Tag: Foreign Relations

Stupid

Trump has withdrawn from the Open Skies Treaty, which allowed a number of countries, most notably the US and Russia, conduct unarmed surveillance flights over each other’s territory.

This is a truly stupid move, but it fits with the philosophy of many within the US foreign policy establishment, particularly on the right, that any agreement that is truly reciprocal is not for the US:

President Trump has decided to withdraw from another major arms control accord, he and other officials said Thursday, and will inform Russia that the United States is pulling out of the Open Skies Treaty, negotiated three decades ago to allow nations to fly over each other’s territory with elaborate sensor equipment to assure that they are not preparing for military action.

Mr. Trump’s decision may be viewed as more evidence that he is preparing to exit the one major arms treaty remaining with Russia: New START, which limits the United States and Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear missiles [The reporter got this wrong, the limit is nuclear warheads, and not nuclear missiles] each. It expires in February, weeks after the next presidential inauguration, and Mr. Trump has insisted that China must join what is now a U.S.-Russia limit on nuclear arsenals.

Considering the fact that France has more deployed nukes than China, and the UK probably has more deployed nukes than China,  I would expect that this is not going to viewed with any enthusiasm by the civilian and military leadership of the People’s Republic.

Mr. Trump’s decision, rumored for some time, is bound to further aggravate European allies, including those in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, who are also signatories to the treaty.

They are likely to remain in the accord, which has nearly three dozen signatories, but have warned that with Washington’s exit, Russia will almost certainly respond by also cutting off their flights, which the allies use to monitor troop movements on their borders — especially important to the Baltic nations.

Russia can literally do nothing but complain if they see something in the US, if European nations see a troubling mobilization on their borders, they can take immediate countermeasures.

You tell me who loses more from this.

Morons.

OOPS!

In a court filing, the FBI mistakenly revealed the name of the Saudi official who was (allegedly) providing support to the 911 hijackers.

A sharp-eyed reporter at Yahoo News (of all outlets) noticed that the name was not redacted on a now withdrawn court document.

It turns out to be one Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, who reported directly to the US Ambassador,  Bandar, aka Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, aka “Bandar Bush” for his closeness to the Bush family.

Did I mention that he was also at one point head of Saudi intelligence?

How convenient:

The FBI inadvertently revealed one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive secrets about the Sept. 11 terror attacks: the identity of a  mysterious Saudi Embassy official in Washington who agents suspected had directed crucial support to two of the al-Qaida hijackers.

The disclosure came in a new declaration filed in federal court by a senior FBI official in response to a lawsuit brought by families of 9/11 victims that accuses the Saudi government of complicity in the terrorist attacks.

The declaration was filed last month but unsealed late last week. According to a spokesman for the 9/11 victims’ families, it represents a major breakthrough in the long-running case, providing for the first time an apparent confirmation that FBI agents investigating the attacks believed they had uncovered a link between the hijackers and the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

………

“This shows there is a complete government cover-up of the Saudi involvement,” said Brett Eagleson, a spokesman for the 9/11 families whose father was killed in the attacks. “It demonstrates there was a hierarchy of command that’s coming from the Saudi Embassy to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs [in Los Angeles] to the hijackers.”

………

After being contacted by Yahoo News on Monday, Justice Department officials notified the court and withdrew the FBI’s declaration from the public docket. “The document was incorrectly filed in this case,” the docket now reads.

………

Ironically, the declaration identifying the Saudi official in question was intended to support recent filings by Attorney General William Barr and acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell barring the public release of the Saudi official’s name and all related documents, concluding they are “state secrets” that, if disclosed, could cause “significant harm to the national security.”

Who says irony is dead?

………

A few lines from the bottom of page 7 is the unredacted statement, “(i.e., any and all records referring or relating to Jarrah);”.

Oops.

But while Sanborn’s 40-page declaration blacks out the Saudi official’s name in most instances, in one it failed to do so — a discrepancy first noted this week by a Yahoo News reporter.

