Month: November 2020

US Lawmakers Accuse Pompeo of Complicity in Israel’s ‘Violation of International Law’

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

US Lawmakers Accuse Pompeo of Complicity in Israel’s ‘Violation of International Law’

“Creeping annexation cannot be a policy that the US government supports if we wish to see peace in the region. This single act was the largest Israeli displacement of Palestinians in four years, behavior only made possible by continued silence from the American government.”

Austrian crackdown on Palestinian NGOs signals slide into tyranny

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Austrian crackdown on Palestinian NGOs signals slide into tyranny

A third explanation seems to relate to the Austrian government’s commitment to US President Donald Trump’s forceful push for the “deal of the century“, which requires the rapid removal of all impediments, including the numerous pro-Palestinian NGOs that operate throughout Europe and the West.

…

A favoured turn of phrase is that anyone who expresses support for the rights of Palestinians or works to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian refugees, or provides clothing for Palestinian orphans, must be pro-Hamas and subsequently seen as suspect. Besides violating the basic rights and freedoms of citizens, it is also highly dangerous, as it could potentially be exploited by extremists on all sides.

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For true stability, the scourge of extremism, all forms of extremism, must be overcome. To misdirect the struggle against the likes of Islamic State and far-right neo-Nazis, which all of society is united behind, to another struggle targeting peaceful elements that hold certain political views or carry out humanitarian and charitable work, is to divide society, and to hand an easy victory to extremists and terrorists.

20 YEARS OF TALKING WITH US PRESIDENTS HAVE BEEN A WASTE OF RUSSIAN BREATH

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

“HELLO BILL, THANK YOU BILL, GOODBYE BILL” – 20 YEARS OF TALKING WITH US PRESIDENTS HAVE BEEN A WASTE OF RUSSIAN BREATH

The release of the White House records of telephone and face-to-face conversations with Putin from 1999 to 2001 ought to have begun a decade ago, according to the archive notes at the Clinton presidential library. But declassification was delayed until 2019; public release was postponed until last month.

Clinton’s conversations with Yeltsin, and the opinion of Yeltsin which Clinton shared in secret with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, were revealed at the start of 2016. They told each other Yeltsin was an ingratiating fool whom they could rely on to do what they wanted so long as his health held. When it didn’t, they were happy to see him out of the way by staging, as they planned, his succession by Victor Chernomyrdin. That regime-changing scheme failed; read the story in the Clinton-Blair papers here.

$427 billion lost each year to tax dodging by corporations and the rich: landmark study

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

$427 billion lost each year to tax dodging by corporations and the rich: landmark study

To ensure countries around the world don’t continue to lose hundreds of billions of dollars each year which could go to strengthening their public health, infrastructure, and education systems, the Tax Justice Network said, governments must promptly take three far-reaching actions:

– Introduce an excess profit tax on multinational corporations making excess profits during the pandemic, such as global digital companies, in order to cut through profit shifting abuses.

– Introduce a wealth tax to fund the Covid-19 response and address the long term inequalities the pandemic has exacerbated, with punitive rates for opaquely owned offshore assets and a commitment between governments to eliminate this opacity.

– Establish a UN tax convention to ensure a global and genuinely representative forum to set consistent, multilateral standards for corporate taxation, for the necessary tax cooperation between governments, and to deliver comprehensive, multilateral tax transparency.

In tapping Blinken, Biden will be served by confidante with deep Jewish roots

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

In tapping Blinken, Biden will be served by confidante with deep Jewish roots

The disagreements referenced were largely over the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration in 2015 — while Blinken deputy secretary of state — and are likely to return to the forefront given Biden’s desire to re-enter the multilateral accord.

Blinken told ToI last month that a US re-entry would require Iran first returning to acquiescence with its obligations under the agreement: “compliance for compliance.”