Trumpian threads

[reedak]

The following are excerpts from Jack Holmes' November 20, 2018 article headined "Ivanka Trump Is Just Another Wannabe American Oligarch in Her Father's Orbit" with the subheading "Yeah, she used private email. But she also has a viper's nest of conflicts-of-interest."

(Begin excerpts)
...Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of emails last year to White House aides, Cabinet officials and her assistants using a personal account, many of them in violation of federal records rules...White House ethics officials learned of Trump’s repeated use of personal email when reviewing emails gathered last fall by five Cabinet agencies to respond to a public records lawsuit. That review revealed that throughout much of 2017, she often discussed or relayed official White House business using a private email account with a domain that she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner....

Some aides were startled by the volume of Ivanka Trump’s personal emails — and taken aback by her response when questioned about the practice. She said she was not familiar with some details of the rules, according to people with knowledge of her reaction.

She's uX-fXXXXXg-familiar? All we heard for a year and a half was that using private email in office was borderline treasonous. She went to her father's rallies. She was there at the Republican National Convention. There isn't a chance in hell she's unfamiliar with the perils of private email use. Dishonesty is in this family's blood. It's coursing through their veins. It's worth noting here that Ivanka is not just The First Daughter—she's a senior adviser to the president. She seems to assume whichever role is more convenient for each media report.

You can rest assured, though, that there will be no repercussions for this. Hypocrisy is dead. You can tell because Ivanka Trump is at least the seventh (7th) Trump administration official to get caught using private email for government business....

Members of the Trump administration who have used personal email to conduct official business:

1) Ivanka Trump
2) Jared Kushner
3) Steve Bannon
4) Stephen Miller
5) Reince Priebus
6) Gary Cohn

The shameless hypocrisy of these people never ceases to amaze me....

Again: none of these people actually care about email or security protocol. It's just a cudgel to be used against political opponents. These are the people who slammed Clinton's emails on the basis she mishandled classified information—an unsettled claim—and then made a mockery of the security-clearance system, shoveling classified information towards people who failed to clear FBI background checks. They don't care.

Still, the Ivanka case is worth lingering on. The New York Times hints at why:

Current and former White House officials have said it was characteristic of a repeated blurring of the lines between her government work and other aspects of her life, which used to include her namesake licensing and apparel businesses.

And here's where we really get into it. Like her father and everyone else who comes greasing into his orbit, Ivanka Trump has seen enormous personal financial benefits to serving in public office. This is not a debatable point, even after her fashion brand went under....

Ivanka made $3.9 million from the family's DC hotel in 2017 -- the hotel that is supposed to remit profits to the Treasury, hosts foreign diplomats, and which is the target of lawsuits alleging POTUS is violating emoluments provisions of the Constitution

Remember when the president pretended to divest from his businesses, holding a press conference with a pile of Definitely Not Empty manila folders before passing control to his sons, who quickly admitted they'd be updating him regularly on how it was all going? Remember when his hotel became the shining beacon at the center of the new swamp, a place for foreign dignitaries to curry favor with the President of the United States by putting money in his pocket? And remember when Ivanka applied for a bunch of trademarks in China and was granted them shortly before her father embarked on a campaign to save a Chinese company? You might be a bit confused because Ivanka's company was also granted 16 new patents in China just this month.

...Is it because the Saudis are putting money in his pocket? What is Jared Kushner's relationship with the crown prince? What is informing the president's reliable friendliness towards Russia? Why, throughout all this, does he refuse to release his tax returns? What would they reveal? All of this is evidence of why conflicts-of-interest matter for public officials in a functioning democracy.

No, Ivanka Trump is merely another would-be American oligarch in her father's sordid orbit. It's now increasingly clear that when Donald Trump improbably won the presidency, a great many people took it as a green light to smash the glass and grab everything you can. That's how you get the various Cabinet officials who are tied to investment schemes and who stand accused of stealing more than $120 million from their business partners. It's how you get many of the same folks spending millions in taxpayer cash on private jet flights, and operating as an arm of the industries they're purportedly supposed to regulate. It's a Great American Heist, and everybody's trying to secure their share of the spoils. Will they make off with the American republic while they're at it? (End excerpts)

Source: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a ... conflicts/

[reedak]

The following are excerpts from a Reuters report by Diane Bartz and Christian Shepherd, dated January 17, 2019, under the headline "U.S. legislation steps up pressure on Huawei and ZTE, China calls it 'hysteria'".

