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Trump's withdrawal from arms treaty doesn't change anything, just divides US pundits


RT
Sat, 27 Apr 2019 16:02 UTC
Guy with gun
© Reuters/Bryan Woolston
An attendee at the National Rifle Association's annual convention
Continuing his tradition of shredding treaties and agreements signed by the Obama administration, President Donald Trump has withdrawn from the UN Arms Trade Treaty. His supporters and opponents immediately weighed in.

Democrats savaged Trump for pandering to the gun lobby and making "a more dangerous world," in the words of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.


As the treaty sought to regulate international transfers of arms from tanks and warships to rifles and rockets, Democrats painted Trump's withdrawal as a move that would make it easier for "human rights abusers and terrorists" to acquire weapons.


Comment: See also: Trump: US is withdrawing from UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT)

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X

Nix retirement, Biden announces 2nd term in office before winning 1st one


RT
Sat, 27 Apr 2019 00:52 UTC
Biden
© Quartz/KJN
Former VP Joe Biden
Joe Biden is so confident he's going to beat 20 other Democrats in the race to wrest the presidency from Donald Trump in 2020 that he reassured voters he wouldn't retire after just one term because of his age.

Asked whether his age would prompt him to serve only one term, Biden exclaimed "No!" apparently taken aback at the suggestion from The View host Joy Behar.

"The idea of committing to only do one term... it's a legitimate question to ask about my age," Biden admitted, but "hopefully, I can demonstrate, not only with age has come wisdom, and experience that can make things a lot better."

Comment: See also:

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X

Ex-consul debunks MSM claims Assange at odds with embassy staff: 'He respected us'


RT
Sat, 27 Apr 2019 13:59 UTC
Assange
© Peter Nicholls/Reuters
Julian Assange
Claims that Ecuadorian embassy staff had trouble living side-by-side with Julian Assange were a mere "smear campaign," the country's former consul told RT. Both the hosts and the guest showed true respect to each other, he said.

In comments to RT, Fidel Narvaez spoke out against media coverage of Julian Assange who remains in custody after his arrest in London.
"I was very disappointed that the fundamental thing - which is the persecution of a journalist for ... the crime of publishing truthful information about war crimes, corruption, mass surveillance - is not in the focus of international [media coverage]."

Comment: See also:

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Nuke

Trump's call to dump nukes deflects from arms control deals he exits


RT
Fri, 26 Apr 2019 16:32 UTC
Trump/nuclear
© YouTube
President Donald Trump
Trump's suggestion that the world powers "have to get rid" of nuclear weapons can't be taken seriously as this is a mere distraction from crucial arms control accords the US is keen to dismantle, analysts told RT.

The US President said that not only "we want to get rid of the nuclear weapons," but "we have to,"citing Russia and China among the states which should ditch their respective arsenals. It comes on the heels of reports that White House officials are allegedly preparing options for a grand nuclear deal between Washington, Moscow and Beijing. But one should not set high hopes for the proposal.

"It is a political declaration, which, I think, has not much in common with reality," commented Vasily Kashin, a senior research fellow at Russia's Higher School of Economics. All in all, "everyone understands there will be no steps in this direction" and there's "quite a distrust" between Washington and Beijing, let alone Washington and Moscow.

Former US diplomat Jim Jatras told RT:
"The US is not agreement capable. Any agreement we make is simply not going to be honored by the US side. I don't see how anybody in Moscow or Beijing would listen to this and say 'oh sure, look at what happened with the nuclear agreement. Look what happened with INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty). Let's go and sign this new agreement I'm sure the Americans will be very sincere about it.'"

Comment: See also:

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Attention

Biden, Trump clash: Charlottesville 'fine people' comments and age jabs


RT
Fri, 26 Apr 2019 19:32 UTC
TrumpBiden
© ZUMA PRESS.com
President Donald Trump • Former VP Joe Biden
Just a day after Joe Biden entered the 2020 election race, the former vice president and President Donald Trump have already locked horns on Trump's Charlottesville protest remarks that enraged Democrats two years ago. Game on.

Biden angered the right and dragged Trump into a two-year-old battle when he hammered the president's response to a white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, in a campaign video released on Thursday.

