for ordering the killings as squad leader, he has said he did not participate in them. However, two other members of his unit say Kerrey helped kill the grandfather, later identified as Bui Van Vat, 65. When they reached the main part of the village, they encountered women and children. According to Kerrey’s account, someone fired on the squad and the commandos returned fire, killing the civilians in the darkness and confusion. A member of his squad, Gerhard Klann, gave The Times a different account. He said the SEALs rounded up the women and children, then debated what to do. They were not in a position to take prisoners, and if they let them go the villagers might alert the enemy. So Kerrey gave the order, Klann said, and they opened fire."
At best Kerrey has changed the story in his own mind so he doesn't see a monster called a war hero in the mirror, or he's a liar!
Btw, AmeriKan universities also double as CIA stations, and Fulbright fought against the war when doing so was very unpopular. So the concept itself is an insult.
And now, a few moments of silence please:
"Donald Duncan, 79, all-but-forgotten early critic of Vietnam War" by Robert D. McFadden New York Times May 07, 2016
NEW YORK — Donald W. Duncan, a Green Beret master sergeant who came home from Vietnam a disillusioned hero in 1965 and became a leading early opponent of US involvement in a war he called illegal, barbaric, and unwinnable, died in a small town in the Midwest seven years ago. He was 79.
Mr. Duncan’s daughters, Valerie Casey and Luise Wilson, confirmed last week that he died March 25, 2009, at a nursing home in Madison, Ind., an all-but-forgotten soldier.
In an age of seeming information ubiquity, the news media will generally recall the lives of noteworthy people when they die. But Mr. Duncan had lived his last years in obscurity, and his death went largely unremarked upon in the wider world.
He was John Kerry before John Kerry, and the Skull and Boneser built a career on being the lead antiwar advocate?
Ugh!
His obituary in The Madison Courier said only that Mr. Duncan had once worked for a local nonprofit that helped poor people find jobs. The crucial events of his life — the killings and brutalities of 18 months in Vietnam, the agony of conscience and conversion, and the years of antiwar struggle — had happened long ago and were not mentioned.
In an America torn by protests against the war in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Mr. Duncan was often in the news, although not as prominently as the pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, Roman Catholic priests Daniel and Philip Berrigan, or actress Jane Fonda, who was photographed laughing and applauding on an antiaircraft gun in Hanoi.
But in 1966, well before the Tet offensive and the My Lai Massacre stirred national discontent, Mr. Duncan was one of the first returning veterans to portray the war as a moral quagmire that had little to do with fighting the spread of communism, as American leaders were portraying it.
It was about war-profiteering.
Mr. Duncan, who went to war convinced it was an anticommunist crusade, ended his Special Forces duty a changed man. A 10-year veteran, he rejected an offer of an officer’s commission and left the United States Army. Back home, he became a fierce critic of the war, writing articles and a memoir and speaking at rallies across the country with singer Joan Baez, writer Norman Mailer, and comedian Dick Gregory.
Where are those same people regarding this generation?
In a 1966 article for Ramparts, a radicalized Roman Catholic political and literary journal, Mr. Duncan told of witnessing murders, torture, and other atrocities by US forces in Vietnam in violation of all international laws; of refusing orders at An Khe to kill four enemy prisoners whose hands were tied behind them; and of rapes by South Vietnamese troops that were never reported, let alone punished.
“The whole thing was a lie,” Mr. Duncan wrote. “We weren’t preserving freedom in South Vietnam. There was no freedom to preserve. To voice opposition to the government meant jail or death. Neutralism was forbidden and punished. Newspapers that didn’t say the right thing were closed down. People are not even free to leave, and Vietnam is one of those rare countries that doesn’t fill its American visa quota.”
In his Ramparts articles and a memoir, “The New Legions” (1967), Mr. Duncan detailed a military career that began in December 1954, when he was drafted by the Army in Rochester, N.Y., a 24-year-old American who had been born in Canada and raised by a stepfather of Hungarian origin.
“I was a militant anticommunist,” Mr. Duncan wrote in Ramparts. “Like most Americans, I couldn’t conceive of anybody choosing communism over democracy. The depths of my aversion to this ideology was, I suppose, due in part to my being Roman Catholic, and in part to the stories in the news media about communism. My stepfather was born in Budapest, Hungary. Although he had come to the United States as a young man, most of his family stayed in Europe.”
And here we are, 50 years later.... same old, same old. Sigh.
He volunteered to fight in South Vietnam in 1964 and served in missions with the Fifth Special Forces Group. He killed the enemy, saw comrades killed, watched civilians shot and bayoneted and their villages burned. He won South Vietnam’s Silver Star, the US Army Air Medal, two Bronze Stars, and the Combat Infantry Badge, and was recommended for a Silver Star and the Legion of Merit.
On reconnaissance in Laos, where US bombers were pounding an enemy supply route, he began to doubt American reports on the war.
“This mission confirmed that the Ho Chi Minh Trail, so called, and the traffic on it, was grossly exaggerated,” he said, “and that the Viet Cong were getting the bulk of their weapons from ARVN and by sea. It also was one more piece of evidence that the Viet Cong were primarily South Vietnamese, not imported troops from the North.” (The ARVN was South Vietnam’s Army.)
Mr. Duncan said it had been common knowledge that draft-dodging and desertion rates among South Vietnamese troops were “staggering,” and that Viet Cong guerrillas attacked US machine-gun positions “across open terrain with terrible losses.” American propaganda, he said, could not obscure such lopsided motivations.
“Even during the short period I had been in Vietnam,” he wrote, “the Viet Cong had obviously gained in strength. The government controlled less and less of the country every day. The more troops and money we poured in, the more people hated us.”
Some things never change!
He concluded that the United States was destined to lose the war. “I don’t think Vietnam will be better off under Ho’s brand of communism,” he said. “But it’s not for me or my government to decide. That decision is for the Vietnamese. I also know that we have allowed the creation of a military monster that will lie to our elected officials, and that both of them will lie to the American people.”
Even has its own public relations office called the pre$$.
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(Blog editor salutes him)
"Robert Bennett, 82, US senator unseated amid Tea Party rise" by Adam Bernstein Washington Post May 07, 2016
WASHINGTON — Robert F. Bennett, a business executive and three-term senator who epitomized Utah’s Republican establishment and became in 2010 the first high-profile political casualty of an anti-Washington fervor surging through his party, died May 4 at his home in Arlington, Va. He was 82.
The cause was complications from pancreatic cancer and a stroke, Mr. Bennett’s assistant Tara Tanner announced.
Mr. Bennett had a lucrative career in corporate management, notably as chief executive of the start-up Franklin Institute, a time management company that holds seminars and makes best-selling day planners.
He stepped down in 1991 from the company, now known as Franklin Covey, with a reported net worth of more than $25 million, and with his eye on the open Senate seat once held by his father.
At 6 feet 6 inches tall, and with a bald pate and protruding ears, Bennett called attention to his looks in campaign slogans, with one proclaiming: “Big Heart. Big Ideas. Big Ears.”
Mr. Bennett was a respected and soft-spoken legislative consigliere to Senate leaders including Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, and rose to prominence on the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee and the powerful Appropriations Committee. He sprinkled hundreds of millions of dollars on home state businesses and projects through spending bill earmarks.
A vigorously free-market conservative, Mr. Bennett opposed measures to regulate corporations and tighten campaign finance rules. He was a party loyalist but won praise from Democrats for his behind-the-scenes pragmatism and diligence on legislation of broad interest.
Most notably, he worked with Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, on a bipartisan attempt to overhaul the health care insurance system. Their Healthy Americans Act, first proposed in 2007, was an effort to marry the Democrats’ wish for universal coverage with the GOP’s emphasis on consumer choice and market forces.
The act drew many admirers but did not reach the floor for a vote.
However, one of the Wyden-Bennett provisions involving flexibility for states carrying out a universal health care mandate was included in the Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama in 2010.
Mr. Bennett opposed the Affordable Care Act, citing the excessive spending he said it would require.
“I cared about the details because I looked at the accounting,” he told NPR. “I looked at the cost, I look at the devastation it would incur on states and the impact it would have on Medicare and all of the other things that were wrong with it.”
As he prepared to seek a fourth term, he found himself out of favor with hard-right activists in his party who demanded more than opposition to the Affordable Care Act.
With the economy still reeling from the 2008 recession, antitax crusaders and conservative broadcasters such as Glenn Beck fingered Mr. Bennett as a symbol of big government and fiscal irresponsibility and rallied the grass roots to boot him and other incumbents from office.
