By Sumi Somaskanda & Tiffany Wertheimer, BBC NewsChina should face “economic cost” for Russia support – Jens Stoltenberg
The head of Nato has told the BBC that China should face consequences for supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, if it does not change its ways.
Jens Stoltenberg said Beijing was “trying to get it both ways” by supporting Russia’s war effort, while also trying to maintain relationships with European allies.
“This cannot work in the long run,” Mr Stoltenberg told BBC News during a visit to Washington.
In the wide ranging interview, Mr Stoltenberg also addressed nuclear weapons and defence spending.
His comments come as Russia shows no sign of easing its war against Ukraine.
A peace summit held in Switzerland at the weekend saw dozens of nations commit to supporting Kyiv, but Russia called it a waste of time and said it would only agree to peace talks if Ukraine essentially surrendered.
When pressed on what Nato members might do about China’s support of Russia, Mr Stoltenberg said there was an “ongoing conversation” about possible sanctions.
He said China was “sharing a lot of technologies, [like] micro-electronics, which are key for Russia to build missiles, weapons they use against Ukraine”.
He added that “at some stage, we should consider some kind of economic cost if China doesn’t change their behaviour”.
Beijing is already under some sanctions for its support of Russia – last month, the US announced restrictions that would target about 20 firms based in China and Hong Kong.
China has defended its business with Moscow, saying it is not selling lethal arms and “prudently handles the export of dual-use items in accordance with laws and regulations”.
Russia’s full-scale invasion has devastated Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin has clearly said he has no intention of pulling back
Russia has become increasingly isolated on the world stage since it launched its full-scale war with Ukraine in 2022. Mr Putin has repeatedly said that the West’s balance of power is shifting, and he has worked to strengthen ties with like-minded leaders.
“Russia right now is aligning more and more with authoritarian leaders,” Mr Stoltenberg told the BBC, listing Iran, Beijing and North Korea.
He said that the North has sent artillery shells to Russia, and in return Russia had given advanced technology for North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes.
“So North Korea is helping Russia to conduct a war of aggression against Ukraine.”
Speaking ahead of a meeting with US President Joe Biden, the Nato chief also announced that more than 20 nations are expected to meet a defence spending target of 2% this year – more than any other year since it was pledged in 2014.
“This is good for Europe and good for America, especially since much of this extra money is spent here in the United States,” he said.
Mr Stoltenberg also addressed comments that he made to the Telegraph on Sunday which indicated that Nato may be considering increasing the number of deployable warheads as a deterrent against growing threats from Russia and China.
The comments were criticised as “nothing but another escalation of tension” by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
But Mr Stoltenberg said they were a “general message” that Nato is a nuclear alliance, and that any attack on a Nato member will “trigger a response from the whole alliance”.
“The purpose of Nato is not to fight the war, the purpose of that is to prevent the war,” he said.
Should the European NATO members manage to provoke Moscow into a nuclear response, the Americans might stay on the sidelines, Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested.
Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday, Putin was asked about the increasingly belligerent rhetoric from some European capitals, which moderator Sergey Karaganov compared to the baying of hyenas.
“The Europeans have to think: if those with whom we exchange such [nuclear] blows are obliterated, would the Americans get involved in such an exchange, on the level of strategic weapons, or not? I very much doubt it,” Putin said in response.
The Russian president explained that, while the US and Russia both have well-developed early warning systems to detect incoming missiles, the European members of NATO do not. “In this sense, they are more or less defenseless,” he said.
Moreover, Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons are “three to four times more powerful than the bombs the Americans used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Putin said. “We have many times more of them – both on the European continent, and even if the Americans bring theirs over from the US – we still have many times more.”
Any such war would have “infinite casualties,” the Russian president warned.
While not ruling out changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, Putin reminded the audience that it currently only allows the use of atomic weapons in case of threats to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country, which is presently not the case.
Nor has Moscow ever brandished nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict, that being a malicious fabrication of some Western politicians, he added.
There is no need to even bring up nuclear escalation when the Russian military and defense industry are effective and far more capable than its adversaries when it comes to armor and aviation, Putin said.
The US and its allies have funneled weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine over the past two years, while insisting they wanted to inflict “a strategic defeat” on Russia – but weren’t a party to the conflict. In recent weeks, Washington, London and some other NATO members announced they were lifting restrictions on Kiev’s use of their weapons against Russia, prompting calls for Moscow to retaliate.
Citing the need to send the West a message, last month the Kremlin ordered the military district that borders Ukraine to carry out drills in deploying non-strategic nuclear weapons.
D/C: Putin is definitely trying to dial up the “scary factor of nuclear weapons” . Most probably to disturb current elections around the world and create a very nasty fear factor. Putin’s media chess move number three!!
Russian sub – joined by three other naval vessels – will not be carrying nuclear weapons, authorities in Havana said as they announced the visit
Guardian staff and agenciesFri 7 Jun 2024 00.44 BSTLast modified on Fri 7 Jun 2024 10.50 BST
A Russian nuclear-powered submarine – which will not be carrying nuclear weapons – will visit Havana next week, Cuba’s communist authorities have announced, amid rising tensions with the US over the war in Ukraine.
The nuclear submarine Kazan and three other Russian naval vessels, including the missile frigate Admiral Gorshkov, an oil tanker and a salvage tug, will dock in the Cuban capital from 12-17 June, Cuba’s ministry of the revolutionary armed forces said in a statement.
“None of the vessels is carrying nuclear weapons, so their stopover in our country does not represent a threat to the region,” the ministry said.
