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Ukrainian prosecutors launch high treason case against ex-president Poroshenko


TASS
Fri, 22 May 2020 19:35 UTC
Pyotr Poroshenko
© EPA-EFE/SERGEY DOLZHENKO
Ukraine's ex-president Pyotr Poroshenko
The Office of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General has launched an investigation into high treason and abuse of office by ex-president Pyotr Poroshenko after purported records of his conversations with former US vice president and secretary of state were made public, the Ukrayinska Pravda newspaper said.

"The Office of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General made an entry in the unified register of prejudicial inquiry," the paper said, citing sources in the prosecutor general's office.

According to sources, the investigation was launched in line with the Ukrainian Criminal Code's articles on state treason and abuse of power or office.

Comment: Poroshenko is insisting the call was fabricated by Zelensky's office! He's not saying it's not his own voice or denying what he said, just that the recording was fabricated with "raw materials". If Poroshenko is indeed prosecuted, that will send a clear message of the obvious corruption involving Joe Biden. Of course, even clear messages are easily ignored by much of the media - that is pretty much their job.

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Arrow Up

'We'll spend you into oblivion' says US nuclear envoy, a 'negotiating' tactic for New START arms control deal

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Thu, 21 May 2020 23:38 UTC
YARS missile
© Sputnik/Vadim Savitskii
A Yars fifth-generation intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at the premises the Novosibirsk Division of Strategic Missile Forces in Russia.
The new US arms control czar has laid out Washington's thinking on the last remaining nuclear pact with Russia, hoping that US threats of a new arms race will force Moscow and Beijing to negotiate a new three-way deal instead.

"We intend to establish a new arms control regime now, precisely to prevent a full-blown arms race," Ambassador Marshall Billingslea, special presidential envoy for arms control, said Thursday during a half-hour interview hosted by the Hudson Institute, a DC-based think tank.

In case there is an arms race, he added, US President Donald Trump "has made clear that we have a tried and true practice here. We know how to win these races and we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion."

This claim is based on the conventional wisdom in Washington that the US "won" the Cold War by pouring money into weapons and forcing the Soviet Union to do the same, eventually causing an economic crisis that triggered the collapse of the socialist system. It is not a standpoint widely accepted in Russia, however.


Comment: See also:

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Stock Down

Ron Paul: US economy won't recover soon; Federal Reserve 'should go out of business'


RT
Fri, 22 May 2020 11:07 UTC
Federal Reserve
© Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
The Federal Reserve in Washington DC, USA
The US Federal Reserve has said it plans to maintain low interest rates for the foreseeable future until it is confident the economy has weathered the consequences of Covid-19 and is in the process of recovery.

RT's Boom Bust spoke to former US congressman and author of 'End the Fed' Dr. Ron Paul about his outlook for the long road to economic recovery.

"I don't think the economy is going to recover, I think it is going yet to be much worse, the market policy edges on total insanity of it all," he said.

"We got into trouble because we spent too much money. The debt is out of control, the interest rates for a gimmick down to zero, they're just doing the same thing over again. The only thing they've added is what is equivalent to 'helicopter money' that Bernanke wanted."


Comment: If Paul is right, and he likely is and has been all along, the worst is yet to come.

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Snakes in Suits

Amy Klobuchar: Why she is the favorite Democrat of Senate Republicans

George Gallanis
World Socialist Web Site
Mon, 19 Aug 2019 00:00 UTC
Klobuchar
© Fox News
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
Senator Amy Klobuchar's presidential campaign exemplifies the anti-working class and right-wing politics of the Democratic Party. Her campaign platform addresses almost none of the pressing issues confronting millions of workers and youth in the United States. She is one of a group of candidates offering themselves as "center-left" substitutes in case the campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden should fall apart.

Like a company offering multiple products to saturate the market, often made using the same ingredients in minutely different proportions, she is one of many right-wing candidates fielded by the Democratic Party who is differentiated from the rest by a slightly varied hue of alleged progressive politics.

In some ways, Klobuchar seems a candidate prepared in the laboratory to meet the specific requirements of the 2020 campaign:
- years of experience in the US Senate, check;
- background as a tough law-and-order prosecutor, check;
- female, check;
- visibly younger than Biden and Trump, check;
- represents a state in the Midwest, the key battleground of 2016 and likely of 2020, check.
And one might add:
- proven defender of corporate America and US imperialism, check, check, check.

Comment: Klobuchar also thought Hillary Clinton would have made a great president, saying, "She passed every threshold."

