It might be a good time to risk a peak at the mainstream news.  Even they couldn’t choke down Ms. Willis’ testimony yesterday.  Millions no doubt tuned in this morning to continue to watch the proceedings unfold, only to be told that she wouldn’t be appearing.  What a disappointment!  The Black Panther father who raised her is taking the stand today, after the surprise that there were no further questions for Fani.  They couldn’t take it anymore.  If you saw an extended exchange, you’ll know what I mean.

Mr. Wade appeared the day before.  There’s no need to explain the apparent trouble they’re in.  But it’s just business as usual.  They apparently want so badly to bring down Donald Trump that they think they can withstand the legal scrutiny by being confused, surprised, combative and several other adjectives.  It’s rather comical that they think they will be the ones to bring down Donald Trump.  

Apparently they’re trying to strip him of his empire with the New York court case.  They want all his assets under the claim that he overvalued his empire in order to obtain loans.  Which were paid without default.  Who ever heard of a case where no one was injured, even financially?  The sanctions are severe, but probably won’t stand the test of appeals. They think they can strip him of his wealth by making these claims after the fact.

It’s almost like people sat in a room and devised multiple tacks on which to prosecute the most popular candidate in memory.  They’ll bring him down if it’s the last thing they do!  We’ve lost track, but Trump’s lawyers haven’t.  It’s death by a thousand cuts, but the prosecutors are not up to it as you can see.  Who knows how these court cases eventually turn out.  The media is busy adding up the value of Trump’s assets, trying to figure out what he’ll do if the New York ruling stands.

You know there’s absolute panic among his detractors with government jobs.  He played nice last time, but they have kept using everything they can think of to get rid of him.  He’s still winning, and they’re scared to death about the prospect of him returning to the presidency.

It’s not the only absurdity we’re being treated to.  News from the border is too heartbreaking to watch.  Get ready for a crime wave.  It’s already underway, and we don’t know the half of it.  Who’d have thought that importing millions of desperate people who don’t speak the language would turn out so badly?  To hear Trump tell it, they’re not sending their best.  Have you seen the photos of the perpetrators of police beat-down in Times Square?  Let’s hope these aren’t the average.  

Suddenly we’ve seen an outbreak of mass shootings.  You don’t want to attend a celebration of a sports victory.  Somebody might have a grudge against somebody else.  Gangs will be there, and they’ll be armed.  There’s an article on the Drudge Report about how black people are moving to Africa for a better life.  

It looks like they’re trying to start WWIII in Europe.  When you look at the world now, versus three years ago, there are wars and rumors of wars to be sure. The righteous view is that the U. S. must keep sending countless billions to Ukraine because Putin is a bad guy.  We’ve known that for some time.  Other European nations are threatening to get involved. Tucker Carlson went over and interviewed Putin at length, and everybody’s outraged.  How dare he interview Putin!

Simultaneously we have news that Alexei Navalny has died in prison.  We’ve known that he was a vocal foe of the Russian leadership, organizing protests of one form or another.  If you’ve read anything about Navalny,  you know that the Russian hierarchy has been trying to get rid of him for years. He accused the “regime” in general and Vladimir Putin in particular of rampant corruption.  

We’re hearing that Israel’s troops are going to move into Rafah, the infamous border crossing from the Gaza strip to Egypt.  There are undoubtedly terrorists hiding among the civilians.  There’s no predicting what will happen, but it won’t be pretty.  

We don’t even want to know what atrocities the brave Islamic warriors committed.  But they filmed much of it.  There’s a limit to how much the human mind can take in, and they’ve gone well beyond it.  Hostages are still held, no doubt some being abused.  And the civilized world thinks it can persuade Israel to go easy.  It’s not working, at all.   

Mark           

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – February 16, 2024 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Germany has had a lot of nasty geopolitical surprises in recent years. But the worst by far — what strategy wonks call a black swan — wasn’t Russian aggression on Europe’s doorstep, China’s quest for global dominance or Turkey stoking conflict in the eastern Mediterranean. It was the election of Donald Trump as US president. Consequently, the nation is mesmerized by the possibility of his re-election on November 3.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, a dedicated transatlanticist, never established the kind of rapport with Mr Trump that she’d had with his predecessors George W Bush and Barack Obama. Mr Trump is the first postwar US president not to have made a state visit to Germany in his first term. But Berlin’s troubles with Washington go beyond the two leaders and extend across the political aisle. On many points of contention, there is near-bipartisan agreement.

Trade protectionists have Germany’s surpluses in their sight. Middle East hawks are upset that Berlin (locking arms with Paris and London) wants to preserve the Iran nuclear agreement. China hawks accuse Ms Merkel of being soft on Beijing. Russia hands are upset at Germany’s reluctance to stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project. The defence community is deeply underwhelmed that the country spends no more than 1.5 per cent of its gross domestic product on defence.

Of course, a second term for Mr Trump would have a wholly different impact on US-German relations than would a Joe Biden presidency. It is conceivable that a victorious Mr Trump would push hard to end US wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, and take American troops out of Europe. He might even hope to make an ally of Russia against China. It would almost certainly be the end of Nato.

