Nov 232019
 
 November 23, 2019  Posted by at 2:14 pm Finance, Primers Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  15 Responses »


Salvador Dali Back the girl 1926

 

It wouldn’t be the first time we ask ourselves what American journalism has come to, but that question sure appears relevant today. There are again new accusations floating around about Trump. And of course we are all weary by now, after the Russiagate bomb and the Ukraine fizzle, but okay, let’s take a look.

There is a newfangled poetically named “ethics watchdog” named American Oversight, which has received some documents after a FOIA request. And everybody’s talking about it! So it must be real interesting, right? The word bombshell comes to mind. Or at least, the minds of much of the press. There’s the BBC:

The US State Department has released records relating to the Trump administration’s dealings with Ukraine. Documents were released to the ethics watchdog American Oversight after a freedom of information request. The records show repeated contacts between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Mr Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. US ties with Ukraine are at the centre of an impeachment investigation against Mr Trump.

The president is accused of withholding aid to Ukraine that had been approved by Congress to pressure the country into investigating his political rival Joe Biden. Mr Giuliani has been accused of trying to discredit former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch while running a shadow US foreign policy on Ukraine. There have been questions over what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo knew.

The records show Mr Pompeo and Mr Giuliani repeatedly spoke to one another – although the topics of those conversations remain unknown. Emails among the documents suggest the pair spoke on the phone on 27 and 29 March.

And the Guardian:

Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was in contact with secretary of state Mike Pompeo in the months before the US ambassador to Ukraine was abruptly recalled, according to a cache of documents released on Friday. The state department released the documents to the group American Oversight in response to a freedom of information lawsuit. They show that Pompeo talked with Giuliani on 26 March and 29 March.


Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, said the documents reveal a clear paper trail from Giuliani to Trump to Pompeo in order to enable the smear campaign against the now ousted envoy in Kyiv, Marie Yovanovitch. “We can see why Mike Pompeo has refused to release this information to Congress. It reveals a clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to secretary Pompeo to facilitate Giuliani’s smear campaign against a US ambassador,” he said.

As well as NBC:

The allegations of a pressure campaign by Trump to get the Ukrainians to announce investigations into a conspiracy theory about the 2016 presidential election and the Bidens are central to the impeachment inquiry into whether Trump abused the power of his office for personal political gain.

The documents released Friday appear to confirm that Pompeo and Giuliani spoke on the phone on March 26, and that another call was scheduled between the two men for March 29 and that it took place. One email appears to show Trump’s former personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, helping to connect Giuliani to Pompeo after there was trouble establishing a connection.

The documents do not say what Giuliani and Pompeo discussed. The March 29 call was scheduled for 20 minutes but lasted just four minutes, according to the documents, and the March 26 call was also just minutes long, the emails show.

When I first saw this all this morning I thought: let it go, and I’m thinking just that again right now. Look, Pompeo and Giuliani talking to each other for just minutes (and to their boss!) is hardly a crime. Unless they talk about committing crimes, but you don’t even know what was discussed! That a group which calls itself nonpartisan connects these calls to Giuliani’s alleged smear campaign against Yovanovich is a bit more puzzling.

Because a president doesn’t need any reason to fire an ambassador. He gets the permission to do that the moment he’s first elected and then inaugurated. He doesn’t have to explain. Getting Giuliani in there doesn’t look like Trump’s best moment, but it’s inconsequential from a legal point of view.

Another allegation that’s being repeated is that Giuliani et al were looking to dig up dirt against Joe Biden and his family, with an eye to the 2020 election. But, again, is that so? Wasn’t perhaps finding out what the most corrupt company in the world’s third-most corrupt country, which receives billions in US aid, was up to in 2016, or today for that matter, the real intention?

Why should we believe it was about 2020, and not 2016? Are there perhaps American interests who don’t want Burisma investigated? And are they perhaps behind the accusation that links that investigation to 2020, so there won’t be an investigation? Shouldn’t we all want to find out what went on?

 

Another story connected to this is that Minority House Leader David Nunes in Vienna met with Victor Shokin, the former Ukraine prosecutor who was fired mere hours after Joe Biden demanded he be. Moon of Alabama asked earlier today on Twitter if anyone has ever seen evidence that Shokin was corrupt, as Biden and others have claimed. I come up empty on that one. Here’s NBC on Nunes’s trip:

The attorney for an indicted associate of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer says his client is willing to tell Congress that Rep. Devin Nunes, R-California, met with Ukraine’s former top prosecutor about investigating the activities of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

An impeachment inquiry is being conducted over allegations Trump held up aid to Ukraine to encourage its leaders to launch an investigation into Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who worked as an energy executive in that country. As vice president, Joe Biden joined a chorus of global pressure for Ukraine to fire then-state prosecutor Victor Shokin.

Trump and Nunes, his chief defender as a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee that has taken a lead role in the impeachment inquiry, say Joe Biden wanted Shokin out to protect his son when Hunter Biden’s employer, Burisma, was under suspicion. Shokin himself claims he was fired at the behest of the former vice president to ease pressure on Burisma and Hunter Biden.

Joseph A. Bondy, an attorney for Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, confirmed that his client was willing to testify before Congress that Nunes met with Shokin. “I can confirm that Victor Shokin told Lev Parnas that he had met with Nunes in Vienna in late 2018, and that Derek Harvey informed that they were investigating the activities of Joe and Hunter Biden related to Burisma,” Bondy told NBC News. Derek Harvey is Nunes’ investigator.

There are a lot of people out there who don’t like Devin Nunes. Which is fine. But claiming that he committed a crime or something in that vein just by talking, with his investigator, to Shokin about Burisma, that’s a whole other thing.

This entire topic appears to be founded on an idea that many people have convinced themselves and others of, that the Trump administration doesn’t have the right to investigate what happened in the past, because it might affect the future. It would seem they DO have that right, though.

It would also seem that they couldn’t rely on existing diplomatic staff in Ukraine and Europe to investigate Burisma. Schiff’s impeachment witnesses made that abundantly clear. So if they do investigate on their own, are they breaking laws, or are they merely breaking a protocol that suits some people just fine?

