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denimbex1986 · 8 months

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'Moviegoers who watch the closing credits of Oppenheimer may notice a familiar name. Writer and director Christopher Nolan's three-hour biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who led the Manhattan Project during World War II to develop the atomic bomb, ends with a thank-you to retired U.S. senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Unrelated to Leahy's appearances in Nolan's Batman trilogy, this cinematic shout-out is about righting a decades-old injustice. Vermont's longest-serving U.S. senator played a critical role in clearing Oppenheimer's name 55 years after his death. And longtime Leahy staffer Tim Rieser deserves his own screen credit for the role he played in that process.

The Norwich native worked for Leahy for 37 years, mostly as his senior foreign policy aide on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Rieser's political savvy and deep relationships in Washington, D.C., earned him a level of influence rarely achieved by Capitol Hill staffers. In one of his final acts before Leahy retired in January, Rieser helped right a grievous wrong that ended Oppenheimer's career — one that, as viewers of Oppenheimer now know, was based on a lie.

In June 1954, at the height of the Red Scare, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission voted to revoke Oppenheimer's security clearance. The decision was influenced by Oppenheimer's past association with communists and justified with the baseless allegation that he was a Soviet spy.

In actuality, Oppenheimer's fall from grace was a political hit job motivated by his opposition to U.S. development of the hydrogen bomb. Denying the physicist access to nuclear secrets effectively ended his government career and left a stain on his reputation that endured long after his death in 1967.

Nolan's blockbuster movie, which is based on the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Martin J. Sherwin and Kai Bird, chronicles much of that previously untold story. But viewers may leave the theater thinking that Oppenheimer was never vindicated.

In fact, Rieser, 71, spent years working with Sherwin and Bird to do just that. His motivation wasn't just to remove a black mark from the history of one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. As he explained to Seven Days, Rieser also wanted to affirm the ongoing importance of protecting scientists who express their political views from becoming targets of government retribution.

The cause was personal for the former Vermont public defender, who lives in Arlington, Va., but still owns, with his siblings, their family home in Norwich. Rieser's parents, Leonard and Rosemary Rieser, worked on the Manhattan Project, knew Oppenheimer and had tremendous respect for him.

"It was probably the most memorable year of their lives," Rieser said of his parents' stint in Los Alamos, N.M. "My father, my mother and everybody else there just revered Oppenheimer. He was larger than life for people their age."

Leonard Rieser was 21 in 1943 when he graduated with a physics degree from the University of Chicago, site of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. The following year, he got married, enlisted in the U.S. Army and, because of his knowledge of nuclear physics, was sent to Los Alamos.

The Riesers knew little about where they were going or what they'd do there. For more than a year, they couldn't disclose their whereabouts to family and friends or reveal their activities. While Rieser's mother ran the Los Alamos nursery school, his father worked alongside such scientists as Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi and Hans Bethe.

The Trinity test, the first-ever detonation of an atomic bomb, occurred on July 16, 1945, which was also the Riesers' first wedding anniversary. Leonard witnessed the blast from less than 20 miles away, face down in the sand.

After the war, Leonard took a teaching job at Dartmouth College, where he later became chair of the physics department, then dean of faculty and provost. When president Lyndon Johnson gave Oppenheimer the prestigious Enrico Fermi Award in 1963, Leonard invited the physicist to speak at Dartmouth and even hosted him at their home.

Tim Rieser, who was only 5 at the time, doesn't remember meeting Oppenheimer, but he grew up hearing stories about the Manhattan Project and still has his father's correspondence with the physicist.

He cannot recall his parents discussing Oppenheimer's blacklisting. "I can only assume ... that they must have been appalled," he said.

So were others in the scientific community. Shortly after the 1954 ruling, 500 scientists signed a letter urging the Atomic Energy Commission to reverse its decision. But it would fall to the next generation to take up that cause.

Bird related in his July 7 New Yorker article "Oppenheimer, Nullified and Vindicated" how Sherwin spent 25 years researching the Oppenheimer case before Bird joined him on the project in 2000. In 2010, with the Pulitzer under their belt, the two authors tried unsuccessfully to convince president Barack Obama's administration to reinstate Oppenheimer's security clearance.

Others made similar attempts. In 2011, senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) sent a 20-page memo urging Oppenheimer's vindication to secretary of energy Steven Chu, who was a scientist and cowinner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997. Chu never acted on that memo, and Bingaman retired from the Senate in 2013.