Mr. Bennett, who had broken a promise to serve no more than two terms, also suffered from an impression among voters that he was too preoccupied with wonkish legislative endeavors and insufficiently attentive to constituent needs.
Mr. Bennett’s upset in 2010 was made possible in part by a quirk in the Utah nominating system, which requires delegates to bestow their blessing at a convention before the primary. At the convention, Mr. Bennett was jeered as “Bailout Bob” and a “RINO” — Republican in Name Only — and came in third among eight contenders.
“The political world changed underneath Bob Bennett’s feet,” Norman J. Ornstein, an American Enterprise Institute congressional scholar, said in an interview.
“He was a creature of an era that had passed, especially for the Republican Party,” Ornstein said. “He had sterling conservative credentials but believed in compromise where you wanted to get things done, and he believed in the institution of Congress. Those were once badges of honor, but they became black marks for activist, radical conservatives.”
Robert Foster Bennett was born in Salt Lake City on Sept. 18, 1933.
He graduated from the University of Utah in 1957 with a bachelor’s degree in political science and served as the student body president.
In 1971, he bought Robert R. Mullen Co., a public relations firm that seemed to be a conspiracy theorist’s dream: It served as a front for CIA personnel, employed the Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt as a writer, and helped represent the political interests of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes.
No, no, no, that doesn't happen in today's world and if it did surely the AmeriKan mew$ media would tell us all about it.
Mr. Bennett alerted Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward to Hunt’s CIA background, a critical early step in unraveling the maze of illegal activity that led directly to the Nixon White House.
Thus destroying the myth of All the President's Men and the brave and intrepid investigative reporter. They were fed all that stuff to remove someone.
That really spins your head, huh?
In 1962, Mr. Bennett married Joyce McKay. Besides his wife, he leaves six children and 20 grandchildren.
After his election loss, Mr. Bennett became a political consultant and lobbyist and lectured at universities in Utah and Washington.
Ah, the revolving door of Wa$hington.
“The political atmosphere, obviously, has been toxic and it’s very clear some of the votes that I have cast have added to the toxic environment,” Mr. Bennett told the Salt Lake Tribune after his defeat. “Looking back on them — with one or two very minor exceptions — I wouldn’t have cast any of them any differently even if I'd known at the time it would cost me my career because I have always done the best I can to cast the vote that I think is best for the state and best for the country.”
It was best you were defeated.
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If only the war could have been prevented:
"Mark Lane, 89; lawyer offered evidence for Kennedy conspiracy" by Keith Schneider New York Times May 13, 2016
NEW YORK — Mark Lane, the defense lawyer, social activist, and best-selling author who concluded in a blockbuster book in the mid-1960s that Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone in killing President John F. Kennedy, a thesis supported in part by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979, died Tuesday at his home in Charlottesville, Va. He was 89.
The cause was a heart attack, his friend and paralegal Sue Herndon said.
The Kennedy assassination, one of the manifest turning points of the 20th century, also was the climactic moment of Mr. Lane’s life and career. Before the president’s murder in November 1963, Mr. Lane was a minor figure in New York’s legal and political circles. He had organized rent strikes, opposed bomb shelter programs, was a Freedom Rider, took on civil rights cases, and was active in the New York City Democratic Party. In 1960, he was elected a state assemblyman and served one term.
After the Kennedy murder, Mr. Lane devoted much of the next three decades to its investigation. Almost immediately he began the Citizens’ Committee of Inquiry, interviewed witnesses, collected evidence, and delivered speeches on the assassination in the United States and in Europe, where he befriended Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, one of his early supporters.
Some have postulated that Lane was CIA and was fulfilling his role regarding the leading of opposition. It's based on the Lenin remark regarding how will they control opposition? Why, they will lead it! Think Alex Jones.
By the time President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination, Mr. Lane had emerged as one of its important independent experts. He testified to the commission in 1964 and served as a legal counsel to Marguerite Oswald, the suspect’s mother.
In August 1966, Mr. Lane published the results of his inquiry in “Rush to Judgment,” his first book, which dominated best-seller lists for two years. With a trial lawyer’s capacity to amass facts, and a storyteller’s skill in distilling them into a coherent narrative, Mr. Lane asserted that the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald was the lone gunman was incomplete, reckless at times, and implausible.
He coined the term “grassy knoll” to describe a green expanse of Dealey Plaza in Dallas that Mr. Lane argued was the source of several of the shots fired at the president.
The book raised doubts about Oswald’s marksmanship and the expertise of police agencies. And he sought to ridicule the Warren Commission’s conclusion that one “magic bullet” could strike and grievously injure Kennedy and Governor John Connally and still emerge essentially intact.
In any event, you can't minimize the evidence that was brought to light during what looks like a limited hangout phase.
Mr. Lane’s findings were disputed aggressively by the government. Still, the financial success of “Rush to Judgment” and its conclusions prompted the development of a new assassination genre in nonfiction — by those who believed and did not believe in a conspiracy — that eventually counted more than 2,000 titles.
Government still disputes it and is still hanging on to that lame-ass explanation.
Mr. Lane was among the genre’s most active contributors. In 1967, the same year he produced a documentary film version of the book, with the same title, The New Yorker magazine writer Calvin Trillin called Mr. Lane one of the foremost Kennedy “assassination buffs.” In 1968, Mr. Lane published “A Citizen’s Dissent’’ to respond to the defenders of the Warren Commission report.
In 1973, Warner Brothers released “Executive Action,” a feature film based on “Rush to Judgment” starring Burt Lancaster that Mr. Lane wrote with help from Dalton Trumbo.
In 1991, Mr. Lane produced a second documentary on the Kennedy assassination, “Two Men in Dallas,” and in 1991 he published a second book, “Plausible Denial,” that argued the CIA was involved in the Kennedy murder.
Mr. Lane relished the heightened national attention that came with his high-profile causes.
In 1968, the comedian Dick Gregory chose Mr. Lane as his running mate in several states in a write-in presidential candidacy for the Freedom and Peace Party. The campaign collected nearly 50,000 votes.
In its final report in 1979, the House committee went further than any branch of government to support the central points of Mr. Lane’s thesis about Kennedy’s murder. It concluded that the FBI and the Warren Commission investigations of the assassination were flawed.
And then any further investigation by the government was dropped.
The committee also found that while Oswald fired three shots, one of which killed Kennedy, a “high probability” existed that a second gunman was present and that the president “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” The committee, though, was “unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy.”
But Mr. Lane also came under criticism from the committee for providing evidence about the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination that they regarded as unsubstantiated: “In many instances, the committee found that Lane was willing to advocate conspiracy theories publicly without having checked the factual basis for them,” wrote the authors of the final committee report. “In other instances, Lane proclaimed conspiracy based on little more than inference and innuendo. Lane’s conduct resulted in public misperception about the assassination of Dr. King and must be condemned.”
King's assassination by higher and more powerful forces in even more obvious -- as was the reason why.
Two months later, any hope of a sane and decent world ended with Bobby Kennedy sprawled on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, and I have to step away from the computer for a while because the tears are blinding my sight.
Mr. Lane was undeterred. “It seems clear,” he wrote in 1992, “that the people of this nation have a different agenda from the politics of suppression, disinformation, perjury, and subornation of perjury readily embraced by their leaders.”
--more--"
Should have given him a Medal of Honor.
As for elections in Vietnam:
"Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung is favored by the business community, which feels that he will continue the economic reforms in the country at the same pace that have helped Vietnam attract a flood of foreign investment and helped triple the per capita GDP to $2,100 over the past 10 years. He is also seen as being more solid in standing up to neighboring China, which has been displaying aggressive territorial ambitions in the South China Sea. Communist Party chief General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, on the other hand, is a stolid, conservative party apparatchik who is not seen as being too imaginative on economic reforms, and being too soft on China. Before the congress opened on Thursday, it appeared that Trong had suppressed Dung; however, Dung appears to have found a loophole."
What a crock of.... Dung.
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Encircling China: Soft Underbelly
The jumping off point for invasion will naturally be....
Australian man accused in plot to pack kangaroo with explosives
Good eye, good eye!
The propaganda is so far of a jump over the shark it has literally become unbelievable, folks!
So how was he planning to get them in the pouch?
"Islamic State’s ability to inspire individuals all around the world to commit acts of terror has been one of the most worrying aspects of the militant group’s rise. However, there have been repeated reminders that the ‘‘lone wolfs’’ it inspires may not be so capable of organizing elaborate terror plots -- even if they still have the potential to cause harm.