The announcement came a day after US officials said that Washington had been tracking Russian warships and aircraft that were expected to arrive in the Caribbean for a military exercise. They said the exercise would be part of a broader Russian response to US support for Ukraine.
The US officials said that the Russian military presence was notable but not concerning. However, it comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that Moscow could take “asymmetrical steps” elsewhere in the world in response to President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use US-provided weapons to strike inside Russia to protect Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
The unusual deployment of the Russian military so close to the US – particularly the powerful submarine – comes amid major tensions over the war in Ukraine, where the western-backed government is fighting a Russian invasion. The Russian vessels’ visit to Cuba will also overlap with Biden’s visit to the G7 leaders summit in Italy.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel met with Putin last month for the annual 9 May military parade on Red Square outside the Kremlin.
During the cold war, Cuba was an important client state for the Soviet Union. The deployment of Soviet nuclear missile sites on the island triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Washington and Moscow came close to war.
Relations between Russia and Cuba have become closer since a 2022 meeting between Diaz-Canel and Putin.
During the Russian fleet’s arrival at the port of Havana, 21 salvoes will be fired from one of the ships as a salute to the nation, which will be reciprocated by an artillery battery from Cuba’s revolutionary armed forces, the foreign ministry said.
A group of Russian warships, including a nuclear-powered submarine, will pay an official visit to Cuba next week, Havana’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces has announced.
In a statement on Thursday, the ministry said that a total of four Russian vessels, including the frigate Admiral Gorshkov, nuclear-powered submarine Kazan, oil tanker Pashin, and rescue tug Nikolay Chiker, will visit the island from June 12-17.
”None of the ships carries nuclear weapons, so their stopover in our country does not pose a threat to the region,” the officials said, adding that the visit to the island, which is around 140km off the coast of the US, “corresponds to the historically friendly relations between Cuba and the Russian Federation and strictly adheres to the international regulations.”
According to the ministry, the Russians will conduct a program of activities during their stay, including courtesy visits to the head of the Revolutionary Navy and the governor of Havana, and visits to places of historical and cultural interest. When the group arrives at the Port of Havana, one of the ships will fire a 21-gun salute, the statement added.
Commenting on the announcement, White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby told CNN that while the US will closely follow the visit, it does not anticipate “any significant national security threat as a result of these exercises.” He went on to suggest that the visit – which he described as “not typical” but pre-scheduled – could be Moscow’s signal to Washington that it is “unhappy” with its efforts to support Ukraine.
US Senator Marco Rubio warned that the Russian exercises “should be a wake-up call to the Biden administration.”
“Our adversaries are dangerously close to our shores, and we must be prepared to defend the homeland from military and hybrid threats in our hemisphere,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
In 1962, Cuba became the arena of a major missile crisis that brought the US and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war. At the time, Moscow stationed nuclear weapons on the island in response to the deployment of American nuclear weapons in Türkiye, and to deter a potential US invasion of Cuba.
The Russian Defense Ministry has yet to comment on the visit, but in late May, it said that a group of warships from the Northern Fleet had set out for the Atlantic on a “long-distance expedition.” It stated that “the main goals of the expedition are to show the flag and ensure the naval presence in operationally important areas of the Far Sea zone.”
The Pentagon has refused delivery of so many F-35s that Lockheed Martin is running out of places to put them, according to a new report from a government watchdog agency.
Last July, the government stopped accepting new F-35s because of hardware and software delays with Technology Refresh-3, a $1.8-billion effort to enable new capabilities for the jet.
The number of jets accumulating outside Lockheed’s plant is “grossly delinquent,” Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., chairman of the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee, told reporters Wednesday.
“We know one thing for certain: it’s going to be at least over 100 aircraft stacked up on the tarmac,” Wittman said.
The GAO report did not say how many aircraft are currently parked, saying the Defense Department deemed that figure “unsuitable for public release.”
But the report said that Lockheed would need to rethink its plans.
“If TR-3 software is delayed past April 2024, Lockheed Martin is projected to exceed its maximum parking capacity and will need to develop a plan to accommodate more parked planes,” it said.
Lockheed officials say they have all the infrastructure and capacity they need to park the aircraft until they are ready for delivery.
“Specific details about parking will not be shared due to security considerations,” officials said in a May 16 statement.
The situation is financial pain for Lockheed: the Pentagon is withholding payments of $7 million for each undelivered TR-3 jet, Bloomberg previously reported.
The government as well will face “significant liability” if any of the parked aircraft get damaged or lost while sitting at Lockheed’s facilities, according to the report.
“It is unique for so many critical DOD aircraft to be waiting for DOD acceptance, instead of stored at lower densities across many military locations throughout the world. This creates unique financial and schedule risks to DOD,” GAO said.
Once the TR-3 upgrade is ready, it will take about a year to deliver all of the jets Lockheed has parked, GAO said.
But challenges with software stability and delayed hardware are pushing the delivery of full TR-3 capability to 2025, the report said. The first TR-3 jets were supposed to be delivered last July.
The Pentagon is working on a plan to restart accepting the jets without the full TR-3 upgrade because, officials say, a part-capability is better than nothing. Those deliveries could start up as soon as July, officials say, but the interim version of the upgrade won’t be combat-ready and will only be used in training.
“According to program officials, this initial TR-3 software will allow the program to accept delivered aircraft but not deliver any new capabilities to the aircraft. TR-3 software with new capabilities will not be delivered until 2025, two years later than originally planned. This means the warfighter will continue to wait for these critical upgrades,” GAO said.