Next, Sherwin and Bird approached Rieser, whom Bird had known for years. Their interest in the Vermont aide had nothing to do with his personal connection to Oppenheimer, of which neither was aware. (Coincidentally, Leonard Rieser had once hired Sherwin to teach at Dartmouth.)

The biographers' interest in Rieser was a political strategy: A seasoned Capitol Hill staffer, he worked for one of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate and had access to high-ranking officials in the Obama administration.

Rieser said it wasn't until he read American Prometheus that he grasped the scope of the miscarriage of justice done in 1954.

"Until then, I didn't know what had happened to Oppenheimer," he said. "I don't think many people did."

Uniquely Qualified

It's hard to imagine anyone else on Capitol Hill who could have brought to the task of clearing Oppenheimer the combination of political clout, governmental savvy, personal motivation and professional autonomy that Rieser did. Because Rieser had worked for Leahy since 1985, the senator knew his parents. After Leonard Rieser died and the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich renamed part of the museum in his honor, Leahy attended the dedication ceremony. And because the senator shared Rieser's view that Oppenheimer had been railroaded, he gave Rieser broad discretion on the project.

Rieser had earned a reputation as someone who knew how to get things done in Washington. He helped draft Leahy's 1992 signature legislation banning the sale of land mines. He was also an architect of the so-called Leahy Law, which outlawed the export of U.S. arms to countries that violate human rights with impunity — an effort that made Rieser the target of a character assassination campaign by Guatemala's then-president, Otto Pérez Molina. In her book Sweet Relief: The Marla Ruzicka Story, author Jennifer Abrahamson described Rieser as "the conscience of the Senate."

Rieser was known for his dogged persistence. In the New Yorker piece, Bird described him as "relentless."

After Alan Gross, a U.S. government contractor, was jailed in Cuba in 2009 and accused of spying, Rieser spent years using back-channel diplomacy to secure his release, making multiple trips to Havana and enlisting the help of Pope Francis. The effort succeeded in 2014. According to the New York Times, once the deal was finalized and Obama called Leahy to thank him, the Vermont senator told the president, "I could not have done it without Tim Rieser."

Rieser brought that same determination to the Oppenheimer cause. In the summer of 2016, he penned a letter from Leahy, cosigned by Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), asking Obama to reinstate Oppenheimer's security clearance. That letter landed on the desk of secretary of energy Ernest Moniz.

"He's a nuclear physicist," Rieser said, "so we thought, If there's anyone who would want to clear Oppenheimer's name, you would think it would be him."

But reversing a 1954 decision on the security clearance of a scientist who died in 1967 was more nettlesome than it looked at first. However corrupt and flawed that process had been, Rieser said, Oppenheimer had lied to a federal investigator.

At issue, he explained, was the so-called "Chevalier incident." Haakon Chevalier was a professor of French literature at the University Of California, Berkeley who met Oppenheimer in 1937. The two became friends, and, in 1943, Chevalier and his wife dined at the Oppenheimers' home.

That evening, Chevalier mentioned to Oppenheimer that the U.S. government wasn't sharing its nuclear secrets with the Soviets, who were U.S. allies at the time. When Chevalier told Oppenheimer that he knew of someone who could get that information to the Russians through back channels, Oppenheimer called the idea treasonous and ended the discussion.

Oppenheimer later disclosed that conversation to general Leslie Groves, the U.S. Army officer who oversaw the Manhattan Project, but he didn't reveal Chevalier's identity. When a federal investigator interrogated him about it, Oppenheimer concocted a fake story to protect his friend.

Why would such historical details matter decades after the fact?

"Moniz was afraid of creating a standard for Oppenheimer that was different from those seeking a security clearance today," explained Rieser, who has a security clearance himself. Though he vehemently disagreed with the Department of Energy's legal argument, Rieser understood why Moniz wouldn't want to set a precedent of giving preferential treatment to someone based merely on their public stature.

As a concession, Moniz renamed a DOE fellowship in honor of Oppenheimer, which wasn't at all what Bird, Sherwin and Rieser had sought. In the meantime, Donald Trump was elected president, at which point Bird and Sherwin essentially gave up the fight.

But not Rieser. He made little progress during the Trump years, which often had a skeptical, if not antagonistic, relationship with science and scientists.