Not without FBI help anyway.
That point has been hammered home by the case of Sevdet Besim, a 19-year-old man on trial in Australia for allegedly planning to commit a terror attack in Melbourne last year. Besim has been accused of attempting an unusual method for a terror attack: packing a kangaroo full of explosives and setting it loose on Australian police officers."
Yeah, kangaroos are really controllable and subject to obeying commands.
Better light up the bat signal!
Screeching and guano fills the air in Australian town filled with bats
Maybe the U.S. could take some off your hands:
"A fungal disease that has killed millions of bats nationwide has spread to Washington state, the first time white-nose syndrome has turned up in the western United States, federal wildlife officials said Thursday. The disease does not affect people or other animals, but bats are valuable because they eat mosquitoes and other insects that damage trees and commercial crops. The news is concerning, though not entirely surprising because the fungal disease spreads rapidly, wildlife officials say. It has killed more than 6 million hibernating bats in 28 states and five Canadian provinces since it was first documented nearly a decade ago in New York. Previously, white-nose syndrome had been detected only as far west as Minnesota."
It's a number that draws comparisons™, but beyond that one must wonder about the effects of GMO mosquitos on some of these populations. If you think I'm buying the limited hangouts of pesticides and white-nose from my pre$$.... sigh!)
Of course, Australia is a long way away.... but they are finding it tough to marshal a war-weary public to arms.
Man, on Fire, Tries to Drive Car Into Australian Police Station Garage
Only problem is “there’s nothing to indicate this is in any way related to terrorism and we can’t know what his motivation was at this stage,” assistant police commissioner, Denis Clifford, said at a news conference.
Australian police investigate abuse accusations against cardinal
I don't know why I dragged that up out of the grave.
Now on to.....
Where the front lines erupted in an attempt to seize Timor Island in an Amazing thrust through the sea:
"Line shares surge in US debut of year’s biggest technology IPO" by Alex Barinka and Selina Wang Bloomberg News July 14, 2016
Line Corp. surged 27 percent in its US trading debut after the Japanese messaging company raised more than $1 billion in the biggest technology initial public offering of the year.
“We will be focusing on our four key markets: Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia,” Line’s chief financial officer, In-Joon Hwang, said in a Bloomberg TV interview.
Investors will be keen to look past the first few days of trading. Line will likely be measured going forward against fellow tech stocks Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc., for which user growth has been a key metric. Line, which has about 218 million users, said in its prospectus that the pace of user growth has slowed.
Despite market volatility and a surging yen triggered by the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union, Line raised its IPO price by 18 percent from an initial estimate and exercised an option to sell more stock. The company sold less than a fifth of its total shares in this week’s offering.
Tokyo’s influential day traders will be watching Line’s open ahead of its debut in its home market on Friday, and could spark an early feeding frenzy for the shares. The traders have a tendency to favor stocks popular with the general public, with retail investors drawn to the IPOs of companies whose services they use.
Line’s sales grew 40 percent last year, but the company chalked up a net loss in the period, according to its IPO filing.
Nomura Holdings Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. were the lead underwriters.
Now why would the printed Globe have kept that under the hood?
Because they are also the lead underwriters of wars?
--more--"
Thus began the long march through Tenggara, Java, and Sumatra.
"Indonesian police say DNA confirms most wanted terror suspect is dead" by Joe Cochrane New York Times July 23, 2016
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia’s national police confirmed through DNA testing that the country’s most wanted terrorism suspect had been killed during a gunbattle earlier in the week on Sulawesi Island, police announced Saturday.
The police said its laboratory had confirmed the identify of Abu Wardah, better known as Santoso. He was the leader of the Mujahedeen of Eastern Indonesia, a terrorist cell that has professed allegiance to the Islamic State.
Santoso and one of his followers were killed Monday during a gunfight with Indonesian security forces near the central Sulawesi province town of Poso, which has long been a hotbed for terrorist activity. Around 20 members of his terrorist cell remained at large.
“From the DNA test results, it’s positive and confirmed that one of the corpses is Santoso,” said Brigadier General Boy Rafli Amar, a national police spokesman.
Santoso, 40, and his cell grew to national prominence in the past several years by carrying out attacks on security forces, in particular the police, as well as training militants across the country. Santoso’s group has included Uighurs from the western Chinese region of Ningxia.
Last year, President Joko Widodo of Indonesia made it a priority to increase efforts to capture or kill Santoso, establishing a joint military-police task force that included fighter jets to support the mission.
In March, the United States placed Santoso and the Mujahedeen of Eastern Indonesia on its global terrorist designation list.
“Indonesia has preempted the creation of a wilayah in Southeast Asia,” said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, referring to an autonomous Islamic governorate.
Indonesia has suffered multiple terrorist attacks carried out by Islamic militants since 2000, including bombings of Christian churches, nightclub bombings on the island of Bali, and attacks on upscale Western hotels and the Australian Embassy in the capital, Jakarta.
But they are now driving out ISIS™ and winning the ground war.
--more--"
Stymied on the ground in Indonesia, the allies took to the air against....
Who shot down Malaysian Airways flight MH17? Report offers clues, but no clarity
Debris in Mozambique is thought to come from Malaysia Airlines flight
Take off that shirt, it’s a threat to national security
Man who found Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 part finds new item on Reunion
CEO of troubled Malaysian airline to step down
Debris in Madagascar will be analyzed to see if belongs to missing plane
In hunt for Flight 370, rethinking just how far a jet can fly on fumes
Pffft!
All the way to Colorado, or so I'm told.
"The countries leading the effort to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared two years ago with 239 people aboard, said Friday that they would suspend but not end the search if the missing plane was not found in the rapidly shrinking target area. Representatives of Australia, China, and Malaysia said the search could be revived if “credible new information” emerged about the location of the airliner...."
Here is a credible report:
"When they fabricated the story about Flight MH370 flying south for the winter from the location where it disappeared off the radar over the South China sea, where a witness reported seeing a plane burning and crashing in the night sky, where the US was holding naval drills with two cruise missile destroyers… when they fabricated the “super stealth” commercial airliner story and diverted the search area a thousand miles from anywhere one would logically look for debris.. I wrote that the plane would never be found. And after a number of bullshit “discoveries” of parts and pieces of things that had nothing to do with Flight MH370 and spending $180 million on an ocean floor mapping project for Big Oil (under the cover of “looking for Flight 370)… they have now given up entirely on ever finding the plane and the bodies of those poor souls lost that day...."
With the air campaign failing, the allies attempted to engineer a change in government:
Ruling coalition wins amid scandal
Ex-Malaysian leader quits ruling party in protest
Former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad can $ee the writing on the wall:
"US goes after more than $1b taken from Malaysian fund" by Eric Tucker Associated Press July 21, 2016
WASHINGTON — The United States moved Wednesday to recover more than $1 billion that federal officials say was stolen from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund and that was used for high-end real estate, fancy artwork, and production of the Hollywood film ‘‘The Wolf of Wall Street.’’
Justice Department civil forfeiture complaints seek the forfeiture of property including a Manhattan penthouse and a Beverly Hills mansion, a $35 million private jet, and paintings by Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet.
The complaint, filed in Los Angeles, alleges a complex money-laundering scheme that the Justice Department says was intended to enrich top-level officials of a government-controlled Malaysian wealth fund.
That fund, known informally as 1MDB, was created in 2009 by the Malaysian government with the goal of promoting economic development projects in the Asian nation. Instead, officials at the fund diverted more than $3.5 billion over the next several years through a web of shell companies and bank accounts in Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and the United States, the complaint alleges.
‘‘In seeking to seize these forfeited items, the Department of Justice is sending a message that we will not allow the United States to become a playground for the corrupt,’’ Eileen Decker, the US Attorney in Los Angeles, said at a news conference. ‘‘And we will not allow it to be a platform for money laundering or a place to hide and invest in stolen riches.’’
Uh-huh.
Obviously, the Malaysian government is not towing the U.S. line; otherwise, these charges would never have been brought.
Federal officials say more than $1 billion was laundered into the United States for the personal benefit of 1MDB officials and their associates. The funds were used to pay for luxury real estate in the United States and Europe, gambling debts in Las Vegas casinos, a London interior designer, expensive paintings, and the production of films.
The Justice Department said it was the largest forfeiture demand under an initiative that seeks to recover foreign bribery proceeds and embezzled funds.