American Oversight has promised much more: “The evidence is only going to get worse for the administration as its stonewall strategy collapses in the face of court orders..”. Alright, fine, let’s see it. But it had better be better than this. You have to come with facts. Certainly after two failed investigations.

“Giuliani talked to Pompeo” may be a fact, but if you have no idea what they talked about, it’s a useless fact, that at most you can use to whip up more empty frenzy. And we know, it’s clickbait, and it sells papers and TV ads, but really, what are we watching, what has American journalism come to? What happened to finding evidence first, and reporting on it after?

 

 

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Nov 162019
 
 November 16, 2019  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  4 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Coffee maker 1943

 

The Brennan Dossier: All About a Prime Mover of Russiagate (Maté)
The Deep State’s Deep State Department (Kunstler)
Dems Switched From “Quid Pro Quo” To “Bribery” Because Of A Focus Group (HA)
Bloomberg To Spend $100m On Anti-Trump Ads In Battleground States (Hill)
Obama Cautions 2020 Hopefuls Against Going Too Far Left (Hill)
Obama Left An Ambassador to Die (PJMedia)
When Did Ukraine Become a ‘Critical Ally’? (Buchanan)
Aviation Academic: I Wouldn’t Ride A 737 MAX No Matter What Boeing Says (ND)
Arbuthnot Out as Assange’s Judge, Says Wikileaks Lawyer Jen Robinson (CN)
Julian Assange’s Lawyer Says His Health Is ‘Seriously Deteriorating’ (SMH)

 

 

Aaron Maté has delved deep into the material. John Durham could use this.

The Brennan Dossier: All About a Prime Mover of Russiagate (Maté)

In the waning days of the Obama administration, the U.S. intelligence community produced a report saying Russian President Vladimir Putin had tried to swing the 2016 election to Donald Trump. The January 2017 report, called an Intelligence Community Assessment, followed months of leaks to the media that had falsely suggested illicit ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin while also revealing that such contacts were the subject of a federal investigation. Its release cast a pall of suspicion over Trump just days before he took office, setting the tone for the unfounded allegations of conspiracy and treason that have engulfed his first term.

The ICA’s blockbuster finding was presented to the public as the consensus view of the nation’s intelligence community. As events have unfolded, however, it now seems apparent that the report was largely the work of one agency, the CIA, and overseen by one man, then-Director John Brennan, who closely directed its drafting and publication with a small group of hand-picked analysts.

Nearly three years later, as the public awaits answers from two Justice Department inquiries into the Trump-Russia probe’s origins, and as impeachment hearings catalyzed by a Brennan-hired anti-Trump CIA analyst unfold in Congress, it is clear that Brennan’s role in propagating the collusion narrative went far beyond his work on the ICA. A close review of facts that have slowly come to light reveals that he was a central architect and promoter of the conspiracy theory from its inception.

Read more …

“The president dispatched Mr. Giuliani to Ukraine because he didn’t trust the State lifers to get to the bottom of the mischief emanating from Kiev during the 2016 election..”

The Deep State’s Deep State Department (Kunstler)

For now, it comes down to this: the US State Department is at war with the White House. State’s allies in the Democratic majority congress want to help overthrow the occupant of the White House because he’s interfering in the department’s foreign policy. The lifers at State are the same ones who executed a coup in 2014 against Ukraine’s government and threw out the elected president Victor Yanukovych because he tilted to join a Russian-backed regional customs union rather than NATO. State’s diplomatic lifers are old hands at coups. Now they’re at it at home, right here in the USA.

Ever since the Maidan Revolution of 2014, they have worked sedulously to exert control over Ukrainian affairs. And they especially can’t stand that the recently elected president Zelensky declared that he wants to improve his country’s relationship with next-door-neighbor (and ex-sovereign) Russia. The occupant of the White House, Mr. Trump, had often expressed a similar interest to improve the USA’s relations with Russia. State would prefer to amp up a new cold war. Mr. Trump has some nerve interfering with that!

The lifers at State also have something to hide: their exertions to connive with Ukraine government officials they controlled to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election in favor of their former boss, Mrs. Clinton. The current impeachment spectacle is an attempt to pitch a smokescreen over that embarrassing mess, which includes the CIA’s and FBI’s efforts to blame Russia for their own illegal interventions in the 2016 election — the heart of the three-year impeachment narrative. The Joe-and-Hunter Biden affair is the left anterior descending artery in that heart.

The current testimony in the House Intel Committee raises another question. Whose back-channel diplomats are legitimate in US foreign policy: Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolf Giuliani, or State’s own boy, billionaire freelance international political adventurer George Soros? The president dispatched Mr. Giuliani to Ukraine because he didn’t trust the State lifers to get to the bottom of the mischief emanating from Kiev during the 2016 election, in which State lifers played an active role, along with Mr. Soros and his agents — in particular an outfit called the AntiCorruption Action Center, jointly funded by Mr. Soros and State (i.e. US taxpayers).

Read more …

Ha ha ha!

Dems Switched From “Quid Pro Quo” To “Bribery” Because Of A Focus Group (HA)

WaPo reported on it last night: “Several Democrats have stopped using the term “quid pro quo,” instead describing “bribery” as a more direct summation of Trump’s alleged conduct. The shift came after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee conducted focus groups in key House battlegrounds in recent weeks, testing messages related to impeachment. Among the questions put to participants was whether “quid pro quo,” “extortion” or “bribery” was a more compelling description of Trump’s conduct. According to two people familiar with the results, which circulated among Democrats this week, the focus groups found “bribery” to be most damning. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the results have not been made public.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a House Intelligence Committee member, kicked off the effort to retire “quid pro quo” from the Democratic vocabulary during a Sunday appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he said “it’s probably best not to use Latin words” to explain Trump’s actions.”

It makes me laugh to think of Dems needing a focus group to explain to them that “bribery,” a concept even kindergarteners grasp as wrong, is a bit more effective than “quid pro quo” when trying to turn public opinion against the president. That’s so elementary that I assumed they switched to bribery in their messaging for legal reasons, because it’s an impeachable offense specified in the Constitution. No more hiding by the GOP behind the vagueness of the term “high crimes and misdemeanors”! Pelosi was about to put them on the spot: This is bribery, son. It’s right there in black and white in Article II. If the facts are there, you must vote to remove.