Specifically, Biden trashed Trump for stating that there "were very fine people on both sides" in Charlottesville. By his comments, the former vice president accused Trump of tarnishing "the core values of this nation."


Comment: See also:

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Passport

Putin responds to Kiev's outrage by offering fast-track citizenship to ALL Ukrainians


RT
Sat, 27 Apr 2019 08:42 UTC
Ukraine passport
© RIA Novosti/Sergey Kuznetsov
Moscow may soon extend its fast-track naturalization procedure to all citizens of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin announced days after residents of the country's east were allowed to get Russian passports within three months.

"We're thinking on granting Russian citizenship to Ukrainians under a simplified procedure," Vladimir Putin told reporters on the sidelines of the Belt and Road summit in Beijing.

Russia has recently made it easier for residents of the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine to become Russian citizens. Expanding on that, Putin said the decision "wasn't spontaneous."

The government has calculated everything, including the number of potential applicants, the number of future retirees and, most importantly, the funding needed to implement the measure. Putin said the offer of passports would cost an estimated $1.5bn, but it will not affect benefits or other social responsibilities.


Comment: You made this bed, Ukraine. So now you sleep in it.

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War Whore

Blackwater founder Erik Prince registers new company in Basra, Iraq


Sputnik
Sat, 27 Apr 2019 02:11 UTC
Erik Prince
© AP/Jerry Broome
Eric Prince, Blackwater offices in Moyock, North Carolina
Blackwater founder Erik Prince has registered a subsidiary of his Hong-Kong based company in Iraq's city of Basra, media reported.

Frontier Logistics Consultancy DMCC, which is a subsidiary of Prince's new company Frontier Services Group (FSG), has been registered as a foreign company with Iraq's Ministry of Trade, Buzzfeed reported on Friday citing documents it had obtained.

The report said the subsidiary's office is based in Basra, located in Iraq's oil-rich southern region, close to the border with Iran and Kuwait.

FSG did not respond to requests for comment about the activity of its business in Iraq, according to the report. However, Prince said in an interview with Al Jazeera in March that FSG could be providing support for oil operations in Iraq or Pakistan.

Comment: See also:

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Bad Guys

Ex-president Lula, in first interview since being thrown in prison: 'Brazil governed by lunatics and US lackeys'

Anna Jean Kaiser and Tom Phillips
The Guardian
Sat, 27 Apr 2019 18:08 UTC
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
© Nelson Almeida/Agence France-Presse/Getty
Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva says his country needs to undergo period of ‘self-reflection’ after what he described as the hate-filled election of far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil's president from 2003 and 2011, is in jail over corruption charges that he disputes

Brazil is being governed by "a bunch of lunatics" and United States "lackeys" who have shattered its international reputation, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has claimed in his first interview since being jailed one year ago.

Lula, Brazil's president from 2003 and 2011, surrendered himself to police last April after being convicted on corruption charges he disputes.

The 73-year-old leftist had been forbidden from giving face-to-face interviews until Friday, when two Brazilian journalists were allowed to visit him at his prison in southern Brazil following a lengthy legal battle.


Comment: Political forces may have managed to imprison Lula on trumped-up charges, but he still holds the heart of the people. He is, without doubt, the most high-profile political prisoner anywhere. That he would undoubtedly have won last year's election in Brazil had he not been abducted and thrown into prison, is a shocking abuse of the rule of law and a return to that country's pre-democracy days of dictatorship-by-fiat.

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Megaphone

Butina lawyer: Court's verdict 'impossible to separate from politics,' sets a dangerous precedent


RT
Sat, 27 Apr 2019 17:38 UTC
Driscoll butina lawyer attorney
© Reuters/Mary F. Calvert/ File
Robert Driscoll, an attorney for Maria Butina
Gun activist Maria Butina is a victim of selective justice, caught up "in the anti-Russian hysteria," attorney Robert Driscoll told RT, warning that the precedent might backfire on US citizens abroad.

"I think it's impossible to separate [Butina's case] from the politics," Driscoll said. He added that it was hard to imagine that a citizen of any other country but Russia would get the same treatment in the US for such a minor offense.
"There's an underlying crime that she's pled guilty to which you can make out under US law. But I think that the notion that this would have been investigated or an arrest would have been made for a typical foreign national who wasn't Russian and wasn't in the current environment in the US... it's almost impossible to believe that."