The complaint identifies by name multiple Malaysian nationals that the government alleges profited from the scheme.
Among them is Riza Shahriz Bin Abdul Aziz, who cofounded Red Granite Pictures, a movie production studio whose films include ‘‘The Wolf of Wall Street.’’
Oh, yeah, speaking of Wall Street.... $igh.
According to the complaint, 11 wire transfers totaling $64 million were used to fund the studio’s operations, including the production of the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Oh, Leo!
The complaint identified Riza as a relative of a Malaysian official, but did not name the official. He is the stepson of Prime Minister Najib Razak.
‘‘Neither 1MDB nor the Malaysian people ever saw a penny of profit from that film or from any of the other assets that were purchased with funds that were siphoned from 1MDB,’’ said Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division. ‘‘Instead, that money went to relatives and associates of the corrupt officials of 1MDB and others.’’
What's the big deal? That's standard practice at the Clinton Foundation.
The Justice Department is seeking to seize any royalties and fees owed to Red Granite in the future.
A phone message at the movie studio on Wednesday morning was not immediately returned.
Malaysian government officials had no comment Wednesday in response to queries about the Justice Department action.
But opposition lawmaker Tony Pua said Malaysia has become a laughingstock with the US move as the government had insisted that no money was missing from the fund. He said the government must open up investigations into the fund and uncover the identity of the Malaysian senior official behind the money laundering.
--more--"
His explanation isn't any good.
"US rejects account of how millions got to Malaysia’s leader" by Richard C. Paddock New York Times July 22, 2016
BANGKOK — A US Justice Department complaint filed in federal court this week directly contradicts repeated assertions by the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, about the origins and purpose of hundreds of millions of dollars that ended up in his personal bank accounts.
While Najib and other Malaysian officials have insisted that the money was a gift from an unidentified Saudi donor, the Justice Department said that it was stolen from a Malaysian government investment fund that Najib oversaw. Najib has said he never received any money from the fund.
The court filing, one of several complaints filed Wednesday in a federal money-laundering investigation, provides the first official public documentation of transactions that challenge Najib’s version of events in a scandal that has battered his government for the past year.
The revelations could undermine his credibility and give new ammunition to a movement to force him from office.
That's the goal here; otherwise, I wouldn't be getting all this print regarding it (buried back in the business pages, but....).
In fact, they wouldn't even be bringing it up.
However, he maintains firm control over his governing party and has stifled opposition with the firing of critics from party posts, the closing of online news outlets, and the criminal prosecution of social media detractors and political opponents.
Regular old Erdogan, huh?
Najib has acknowledged receiving the money but said he broke no laws and took nothing for personal gain. He told reporters Thursday that his government would “fully cooperate” with the Justice Department action.
“Allow the process to take its course,” he said, “but I want to say categorically that we are serious about good governance.”
A spokesman for Najib, reached late Thursday, said the prime minister had not changed his position that the money he received was a gift from a Saudi donor and that he gave most of it back because he did not need it.
While the Justice Department complaint is an allegation, not evidence, it outlines in detail how huge sums were diverted from the government fund, routed through bank accounts in various countries, and then spent on high-end real estate, artwork, gambling, and various luxury goods by Najib’s stepson, friends, and associates.
But they can't find the terrorists or what Wall Street did, blah, blah, blah.
The court filing seeks to recover more than $1 billion in assets bought with money that prosecutors say was stolen from the fund, known as 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB.
Those assets, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said Wednesday, “are just a portion of the more than $3 billion that was stolen from 1MDB and laundered through American financial institutions in violation of United States law.”
The case, she said, should be seen as a sign of the country’s “firm commitment to fighting international corruption” and the department’s determination “to protect the American financial system from being used as a conduit for corruption.”
What did they do, withdraw the money they were stashing here?
Is that why Lynch is in a tizzy, and did she cc Bill Clinton?
The United States is among several governments, including Malaysia, Singapore, and Switzerland, that have investigated 1MDB.
The inquiries began last year after an investigative report in The New York Times traced the purchases of about $150 million in residential properties and artwork in the United States to relatives or associates of Najib.
While the federal complaint does not identify Najib by name, it cites $731 million in funds that came from 1MDB that were deposited into accounts belonging to a government official identified as “Malaysian Official 1.”
However, Najib is clearly recognizable in the descriptions and actions attributed to that official.
Large transactions by “Malaysian Official 1” described in the complaint are identical to those previously acknowledged by Najib. The complaint describes the official’s role in managing the fund, which matches Najib’s role. And it says “Malaysian Official 1” is a relative of Riza Aziz, Najib’s stepson.
A person with knowledge of the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that “Malaysian Official 1” was Najib. The complaint does name Aziz, and a family friend, Jho Low, who helped establish the fund.
Najib’s advisers have said Najib received about $1 billion in 2013, most of it donations from a member of the Saudi royal family to help him fight a tough election campaign that year.
That explanation of a Saudi gift was repeated by Najib’s attorney general, Mohamed Apandi Ali, who closed a government investigation into the money in January saying that he had found no evidence of wrongdoing.
On Thursday, Apandi issued a statement asserting that no investigation had found evidence that 1MDB funds had been misappropriated.
The Saudi gift was also confirmed by Saudi Arabia. Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told reporters in April that Najib had received a “genuine donation” from a Saudi donor. He did not specify the amount or provide any details.
A Saudi Foreign Ministry spokesman did not respond Friday to requests for comment.
The complaint says that $681 million transferred to Najib in 2013 came from a Singapore bank account held in the name of Tanore Finance Corp. It says the money originated from $3 billion in bonds underwritten for 1MDB by Goldman Sachs.
It always comes down to the usual $u$pects, doesn't it?
--more--"
Thankfully, Singapore remains safe, and thus the allies would turn to take on....
Large metal chunk investigated after washing onto Thai beach
It was there that they landed, and immediately began to drive for Bangkok. There they were met by Chinese and Turkish forces and driven back according to reports.
It was then that "prodemocracy protesters in Thailand’s capital defied a ban on protests and staged a rare rally Saturday against the country’s ruling military government. More than 200 people marched peacefully to Bangkok’s Democracy Monument, a symbolic site that has become a rallying point for protests in recent years. They carried antijunta banners as a ring of police kept watch over the event."
A battle cry was sounded:
"Thai police said Saturday that two men who were arrested in August’s deadly Bangkok bombing were the ones who carried out the attack and authorities have gathered enough evidence to prosecute them. Authorities said they are confident that the two men in custody, identified as Adem Karadag and Mieraili Yusufu, are responsible for the bombing at the Erawan Shrine on Aug. 17 that killed 20 people and injured more than 120. Police are seeking at least 15 other people in connection with the case."
It was a subtle way of telling the Thais to toe the line; however, it ended in an insulting defeat for allied forces, but everyone could see it coming.
Nothing left to do now but freeze the joke of a vote and stick with the prime minister and foreign minister (now that was a president!) before moving up to.....
Where the allies should find friendlier terrain under a puppet government.
The president is nothing but a figurehead for the CIA, and the parliament is dominated by them. In a day full of ceremony and symbolism, the new president was nominated.
"The newly created role could give her authority exceeding the president’s. The combination of jobs means she will oversee the president’s office, determine foreign policy and coordinate decision-making between the executive branch and parliamentary leaders. It is unclear what responsibilities that will leave for the president. Military members of Parliament denounced the measure as an unconstitutional power grab, stood up in the chamber in protest, and boycotted the vote."
They were then put under arrest as General John Kerry pushed his troops dangerously far from their supply lines and towards Thailand.
"Suu Kyi tackles migrant workers’ plight during Thailand trip" Associated Press June 24, 2016
MAHACHAI, Thailand — In a demonstration of her popular appeal, Myanmar de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi received a rapturous welcome Thursday as she presided over a town hall-style meeting with some of the huge population of migrant workers from her homeland who eke out a living in Thailand.
Her meeting with countrymen in the Thai port town of Mahachai, where many work, reprised a similar meeting in 2012 that drew tens of thousands. The numbers this time appeared to be lower, but the level of adulation was high, as the cheering crowd had to be held back from mobbing her.
Overshadowing her visit — though not addressed by her or her Thai hosts — is her government’s treatment of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority of about 1 million who generally have been deprived of citizenship under Myanmar law and are targets of discrimination and violence.
Suu Kyi spoke to several hundred people in a meeting hall for 20 minutes before stepping down from the stage in frustration at a faulty sound system to engage face-to-face with members of the audience, who gave her questions and comments about what she could do to help their lives.