But no, turns out she and Schiff needed a group of average joes to officially confirm that bribe sounds worse than some Latin term known mainly to lawyers. I’m surprised Trump hasn’t highlighted the focus-grouping on Twitter yet. Not only does it underline that impeachment is a political process, being run by people who stand to gain electorally by investigating him, but it leaves Democrats open to the claim that they’re not just tweaking the terminology based on public opinion, they’re tweaking the actual charges. If the facts, which haven’t changed materially since this started, told a straightforward story of bribery all along then why was the less definitive “abuse of power” cited until recently as the core claim against POTUS?

Read more …

States for sale.

Bloomberg To Spend $100m On Anti-Trump Ads In Battleground States (Hill)

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to drop $100 million on anti-Trump ads in key swing states during the 2020 election. The digital ad campaign will focus on Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and will run starting Friday through the end of the primary season, according to multiple news reports. The ads will not feature Bloomberg himself. “Mike believes that Trump is an existential threat to the country,” Bloomberg spokesman Jason Schechter told CNN. “He’s not waiting to take on the President, he’s starting now. This is all hands on deck.”


The announcement of the ad campaign comes as Bloomberg takes steps to plunge into the crowded 2020 Democratic primary field, a move that could potentially upheave the party’s presidential nominating contest. The former mayor filed paperwork to appear in the Alabama and Arkansas primaries, but did not file paperwork for the crucial New Hampshire primary by the Friday deadline. The $100 million investment could serve as a counterbalance to President Trump’s gargantuan war chest – the president and the Republican National Committee combined to raise $308 million so far this year, and started November with $156 million in cash reserves.

Read more …

Odd. He hasn’t said a word so far and now this? Paving the way for Hillary? Piling on Sanders AGAIN?

Obama Cautions 2020 Hopefuls Against Going Too Far Left (Hill)

Former President Obama cautioned the crowded Democratic 2020 primary field from moving too far to the left, saying voters could be turned off by messages calling for massive societal and government transformations. “Even as we push the envelope and we are bold in our vision, we also have to be rooted in reality,” Obama said at a meeting of fundraisers, according to The New York Times, which was in attendance at the event. “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it.” The former president cited health care and immigration as issues where certain proposals from 2020 contenders, none of whom he mentioned by name, may be beyond the pale for many voters.


His comments could be implied as critiques of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who have called for a “political revolution” and “big structural change,” introducing policies that would eliminate private health insurance and place a moratorium on deportations. Obama, who is still widely liked among the Democratic Party faithful, recognized that 2020 candidates would have to move beyond his White House’s platforms, but that there could be a limit to how far left the contenders’ plans could go. “I don’t think we should be deluded into thinking that the resistance to certain approaches to things is simply because voters haven’t heard a bold enough proposal and if they hear something as bold as possible then immediately that’s going to activate them,” he said.

Read more …

“..Yovanovitch wouldn’t even had known about the tweet until after her testimony had Schiff not posted the tweets in the first place..”

Obama Left An Ambassador to Die (PJMedia)

“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” Trump tweeted. “She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.” “They call it ‘serving at the pleasure of the President,'” Trump continued. “The U.S. now has a very strong and powerful foreign policy, much different than proceeding administrations. It is called, quite simply, America First!” Trump also noted that he’s done far more for Ukraine than his predecessor than Obama.

This triggered Adam Schiff. “What we saw today is it wasn’t enough that Ambassador Yovanovitch was smeared. It wasn’t enough she was attacked. It wasn’t enough that she was recalled for no reason, at least no good reason. But we saw today witness intimidation in real-time by the president of United States,” Schiff said. “Once again going after this dedicated and respected career public servant in an effort to not only chilled her but to chill others who may come forward. We take this kind of witness intimidation and obstruction of the inquiry very seriously,” he added. Really? First of all, Yovanovitch wouldn’t even had known about the tweet until after her testimony had Schiff not posted the tweets in the first place, but regardless, where’s the intimidation? I can’t see any. If Schiff was taking this seriously, he wouldn’t be lobbing absurd charges for the purpose of piling on more ridiculous charges against Trump hoping something will stick.

But what really gets me is how it’s been almost seven years since Barack Obama left one of his ambassadors to die in a terrorist attack on a U.S. consulate, and the same people who defended the Obama administration endlessly over that, are feigning outrage over Trump’s tweet expressing his opinion. Democrats have been crying “impeach!” over everything for years, and now every time Trump expresses an opinion, we’re hearing “intimidation.” The same party that defended the Obama administration’s failure to protect our consulate in Libya from an attack that claimed four American lives, including that of a U.S. ambassador, are now trying to tell us that we should be outraged over a harmless tweet—a tweet that, regardless of what one thinks of the content, was written after Yovanovitch started testifying, and as far as Trump knew, she wouldn’t have even had an opportunity to see until well after her testimony concluded? A tweet that she’d have been oblivious to had Schiff not brought it up.

Read more …

“Despite constant pressure from Sen. John McCain and our neocons to bring Ukraine into NATO, wiser heads on both sides of the Atlantic rejected the idea.”

When Did Ukraine Become a ‘Critical Ally’? (Buchanan)

Indeed, Ukraine has never been a NATO ally or a “critical ally.” Three decades ago, George H.W. Bush implored Ukraine not to set out on a course of “suicidal nationalism” by declaring independence from the Russian Federation. Despite constant pressure from Sen. John McCain and our neocons to bring Ukraine into NATO, wiser heads on both sides of the Atlantic rejected the idea. Why? Because the “territorial integrity and sovereignty” of Ukraine is not now and has never been a vital interest of ours that would justify a U.S. war with a nuclear-armed Russia. Instead, it was the avoidance of such a war that was the vital interest that nine U.S. presidents, from Truman to Bush I, secured, despite such provocations as the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the building of the Berlin Wall.

In February 2014, the elected pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown by U.S.-backed protesters in Maidan Square, cheered on by McCain. This was direct U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Ukraine. Victoria Nuland of the State Department conceded that we had dumped billions into Ukraine to reorient its regime to the West. To Vladimir Putin, the Kyiv coup meant the loss of Russia’s historic Black Sea naval base at Sebastopol in Crimea. Rather than let that happen, Putin effected an uprising, Crimea’s secession from Ukraine, and the annexation by Russia. In eastern Ukraine, the pro-Russian Donbass rose up in rebellion against the pro-NATO regime in Kyiv. Civil war broke out. We backed the new regime. Russia backed the rebels. And five years later, the war goes on. Why is this our fight?

