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Europe
Hungary
(Tuesday), 16 July 2024 20:38 Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán sent a letter to the European Council president, dated 12 July. The letter was divided into 10 points. Orbán said that one of the conclusions of his self-declared "peace mission" to Ukraine, Russia, China, Turkey and US presidential candidate Trump was that the EU should seek to restore diplomatic relations with Russia. “The chance for peace is diminished by the fact that diplomatic channels are blocked and there is no direct dialogue between the parties who have a leading role to play in creating the conditions for peace,” Orbán wrote. Orbán also wrote that he believed a ceasefire and peace talks were still achievable but added that “in the next two months, we will see more dramatic losses and military developments on the frontlines than ever before' if the war did not stop immediately. The Hungarian prime minister also stressed that Europe should take the lead in trying to negotiate peace between Russia and Ukraine, as the US becomes increasingly distracted as its presidential election approaches in November. “Political leadership provided by the United States is limited, due to the ongoing election campaign,” Orbán wrote. “Therefore we can expect no such proposal coming from the US in the coming months. We should consider - in the spirit of European strategic autonomy - launching a European initiative,” he added. Other Hungarian proposals included a “political offensive” in the Global South and possible talks with China – which has put forward its own peace proposal for the war in Ukraine and snubbed a high-level peace conference in Switzerland in June – on a possible “peace conference” attended by both Russia and Ukraine. European Council President Michel issued a reply to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán today on his 'rogue' diplomacy over Ukraine. In his reply to Orbán, Michel said he had “taken note of your insights and suggestions” but wanted to 'set the record straight' on five key points. 'I cannot accept your claim that we have led a ‘pro-war policy,’ Michel wrote in the letter. 'We, the EU, reiterated our unwavering commitment to support Ukraine and its people for as long as it takes and as intensely as needed,' Michel wrote, stressing that the bloc’s position on Ukraine is agreed upon by consensus among all 27 EU member states. Michel said the EU’s rotating presidency has “no role in representing the Union on the international stage and received no European Council mandate to engage on behalf of the Union”. “I made this clear even prior to your visit to Moscow and this was subsequently reiterated by High Representative Borrell in his statement of 5 July,' Michel wrote. He also stressed the EU’s key policy line that 'no discussion about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine” and that the bloc has 'spared no effort to reach out to all partners in this regard, including China.” 'Lastly, the most direct way to peace is for Russia to withdraw all of its forces from Ukraine and respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the UN Charter,' he concluded. Michel had shared the letter with all EU member states and would inform his Ukrainian counterparts of the exchange of letters. Michel’s letter comes a day before EU ambassadors are expected to raise the issue informally tomorrow as part of preparations for next week’s meeting of EU foreign ministers. It also comes after the European Commission said yesterday that it would boycott informal ministerial meetings organised by the Hungarian EU presidency in response to the widely condemned solo diplomatic efforts. The Council’s legal service told EU envoys last week that Budapest’s actions could constitute a breach of the bloc’s treaties. So far, however, EU countries have failed to come up with concrete options for curbing Budapest’s actions beyond public displays of anger. But most EU member states are now ready to join a boycott of the Hungarian EU presidency led by Eastern and Northern European member states. (Source: euractiv)
France
16/07/2024 - 20:20 French President Macron accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal today. Attal will lead a caretaker government with restricted powers until a new government is named. (Source: rfi)
European Parliament
Tuesday 16/07/2024 The European Parliament overwhelmingly re-elected Maltese conservative Metsola as speaker on Tuesday, in the first crunch vote on the EU’s top jobs after elections in June. "Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has outraged his EU counterparts by visiting Russia and China, was due to address the parliament but his speech was postponed, officially because of a busy voting schedule'. Current speaker Metsola (EPP) won another two-and-a-half-year mandate after receiving 562 votes out of the 699 MEPs who took part. The refusal of some MEPs to cooperate with the 'far-right' and von der Leyen’s fate are closely linked. A new group known as Patriots for Europe, created by Orbán and including France’s 'far-right' National Rally, is now parliament’s third-biggest faction, vying for two vice-president spots as well. That group includes controversial figures such as Italian general Vannacci, author of a book 'featuring homophobic, misogynistic and anti-migrant' remarks. Patriots MEPs could be excluded from leading parliamentary committees next week. Patriots spokesman, de Mendoza, argued that a 'cordon sanitaire' employed by mainstream political parties to block the 'far-right' was “undemocratic.” (Source: thearabweekly)