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Briefcase

Former US attorney under Clinton signals Judge Emmet Sullivan to make trouble for the administration

Jonathan Turley
jonathanturley.org
Thu, 21 May 2020 00:00 UTC
Sullivan/Litman
© SOTT/MSNBC
US District Judge Emmet Sullivan • Former US Attorney Harry Litman
The Los Angeles Times has posted a column by UCLA Law Professor and former U.S. Attorney under Bill Clinton, Harry Litman. The column that captures just how disconnected legal analysis has become in the Trump era. Litman in the column admits, to his credit, that the precedent overwhelmingly opposes a denial of motion to dismiss. However, Litman then encourages U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to use the hearing to "make trouble" for the Justice Department — a goal disconnected from the inescapable legal precedent (and thus the judicial obligations) presented by the motion. There is a word for using hearing to gratuitously "make trouble" for the Executive Branch: judicial activism. I have previously written about the need to dismiss the Flynn case and criticized those who dismiss new evidence of wrongdoing by the prosecutors.[Update: Professor Litman has responded on Twitter and his views are included below]

Litman's column follows the pattern of not even discussing the allegations facing the prosecutors or the new information. There is no mention of the possible false statements or withheld evidence in the case. There is no mention of new evidence showing findings of no criminality but high-level interventions to keep the investigation alive. The case is presented again in an immaculate fashion where the impropriety of the Justice Department is presented as established and beyond question. While I have admitted to coming to these disputes with the bias of a long-standing criminal defense attorney, I at least acknowledge the opposing arguments on the merits.
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Eye 1

British govt gags NHS staff from speaking out publicly about what's really going on in hospitals during 'Covid-19 pandemic'

Sarah Johnson
The Guardian
Sat, 09 May 2020 08:56 UTC
Medical staff
© Carl Recine/Reuters
Draconian measures prevent some healthcare professions discussing their work during pandemic
Healthcare professionals are being silenced and threatened with disciplinary action for speaking out about their work during the coronavirus outbreak, the Guardian can reveal.

Many NHS staff are increasingly concerned that their ability to share stories about their work is being restricted by a clampdown on speaking out publicly.

It follows reports of doctors and nurses being gagged by hospitals and other NHS bodies from speaking out about widespread shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE). Tactics have included threatening emails, the possibility of disciplinary action, and some people even being sent home from work.

Comment: It is also now undeniable that not only was the infection and possible mortality rate massively exaggerated, and that most hospitals weren't backlogged but were instead left empty, and that, while these lies were being broadcast by the government and the media, and people were on the street clapping for the NHS, the elderly and vulnerable were without the care they needed and died in numbers likely higher than on average, some were even asked to sign Do Not Resuscitate forms; cancer patients had appointments postponed which actually caused a greater loss of life than the coronavirus. And so one wonders just what amount of unnecessary death these gag orders contributed to? Bearing in mind we've yet to even begin counting the true cost of damage to society, to the economy, and all the other forms of destruction the tyrannical lockdown has wrought.

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Star of David

CFR member admits what we already knew: Israel-Palestine 'peace process' was never intended to give Palestinians a state

Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss
Fri, 22 May 2020 18:29 UTC
idf soldier
© ANNE PAQ
ISRAELI SOLDIER HOLDING A MOBILE PHONE IN FRONT OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER, TRYING TO PREVENT THE DOCUMENTATION OF THE EVENTS TAKING PLACE IN THE WEST BANK VILLAGE OF NABI SALEH, APRIL 20, 2018.
Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations has an article at Foreign Policy saying that the U.S. should phase out aid to Israel and "end the special relationship" because the peace process has attained its real objective: Israel is established as a secure country with a standard of living rivaling the UK and France, and no real military threat.


Comment: No real military threat? That's good to know, but someone should inform Netanyahu and all the hysterical Israelis constantly wailing about the supposed threat posed by Hezbollah, Iran, Hamas, etc. But what do you think the chances are that Israel would ever let the U.S. stop giving it billions of dollars of free money? Not very likely.


The piece is shocking because it strips the mask from the peace process, saying just what Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi and Ali Abunimah said decades ago, it was intended to fail, never producing Palestinian sovereignty.