………

A redacted copy of a three-and-a-half page October 2012 FBI “update” about the investigation stated that FBI agents had uncovered “evidence” that Thumairy and Bayoumi had been “tasked” to assist the hijackers by yet another individual whose name was blacked out, prompting lawyers for the families to refer to this person as “the third man” in what they argue is a Saudi-orchestrated conspiracy.

Describing the request by lawyers for the 9/11 families to depose that individual under oath, Sanborn’s declaration says in one instance that it involves “any and all records referring to or relating to Jarrah.”

The reference is to Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, a mid-level Saudi Foreign Ministry official who was assigned to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., in 1999 and 2000. His duties apparently included overseeing the activities of Ministry of Islamic Affairs employees at Saudi-funded mosques and Islamic centers within the United States.

Relatively little is known about Jarrah, but according to former embassy employees, he reported to the Saudi ambassador in the United States (at the time Prince Bandar), and that he was later reassigned to the Saudi missions in Malaysia and Morocco, where he is believed to have served as recently as last year.

Also, as to is his current whereabouts?

 ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Is that a bone saw I hear?

Jarrah “was responsible for the placement of Ministry of Islamic Affairs employees known as guides and propagators posted to the United States, including Fahad Al Thumairy,” according to a separate declaration by Catherine Hunt, a former FBI agent based in Los Angeles who has been assisting the families in the case.

Hunt conducted her own investigation into the support provided to the hijackers in Southern California. “The FBI believed that al-Jarrah was ‘supporting’ and ‘maintaining’ al-Thumairy during the 9/11 investigation,” she said in her declaration.

I’m shocked.

Speaking of Evil………

German ministers have reacted angrily following reports US president Donald Trump offered a German medical company “large sums of money” for exclusive rights to a Covid-19 vaccine.

“Germany is not for sale,” economy minister Peter Altmaier told broadcaster ARD, reacting to a front page report in Welt am Sonntag newspaper headlined “Trump vs Berlin”.

The newspaper reported Trump offered $1bn to Tübingen-based biopharmaceutical company CureVac to secure the vaccine “only for the United States”.

………

The report prompted fury in Berlin. “German researchers are taking a leading role in developing medication and vaccines as part of global cooperation networks,” foreign minister Heiko Maas told the Funke Mediengruppe research network. “We cannot allow a situation where others want to exclusively acquire the results of their research,” said Maas, of the centre-left SPD.

“International co-operation is important now, not national self-interest,” said Erwin Rüddel, a conservative lawmaker on the German parliament’s health committee.

Christian Lindner, leader of the liberal FDP party, accused Trump of electioneering, saying: “Obviously Trump will use any means available in an election campaign.”

The German health minister, Jens Spahn, said a takeover of CureVac by the Trump administration was “off the table”. CureVac would only develop vaccine “for the whole world”, Spahn said, “not for individual countries”.

Trump thinks that if he can take the vaccine from the rest of the world, he can sell it as, “Making America Great Again,” in Nivember.

This really is unbelievably malicious.

Ha Ha!!

Facing a crisis with COVID-19, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is reversing himself, and bringing back the Cuban doctors that he expelled when he toook office, because he now realizes just how badly he has f%$#ed himself now that he, and the rest of the world, is facing a potentially deadly pandemic:

Brazil is set to hire more doctors to fight coronavirus and the drive will include Cuban doctors in Brazil as part of a medical program that was canceled in late 2018 amid a diplomatic spat between Havana and Jair Bolsonaro, the health ministry said on Monday.

Health ministry officials said they will initially look to hire Brazilian nationals, but after that, they would try to bring in Cuban doctors – collateral damage in a war-of-words between President Jair Bolsonaro, who was then the president-elect, and Havana.

Bolsonaro, a far-right army captain, has for years railed against communist Cuba, which had close ties to previous leftists administrations in Brasilia.

It appears that Bolsonaro thinks that the Cubans have a robust system of medical schools, which allows them to provide doctors countries around the world which lack proper medical personnel.

I guess that this makes him Putin’s stooge.