Specifically, the TR-3 software has had trouble supporting the F-35’s radar and electronic warfare systems. Some test pilots have said that they had to reboot their radar and
electronic warfare systems mid-flight, according to the report.
“Program officials stated that early versions of radar and in-flight systems software can commonly experience rebooting issues. However, even after being nearly a year delayed, TR-3 software continues to be unstable, according to test officials,” GAO said.
House lawmakers have grown so frustrated with the program that they have proposed cutting the Pentagon’s F-35 buy in the House Armed Services chairman’s mark of the fiscal 2025 policy bill—and fencing off the delivery of 10 more jets until problems are addressed.
The proposed bill would take the resources that were allocated to buy more jets and use them to create a digital twin of the F-35 and an integrated software laboratory. It’s “astounding” that Lockheed hasn’t modernized how it develops software and hardware for the program, Wittman said.
“We also believe that the resources from the 10 aircraft that will go to an integrated software laboratory, to digital twin testing, to additional test beds—all those things are capabilities that should have been done years ago and haven’t been done and that’s why we’re so far behind where we are today. So we are saying, you know what, we’re not going to leave this to chance anymore. We’re going to take an active role,” Wittman said.
The F-35 program is on track to cost over $2 trillion, making it the world’s most expensive weapons program.
By now, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambition to remake the world is undeniable. He wants to dissolve Washington’s network of alliances and purge what he dismisses as “Western” values from international bodies. He wants to knock the U.S. dollar off its pedestal and eliminate Washington’s chokehold over critical technology. In his new multipolar order, global institutions and norms will be underpinned by Chinese notions of common security and economic development, Chinese values of state-determined political rights, and Chinese technology. China will no longer have to fight for leadership. Its centrality will be guaranteed.
To hear Xi tell it, this world is within reach. At the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs last December, he boasted that Beijing was (in the words of a government press release) a “confident, self-reliant, open and inclusive major country,” one that had created the world’s “largest platform for international cooperation” and led the way in “reforming the international system.” He asserted that his conception for the global order—a “community with a shared future for mankind”—had evolved from a “Chinese initiative” to an “international consensus,” to be realized through the implementation of four Chinese programs: the Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative.
Outside China, such brash, self-congratulatory proclamations are generally disregarded or dismissed—including by American officials, who have tended to discount the appeal of Beijing’s strategy. It is easy to see why: a large number of China’s plans appear to be failing or backfiring. Many of China’s neighbors are drawing closer to Washington, and its economy is faltering. The country’s confrontational “Wolf Warrior” style of diplomacy may have pleased Xi, but it won China few friends overseas. And polls indicate that Beijing is broadly unpopular worldwide: A 2023 Pew Research Center study, for example, surveyed attitudes toward China and the United States in 24 countries on six continents. It found that only 28 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of Beijing, and just 23 percent said China contributes to global peace. Nearly 60 percent of respondents, by contrast, had a positive view of the United States, and 61 percent said Washington contributes to peace and stability.
But Xi’s vision is far more formidable than it seems. China’s proposals would give power to the many countries that have been frustrated and sidelined by the present order, but it would still afford the states Washington currently favors with valuable international roles. Beijing’s initiatives are backed by a comprehensive, well-resourced, and disciplined operational strategy—one that features outreach to governments and people in seemingly every country. These techniques have gained Beijing newfound support, particularly in some multilateral organizations and from nondemocracies. China is succeeding in making itself an agent of welcome change while portraying the United States as the defender of a status quo that few particularly like.
Rather than dismissing Beijing’s playbook, U.S. policymakers should learn from it. To win what will be a long-term competition, the United States must seize the mantle of change that China has claimed. Washington needs to articulate and push forward its own vision for a transformed international system and the U.S. role within that system—one that is inclusive of countries at different economic levels and with different political systems. Like China, the United States needs to invest deeply in the technological, military, and diplomatic foundations that enable both security at home and leadership abroad. Yet as the country commits to that competition, U.S. policymakers must understand that near-term stabilization of the bilateral relationship advances rather than hinders ultimate U.S. objectives. They should build on last year’s summit between President Joe Biden and Xi, curtailing inflammatory anti-Chinese rhetoric and creating a more functional diplomatic relationship. That way, the United States can focus on the more important task: winning the long-term game.
I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW
Beijing’s playbook begins with a well-defined vision of a transformed world order. The Chinese government wants a system built not just on multipolarity but also on absolute sovereignty; security rooted in international consensus and the UN Charter; state-determined human rights based on each country’s circumstances; development as the “master key” to all solutions; the end of U.S. dollar dominance; and a pledge to leave no country and no one behind.
This vision, in Beijing’s telling, stands in stark contrast to the system the United States supports. In a 2023 report, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed Washington was “clinging to the Cold War mentality” and “piecing together small blocs through its alliance system” to “create division in the region, stoke confrontation and undermine peace.” The United States, the report continued, interferes “in the internal affairs of other countries,” uses the dollar’s status as the international reserve currency to coerce “other countries into serving America’s political and economic strategy,” and seeks to “deter other countries’ scientific, technological and economic development.”
Finally, the ministry argued, the United States advances “cultural hegemony.” The “real weapons in U.S. cultural expansion,” it declared, were the “production lines of Mattel Company and Coca-Cola.”
Beijing claims that its vision, by contrast, advances the interests of the majority of the world’s people. China is center stage, but every country, including the United States, has a role to play. At the 2024 Munich Security Conference in February, for example, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China and the United States are responsible for global strategic stability. China and Russia, meanwhile, represent the exploration of a new model for major-country relations.