Mr Biden cherishes the transatlantic alliance and appreciates the EU’s economic and regulatory heft. Yet bogged down by a multitude of domestic challenges, his administration would have to focus urgently on China’s rise. The burden of regional security — from north Africa via the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East all the way to the Caucasus, Ukraine and Belarus — will fall to Europe.

In either election outcome, the simple truth is that the onus is on Europe’s most powerful country to turn itself into the continent’s security anchor. Germany is unprepared for this, says Norbert Röttgen, chair of the Bundestag foreign affairs committee.

Still, there is a new sense of urgency in Berlin. In the summer, Germany backed a massive debt-financed recovery programme for the pandemic-stricken EU. It has supported new sanctions against senior Kremlin figures after the assassination attempt on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. And while Ms Merkel still appears unwilling to suspend Nord Stream 2, for the first time she has refused to rule it out. The legislature is considering a law that would effectively ban the Chinese telecoms provider Huawei from Germany’s 5G network.

As for the US, German defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer gave a forceful speech last week in which she said Germany would have to become a “strategic giver” and play a stronger role in the security of Europe’s neighbourhood. Foreign minister Heiko Maas followed with an op-ed warning that the “profiteers of our differences sit in Beijing and Moscow, but also in Tehran and Pyongyang”. Both emphasised the need to co-operate on confronting Chinese assertiveness — but the fear of being dragged into a confrontation by the US is palpable.

Berlin’s dilemma is that it badly wants to reserve the right to agree to disagree with Washington, regardless of who is the next president. But it is a long way from being able to afford to.

Constanze Stelzenmüller

Senior Fellow – Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe

Source: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/10/26/germany-needs-to-step-up-to-europes-defense/

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(CN) — The harsh view that the European Union is a weakling when it comes to foreign affairs and standing up against the military powers of the world is being seriously tested as Russia exerts control over Belarus and dismisses claims that a prominent Russian opposition leader was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent.

On Thursday, Russia was seen flexing its muscles on both fronts. It sent Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and a cadre of other government ministers to Minsk, the Belarusian capital, in a show of support for the teetering regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

The Kremlin also dismissed Germany’s findings that Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent first concocted by Soviet scientists in the 1970s and believed to be in the possession of the Russian military in violation of chemical weapons treaties.

The EU now risks seeing Russia get its way despite the chorus of protests coming from European capitals against the authoritarian tactics deployed by Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“In foreign policy, the European Union is frankly hopelessly weak, slow and divided,” Mark Galeotti, a Russia expert who writes about Russian criminals and spies, said on his podcast.

Galeotti said the EU likes to see itself as a hub of economic power and a model of supranational liberal-democratic governance transcending the old order of zero-sum politics and a leader in establishing international laws, rules and standards.

But he said Russia discounts the EU “as a scam” built around unnatural supranational institutions without real power and sees the bloc as being on the brink of collapse due to internal differences and rivalries, the rise of nationalist movements along with anti-EU sentiment and the departure of Great Britain after the Brexit referendum.

“This is not power as they see it,” Galeotti said. “They feel pretty good about their million-man army compared to the EU” and its insistence on rules and laws.

“It sees none of the genuine signs of power in the EU,” he added. “The Kremlin sees power as based around will, discipline, economic and military and political strength that can be applied; speed and action. In those terms, the EU is nowhere, punching so far below its weight.”

Although Russia views the EU as a geopolitical weakling, it still poses a risk for Putin because the European model is alluring to so many people in Russia and neighboring Belarus, he said.

Belarusian opposition supporters light their smartphones as they gather at Independence Square in Minsk on Aug. 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

“There is a certain genteel, magnetic … force to the European Union that at some level the Kremlin understands and fears,” Galeotti said.

It’s in this context, then, that the uprising in Belarus and the alleged poisoning of Navalny can be seen as crucial events in the long-running conflict between the EU and Putin’s Russia.

This new chapter in the clash unexpectedly opened on Aug. 9, when mass pro-democracy demonstrations broke out in Belarus following accusations of a rigged presidential election. The protesters are pleading for the EU’s help in bringing down the 26-year rule of Lukashenko, a man often described as Europe’s last dictator.

The EU has imposed sanctions on Lukashenko and pledged to send $63 million to back pro-democracy efforts and support victims of the regime’s brutal crackdown on protests. European leaders also are calling for investigations into allegations of torture against protesters and for a new presidential election.

The crisis on the EU’s eastern doorstep deepened and became more multifaceted with the alleged poisoning on Aug. 20 of Navalny, a main opposition figure in Russia who enjoys the backing of the West. He fell ill during a flight to Moscow from Tomsk in Siberia; he was flown to Berlin after receiving treatment from Russian doctors who said he hadn’t been poisoned.

He remains in a medically induced coma in a Berlin hospital. His condition is not considered life threatening, though he may suffer long-term nerve damage, doctors say.

On Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel lashed out against Russia at a news conference where she announced that laboratory tests by the German military found “beyond a doubt” that Navalny had been poisoned with Novichok in an effort “to silence him.”

