A representative of Deutsche Bank said in a statement: “We remain committed to providing appropriate information to all authorised investigations and will abide by a court order regarding such investigations.”
Attorneys and representatives for the two sides were not immediately available for comment late on Monday.
Violent clashes erupted in the Venezuelan capital on Tuesday after opposition leader Juan Guaidó launched what appeared to be a military-backed challenge to President Nicolás Maduro, summoning thousands of people to the streets to demonstrate against the socialist leader.
US Senator Marco Rubio, who has strongly backed Guaido, issued a call for the military to rise up: “This is the moment for those military officers in #Venezuela to fulfil their constitutional oath & defend the legitimate interim President @jguaido, in this effort to restore democracy,” he tweeted. “You can write history in the hours & days ahead.”
So Fox News has the first opportunity to vet and revise the DOJ redacted Mueller Report. Did they use their or the DOJ’s Texta? (ODT)
ABC News and The New York Times report that White House officials have already been briefed on special counsel Robert Mueller’s highly anticipated report, which is expected to be made public on Thursday.
The news reports suggest the Justice Department gave the White House advance notice about the conclusions of the special counsel’s report on the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election.
ABC News reported that the White House received a “broad briefing” on the 400-page report that focused mostly on the “mechanics of the report itself.”
Trump’s advisers are concerned the report will reveal instances of possible obstruction of justice that aren’t already public, according to ABC News, which cited unnamed White House officials and sources close to the administration.
So, for the last few of us still here thinking about American wars, I would say that when it comes to off the charts, it’s possible that you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A Gallup poll has found that for the first time in many years, 50% of Americans favor the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
I’m not sure what the other 50% think the Palestinians should do. Just stay stateless and without the rights of citizenship? You do understand that they live under foreign military occupation, right? That in the West Bank if they have a dispute, they have to go to an Israeli court; that Israeli squatters can come in and steal their property and water at will; that if you don’t have citizenship in a state, it is sort of like being in jail permanently.
What is remarkable is that the public has swung toward a Palestinian state even though it is not the project of the current president. Earlier high points in this position were reached when Bush and Obama, respectively, were trying to achieve a peace accord.
The Intercept’s Senior Politics Editor Briahna Gray for a conversation with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about identity, race and class, and how these debates are likely to play out in the years ahead.
Trump has taken 4 companies and applied his inventive policies to them and sent them bankrupt those companies greatest success was screwing the lives of the people who were involved with them. Trump merely walked away. Mind you I bet he took money out first and left the debt. Nothing has changed really. (ODT)
A senior Trump administration official has told Bloomberg News that the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy would see its $2.3 billion budget slashed by about 70 percent, to $700 million, under President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget request, which will be released on Monday.
Conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation have called for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, to be eliminated entirely, saying energy innovation is best left up to the private sector.
Where the political DIRT BRIGADE is financed by Murdoch media Fox News (ODT)
Daily Caller which published AOC’s fake photo is financed by far-right Tucker Carlson. Carlson is a far-right commentator for the pro-Donald Trump Fox news.
“Many have recognized that @FoxNews has crossed a line beyond conservatism and into outright bigotry with their financing of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. Tucker finances the @DailyCaller, which posted fake nudes of me,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet responding to the news.
This needs repeating over and over again unaccounted for bases and 44,000 troops hides the truth about a very flawed country that declares it’s a Democracy. (ODT)
President Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from Syria means that the 2019 Base Structure Report will likely be the most accurate in years. For the first time since 2015, the Pentagon’s inventory of outposts will no longer be missing the al-Tanf garrison (or then again, maybe it will). But that still potentially leaves hundreds of off-the-books bases absent from the official rolls. Consider it one outpost down and who knows how many to go.
Officially, the Department of Defense (DoD) maintains 4,775 “sites,” spread across all 50 states, eight U.S. territories, and 45 foreign countries. A total of 514 of these outposts are located overseas, according to the Pentagon’s worldwide property portfolio
The Overseas Base Realignment and Closure Coalition notes that the United Statespossesses up to 95% of the world’s foreign military bases, while countries like France, Russia, and the United Kingdom have perhaps 10-20 foreign outposts each. China has just one.
However Unofficially
The Department of Defense even boasts that its “locations” include 164 countries. Put another way, it has a military presence of some sort in approximately 84% of the nations on this planet — or at least the DoD briefly claimed this. After TomDispatch inquired about the number on a new webpage designed to tell the Pentagon’s “story” to the general public, it was quickly changed. “We appreciate your diligence in getting to the bottom of this,” said Lieutenant Colonel Baldanza. “Thanks to your observations, we have updated defense.gov to say ‘more than 160.’”
These developments shed light on how the US justice works, at least when it comes to Russians. RT looks at some of the high-profile cases, involving Russian citizens who have been detained or imprisoned in the US.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. It doesn’t justify a reason for keeping it. Not all of Trump’s declarations are wrong but nor do they mollify the rightfull opposition to him him. (ODT)
Abandoning the American-backed Kurdish allies, Pentagon officials have argued, will hamper future efforts by the United States to gain the trust of local fighters, from Afghanistan to Yemen to Somalia.