(Begin excerpts)
WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers introduced bills on Wednesday that would ban the sale of U.S. chips or other components to Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL], ZTE Corp or other Chinese telecommunications companies that violate U.S. sanctions or export control laws.

The proposed law drew sharp criticism from China where Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called the U.S. legislation “hysteria”, intensifying a bitter trade war between Beijing and Washington.

The bills were introduced shortly before the Wall Street Journal reported federal prosecutors were investigating allegations that Huawei stole trade secrets from T-Mobile U.S. Inc and other U.S. businesses.

The Journal said that an indictment could be coming soon on allegations that Huawei stole T-Mobile technology, called Tappy, which mimicked human fingers and was used to test smartphones.

Huawei said in a statement the company and T-Mobile settled their disputes in 2017 following a U.S. jury verdict that found “neither damage, unjust enrichment nor wilful and malicious conduct by Huawei in T-Mobile’s trade secret claim”....

The legislation is the latest in a long list of actions taken to fight what some in the Trump administration call China’s cheating through intellectual property theft, illegal corporate subsidies and rules hampering U.S. corporations that want to sell their goods in China.

In November, the U.S. Department of Justice unveiled an initiative to investigate China’s trade practices with a goal of bringing trade secret theft cases.

At that time, Washington had announced an indictment against Chinese chipmaker Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co Ltd for stealing trade secrets from U.S. semiconductor company Micron Technology relating to research and development of memory storage devices.

Jinhua, which has denied any wrongdoing, was put on a list of entities that cannot buy goods from U.S. firms.

On Capitol Hill, Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Mike Gallagher, both Republicans, along with Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative Ruben Gallego, both Democrats, introduced the bills that would require the president to ban the export of U.S. components to any Chinese telecommunications company that violates U.S. sanctions or export control laws.

The bills specifically cite ZTE and Huawei, both of which are viewed with suspicion in the United States because of fears that their switches and other gear could be used to spy on Americans. Both have also been accused of failing to respect U.S. sanctions on Iran.

“Huawei is effectively an intelligence-gathering arm of the Chinese Communist Party whose founder and CEO was an engineer for the People’s Liberation Army,” Cotton wrote in a statement. “If Chinese telecom companies like Huawei violate our sanctions or export control laws, they should receive nothing less than the death penalty - which this denial order would provide.”...

In addition to allegations of sanctions-busting and intellectual property theft, Washington has been pressing allies to refrain from buying Huawei’s switches and other gear because of fears they will be used by Beijing for espionage.....(End excerpts)

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1PA2LU

P.S. I have made the following "intelligent guess" at a US political forum on December 30, 2018:

"Despite Trump's latest claim of 'big progress' in trade deal after his 'long and very good call with President Xi of China', I 'predict' the Huawei CFO will be jailed in the US in 2019.

Only after seeing the jailing of Meng Wanzhou can the Chinese authorities finally awake to the reality of Trump's Jekyll-Hyde personality and his resolve to wreck the Chinese economy.

Rarely does a 'soothsayer' hope his 'prediction' will never come true. Here I really hope my 'intelligent guess' is wrong or not so 'intelligent' after all".

[reedak]

1. The fortune of Huawei takes a deep plunge after the detention of its CFO in Canada on December 1 last year. More and more countries, under the pressure of the US, ban the use of its 5G components on the allegation that the company is spying for the Chinese government.

In the latest development, US Senator Tom Cotton even threatened the Huawei CFO with the death penalty: "Huawei is effectively an intelligence-gathering arm of the Chinese Communist Party whose founder and CEO was an engineer for the People’s Liberation Army. If Chinese telecom companies like Huawei violate our sanctions or export control laws, they should receive nothing less than the death penalty - which this denial order would provide.”

2. So far the detention of the Huawei CFO has become a diplomatic spat between China and Canada. It is obvious that the US is the mastermind behind the detention and the plot to wreck the Chinese economy.

China should launch a ferocious counterattack at the US economy. In addition, it should retaliate against those countries which ban Huawei under US pressure.

3. Here I coin the term "trudeau" (taken from the name of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Pierre James Trudeau) as a verb to mean the following:

(a) Focus on the wrong target.

(b) Pay attention to trivial issues instead of the crux of the matter.

(c) Can't see the forest for the trees, that is, focus only on small details and fail to understand larger plans or principles.

4. Here are some examples of the use of the new term:

(i) See what you have been trudeauing, you have been taking a long time just to take a photograph of my chest instead of my face.

(ii) The police inspector scolded his staff: "What a fool you are! Instead of going after the mafia boss, you trudeau by bringing back this petty thief.