"Generally, when I try to solve a problem, I do everything I can until I finally feel like I've exhausted everything I can possibly do," he said. "I also felt it was so outrageous what had been done to Oppenheimer. It was pure vindictiveness and politics."

Carrying the Day

To make his case, Rieser had to show the government why the Oppenheimer decision still matters — a quest with personal resonance. After the war, Rieser's father, like Oppenheimer, was conflicted about the way the atomic bomb had been used. Having visited Hiroshima, he devoted much of the rest of his life to advocating for strict controls on nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Also like Oppenheimer, he once chaired the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit organization devoted to controlling nuclear weapons and other new technologies that can negatively affect humanity. Rieser was incensed that the government could exact retribution against scientists merely for expressing controversial or unpopular views.

"So when [Joe] Biden got elected," Rieser said, "I decided we should try again."

In June 2021, Rieser wrote a second letter to the DOE, signed by Leahy and the same three Democratic senators. When two months passed with no reply, he called "this guy I knew" at the department.

Ali Nouri had worked in the Senate for about a decade and had once sold Rieser a Ping-Pong table through Craigslist. After leaving the Hill, Nouri went to work for the Federation of American Scientists before Biden tapped him to be assistant secretary of congressional relations at the DOE.

Nouri replied to Rieser a few days later.

"'I think you're going to get the same answer,'" Rieser recalled Nouri telling him. "So I said, 'Then don't answer it. I'm going to write a different letter.'"

The underlying problem, Rieser explained, lay in the nature of the request. He couldn't ask the DOE simply to reinstate Oppenheimer's security clearance, because that would require a new hearing, one that was fair, impartial and, obviously, impossible, given that Oppenheimer is dead. Instead, Rieser decided to ask the department to "nullify" the 1954 decision.

Beginning in August 2021, Rieser drafted a third letter to Biden's secretary of energy, Jennifer Granholm. This one not only detailed the injustices and illegalities of the 1954 proceedings but also highlighted why the decision should be nullified. It read, in part:

Government scientists, whether renowned like Oppenheimer or a technician laboring in obscurity, including those who risk their careers to warn of safety concerns or to express unpopular opinions on matters of national security, need to know that they can do so freely and that their cases will be fairly reviewed based on facts, not personal animus or politics.

After more than a year of working on the letter, Rieser and Leahy got 42 other senators to sign it, including four Republicans: Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Ala).

Even with such bipartisan backing, Rieser said, he feared that the endorsement of 43 senators might not be enough to "carry the day." So he asked Thomas Mason, director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, to pen a letter in support. Mason did so and got all seven surviving former directors of the Los Alamos lab to sign it, too.

Next, Rieser contacted the heads of the Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, American Physical Society and Federation of American Scientists. Though Sherwin had died of lung cancer in 2021, Rieser asked Bird and Richard Rhodes, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Making of the Atomic Bomb, to pen similar letters to the energy secretary. It didn't hurt that Nolan's Oppenheimer was scheduled for release the following year.

"What I've learned over the years in Congress," Rieser explained, "is, if you're going to take on a difficult problem, you have to use every ounce of energy you can muster and stick with it no matter how long it takes."

In late August 2022, Rieser compiled all the supporting materials into a binder, then bicycled down to the DOE headquarters and hand-delivered it to Nouri to present to Granholm.

"And then I waited," he said.

On December 16, 2022, Granholm issued a five-page order vacating the Atomic Energy Commission's 1954 decision against Oppenheimer. She wrote:

When Dr. Oppenheimer died in 1967, Senator J. William Fulbright took to the Senate floor and said "Let us remember not only what his special genius did for us; let us also remember what we did to him." Today we remember how the United States government treated a man who served it with the highest distinction. We remember that political motives have no proper place in matters of personnel security. And we remember that living up to our ideals requires unerring attention to the fair and consistent application of our laws.

"It had everything that I could have hoped for," Rieser said. "Granholm felt, as senator Leahy and I did, that this is as relevant today as it was 70 years ago."

Even after Oppenheimer's vindication, Rieser felt that his work wasn't done. Knowing that millions of people would see Oppenheimer, he suggested to Nolan, whom he knew through Bird and Leahy's Batman cameos, that he include an epilogue to that effect; he even suggested the wording.

