[AMV] Amerikaanse politiek #499 Guiltiany?

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Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 00:05 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Supertof om als laatste post een echt uitgebreide te maken ... hier in de herhaling dus:

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Ook zoiets ... dit leeft in bepaalde kringen nogsteeds trouwens he!

Hoe dan ook, er was gister een artikel bij PBS Newshour over iemand die Russisch propagandaknaaal Sputnik gevolgd heeft .. die raakte aardig van de leg, hoewel het waarschijnlijk wel wat hyperbolisch gesteld was. Klaarblijkelijk wordt het daar in de VS in New York uitgezonden op de FM alsook in bepaalde delen van Europa. Hier het artikel:

Althans, waarschijnlijk zijn mensen als als OllieA en brokjespoes hier ook in geinteresseerd.. dus het is waarschijnlijk goed te vermelden dat het een mooie echt wel lange longread is en dat als je het leest bij de bron er talloze links naar bronnen staan en enkele plaatjes enzo:

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quote:

Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 00:05 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Supertof om als laatste post een echt uitgebreide te maken ... hier in de herhaling dus:

[..]

Ook zoiets ... dit leeft in bepaalde kringen nogsteeds trouwens he!

Hoe dan ook, er was gister een artikel bij PBS Newshour over iemand die Russisch propagandaknaaal Sputnik gevolgd heeft .. die raakte aardig van de leg, hoewel het waarschijnlijk wel wat hyperbolisch gesteld was. Klaarblijkelijk wordt het daar in de VS in New York uitgezonden op de FM alsook in bepaalde delen van Europa. Hier het artikel:

Althans, waarschijnlijk zijn mensen als als OllieA en brokjespoes hier ook in geinteresseerd.. dus het is waarschijnlijk goed te vermelden dat het een mooie echt wel lange longread is en dat als je het leest bij de bron er talloze links naar bronnen staan en enkele plaatjes enzo:

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Inside Russia's propaganda machine

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Op donderdag 3 mei 2018 18:48 schreef Vis1980 het volgende:

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pssst niet doorvertellen hoor, maar het gaat niet om de seks, maar om het afkopen met welk geld. Niet draaien aub.

twitter:

AP twitterde op vrijdag 04-05-2018 om 03:08:15 Missouri lawmakers call historic special session to discuss "disciplinary actions," which could include impeachment, against Gov. Eric Greitens. https://t.co/BrBjuXE2l9 reageer retweet

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Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 03:18 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:
Eric Greitens

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Trump Orders Pentagon to Consider Reducing U.S. Forces in South Korea

May 3, 2018

President Trump has ordered the Pentagon to prepare options for drawing down American troops in South Korea, just weeks before he holds a landmark meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, according to several people briefed on the deliberations.

Reduced troop levels are not intended to be a bargaining chip in Mr. Trump’s talks with Mr. Kim about his weapons program, these officials said. But they acknowledged that a peace treaty between the two Koreas could diminish the need for the 28,500 soldiers currently stationed on the peninsula.

Mr. Trump has been determined to withdraw troops from South Korea, arguing that the United States is not adequately compensated for the cost of maintaining them, that the troops are mainly protecting Japan and that decades of American military presence had not prevented the North from becoming a nuclear threat.

His latest push coincides with tense negotiations with South Korea over how to share the cost of the military force. Under an agreement that expires at the end of 2018, South Korea pays about half the cost of the upkeep of the soldiers — more than $800 million a year. The Trump administration is demanding that it pay for virtually the entire cost of the military presence.

The directive has rattled officials at the Pentagon and other agencies, who worry that any reduction could weaken the American alliance with South Korea and raise fears in neighboring Japan at the very moment that the United States is embarking on a risky nuclear negotiation with the North.

Officials declined to say whether Mr. Trump was seeking options for a full or partial reduction of troops, though a full withdrawal was unlikely. They emphasized that rethinking the size and configuration of the American force was overdue, regardless of the sudden flowering of diplomacy with North Korea.

But Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Kim injects an unpredictable new element. His enthusiasm for the encounter — and the prospect of ending a nearly 70-year-old military conflict between the two Koreas — has raised concerns that he may offer troop cuts in return for concessions by Mr. Kim.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis added to those concerns last Friday when he suggested that the future of the American military presence might be on the table.

“That’s part of the issues that we’ll be discussing in negotiations with our allies first, and of course with North Korea,” he said. “For right now, we just have to go along with process, have the negotiations and not try to make preconditions or presumptions about how it’s going to go.”