A large crowd of several thousand waiting outside burst into cheers and song as she was leaving, after staying for the duration of her meeting even as heavy rain poured on them.
When Suu Kyi last visited Thailand four years ago, it was as head of her country’s opposition party to offer moral support to her countrymen who work here in menial jobs, often in exploitative conditions.
She arrived back as her country’s elected leader to tackle on an official basis the problems faced by Myanmar migrant workers the government estimates to number 1.4 million but advocates say is at least twice that.
The trip puts her in the spotlight as questions have arisen about her government’s policies, particularly toward the Rohingya minority.
Questions have arisen where?
--more--"
"U.S. Criticizes Myanmar Over Human Trafficking" New York Times News Service June 30, 2016
WASHINGTON — The designation came just a few weeks after the Treasury Department lifted a broad array of sanctions on Myanmar, including those applying to state-run banks and businesses.
Senior officials argued then that although the country’s human rights record was not perfect, its leaders deserved to be rewarded for their steps toward democratization. Relaxing the sanctions, they said, would serve as an incentive for the government to further improve its behavior.
Maybe they can bribe Myanmar back into the fold?
US officials said Myanmar had not met expectations for improvement, though they said its efforts had been “significant.” The determination could have potentially damaging effects on a relationship that was just showing signs of thaw.
The State Department said in its report that the conscription of children by the country’s military and the widespread use of forced labor, including the sex trafficking of women and girls, also remain serious problems in Myanmar.
They would only be dragging those out had Suu Kyi done something wrong, like think independently.
While the government has continued to prosecute and raise awareness about trafficking, it said Myanmar had not done enough to hold civilian officials responsible, a core issue as it appears the problem may be shifting to the private sphere rather than being resolved....
It's also a lever against the government should sanctions need be reapplied.
--more--"
The U.S. State Department gave them the same ranking as Iran, North Korea, and Syria?
Ain't those fighting words?
Related:
"Concerns about corruption, child-trafficking and baby-selling have prompted the United States to suspend adoptions from several countries in recent years, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala and Nepal."
It's only a quick thrust through Bangladesh to get to the high ground of.....
"Nepalese gathered at the remains of a historic tower in the capital and other sites across the nation to hold memorial services marking the one-year anniversary of a devastating earthquake, which killed nearly 9,000 people and left millions homeless. Minor protests were also held, with demonstrators angry at the slow rate of reconstruction. About 100 protesters, demonstrating against the slow rebuilding of the homes, scuffled with police outside the prime minister’s office."
That's why supplies aren't getting through.
"Risks in climbing Everest in focus as 3 die, 2 disappear" Associated Press May 23, 2016
KATHMANDU, Nepal — An Indian climber has died while being helped down Mount Everest, just a couple of days after Dutch and Australian climbers died near the peak. Two other Indian climbers are missing, and experts say some of the accidents may have been avoidable.
Poor planning and overcrowding on the world’s tallest peak may have led to bottlenecks that kept people delayed at the highest reaches while waiting for the path to clear lower down, Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association said Monday.
‘‘This was a man-made disaster that may have been minimized with better management of the teams,’’ he said. ‘‘The last two disasters on Everest were caused by nature, but not this one.’’
Many had hoped this year’s climbing season would bring success and restore confidence in the route, after deadly disasters canceled climbing the previous two years.
But as hundreds of eager climbers, joined by Sherpa guides and expedition experts, scrambled to take advantage of good weather to ascend, reports of tragedy began trickling down the mountain.
--more--"
Related: Sushil Koirala, Ex-Premier of Nepal Who Fought for Democracy, Dies at 77
Just when they needed him most.
Nepal’s parliament elects nation’s first female president
Habitat for Humanity cancels Jimmy Carter build in Nepal
The Dalai Lama apparently says ‘too many’ refugees are going to Europe
Obama and Dalai Lama meet over China’s objection
Obama had him over for talks to see who is on board for war, and now he is over there making sure of the commitments.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Maps of Australia are all five feet off
At least now we know why the invasion up the outer rim of the Western Pacific did not go according to plan.
Also see: ‘Cruel in the extreme:’ Australia accused of ignoring abuse of refugees
What did they expect to find in a prisoner of war camp?
AUSTRALIA:
Australian man accused in plot to pack kangaroo with explosives
Good eye, good eye!
The propaganda is so far of a jump over the shark it has literally become unbelievable, folks!
So how was he planning to get them in the pouch?
"Islamic State’s ability to inspire individuals all around the world to commit acts of terror has been one of the most worrying aspects of the militant group’s rise. However, there have been repeated reminders that the ‘‘lone wolfs’’ it inspires may not be so capable of organizing elaborate terror plots -- even if they still have the potential to cause harm.
Not without FBI help anyway.
That point has been hammered home by the case of Sevdet Besim, a 19-year-old man on trial in Australia for allegedly planning to commit a terror attack in Melbourne last year. Besim has been accused of attempting an unusual method for a terror attack: packing a kangaroo full of explosives and setting it loose on Australian police officers."
Yeah, kangaroos are really controllable and subject to obeying commands.
Better light up the bat signal!
Screeching and guano fills the air in Australian town filled with bats
Maybe the U.S. could take some off your hands:
"A fungal disease that has killed millions of bats nationwide has spread to Washington state, the first time white-nose syndrome has turned up in the western United States, federal wildlife officials said Thursday. The disease does not affect people or other animals, but bats are valuable because they eat mosquitoes and other insects that damage trees and commercial crops. The news is concerning, though not entirely surprising because the fungal disease spreads rapidly, wildlife officials say. It has killed more than 6 million hibernating bats in 28 states and five Canadian provinces since it was first documented nearly a decade ago in New York. Previously, white-nose syndrome had been detected only as far west as Minnesota."
It's a number that draws comparisons™, but beyond that one must wonder about the effects of GMO mosquitos on some of these populations. If you think I'm buying the limited hangouts of pesticides and white-nose from my pre$$.... sigh!)
Of course, Australia is a long way away.... but they are finding it tough to marshal a war-weary public to arms.
Man, on Fire, Tries to Drive Car Into Australian Police Station Garage
Only problem is “there’s nothing to indicate this is in any way related to terrorism and we can’t know what his motivation was at this stage,” assistant police commissioner, Denis Clifford, said at a news conference.
Australian police investigate abuse accusations against cardinal
I don't know why I dragged that up out of the grave.
Now on to.....
**********
INDONESIA:
INDONESIA:
Where the front lines erupted in an attempt to seize Timor Island in an Amazing thrust through the sea:
"Line shares surge in US debut of year’s biggest technology IPO" by Alex Barinka and Selina Wang Bloomberg News July 14, 2016
Line Corp. surged 27 percent in its US trading debut after the Japanese messaging company raised more than $1 billion in the biggest technology initial public offering of the year.
“We will be focusing on our four key markets: Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia,” Line’s chief financial officer, In-Joon Hwang, said in a Bloomberg TV interview.
Investors will be keen to look past the first few days of trading. Line will likely be measured going forward against fellow tech stocks Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc., for which user growth has been a key metric. Line, which has about 218 million users, said in its prospectus that the pace of user growth has slowed.
Despite market volatility and a surging yen triggered by the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union, Line raised its IPO price by 18 percent from an initial estimate and exercised an option to sell more stock. The company sold less than a fifth of its total shares in this week’s offering.
Tokyo’s influential day traders will be watching Line’s open ahead of its debut in its home market on Friday, and could spark an early feeding frenzy for the shares. The traders have a tendency to favor stocks popular with the general public, with retail investors drawn to the IPOs of companies whose services they use.
Line’s sales grew 40 percent last year, but the company chalked up a net loss in the period, according to its IPO filing.
Nomura Holdings Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. were the lead underwriters.
Now why would the printed Globe have kept that under the hood?
Because they are also the lead underwriters of wars?
--more--"
Thus began the long march through Tenggara, Java, and Sumatra.
"Indonesian police say DNA confirms most wanted terror suspect is dead" by Joe Cochrane New York Times July 23, 2016
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia’s national police confirmed through DNA testing that the country’s most wanted terrorism suspect had been killed during a gunbattle earlier in the week on Sulawesi Island, police announced Saturday.
The police said its laboratory had confirmed the identify of Abu Wardah, better known as Santoso. He was the leader of the Mujahedeen of Eastern Indonesia, a terrorist cell that has professed allegiance to the Islamic State.