During the Obama years, major lethal aid was denied to Ukraine. The White House reasoned that arming Ukraine would lead to an escalation of the war in the east, greater Russian intervention, defeat for Kyiv, and calls for the U.S. to intervene militarily, risking a war with Russia. Not until Trump became president did lethal aid begin flowing to Ukraine, including Javelin anti-tank missiles.

Read more …

The FAA is getting into trouble.

Aviation Academic: I Wouldn’t Ride A 737 MAX No Matter What Boeing Says (ND)

Monash University aviation expert and co-author of Up in the Air Greg Bamber said that he would not feel safe flying on the 737 MAX under current circumstances. “I would not be getting on one at the moment,” Professor Bamber said. “Boeing has made several earlier forecasts of the planes being back in the air very soon which it did not keep. “I think there’s a lot of ground still to cover.” Boeing’s behaviour has created a “trust deficit”, Professor Bamber said. “They are saying that the first people that will be flying on these planes will be Boeing executives and airline executives, and they will be on a big push to try to reassure the public and on a charm offensive to convince people to trust Boeing again,” he said.

He outlined two ongoing areas of concern. The first is the technical issue of fixing the fault with the 737 MAX planes – the MCAS system, which was designed to prevent the plane stalling, but was not disclosed to pilots – and led to the Lion Air and Ethiopian Air tragedies. Boeing misled both “the airlines it was selling these planes to”, and the pilots, by not disclosing the new MCAS system and putting it in their manuals, Professor Bamber said. “Boeing did this for commercial reasons, putting profits before people. They wanted to pretend that the Boeing 737 MAX 8 was not a new aircraft on a new system, and they wanted to persuade airlines to buy it on the grounds that pilots wouldn’t need new training,” he said. “Just fixing the technical issue is one thing … but once that’s done and the regulators are convinced that has been done, it is then going to be necessary to try to fix the trust deficit and retrain the pilots and convince the travelling public that the planes are safe.”

The second issue is that the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) in the United States allowed Boeing to act with little oversight and “almost self-regulate”, Professor Bamber said. “The FAA In the US is also to some extent at fault here,” he said. “The primary fault is with Boeing, but the American authority had been captured by Boeing. The FAA allowed Boeing to almost self-regulate.” Boeing has a “major challenge ahead”, Professor Bamber said. “Even if the FAA does reverse the grounding its likely that other regulators in Australia, Asia, and Europe, won’t necessarily follow suit any longer. “They will want to take time to do their own investigations because they now have a trust deficit with the FAA.”

Read more …

It took her all this time to recuse herself. But they have more of these people.

Arbuthnot Out as Assange’s Judge, Says Wikileaks Lawyer Jen Robinson (CN)

WikiLeaks lawyer Jen Robinson said Lady Emma Arbuthnot, the judge presiding over Julian Assange’s extradition proceedings who is embroiled in a conflict of interest, will no longer be be sitting on the case. Lady Emma Arbuthnot, the Westminster chief magistrate enmeshed in a conflict of interest, will no longer be presiding over the extradition proceedings of imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, said WikiLeaks lawyer Jen Robinson, at an event in Sydney on Friday night. “Yes, there was some controversy about her sitting on the case,” Robinson said. “She won’t be sitting on the case going forward.” Robinson told Australian journalist Quentin Dempster at the event that she was “not sure” who would take over from Arbuthnot.

Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis of the Daily Maverick reported on Friday: “The son of Lady Emma Arbuthnot, the Westminster chief magistrate overseeing the extradition proceedings of Julian Assange, is the vice-president and cyber-security adviser of a firm heavily invested in a company founded by GCHQ and MI5 which seeks to stop data leaks, it can be revealed. Alexander Arbuthnot’s employer, the private equity firm Vitruvian Partners, has a multimillion-pound investment in Darktrace, a cyber-security company which is also staffed by officials recruited directly from the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

These intelligence agencies are behind the US government’s prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secret documents. Darktrace has also had access to two former UK prime ministers and former US President Barack Obama. The revelations raise further concerns about potential conflicts of interests and appearance of bias concerning Lady Arbuthnot and the ties of her family members to the UK and US military and intelligence establishments. Lady Arbuthnot’s husband is Lord James Arbuthnot, a former UK defence minister who has extensive links to the UK military community.

Read more …

“The Australian government has not, as far as I am aware, raised any objection to the treatment of Julian Assange by the US or his indictment under the espionage act”

Julian Assange’s Lawyer Says His Health Is ‘Seriously Deteriorating’ (SMH)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange remains ill and effectively isolated in a high-security prison alongside inmates facing charges for violent offences and terrorism, his lawyer Jennifer Robinson told a Sydney audience on Friday night. “I was with Julian on Tuesday… and his health is obviously significantly and seriously deteriorating,” said Ms Robinson, a prominent human rights advocate and barrister who has defended Mr Assange since 2010. Ms Robinson was in Sydney as a guest of the global association of Writers, PEN International, which was marking its Day of the Imprisoned Writer in support of free speech.

She said that during his seven years inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Mr Assange had not been able to access proper sunlight or space to exercise and the UK had refused permission to let him access outside medical care, forcing him to “choose between his right to asylum and his right to health”. Mr Assange, 48, has now completed his sentence for breaching bail as a result of that asylum. He is being held in Belmarsh Prison outside London as the British government considers an extradition application from the United States over allegations he conspired to break into a classified Pentagon computer. Should he be convicted he faces 175 years in prison. His hearing will be heard in February.

Ms Robinson said Mr Assange should be supported as a journalist and publisher for his release of millions of pages of secret US military and diplomatic cables, and criticised Australian governments of both parties for failing to intervene on his behalf. “The Australian government has not, as far as I am aware, raised any objection to the treatment of Julian Assange by the United States or an objection to his indictment under the espionage act,” she said. “One wonders, had the Australian government raised their concern about this treatment of an Australian citizen whether the Trump administration would have pursued these charges.” She said that it would have a devastating effect on free speech around the world if the US was able to successfully prosecute a journalist who was not a US citizen for actions he had not undertaken on US soil.