China and the European Union are the world’s two major markets and civilizations and should resist establishing blocs based on ideology. And China, as what Wang called the “largest developing country,” promotes solidarity and cooperation with the global South to increase its representation in global affairs.
China’s vision is designed to be compelling for nearly all countries. Those that are not democracies will have their choices validated. Those that are democracies but not major powers will gain a greater voice in the international system and a bigger share of the benefits of globalization. Even the major democratic powers can reflect on whether the current system is adequate for meeting today’s challenges or whether China has something better to offer. Observers in the United States and elsewhere may roll their eyes at the grandiose phrasing, but they do so at their peril: dissatisfaction with the current international order has created a global audience more amenable to China’s proposals than might have existed not long ago.
D/C: Certainly China has been buying huge amounts of gold to get off their dependency on the dollar, But also they need to get American’s a little on side to aid their exports, as their economy is a problem right now!
CNN: Choose between stability and ‘downward spiral,’ China tells Blinken during Beijing trip
Former U.S. president Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he leaves a Manhattan courtroom after the second day of his criminal trial in New York on April 16.Mary Altaffer/The Associated Press
The chair of the Nevada Republican Party has been indicted. So has the former chair of the Georgia GOP. In Michigan, a former co-chair of the state party is facing charges.
As former President Donald Trump goes on trial in the New York criminal case, other investigations and prosecutions in five crucial swing states are continuing to scrutinize the steps that he and his allies took in trying to circumvent the will of voters after the 2020 election.
The investigations focus largely on the plan to deploy fake electors in states Trump lost. Documents emerging from the state cases highlight divisions among Trump advisers after the 2020 election about whether to use hedging language in the phony certificates they sent to Washington purporting to designate electoral votes for Trump. They also undercut claims by some Trump aides that they played little role in the fake-electors plan.
Georgia, Michigan and Nevada have already brought charges against a total of 25 fake electors, including current and former Republican Party leaders in those states. The Georgia case, led by Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, has gone further, bringing charges against Trump himself and a number of his advisers.
Investigations are also playing out in Wisconsin as well as in Arizona, where state Attorney General Kris Mayes is expected to bring charges soon. Grand jury subpoenas were recently issued to the people who acted as fake electors in Arizona, including Kelli Ward, a former state Republican chair. Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign official who is already facing charges in Georgia, is also among those subpoenaed in the Arizona case.
There are so many state investigations going on that “they all kind of run together,” said Manny Arora, a lawyer for Kenneth Chesebro, an architect of the fake-electors plan who has emerged as a key witness in the investigations.
“Most of the jurisdictions are keeping it local and leaving the big stuff to the feds,” Arora said, adding that he did not expect most of the state cases to “be quite as sweeping as Georgia.”
Evidence has also emerged from state civil suits brought on behalf of legitimate 2020 electors for Joe Biden, and from the federal case brought by Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting Trump.
The state-level inquiries are being led by Democrats, with one exception. Pete Skandalakis, a Republican who leads a nonpartisan state agency in Georgia, said last week that he would investigate Lt. Gov. Burt Jones over his role as a fake elector. Willis was disqualified from investigating Jones because she had hosted a fundraiser for one of Jones’ political opponents.
Whether any of the cases will significantly affect Trump’s 2024 campaign is unclear. The former president’s most immediate legal challenge is the criminal trial that began this week in New York City, focusing on hush-money payments made to porn actor Stormy Daniels.
In the election interference cases, lawyers for Trump and other defendants have generally not disputed the evidence, choosing instead to challenge the investigations on free speech, immunity or procedural grounds.
But Trump’s legal team continues to fall under scrutiny as well. One of his top lawyers, Boris Epshteyn, was closely involved in the fake-electors effort, his emails and texts show. (“Does VP have ultimate authority on which slate of electors should be chosen?” Epshteyn texted to Chesebro on Dec. 12, 2020, as the plan was germinating.)
Trump has depicted himself as the victim of a wide-ranging conspiracy, and has made his legal travails a focus of his campaign. During Easter, he circulated a story likening his legal challenges to the trials of Jesus.
Many of those who tried to keep Trump in power after the 2020 election remain defiant. Anthony Kern, a state lawmaker in Arizona who served as a fake elector there, said late last year that “there’s no such thing as fake electors.”
Others have expressed contrition. Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who worked for the Trump campaign, tearfully apologized in October when she pleaded guilty to a felony in Atlanta, telling a judge that she looked back “on this experience with deep remorse.”
A few weeks later, in Michigan, a fake Trump elector and former state trooper named James Renner told state investigators that he came to regret his actions in 2020 after learning more about what happened.
“I felt that I had been walked into a situation that I shouldn’t have ever been involved in,” he said in an interview with investigators from the Michigan attorney general’s office, according to a transcript obtained by The New York Times. Charges against Renner were dropped and he agreed to cooperate.
Chesebro, who pleaded guilty to a felony last year in Georgia, later told investigators in Michigan that he had been misled by the Trump campaign and had not known that it was “trying to create chaos in state legislatures.”
He said he had been financially devastated by legal fees.
“It’s been a real, a lesson in not working with people that you don’t know and you’re not sure you can trust,” Chesebro told the Michigan investigators, according to a recording of his interview with them that has been reported previously by CNN. “I ended up losing. I had a wonderful apartment in New York City I had to sell for a $2 million loss, and lost almost all my net worth because of the attorney bill.”
In December, Andrew Hitt, who was head of the Wisconsin Republican Party during the 2020 election, told a local ABC affiliate that he and other fake electors “were tricked” by the Trump campaign and thought they were only acting as a contingency, in case litigation succeeded.