It is worth remembering that even high-ranking military personnel from within the US government have ‘blown the whistle,” on behind-the-scenes tactics. In 2007 General Wesley Clark, a four star US General and NATO’s supreme allied commander, for example, listed a number of countries including Iraq, Iran and Syria that the US planned to take down long before 9/11, simply because they have “a good military and can take out governments.” (source)
Maj. Danny Sjursen is a U.S. Army officer and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan…
It was a good week for Isis. The pressure is off in Syria, while its vicious urban bombing campaign in Afghanistan prospectively faces less resistance. It now has a chance to regroup and regain the initiative to threaten the west again. Analysts fear it could be “Iraq all over again” – a reference to the way the jihadists came back from the dead and swept to power in Mosul and Raqqa after the US quit in 2011 with the job unfinished.
Trump “will lose the peace by withdrawing” tweeted retired US army general Jack Keane. “Isis will re-emerge, Iran a greater threat, will own all of Syria, Israel more in danger.”
Jeremy Scahill details the crimes of Bush, the sick propaganda of the corporate media memorials, and the trail of blood, death, and tears Bush leaves behind. Independent journalist Arun Gupta covers decades of Bush, from his time at the helm of the CIA to the presidency. Gupta discusses Bush’s support for Manuel Noriega and his eventual invasion of Panama, the pardoning of Iran-Contra criminals, the dirty wars in Central America, the support for Saddam Hussein, and the launch of the Gulf War. Acclaimed Iraqi poet and scholar Sinan Antoon describes his life under the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Saddam, the horrors of the Gulf War, and how Bush’s destruction of Iraqi civilian society led to the rise of ISIS.
Brown University’s Costs of War Project this month released a new estimate of the total death toll from the U.S. wars in three countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The numbers, while conservatively estimated, are staggering. Brown’s researchers estimate that at least 480,000 people have been directly killed by violence over the course of these conflicts, more than 244,000 of them civilians. In addition to those killed by direct acts violence, the number of indirect deaths — those resulting from disease, displacement, and the loss of critical infrastructure — is believed to be several times higher, running into the millions.
At first, Judy Melinek didn’t know how to respond when she learned about an NRA tweet last week telling doctors who dared enter the gun debate to stay “in their own lane.”
But two days later, when the forensic pathologist was on her way to the morgue to examine the body of one of the country’s many forgotten gunshot victims, the words came to her.
US doctors are breaking their silence on guns.
US doctors are breaking their silence on guns.
“Do you have any idea how many bullets I pull out of corpses weekly? This isn’t just my lane,” she tweeted on Friday. “It’s my [expletive] highway.”
Joseph Sakran, a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital, who suffers from a paralysed vocal cord after taking a stray bullet in the neck almost 25 years ago, refused to stay silent as the country’s latest mass shooting hit the news.
“I have Two Words for you Hell No! #Hell No for #ThousandOaks #Hell No for all black men that die & no one hears about it. #Hell No for all those that we still may be able to save,” Sakran wrote.
Melinek and Sakran are among countless medical professionals who have taken to Twitter in the past few days to fire back at the NRA – creating a viral response that has ricocheted around the Internet under the hashtags #thisisourlane and #thisismylane.
The Trumpsters are no accident and it will always be supported by Fox News because that’s where the cash flow is (ODT)
Sarah Sanders accused of sharing ‘doctored’ video to justify CNN reporter’s suspension
The White House press secretary — who is upfront in accusing media of sharing “fake news” — tweets a video which analysts claim contains extra frames to make it appear Jim Acosta struck a female intern.
Trump is enabling Voter Suppression, Terrorism while blaming Immigration for everything (ODT)
Key points:
The packages sent to Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama were intercepted during mail screening
A live explosive device and white powder was sent to CNN’s bureau in New York
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio says the incidents were “clearly an act of terrorism”
The head of CNN has slammed US President Donald Trump for his media attacks after police intercepted suspected pipe bombs sent to the network, former US president Barack Obama, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other public figures.
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The US has fallen off a cliff on global health statistics, plummeting an unprecedented 21 places in the world index. Moreover, the US is expected to fall even further behind over the next 20 years. Mellan Solly at The Smithsonian Magazine analyzed the numbers in a just-published Lancet article
Georgia secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp improperly purged more than 340,000 voters from the state’s registration rolls, an investigation charges.
Greg Palast, a journalist and the director of the Palast Investigative Fund, said an analysis he commissioned found 340,134 voters were removed from the rolls on the grounds that they had moved – but they actually still live at the address where they are registered.
What I am saying is that everyone accused has the right to defend themselves, to refute the evidence, to question its veracity, to question the character of a person who goes screwing around, takes money then asks for more, under the law. What I am saying is that the two sides of the story belong expressly and uniquely to the forum of law, and not the public domain.
The way we have things today, everyone ends up being a victim, whatever the outcome. Time to draw the line.
When corporate crime is rife in the US and Australia so why is the Australian PM focusing on the Unions? (ODT)
To avoid another crash, the Massachusetts senator says the U.S. must “force law-breaking bankers to trade in their pinstripe suits for orange jumpsuits.”