This isn’t the first time Putin’s regime has been accused of using Novichok. In 2018, a former Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter allegedly were poisoned with the nerve agent in England.

Merkel called Navalny’s poisoning “attempted murder” and she demanded Moscow explain its position on the Navalny case. She also called for an international investigation into the alleged poisoning.

But it remains far from clear who was behind Navalny’s poisoning. Some experts see the hand of the Kremlin behind it because Navalny poses a threat to Putin with regional elections set for Sept. 13 and the mass protests in Belarus threatening to spark a similar wave of protests in Russia.

But many pundits, even among those in the West, remain unconvinced that the poisoning was ordered by the Kremlin and instead believe it may have been carried out by Navalny’s other enemies. In the past, Navalny has said he would be a bigger problem for the Kremlin as a corpse than a living person. Experts are questioning the Kremlin’s involvement because the attack did not kill him and they don’t think Moscow would have granted his transfer to Berlin if it knew Novichok was used.

“The list of people he’s annoyed is as long as the list of rich powerful Russians,” Galeotti said in a recent interview about Navaly. He doesn’t believe the Kremlin ordered the assassination attempt. But he said only someone who is very rich and powerful in Russia could have obtained Novichok.

British authorities claim Russia has a small stockpile of the nerve agent in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Russia denies it has any Novichok. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons may get involved in a probe. The agency confirmed in 2018 that Novichok had been used against the Skripals.

Navalny has risen to prominence as an anti-corruption investigator and blogger who criticizes Putin and his party, United Russia. Navalny accuses Putin and his political cronies of being “crooks and thieves.” He has revealed stunning corruption at the top levels of Russian society.

The 44-year-old political activist charges that he was poisoned while in prison last year. He previously was attacked in public too. Since entering politics, he has been arrested many times and was convicted of embezzlement in what he called a politically motivated prosecution. He was blocked from running against Putin in the 2018 presidential elections and he’s been barred from registering a political party.

Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny speaks to a crowd in Moscow last year. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)

Politically, Navalny is hard to pin down but he has a history of courting far-right circles and expressing racist anti-Muslim ideas while supporting ethnic Russian nationalism. He advocates transparency in government and he has gained support beyond Moscow in Russia’s regions, where resentment against Moscow’s taxes and its rich elite has grown in recent years due to falling living standards, a lack of progress in fixing decrepit infrastructure and rampant corruption.

The question, though, remains what Germany and the EU will do to back up their anger against Russia. New sanctions are being considered, but the EU has already imposed sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea in 2014. The EU is also turning to NATO and the U.S. for help.

By Thursday, calls were mounting for Germany to stop construction of a controversial gas pipeline from Russia, the Nord Stream 2. The pipeline is expected to double the amount of gas Germany already gets from Russia. Despite the finding that Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, Merkel dismissed the possibility of ending Nord Stream 2, a position that drew rebukes.

“We must pursue hard politics, we must respond with the only language Putin understands – that is gas sales,” said Norbert Roettgen, a top German politician with Merkel’s conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union, on German radio.

He said finishing the pipeline “would be the maximum confirmation and encouragement for Putin to continue this kind of politics.”

But it remains doubtful that Merkel will follow this course.

“Outrage could be part of a broader strategy if the goal is to prepare your electorate for unpopular action, like a war,” Wolfgang Munchau, a political analyst who runs Eurointelligence, said in a briefing note. “But when that part is missing, outrage turns into hypocrisy.”

Munchau said Putin took the risk of sanctions when he ordered the annexation of Crimea because he wanted to “fortify Russia’s wider zone of influence.”

“Such trade-offs are absent in German thinking,” Munchau said. “German foreign policy works on two separate levels: the level of the moral outrage over human rights violations … and the simultaneous pursuit of German trade interests.”

Munchau said Germany’s business interests outweigh its foreign policy strategy.

“Modern Germany has no tradition of defining strategic interests that go beyond exports,” he said, adding that Roettgen’s position on Nord Stream 2 “does not carry majority support in the Bundestag.”

He said Germany’s influence over foreign policy in the EU has grown since Britain left the bloc, but he said Germany must show it is willing to make hard decisions.

“If you are not ready to take a hit in the pursuit of a strategic interest, you are not a foreign policy actor,” he said.

In Belarus, meanwhile, Russia is getting its way too by backing Lukashenko’s crackdown on the opposition. In recent days, most of the leaders of a council set up to serve as the voice of the opposition have been arrested. Also, police are now arresting many protesters, journalists and critics, including famous television hosts. Opposition leaders charge that many people have disappeared too. At the same time, cracks are beginning to appear in the opposition with the announcement that a new party will be formed by an opposition leader.

Russia has said it will not meet with the opposition and it has pledged to send in military help to Lukashenko if the situation gets out of control.

Belarus and Russia have close ties and Moscow’s backing of Lukashenko likely will force Belarus to become even more closely tied into Russia. Already, more than half of Belarus’s imports come from Russia and about a third of its exports go to Russia.

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Source: https://www.courthousenews.com/eu-and-russia-clash-over-belarus-poisoning-accusations/

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