Read more …

 

David Graeber tweeted: “if there was anything that really set my thinking on the path that led to the bullshit jobs book, it was probably this brilliant meme”

 

 

 

 

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Nov 152019
 


Johannes Vermeer View of Delft 1660-61

 

Roger Stone convicted on all counts. I’m reading through them and see WikiLeaks all over. And yes, he may have been lying about all sorts of things, his contacts with Randy Credico, what he knew when etc etc. But one thing must again be made clear: Stone never had any direct contact with Assange, let alone in some plot to release information that could damage Hillary Clinton.

We can be sure of that because as I’ve said multiple times, Assange has said that did not take place, and Assange couldn’t afford to lie, because the slightest little lie would have turned potential whistleblowers (the real kind, not the fake CIA agent one we see today) away from leaking anything to WikiLeaks. And WikiLeaks was Julian’s life’s work.

He would never have risked that, and he didn’t need to. Moreover, in 2016, the time the Roger Stone story plays, he was still in the Ecuador embassy in London, relatively secure and with all the equipment he wanted at his disposal. The Stone verdict reads like a verdict of WikiLeaks too, but only on the surface, and that only because Assange has been silenced.

Robert Mueller in his utterly failed investigation at the end still left two strains open which he insinuated were true, but which both were possible only because the accused were unable or unlikely to defend themselves: the “Russians”, in particular a group of 13 unnamed GRU “hackers”, and Julian Assange. As I said back then, Mueller is a coward and a liar for doing that, and for not acknowledging what a failure he is.

 

Other than that, today the ‘hearing’ of Marie Yovanovich, former US ambassador to Ukraine, when combined with Wednesday’s ‘testimonies’ of Bill Taylor (career diplomat and acting United States ambassador to Ukraine) and George Kent (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs), has started to paint a pretty solid picture of what is going on.

That is, the Deep State or whatever you want to call it, represented by all these people, was dead set on continuing the US policies that led to the Maidan coup against elected president Yanukovich. It involved Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pratt, plus scores of other “public servants”.

It was always directed towards antagonizing Vladimir Putin, and they expected to be able to keep doing it. When Trump came and said: wait a minute, their rear guard was mobilized. And now we have this whole Quid Pro Quo drama, which Nancy Pelosi yesterday renamed Bribery, because too many simple Americans can’t even understand one single Latin term, and because it sounds so much more ominous.

But really, I said it before, Adam Schiff opened on Wednesday with talk of Russia aggression, “In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation’s embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin’s desire to rebuild a Russian empire.”, while Taylor followed right behind with “If we withdraw or suspend or threaten to withdraw our security assistance” to Ukraine, it sends a “message to Ukrainians, but its just as important to the Russians who are looking for any sign of weakness”.

That’s the tenor that Marie Yovanovich also operates within. It’s a wolf pack, it’s a state within a state. They all owe their status and salaries to antagonizing Russia. But it was them, representing the US, who started the Maidan mayhem in 2013/14, not Russia. Nuland herself admitted the US spent $5 billion on that coup. She just used another word.

And then Putin outsmarted them all by taking Sevastopol, and he did it without a single shot being fired. Boy, they must have hated that. But many of them still remained in place, or in similar places, and that’s exactly what Trump didn’t want any longer. As we speak, Schiff can try and present Yovanovich as some sort of brave life long “servant” to the US, but she hasn’t exactly been complimenting her new president.

 

Is it outrageous for a president to want to have people who represent him/her, instead of holdovers from other administrations, who don’t? Of course not, a president has full authority in firing and appointing ambassadors. I’m more asking myself: what took you so long?

Trump today has a choice of continuing the failed Obama approach in Ukraine, trying to establish the country as some stronghold vs Russia and even get it into NATO, or he can initiate peace talks with Putin and Zelensky and other leaders in the region. Which choice would you prefer? “Putin’s desire to rebuild a Russian empire”, as Schiff put it, is nonsense. Putin simply doesn’t want Ukraine, which borders Russia, to be used as threat to his country.

He doesn’t want missiles stationed there etc. And the people he supports in the Donbass region? They’re Russian nationals, who got caught up on the “wrong” side of a new border in the downfall of the Soviet Union. If he had let them down, his entire nation would have never forgiven him. Not a hard choice to make.

Of course, in the background noise to all of this, there’s the fact that Russia has far surpassed the US in arms manufacturing. For one tenth of the cost they produce weapons that are 10 times more effective. That what the Deep State and its platoons of “public servants” like Bill Taylor and Marie Yovanovich hate most of all.

And they would never clamor for toning it down a little, for peace negotiations, for detente. Because that would threaten all of their paychecks.

 

And that is what I got from Wednesday’s and today’s ‘hearings’, that is the picture that shines through. It doesn’t mean to me that Trump is such a great president or anything, god almighty no, but that even if or when he tries to tone things down, this is the backdraft he gets. And that is mighty scary if you ask me.

Marie Yovanovich is sitting there complaining about some conspiracy against her, while A) Trump has every right to fire her and B) she’s been talking trash against him behind his back. If Trump loses in 2020 and the Dems want to restore that whole Deep State thing, by all means, and it’ll be legal too. But what’s happening now is not.

Adam Schiff and the Democrats are trying to make it look as if Trump does all these crazy and illegal things to try and influence the next election, while at the same time they have spent 2+ years and $40 million on the Mueller report that came up yawningly empty, and seamlessly went into Ukrainegate, which is also as hollow as a black hole.

Just switched on the footage again, and there’s some woman reciting how Yovanovich has 33 years of service, and it’s terrible she was fired from her job, but wouldn’t that always be, and isn’t it always, dependent on a person’s political leanings? That after 33 years you may not be able, or trusted, to properly represent a new president’s views? Should that president then step down because you did all those years or should you look for another job?

But not, Yovanovich presents herself as non-partisan. Well, opinions on that vary. And the president the American people elected doesn’t think she is. And that’s what counts today. What Bill Taylor and Marie Yovanovich show us this week, is that there may not just be a Deep State, but also a Shallow State.