Those Wisconsin fake electors agreed in a recent civil settlement that the document they signed was “used as part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results” and they said they would cooperate with the Justice Department.
Wisconsin officials have yet to confirm publicly that they are investigating fake electors. But Chesebro was interviewed on the subject last year by the office of Josh Kaul, the state attorney general, according to Arora.
None of the cases are likely to be resolved before the November election. A trial in Nevada, where charges were brought in December, has been delayed until next year. In Michigan, the case is still in the pretrial hearing phase.
Willis was the first to start an investigation, charging 19 people in August in a wide-ranging racketeering case. But she has been slowed by the scope of her case, and by a recent attempt by the defense to have her disqualified because of her romantic relationship with a lawyer she hired to oversee the case.
Chesebro’s communications continue to surface. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, he believed there was “voluminous evidence in multiple states of a rigged election,” as he said in one email, but he had trouble persuading some whose support he sought that any such evidence existed. He sent anonymous direct messages to James Widgerson, then editor of a conservative Wisconsin website, to tell him about an election fraud hearing led by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a staunch Trump ally. Widgerson replied: “I cannot roll my eyes that far.”
Chesebro did repeatedly seek to insert language into the phony Electoral College certificates that were drafted for the slates of fake electors to make clear they were only meant as a contingency, in case legal challenges to Biden’s 2020 victory succeeded. Chesebro texted Roman, the Trump campaign official, and said he thought that the language “should be changed in all the states.”
“I don’t,” Roman replied.
Chesebro added that he could help draft the language, but Roman replied with a dismissive expletive.
The contingency language was ultimately included only in Pennsylvania and New Mexico, and it appears to have headed off prosecution of the fake electors in those states. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat, cited the contingency language in January after declining to bring charges.
“By the time the Trump campaign contacted New Mexico’s fake electors, the campaign had added conditional language to the certificate,” Torrez wrote in a January letter to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. Because of that, he added, “there is not enough evidence” in “support of a charge of forgery.”
D/C: Some might say that busing in Chinese non citizen/pressured voters to a polling station is also similar. Not that this would every happen in Canada!!!Need to check those citizenship cards/passports and proof of address at the door guys and photocopy them for everybody even if this takes timeand the polling stations need to stay open for two days .. please let’s get it right.
Democracy needs to be seen to be clean here, as we notice that all around the globe that it isn’t. I have been voting here for decades in federal elections and have never once been asked for proof of Canadian citizenship!!! Why NOT?? See rules below.
Tehran says UN Security Council should have condemned Israel’s deadly air raid on Iranian consulate in Damascus.
Iran has promised a response after its consulate in the Syrian capital Damascus was destroyed in a suspected Israeli missile attack [Firas Makdesi/Reuters]
Iran’s mission to the United Nations has suggested that any Iranian military response to a deadly Israeli air raid on the Iranian consulate in Damascus could have been averted if the UN Security Council had denounced Israel’s attack.
The Iranian statement on Thursday comes amid a growing number of media reports that an Iranian attack on Israel or Israeli interests is imminent.
“Had the UN Security Council condemned the Zionist regime’s reprehensible act of aggression on our diplomatic premises in Damascus and subsequently brought to justice its perpetrators, the imperative for Iran to punish this rogue regime might have been obviated,” the Iranian mission said in a social media post.
Iran has promised to carry out a “decisive” response to the Israeli attack that killed seven members of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including two generals, in Damascus on April 1.
The Israeli assault and anticipated Iranian retaliation have raised fears of an all-out regional war in the Middle East amid the raging conflict in Gaza, intensifying tensions and a chorus of calls for de-escalation.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian held phone calls with his Qatari, Saudi, Emirati, Iraqi and German counterparts on Thursday.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock cautioned against further tensions during her talks with Amir-Abdollahian, Berlin said.
“Avoiding further regional escalation must be in everyone’s interest. We urge all actors in the region to act responsibly and exercise maximum restraint,” the German Federal Foreign Office said in a post on X.
German airline Lufthansa extended its suspension on flights to Tehran on Thursday, the Reuters news agency cited a company spokesperson as saying.
Russia also warned its citizens against travelling to the Middle East, especially Israel, the Palestinian territory and Lebanon.
The United States, which has forces stationed across the region, had warned Iran against attacking Israel, pledging support for its ally.
“Our commitment to Israel’s security against these threats from Iran and its proxies is ironclad; let me say it again: ironclad,” US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday. “We’re going to do all we can to protect Israel’s security.”
A US official, who spoke to Al Jazeera Arabic on condition of anonymity, said Biden’s statement is not merely rhetorical, and the US would help intercept Iranian rockets or drones against Israel.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke via phone to Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday.
“Secretary Blinken reiterated the United States’ support for Israel’s security and made clear that the US will stand with Israel against any threats by Iran and its proxies,” the US Department of State said in a statement.
Blinken also spoke to his Turkish, Chinese and Saudi counterparts, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Thursday.
“We have been engaged in a series of contacts not just at his [Blinken’s] level – but other levels, too – to talk to foreign counterparts to send this really clear message to Iran that they should not escalate this conflict,” Miller said.
The New York Times reported, citing anonymous Pentagon sources that Michael E Kurilla, the top US general in the Middle East, was visiting Israel on Thursday to discuss the possible Iranian attack.
Later on Thursday, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated that the US is committed to Israel’s security without providing details on how Washington would respond to an Iranian strike. “I want to be really careful. I am not going to get into operational procedures from here,” she told reporters.