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

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Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 05:58 schreef Szura het volgende:
https://mobile.nytimes.co(...)ries&pgtype=Homepage

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Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 06:01 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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Belangrijke stap, zal ook de Chinese rol verder onder druk zetten omdat hun belangrijkste zorg is dat bij een akkoord alsnog Amerikaanse troepen in Zuid-Korea blijven, die zullen ook wel blijven maar met zo'n stap versterkt Trump de positie van Kim jegens Xi Jinping. De Chinezen hebben zichzelf aardig buitenspel gezet.

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Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 06:04 schreef Szura het volgende:

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Ik lees vooralsnog alleen maar deskundigen die het überdom zouden vinden om dit te doen en alleen het nieuws van deze voornemens al schadelijk vinden.

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As North Korea holds summit meetings with its archenemies — first South Korea, and soon the United States — China is hustling not to lose influence.

Its foreign minister, Wang Yi, returned Thursday to Beijing after two days in North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, where he met with the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, shoring up China’s position as the North’s best friend.

China holds substantial economic leverage, but in the heightened strategic competition between it and the United States, it worries that Mr. Kim is using that rivalry to reduce dependence on China, his country’s longtime benefactor.

One of Mr. Wang’s jobs was to try to stop Mr. Kim from veering toward the United States under President Trump, some Chinese experts said.

“Beijing likely would want to ensure that Pyongyang would not develop a closer relationship with Washington than Beijing,” said Zhao Tong, a North Korea expert at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing. “The visit by the Chinese foreign minister, the first in 11 years, appears to be part of that effort.”

Continue reading the main story
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Beijing has suspected that Washington might agree to put aside its nuclear disagreements with North Korea and accept the North’s nuclear capabilities if it served to contain China, he said.

Mr. Wang could have delivered a careful message, reminding the North that China was its true friend despite the rough patch in the past six years since Mr. Kim came to power, said Xia Yafeng, a Chinese historian at Long Island University.

“Wang Yi had a mission: to coordinate with the North Koreans on how to talk with Trump,” he said. “He can advise the North Koreans, but he cannot threaten them. He may say: ‘Be careful when you talk with Trump. We will always side with you.’”

China grudgingly went along with Washington’s demand last year that it support United Nations sanctions meant to deny the North of critical foreign currency from sales of coal, minerals, seafood and garments.

But Beijing’s desire to punish North Korea’s economy is probably wavering, Mr. Zhao said.

“I can imagine China taking additional measures to further improve ties with North Korea,” Mr. Zhao said. These would include working to connect North Korea to roads and rail networks in northeast Asia, and embracing the North in its Belt and Road Initiative.

There are already signs that China is trying to loosen some of the economic restrictions. Businessmen in the area of northeastern China that borders North Korea say that some North Korean workers are returning to China on short-term visas, and that they expect trade to pick up soon.

“I can imagine China already starting studies into options to increase economic cooperation with North Korea in areas that would not violate existing United Nations Security Council resolutions,” Mr. Zhao said.

Beijing was miffed and surprised at being pointedly excluded from several items in the joint declaration that North and South Korea issued last Friday at the end of their summit meeting.

The two Koreas said they would start talks with Washington to negotiate a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War, which ravaged the peninsula from 1950 to 1953.

The declaration mentioned “trilateral or quadrilateral” talks. If the talks were “trilateral” that would include North and South Korea and the United States but not China, which sent millions of troops to fight on North Korea’s side during the war. China withdrew all its troops in 1958.

“The Chinese heard it was North Korea that got the talks to be broadened to quadrilateral,” said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy.

Beyond that, China was not invited to send observers to the planned destruction of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea at the end of this month. Mr. Kim said he would invite South Korean and American experts to witness the shutdown, a gesture that American officials said would have little impact on the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

“The test site is close to the Chinese border,” Mr. Haenle said. “The Chinese were upset because China is a nuclear power, South Korea is not.”

Despite these snubs, the visit of the foreign minister, Mr. Wang, was symbolically important, Mr. Xia said.

In the heyday of the China-North Korea relationship when Mr. Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung, was in power, top-level visits between the two countries were frequent. The grandfather visited China many times, Mr. Xia said. Even Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, made seven trips between 2000 and 2011.

The parade of visits stopped after the young Mr. Kim came to power and derailed the relationship to China by ordering the killing of senior Korean officials close to Beijing.

Mr. Kim made a surprise visit to Beijing in late March, apparently on his own initiative, maneuvering in a way that made him look less like a supplicant and more like an equal.

Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Kim is likely to take place in the Demilitarized Zone at the border between South and North Korea, Mr. Trump has said. Some diplomats are speculating that the two leaders may meet on the northern side of the zone, drawing a distinction with the summit meeting last week on the South Korean side, and satisfying Mr. Trump’s desire for drama.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, is expected to go to Pyongyang after the Trump-Kim meeting. One of the foreign minister’s duties was to confirm details of Mr. Xi’s visit, Chinese analysts said.