It’s Official

The World Health Organization has officially declared that COVID-19 is a pandemic:

The spread of the coronavirus is now a pandemic, officials at the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

“We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director-general.

………

There are only about 1,100 confirmed cases in the United States, but experts fear that is only a fraction of the real prevalence, because testing for the coronavirus has been unavailable or haphazard in the United States.

The number of cases in the world doubles every six days, epidemiologists have estimated.

And the US response will be handled by people who want to down the government in a bathtub.

Finally

It is difficult to imagine that Evo Morales would have left office when and how he did — in a civic-military coup — if the Organization of American States had not found that Bolivia’s Oct. 20 election was fraudulent. To be sure, the OAS did not single-handedly bring down Morales. In the weeks before the coup, Morales faced large protests and a devastating police mutiny.

The protests did not focus solely on the election. Many were upset Morales was allowed to run at all after losing a 2016 referendum asking voters to approve his bid to seek a fourth term. The police mutiny centered on officers’ disgruntlement over pay and being asked to contain the protests. And the Bolivian right had declared that Morales could win the October election only through fraud for months before the vote, i.e., well before the OAS stepped into the fray.

Yet, the OAS actions were undoubtedly important in creating a climate within which a coup could not only succeed, but be applauded as a necessary step toward restoring Bolivian democracy, as the U.S. government and mainstream media did. In fact, the opposite has occurred. Following Morales’s ouster, Bolivia has come under the control of a right-wing authoritarian regime that has killed dozens of unarmed protesters, detained hundreds, blocked international human rights investigators, systematically repressed political opponents, threatened journalists and media outlets, embraced racism, and enacted a far-right agenda for which it has no electoral mandate nor constitutional legitimacy.

The question of whether the OAS was justified in declaring the October election fraudulent looms large. In a recent article published in The Post, John Curiel and Jack R. Williams, researchers with MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab, conclude the answer is no. Curiel and Williams used statistical analysis to analyze a central claim made by the OAS — initially in an Oct. 21, 2019, news release — that there was a “drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results” following an election-night suspension of the unofficial rapid vote count. According to the OAS, this is one of numerous pieces of evidence showing fraud. Curiel and Williams unequivocally reject this, writing: “As specialists in election integrity, we find that the statistical evidence does not support the claim of fraud in Bolivia’s October election.”

The OAS is an organ of the US regime change mousketeers.

Oh, Snap

It appears that in John Bolton’s book, he explicitly states that Donald Trump withheld aid to the Ukraine to coerce an investigation of political rivals:

President Trump told his national security adviser in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by the former adviser, John R. Bolton.

The president’s statement as described by Mr. Bolton could undercut a key element of his impeachment defense: that the holdup in aid was separate from Mr. Trump’s requests that Ukraine announce investigations into his perceived enemies, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, who had worked for a Ukrainian energy firm while his father was in office.

Mr. Bolton’s explosive account of the matter at the center of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, the third in American history, was included in drafts of a manuscript he has circulated in recent weeks to close associates. He also sent a draft to the White House for a standard review process for some current and former administration officials who write books.

………

Over dozens of pages, Mr. Bolton described how the Ukraine affair unfolded over several months until he departed the White House in September. He described not only the president’s private disparagement of Ukraine but also new details about senior cabinet officials who have publicly tried to sidestep involvement.

………

The White House did not provide responses to questions about Mr. Bolton’s assertions, and representatives for Mr. Johnson, Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Mulvaney did not respond to emails and calls seeking comment on Sunday afternoon.

Mr. Bolton’s lawyer blamed the White House for the disclosure of the book’s contents. “It is clear, regrettably, from the New York Times article published today that the pre-publication review process has been corrupted and that information has been disclosed by persons other than those properly involved in reviewing the manuscript,” the lawyer, Charles J. Cooper, said Sunday night.

He said he provided a copy of the book to the White House on Dec. 30 — 12 days after Mr. Trump was impeached — to be reviewed for classified information, though, he said, Mr. Bolton believed it contained none.