Iran hawks in the US Congress have been calling for a strong response by Washington to any Iranian military move against Israel.
“Israel is under threat of imminent attack by Iran,” Republican Senator Tom Cotton wrote in a social media post on Thursday. “President Biden needs to warn the ayatollahs immediately that the United States will back Israel to the hilt and the joint American-Israeli retaliation for any attack will be swift and devastating.”
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to issue a threat to Iran and other adversaries, saying that the country is prepared for “challenges in other arenas” beyond the war on Gaza.
“We have determined a simple rule: Whoever harms us, we will harm them. We are prepared to meet all of the security needs of the State of Israel, both defensively and offensively,” Netanyahu said during a visit to an airbase in central Israel, according to his office.
The Israeli military has been attacking Iran-linked targets in Syria for years as Tehran deepened its military presence in the war-torn country.
But the attack on the Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus earlier this month was seen as especially brazen. It garnered condemnations from across the Middle East and the rest of the world.
“The consulate and embassy offices in any country are considered to be the territory of that country. When they attack our consulate, it means they have attacked our territory,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was quoted as saying by Mehr news agency on Wednesday.
“The Zionist regime made a mistake and must be punished and will be punished.”
Peter Maass is the author of “Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War.” He covered the Bosnia war for The Post, and the invasion of Iraq for the New York Times Magazine.
How does it feel to be a war-crimes reporter whose family bankrolled a nation that’s committing war crimes?
I can tell you.
I covered the genocide in Bosnia for The Post, wrote a book about it, and reported from Iraq and Afghanistan, among other conflict-ridden countries. Also, my ancestors were key funders of Jewish emigration to British-controlled Palestine. The Warburgs and Schiffs donated millions of dollars to that cause, and during the war between Jews and Arabs that started in 1948, they helped raise vast sums for the new state of Israel. When Golda Meir made an emergency fundraising visit to the United States, one of the philanthropists she met with was an uncle of mine who led the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
As Israeli forces grind through Gaza in what the International Court of Justice defines as a “plausible” case of genocide, my family’s history of philanthropy runs into my familiarity with war crimes. When Israel bombs and shoots civilians, blocks food aid, attacks hospitals and cuts off water supplies, I remember the same outrages in Bosnia. When people in a Gaza flour line were attacked, I thought of the Sarajevans killed waiting in line for bread, and the perpetrators who in each case insisted the victims were slaughtered by their own side.
Atrocities tend to rhyme.
When I reported from besieged Sarajevo, I stayed in a hotel that was smack on the front line, with Serbian snipers routinely firing at civilians walking under my window. While exiting or entering the Holiday Inn, sometimes I was the one getting shot at. On a spring day in 1993, I heard the familiar crack and whistle of a sniper’s bullet, followed by an awful scream. I went to my window and saw a wounded civilian trying to crawl to safety. Writing in The Post more than three decades ago, I described the man’s desperate shouts as “a mad howl of a person pushed over the edge. It came from the lungs, from the heart, from the mind.”
I was thinking of Haris Bahtanovic — I tracked him to a nearby hospital the next day — as I watched an agonizing video from Gaza not long ago. The video shows a grandmother, Hala Khreis, trying to leave a neighborhood that Israeli forces are surrounding. Walking tentatively, she holds the hand of her grandson, who is five years old and carries a white flag. Suddenly, a shot rings out and she crumples to the ground dead. Sniper rifles have high-powered scopes — the shooters can see who they are shooting. The attacks on Khreis in 2024 and Bahtanovic in 1993 occurred in daytime and were not accidental.
Millions of Jews in America feel connected to Israel’s creation. Maybe our ancestors gave or raised money, maybe they went and fought, maybe they donated to Zionist organizations. What’s a Jew to do now? Everyone makes their own choices, but my experience of war crimes taught me that being Jewish means standing against any nation that commits war crimes.
Any.
I noted in my Bosnia book how being a Jew and seeing an actual genocide made me understand, more than before, the precariousness of minorities and the necessity of speaking out as atrocities emerge. That imperative strengthens if your government abets the crimes or your tribe commits them.
Israel and its supporters contend that what’s happening in Gaza is a legal and righteous response to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas fighters. It’s evident that war crimes were committed by Hamas: Israelis were shot in their homes at kibbutzim, and concertgoers at the Nova music festival were massacred. We’ve seen the pictures and videos, and while some allegations have turned out to be false, the evidence of brutal crimes is solid. Hamas is still holding more than 100 hostages.
That does not give Israel a pass to respond as it pleases. An eye for an eye — or a hundred eyes for one eye — is not a thing in international law. A key tenet of the laws of warfare is that an attack that endangers civilians must be militarily necessary, and any civilian casualties that occur must be proportional to the military gain. What that means, in plainer language, is that you cannot slaughter a lot of civilians for a minor battlefield gain, and you certainly cannot target civilians, as appears to have happened in the killing of Hala Khreis and many other Palestinians. So far, more than 30,000 people have been reported killed in Gaza, most of them civilians, including more than 13,000 children.
The victims of genocide — which Jews were in the Holocaust — are not gifted with the right to perpetrate one. Of course, a war-crimes court should be the arbiter of whether Israel’s actions in Gaza qualify as genocide, but sufficient evidence for indictments appears to exist because the legal definition of genocide is “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” The key words are “in part.” Holocaust levels of killing are not required to reach the legal standard.
This puts all Americans, not just American Jews, on the spot. The U.S. government is Israel’s principal supporter, by virtue of the bombs and other weapons that continue to be provided to the extremist government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. We are all implicated.