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As the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, prepares for his meetings with the presidents of South Korea and the United States, China has found itself in an unaccustomed place: watching from the sidelines.

Worse, many Chinese analysts say, North Korea could pursue a grand bargain designed not only to bring the isolated nation closer to its two former Korean War foes, but also diminish its reliance on China for trade and security.

Such an outcome — a reversal of 70 years of history — remains a long shot, amid doubts about whether the North would agree to relinquish its arsenal of nuclear weapons. Still, China finds itself removed from the center of the rapidly unfolding diplomacy, and unusually wary about Mr. Kim’s objectives in reaching out to his nation’s two bitterest enemies.

Mr. Kim’s meeting with the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, is set for Friday, and a meeting with President Trump — the first ever between leaders of the two nations — is expected to follow in May or early June. In a sign of just how much is suddenly on the table, South Korea recently confirmed that it was in talks with the North and with the United States about signing a treaty to end the Korean War, which halted in 1953, but never formally ended.

With events moving so quickly, and Beijing finding itself largely left on the outside, analysts said China and its leader, Xi Jinping, must at least consider what they called worst-case contingencies.

Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE

Sanctions Are Hurting North Korea. Can They Make Kim Give In? APRIL 20, 2018

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“The loss of prestige is a big problem for China and Xi, who wants everyone else to view China as an essential actor of international relations, especially in the Northeast Asian context,” said Zhang Baohui, a professor of international relations at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. “Now, suddenly, China is no longer relevant.”

[“We no longer need” nuclear or missile tests: Read about whether North Korea is really willing to trade away its arsenal for economic benefits.]

In a declaration over the weekend that North Korea would suspend nuclear and missile tests, Mr. Kim spoke as if the North was already a nuclear power, and no longer needed weapons tests, a direct challenge to the Trump administration’s stated goal of denuclearization. Washington has declared that the coming negotiations are about getting rid of the arsenal.

Still, Mr. Trump apparently wants to claim a place in history as the American leader who formally ended the Korean War — even though he tweeted on Sunday morning that he was not rushing into a deal. And Mr. Moon is eager to edge toward the reunification of the two Koreas. So China fears the outcome could be either a North Korea or a unified Korean Peninsula leaning toward the United States.

Since the 1950-53 Korean War, when China fought on the side of the North against the United States and its ally in the South, the alliances have been immovable. The North has provided a convenient buffer for China against having American troops on its border; the South serves as a base in the region for the American military.

In negotiations over the denuclearization of the North, Beijing has to worry whether all that could suddenly be in play, Chinese analysts said.

“If a grand deal can be struck between Kim and Trump, in the form of denuclearization in exchange for normalization of bilateral relations, then Northeast Asia may see a major realignment,” Mr. Zhang said. “China does not run Kim’s foreign policy and they know that.”

The possible new alignment on the Korean Peninsula that most concerns Beijing is a loose unification between North and South Korea with American troops remaining in the South.

As part of its conciliatory moves before the meetings, the North has dropped its demand for the departure of the 28,000 United States troops stationed in the South as a condition for denuclearization.

“A unified, democratic Korea aligned with the U.S. will be dangerous to the Communist regime in China, though not necessarily the Chinese nation,” said Xia Yafeng, a North Korea expert at Long Island University.

From China’s point of view, a favorable outcome from the meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim may simply be a less dangerous version of the status quo, Mr. Xia said.

There could be a “nice photo” of the two men, with vague promises from the North Korean leader to get rid of his nuclear weapons, and then long negotiations in which China would have a big say, he said.
What is curious is that China has for decades spoken in favor of a peace treaty to end the Korean War. Premier Zhou Enlai of China mentioned ending the Korean War in a 1971 interview with The New York Times columnist James Reston, Mr. Xia said.

China, however, has a very specific view of what such a treaty would entail: the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea, which would leave both Koreas leaning toward China.

“A peace treaty is good for China in that it will presumably denuclearize North Korea, and more important, it will end the legality of the U.S. military alliance and troop presence on the peninsula,” said Yun Sun, a North Korea expert at the Stimson Center in Washington.

Since North Korea is looking for security guarantees from the United States in return for denuclearization, that guarantee “will hopefully include the withdrawal of U.S. troops,” she said.

But, like his grandfather and father, who ruled North Korea before him, Mr. Kim has shown signs of wanting to reduce China’s influence.

When the young leader made a surprise visit to Beijing three weeks ago to meet Mr. Xi for the first time, the two men seemed to repair somewhat the traditionally close relationship between the two countries that had been in the freezer since Mr. Kim came to power in 2011.