………

Mr. Bolton would like to testify for several reasons, according to associates. He believes he has relevant information, and he has also expressed concern that if his account of the Ukraine affair emerges only after the trial, he will be accused of holding back to increase his book sales.

………

Mr. Bolton also described other key moments in the pressure campaign, including Mr. Pompeo’s private acknowledgment to him last spring that Mr. Giuliani’s claims about Ms. Yovanovitch had no basis and that Mr. Giuliani may have wanted her removed because she might have been targeting his clients who had dealings in Ukraine as she sought to fight corruption.

This has got to be a bit awkward for Trump, McConnell, and their Evil Minions.

This is Incredibly F%$#ed Up

Now that the majority of Iraq wants the US troops gone, the US State Security Apparatus wants to carve out a Sunni rump state so that they can continue basing troops there.

This is unbelievably f%$#ing stupid:

Backed into a corner and influence waning, the United States has in recent weeks been promoting a plan to create an autonomous Sunni region in western Iraq, officials from both countries told Middle East Eye.

The US efforts, the officials say, come in response to Shia Iraqi parties’ attempts to expel American troops from their country.

Iraq represents a strategic land bridge between Iran and its allies in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.

Establishing a US-controlled Sunni buffer zone in western Iraq would deprive Iran of using land routes into Syria and prevent it from reaching the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.

For Washington, the idea of carving out a Sunni region dates back to a 2007 proposition by Joe Biden, who is now vying to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.

It was hoped that the scheme could tighten US control over Iraq and provide protection for Sunnis during the 2006-08 sectarian civil conflict, in which tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis from both the Sunni and Shia communities were slaughtered.

But opposition to Iraq being divided along sectarian and ethnic lines, as well as Americans’ insistence on keeping the country united, has postponed attempts at its implementation.

Now efforts to expel US troops have breathed new life into the project, and the creation of a Sunni region is just one of the options being considered by Washington to counter Iranian pressure, a top Iraqi Shia official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told MEE.

Iraqi unity “is no longer a priority now for the US,” the Shia official said.

“If the Americans reach a dead-end in terms of the presence of their forces in Iraq, they will work to implement this project vigorously.”

A former US official familiar with the project confirmed that the Americans have worked on “taking this project out of the drawer and putting it on the table”.

“The creation of a Sunni region has always been an option for the US. The Iranians cannot be allowed to reach the Mediterranean Sea or benefit from the land bridge connecting them to Hezbollah” in Lebanon, the former US official told MEE.

“The project is American, not Sunni. The presence of the American forces has been the guarantor for the Sunnis and the Kurds, so if the US has to leave Iraq, then establishing a Sunni region in western Iraq is its plan to curb Iran and its arms in the Middle East,” he added.

“We are talking about establishing a country, not an administrative region.”

Seriously, what passes for the conventional wisdom among the US defense and foreign policy establishment is remarkably stupid.

OK, Had a Chance to Review the Parnas Documents

First, it has to be noted that these documents have been in the possession of the Department of Justice for months, and the fact that there has not been more filings against the co-conspirators in the Ukraine affair indicates that Attorney General Bob Barr has unequivocally engaged in an active covered up.

He needs to be tried, convicted, and disbarred. (pun not intended)

The shocker here(so far) is that some of people involved were considering having the US ambassador to Kiev, Marie Yovanovitch, assassinated:

In April 2019, Rudolph W. Giuliani believed he was on the cusp of achieving an important goal: ousting the United States ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch. As Ms. Yovanovitch’s standing with the White House grew more precarious, Mr. Giuliani texted an associate.

………

The exchange was included in an array of documents released by House Democrats on Tuesday that offered new details on the shadow diplomacy campaign at the center of Mr. Trump’s impeachment and highlighted the effort to remove Ms. Yovanovitch.

Mr. Parnas, who is facing federal charges in Manhattan, recently turned the documents over to the House Intelligence Committee as part of its impeachment inquiry.

One of the new documents shows Mr. Giuliani saying that he had Mr. Trump’s blessing to seek a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president-elect, last spring, potential new evidence on the eve of the president’s impeachment trial.