Ultimately, Nolan didn't include it. While Rieser has no hard feelings about not getting thanked in the movie himself — Senate staffers are accustomed to letting their bosses take credit for their work — he wishes that viewers of the film knew the final outcome. As he put it, "It's important that people know there is another chapter, and an important one, albeit many, many years later."

Rieser, who now works as a senior adviser to Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) hasn't remained entirely in the shadows. In addition to being featured in last month's New Yorker piece, he will be in two forthcoming documentaries about Oppenheimer's life.

For one, Rieser was interviewed in the late physicist's New Mexico house. While sitting in Oppenheimer's living room, he remembers thinking, "If only my parents could have been here! None of us could ever have imagined that I would be doing such a thing. It's amazing how life does come full circle."'

#Tim Rieser #Oppenheimer #Christopher Nolan #The Manhattan Project #Atomic Energy Commission #American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer #Kai Bird #Martin J. Sherwin #Los Alamos #Haakon Chevalier #Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists #President Obama #Jennifer Granholm #Richard Rhodes #The Making of the Atomic Bomb

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myvinylplaylist · 3 months

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Billie Joe + Norah: Foreverly (2013)

Reprise Records

#my vinyl playlist #billie joe armstrong #norah jones #dan rieser #tim luntzel #charlie burnham #the everly brothers #green day #reprise records #folk music #country music #compact disc #album cover #album art #jonny lam

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giaitritonghop123 · 4 years

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Trump tính cắt ngay tài trợ cho WHO

Chính quyền Trump muốn cắt luôn tiền cho WHO và chuyển sang các khoản đóng góp khác cho Liên Hợp Quốc, trước khi rời khỏi tổ chức vào tháng 7/2021.

Chính phủ Mỹ hồi tháng 7 tuyên bố rút khỏi Tổ chức Y tế Thế giới (WHO), sau khi Tổng thống Donald Trump cáo buộc tổ chức này "thân" Trung Quốc và không ngăn được Covid-19.

Tuy nhiên, quyết định rời WHO của chính phủ Mỹ sẽ không có hiệu lực cho tới tháng 7 năm sau, do đó nước này vẫn phải duy trì các khoản đóng góp tài chính tới thời điểm trên. Khi thông báo rút khỏi WHO, Mỹ cho biết đã thanh toán phí đóng góp đợt đầu trị giá 58 triệu USD và còn nợ khoản đóng góp 62 triệu USD đợt hai.

Nerissa Cook, phó trợ lý Ngoại trưởng phụ trách các tổ chức quốc tế, hôm 2/9 cho biết các khoản phí đóng góp cho WHO, cũng như khoản nợ 18 triệu USD từ năm trước, sẽ được chuyển sang Liên Hợp Quốc để đóng các khoản phí khác của tổ chức này thay vì chuyển tới WHO. Cook từ chối tiết lộ thêm chi tiết kế hoạch.

Các thành viên đảng Dân chủ trong quốc hội đã phản đối động thái cắt giảm hoặc chuyển hướng nguồn kinh phí đóng góp cho WHO. Họ cáo buộc đây là động thái vi phạm nghị quyết chung giữa chính phủ và quốc hội Mỹ vào thời điểm nước này gia nhập WHO năm 1948.

Trụ sở WHO tại Geneva, Thụy Sĩ, hôm 18/5. Ảnh: Reuters.

"Theo hiểu biết của chúng tôi về nghị quyết, nếu Mỹ quyết định rời đi, phải một năm sau điều này mới có hiệu lực. Trong khoảng thời gian đó, chúng ta phải trả những gì đang nợ, gồm khoản đóng góp chưa thanh toán từ năm 2019, 2020 và ít nhất một phần của 2021", Tim Rieser, trợ lý chính sách đối ngoại của Thượng nghị sĩ Dân chủ Patrick Leahy, cho biết.

Rieser nói thêm chính quyền Trump nhiều khả năng sẽ diễn giải nghị quyết theo cách khiến họ không phải tuân theo quy định và sau đó dẫn tới các cuộc tranh luận.

"Thượng nghị sĩ Leahy và mọi chuyên gia y tế thế giới đều tin rằng đây là quyết định cực kỳ thiển cận cũng như sai thời điểm, do Tổng thống cố gắng đổ lỗi cho những người khác vì chính quyền của ông ta xử lý đại dịch tệ hại", Rieser khẳng định.

