Israel put on notice by U.S. about West Bank, minister says https://t.co/tEyd7u9uNU— Mike Nova (@mikenov) March 6, 2017
- Israel put on notice by U.S. about West Bank, minister says - CBS News
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One of the main reasons why the “peace process” never panned out the way it was supposed to, according to Israel at least, is because many Palestinians simply do not recognize the State of Israel. Albeit Israel has yet to define its ever-shifting borders, one must question how Israel can demand recognition without even recognizing the existence of Palestinians.
In a map published and presented by Israel’s Ministry of Tourism, the West Bank ceases to exist. Instead, it shows highway routes weaving through a borderless Judea and Samaria — highway routes that Palestinians are typically prevented from using. The only territory marked as Palestinian is the Gaza Strip which looks to be less than 1% of the total mapped territory.
Here is a government website that endorses the de facto annexation of Palestinian land. The next time Israel complains about recognition, ask why it doesn’t even bother recognizing Palestine.
Hat tip to A. Milbes
Sami Kishawi
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Israeli minister: US warned Israel about annexing West Bank
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FILE -- In this May 30, 2016 file photo, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman appears at the Knesset, Israel's parliament, before his ...
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Voice of America: Israeli Minister: US Warned Israel About Annexing West Bankby webdesk@voanews.com (Associated Press)
Israel's defense minister said Monday the U.S. has notified Israel that imposing Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank would lead to an "immediate crisis" with the Trump administration. "We received a direct message - not an indirect message and not a hint - from the United States. Imposing Israeli sovereignty on Judea and Samaria would mean an immediate crisis with the new administration," Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said at the start of parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee meeting. Judea and Samaria is the biblical term for the West Bank, land Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and continues to occupy. The defense minister was responding to a media interview with lawmaker Miki Zohar, of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, in which he rejected the idea of a Palestinian state and advocated for a "one-state solution" in which Palestinians would have Israeli citizenship. "The two-state solution is dead," Zohar told i24NEWS, an Israeli TV channel. "What is left is a one-state solution with the Arabs here as, not as full citizenship, because full citizenship can let them to vote to the Knesset. They will get all of the rights like every citizen except voting for the Knesset," the Israeli parliament. "They will be able to vote and be elected in their city under administrative autonomy and under Israeli sovereignty and with complete security control," Zohar added. Lieberman said he received phone calls "from the entire world" about whether Zohar's proposal reflected the Israeli government's position. He said imposing Israeli sovereignty on the West Bank would mean Israel would be faced with the financial burden of providing Palestinians with health care and other benefits. He called on the governing coalition to "clarify very clearly, there is no intention to impose Israeli sovereignty." In a striking departure from longtime American policy, President Donald Trump has not explicitly embraced a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which Israel would end its occupation of the West Bank and an independent Palestinian state would be established alongside Israel. Trump said last month he would support whatever solution is acceptable to both sides. That has raised questions about what kind of agreement could be reached, and has led to calls by hard line members of Netanyahu's Cabinet to give up on the idea of a Palestinian state and formally annex part or all of the West Bank to Israel. A single binational state could require Israel to grant citizenship to millions Palestinians under its control, threatening its status as a Jewish-majority democracy.
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Voice of America: Accused Al-Qaida Operative Faces US Trial, Despite Refusal to Appear by webdesk@voanews.com (Reuters)
An accused al-Qaida operative charged with engaging in attacks on U.S. forces that killed at least two American servicemen in Afghanistan is set to face trial on Monday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Adam Harun, also known by the nom de guerre Spin Ghul, or White Rose in the Pashto language, is accused of conspiring to kill Americans and providing support to a terrorist group, among other charges. An anonymous jury will hear the case, which is not uncommon in national security trials. Harun, 47, is not expected to be in court. Since his extradition from Italy in October 2012, the Saudi-born defendant has insisted he is a "warrior" who should face a military tribunal rather than criminal proceedings and has registered his dissent through increasingly aggressive courtroom behavior. Before one appearance last May, Harun scuffled with U.S. marshals, tore off his clothes, then disrupted the hearing by screaming from an adjacent holding cell. He has refused to speak with his court-appointed lawyers for two years. At their request, U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan is permitting Harun to monitor his trial by video from a jail cell. At a hearing in February to determine if Harun was mentally fit to stand trial, a psychologist called by the defense testified that Harun was delusional, pointing to his refusal to shower while in jail. But Cogan declared Harun competent, finding that his behavior was a deliberate act of protest. "His lack of respect for this court and his rejection of these legal proceedings does not demonstrate his incapability of assisting in his defense," Cogan said. Harun was captured in Libya in 2005 and released in 2011 to a refugee ship headed for Italy before Italian authorities seized him and notified U.S. federal agents, who interviewed him in Italy, according to court papers. Prosecutors say Harun, who says he is a citizen of Niger, admitted he joined an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan shortly before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. soil. Harun engaged in numerous attacks against American troops along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, including one that killed a U.S. Army private and an Air Force airman, U.S. authorities said. Eventually, Harun traveled to Nigeria, where he plotted to bomb the U.S. Embassy there, according to court papers. Harun faces life in prison if convicted, but cannot bevexecuted under terms of his extradition.
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JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Police are expected to question Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a fourth time on Monday in a corruption investigation that has prompted political rivals to start looking to a "post-Bibi" Israel.
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Israel’s interior ministry says an Arab town that named a street after the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has removed the sign bearing his name.