Mr. Giuliani has previously said he was acting at Mr. Trump’s direction in his dealings with Ukrainian officials, but the letter released on Tuesday is the first public document that says he was doing so.

………

Mr. Lutsenko added: “And here you can’t even get rid of one [female] fool,” an apparent reference to Ms. Yovanovitch. He also inserted a frowning emoji.

“She’s not a simple fool[,] trust me,” Mr. Parnas responded. “But she’s not getting away.”

Mr. Trump ultimately recalled Ms. Yovanovitch from her post in late April.

In a separate series of cryptic text messages, Mr. Parnas communicated with another man who appeared to be monitoring the movements of Ms. Yovanovitch. The texts, exchanged in March on WhatsApp, indicated that the second man, Robert F. Hyde, was in touch with people in Ukraine who were watching Ms. Yovanovitch.

They are willing to help if we/you would like a price,” one message from Mr. Hyde to Mr. Parnas read.

It was not clear who was watching the ambassador or why.

“Needless to say, the notion that American citizens and others were monitoring Ambassador Yovanovitch’s movements for unknown purposes is disturbing,” said Lawrence S. Robbins, a lawyer for Ms. Yovanovitch. “We trust that the appropriate authorities will conduct an investigation to determine what happened.”

In a brief interview conducted via text on Tuesday, Mr. Hyde, a Republican congressional candidate in Connecticut, denied that he had tracked Ms. Yovanovitch’s movements in Kyiv, and called Representative Adam B. Schiff, the intelligence committee chairman, a “commie.”

The Department of Justice has already ignored evidence that a US ambassador was stalked, and possibly targeted for death, so I think that Mr. Robbins is being optimistic.

Mr. Hyde appears to be completely unhinged, BTW.  (Here and here)

Not Enough Bullets

In their crusade to make the world safe for rich white people, the New York Times takes on the horror that is a new Massachusetts law that requires au pairs be paid minimum wage for caring for children.

I get it, you feel entitled for cheap/free labor from the people who watch your kids:

When Stephanie Mayberg, a physician assistant, learned that a court ruling meant her child care costs were about to increase by 250 percent, she was stunned. The recent federal court decision, that au pairs were entitled to the rights of domestic workers in Massachusetts, including being paid a minimum wage, left Ms. Mayberg, of Southborough, wondering how she and her husband could afford to keep their au pair from Colombia for a second year.

………

Of the legal finding that au pairs — young people from other countries who come to the United States to live with families and care for their children — were entitled to a minimum wage and protected by Massachusetts’s Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, passed in 2014, she added, “I’m a big supporter because au pairs are unprotected.”

………

In Massachusetts, the decision has thrown families who host au pairs into chaos as they sort through their new responsibilities as employers, and cope with significantly increased child care costs.

………

The minimum wage in Massachusetts, $12.75 per hour, means that families who employ au pairs will now have to pay them roughly $528 a week for 45 hours of work, when factoring in overtime and a $77 deduction for room and board. The lawsuit, which was brought in 2016, had been working its way through the courts for several years, but it appeared that many au pair agencies had not warned host families about the pending case or the possibility that the domestic workers rules might apply.

………

But some former au pairs disagreed with the parents and the view of the federal government. Thaty Oliveira, 35, who is from Brazil, was an au pair in Massachusetts in 2003. While she said she had a great experience with the family, and worked at most 30 hours a week, she said that was not the norm among her fellow au pairs, many of whom spent too many hours doing child care to get a rich exposure to American culture. Even in her case, she said, she considers the child care she performed to have been real work, deserving of a minimum wage.

“We’re not asking for a lot,” she said. “It’s really just minimum rights.”

But it’s too much for the self-absorbed assholes to offer basic human dignity to the people that they have hired to safeguard their families.

Worst 1979 Cover Band Ever

Once again short-sighted and stupid foreign policy is putting a US embassy in the Middle East at risk:

Iraqi protesters and militia fighters angry over recent deadly US airstrikes on an Iran-backed Shiite militia group attacked the heavily fortified US embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday.