Russia
16.07.2024 "It will be impossible to resolve the conflicts that are multiplying and without getting to the root causes and restoring faith in our ability to join forces for the common good and justice for all," Lavrov said during a UN Security Council debate on "the parameters of a just world order." Lavrov accused the US of long "declaring its own exceptionalism" before adding: "This also applies to Washington's attitude towards its allies, from whom it demands unquestioning obedience, even to the detriment of their national interests." The Russian diplomat said the West is "aggressively dismantling" the global system that was originally built based on its models to contain Russia, China and other countries whose independent policies are seen as a challenge to its hegemony. "Washington has done everything to blow up, including literally, by organizing terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, the foundations of mutually beneficial energy cooperation between Russia, Germany and Europe," he added. The foreign minister also accused the US of holding "the entire West at gunpoint" and expanding its trade and economic war against those it deems undesirable. He claimed it "unleashed an unprecedented campaign of unilateral, coercive measures that are hitting Europe first and are leading to a fragmentation of the world economy." (Source: aa)
Ukraine
July 16, 2024 As Ukraine and its Western allies formulate a strategy to end the war, leaders should remember what matters most in Ukraine: sovereignty. The top priority for Ukraine and its allies should be achieving terms that minimize risks to Ukraine’s sovereignty by creating a durable, sustainable peace: long-term military aid and multilateral security guarantees, Ukrainian military neutrality, and a rebuilding effort alongside economic integration with the West. 'First, long-term military aid offers the best protection for Ukrainian sovereignty. Western aid and training after the 2014 invasion were enough to prepare Ukraine to deliver a shocking failure to Russia in its 2022 assault on Kyiv. The United States and its European allies should enshrine consistent aid to Ukraine in domestic legislation.' The bilateral security deals Ukraine has negotiated with at least thirteen countries, including the recent one with the United States and the European Union’s (EU) multi-year Ukraine aid fund, are steps in the right direction. The United States should also fund Ukraine through annual appropriations, such as Foreign Military Financing and longer-term funds like the EU’s. More regularized funding at a lower “peacetime level” will also reduce domestic political disputes. Finally, the West should offer Ukraine security guarantees that are stronger than the “assurances” offered in the Budapest Memorandum. As part of that, the United States could commit to surge aid in the event of renewed Russian aggression. The United States’s existing agreement is a framework that can be built upon for a more robust set of protections. Second, Ukraine should reinstate its former neutrality. For their part, Western leaders should publicly recognize Ukraine’s neutral stance. Slow progress toward NATO membership, described as Putin’s “brightest of all red lines” by CIA Director Burns, likely has more risk than benefit for Ukrainian sovereignty. Third, Ukraine must be rebuilt. Economic prosperity will harden Ukraine against further incursions and, therefore, protect Ukrainian sovereignty post-war. Ukraine currently controls most of its major metropolitan areas and maintains access to the Black Sea, where it has resumed agricultural shipping at near pre-war levels. The fundamental ingredients to rebuilding a thriving, prosperous society are still present. A robust economy will not only enable Ukraine to build a domestic defense industry and fund a strong military but also ensure that peace is sustainable for the Ukrainian people. This will be a major reconstruction effort, potentially financed in part through investment proceeds generated from frozen Russian assets. Ukraine should also begin integrating with Western Europe, leading to eventual EU membership. Given the choice to prioritize territorial concessions or multilateral security guarantees in peace negotiations, Ukraine would be best served by making itself as strong and steady as possible. (Source: nationalinterest)
by Davidson, Piliero, and Gaber - researchers with the Applied History Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. They are also the authors of a recently released research paper on the history of conflict resolution and its implications for the Russia-Ukraine War.