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Washington Post President Trump spent the weekend at “the winter White House,” Mar-a-Lago, the secluded Florida castle where he is king. The sun sparkles off the glistening lawn and warms the russet clay Spanish tiles, and the steaks are cooked just how he likes them ... A Conspiracy Theory's Journey From Talk Radio to Trump's TwitterNew York Times Russia mystery threatens to consume WashingtonCNN James Comey, DC Unicorn, Shoots Down Trump Wiretap ClaimDaily Beast Los Angeles Times -Washington Examiner -NBCNews.com -Breitbart News all 1 news articles » |
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CNN International (CNN) Rep. Cedric Richmond apologized to White House adviser Kellyanne Conway on Sunday night for making crude remarks at a Washington dinner last week about a photo showing Conway on her knees on an Oval Office sofa. "After a discussion with ... and more » |
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House Republicans to introduce health care legislation this week
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Poll: Most 'concerned' about Trump's alleged ties to Russia
Washington Examiner A new poll says most people are either somewhat or very worried about President Trump's alleged ties to Russia. The CNN/ORC survey said 55 percent of those asked are at least a little worried about reports that some in the Trump administration had ... Poll: Majority supports special prosecutor for Russia investigationThe Hill (blog) Most Americans Want a Special Prosecutor to Probe Russia and the 2016 ElectionTIME Most Americans say special prosecutor should investigate Trump-Russia ties: PollWashington Times New York Post -Daily Beast -The Week Magazine -WCPO all 17 news articles » |
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By Hunter Lewis*
We would seem to be experiencing a pretty close duplicate of the almost fifty year old scandal that rocked the world and brought down President Nixon. But this time the Washington Post is trying to cover up the scandal, not bring it to light.
President Trump gave President Obama and the Democrats lifesaving wiggle room by using words like “ wire tap” instead of “electronic surveillance” or “spying and “ Trump Tower” instead of “ Trump campaign” or “Trump campaign personnel.” By focusing on Trump’s exact words, the guilty parties think they can issue denials without outright lying.
President Obama further confused things ( but also in an indirect way clarified them) by asserting, through a written statement issued by an assistant, that neither he nor anyone in the White House had “ ordered” wiretapping of Trump. This confused the matter because he did not have to order the spying in order to know about it and encourage it, but also clarified the matter in that such a careful choice of words virtually amounted to confirmation that others, perhaps from the Justice Department, had ordered it with his knowledge and perhaps encouragement. That both the president and Valerie Jarrett referred to the written statement and have refused ( at least so far) further questions strongly suggests that, yes, there was spying on the Trump campaign, yes, they knew about it, and, yes, they did nothing to stop it.
This might be a good moment to remind our young readers it was precisely this behavior, an administration in power spying on an opposing presidential campaign, and then trying to cover it up, that led to President Nixon’s removal from office. This was precisely what “Watergate” was all about. There are of course notable differences. This time the insurgent campaign won, the spying was done by administration agencies using the highest tech means, and papers like the Washington Post and New York Times are themselves complicit in the cover up rather than unmasking it.
This is perhaps the greatest irony of the current moment. Standing up to the political establishment during Watergate is what made the Washington Post famous all around the world. Now it is trashing that heritage. The iconic editor of the Post who led the fight, Ben Bradlee, later admitted to historians that what really triggered the decision to pursue the Nixon administration was not a determination to protect freedom of the press, but rather a threat from the Nixon FCC to take away the Post’s TV station licenses. This made it, as Bradlee later recounted, primarily a fight for economic survival rather than a social or political crusade. The Post’s latest behavior, where it gladly accepts leaks from prior administration figures who spied on an opposing presidential campaign, is neither heroic nor financial in nature. It just shows how thoroughly corrupt the old progressive elites have become.
If we need any further reminders of this corruption, just check out independent investigator Peter Schweizer’s recent reminder on Fox News of how deeply Clinton campaign officials were in bed with the Russians and how many millions they made from it: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/03/03/peter-schweizer-trump-vs-clintons-russia-ties-guess-who-always-got-free-pass.html
An account of much of the evidence supporting Trump’s charges, including smoking guns from the NY Times and the Washington Post, is below.
About the author:
*Hunter Lewis is author of nine books, including Where Keynes Went Wrong, Free Prices Now! and Crony Capitalism in America: 2008-2012. Lewis is co-founder of Against Crony Capitalism.org as well as co-founder and former CEO of Cambridge Associates, a global investment firm. He has served on boards and committees of fifteen not-for-profit organizations, including environmental, teaching, research, and cultural organizations, as well as the World Bank.
*Hunter Lewis is author of nine books, including Where Keynes Went Wrong, Free Prices Now! and Crony Capitalism in America: 2008-2012. Lewis is co-founder of Against Crony Capitalism.org as well as co-founder and former CEO of Cambridge Associates, a global investment firm. He has served on boards and committees of fifteen not-for-profit organizations, including environmental, teaching, research, and cultural organizations, as well as the World Bank.
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Anyone home in Trumpville? by Editorial Board
The president’s halls are more echo than beehive.
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There are tangible warning signs that the integrity of the Senate and House inquiries is at risk.
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Has the State Department been sidelined? by Editorial Board
Rex Tillerson is conspicuously absent from the White House’s foreign policy decisions.
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The U.S. should use its leverage on Syria by Editorial Board
Ambassador Haley’s forceful diplomacy on Tuesday was welcome, but more could be done.
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It’s recusal is a welcome step, but an independent commission may yet be needed.
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Trumpism may fall in Europe by Editorial Board
For now, it looks as though the forces that oppose his nationalist views are being galvanized.
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Pulling out of international agreements will not bring back manufacturing jobs.
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Washington Times |
Russia conspiracy allegations to continue until Trump plugs intel leaks
Washington Times Russian conspiracy allegations will continue to dog the White House until President Trump gets a handle on the administration's opponents inside the U.S. intelligence community who are driving the story, warned Republican strategists in Washington. FBI Director James Comey reportedly believes allegation Barack Obama wiretapped Donald Trump is 'false' as ...Telegraph.co.uk Trump wants congressional probe of evidence-free claims about ObamaUSA TODAY Is Donald Trump bonkers, paranoid or trapped?The Sydney Morning Herald The Economist (blog) -CNBC -Breitbart News all 1,401 news articles » |
(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
Former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. on March 5 denied that President Trump’s 2016 campaign was wiretapped while senators of both parties weighed in on the allegations. Former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. denies that President Trump’s 2016 campaign was wiretapped. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
Donald Trump’s presidency has veered onto a road with no centerlines or guardrails.
The president’s accusation Saturday that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had tapped his phone “during the very sacred election process” escalated on Sunday into the White House’s call for a congressional investigation of that evidence-free claim.
The audacious tactic was a familiar one for Trump, who has little regard for norms and conventions. When he wants to change a subject, he often does it by touching a match to the dry tinder of a sketchy conspiracy theory.