Santoso and one of his followers were killed Monday during a gunfight with Indonesian security forces near the central Sulawesi province town of Poso, which has long been a hotbed for terrorist activity. Around 20 members of his terrorist cell remained at large.
“From the DNA test results, it’s positive and confirmed that one of the corpses is Santoso,” said Brigadier General Boy Rafli Amar, a national police spokesman.
Santoso, 40, and his cell grew to national prominence in the past several years by carrying out attacks on security forces, in particular the police, as well as training militants across the country. Santoso’s group has included Uighurs from the western Chinese region of Ningxia.
Last year, President Joko Widodo of Indonesia made it a priority to increase efforts to capture or kill Santoso, establishing a joint military-police task force that included fighter jets to support the mission.
In March, the United States placed Santoso and the Mujahedeen of Eastern Indonesia on its global terrorist designation list.
“Indonesia has preempted the creation of a wilayah in Southeast Asia,” said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, referring to an autonomous Islamic governorate.
Indonesia has suffered multiple terrorist attacks carried out by Islamic militants since 2000, including bombings of Christian churches, nightclub bombings on the island of Bali, and attacks on upscale Western hotels and the Australian Embassy in the capital, Jakarta.
But they are now driving out ISIS™ and winning the ground war.
--more--"
Stymied on the ground in Indonesia, the allies took to the air against....
*************
MALAYSIA:
MALAYSIA:
Who shot down Malaysian Airways flight MH17? Report offers clues, but no clarity
Debris in Mozambique is thought to come from Malaysia Airlines flight
Take off that shirt, it’s a threat to national security
Man who found Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 part finds new item on Reunion
CEO of troubled Malaysian airline to step down
Debris in Madagascar will be analyzed to see if belongs to missing plane
In hunt for Flight 370, rethinking just how far a jet can fly on fumes
Pffft!
All the way to Colorado, or so I'm told.
"The countries leading the effort to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared two years ago with 239 people aboard, said Friday that they would suspend but not end the search if the missing plane was not found in the rapidly shrinking target area. Representatives of Australia, China, and Malaysia said the search could be revived if “credible new information” emerged about the location of the airliner...."
Here is a credible report:
"When they fabricated the story about Flight MH370 flying south for the winter from the location where it disappeared off the radar over the South China sea, where a witness reported seeing a plane burning and crashing in the night sky, where the US was holding naval drills with two cruise missile destroyers… when they fabricated the “super stealth” commercial airliner story and diverted the search area a thousand miles from anywhere one would logically look for debris.. I wrote that the plane would never be found. And after a number of bullshit “discoveries” of parts and pieces of things that had nothing to do with Flight MH370 and spending $180 million on an ocean floor mapping project for Big Oil (under the cover of “looking for Flight 370)… they have now given up entirely on ever finding the plane and the bodies of those poor souls lost that day...."
With the air campaign failing, the allies attempted to engineer a change in government:
Ruling coalition wins amid scandal
Ex-Malaysian leader quits ruling party in protest
Former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad can $ee the writing on the wall:
"US goes after more than $1b taken from Malaysian fund" by Eric Tucker Associated Press July 21, 2016
WASHINGTON — The United States moved Wednesday to recover more than $1 billion that federal officials say was stolen from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund and that was used for high-end real estate, fancy artwork, and production of the Hollywood film ‘‘The Wolf of Wall Street.’’
Justice Department civil forfeiture complaints seek the forfeiture of property including a Manhattan penthouse and a Beverly Hills mansion, a $35 million private jet, and paintings by Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet.
The complaint, filed in Los Angeles, alleges a complex money-laundering scheme that the Justice Department says was intended to enrich top-level officials of a government-controlled Malaysian wealth fund.
That fund, known informally as 1MDB, was created in 2009 by the Malaysian government with the goal of promoting economic development projects in the Asian nation. Instead, officials at the fund diverted more than $3.5 billion over the next several years through a web of shell companies and bank accounts in Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and the United States, the complaint alleges.
‘‘In seeking to seize these forfeited items, the Department of Justice is sending a message that we will not allow the United States to become a playground for the corrupt,’’ Eileen Decker, the US Attorney in Los Angeles, said at a news conference. ‘‘And we will not allow it to be a platform for money laundering or a place to hide and invest in stolen riches.’’
Uh-huh.
Obviously, the Malaysian government is not towing the U.S. line; otherwise, these charges would never have been brought.
Federal officials say more than $1 billion was laundered into the United States for the personal benefit of 1MDB officials and their associates. The funds were used to pay for luxury real estate in the United States and Europe, gambling debts in Las Vegas casinos, a London interior designer, expensive paintings, and the production of films.
The Justice Department said it was the largest forfeiture demand under an initiative that seeks to recover foreign bribery proceeds and embezzled funds.
The complaint identifies by name multiple Malaysian nationals that the government alleges profited from the scheme.
Among them is Riza Shahriz Bin Abdul Aziz, who cofounded Red Granite Pictures, a movie production studio whose films include ‘‘The Wolf of Wall Street.’’
Oh, yeah, speaking of Wall Street.... $igh.
According to the complaint, 11 wire transfers totaling $64 million were used to fund the studio’s operations, including the production of the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Oh, Leo!
The complaint identified Riza as a relative of a Malaysian official, but did not name the official. He is the stepson of Prime Minister Najib Razak.
‘‘Neither 1MDB nor the Malaysian people ever saw a penny of profit from that film or from any of the other assets that were purchased with funds that were siphoned from 1MDB,’’ said Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division. ‘‘Instead, that money went to relatives and associates of the corrupt officials of 1MDB and others.’’
What's the big deal? That's standard practice at the Clinton Foundation.
The Justice Department is seeking to seize any royalties and fees owed to Red Granite in the future.
A phone message at the movie studio on Wednesday morning was not immediately returned.
Malaysian government officials had no comment Wednesday in response to queries about the Justice Department action.
But opposition lawmaker Tony Pua said Malaysia has become a laughingstock with the US move as the government had insisted that no money was missing from the fund. He said the government must open up investigations into the fund and uncover the identity of the Malaysian senior official behind the money laundering.
--more--"
His explanation isn't any good.
"US rejects account of how millions got to Malaysia’s leader" by Richard C. Paddock New York Times July 22, 2016
BANGKOK — A US Justice Department complaint filed in federal court this week directly contradicts repeated assertions by the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, about the origins and purpose of hundreds of millions of dollars that ended up in his personal bank accounts.
While Najib and other Malaysian officials have insisted that the money was a gift from an unidentified Saudi donor, the Justice Department said that it was stolen from a Malaysian government investment fund that Najib oversaw. Najib has said he never received any money from the fund.
The court filing, one of several complaints filed Wednesday in a federal money-laundering investigation, provides the first official public documentation of transactions that challenge Najib’s version of events in a scandal that has battered his government for the past year.
The revelations could undermine his credibility and give new ammunition to a movement to force him from office.
That's the goal here; otherwise, I wouldn't be getting all this print regarding it (buried back in the business pages, but....).
In fact, they wouldn't even be bringing it up.
However, he maintains firm control over his governing party and has stifled opposition with the firing of critics from party posts, the closing of online news outlets, and the criminal prosecution of social media detractors and political opponents.
Regular old Erdogan, huh?
Najib has acknowledged receiving the money but said he broke no laws and took nothing for personal gain. He told reporters Thursday that his government would “fully cooperate” with the Justice Department action.
“Allow the process to take its course,” he said, “but I want to say categorically that we are serious about good governance.”
A spokesman for Najib, reached late Thursday, said the prime minister had not changed his position that the money he received was a gift from a Saudi donor and that he gave most of it back because he did not need it.
While the Justice Department complaint is an allegation, not evidence, it outlines in detail how huge sums were diverted from the government fund, routed through bank accounts in various countries, and then spent on high-end real estate, artwork, gambling, and various luxury goods by Najib’s stepson, friends, and associates.
But they can't find the terrorists or what Wall Street did, blah, blah, blah.
The court filing seeks to recover more than $1 billion in assets bought with money that prosecutors say was stolen from the fund, known as 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB.
Those assets, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said Wednesday, “are just a portion of the more than $3 billion that was stolen from 1MDB and laundered through American financial institutions in violation of United States law.”
The case, she said, should be seen as a sign of the country’s “firm commitment to fighting international corruption” and the department’s determination “to protect the American financial system from being used as a conduit for corruption.”
What did they do, withdraw the money they were stashing here?