North America
United States
July 16, 2024 6:08 pm “We can expect no peace initiative coming from [Trump] until the elections. I can however surely state that shortly after his election victory, he will not wait until his inauguration, but will be ready to act as a peace broker immediately,” Hungarian PM Orbán wrote in his letter that was sent to European Council president Michel and other EU leaders. “He has detailed and well-founded plans for this.” A Trump-style peace deal is expected to call on Ukraine to concede much of its invaded territory to Moscow, something Kyiv and most Western capitals bitterly oppose. According to Menon, a professor of European politics at King’s College London: “It is very hard to see what the Europeans can do if Trump gets in and says to Zelensky, ‘sign this deal or I’ll stop US aid’. Ukraine could refuse to sign. But how long would it last without US support? And he could say to Putin: ‘Sign up or we’ll double the amount of weapons we send to Ukraine.’ There is a visceral reluctance among Mr Trump’s wing of the Republican Party to give any US taxpayer money to Ukraine. Fears that America’s support for Kyiv will wither if Mr Trump is elected have been heightened by the announcement Ohio Senator Vance will be his running mate. He is a staunch proponent of Trump’s “America First” vision and generally suspicious of US intervention in foreign affairs. Soon after Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Vance declared: “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” Mr Vance led the ultimately unsuccessful attempts among the Maga section of the GOP in Congress to kill off President Biden’s latest $60bn US aid package to Ukraine. (Source: inews)
July 16, 2024, 7:44 a.m. ET Would-be Trump assassin was spotted by cops twice 26 minutes before he rained bullets on the Pennsylvania rally crowd and wounded ex-prez. A clear picture is emerging of the exact timeline of staggering failures that enabled an armed 20-year-old man with no military training to scale a building loaded with counter-sniper team cops in broad daylight and come within a hair’s breadth of killing former President Trump. The Beaver County Emergency Services Unit - which traveled to the Butler County, Pennsylvania, Trump rally from the neighboring Pittsburgh suburb - noticed Cooks on the roof, took a picture of him and reported it around 5:45 p.m. Not only did Crooks manage to avoid being confronted despite sticking out like a sore thumb, he secured his rooftop perch right under the noses of a local police sniper team stationed inside the AGR International Inc. factory next to the Butler County Farm Fair grounds which was being used by local police as a “watch post” for snipers to scan for threats as the former president spoke onstage only 130 yards away. Cops were inside, but not on the roof, during the shooting. Crooks was able to scale the building unchallenged before firing off up to eight shots with an AR-style assault rifle, grazing Trump in the ear, killing one Trump supporter ex-fire chief and wounding two others. Law enforcement sources said it was not clear as of Monday night whether any of the local officers - who were tasked with securing the perimeter outside the rally - were able to warn Secret Service agents about the gunman. Chilling video captured at the rally illustrates the botched security operation. This includes approximately two minutes of footage that could go down in history as a low point for the Secret Service in the agency’s more than 100-year history of protecting US presidents. A multi-feed video montage assembled by MilkBarTV, which has been viewed more than 3.5 million times on X, shows the attempted assassination play out in real time using clips from several vantage points. In it, more than 120 excruciating seconds pass between rallygoers first spotting Crooks on the roof and the moment he fires his rifle. Perhaps most disturbingly, the people who saw the would-be assassin repeatedly tried to alert law enforcement patrolling nearby. In the video, the two-minute timer the videographer suddenly verbally acknowledges a nearby commotion, apparently sparked by several rally attendees noticing Crooks on the roof. “Look, they’re all pointing,” he says of the crowd’s reaction to the unusual and troubling sight. Seconds later, the camera pans and captures what appears to be a uniformed police officer making his way around the front of the plant building where the 20-year-old gunman was hiding. At this point, more onlookers are crowding around to gawk, chatting about what they saw. “Yeah, someone’s on top of the roof, look! There he is right there, see him? He’s laying down, see him?” the videographer asks. “Yeah, he’s lying down,” a woman says in response. Just before the 17-second mark, Crooks comes into frame for the first time, appearing to be