Chính quyền Mỹ hôm 1/9 cho biết họ sẽ không tham gia vào nỗ lực quốc tế do WHO dẫn dắt để phát triển vaccine Covid-19. Mỹ cũng bác những lo ngại của WHO về kế hoạch phân phối vaccine của họ trước khi hoàn thành đầy đủ các giai đoạn thử nghiệm.

Washington dự kiến thông báo trong vài tháng tới về việc triệu các chuyên gia y tế Mỹ từ Bộ Y tế và Dịch vụ Nhân sinh, đang phục cho tại trụ sở WHO ở Geneva cùng các văn phòng khu vực, về nước.

Ngọc Ánh (Theo Guardian)

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antoine-roquentin · 6 years

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But in the South Florida courtroom, the testimony of José Santos Peña also implicated Julián Pacheco Tinoco, a former Honduran military official with long ties to the U.S. security apparatus.

A U.S. prosecutor asked the informant about a meeting in Honduras he had participated in a few years earlier. The purpose of the meeting with Honduras’s current security minister and then head of military intelligence Pacheco Tinoco was “so that he could give me help to receive shipments from Colombia to Honduras,” the informant told the court.

“What type of shipments?” the prosecutor asked.

“Cocaine,” the informant clarified.

According to the prosecution, one of the defendants in the case had deleted from his Samsung phone chat records and contact information bearing Pacheco’s name. But the allegation that the top security official of one of the United States’s closest regional allies was involved in drug trafficking was treated as a nonevent in Washington; not a single major media story mentioned the DEA informant’s testimony.

In March 2017, this time in a New York courtroom, Pacheco’s name would once again come up. More details of his and other Honduran government officials’ alleged involvement in drug trafficking were revealed.

Today, Pacheco remains the minister of security, in charge of the entire Honduran national police force. With hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. assistance pouring into Honduras’s security forces, Pacheco is one of the most important players in the country’s security and counternarcotics cooperation with the United States.

In an e-mailed statement, Tim Rieser, the foreign policy aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the senator is concerned with the allegations, but that more facts are needed. Leahy “believes the State Department should be looking at this carefully because the Security Minister needs to be someone of unimpeachable integrity,” Rieser wrote.With future funding for Honduras threatened by some members of Congress — including Leahy — Pacheco was in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. It wasn’t the first time he had made a trip to protect the U.S.-Honduran relationship.

Pacheco’s connection with the United States dates back decades. As a 21-year-old cadet, Pacheco traveled to the U.S. military’s School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. In September 1979, he graduated from a course on counterinsurgency tactics.

With the election of Ronald Reagan the following year, Honduras took on new prominence as a U.S. ally and as a staging ground for covert American support for the contra right-wing insurgency in Nicaragua. U.S. security aid to the country skyrocketed, as did allegations that the Honduran military was involved in drug trafficking and in dozens of disappearances of activists. U.S. diplomats largely looked the other way.

In the spring of 1986, at the height of the United States’s Cold War efforts in Central America, Pacheco was once again at the School of the Americas. This time, having been promoted to lieutenant, Pacheco graduated from a course in psychological operations.

After the Berlin Wall fell, the Pentagon changed tack in Central America and began focusing more on the “War on Drugs.”In April 1988, the most notorious Honduran trafficker at the time, Juan Ramón Matta Ballesteros, was arrested and sent to the United States. As a key interlocutor between the Medellin Cartel in Colombia and Mexican traffickers, Ballesteros had compromised the highest levels of the Honduran military and government. He had also been a U.S. ally and owned a CIA-linked airline that had funneled weapons to the Nicaraguan contras – while sending drugs north.

Honduras’s constitution barred extradition, but working with rogue elements in the Honduran military, U.S. Marshal agents facilitated the capture of Matta Ballesteros. He was brought to the Dominican Republic, where he was officially turned over to U.S. authorities. The Honduran military officers who participated in the rendition were eventually criminally charged in their home country.

The following year, the United States invaded Panama, turning on another erstwhile ally involved in drug trafficking, Gen. Manuel Noriega. Noriega himself was head of military intelligence before becoming president and had been “our man in Panama,” receiving regular CIA payments for decades. Anyone – no matter their criminal record – could be a U.S. ally. That is, until they weren’t.