Hundreds of men waving Iraqi and militia flags torched a security post and hurled stones at security forces, as embassy guards fired stun grenades and tear gas to disperse crowds that breached the outer wall of America’s largest embassy.

There were no reports of casualties, but the breach was one of the worst attacks on a US embassy in recent memory. The Pentagon said it had deployed extra troops to protect the mission. Meanwhile, the State Department said there were no plans to evacuate the compound.

………

The militiamen were demonstrating against US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on Sunday targeting Kataeb Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia. At least 25 militiamen were killed.

Iraqi security forces allowed thousands of protesters to march to the heavily-fortified Green Zone after a funeral held for those killed, letting them pass through a security checkpoint leading to the area.

Many in the crowd shouted “Down, Down USA!” and “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” outside the embassy compound as they threw objects over its walls.

I am old enough to remember the the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.

If history does not repeat itself, it certainly rhymes.

Good Political Strategy

One of the concerns about Brexit is the future of both the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) as well as their price controls on drugs.

Jeremy Corbyn is now explicitly promising that neither the NHS nor drug price controls will even be brought up in trade negotiations with the US.

In fact, he his proposing legislation to explicitly prohibit any such negotiations:

UK opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said the Labour Party will exclude Britain’s National Health Service and medicines from trade deals with the United States, as he accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson of covering up “secret talks” on the NHS.  

………

“Our public services are not bargaining chips to be traded in secret deals. I pledge a Labour government will exclude the NHS, medicines and public services from any trade deals – and make that binding in law”, he added.

It’s good policy and good politics.

Welcome to the Republic of Gilead

Last November, a top Trump appointee at the U.S. Agency for International Development wrote a candid email to colleagues about pressure from the White House to reroute Middle East aid to religious minorities, particularly Christian groups.

“Sometimes this decision will be made for us by the White House (see… Iraq! And, increasingly, Syria),” said Hallam Ferguson, a senior official in USAID’s Middle East bureau, in an email seen by ProPublica. “We need to stay ahead of this curve everywhere lest our interventions be dictated to us.”

The email underscored what had become a stark reality under the Trump White House. Decisions about U.S. aid are often no longer being governed by career professionals applying a rigorous review of applicants and their capabilities. Over the last two years, political pressure, particularly from the office of Vice President Mike Pence, had seeped into aid deliberations and convinced key decision-makers that unless they fell in line, their jobs could be at stake.

Five months before Ferguson sent the email, his former boss had been ousted following a mandate from Pence’s chief of staff. Pence had grown displeased with USAID’s work in Iraq after Christian groups were turned down for aid.

ProPublica viewed internal emails and conducted interviews with nearly 40 current and former U.S. officials and aid professionals that shed new light on the success of Pence and his allies in influencing the government’s long-standing process for awarding foreign aid. Most people spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration’s efforts to influence USAID funding sparked concern from career officials, who worried the agency risked violating constitutional prohibitions on favoring one religion over another. They also were concerned that being perceived as favoring Christians could worsen Iraq’s sectarian divides.

………

The Wall Street Journal and BuzzFeed have previously reported Pence’s interest in increasing foreign aid to Christians and his displeasure with USAID’s activities in Iraq.

Please, impeach Pence first.

Mixed Emotions

While making it official will remove a (clearly unconstitutional and corrupt) justification for Federalist Society hacks to rule against Congressional subpoenas, it also appears that this is an artifact of the permanent Democratic permanent protective crouch, because they have responded to Republicans saying mean things about them.

F%$# the Republicans with Cheney’s dick:

House Democrats unveiled new procedures for the impeachment inquiry of President Trump on Tuesday, responding to Republican demands for due process by setting out rules for future public hearings delving into whether Trump should be removed from office.

The resolution backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hands the lead role to the House Intelligence Committee and its chairman, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who would have broad latitude to organize extended questioning of potential public witnesses. Two other committees that have so far participated in the closed-door investigation into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine — Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform — would not be permitted to directly participate in the open proceedings under the legislation.