lying on his right side. By 22 seconds in, the crowd nearby is becoming more interested and is gathering closer to take a look, and the scene grows noticeably more tense. Ten seconds later, the videographer points out Crooks to another male bystander, and at the 34-second mark, Crooks can be seen very clearly altering his position to rest on his stomach. At this moment, with Crooks still visible in the frame and still adjusting his position, a male voice calls out, “Officer!” An anxious-sounding woman starts giving play-by-play of what she’s witnessing, seemingly while calling out to law enforcement. “Come over here, he’s on the roof! He’s flat! Right here, he’s flat on the roof! He’s standing up now, he went flat on the roof again.” At this point, other members of the crowd can be heard calling out as well, but their voices are indistinguishable. At the 52-second mark, the montage shifts perspective to a single image of Trump, who is still speaking on stage. The video is barely one minute away from the shooting. When the timer reaches 1 minute, 15 seconds, the view switches to a split-screen, both showing Trump in real time, who calls for a chart to boast about the low illegal immigration numbers under his administration compared to President Biden’s. At a minute, 49 seconds, the camera splits into four simultaneous views - two of Trump head-on, one from behind his back, and another view of the original cameraman who noticed Crooks on the roof. A second later, a man in what appears to be an Army uniform complete with green helmet steps into frame and appears to wave at the crowd before disappearing out of frame, walking in the opposite direction of the manufacturing plant building. At the 1 minute, 55 second mark, a man screams, “He’s got a gun!” The camera grows increasingly unsteady, but it captures what appears to be a uniformed police officer walking toward the building where Crooks is lying. At 2 minutes and 1 second, three distinct shots ring out and the scene erupts into chaos. As Trump hits the deck and the Secret Service swarms him, a chorus of blood-curdling screams erupts from the crowd. At 2 minutes and 8 seconds, a series of rapid gunshots can be heard as the audience continues screaming. Then a few seconds later, a man’s voice warns, “He’s turning this way, be careful!” and a woman shrieks before one final gunshot rings out. The camera’s focus shifts back to the roof, showing Crooks, lying motionless, his body blurred out. The gunman is dead. The surreal footage echoes what several witnesses told reporters after the shooting: Some rally attendees were aware of Crooks’ presence well before he fired. One local cop from the Butler Township police did manage to get hoisted onto the roof, and came face to face with the gunman, who pointed his rifle at the officer. The Butler County sheriff defended his failure to stop Crooks, saying the cop was still pulling himself up and had to let go when faced with the weapon. Law enforcement sources who have served on presidential protection details told that Secret Service field offices where events are taking place routinely engage in a budgetary tug-of-war with purse string holders back in Washington. The field offices usually get 'a fraction' of what they ask for, the sources said. This means the agency has to depend on local law enforcement to supplement its resources, and small municipalities typically lack the resources of major cities like New York. It was “absolutely a miracle” that Trump survived the attempt on his life, which was thanks in no small part to Crooks’ poor marksmanship. /video/ (Source: nypost): https://tinyurl.com/22njc9vd
July 16, 2024 10:02 PM GMT+2 The United States received intelligence in recent weeks about an Iranian plot to assassinate former President Trump, CNN said today. The White House said there were no indications that the suspected shooter in Saturday's attempted assassination of Trump had any foreign or domestic accomplices. CNN reported that the intelligence about the Iranian plot was passed on by a human source. "These accusations are unsubstantiated and malicious.' "From the perspective of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Trump is a criminal who must be prosecuted and punished in a court of law for ordering the assassination of General Soleimani. Iran has chosen the legal path to bring him to justice," Iran's mission to the United Nations in New York said in a statement. (Source: reuters)