(iii) Why are you hitting the cobra's tail? Don't trudeau! Smash its head! Quick!

(iv) Instead of solving the country's urgent economic problems, the president wastes his time trudeauing on getting fund for building the wall.

(v) They trudeau the whole morning arguing about petty cash and overlooking the budget in the meeting.

(vi) China is trudeauing in its diplomatic spat with Canada. In order to save its economy from being wrecked by the US, it should launch a ferocious counterattack at the US economy at once.

P.S. Past tense and past participle of the verb "trudeau" are still "trudeau".

[reedak]

1. Commenting on Donald Trump's obsession with his "intangible, physical, tall, power, beautiful southern border wall" which causes the government shutdown, I coin the term "Trumpian wall" to mean the following:

(a) The barrier around a cradle or cot.

(b) The vertical part of a coffin.

(c) An obstacle or barrier to movement or progress

2. Here are some examples of the use of the new term:

(i) When the grave robber was about to open the coffin, he heard a knocking noise on the Trumpian wall.

(ii) You must beware lest your baby falls over the low Trumpian wall of the cot.

(iii) Before its miraculous parting by Moses, the Red Sea was a Trumpian wall to the Israelites in their exodus from Egypt.

(iv) For centuries before Columbus' first voyage in 1492, the Atlantic Ocean was a formidable Trumpian wall for Europeans to the Americas.

(v) The dispute over wall funding is the Trumpian wall to ending the government shutdown.

(vi) Donald Trump may never get his "intangible, physical, tall, power, beautiful southern border wall", but he can rest assured that, just like everybody else, he will get his Trumpian wall eventually.

3. I also coin the expression "hit the Trumpian wall" to mean the following:

(a) Lack of power to change or improve a situation.

(b) Erectile dysfunction.

4. Here are some examples of the use of the new term:

(i) The federal government hit the Trumpian wall when Congress and the White House failed to agree on the inclusion in an annual spending bill of $5.7 billion requested by President Trump for the construction of an additional 234 miles of fencing to be added to the existing security barrier along the US border with Mexico.

(ii) After ten years of marriage, they still have no children because the husband has hit the Trumpian wall.

(iii) Disputes and conflicts increase when human reason hits the Trumpian wall.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na- ... story.html

[reedak]

(A) "Human Events" is the news source President Reagan called his "favourite newspaper". The following are excerpts from an article by "Human Events" on April 2, 2011 under the headline "Top 10 Reasons George Soros Is Dangerous".

(Begin excerpts)
Human Events’ readers, in an online poll, recently voted billionaire financier George Soros “the single most destructive leftist demagogue in the country"....

1. Gives billions to left-wing causes: Soros started the Open Society Institute in 1993 as a way to spread his wealth to progressive causes. Using Open Society as a conduit, Soros has given more than $7 billion to a who’s who of left-wing groups...

2. Influence on U.S. elections: Soros once said that removing President George W. Bush from office in 2004 was the “central focus of my life.” He put his money where his mouth is, giving $23.58 million to various 527 groups dedicated to defeating Bush. His early financial support helped jump-start Barack Obama’s political career. Soros hosted a 2004 fund-raiser for Obama when he was running for the Illinois Senate and gave the maximum-allowed contribution within hours of Obama’s announcement that he was running for President.

3. Wants to curtail American sovereignty: Soros would like nothing better than for America to become subservient to international bodies. He wants more power for groups such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, even while saying the U.S. role in the IMF should be “downsized.”...

4. Media Matters: Soros is a financial backer of Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog group that hyperventilates over any conservative view that makes it into the mainstream media. Now its founder, David Brock, has openly declared war on Fox News, telling Politico that the group was mounting “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” against the cable news channel, and would try to disrupt the commercial interests of owner Rupert Murdoch—an odd mission for a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt educational foundation that is barred from participating in partisan political activity.

5. MoveOn.org: Soros has been a major funder of MoveOn.org, a progressive advocacy group and political action committee that raises millions for liberal candidates. This is the group that had on its website an ad comparing President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler and ran the infamous “General Betray Us” ad in the New York Times, disparaging the integrity of Gen. David Petraeus.

6. Center for American Progress: Headed by John Podesta, White House chief of staff under President Clinton, the Center for American Progress has been instrumental in providing progressive talking points and policy positions for the Obama administration. There has also been a revolving door between the White House and the Soros-funded think tank, with Obama staffing his administration with many CAP officials.