Where did America disappear to overnight the nation we once knew has vanished (ODT)
The United States will threaten to punish individuals who cooperate with the International Criminal Court in a potential investigation of US wartime actions in Afghanistan, according to people familiar with the decision.
Democrats in 2018 feel more positive toward socialism than capitalism, according to a Gallup Poll released Monday.
Fifty-seven percent of respondents indicated they had a positive view of socialism, a percentage that has not changed drastically since 2010. “The major change,” Gallup reports, “has been a less upbeat attitude toward capitalism, dropping to 47% positive this year—lower than in any of the three previous measures.”
As the United States continues to fuel Yemen’s worsening humanitarian crisis, and boast that it’s targeting al Qaeda in the impoverished nation (AQAP) with airstrikes, new reporting reveals that the U.S.- and U.K-backed Saudi coalition waging a bombing campaign there is recruiting al Qaeda fighters to join its ranks, and paying off the extremists to leave areas.
The militants were guaranteed a safe route out and allowed to keep weapons and cash looted from the city—up to $100 million by some estimates—according to five sources, including military, security, and government officials. […]
Coalition-backed forces moved in two days later, announcing that hundreds of militants were killed and hailing the capture as “part of joint international efforts to defeat the terrorist organizations in Yemen.”
“When it comes to large corporations, the supposedly ‘tough-on-crime’ Trump administration is undertaking an epic retreat from law enforcement—slashing fines, declining to bring cases against corporate wrongdoers, and cutting enforcement programs,” Public Citizen president Robert Weissman said in a statement on Wednesday.
At the time of this conversation, early February 2014, their enemy Viktor Yanukovych was still president. The leaked recording proved that the US and its Kiev embassy were actively involved in a regime change operation. The composition of the post-Maidan government corresponded exactly with US plans.
What few people knew at the time was that such levels of control over the composition of foreign governments had become standard practice for US embassies all over the world. As I could see on my very numerous travels around the Balkans in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the US ambassador was treated by the political class and the media in those countries not as the officially accredited representative of a foreign government but instead as an imperial governor whose pronunciamentos were more important than those of the national government.
It’s all well and good saying things like ‘let Nicaraguans decide their future for themselves without foreign interference’, but criticism of Nicaragua’s young activists, based purely on the grounds of their acceptance of foreign backing, misses the point. Doing so ignores the historic fact that the Sandinistas also received extensive foreign support from the Cuban intelligence service (DGI) during the revolution. The difference between the two, however, are the stringent financial and economic conditions that go hand-in-hand with US support. When it comes to Washington backing your fight, there’s no such thing as a free ride.
US President Donald Trump has claimed, without evidence, that newly released documents relating to the wiretapping of his onetime campaign adviser Carter Page show that intelligence agencies misled the courts that approved the warrant.
Donald Trump wants recognition as a PEACEMAKER otherwise known as a GUN (ODT)
Unless they end in disaster, most missions remain in the shadows, unknown to all but a few Americans. And yet last year alone, U.S. commandos deployed to 149 countries — about 75% of the nations on the planet. At the halfway mark of this year, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM or SOCOM), America’s most elite troops have already carried out missions in 133 countries. That’s nearly as many deployments as occurred during the last year of the Obama administration and more than double those of the final days of George W. Bush’s White House.
Economic errorism by the the worlds largest Industrial Military Complex. Ready to alter the biology of mankind (ODT)
Then the US delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.
American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.
When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.
The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.
The US has long sought to deny its hegemonic character while emphasizing its democratic character. It now seems all such pretence has been abandoned.
Now, with the US Department of Defense amending the mission statement of the US military from a ‘deter war’ stance to a ‘sustain American influence abroad’ stance all pretense, as mentioned, is over, allowing the country’s political and military elite to bask in the warm glow of hegemony unmasked.
I’m of a generation where the idea of the UN Security Council meeting without the US is hard to imagine. The conference is eloquent about how isolated and increasingly irrelevant Trump has made America. The rest of the world now sees Washington as an annoying problem to get around.
Moreover, think of it. This meeting involves three of America’s closest military and economic allies–Britain, France and Germany– having been pushed by Trump into the same corner with Russia and China in seeking to have better relations with Iran. I guess Trump has taught *them* a lesson.
Trump is ordering the US Department of the Treasury to slap third party sanctions on non-US firms who do business with Iran. Companies like Total, S.A., the French oil giant, who do business with the US, cannot afford to buck the Treasury Department and so are pulling out of planned Iran investments.
Warmongers walk away with the purse leaving the rest to pay and Australia is a victim as well. (ODT)
Even if Washington stopped spending on its wars tomorrow, it will still, thanks to those conflicts, owe more than $8 trillion in interest alone by the 2050s.
Never before has this country relied so heavily on deficit spending to pay for its conflicts. The consequences are expected to be ruinous for the long-term fiscal health of the U.S., but they go far beyond the economic. Massive levels of war-related debt will have lasting repercussions of all sorts. One potentially devastating effect, a new study finds, will be more societal inequality.
Part 1
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