In Honduras, shifting U.S. priorities, a decrease in funding, and the arrest of Matta Ballesteros pushed the military into the background — at least for a little while. In June 2009, a military coup d’état ousted left-leaning elected president, Manuel Zelaya, who was dropped off in Costa Rica in his pajamas.

With relations tested, and the U.S. having temporarily suspending security assistance, then-Col. Pacheco Tinoco was sent to Washington, D.C., by the head of the Honduran armed forces. His mission was to convince the United States that the military acted properly, that there was no coup.

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giuseppenoc · 5 years

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Lo que hay detrás del caso Casey

Un Nuevo artículo ha sido publicado en https://web2meet.net/lo-que-hay-detras-del-caso-casey/

Lo que hay detrás del caso Casey

Por Eduardo Mackenzie

@eduardomackenz1

23 de mayo de 2019

El escándalo del falso reportaje del New York Times contra el Ejército de Colombia dejó mal parado al diario americano. Este pretendía enlodar a las Fuerzas Armadas y lo que hizo fue poner al descubierto a su ladino reportero Nicholas Casey, y hasta a una red política que patrocina tales desmanes con apoyo de George Soros. Y, además, permitió abrir un debate sobre el carácter del New York Times.

Veamos lo de Patrick J. Leahy. El odio de ese senador demócrata de 79 años por el Ejército de Colombia no es de ahora. No olvidamos que, en junio de 2002, él intentó, con su brazo derecho Tim Rieser, hacer que fracasara el Plan Colombia. El presidente saliente, Andrés Pastrana, había pedido al presidente George Bush que reanudara la ayuda militar a Colombia tras el fracaso de las “conversaciones de paz” en el Caguán. En ese momento, las FARC estaban en plena ofensiva, secuestrando y cometiendo todo tipo de atrocidades en varios departamentos. El presidente electo Álvaro Uribe se reunió con funcionarios del gobierno Bush y con líderes del Congreso. Finalmente, la maniobra de Leahy fracasó y el material militar cedido por los Estados Unidos, sobre todo aéreo, le permitió al Ejército y a la Policía de Colombia quebrar ulteriormente la ofensiva narco-terrorista.

La semana pasada, ese mismo senador volvió a hacer de las suyas. Su objetivo fue, de nuevo, el Ejército de Colombia. Respaldó las difamaciones de Nicholas Casey y cuando éste fue emplazado por la senadora María Fernanda Cabal, quien mostró las fotos de 2016 donde se ve a Casey recorriendo una llanura en una moto y con gente armada de las FARC (lo que dice mucho sobre su falsa independencia), Leahy, iracundo, la emprendió contra ella. Leahy le ordenó al gobierno de Iván Duque que le exigiera a la senadora Cabal “pruebas” de lo que decía sobre el aventurero Casey, invirtiendo la carga de la prueba. Con esa pirueta Casey pretendía exonerar al reportero de presentar la evidencia que le pedían en Colombia. Pero no lo logró. El ministro de Defensa de Colombia acusa a Casey de seleccionar los hechos que le interesan, dramatizar y/o ocultar otros y decir mentiras. En lugar de explicarse, Casey aprovechó su huida de Bogotá para difamar de nuevo al Ejército: dijo que él estaba en peligro. Muchos colombianos le siguen pidiendo a Casey que diga qué pruebas tuvo para escribir que el Ejército ordena cometer asesinatos.

No menos grave es que Patrick Leahy se haya creído con el derecho de darle órdenes al jefe de Estado colombiano y de intimidar a la senadora Cabal. La actitud delirante de Leahy desacreditó ante los ojos de los colombianos al Partido Demócrata, quien hasta hace unos años respetaba las formas diplomáticas con los dirigentes de sus países amigos.

Patrick Leahy milita en la fracción más izquierdista del Partido Demócrata. Durante la pasada campaña electoral apoyó a Bernie Sanders, un parlamentario de 78 años que se identifica como «socialista» y a quien la BBC llama “el socialista que quiere ser presidente de EE.UU.” Durante la dictadura de Hugo Chávez, Sanders ayudó, en 2005 y 2006, a Citgo, una compañía petrolera venezolana, a obtener un permiso para vender sus productos en Estados Unidos. En 2013, David Sirota, ex vocero de Sanders, elogió el “milagro económico de Chávez”.