7. Environmental extremism: Former Obama green jobs czar Van Jones and his leftist environmental ideas have been funded by Soros’ money at these groups: the Ella Baker Center, Green For All, the Center for American Progress, and the Apollo Alliance, which was instrumental in getting $110 billion in green initiatives included in Obama’s stimulus package. Soros also funds the Climate Policy Initiative to address global warming and gave Friends of the Earth money to “integrate a climate equity perspective in the presidential transition.”

8. America Coming Together: Soros gave nearly $20 million to this 527 group with the express purpose of defeating President Bush. A massive get-out-the-vote effort, ACT’s door-to-door canvassing teams included numerous felons, its voter registration drives were riddled with fraud, and it handed out incendiary fliers and made misleading taped phone calls to voters...

9. Currency manipulation: A large part of Soros’ multibillion-dollar fortune has come from manipulating currencies. During the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad accused him of bringing down the nation’s currency through his trading activities, and in Thailand he was called an “economic war criminal.” Known as “The Man who Broke the Bank of England,” Soros initiated a British financial crisis by dumping 10 billion sterling, forcing the devaluation of the currency and gaining a billion-dollar profit.

10. Delusions: Soros has repeatedly said that he sees himself as a messianic figure. Who but a megalomaniac would make these comments? “I admit that I have always harbored an exaggerated view of my self-importance—to put it bluntly, I fancied myself as some kind of god” or “I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood, which I felt I had to control, otherwise I might end up in the loony bin.” If only the loony bin were an option. As it is, one of the wealthiest men in the world is using his billions to impose a radical agenda on America. (End excerpts)

Source: http://humanevents.com/2011/04/02/top-1 ... dangerous/

(B) In 1999, economist Paul Krugman was critical of George Soros's effect on financial markets:

"Nobody who has read a business magazine in the last few years can be unaware that these days there really are investors who not only move money in anticipation of a currency crisis, but actually do their best to trigger that crisis for fun and profit. These new actors on the scene do not yet have a standard name; my proposed term is 'Soroi'".

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros

(C) At the annual World Economic Forum in Davos in 2016, George Soros told Bloomberg TV that the Chinese economy – where growth has already slowed to a 25-year low according to official figures – was heading for a hard landing.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2018, he attacked US tech giants Facebook and Google - calling them a menace to society and "obstacles to innovation".

Telling a dinner audience on the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos this year (2019), he launched a scathing attack on Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying he was “the most dangerous enemy” of free societies for presiding over a high-tech surveillance regime.

He urged Donald Trump to crack down hard on Chinese tech giants ZTE and Huawei as part of a more focused effort on China in the trade war.

P.S. George Soros seems to be suffering from technophobia. One would wonder why he has never called the nuclear bomb a menace to free societies and an obstacle to innovation.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ar-on-yuan

https://www.michaelbociurkiw.com/news/2 ... and-google

https://www.breitbart.com/news/soros-ca ... societies/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technophobia

[reedak]

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera teaches human rights and philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. The following are excerpts from his 28 January 2019 article headlined "What has happened in Venezuela is a coup. Trump’s denial is dangerous" with the subheading "Juan Guaidó has declared himself president. Now the US and rightwing regimes may seek an excuse to intervene in support".

(Begin excerpts)
....Enter Donald Trump: megalomaniac, erratic, liar. Calling out the interventionism of previous US administrations, which had been constant in their hatred for Chavez and their attempts to regain influence in the region, Trump promised to put an end to all such shenanigans. But on Wednesday, vice-president Mike Pence saluted Guaidó’s self-appointment, observing that although Trump disliked intervening elsewhere, he “has always had a very different view of our hemisphere”. That’s an explicit invocation of the Monroe doctrine under which the US has held it as its responsibility to intervene in the Americas, which it sees as its backyard.

Trump swiftly recognised Guaidó as the interim president of Venezuela, and was followed by a cohort of Latin American presidents, all-white, upper-class leaders now spearheading the new reactionary wave in the region: Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Argentina’s Mauricio Macri, Colombia’s Iván Duque and Chile’s Sebastián Piñera. They’ll proclaim themselves saviours of democracy and humanitarianism, the liars. Draping themselves in the robes of the liberators of yesteryear, just as Guaidó draped himself in the image of Chavez and Bolívar while holding a constitution with the latter’s image on its cover, they’ll happily support further US sanctions, paramilitary forces training Venezuela’s opposition in the torture tactics that displaced 7 million people in Colombia, or using “lawfare” in pan-American institutions just as happened to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Manuel Zelaya in Honduras and Fernando Lugo in Paraguay.