In fact, the visit was probably not so much a gesture of rapprochement as a deft move by Mr. Kim to play China against the United States, just as his grandfather had maneuvered between China and the Soviet Union, Chinese analysts said.

Mr. Kim’s purpose was to give the impression to the Americans that he was entering the meetings with China at his back, they said. Mr. Xi accepted an invitation from Mr. Kim to make a return visit to Pyongyang, but there were no signs that would happen before Mr. Trump meets with Mr. Kim, a Chinese government spokesman said.

Analysts say that since coming to power, the young Mr. Kim has resented his country’s almost total economic dependence on Beijing, which has only increased under the tough United Nations economic sanctions that China voted for last year.

About 90 percent of the North’s foreign trade in essential items — coal, minerals, seafood, textiles — passes through China, and China is its biggest supplier of fuel.

At the urging of the Trump administration, China approved the sanctions that have severely cut the North’s access to fuel and hard currency. North Korean ties with China seemed to hit a low, with Mr. Kim refusing to even meet a Chinese envoy in November, and conducting a ballistic missile test instead.

Perhaps wary of alienating the North, and unhappy with Mr. Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on Chinese imports, Beijing was no longer so willing to punish the North, Chinese analysts said.

There are already signs that trade is picking up along China’s border with North Korea, Chinese traders say, which could mean a relaxing after six months of near total trade embargo.

Hours after the North’s announcement on Saturday of its suspension of nuclear tests, one outspoken Chinese state-run newspaper, The Global Times, said the United Nations should “immediately discuss the cancellation of part of the sanctions against North Korea.”

Further, the United States, South Korea and Japan should lift their unilateral sanctions against the North, the paper said.

Correction: April 23, 2018
A picture caption with an earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of the Chinese president. He is Xi Jinping, not Xi Jingping.

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Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 06:41 schreef Szura het volgende:
Ja de rol van China vind ik ook interessant, maar ik ben niet de enige die twijfelt aan de door jou aangehaalde coördinatie vanuit Washington. Come on, het is Trump die het tegenovergestelde van z’n geclaimde ‘fine-tuned machine’ runt en zonder ambassadeur en zonder minister van Buitenlandse Zaken inging op de uitnodiging voor een top. Bovendien lijken er al belangrijke zaken te worden prijsgegeven voor de top überhaupt ingepland is, lijkt me toch zorgelijk.

Twee draadjes daarbij:
https://twitter.com/nktpnd/status/992228890969018368?s=21

https://twitter.com/ajmount/status/992223508087394304?s=21

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Reduced U.S. troop levels are not intended to be a bargaining chip in Trump’s planned summit in late May or early June with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un about Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, the Times said.

The officials said, however, that a peace treaty between the two Koreas could diminish the need for the 23,500 U.S. soldiers currently stationed on the peninsula, the newspaper said.

A full withdrawal of U.S. troops was unlikely, the officials said, according to the paper.

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Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 07:47 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Als Trump de betaling van de 130k aan Cohen heeft opgevoerd als juridische kosten en ze vervolgens als aftrekpost (no pun) heeft opgevoerd, zou dat dan belastingfraude zijn geweest?

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Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 07:47 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Als Trump de betaling van de 130k aan Cohen heeft opgevoerd als juridische kosten en ze vervolgens als aftrekpost (no pun) heeft opgevoerd, zou dat dan belastingfraude zijn geweest?

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Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 08:53 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Het zou wel wat zijn als de IRS een inval doet in het Witte Huis.

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Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 08:59 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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Het waren toch juridische kosten.....

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Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 09:11 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Dat Trump en Cohen het in de doofpot wilden hebben is natuurlijk geen reden om de hardwerkende amerikaanse belastingbetaler de rekening te geven.

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Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 08:59 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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Het waren toch juridische kosten.....

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Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 09:15 schreef klappernootopreis het volgende:

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De reden waarom er zo'n stennis om is, is het feit dat diezelfde juridische kosten volgens Giuliani écht niet uit de partijkas zijn betaald. Okee, dat is een punt. Maar het feit dat Trump de relatie met Daniels geheim heeft proberen te houden vanwege de verkiezingen, en niet om dit te verbergen voor zijn vrouw, torpedeert Giuliani statement volledig. Waarom die geheimzinnigheid als er "niets is gebeurd"? waarom 130.000 dollar zwijggeld betalen om een politieke campagne te redden? En als dit is gebeurt met die reden, dan moet die 130.000 dollar (mét bonus voor Cohen) als campagnefonds zijn gebruikt. welke terugbetaal-constructie Trump ook heeft gebruikt, het heeft ingedruist tegen de regels. En juist dáár ging Giuliani de fout in.

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Op vrijdag 4 mei 2018 09:12 schreef DeParo het volgende:

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Dan moet je iets aan het systeem doen he.