The idea of Jews protecting the rights of Palestinians is not as new as you might think. Before the Holocaust, my ancestors were part of the “non-Zionist” movement that supported Jewish emigration to Palestine but opposed the creation of a Jewish state. The non-Zionist position was based on the concern that a Jewish state would result in violence and reinforce accusations that Jews were not loyal to America.
For example, in the May 21, 1917, edition of the New York Times, a headline reads: “Mr. Schiff Not for Zionism: He Would Establish Jewish Population, Not a Nation, in Palestine.” The story is about my great-great-grandfather, Jacob Schiff, the Gilded Age financier who bankrolled efforts to help persecuted Jews flee Europe. The idealistic non-Zionist goal was for the Jews who were settling in Palestine to make a deal with the Arabs already living there that would not give either side complete government control. Two decades later, in 1936, my great-grandfather, Felix Warburg, who had married Schiff’s daughter, accurately warned that establishing a Jewish state would lead to “bloody heads and misfortune.”
Jewish settlement continued in Palestine, of course, and the Holocaust accelerated momentum for creating a national homeland there — for which my ancestors dutifully opened their wallets. But there is a largely forgotten history of what then happened in a dissenting corner of America’s Jewish community. As Geoffrey Levin writes in his relevant new book, “Our Palestine Question,” since the founding of Israel “there have been American Jews deeply unsettled by Israeli policies toward both the Palestinian refugees and Arabs living under Israeli rule,” who are fiercely dedicated to the issue.
These dissenting Jews were unsettled by, among other things, the exodus of more than 700,000 Arabs when Israel was established; it’s what Arabs refer to as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” Israel refused to let these Arabs return to their homes and, over the decades, constructed a repressive apparatus of military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. While Levin’s book was published just before the latest convulsion, he astutely noted that “some American Jews today see their support for Palestinian rights as a meaningful expression of their Jewish identity.”
My Jewish identity was always a bit vague because my ancestors were German Jews who assimilated at the speed of cultural sound; when I was growing up, we even had a Christmas tree. (They donated and spent their money at the same pace; the fortune was mostly gone by the time I came of age.) I began to feel more Jewish while covering the genocide of Bosnia’s Muslims. What Levin points to — the defense of Palestinians increasingly being an act of Jewish identity, particularly for younger Jews — feels right for me, too.
It was near Sen. Charles E. Schumer’s home in Brooklyn that I recently saw how this long-ignored movement has found new propulsion. I live a 10-minute walk from the Democratic majority leader’s apartment building, which the New York Police Department barricades whenever a protest approaches. Though Schumer now calls for early elections that might unseat Netanyahu, he supports military aid to Israel and is the highest-ranking elected Jewish official in the United States. Protesters are shunted a few hundred yards away to Prospect Park, and about 100 of them happened to be there when I walked by last month.
Some waved professionally printed, multicolored placards that said “Hands Off Rafah — Stop the Genocide,” and “Ceasefire Now — Let Gaza Live.” But there was also a woman wearing a kaffiyeh around her waist, who held a piece of cardboard with a handwritten message: “Jewish Nurse Against Occupation.” She was protesting not just the killing of civilians but the decades-long military occupation of Palestinian territory, which is the underlying problem.
These protesters are part of a movement that includes Jewish demonstrators who wear T-shirts that say “Not In Our Name.” Their potent voices undermine the argument that all protests against Israeli violence are antisemitic. They help legitimize global opposition to what’s being done in Gaza, and they defend not only Palestinian lives but Jewish lives, too, because they contradict the misbegotten idea that Jews as a whole are to blame for what Israel is doing.
I did not take the activist route after graduating from college. I chose journalism, then wars chose me. Through the years, I realized that exposing war crimes — wherever they occur — is central to my identity as an American, a journalist and a Jew.
D/C: An extremely powerful piece that it is hard to argue with.
Islamabad said the comments undermine peace and impede the prospect of constructive engagement.
Defence Minister Singh’s comments came after media reports saying the India had killed about 20 people in Pakistan since 2020 [File: Adnan Abidi/Reuters]
Published On 6 Apr 20246 Apr 2024
Pakistan has denounced “provocative remarks” made by Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who said in an interview that India would enter Pakistan to kill anyone who escapes over its border after trying to carry out attacks.
Singh’s comments on Friday came after the Guardian newspaper published a report stating that India had killed about 20 people in Pakistan since 2020 as part of a broader plan to target “terrorists residing on foreign soil”
“India’s assertion of its preparedness to extra-judicially execute more civilians, arbitrarily pronounced as ‘terrorists’, inside Pakistan constitutes a clear admission of culpability,” Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Saturday.
The ministry also said that such “myopic and irresponsible behaviour” not only undermines regional peace but also impedes the prospect of constructive engagement in the long term.
“Pakistan stands resolute in its intent and ability to safeguard its sovereignty against any act of aggression,” the ministry added.
During his interview with local broadcaster CNN News18 on Friday, the Indian defence chief was asked about the Guardian report, and responded: “If they run away to Pakistan, we will enter Pakistan to kill them.”
“India always wants to maintain good relations with its neighbouring countries … But if anyone shows India the angry eyes again and again, comes to India and tries to promote terrorist activities, we will not spare them,” Singh added.
Tense relations
Pakistani security officials, speaking to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, acknowledged at least six killings took place in 2023, and two in the year before.
They said they believed these killings were carried out by a “hostile intelligence agency” – code for India’s external spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing – and were investigating.