Expect such measures to have limited purchase. Washington knows it. Then, Trump and the others will be ready to go for the more muscular approach. Not by accident, this could also benefit Trump as elections approach or if he is cornered by investigations and impeachment. War distracts and makes money. Only this won’t be a regional plunder: China and Russia, both with key interests in Venezuela and elsewhere in the region, have followed Bolivia, Mexico, Uruguay and Cuba to call Guaidó’s stunt by its real name: a coup. Russia has indicated it would come to the defence of its ally. In Venezuela, many who may be critical of Maduro but fear most the return of the rightwing opposition to power are unlikely to cheer the newly converted humanitarians. Unlike the supporters of Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973, they’re armed. Washington awaits developments on the ground while keeping “all options on the table”. That’s doublespeak for hoping the heavy-handed response by Maduro’s government would provide moral justification for an intervention that would surely be approved by the Organization of American States.

There is plenty to criticise Maduro for: late or misguided economic measures, corruption, power-hoarding. But these criticisms cannot disguise a coup or justify an intervention that, if and when it comes, would engulf us all. Trump counts on Colombia’s Iván Duque, Alvaro Uribe’s appointee, and Brazil’s neo-fascists to support this, contributing troops of their own if needed. A neo-fascist runs one of the Americas’ powerhouses in Brazil; a narcissistic liar afraid of being painted into a corner runs the other. That combination is toxic. War in the name of humanity may tempt them, as it did the more liberal leaders of the past. But this time the stakes are higher. Venezuela’s coup is a threat to the entire world. (End excerpts)

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... uan-guaido

[reedak]

Robert J. Shapiro is co-founder and chairman of Sonecon, LLC, a private firm that advises US and foreign businesses, governments and non-profit organizations. From 1998 to 2001, he served as Under Secretary at the US Department of Commerce from 1998 to 2001. He was the vice president of the Progressive Policy Institute, an organization he co-founded in 1989.

The following are excerpts from his January 3, 2019 article headlined "The Deteriorating US Economy" with the subheading "Economists cannot say with precision when the next U.S. recession will begin. But there is no reasonable doubt that the U.S. economy will weaken in 2019."

(Begin excerpts)
In all likelihood, President Trump will face a seriously weakening U.S. economy in 2019, a development that could well shake his hold on Congressional Republicans and even some of his ardent supporters.

To date, the longest expansion in U.S. history lasted ten years (from March 1991 to March 2001). The current economic expansion will match that milestone in mid-2019....

Given that we have an elderly expansion on our hands, an economic downturn in the foreseeable future is thus a matter of when, not if.

At this point in the U.S. business cycle, one should see consumers continuing to pull back on purchases of new homes and large items (“durables”). That would be the case in 2019 even if the incomes of average households had not lagged inflation over the last 20 months. But they have.

As consumer demand continues to cool, businesses will slow new investment and hiring, and overall growth will likely fall to or below 2%. At the end of that road lies the next recession in late 2019 or early 2020. That’s not exactly supportive of Trump’s aspirations for reelection to the Oval Office in November of next year....

The deteriorating outlook on the U.S. economy has not been lost on global investors. The best evidence that their confidence in the U.S. economy has waned is not so much the stock market’s recent stumbles, but rather the changes in what economists call the “yield curve.”...

Those changes in the yield curve are the most reliable measure economists have that a recession is coming. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, an inverted yield curve has preceded by about one year every U.S. recession since 1960 with only one false positive (in 1966).

The bad news for President Trump as he contemplates the seemingly certain toxic fallout from investigators in 2019 is that the yield curve has already flattened dramatically....

Based on history and the hard data on what’s happening today, there is no reasonable doubt that the U.S. economy will weaken in 2019 as it enters the final stage of this business cycle. (End excerpts)

Source: https://www.theglobalist.com/us-economy ... ald-trump/

[reedak]

Richard Phillips is a New York-based international analyst. Since the 1980s, he has served as a senior advisor to major financial institutions around the world. Among his current responsibilities is the management of the Thomson Reuters Corporate Responsibility Ratings and Indexes, which measure 200 separate factors to assess the environmental, social and governance performance of over 5,000 companies worldwide.

The following are excerpts from Richard Phillips' December 27, 2018 article headlined "American People to Trump: What’s Goin’ on in the Markets?" with the subheading "What makes this particular market correction so spooky is that, unlike in 2008, no single reason has yet been identified as causing the downturn."