But the stakes have gotten higher, and the consequences more real and serious, as questions mount over Moscow’s reported attempts to interfere with last year’s presidential election.
Trump’s response also has deepened doubts about his own judgment, not just in the face of the first crisis to confront his young presidency but in dealing with the challenges that lie ahead for the chief executive of the world’s most powerful nation.
His tweets may have been an effort to distract from revelations that his aides and associates had contact with Russian officials during the election and transition, as well as to deflect criticism onto Obama.
But instead, the president has invited more scrutiny to the larger controversy over Russian interference. The issue shows no signs of fading.
So explosive was Trump’s unsubstantiated wiretap accusation that FBI Director James B. Comey asked the Justice Department to take the extraordinary step of issuing a statement rebutting it, a U.S. official said, confirming a report Sunday in the New York Times.
The process of obtaining permission to conduct a wiretap on an American in a foreign intelligence investigation is an arduous one. If it turns out that a government agency put one on Trump or individuals around him, an obvious question would be what evidence was used to justify the action.
Trump’s tweetstorm early Saturday made his disciplined, well-received speech to Congress four days before seem less a turning point than an aberration.
“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Trump fired out, in the first of four tweets on the subject.
The charge was reminiscent of the early days of his political ascendancy, when he built a political base by pandering to the fringes with false stories about Obama’s birthplace. After he was elected with less than a popular majority, Trump made the groundless claim that millions of people had voted illegally.
But the voice of a U.S. commander in chief carries much greater weight than that of just about anyone else on the planet. Trump’s detractors say the way he uses that platform has worrisome implications that go far beyond the sensation he creates on social media and his ability to dominate the news.
“We have as president a man who is erratic, vindictive, volatile, obsessive, a chronic liar, and prone to believe in conspiracy theories,” said conservative commentator Peter Wehner, who was the top policy strategist in George W. Bush’s White House. “And you can count on the fact that there will be more to come, since when people like Donald Trump gain power they become less, not more, restrained.”
Nor does Trump appear to have a governing apparatus around him that can temper and channel his impulses.
“When the president goes off and does what he did within the last few days, of just going ahead and tweeting without checking on things, there’s something wrong. There’s something wrong in terms of the discipline within the White House and how you operate,” Leon Panetta, a White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton and CIA director during the Obama administration, said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Trump and his allies, however, say that the criticism is misdirected.
In their view, the concern over Russian interference in the election has been overblown by Democrats looking for an excuse for Hillary Clinton’s defeat last November.
They also say that more focus should be concentrated on the people within the government who are leaking sensitive information to the news media.
Within a government bureaucracy that tilts Democratic, “there is an active ‘deep state’ opposition to a populist disruptive reformer. Many believe it is their duty to break the law and lie,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich. “For Trump to succeed, there will have to be profound overhaul of the bureaucracy. To be normal in this environment is to fail.”
Still, Republicans on Capitol Hill have been unsettled by Trump’s latest claims, which come amid investigations by the House and Senate intelligence committees and calls by some for more drastic measures, including a select committee, independent commission or special prosecutor.
“It would be more helpful if he turned over to the Intelligence Committee any evidence that he has,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a member of that panel, said on “Face the Nation.” “It would probably be helpful if he gave more information, but it also might be helpful if he just didn’t comment further and allowed us to do our work.”
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Some note that Trump now sits in the Oval Office in large part because voters did not want another conventional politician in the job.
“A lot of this outrage that’s out there is because Donald Trump is doing what Donald Trump said he was going to do if he was elected,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who ran against Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, said on “Meet the Press.”
Yet Trump’s accusations may well inflame — rather than calm — another sentiment that abounds in the country.
“This is exceedingly problematic. We were already in a huge deficit as to what the country trusted out of Washington and our leaders,” said Matthew Dowd, who has been a strategist for both Democratic and Republican politicians.
“This only adds to it,” Dowd said. “We’re in a surreal world.”
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President Trump spent the weekend at “the winter White House,” Mar-a-Lago, the secluded Florida castle where he is king. The sun sparkles off the glistening lawn and warms the russet clay Spanish tiles, and the steaks are cooked just how he likes them (well done). His daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner — celebrated as calming influences on the tempestuous president — joined him. But they were helpless to contain his fury.
Trump was mad — steaming, raging mad.
Trump’s young presidency has existed in a perpetual state of chaos. The issue of Russia has distracted from what was meant to be his most triumphant moment: his address last Tuesday to a joint session of Congress. And now his latest unfounded accusation — that Barack Obama tapped Trump’s phones during last fall’s campaign — had been denied by the former president and doubted by both allies and fellow Republicans.
When Trump ran into Christopher Ruddy on the golf course and later at dinner Saturday, he vented to his friend. “This will be investigated,” Ruddy recalled Trump telling him. “It will all come out. I will be proven right.”
“He was pissed,” said Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax, a conservative media company. “I haven’t seen him this angry.”
President Trump arrives at the White House after a trip to Newport News, Va., to visit a new aircraft carrier on March 2. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Trump enters week seven of his presidency the same as the six before it: enmeshed in controversy while struggling to make good on his campaign promises. At a time when White House staffers had sought to ride the momentum from Trump’s speech to Congress and begin advancing its agenda on Capitol Hill, the administration finds itself beset yet again by disorder and suspicion.
At the center of the turmoil is an impatient president increasingly frustrated by his administration’s inability to erase the impression that his campaign was engaged with Russia, to stem leaks about both national security matters and internal discord and to implement any signature achievements.
This account of the administration’s tumultuous recent days is based on interviews with 17 top White House officials, members of Congress and friends of the president, many of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly.
Gnawing at Trump, according to one of his advisers, is the comparison between his early track record and that of Obama in 2009, when amid the Great Recession he enacted an economic stimulus bill and other big-ticket items.
Trump’s team is trying again to reboot this week, with the president expected to sign a new executive order Monday implementing an entry ban for some countries after the initial one was blocked in federal court. The administration also intends to introduce a legislative plan later in the week to repeal and replace Obama’s health-care law, officials said.
The rest of Trump’s legislative plan, from tax reform to infrastructure spending, is effectively on hold until Congress first tackles the Affordable Care Act.