Comment: Driscoll is not the only one to see the potential danger to students who travel abroad:
The politically motivated sentence of Russian gun activist Maria Butina makes anyone going to study abroad - including Americans - look like a criminal, analysts have told RT.

The 18-month prison sentence for Butina "is a horrific miscarriage of justice," said Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute. "The only thing she's guilty of is being a Russian in America at a time that America is under a spell of some kind of anti-Russian hysteria.

"This woman was held in maximum security solitary confinement for 10 months for a crime for which an average person would get a small fine and be sent off," McAdams added.

Butina, who arrived in the US on a student visa in 2016 before becoming active in pro-gun circles, was sentenced on Friday for acting as a foreign agent on behalf of the Kremlin without proper registration.

"What she did is what thousands and thousands of other foreign international students do in the US. They come to the US to get to know the country; to get to know how the political system works; to make friends... The idea that she is some sort of Russian spy is absolutely absurd," McAdams told RT.

Thousands of American students abroad do the same as well, and the ruling against Butina has "criminalized" them all, he added.

"There's danger that there could be a tit-for-tat response from Russia," said independent political commentator Anthony Webber.

"I don't think it helps relationships on the world stage. What's needed is for Russia is to be calm and not overreact," he told RT, adding that the history of Russian-American relations shows that Moscow is actually "good at not overreacting to over-the-top provocations."

After being held in solitary confinement for months, Butina pleaded guilty to being a de facto lobbyist, saying that she was unaware that registration was needed.

"Going to jail for that seems really over the top," Webber said. "I don't think it makes the democratic process or the judicial process look very good either."

Her whole case "has been blown out of proportion to fit the anti-Russian agenda, which has been going on in the US since the 2016 presidential election... She's just being made use of as a pawn," the analyst said.

The entire affair has been "political from the beginning," said Patrick Henningsen, editor at 21st Century Wire. "Some of the media stories that have been circulating about her early on have been proven to be false, like that she was exchanging sexual favors for information and somehow trying to corrupt the democratic system through her activities. This is all mainly in the wake of the 2016 election."

The prison sentence handed to the 30-year-old might have been "a face-saving exercise" on the part of the US, Henningsen suggested.

"To have her going free and speaking to the media, telling her story - it's going to be hugely embarrassing" for Washington, he told RT, adding that the ruling means Butina will be released "in the thick of the 2020 US presidential election. So this should be very interesting."

International attorney Douglas McNabb believes that 18 months is an appropriate sentence for Butina, however, considering that "the statutory maximum for the crime that she pleaded guilty to is five years."

With Butina receiving credit for her pretrial custody of nine months and 'good-time' credit cutting the sentence by another two months, she'll actually spend seven additional months in federal custody, McNabb pointed out.


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Attention

Russian Foreign Ministry slams 'politically motivated' Butina verdict as a 'shameful stain' on US justice


RT
Sat, 27 Apr 2019 17:29 UTC
butina

Maria Butina
The Russian Foreign Ministry called the 18-month prison sentence for student Maria Butina a "politically motivated" decision "in the spirit of McCarthyism," adding that her only crime was being a Russian citizen in the US.

"From the moment of her arrest we have pointed out that the accusations against her of attempting to influence internal American political processes were completely contrived and fabricated," the ministry said in a statement on Friday. "Her confession, which was coerced through harsh imprisonment conditions and threats of a lengthy sentence, changes nothing."

Butina was sentenced on Friday to 18 months in prison and deportation from the US by a federal judge in Washington, DC. She was arrested by the FBI in June last year and charged with being an unregistered foreign agent. The nine months she has already spent in jail - much of it in solitary confinement - will count towards her sentence.

Comment: Even Putin has weighed in on the patent absurdity of the sentence:
The US government knows that Russian gun activist Maria Butina isn't guilty of a crime, but sentenced her to prison anyway to avoid embarrassment, Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed.

"[The US] is just trying to save face," Putin said while speaking at the 2nd Belt & Road Forum in Beijing on Saturday.

"There's nothing they can charge [Butina] with, so to avoid looking ridiculous, they decided to slap her with 18 months in prison."

The Russian president described Butina's 18-month prison sentence as "a travesty of justice."


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