Cook says the U.S.'s "core interest" in the Middle East was always Israel's "security," so the peace process needed to spin its wheels forever.
U.S. policymakers have long believed that a two-state solution was the best way to ensure Israel's security, and U.S. presidents from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama to Donald Trump himself have repeatedly pursued that goal. But the mostly unacknowledged fact about the two-state impasse — and perhaps the reason Washington hasn't summoned the political will to overcome it — is that it has helped the United States achieve one [of] its core interests in the region: helping to ensure Israeli security....
The "tragedy" for Palestinians is that they trusted the U.S. and "misread" core U.S. interests, Cook explains; but now they have to live forever in Bantustans.
The tragedy in all this is the permanent dispossession of the Palestinians, who will no doubt be outraged at Washington's washing its hands of the conflict, sealing their fate to live forever under the boot of the IDF or shoved into Bantustans. They would be justified in their anger. They have also misread core U.S. interests in the Middle East, which really are not concerned with the Palestinians, who, against all evidence, trusted the United States.
The next time anyone talks about Arabs not really meaning what they say or conducting foreign policy like a soukh, remind them that Even a Council on Foreign Relations pundit says the U.S. lied to Palestinians for 25 years of false promises.
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Bad Guys

Britain First leader Paul Golding 'found guilty of terror offence' because he refused to give cops his phone's PIN following Russia trip

Joe Duggan
The Sun
Wed, 20 May 2020 18:07 UTC
Paul Golding
© Press Association
The 38-year-old had refused to give police access to his mobile phone on his return from a political trip to Russia
Britain First leader Paul Golding has been found guilty of a terror offence after refusing to give police his phone's PIN following a trip to Russia.

Golding, 38, was stopped at Heathrow Airport on October 23 last year on his way back from Moscow by officers from the Metropolitan Police.

He refused to give the pin codes for an iPhone and Apple computer and was later charged with willfully refusing to comply with a duty under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act.
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Cross

Trump designates houses of worship as essential, orders US governors to reopen them NOW

Alex Hider
Fox 17
Fri, 22 May 2020 18:27 UTC
cross
© krisanapong detraphiphat via Getty Images
President Donald Trump held a previously unscheduled press briefing at the White House on Friday to unveil Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance on reopening places of worship, classifying them as "essential."

Trump called on governors to open all places of worship "right now, this weekend." He added that if state governors chose to keep places of worship closed, he would "override them."

Earlier this week, the CDC released guidance on reopening child care centers, schools, restaurants, mass transit systems and other businesses. Churches were not part of that guidance.

The CDC's release came as all states had already begun the process of reopening their economies.

Earlier this month, The Associated Press reported that top Trump administration officials had shelved documents that offered advice on reopening the country, saying that the recommendations wouldn't "see the light of day."

Comment: This move by Trump could have been in response to the announcement that thousands of churches across the country would be reopening in defiance of each state's governor's orders to remain closed despite restaurants, bars, casinos, and tattoo parlors being allowed to reopen. As Trump so aptly put it:
"These are places that hold our society together and keep our people united," Trump announced at the White House on Friday, adding that it's "not right" that some states have deemed liquor stores and abortion clinics as essential, but mandated that houses of worship remain closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.


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Camcorder

Silvercorp mercenary says Guaido 'greatly misled' coup operation team


RT
Fri, 22 May 2020 18:18 UTC
guaido
© REUTERS/Manaure Quintero
Juan Guaido
The private US military firm behind the bungled coup in Venezuela was kept in the dark by Juan Guaido as he "misled" the operation and made poor decisions, a captured ex-US soldier said during interrogation.

Juan Guaido, the Washington-backed self-proclaimed 'interim president' of Venezuela, muddied the waters during the failed mission supposedly aimed at ousting President Nicolas Maduro. That's according to Luke Denman, one of the two former US Green Berets accused of participating in the failed plot, who has shed more light on the mission in a new interrogation tape.

Guaido, thought to have hired Florida-based private military firm Silvercorp USA to spearhead his coup plans, "misled quite a few people," the American captive could be heard saying in the video, aired by Venezuelan state TV.
At this point, seeing everything that I have, I believe that Silvercorp, as well as many others, have been greatly misled by Mr. Guaido.
Previous interrogation tapes and media leaks indicate the opposition leader was in touch with Jordan Goudreau, a US special forces veteran and head of Silvercorp. Venezuelan investigators earlier revealed that Goudreau had met Guaido at the White House during Guaido's trip to the US.


He "didn't have any reason not to trust Guaido," Denman said before unloading on the 'interim president'. "I believe if anybody has made an incorrect decision, it's Mr. Guaido," the former Green Beret stated without elaborating.

Comment: For more on the failed attempt at a coup, see the following coverage:

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