(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
Former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. on March 5 denied that President Trump’s 2016 campaign was wiretapped while senators of both parties weighed in on the allegations. Former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. denies that President Trump’s 2016 campaign was wiretapped. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
White House legislative staffers concluded late last week that the administration was spinning in circles on the health-care plan, amid mounting criticism from conservatives that the administration was fumbling.
With Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on the road with Vice President Pence, a decision was made: Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, would become the point person, though officials insisted Price had not been sidelined.
On Friday, Mulvaney convened a meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with top administration officials and senior staff of House and Senate leaders to hammer out the final details of the proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act.
“Mulvaney has been essential in helping us get health care over the finish line,” said Marc Short, the White House legislative affairs director.
On Capitol Hill, Price is seen by some Republicans as more knowledgeable about health-care policy than Mulvaney, given his experience as a physician and his time as chairman of the House Budget Committee. But Mulvaney benefits from the close relationships he has forged with Trump’s top advisers and with the House’s conservative wing.
Trump, meanwhile, has been feeling besieged, believing that his presidency is being tormented in ways known and unknown by a group of Obama-aligned critics, federal bureaucrats and intelligence figures — not to mention the media, which he has called “the enemy of the American people.”
That angst over what many in the White House call the “deep state” is fomenting daily, fueled by rumors and tidbits picked up by Trump allies within the intelligence community and by unconfirmed allegations that have been made by right-wing commentators. The “deep state” is a phrase popular on the right for describing entrenched networks hostile to Trump.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-
Calif.), an advocate of improved relations between the United States and Russia, said he has told friends in the administration that Trump is being punished for clashing with the hawkish approach toward Russia that is shared by most Democrats and Republicans.
Calif.), an advocate of improved relations between the United States and Russia, said he has told friends in the administration that Trump is being punished for clashing with the hawkish approach toward Russia that is shared by most Democrats and Republicans.
“Remember what Dwight Eisenhower told us: There is a military-industrial complex. That complex still exists and has a lot of power,” he said. “It’s everywhere, and it doesn’t like how Trump is handling Russia. Over and over again, in article after article, it rears its head.”
The president has been seething as he watches round-the-clock cable news coverage. Trump recently vented to an associate that Carter Page, a onetime Trump campaign adviser, keeps appearing on television even though he and Trump have no significant relationship.
Stories from Breitbart News, the incendiary conservative website, have been circulated at the White House’s highest levels in recent days, including one story where talk-radio host Mark Levin accused the Obama administration of mounting a “silent coup,” according to several officials.
Stephen K. Bannon, the White House chief strategist who once ran Breitbart, has spoken with Trump at length about his view that the “deep state” is a direct threat to his presidency.
Advisers pointed to Bannon’s frequent closed-door guidance on the topic and Trump’s agreement as a fundamental way of understanding the president’s behavior and his willingness to confront the intelligence community — and said that when Bannon spoke recently about the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” he was also alluding to his aim of rupturing the intelligence community and its influence on the U.S. national security and foreign policy consensus.
Bannon’s view is shared by some top Republicans.
“It’s not paranoia at all when it’s actually happening. It’s leak after leak after leak from the bureaucrats in the [intelligence community] and former Obama administration officials — and it’s very real,” said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “The White House is absolutely concerned and is trying to figure out a systemic way to address what’s happening.”
The mood at the White House on Tuesday night was different altogether — jubilant. Trump returned from the Capitol shortly before midnight to find his staff assembled in the residence cheering him. Finally, they all thought, they had seized control. The president had even laid off Twitter outbursts — a small victory for a staff often unable to drive a disciplined message.
“He nailed it, and he knew it,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president.
The merriment came to a sudden end on Wednesday night, when The Washington Post first reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with the Russian ambassador despite having said under oath at his Senate confirmation hearing that he had no contact with the Russians.
Inside the West Wing, Trump’s top aides were furious with the defenses of Sessions offered by the Justice Department’s public affairs division and felt blindsided that Sessions’s aides had not consulted the White House earlier in the process, according to one senior White House official.
The next morning, Trump exploded, according to White House officials. He headed to Newport News, Va., on Thursday for a splashy commander-in-chief moment. The president would trumpet his plan to grow military spending aboard the Navy’s sophisticated new aircraft carrier. But as Trump, sporting a bomber jacket and Navy cap, rallied sailors and shipbuilders, his message was overshadowed by Sessions.
Then, a few hours after Trump had publicly defended his attorney general and said he should not recuse himself from the Russia probe, Sessions called a news conference to announce just that — amounting to a public rebuke of the president.
Back at the White House on Friday morning, Trump summoned his senior aides into the Oval Office, where he simmered with rage, according to several White House officials. He upbraided them over Sessions’s decision to recuse himself, believing that Sessions had succumbed to pressure from the media and other critics instead of fighting with the full defenses of the White House.
In a huff, Trump departed for Mar-a-Lago, taking with him from his inner circle only his daughter and Kushner, who is a White House senior adviser. His top two aides, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Bannon, stayed behind in Washington.
As reporters began to hear about the Oval Office meeting, Priebus interrupted his Friday afternoon schedule to dedicate more than an hour to calling reporters off the record to deny that the outburst had actually happened, according to a senior White House official.
“Every time there’s a palace intrigue story or negative story about Reince, the whole West Wing shuts down,” the official said.
Ultimately, Priebus was unable to kill the story. He simply delayed the bad news, as reports of Trump dressing down his staff were published by numerous outlets Saturday.
Trouble for Trump continued to spiral over the weekend. Early Saturday, he surprised his staff by firing off four tweets accusing Obama of a “Nixon/Watergate” plot to tap his Trump Tower phones in the run-up to last fall’s election. Trump cited no evidence, and Obama’s spokesman denied any such wiretap was ordered.
That night at Mar-a-Lago, Trump had dinner with Sessions, Bannon, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly and White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, among others. They tried to put Trump in a better mood by going over their implementation plans for the travel ban, according to a White House official.
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Trump was brighter Sunday morning as he read several newspapers, pleased that his allegations against Obama were the dominant story, the official said.