Is that why Lynch is in a tizzy, and did she cc Bill Clinton?
The United States is among several governments, including Malaysia, Singapore, and Switzerland, that have investigated 1MDB.
The inquiries began last year after an investigative report in The New York Times traced the purchases of about $150 million in residential properties and artwork in the United States to relatives or associates of Najib.
While the federal complaint does not identify Najib by name, it cites $731 million in funds that came from 1MDB that were deposited into accounts belonging to a government official identified as “Malaysian Official 1.”
However, Najib is clearly recognizable in the descriptions and actions attributed to that official.
Large transactions by “Malaysian Official 1” described in the complaint are identical to those previously acknowledged by Najib. The complaint describes the official’s role in managing the fund, which matches Najib’s role. And it says “Malaysian Official 1” is a relative of Riza Aziz, Najib’s stepson.
A person with knowledge of the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that “Malaysian Official 1” was Najib. The complaint does name Aziz, and a family friend, Jho Low, who helped establish the fund.
Najib’s advisers have said Najib received about $1 billion in 2013, most of it donations from a member of the Saudi royal family to help him fight a tough election campaign that year.
That explanation of a Saudi gift was repeated by Najib’s attorney general, Mohamed Apandi Ali, who closed a government investigation into the money in January saying that he had found no evidence of wrongdoing.
On Thursday, Apandi issued a statement asserting that no investigation had found evidence that 1MDB funds had been misappropriated.
The Saudi gift was also confirmed by Saudi Arabia. Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told reporters in April that Najib had received a “genuine donation” from a Saudi donor. He did not specify the amount or provide any details.
A Saudi Foreign Ministry spokesman did not respond Friday to requests for comment.
The complaint says that $681 million transferred to Najib in 2013 came from a Singapore bank account held in the name of Tanore Finance Corp. It says the money originated from $3 billion in bonds underwritten for 1MDB by Goldman Sachs.
It always comes down to the usual $u$pects, doesn't it?
--more--"
Thankfully, Singapore remains safe, and thus the allies would turn to take on....
**********
THAILAND:
THAILAND:
Large metal chunk investigated after washing onto Thai beach
It was there that they landed, and immediately began to drive for Bangkok. There they were met by Chinese and Turkish forces and driven back according to reports.
It was then that "prodemocracy protesters in Thailand’s capital defied a ban on protests and staged a rare rally Saturday against the country’s ruling military government. More than 200 people marched peacefully to Bangkok’s Democracy Monument, a symbolic site that has become a rallying point for protests in recent years. They carried antijunta banners as a ring of police kept watch over the event."
A battle cry was sounded:
"Thai police said Saturday that two men who were arrested in August’s deadly Bangkok bombing were the ones who carried out the attack and authorities have gathered enough evidence to prosecute them. Authorities said they are confident that the two men in custody, identified as Adem Karadag and Mieraili Yusufu, are responsible for the bombing at the Erawan Shrine on Aug. 17 that killed 20 people and injured more than 120. Police are seeking at least 15 other people in connection with the case."
It was a subtle way of telling the Thais to toe the line; however, it ended in an insulting defeat for allied forces, but everyone could see it coming.
Nothing left to do now but freeze the joke of a vote and stick with the prime minister and foreign minister (now that was a president!) before moving up to.....
***********
MYANMAR:
MYANMAR:
Where the allies should find friendlier terrain under a puppet government.
The president is nothing but a figurehead for the CIA, and the parliament is dominated by them. In a day full of ceremony and symbolism, the new president was nominated.
"The newly created role could give her authority exceeding the president’s. The combination of jobs means she will oversee the president’s office, determine foreign policy and coordinate decision-making between the executive branch and parliamentary leaders. It is unclear what responsibilities that will leave for the president. Military members of Parliament denounced the measure as an unconstitutional power grab, stood up in the chamber in protest, and boycotted the vote."
They were then put under arrest as General John Kerry pushed his troops dangerously far from their supply lines and towards Thailand.
"Suu Kyi tackles migrant workers’ plight during Thailand trip" Associated Press June 24, 2016
MAHACHAI, Thailand — In a demonstration of her popular appeal, Myanmar de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi received a rapturous welcome Thursday as she presided over a town hall-style meeting with some of the huge population of migrant workers from her homeland who eke out a living in Thailand.
Her meeting with countrymen in the Thai port town of Mahachai, where many work, reprised a similar meeting in 2012 that drew tens of thousands. The numbers this time appeared to be lower, but the level of adulation was high, as the cheering crowd had to be held back from mobbing her.
Overshadowing her visit — though not addressed by her or her Thai hosts — is her government’s treatment of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority of about 1 million who generally have been deprived of citizenship under Myanmar law and are targets of discrimination and violence.
Suu Kyi spoke to several hundred people in a meeting hall for 20 minutes before stepping down from the stage in frustration at a faulty sound system to engage face-to-face with members of the audience, who gave her questions and comments about what she could do to help their lives.
A large crowd of several thousand waiting outside burst into cheers and song as she was leaving, after staying for the duration of her meeting even as heavy rain poured on them.
When Suu Kyi last visited Thailand four years ago, it was as head of her country’s opposition party to offer moral support to her countrymen who work here in menial jobs, often in exploitative conditions.
She arrived back as her country’s elected leader to tackle on an official basis the problems faced by Myanmar migrant workers the government estimates to number 1.4 million but advocates say is at least twice that.
The trip puts her in the spotlight as questions have arisen about her government’s policies, particularly toward the Rohingya minority.
Questions have arisen where?
--more--"
"U.S. Criticizes Myanmar Over Human Trafficking" New York Times News Service June 30, 2016
WASHINGTON — The designation came just a few weeks after the Treasury Department lifted a broad array of sanctions on Myanmar, including those applying to state-run banks and businesses.
Senior officials argued then that although the country’s human rights record was not perfect, its leaders deserved to be rewarded for their steps toward democratization. Relaxing the sanctions, they said, would serve as an incentive for the government to further improve its behavior.
Maybe they can bribe Myanmar back into the fold?
US officials said Myanmar had not met expectations for improvement, though they said its efforts had been “significant.” The determination could have potentially damaging effects on a relationship that was just showing signs of thaw.
The State Department said in its report that the conscription of children by the country’s military and the widespread use of forced labor, including the sex trafficking of women and girls, also remain serious problems in Myanmar.
They would only be dragging those out had Suu Kyi done something wrong, like think independently.
While the government has continued to prosecute and raise awareness about trafficking, it said Myanmar had not done enough to hold civilian officials responsible, a core issue as it appears the problem may be shifting to the private sphere rather than being resolved....
It's also a lever against the government should sanctions need be reapplied.
--more--"
The U.S. State Department gave them the same ranking as Iran, North Korea, and Syria?
Ain't those fighting words?
Related:
"Concerns about corruption, child-trafficking and baby-selling have prompted the United States to suspend adoptions from several countries in recent years, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala and Nepal."
It's only a quick thrust through Bangladesh to get to the high ground of.....
************
NEPAL:
NEPAL:
"Nepalese gathered at the remains of a historic tower in the capital and other sites across the nation to hold memorial services marking the one-year anniversary of a devastating earthquake, which killed nearly 9,000 people and left millions homeless. Minor protests were also held, with demonstrators angry at the slow rate of reconstruction. About 100 protesters, demonstrating against the slow rebuilding of the homes, scuffled with police outside the prime minister’s office."
That's why supplies aren't getting through.
"Risks in climbing Everest in focus as 3 die, 2 disappear" Associated Press May 23, 2016
KATHMANDU, Nepal — An Indian climber has died while being helped down Mount Everest, just a couple of days after Dutch and Australian climbers died near the peak. Two other Indian climbers are missing, and experts say some of the accidents may have been avoidable.
Poor planning and overcrowding on the world’s tallest peak may have led to bottlenecks that kept people delayed at the highest reaches while waiting for the path to clear lower down, Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association said Monday.
‘‘This was a man-made disaster that may have been minimized with better management of the teams,’’ he said. ‘‘The last two disasters on Everest were caused by nature, but not this one.’’
Many had hoped this year’s climbing season would bring success and restore confidence in the route, after deadly disasters canceled climbing the previous two years.
But as hundreds of eager climbers, joined by Sherpa guides and expedition experts, scrambled to take advantage of good weather to ascend, reports of tragedy began trickling down the mountain.
--more--"
Related: Sushil Koirala, Ex-Premier of Nepal Who Fought for Democracy, Dies at 77
Just when they needed him most.