Esos son los individuos que pretenden tumbar el ministro de Defensa y el Comandante del Ejército de Colombia, con ayuda de Vivanco y de Soros, y que creen poder darle la orden al presidente Iván Duque de que persiga a María Fernanda Cabal, senadora del partido de gobierno (1).

Al defender a Casey y decir, por Twitter, que ese matutino “informa de manera precisa e imparcial”, y que “no toma parte en ningún conflicto político en ninguna parte del mundo”, el New York Times hizo reír a muchos. Durante décadas, el NYT fue un diario de referencia, muy leído y respetado. Ya no lo es. Es un diario cada vez más amargo, de izquierda, con plumíferos y con resentimientos y obsesiones de izquierda. Su falta ética de la semana pasada, y su incapacidad para reconocer la falta, reflejan la arrogancia de un diario que lanza la piedra y esconde la mano.

El New York Times es criticado en Estados Unidos y no solo por las mentiras que dice sobre el gobierno de Donald Trump. En enero pasado, ese diario escandalizó a millones de lectores por un artículo que elogia la dictadura cubana (2) y el papel que juega Castro en la realidad política de Venezuela y Nicaragua.

El NYT es acusado de ayudar a las campañas palestinas contra Israel, de darle alas a la violencia de Hamás. En Francia recuerdan que las caricaturas de Charlie Hebdo, semanario masacrado el 7 de enero de 2015 por terroristas islámicos, fueron censuradas por el NYT dizque por «respeto a la fe musulmana”, antes de publicar imágenes anticristianas como un retrato del papa Benedicto XVI compuesto con condones de colores.

Aunque su editor y algunos de sus columnistas son judíos, ese diario comete actos de gran bajeza. En abril pasado, publicó una caricatura claramente antisemita. En ésta aparece el primer ministro Benjamín Netanyahu en forma de perro. Este, con un collar decorado con una Estrella de David, arrastra a un ciego, el presidente Donald Trump. Una publicación israelita, Hatzad Hasheni, comentó: “Esa caricatura recuerda los mensajes y caricaturas publicados en la Alemania nazi que mostraban a los judíos controlando a Estados Unidos y al resto de las potencias aliadas, dictando sus políticas y obligando al mundo a la guerra”.

Gracias al escándalo desatado por reportaje no corroborado de Casey, los colombianos supieron que en el NYT hay dinero de George Soros y que la organización de éste, Open Society Foundations estimula la producción de artículos de alcantarilla que sirven a sus intereses. Lo de hoy contra el Ejército prueba que la OSF está tratando de socavar la ayuda militar que los Estados Unidos le prestan a Colombia. Utilizan para ello la llamada Ley Leahy creada en 1997 para bloquear el suministro de equipos y entrenamiento militar a un país extranjero con el pretexto de que su fuerza pública comete «graves violaciones de derechos humanos».

Lo hecho por Nicholas Casey en estos días es un primer paso para alcanzar un objetivo: dejar a Colombia sin respaldo de la Casa Blanca y del Pentágono para que la narco-subversión, y las Farc y el Eln, en particular, puedan ejecutar los pactos Santos-Timochenko y doblegar al Estado y a la sociedad a corto plazo. Y para que Colombia quede sin defensa frente a las amenazas venezolana y nicaragüenses. Días antes, Vivanco, otro valioso agente de Soros, había desatado una ofensiva contra Alejandro Ordóñez, embajador de Colombia ante la OEA. Vivanco también intervino en el operativo mediático contra el Ejército de Colombia, pues todo ese circo hace parte de un mismo paquete desestabilizador.

Lo que es inadmisible es la actitud de un grupo que dice defender la libertad de la prensa en Colombia. La Flip aceptó, en efecto, la versión del NYT y en lugar de denunciar el periodismo perrata de Casey tragó entero lo que éste dijo.

Los colombianos deberíamos ser más críticos y exigentes ante las campañas que llegan envueltas en las mejores intenciones. En lugar de salir a ayudar al primer bufón que pretende darnos lecciones de modernidad hay que ser más cautos.