But he found reason to be mad again: Few Republicans were defending him on the Sunday political talk shows. Some Trump advisers and allies were especially disappointed in Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), who two days earlier had hitched a ride down to Florida with Trump on Air Force One.
Pressed by NBC’s Chuck Todd to explain Trump’s wiretapping claim, Rubio demurred.
“Look, I didn’t make the allegation,” he said. “I’m not the person that went out there and said it.”
Damian Paletta contributed to this report.
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SESTOKAI, Lithuania — A vermilion-colored locomotive slowed to a halt, its freight cars obscured in the blinding snow. A German captain ordered his troops to unload the train’s cargo. “Jawohl!” — “Yes, sir!” — a soldier said, before directing out the first of 20 tanks bearing the Iron Cross of the Bundeswehr, Germany’s army.
Evocative of old war films, the scene is nevertheless a sign of new times. Seven and a half decades after the Nazis invaded this Baltic nation, the Germans are back in Lithuania — this time as one of the allies.
As the Trump administration ratchets up the pressure on allied nations to shoulder more of their own defense, no country is more in the crosshairs than Germany. If it meets the goals Washington is pushing for, Germany — the region’s economic powerhouse — would be on the fast track to again become Western Europe’s biggest military power.
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Any renaissance of German might has long been resisted first and foremost by the Germans — a nation that largely rejected militarism in the aftermath of the Nazi horror. Yet a rethinking of German power is quickly emerging as one of the most significant twists of President Trump’s transatlantic policy.
Since the November election in the United States, the Germans — caught between Trump’s America and Vladimir Putin’s Russia — are feeling less and less secure. Coupled with Trump’s push to have allies step up, the Germans are debating a military buildup in a manner rarely witnessed since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Perhaps nowhere is the prospect of a new future playing out more than here in Lithuania — where nearly 500 German troops, including a Bavarian combat battalion, arrived in recent weeks for an open-ended deployment near the Russian frontier. The NATO deployment marks what analysts describe as Germany’s most ambitious military operation near the Russian border since the end of the Cold War. It arrived with a formidable show of German force — including 20 Marder armored infantry fighting vehicles, six Leopard battle tanks and 12 Fuchs and Boxer armored personnel carriers.
“Maybe, with respect to the United States, you need to be careful what you wish for,” said Lt. Col. Torsten Stephan, military spokesman for the German troops in Lithuania. “Mr. Trump says that NATO may be obsolete, and that we need to be more independent. Well, maybe we will.”
The German-led deployment — also involving a smaller number of troops from Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway — is designed to send a muscular message from Europe to Putin: Back off.
Yet on a continent facing the prospect of a new Cold War, the deployment is also offering a window into the risks of renewed German strength — as well as the Russian strategy for repelling it by dwelling on Germany’s dark past. In the 21st-century world of hybrid warfare, the first proverbial salvos have been fired.
Recently, coordinated emails were sent to Lithuanian police, media and top politicians, falsely claiming that the new German troops had gang-raped a local 15-year-old girl. The Lithuanian government quickly disproved the allegations — but not before a few local outlets and social-media users had spread the false accounts. Officials are investigating whether the Russians were behind it.
“But if you ask me personally, I think that yes, that’s the biggest probability,” said Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis.
Pro-Russian websites, meanwhile, are preying on old stereotypes, harking back to Adolf Hitler and portraying the NATO deployment in Lithuania as a “second invasion” by Germany.
As Germany grows bolder, outdated imagery is roaring back to life through Russian propaganda. Last week, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the building of a reproduction of the old German Reichstag at a military theme park near Moscow, offering young Russians a chance to reenact the 1945 storming of the structure during the fall of Berlin.
Yet in Lithuania, a former Soviet republic now living in the shadow of Russia’s maw, the Nazi legacy is seen as ancient history. To many here, modern Germany is a bastion of democratic principles and one of the globe’s strongest advocates of human rights, free determination and measured diplomacy. And facing a Russian threat in times of uncertain NATO allegiances, the Lithuanians are clamoring for a more powerful Germany by its side.
“I think U.S. leadership should be maintained, but also, we need leadership in Europe,” Karoblis said. Noting that Britain is in the process of breaking away from the European Union, he called Germany the most likely new guarantor of regional stability.
“Why not Germany? Why not?” he said.
More dangerous missions
For many Germans, however, there are many reasons — including overspending and fears of sparking a new arms race. According to a poll commissioned by Stern magazine and published this year, 55 percent of Germans are against increasing defense spending in the coming years, while 42 percent are in favor.
The German military has staged several military exercises in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe, and its pilots form part of the air police deterring Russian planes buzzing the E.U.’s eastern borders. It has also begun to take on more dangerous missions — deploying troops to the Balkans, Afghanistan and, last year, to Mali. The military also has taken on a logistical support role in the allied fight against the Islamic State.
But the Germans are slated to do much more. In 2014, German officials agreed with other NATO nations to spend at least 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense within 10 years — up from about 1.2 percent in 2016. Until recently, however, many German officials privately acknowledged that such a goal — which would see Germany leapfrog Britain and France in military spending — was politically untenable.
Since Trump’s victory, however, German politicians, pundits and the media have agonized over the issue, with more and louder voices calling for a stronger military. Last month, the Defense Ministry announced plans to increase Germany’s standing military to nearly 200,000 troops by 2024, up from a historical low of 166,500 in June. After 26 years of cuts, defense spending is going up by 8 percent this year.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for cool heads, but also for increased military spending. Her defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, has been more forceful, saying recently that Germany cannot “duck away” from its military responsibility. Although considered a distant possibility, some outlier voices are mentioning the once-inconceivable: the advent of a German nuclear bomb.
“If Trump sticks to his line, America will leave Europe’s defense to the Europeans to an extent that it hasn’t known since 1945,” Berthold Kohler, publisher of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, wrote in a recent opinion piece. That could mean “higher defense spending, the revival of the draft, the drawing of red lines and the utterly unthinkable for German brains — the question of one’s own nuclear defense capability.”
Germany, along with its regional allies, has begun exploring an increase of military activity through joint European operations — and experts see that, and NATO, as the most likely funnels for German military power. Germany’s deployment in Lithuania, for instance, is part of a broader allied deterrent in Eastern Europe, with the Americans, Canadians and British leading other contingents in Poland, Latvia and Estonia.