Nepal’s parliament elects nation’s first female president
Habitat for Humanity cancels Jimmy Carter build in Nepal
The Dalai Lama apparently says ‘too many’ refugees are going to Europe
Obama and Dalai Lama meet over China’s objection
Obama had him over for talks to see who is on board for war, and now he is over there making sure of the commitments.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Maps of Australia are all five feet off
At least now we know why the invasion up the outer rim of the Western Pacific did not go according to plan.
Also see: ‘Cruel in the extreme:’ Australia accused of ignoring abuse of refugees
What did they expect to find in a prisoner of war camp?
Monday, August 1, 2016
And on the Eighth Day....
God created the Bo$ton Globe (the Bo$ton Globe)!
And thus a new day was Bourne (was the last of my notes and first thing I read; Ghost-bust-hers gone. I wonder how much tax loot that cost the citizens of the state).
That gets us over to the statehouse on the flip back to the front. The feature is Tim Kaine's biography, and it should be noted that he believes “it is especially important at this time to reaffirm our strong commitment to Israel’s inalienable right to exist.”
Without wanting to stir up too much trouble about it, it's lines on a map. Nothing inalienable about them. Not like the rights that are consistently violated by government at all levels, even if you can't see it in front of you.
Under the fold comes a high price for a room (let me see if I can find you something else) along with the empty trains at the T and an Olympic supplement.
The set-up of Trump continues, and what I noted in the piece was you had a guy -- no disrespect intended at all, and I'll get to vets in a second (pun intended for later) -- who was a foil at the DNC given a spot on "Meet the Pre$$." This is an organized smear campaign against Trump, and I'll explain why next.
As far as the rest goes, the wife says she is a Gold Star mother -- and I wrote so is Cindy Sheehan in the paragraph underneath. Once again, war pre$$ very selective when waving women at you.
The third thing I noticed amongst the criticism from Clinton was that the SAME PEOPLE who are criticizing him for his ill-manners, social clumsiness, and language, are the same ones responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions by now, of Muslims all across the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, over lies, lies, and more lies peddled by the same people and pre$$ -- and here we are focused on how Trump interacted with one Muslim vet and his family that is a Democratic prop.
That's not and endorsement or support of anything Trump said or says, by the way. It's simply a step back and an acknowledgment of what is going on behind the ma$$ media $how.
Now, about those veterans (right next door, too):
"Care for America’s veterans is a top issue in the presidential campaign, with the nearly 21 million veterans in the United States making up a critical voting bloc that Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump are vying for. The president leaves office in January, and he plans to use this appearance to recap how he has tried to help former military members, moving beyond headline-grabbing scandals over lengthy wait-times for veterans seeking medical care."
Just because he says it doesn't make it true, and this whole kerfuffle that is leading my national news is about rigging voting blocks to plausibly allow Hillary the presidency.
Yeah, well, veterans don't forget. Were I a commander in chief, I'd call 'em all home and my first priority is their health. Until we solve that, no more wars, no more nothing!!
Working my way up the national briefs I find the Texas hot-air balloon crash, and not a word about what happened in Austin. Looks like someone leaked a drill for the obvious reasons. Globe jumped the gun a little, which is better than falling out of the balloon. Good thing there was water below.
On the World stage, there is solidarity in Europe as Iraqis attempt to take back Mosul, although suddenly the situation in Armenia has again flared up (that was before the coup but you could see the signs coming in hindsight). Must be the end times given what's happening in Japan, and it's all connected to Turkey and Syria (once again the world in one page).
Meanwhile, Afghanistan is all but forgotten in print but that's not really saying anything anyway (and that is one of their pillars).
"How might her foreign policy differ from Obama’s? I’d say more at the margins than in the main. She’d seek to smooth relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose leaders clashed with Obama over Jewish settlements and the Iran deal. She’d probably favor more proactive military deterrence of Russian and Chinese regional aggressions. She might pursue a much-discussed no-fly zone in Syria."
Thus she has all the Bush war hawks endorsing her. I'd say how ironic, but H.W. adopted Bill Clinton as the son he never had, remember?
It's going to be one hot rest of the summer in the city. Thankfully there is no school so you don't have to wake up early (except in New Hampshire). Some aren't waking up at all so prepare the eulogy. I'm sure there will be a fine turn out for the funeral.
Then it's back to business. They are calling for blood when it comes to the rents. Even Airbnb is getting expensive, and no, you can't stay here (find someone to take you home).
You know, if we can't talk things out it means war.
See: On the 8th Day....
of the eighth month, at the eighth hour, in the second of eight years.
What did God do on the 8th day?
Then so will I.
And thus a new day was Bourne (was the last of my notes and first thing I read; Ghost-bust-hers gone. I wonder how much tax loot that cost the citizens of the state).
That gets us over to the statehouse on the flip back to the front. The feature is Tim Kaine's biography, and it should be noted that he believes “it is especially important at this time to reaffirm our strong commitment to Israel’s inalienable right to exist.”
Without wanting to stir up too much trouble about it, it's lines on a map. Nothing inalienable about them. Not like the rights that are consistently violated by government at all levels, even if you can't see it in front of you.
Under the fold comes a high price for a room (let me see if I can find you something else) along with the empty trains at the T and an Olympic supplement.
The set-up of Trump continues, and what I noted in the piece was you had a guy -- no disrespect intended at all, and I'll get to vets in a second (pun intended for later) -- who was a foil at the DNC given a spot on "Meet the Pre$$." This is an organized smear campaign against Trump, and I'll explain why next.
As far as the rest goes, the wife says she is a Gold Star mother -- and I wrote so is Cindy Sheehan in the paragraph underneath. Once again, war pre$$ very selective when waving women at you.
The third thing I noticed amongst the criticism from Clinton was that the SAME PEOPLE who are criticizing him for his ill-manners, social clumsiness, and language, are the same ones responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions by now, of Muslims all across the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, over lies, lies, and more lies peddled by the same people and pre$$ -- and here we are focused on how Trump interacted with one Muslim vet and his family that is a Democratic prop.
That's not and endorsement or support of anything Trump said or says, by the way. It's simply a step back and an acknowledgment of what is going on behind the ma$$ media $how.
Now, about those veterans (right next door, too):
"Care for America’s veterans is a top issue in the presidential campaign, with the nearly 21 million veterans in the United States making up a critical voting bloc that Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump are vying for. The president leaves office in January, and he plans to use this appearance to recap how he has tried to help former military members, moving beyond headline-grabbing scandals over lengthy wait-times for veterans seeking medical care."
Just because he says it doesn't make it true, and this whole kerfuffle that is leading my national news is about rigging voting blocks to plausibly allow Hillary the presidency.
Yeah, well, veterans don't forget. Were I a commander in chief, I'd call 'em all home and my first priority is their health. Until we solve that, no more wars, no more nothing!!
Working my way up the national briefs I find the Texas hot-air balloon crash, and not a word about what happened in Austin. Looks like someone leaked a drill for the obvious reasons. Globe jumped the gun a little, which is better than falling out of the balloon. Good thing there was water below.
On the World stage, there is solidarity in Europe as Iraqis attempt to take back Mosul, although suddenly the situation in Armenia has again flared up (that was before the coup but you could see the signs coming in hindsight). Must be the end times given what's happening in Japan, and it's all connected to Turkey and Syria (once again the world in one page).
Meanwhile, Afghanistan is all but forgotten in print but that's not really saying anything anyway (and that is one of their pillars).
"How might her foreign policy differ from Obama’s? I’d say more at the margins than in the main. She’d seek to smooth relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose leaders clashed with Obama over Jewish settlements and the Iran deal. She’d probably favor more proactive military deterrence of Russian and Chinese regional aggressions. She might pursue a much-discussed no-fly zone in Syria."
Thus she has all the Bush war hawks endorsing her. I'd say how ironic, but H.W. adopted Bill Clinton as the son he never had, remember?
It's going to be one hot rest of the summer in the city. Thankfully there is no school so you don't have to wake up early (except in New Hampshire). Some aren't waking up at all so prepare the eulogy. I'm sure there will be a fine turn out for the funeral.
Then it's back to business. They are calling for blood when it comes to the rents. Even Airbnb is getting expensive, and no, you can't stay here (find someone to take you home).
You know, if we can't talk things out it means war.
See: On the 8th Day....
of the eighth month, at the eighth hour, in the second of eight years.
What did God do on the 8th day?
Then so will I.
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