Relations between India and Pakistan have worsened since a 2019 suicide bombing of an Indian military convoy in Kashmir was traced to Pakistan-based fighters and prompted New Delhi to carry out an air raid on what it said was a fighter base in Pakistan.
Pakistan said earlier this year it had credible evidence linking Indian agents to the killing of two of its citizens on its soil. India said it was “false and malicious” propaganda.
Canada and the United States last year accused India of killing or attempting to kill people in those countries.
Canada said in September that it was pursuing “credible allegations” linking India to the death of a Sikh separatist leader shot dead in June – claims that India said were “absurd and motivated”.
A top Canadian official said in January that India was cooperating in the matter and bilateral ties were improving.
The US similarly said in November that it had thwarted an Indian plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader and announced charges against a person it said had worked with India to orchestrate the attempted murder.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said India will investigate any information it receives on the matter.
Emergency services work at a destroyed building hit by an air strike in Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 1, 2024. An Israeli airstrike has destroyed the consular section of Iran’s embassy in Damascus, killing or wounding everyone inside, Syrian state media said Monday.Omar Sanadiki/AP Washington CNN —
The US is on high alert and actively preparing for a “significant” attack that could come as soon as within the next week by Iran targeting Israeli or American assets in the region in response to Monday’s Israeli strike in Damascus that killed top Iranian commanders, a senior administration official tells CNN.
Senior US officials currently believe that an attack by Iran is “inevitable” – a view shared by their Israeli counterparts, that official said. The two governments are furiously working to get in position ahead of what is to come, as they anticipate that Iran’s attack could unfold in a number of different ways – and that both US and Israeli assets and personnel are at risk of being targeted.
As of Friday, the two governments did not know when or how Iran planned to strike back, the official said.
A direct strike on Israel by Iran is one of the worst-case scenarios that the Biden administration is bracing for, as it would guarantee rapid escalation of an already tumultuous situation in the Middle East. Such a strike could lead to the Israel-Hamas war broadening into a wider, regional conflict – something Biden has long sought to avoid.
It has been two months since Iranian proxies attacked US forces in Iraq and Syria, a period of relative stability after months of drone, rocket and missile launches targeting US facilities. The lone exception came on Tuesday, when US forces shot down a drone near al-Tanf garrison in Syria. The drone attack, which the Defense Department said was carried out by Iranian proxies, came after the Israeli strike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus.
“We asses that al-Tanf was not the target of the drone,” a defense official said Tuesday. “Since we were unable to immediately determine the target and out of safety for US and coalition partners, the drone was shot down.”
The incident came after the Israeli airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus on Monday, though an Israel Defense Forces spokesman told CNN that their intelligence showed the building was not a consulate and is instead “a military building of Quds forces disguised as a civilian building.”
Israel has carried out numerous strikes on Iran-backed targets in Syria, often targeting weapons shipments intended for Hezbollah, a powerful Iranian proxy in Lebanon. But the targeting of the embassy itself marks a significant escalation, since embassies are considered the sovereign territory of the nations they represent.
Iran vowed to take revenge after Israel’s airstrike on Iran’s embassy complex in Syria, which killed at least seven officials. Mohammed Reza Zahedi, a top commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), and senior commander Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi were among those killed, according to Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
At least six Syrian citizens were also killed, Iranian state television reported on Tuesday.
Zahedi, a former commander of the IRGC’s ground forces, air force, and the deputy commander of its operations, is the most high-profile Iranian target killed since then-US President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of IRGC Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020.
The US was quick to inform Iran that the Biden administration was not involved and had no advance knowledge of Monday’s strike on the embassy and has warned Iran against coming after American assets.
“The United States had no involvement in the strike and we did not know about it ahead of time,” a National Security Council spokesperson told CNN earlier this week.
The US has warned Iran not to use the Israeli strike in Damascus as “a pretext to attack US personnel and facilities,” a State Department spokesperson told CNN Friday.
The warning was sent in response to a message from Iran, the spokesperson said. Iran’s message to the US blamed the US for the Damascus attack, a senior administration official said, though it was not clear what, if anything else, Iran conveyed to the US in that initial message.
The deputy chief of staff of the Iranian president, Mohammad Jamshidi, said on X Friday that “in a written message, the Islamic Republic of Iran warns US leadership not to get dragged in Netanyahu’s trap for US: Stay away so you won’t get hurt.” He added that in response, the US asked Iran not to target American facilities.
“As Iran noted publicly, we received a message from them,” the State Department spokesperson told CNN when asked about Jamshidi’s post. “We responded by warning Iran not to use this as a pretext to attack US personnel and facilities. We did not ‘ask.’”
A senior administration official described the US’ warning to Iran as: “Don’t think about coming after us.”
The State Department spokesperson did not provide further information about how the US’ message was conveyed to Iran.
The United States considers its own embassies and consulates abroad, as well as foreign countries’ embassies and consulates in the US, to have a special status. According to the US State Department, “an attack on an embassy is considered an attack on the country it represents.”
On Tuesday, the Pentagon’s Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said the US’ assessment was that Israel had carried out the airstrike.
“That’s our assessment, and it’s also our assessment that there were a handful of IRGC top leaders there. I can’t confirm those identities, but that’s our initial assessment right now,” Singh said.
Israel has intensified its military campaign against Iran and its regional proxies following the October 7 attack on Israel by Tehran-backed Palestinian group Hamas, which killed about 1,200 people and saw more than 200 taken hostage.
Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 32,800 people, according to the Ministry of Health in the besieged enclave, wrought widespread destruction and brought more than 1 million people to the brink of a man-made famine.
Mark Collins 3Ds Blog 