It also sets out for the first time the ability of House Republicans to make their own requests for testimony and documents, though those requests will be subject to a vote of the Democratic-majority committee — a practice that matches the minority powers in the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

I expect Republicans will continue to make Democrats jump through hoops, because, after all, this is what they do.

In less ambiguous news, a new witness has emerged, whose testimony strongly implies that the so-called transcript of Trump’s call to the Ukraine was altered to cover up evidence of attempted extortion:

Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, told House impeachment investigators on Tuesday that the White House transcript of a July call between President Trump and Ukraine’s president omitted crucial words and phrases, and that his attempts to include them failed, according to three people familiar with the testimony.

The omissions, Colonel Vindman said, included Mr. Trump’s assertion that there were recordings of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. discussing Ukraine corruption, and an explicit mention by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of Burisma Holdings, the energy company whose board employed Mr. Biden’s son Hunter.

Colonel Vindman, who appeared on Capitol Hill wearing his dark blue Army dress uniform and military medals, told House impeachment investigators that he tried to change the reconstructed transcript made by the White House staff to reflect the omissions. But while some of his edits appeared to have been successful, he said, those two corrections were not made.

Colonel Vindman did not testify to a motive behind the White House editing process. But his testimony is likely to drive investigators to ask further questions about how officials handled the call, including changes to the transcript and the decision to put it into the White House’s most classified computer system — and whether those moves were meant to conceal the conversation’s most controversial aspects.

Drip  ……… drip  ……… drip  ……… drip  ………

Bye Bye Boris

Boris Johnson hoped to get his Brexit proposal approved today.

Things did not go as planned :

MPs have inflicted a humiliating defeat on Boris Johnson by passing a backbench amendment withholding their support from his Brexit deal.

Instead of backing Johnson’s agreement in a “meaningful vote”, MPs passed an amendment tabled by a cross-party group of MPs led by Oliver Letwin by 322 votes to 306 – a majority of 16.

The prime minister said he was not “daunted or dismayed” by the defeat, and would press ahead with tabling Brexit legislation next week. MPs are likely to take the opportunity to table a string of amendments, including on trying to force a second referendum.

The move by cross-party MPs was aimed at forcing Johnson to comply with the terms of the Benn act, which obliges him to write to the EU to request a Brexit delay, if he had not won approval for his deal by 11pm.

As to that letter to the EU requesting a delay?  Johnson is doing the absolute minimum as defined by law, resusing to sign the letter asking for an extension, and signing an accompanying letter asking for an extension not to be granted:

Boris Johnson has sent an unsigned letter to European council president Donald Tusk requesting a further Brexit delay beyond 31 October – accompanied by a signed one arguing against it.

The prime minister sent three letters: an unsigned photocopy of the request he was obliged to send under the Benn Act, an explanatory letter from the UK’s ambassador to the EU and a personal letter explaining why Downing Street did not want an extension.

In the signed message, he warned of the “corrosive impact” of a long delay, and that “a further extension would damage the interests of the UK and our EU partners, and the relationship between us”. He said Parliament had “missed the opportunity to inject momentum into the ratification process” yet remained confident Brexit legislation would be passed by 31 October.

The move sparked concerns the prime minister could face fresh court action. One former Tory cabinet minister said: “This is clearly against the spirit of the Benn Act and is not consistent with the assurances that were given by Downing Street to the Scottish courts about applying for an extension. It will also put government law officers in a very uncomfortable position.”

………

After the extension request was sent, Jeremy Corbyn accused Johnson of “petulant posturing and bluster” and said “his damaging deal was defeated today.”

“Petulant posturing and bluster,” is pretty much the defining feature of BoJo.

I’m expecting a crash-out. 

Amazingly Corrupt, and a Wimp

President Trump has awarded the 2020 Group of Seven summit of world leaders to his private company, scheduling the summit for June at his Trump National Doral Miami golf resort in Florida, the White House announced Thursday.

That decision is without precedent in modern American history: The president used his public office to direct a huge contract to himself.