In some of Germany’s neighbors — particularly Poland — there remain pockets of opposition to renewed German military might, positions based at least in part on war memories. But old prejudices are dying fast.
Take, for instance, tiny Lithuania — a nation the Nazis overran in 1941, kicking out the occupying Soviets. The Third Reich held on there through 1945, exterminating more than 200,000 Jews. After World War II, Lithuania reverted to Soviet domination before winning independence at the end of the Cold War. Over the past decade, Lithuania hitched its star to the West — joining the E.U. and NATO in 2004, much to the chagrin of the Russians.
Now, Lithuanians’ fear of the bear on their doorstep is surging. Since the de facto invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, Russian politicians have begun speaking ominously about a key warm-water port that they say was wrongly “gifted” to Lithuania after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Hackers thought to be linked to the Russians have targeted government servers and national television channels.
In the city of Jonava, about six miles from the barrack housing the new NATO troops, the Nazis killed more than 2,000 Jews in the 1940s. Yet in the oral histories, the German occupation is portrayed in a far better light than the Soviet era that followed.
Nadiezda Grickovaite, 86, the town’s only living resident with vivid memories of the World War II era, said she recalled her mother taking her into the woods “so we didn’t see the shooting of the Jews.” But she said the Soviets were comparatively worse — a history she has passed down in speeches and talks at local schools.
“I don’t feel any bad feelings against the Germans because of the past,” she said. “This was history. We can’t blame them now.”
The new German troops, meanwhile, have received special sensitivity training about the Nazi legacy in Lithuania and to insist on gentle interactions with locals. Jonava’s acting mayor, Eugenijus Sabutis, said the only incident since the troops arrived in late January was an altercation between an American GI and local men over the attentions of a woman.
“I don’t feel part of that history — the history of Germans who were here before,” said Sebastian, a 27-year-old German private stationed in Lithuania who only gave his first name per the German army’s rules for the interview. “What I know is that we are in a kind of new Cold War, and now we are here to help.”
Stephanie Kirchner contributed to this report.
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Trump Abandons Cooperation with Russia
Center for Research on Globalization She called Putin a “Mafia Don,” said “(b)lackmail and intimidation are part of his stock and trade.” In response to candidate Trump urging better relations with Russia, opposition ["Deep State"] forces launched a campaign to delegitimize him. According ... Enigma variations on Putin's RussiaThe Commentator Trump picks strong critic of Putin for key postPower Line (blog) Trump picks Putin critic as adviser on RussiaThe National Berkeley Daily Planet -T.co -T.co -Politico all 545 news articles » |
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Russian conspiracy allegations will continue to dog the White House until President Trump gets a handle on the administration's opponents inside the U.S. intelligence community who are driving the story, warned Republican strategists in Washington.
President Trump has railed against the leaks apparently emanating from the National Security Agency, CIA ...
The spectacle of Saudi King Salman’s tour of Asia is matched by its significance. Attention has focused as much on his 1,500-strong entourage and their 459 tons of luggage – roughly the weight of two Boeing 787 Dreamliners – as it has on expectations of billions of dollars in investment.
To be sure, economics is high on the Saudi leader’s agenda. Salman is looking at both strategic investments in Asia as well as Asian investments in the kingdom that will help it diversify its economy and strengthen ties to China and major Muslim nations in an era of uncertainty about the United States’ place in the world.
Yet Salman’s geopolitical concerns go far beyond whether the US remains a reliable guarantor of regional security. Saudi Arabia is locked into a global battle with Iran for dominance in the Muslim world. For the Al Sauds, the kingdom’s ruling family, the struggle with the Islamic republic is existential in nature.
Iran not only represents an alternative form of Islamic rule that recognises a degree of sovereign legitimacy and was established by a popular revolt. It also has assets the kingdom lacks that are key to sustaining regional hegemony: a large population, a huge domestic market, an industrial base, a battle-hardened military, geography, and a deep-seated identity grounded in a history of empire.
An epic battle
The epic battle between Saudi Arabia and Iran is being fought not only on the international and Middle Eastern stage but domestically in Muslim and non-Muslim nations that span the globe. Saudi Arabia’s soft power effort, possibly the single largest public diplomacy campaign in history, has aligned itself neatly with Muslim governments that opportunistically play politics with religion and Muslim communities that embrace Saudi-style Sunni ultra-conservatism in lieu of feasible alternatives.
Singapore’s bid to outshine Hong Kong with Saudi Aramco bid is a pipe dream
Singapore’s bid to outshine Hong Kong with Saudi Aramco bid is a pipe dream
China may not have a seriously sizeable Muslim community, yet the lure of ultra-conservatism has made its mark among Hui Muslims and Uygurs alike. Chinese concern about the impact of ultra-conservatism coupled with Iran’s strategic advantage has shaped Chinese policy even if Saudi Arabia is a major oil supplier and commercial partner as well as a military ally.
President Xi Jinping’s visit to the Middle East last year, the first by a Chinese leader in seven years, saw the signing of billions of dollars’ worth of agreements with Saudi Arabia and a ten-fold expansion of trade with Iran over the next 10 years. The significance may go far beyond commerce as Chinese interests align more with Iranian interests than those of Saudi Arabia.
From Riyadh, Xi went to Iran to become the first foreign leader to do so following the lifting of international sanctions against the Islamic republic. Saudi leaders could not have been pleased.
Xi’s determination to gain a first mover advantage in Iran at a time that Saudi Arabia was seeking to increase rather than reduce the Islamic republic’s international isolation suggested that more than commerce was at play.
Xi’s visit to the kingdom was accompanied by talk of brotherly relations and strategic cooperation. The rhetoric, however, did little to mask serious differences on issues ranging from Syria – with Chinese support for President Bashar al-Assad – to Saudi propagation of ultra-conservatism and a relative decline in Chinese reliance on Saudi oil.
“Our biggest worry in the Middle East isn’t oil – it’s Saudi Arabia,” a Chinese analyst told the Asia Times. Religious affinity is not something China has to worry about with Shiite-majority Iran, which has long projected itself as a revolutionary rather than a sectarian power.