July 16, 2024 The foreign-born population was estimated to be 46.2 million, or almost 14% of the U.S. total, in 2022, according to the Census Bureau, including about 11 million in the country illegally. Hardly a month passes without at least one in the country illegally getting charged with a high-profile, horrific crime. ’Peer-reviewed academic studies have generally found no link between immigration and violent crime’, though conclusions vary based on the data examined. A review of academic studies from 1994 to 2014 in the Annual Review of Criminology found that the most common conclusion was “a null or nonsignificant association between immigration and crime.” A study published by the National Academy of Sciences, based on Texas Department of Public Safety data from 2012 to 2018, found people in the country illegally had “substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses.' Texas is the only state to track crimes by immigration status. “There’s a lot of research on immigration and crime, there’s far less on undocumented immigration and crime,” said Light, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and co-author of the study on Texas data. The perception that immigration breeds crime “continues to falter under the weight of the evidence,’ according to a review of academic literature last year in the Annual Review of Criminology. Trump has reached the greatest political heights while linking immigration to violent crime, ’portraying the foreign-born as criminals’ - claims that immigrants are more responsible for crime than native-born Americans. “This is not coming from nowhere, says Bon Tempo, an immigration historian and associate professor at University at Albany. To the lowest month of Biden’s presidency, arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico plunged 29% in June - impact of a new rule to temporarily suspend asylum. Historians trace the ’unfounded’ narrative linking immigration to violent crime to at least the 1850s with the populist Know Nothing movement, also known as the American Party. (Members were required to say “I know nothing” when asked about the party.) In the 1850s German and Irish immigrants were targeted as degenerate thieves. In the 1880s the Knights of Labor reached its peak influence by associating immigrants with crime as part of an agenda for workers’ rights. Fear of crime helped produce laws in the 1880s against Chinese immigration. The undercurrent of popular belief that immigrants breed crime persisted through the 20th century and into the 21st. The high-level Dillingham Commission produced a 41-volume report in 1911 that found the government wasn’t doing enough to keep out criminal immigrants, reflecting views that other countries were sending America their worst. Johnson, a Republican newspaper editor who represented a Washington state congressional district, authored a 1924 law that severely restricted arrivals from outside Western Europe for four decades amid deep public anxiety about immigration. In 1929, Livingston Blease, a Democratic governor and U.S. senator from South Carolina who advocated lynching Blacks, spearheaded a law that made illegal entry a misdemeanor crime. The Wickersham Commission government report in 1931 noted the theory that immigration fuels crime is “almost as old as the colonies planted by Englishmen on the New England coast.” Crime has been an underlying fear even as Republican presidential candidate Buchanan spoke of an “illegal invasion” when focused on cultural issues in the 1990s. California Gov. Wilson, a Republican, dwelled on the idea that American citizens were being robbed of social services when he campaigned for a 1994 ballot measure to prohibit education and health care for people in the county illegally, which was approved by voters but largely thrown out in court. Tancredo led efforts against illegal immigration as a Republican congressman from Colorado in the 2000s, highlighting that federal prisons housed many who entered the country illegally. “They’re coming here to kill you, and you, and me, and my grandchildren,’ he said at a 2005 rally in New Hampshire. Trump launched his presidential bid in 2015 by saying Mexico is “sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Trump elevated the profile of MS-13, a criminal gang with roots among Salvadoran immigrants, and of “angel families” whose loved ones were killed by people in the country illegally. “For years, their pain was met with silence; their plight was met with indifference’” he told a group of victims’ families at the White House in 2018. Trump and his allies describe violent crimes committed by people in the country illegally as preventable acts, especially when an assailant had previous encounters with police in the United States. A poll in March shows the share of Americans who say that there’s a major risk that legal immigrants will commit crimes in the U.S. has increased to 32% from 19% in 2017. At last month’s presidential debate Trump was saying that “millions” from prisons, jails and mental health institutions entered the country under Biden’s watch. (Source: thestar * / The Associated Press)
* Toronto Star
by Spagat
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