Trump’s Doral resort — set among office parks near Miami International Airport — has been in sharp decline in recent years, according to the Trump Organization’s own records. Its net operating income fell 69 percent from 2015 to 2017; a Trump Organization representative testified last year that the reason was Trump’s damaged brand.

Now, the G-7 summit will draw hundreds of diplomats, journalists and security personnel to the resort during one of its slowest months of the year, when Miami is hot and the hotel is often less than 40 percent full. It will also provide a worldwide spotlight for the club.

Needless to say, pretty much everyone who heard this completely lost their sh%$, and as is his wont, Trump has reversed himself

President Trump on Saturday said he would no longer host next year’s Group of Seven (G-7) summit at his Doral resort after intense backlash from Democrats, ethics watchdogs and some Republican lawmakers.

The reversal came two days after the White House announced that Trump National Doral near Miami would host the gathering of world leaders next June. The decision was widely panned by critics who viewed it as a brazen move for the president to enrich his family brand.

Seriously, just impeach the motherf%$#er.

Prudent Move

When you consider the fact that Devin Nunes (Moo) leaked sensitive details of the House Intelligence Committee to the White House when he was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,* it seems prudent that the current committee leadership is considering concealing the identity of the various whistle-blowers from Republicans ont he committee.

After all, they have already shown that they cannot be trusted to handle classified information responsibly:

House Democrats are weighing extraordinary steps to secure testimony from a whistleblower whose complaint prompted their impeachment inquiry, masking his identity to prevent President Trump’s congressional allies from exposing the individual, according to three officials familiar with the deliberations.

The steps under consideration include having the whistleblower testify from a remote location and obscuring the individual’s appearance and voice, these officials said.

The efforts reflect Democrats’ deepening distrust of their GOP colleagues, whom they see as fully invested in defending a president who has attacked the whistleblower’s credibility and demanded absolute loyalty from Republicans.

………

In a further sign of the breakdown of comity, the committee majority restricted access to the visitor logbook after GOP staffers leaked names of individuals signing in for job interviews when the majority was hiring new staffers in early 2019, according to a committee aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely describe the situation.

That is amazingly chicken sh%$, but typical for for Republicans.

Their goal is to out the whistle-blower, and then allow their MAGA knuckle draggers to harass them and their family as a warning to others.

*https://www.wired.com/2017/04/devin-nunes-white-house-trump-surveillance/

Another CIA Officer is Lawyering Up

Someone else in the US state security apparatus has contacted the IG in preparation of making a whistle-blower complaint:

A second intelligence official who was alarmed by President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine is weighing whether to file his own formal whistle-blower complaint and testify to Congress, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The official has more direct information about the events than the first whistle-blower, whose complaint that Mr. Trump was using his power to get Ukraine to investigate his political rivals touched off an impeachment inquiry. The second official is among those interviewed by the intelligence community inspector general to corroborate the allegations of the original whistle-blower, one of the people said.

The inspector general, Michael Atkinson, briefed lawmakers privately on Friday about how he substantiated the whistle-blower’s account. It was not clear whether he told lawmakers that the second official was considering filing a complaint.

A new complaint, particularly from someone closer to the events, would potentially add further credibility to the account of the first whistle-blower, a C.I.A. officer who was detailed to the National Security Council at one point. He said that he relied on information from more than a half-dozen American officials to compile his allegations about Mr. Trump’s campaign to solicit foreign election interference that could benefit him politically.

I still think that Congress should have a broad impeachment investigation, because the complete lawlessness of this administration needs to be made public, but this does make things for Trump and his Evil Minions.

As an aside, excluding Trump’s rather incendiary tweets,  the reception that these whistle-blowers have received from the establishment and the intelligence agencies have been far more supportive than (for example) Binney, Drake, and Kiriakou.

The only logical explanation for this is that this (relatively) benign behavior is a result of their being more supportive of the whistle-blowing regarding the Ukraine than they are of whistle-blowing regarding torture, spying on American citizens, and going to war under false pretense.

Whistle-blowers are generally treated like sh%$, and this needs to change.