Moreover, there is no such a thing as a president for life in the US and for very good reason. So why all the fuss about Yovanovich not being able to be an ambassador for life? I just don’t get it.

 

 

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Nov 142019
 


Pablo Picasso Pitcher of flowers on a table 1942

 

The Impeachment Pantomime (Patrick Lawrence)
The Real Ukraine Controversy: An Activist US Embassy (Solomon)
Trump Impeachment Inquiry: New Claims Amid Public Hearing (BBC)
Trickster Adam Schiff Conjuring ‘Guilt’ Out Of Thin Air (NYPost)
Trump Impeachment Is Blueprint To Overthrow Government From Within (Rives)
Here Are The Payments To Hunter Biden, Leaked From Ukraine (CDMedia)
Lawmaker Posts Cryptic Jeffrey Epstein Message During Impeachment Hearing (G.)
The Holy-Cow Moment for Subprime Auto Loans (WS)
Le Mesurier Gets Cross (Craig Murray)
Greek Refugee Camp For 640 People Is Found To Be Housing 3,745 (G.)

 

 

I have too much to say about the impeachment thing to do it here, I’ll do that separately later. Meanwhile, a few strong commentaries:

The Impeachment Pantomime (Patrick Lawrence)

The impeachment probe starts to take on a certain reek. It starts to look as if contempt for Trump takes precedence over democratic process — a dangerous priority. Sperry quotes Fred Fleitz, a former National Security Council official, thus: “Everyone knows who he is. CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times knows. Congress knows. The White House knows…. They’re hiding him because of his political bias.” Here we come to another question. If everyone knows the whistleblower’s identity, why have the corporate media declined to name him? There can be but one answer to this question: If Ciaramella’s identity were publicized and his professional record exposed, the Ukrainegate narrative would instantly collapse into a second-rate vaudeville act — farce by any other name, although “hoax” might do, even if Trump has made the term his own.


There is another half to this burlesque. While Schiff and his House colleagues chicken-scratch for something, anything that may justify a formal impeachment, a clear, documented record emerges of Joe Biden’s official interventions in Ukraine in behalf of Burisma Holdings, the gas company that named Hunter Biden to its board in March 2014 — a month, it is worth noting, after the U.S.–cultivated coup in Kiev. There is no thought of scrutinizing Biden’s activities by way of an official inquiry. In its way, this, too, reflects upon the pantomime of the impeachment probe. Are there sufficient grounds to open an investigation? Emphatically there are. Two reports published last week make this plain by any reasonable measure.

Read more …

Nobody appears to know more about the Ukraine boondoggle than John Solomon. But the Hill seems to have dumped him. He publishes on his own site now.

The Real Ukraine Controversy: An Activist US Embassy (Solomon)

The first time I ever heard the name of U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was in early March of this year. It did not come from a Ukrainian or an ally of President Trump. It came from a career diplomat I was interviewing on background on a different story. The diplomat, as I recall, suggested that Yovanovitch had just caused a commotion in Ukraine a few weeks before that country’s presidential election by calling for the firing of one of the prosecutors aligned with the incumbent president. The diplomat related that a more senior State official, David Hale, was about to travel to Ukraine and was prepping to be confronted about Yovanovitch’s comments. I remember the diplomat joking something to the effect of, “we always say that the Geneva Convention is optional for our Kiev staff.”

The Geneva Convention is the UN-backed pact enacted during the Cold War that governs the conduct of foreign diplomats in host countries and protects them against retribution. But it strictly mandates that foreign diplomats “have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of that State” that hosts them. You can read the convention’s rules here. I dutifully checked out my source’s story. And sure as day, Yovanovitch did give a speech on March 5, 2019 calling for Ukraine’s special anticorruption prosecutor to be removed. You can read that here. And the Ukraine media was abuzz that she had done so. And yes, Under Secretary of State Hale, got peppered with questions upon arriving in Kiev, specifically about whether Yovanovitch’s comments violated the international rule that foreign diplomats avoid becoming involved in the internal affairs and elections of their host country.

Hale dutifully defended Yovanovitch with these careful words. “Well, Ambassador Yovanovitch represents the President of the United States here in Ukraine, and America stands behind her statements. And I don’t see any value in my own elaboration on what they may or may not have meant. They meant what she said.” You can read his comments here. Up to that point, I had focused months of reporting on Ukraine on the U.S. government’s relationship with a Ukraine nonprofit called the AntiCorruption Action Centre, which was jointly funded by liberal megadonor George Soros’ charity and the State Department. I even sent a list of questions to that nonprofit all the way back in October 2018. It never answered.

Given that Soros spent millions trying to elect Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump in 2016, I thought it was a legitimate public policy question to ask whether a State Department that is supposed to be politically neutral should be in joint business with a partisan figure’s nonprofit entity.

Read more …

The one thing that was new in yesterday’s circus was Bill Taylor claiming more third-hand stories.

Trump Impeachment Inquiry: New Claims Amid Public Hearing (BBC)

A top US diplomat told impeachment hearings that President Trump directly asked about a Ukrainian investigation into his Democratic rival Joe Biden. In previously unheard testimony, Bill Taylor, the acting US ambassador to Ukraine, said a member of his staff was told Mr Trump was preoccupied with pushing for a probe into Mr Biden. He was speaking at the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry. Mr Trump told reporters he did not recall making such comments. Mr Trump is accused of withholding US military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the country’s new president to publicly announce a corruption inquiry into Mr Biden, among the favourites to take him on in the 2020 presidential race.


[..] During a detailed opening statement, Mr Taylor said a member of his staff had overheard a telephone call in which the president inquired about “the investigations” into Mr Biden. The call was with Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, who reportedly told the president over the phone from a restaurant in Kyiv that “the Ukrainians were ready to move forward”. After the call, the staff member “asked ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought about Ukraine”, Mr Taylor said. Mr Taylor said: “Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden.” Meanwhile observers and former officials have drawn attention to the security implications of making the call from a restaurant, potentially exposing the conversation to eavesdropping by Russian intelligence.

Read more …

“Thanks to the false charges made by James Comey, John Brennan and others that Trump was a running dog for Vladimir Putin, uniforms and badges are no longer proof of rectitude. Count diminished public trust in those institutions as a lasting legacy of the Obama presidency.”