Consequently, China remains reluctant to clearly articulate its strategic interests or intentions in the Middle East and North Africa beyond its drive to secure resources, investments and people, and expand its influence through economic ties and its “One Belt, One Road” initiative to link economies into a China-centred trading network. As a result, China’s strategic dialogue remains focused on free-trade agreements with the six-nation, Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) rather than the forging of broader strategic partnerships that go beyond economics.
China has also long sought to tread carefully in its for now limited military contacts.
China was, for example, slow to engage in its security cooperation with Saudi Arabia that started in secret in 1985, five years prior to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. In a deal that was only disclosed three years later, Saudi Arabia in its first weapons deal with China bought in 1985 for US$3.5 billion 36 Chinese CSS-2 East Wind intermediate range ballistic missiles even though they were known to be highly inaccurate in conventional use.
The deal said much about the attitude of Saudi Arabia towards China. Saudi Arabia saw the deal as a way to counter Iran’s missile strength that in a twist of irony was built on Chinese technology and design, and as leverage to persuade the US to be more forthcoming with weaponry that had offensive capabilities. In a further indication that China was making only limited inroads and that Saudi Arabian arms purchases remained focused on Western suppliers, Saudi Arabia – even while engaged in a massive weapons buying spree – waited 30 years to acquire a more up-to-date Chinese missile system, the DF-21 East Wind ballistic missile.
A frontal assault
Ultra-conservatism – which complicates communal relations, changes policies towards minorities, and alters local culture as well as Saudi efforts to forge an anti-Iranian military alliance – loomed even larger in Malaysia and during the current Indonesian leg of Salman’s tour. In Malaysia, a supposedly pluralistic nation that bans Shi’a Islam, ultra-conservative Islamic scholars legitimise the United Malays National Organisation (Umno), the country’s ruling party, raising concerns about a more intolerant society despite its multi-ethnic composition.
The state of Johor’s straight-talking sultan, Ibrahim Ismail Ibni Sultan Iskander, didn’t mince words last year when he decried what he described as creeping Arabisation of the Malay language. He insisted that Malaysians use Malay rather than Arabic words when referring to religious practices and Muslim holidays.
In a frontal assault on Saudi-inspired ultra-conservatism, Ibrahim advised his people that “If there are some of you who wish to be an Arab and practise Arab culture, and do not wish to follow our Malay customs and traditions, that is up to you. I also welcome you to live in Saudi Arabia. That is your right but I believe there are Malays who are proud of the Malay culture. At least I am real and not a hypocrite and the people of Johor know who their ruler is,” the sultan said.
Both Malaysia and Indonesia have been reluctant to become too involved in a 41-nation, Saudi-led military alliance headquartered in Riyadh that officially was created to combat political violence and the Islamic State (IS). Many fear the alliance is also intended as a military bloc against Iran that would also bolster Saudi Arabia’s campaign in Yemen – where it is fighting Houthi militia and loyalists of the former president, Ali Abdullah Salleh, allegedly supported by Iran.
Ultra-conservatism
Saudi influence was nonetheless evident when Malaysian Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein last year, to the consternation of his ministry’s civilians, agreed to let 300 Malaysian paratroopers participate in a 20-nation military exercise in the kingdom. Malaysia currently has up to 100 military personnel and C-130 Hercules transport planes in Saudi Arabia that provide the alliance with logistical support.
The Indonesian military, like its Malaysian counterpart, regularly trains with Saudi officers to counter IS. Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi policy analyst with close government ties, described last year’s exercise as a preparation for possible Saudi military intervention in Iraq and Syria.
Critics in the ministry were taken aback when Hishammuddin obliged them weeks later to endorse Saudi funding for the King Salman Centre for Moderation (KSCM). Under the auspices of the ministry’s think tank, the Malaysian Institute of Defence and Security (MIDAS), would seek to counter jihadist messaging in Southeast Asia. An internal ministry memo said MIDAS had a “strategic interest to be collaborating with various institutions internationally particularly from Saudi Arabia”.
A joint communique at the end of Salman’s visit described political violence as the most important issue discussed between the king and Prime Minister Najib Razak. Najib backed Saudi concerns about Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries and called on the Islamic republic to respect the sovereignty of regional states.
The two leaders also announced the establishment of the King Salman Centre for International Peace (KSCIP), a collaboration of Saudi and Malaysian defence institutions as well as the Muslim World League, a prime Saudi vehicle for the propagation of ultra-conservatism. It’ not clear if KSCM and KSCIP are separate institutions.
In Indonesia, a country that prides itself on its tolerant interpretation of Islam, Saudi-style ultra-conservatism is similarly making itself felt. Major Islamic organisations with a history of opposition to Wahhabism, the ultra-conservative world view that governs the kingdom, see Shiites, who constitute 1.2 per cent of the population, and Iran as threats to national security. A former deputy head of Indonesian intelligence goes as far as describing Shiites as the foremost domestic threat to national security.
Saudi media reported that King Salman hoped during his visit to lay the ground for the opening of more Arabic-language Islamic schools in Indonesia. They said the king would also be increasing the number of scholarships available to Indonesians for study in Saudi Arabia. Many of those who return after completing their studies are imbued with Saudi-style ultra-conservatism.