(Begin excerpts)
...As of December 25, 2018, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had been down on seven consecutive days. It was down 13 out of 18 trading days for the month of December through Christmas Day.

But what makes this particular market correction so spooky is that, unlike in 2008, no single reason has yet been identified as causing the downturn....

It is worth noting that this is the worst December for the stock market since 1931, a year after the passage of the so-called Smoot-Hawley Act....

Nor is the crash confined to “big tech.” The biotech sector hasn’t done much better recently and popular biotech indexes are down on the order of 33% since late September, as government weighs in on drug pricing.

Technology and biotechnology are supposed to represent America’s economic future. If recent performance is any indication, the future is looking rather bleak.

Of great concern in terms of the tech crash is that the increasingly bleak outlook for stocks, which remains largely ethereal, will become hard fact at an inopportune time....

As this unfolds, confidence in all branches of the U.S. government, especially the Executive Branch, will continue to erode.

With each passing day, the Trump Administration looks more and more like a misguided Amateur Hour — a reality game show where untalented hacks get to compete against the President for whose ideas are more stupid — call it “The Political Apprentice: Stupid Edition.”...

Trump’s government shutdown is based on the curious idea to impose a 16th century solution – walls — on a problem that doesn’t really exist (mass immigration). This type of erratic — call it stupid — behavior undermines confidence on a scale not seen in U.S. politics since the end of World War II....

In the current market, we are deprived of such certain culpability. Today, one can only ask, “What’s Goin’ On?” (End excerpts)

Source: https://www.theglobalist.com/us-stock-m ... e-economy/

[reedak]

The following are excerpts from a May 28, 2005 article, by Steven R. Weisman from Washington and Juan Forero from Bogotá, Colombia, under the headline "U.S. Rejects Venezuelan Move on Extradition of Bombing Suspect". It is one of many examples of US hypocrisy and double standard on extradition and terrorism.

(Begin excerpts)
WASHINGTON, May 27 - The Justice Department on Friday rejected Venezuela's request for the arrest of a Cuban exile wanted for an airplane bombing as a preliminary to his extradition, saying it had not provided proper supporting evidence.

A State Department official said the Venezuelans were told that their request, which called for the arrest of Luis Posada Carriles to prevent his escape as a first step to extradition, did not contain sufficient information regarding the facts and circumstances of his involvement in the 1976 bombing. The midair explosion of a Cuban airliner off the coast of Barbados killed 73 people, including several Venezuelans.....

Mr. Posada is in American custody. He escaped a Venezuelan jail in 1985 while awaiting trial on charges he planned the bombing. Now 77, he reappeared on May 17 in Miami....

Mr. Posada, a former C.I.A. operative has placed the Bush administration in a political and legal predicament that has raised questions about whether it has a double standard on terrorism.

Extraditing Mr. Posada would embitter members of Miami's Cuban-American community, some of whom are close allies and financial backers of President Bush and his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida. Not extraditing him could raise accusations that the administration was willing to protect a bombing suspect if his mission was to eliminate one of Washington's adversaries.

American officials have not said whether they would extradite Mr. Posada, saying that the question was a legal matter. But they have indicated they would not willingly send him to Venezuela. The fear is that Mr. Posada would wind up in Cuba, where he would be executed for a range of crimes, including an assassination attempt on Mr. Castro. (End excerpts)

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/28/poli ... spect.html

[reedak]

1. Let us look at an amusing demonstration of "The Art of the Deal" by Donald Trump in the full glare of the world. On the one hand, the Trump administration colludes with Canada to detain the Huawei CFO for jailing in the US. On the other hand, it expects a positive outcome in its trade talks with China, claiming everything is going very well.

When you talk business with someone, do you keep punching him in the chest like a sandbag in order to get a good deal? Do you expect the other party to bare his chest more openly, laughing loudly with the remark "Please punch as hard as you can. I enjoy it very much."?

2. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the word "extradite" means "to make someone RETURN for trial to another country or state where they have been accused of doing something illegal". Where should the Huawei CFO return? RETURN to the USA? Is she a US citizen? Moreover, did the US inform or complain about the Huawei CFO to the Chinese government in the past or prior to her illegal detention in Canada?

3. Using an analogy, suppose Mr A's son got a bruised cheek after a fight with your son. Instead of complaining to you, Mr A quietly colluded with Mr B to teach your son a lesson.

One day when your son walked past Mr B's house, he was detained by Mr B and sent to Mr A for a sound thrashing. What would be your reaction then?

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... /extradite

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump:_Th ... f_the_Deal