Trickster Adam Schiff Conjuring ‘Guilt’ Out Of Thin Air (NYPost)

The conclusion has always come first — get Trump — then create a justification by weaving a few thin threads together into a noose. In both cases, the Dems have relied on members of the resistance embedded in the government to serve as the hanging party. Some wear military uniforms while others are in the CIA and FBI. Thanks to the false charges made by James Comey, John Brennan and others that Trump was a running dog for Vladimir Putin, uniforms and badges are no longer proof of rectitude. Count diminished public trust in those institutions as a lasting legacy of the Obama presidency. The main problem now is that, three years after Trump’s election, these constant hair-on-fire screams sound and feel like partisan politics pretending to be apolitical.

The smell of a continuing dirty trick is hard to ignore. Schiff, of course, comes by his current role honestly in the sense that he has been a chief proponent of anything and everything that might turn the public against the president. He insisted that Trump was guilty of collusion for two years before Mueller said otherwise and then continued to say it despite Mueller. But after the special counsel’s public testimony turned out to be the dud of all duds, Russia, Russia, Russia dropped off the earth and Schiff instantly proclaimed Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine the new crime of the century. In a rational world, where facts matter and credibility counts, Schiff would already be consigned to history’s dustbin alongside Sen. Joe McCarthy.

Like the infamous red baiter who saw a commie behind every desk, Schiff sees evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors” every time the president opens his mouth. It’s been that way since before Trump was inaugurated. McCarthy was not burdened by decency, as Army lawyer Joseph Welch famously noted. Schiff is similarly unburdened and so he, too, willy-nilly ruins lives and trashes reputations without a sense of guilt. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is no less culpable. In the early months after she got the gavel, she skillfully pushed back against the tide of radicalism sweeping through her party. Repeatedly, she insisted that impeachment was extremely divisive, should only be a last resort and had to have bipartisan support.

Those were her red lines, and she violated all of them. Her resolution for a formal inquiry got zero GOP votes and the public support for removing Trump is essentially limited to her party’s voters. There is no national emergency that would justify such an extreme action, and yet she gave Schiff the green light.

Read more …

Jenna Ellis Rives is a member of the Donald Trump 2020 advisory board. She is a constitutional law attorney.

Trump Impeachment Is Blueprint To Overthrow Government From Within (Rives)

The House is ready to begin public hearings this week, furthering the partisan move by the Democrats to impeach President Trump in a blatant abuse of constitutional authority. Representative Adam Schiff said in a press conference, “These open hearings will be an opportunity for the American people to evaluate the witnesses for themselves and also to learn firsthand about the facts of the president’s misconduct.” There are several problems with this statement. First, Schiff is already characterizing the outcome of the investigation. As the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he serves as a key arbiter of the inquiry under the resolution. As such, he is in a position that demands an unbiased irreproachable ethic in evaluating requests for subpoenas and testimony.

Any judge in a similar position would be required to recuse himself with even a hint of the pure bias Schiff has displayed, including coordination with the Ukraine whistleblower and other actions. The Democrats do not even pretend that their impeachment game is fair or actually about fact finding. This is simply about using a grant of power in the Constitution arbitrarily and politically, outside the bounds of due process and the purpose of that authority. Although the House does have the “sole power” of impeachment, that is a grant of jurisdiction, not a license to proceed on purely partisan motivation. Article One must work coordinately and not inconsistently with Article Two, which provides the legal basis upon which a sitting president may be impeached.

Second, Schiff demonstrates this is all about media play in the court of public opinion. Voters have no power or responsibility in an impeachment proceeding. The drafters of the Constitution intended the impeachment and removal process to be exercised only when there was sufficient evidence that the subject of the impeachment had committed a legally qualifying offense. This is not about whether impeachment is popular in the polls or whether a majority of Americans prefer it. Transparency in the context of this quasi judicial process is to provide fundamental fairness and due process for the president. Why are the Democrats so hellbent on blatantly refusing to allow Republican subpoenas and witnesses?

It is because it is a sham. Yet the Democrats are openly admitting that their goal is to try this in the media and attempt to dishonestly convince us that somehow we too should hate Donald Trump. They are hoping to convince us not to vote for him. That is not a legitimate or constitutional purpose of an impeachment. It is rather ironic that they claim his “crime” is an alleged quid pro quo to gain political advantage, while they are manipulating the power of impeachment for their political advantage. It is Schiff and other Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who should be impeached. There is an actual constitutional basis for that.

Read more …

And the series keeps going on.

Here Are The Payments To Hunter Biden, Leaked From Ukraine (CDMedia)

The information below has been leaked from the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s office and acquired from intelligence sources within Ukraine; it is part of investigative materials acquired during an investigation into Biden corruption. As CD Media has reported previously, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau Of Ukraine (NABU) has succeeded in shutting down all investigations into Hunter Biden, Joseph Biden, Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevskiy, former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewskiy. NABU is controlled by Obama/Soros linked operatives and was created to coverup Democrat, Biden, Deep State, State Department corruption during the Obama Administration and the years after in which this cabal went after duly-elected President Trump.

Prosecutors who desire the information to get out in spite of the Deep State’s efforts to prevent such a release and prevent investigations to continue, have leaked to CD Media. The highlighted sections describe: According to the Department of Financial Monitoring (Counter-intelligence) of Latvia, the following sums of money were obtained from Busima Holding Limited (Cyprus) to the account of Burisma Holding Limited (Cyprus) which is open at AS PrivatBank in Latvia: money transfer of 14 655 982 US Dollars and 366 015 EUR from the company “Wirelogic Technology AS”, and 1 9 64 375 US dollars from “Digitex Organization LLP” based on the credit agreements. (Note: credit agreements here mean “intra-company” transactions to decrease the taxes to be paid or “credit agreement” also serve as means of hidden dividend payments).