All in all, Salman’s Asian official visit-cum-holiday is likely to reverberate far beyond the billions of dollars in economic and commercial agreements he signs. The visit also solidified cooperation between Asian nations and Saudi Arabia in the fight against IS. This, despite the fact that IS and the kingdom have the same ideological roots, even if the jihadists accuse Saudi Arabia of having deviated from the true path of Islam. At the same time, the tour could also well embed sectarian aspects of Saudi’s Arabia’s epic struggle with Iran ever deeper in the social and political life of the continent’s Muslims.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post, and is reprinted with permission
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Voice of America: Hackers Drawn to Energy Sector's Lack of Sensors, Controls by webdesk@voanews.com (Associated Press)
Oil and gas companies, including some of the most celebrated industry names in the Houston area, are facing increasingly sophisticated hackers seeking to steal trade secrets and disrupt operations, according to a newspaper investigation. A stretch of the Gulf Coast near Houston features one of the largest concentrations of refineries, pipelines and chemical plants in the country, and cybersecurity experts say it's an alluring target for espionage and other cyberattacks. "There are actors that are scanning for these vulnerable systems and taking advantage of those weaknesses when they find them," said Marty Edwards, director of U.S. Homeland Security's Cyber Emergency Response Team for industrial systems. Homeland Security, which is responsible for protecting the nation from cybercrime, received reports of some 350 incidents at energy companies from 2011 to 2015, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle has found. Over that period, the agency found nearly 900 security flaws within U.S. energy companies, more than any other industry. Steps are being taken to thwart attacks. For instance, the Coast Guard in a joint operation with Houston police patrolled the waters southeast of Houston last year conducting sweeps for unprotected wireless signals that hackers could use to gain access to facilities. The operation was one of the first of its kind in the U.S. concentrating on cyberattacks by sea. But the vast network of oil and gas operations makes it difficult to secure. Thousands of interconnected sensors and controls that run oil and gas facilities remain rife with weak spots. Many companies the technology and personnel to detect hackers. Equipment was designed decades ago without security features, and efforts over the years to link computer networks to devices that monitor pressure or control valves have exposed operations to online threats. "You could mess with a refinery or cause a vessel to explode," Richard Garcia, a former FBI agent who became a cybersecurity specialist, told the Chronicle. Power, chemical and nuclear facilities must adhere to strict cybersecurity measures, but federal law doesn't impose such standards on the oil and gas sector. And when oil and gas companies have been infiltrated by a hacker, they're not required to report the incident. More than 20 of the nation's largest oil companies _ including Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips, refiner Phillips 66 and pipeline operator Kinder Morgan _ declined to comment or did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The American Petroleum Institute, the national trade association for oil and gas, also declined to comment. Charles McConnell, executive director of Rice University's Energy and Environment Initiative, said oil companies tend to rush to deploy new computer technologies that make operations more productive, but only afterward considering ways to defuse online threats. "The pace of change of the technology we've adopted is every step of the way more and more vulnerable to cyberattack," McConnell said.
Voice of America
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World: Recent developments surrounding the South China Seaby Hrvoje Hranjski | AP
A look at recent developments in the South China Sea, where China is pitted against smaller neighbors in multiple disputes over islands, coral reefs and lagoons in waters crucial for global commerce and rich in fish and potential oil and gas reserves:
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(Civil.Ge) — The Military Committee (MC), NATO’s highest military authority and the organization’s primary source of military advice, concluded its two-day visit to Georgia on March 2-3 to discuss the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package and its implementation, as well as regional security issues.
The Military Committee Chairman, General Petr Pavel, accompanied by senior NATO military representatives, held multiple high-level meetings with Georgian officials.
On March 2, Georgia’s Defense Minister Levan Izoria hosted the Czech General to discuss NATO-Georgia cooperation prospects, security challenges in the region, as well as the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package (SNGP) and Georgia’s participation in international missions.
“NATO supports Georgia’s commitment and its Euro-Atlantic membership aspirations” General Pavel said at the joint press conference following the meeting with Georgian Defense Ministry officials on March 2.
Although NATO officials “appreciate” the scope of reforms and changes that Georgia has pursued for joining NATO, General Pavel noted that “there is obviously a long way of preparing a nation for a membership”. He, however, stressed that NATO will do its “best to prepare Georgia for future NATO membership.”
General Pavel reiterated NATO’s support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia and called on the Russian Federation to “reverse its recognition of the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions of Georgia and to withdraw its forces from Georgia.”
Georgia’s Defense Minister Levan Izoria stressed that Georgia-NATO relationships have been “unprecedented” in the last few months.
He also said that the NATO Military Committee visit to Georgia demonstrates a strong message from the Alliance, which continues to support Georgia’s integration and its efforts towards NATO membership.
Following the press conference on Thursday, NATO Military Representatives visited the NATO-Georgia Joint Training and Evaluation Center (JTEC) to attend the pre-deployment training of the Georgian military unit to “Resolute Support” mission in Afghanistan.
The NATO Military Committee’s March 3 meeting, held with participation of Georgia, focused on security and challenges that the country faces in the region, as well as increased NATO presence in the Black Sea region.
As part of the visit, the 28 NATO Military Representatives also visited the Administrative Boundary Line (ABL), where they received a briefing on the current situation.
During the visit, General Petr Pavel met with the Georgian leaders – President Giorgi Margvelashvili and Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili.
Eurasia Review
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(Civil.Ge) — The Military Committee (MC), NATO’s highest military authority and the organization’s primary source of military advice, concluded its two-day visit to Georgia on March 2-3 to discuss the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package and its...
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Israel’s Cabinet has approved new measures on the path to decriminalize the use of marijuana in the country. Anyone caught using the drug for the first time will only be fined roughly $270 instead of facing criminal charges.Read Full Article at RT.com
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. lawmakers expect to unveil this week the text of long-awaited legislation to repeal and replace the Obamacare healthcare law, one of President Donald Trump's top legislative priorities, a senior Republican congressional aide said on Sunday.
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Chris Coons walks back talk of Russia-Trump collusion
Washington Times Sen. Chris Coons, Delaware Democrat, on Sunday walked back his bombshell declaration about transcripts showing Russia-Trump collusion, saying he had no proof such documents exist and apologizing for any “hyperventilating.” “I have no hard evidence ... Tom Cotton and Fox News Accidentally Screw Trump By Confirming Russia Transcripts ExistPoliticusUSA 'Isn't There More Than a Whiff of McCarthyism?': Chris Wallace Grills Senator on Trump/RussiaClaimsMediaite Coons clarifies Trump-Russia commentsWDEL 1150AM all 22 news articles » |
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Yemen has become Iran's testing ground for new weapons
Enter Stage Right Since the beginning of the year, the Houthis have increased their missile fire, including Scuds, from Yemeni territory at different targets in Saudi Arabia, including airports and civilian infrastructures, along with missile fire at coalition targets ... |
Nearly 500 German troops including a Bavarian battle battalion deployed recently in Lithuania near the Russian frontier.
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