Further, the part of the sums described above, the money was transferred to Alan Apter (302 885 EUR), Alexander Kwasniewski (1 150 000 EUR), Devon Archer and Hunter Biden. Additional information was leaked: BURISMA HOLDINGS LIMITED during a period from 18th November 2014 to 16th November 2015 transacted 45 money transfers through MORGAN STANLEY SMITH BARNEY LLC in the sum of 3.5 mln US Dollars. The recipient of the money transfer is the company Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC (belongs to Devon Archer). Note: The company belongs to Devon Archer and Kerry Family including Kerry Senior, Kerry Junior, Heinz Jr and Hunter Biden. Devon Archer, Kerry Jr, Heinz Jr and Hunter Biden are listed as partners in Rosement Seneca Fund, Rosemont Seneca Partners and affiliated Rosemont Seneca other companies.

Read more …

“EPSTEIN DIDN’T KILL HIMSELF”

Lawmaker Posts Cryptic Jeffrey Epstein Message During Impeachment Hearing (G.)

Conspiracy theories have abounded ever since Jeffrey Epstein’s death in a New York jail was ruled a suicide, with figures on the right and left claiming he was murdered. On Wednesday, a US congressman weighed in with his own cryptic message. Republican Paul Gosar, a staunch conservative from Arizona, issued a series of 23 tweets over a roughly eight-hour period railing against the Democrats’ impeachment investigation of Donald Trump. Taken together, the first letter of each tweet spells: “EPSTEIN DIDN’T KILL HIMSELF”. As the first public impeachment hearing got under way, it was unclear what prompted the timing of Gosar’s message. Asked whether it was intentional, his communications director, Ben Goldey, replied with an equally cryptic comment:

All of the tweets pertained to testimony from today’s hearing.

Rest assured, they are substantive.

Every one of them.

All of them.

5 were brilliant.

1 was ok.

Zealous Twitter users picked up on the original message, which was easy to miss as it was couched in standard-issue rightwing complaints: “No quid pro quo”, “Democrats are desperate”, “Hillary Clinton and the DNC funded a foreign spy”. A few hours later, however, Gosar’s account posted Goldey’s comment with the first letter of each line bolded, making the message clear.

Read more …

Yeah, Jay Powell, very strong economy.

The Holy-Cow Moment for Subprime Auto Loans (WS)

Serious auto-loan delinquencies – auto loans that are 90 days or more past due – in the third quarter of 2019, after an amazing trajectory, reached a historic high of $62 billion, according to data from the New York Fed today. This $62 billion of seriously delinquent loan balances are what auto lenders, particularly those that specialize in subprime auto loans, such as Santander Consumer USA, Credit Acceptance Corporation, and many smaller specialized lenders are now trying to deal with. If they cannot cure the delinquency, they’re hiring specialized companies that repossess the vehicles to be sold at auction. The difference between the loan balance and the proceeds from the auction, plus the costs involved, are what a lender loses on the deal.

The repo business, however, is booming. But delinquencies are a flow: As current delinquencies are hitting the lenders’ balance sheet and income statement, the flow continues and more loans are becoming delinquent. And lenders are still making new loans to risky customers and a portion of those loans will become delinquent too. And now the flow of delinquent loans is increasing – and this isn’t going to stop anytime soon: These loans are out there and new one are being added to them, and a portion of them will be defaulting. Total outstanding balances of auto loans and leases in Q3, according to the New York Fed’s measure (higher and more inclusive than the Federal Reserve Board of Governors’ consumer credit data) rose to $1.32 trillion:

Read more …

Upon the death of White Helmets co-founder James Le Mesurier, Murray lists some 20 UK journalists who all follow the Twitter account of “Philip Cross”, which has only ever retweeted things without posting one original tweet. “Philip Cross”, though, has changed Wikipedia pages for 2,987 consecutive days, and made dozenns of changes to Le Mesurier’s page in the 24 hours after his death.

Le Mesurier Gets Cross (Craig Murray)

This week, on the day of Le Mesurier’s death, “Philip Cross” made 48 edits to Le Mesurier’s Wikipedia page, each one designed to expunge any criticism of the role of the White Helmets in Syria or reference to their close relationship with the jihadists. “Philip Cross” has been an operation on a massive scale to alter the balance of Wikipedia by hundreds of thousands of edits to the entries, primarily of politically engaged figures, always to the detriment of anti-war figures and to the credit of neo-con figures. An otherwise entirely obscure but real individual named Philip Cross has been identified who fronts the operation, and reputedly suffers from Aspergers. I however do not believe that any individual can truly have edited Wikpedia articles from a right wing perspective, full time every single day for five years without one day off, not even a Christmas, for 2,987 consecutive days.


I should declare here the personal interest that “Philip Cross” has made over 120 edits to my own Wikipedia entry, including among other things calling my wife a stripper, and deleting the facts that I turned down three honours from the Crown and was eventually cleared on all disciplinary charges by the FCO. I hazard the guess that at least several of the above journalists follow “Philip Cross” on twitter because they are a part of the massive Wikipedia skewing operation operating behind the name of “Philip Cross”. If anybody has any better explanation of why they all follow “Philip Cross” on twitter I am more than willing to hear it.

Read more …

“Nine unaccompanied girls were sleeping on the floor in a 10 metre sq container next to the police office, with no bathroom or shower.”

Greek Refugee Camp For 640 People Is Found To Be Housing 3,745 (G.)

An EU-funded refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos built to house 640 people is home to 3,745, with unaccompanied children forced to sleep on the floor of windowless and overcrowded containers, an official audit has revealed. Other children were found to be living in makeshift tents or in derelict buildings on the outskirts of the camp in what the special report from the European court of auditors described as “dire conditions”. “Seventy-eight unaccompanied minors were in tents or abandoned derelict houses outside the hot spot, in unofficial extensions to the facility,” the auditors said. “Nine unaccompanied girls were sleeping on the floor in a 10 metre sq container next to the police office, with no bathroom or shower.”


The situation at Greek facilities on Samos and at the island of Lesbos are described as “highly critical in terms of capacity and the situation of unaccompanied minors”, due to a failure of the bloc’s relocation and return scheme for migrants coming to Europe from countries such as Syria. The auditors’ findings were echoed on Wednesday in appeals made by the mayor of Samos, Georgios Stantzos, who warned of riots due to the “primitive” conditions. Last month, a fire broke out in the camp after a brawl in town between rival groups of Syrians and Afghans.

Read more …

 

 

 

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