(1).- Ver la respuesta de la senadora María Fernanda Cabal al senador Patrick Leahy :

Carta abierta al senador demócrata Patrick Leahy @SenatorLeahy. «Hoy, más que nunca, a pesar de las presiones y acusaciones de las cuales soy objeto, reitero mi compromiso con los héroes de Colombia». pic.twitter.com/QzGOk75BcL— María Fernanda Cabal (@MariaFdaCabal) May 22, 2019

(2).- Ver: https://www.nytimes.com/es/2019/01/06/revolucion-cubana-jon-lee-anderson/ y https://www.cibercuba.com/noticias/2019-01-11-u157374-e157374-s27061-fuertes-criticas-new-york-times-articulo-opinion-elogia

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newstfionline · 6 years

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U.S. Is Ending Final Source of Aid for Palestinian Civilians

By Edward Wong, NY Times, Sept. 14, 2018

WASHINGTON--As part of its policy to end all aid for Palestinian civilians, the United States is blocking millions of dollars to programs that build relationships between Israelis and Palestinians, according to current and former American officials briefed on the change.

The move to prevent Palestinians--including, in many cases, children--from benefiting from the funds squeezes shut the last remaining channel of American aid to Palestinian civilians.

The money had already been budgeted by Congress for allocation in fiscal year 2017, which ends this month. In the past, these designated funds went mostly to programs that organized people-to-people exchanges between Palestinians and Israelis, often for youth. Some went to programs for Israeli Jews and Arabs.

Advocates had hoped this last $10 million pot of money would remain available to projects with Palestinians, even as the Trump administration cut all other aid.

But last week, officials from the United States Agency for International Development told congressional aides that programs that benefit Palestinians alongside Israelis would not receive any new money, said Tim Rieser, foreign policy aide to Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat from Vermont. Mr. Leahy established the broader program managed by U.S.A.I.D.

The agency’s officials did not want to cut programs with Palestinians, but had to accommodate a White House that does not want to send American funds to Palestinians, Mr. Rieser said.

As a result, only programs with Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs will get funding, contrary to the tradition of the funds and intent of Congress.

“Essentially, U.S.A.I.D. was faced with the choice of shutting down the program and losing the funds, or keeping something going,” Mr. Rieser said. “They decided to support programs that involve Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs.”

Programs currently on multiyear grants will still get all their funds, Mr. Rieser said.

The broad push to cut all funding to Palestinian civilians is promoted by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Trump and the top White House adviser on the Middle East. Mr. Kushner has been working on a peace proposal for the Israelis and Palestinians, and is seeking maximum negotiating leverage over the Palestinians.

He also has criticized the Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas for refusing to negotiate after Mr. Trump declared in December that the United States was recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“Nobody is entitled to America’s foreign aid,” Mr. Kushner told The New York Times on Thursday.

“The bottom line is if you’re a Palestinian, you don’t have access to any of this,” said David Harden, a former American aid agency official who managed projects for 11 years in the West Bank and Gaza and who had been briefed on the decision. He called the decision vindictive. “Once you cut out East Jerusalem hospitals and cut out girls playing soccer with each other, it’s the end of hope.”

“Reconciliation activities should be beyond politics,” he added, saying that the programs had been very effective.

R. Nicholas Burns, a Harvard Kennedy School professor and former senior American diplomat who worked on Palestinian issues, said that “cutting off all American economic and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people is meanspirited and beneath a great nation like ours.”

“Republican and Democratic presidents have tried for decades to position the U.S. as an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians,” he said. “President Trump has abdicated that critical role and squandered our influence and credibility with the Arab world on this critical issue. This is diplomatic malpractice of the highest order.”

#Palestinians #US aid to Palestinians

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allsaintsbanquethallrental · 6 years

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Volunteers recognized at Feast at The Woodlands Township

Photo: Photo Courtesy The Woodlands Township

The Woodlands Township Board of Directors honored the Volunteers of the Year at a special receptionon Jan. 24. Left to right: Director Carol Stromatt, Darla D. Bell, TreasurerJohn Anthony Brown, Vice Chairman John McMullan, Bruce Morris, Chairman Gordy Bunch, Tim Golding, Alana Ashley, Stephen Terni, Secretary Dr. Ann Snyder, Director Brian Boniface along with Director Bruce Rieser. Less

Photo: Photo Courtesy The Woodlands Township

Volunteers recognized at banquet in The Woodlands Township

Over 200 volunteers, including recipients of this township’s Volunteer of the Year Awards, were recognized for their work in the community on Wednesday, Jan. 24. The Woodlands Township Board of Directors Chairman Gordy Bunch thanked the volunteers for their support during the reception Wednesday, which has been sandwiched in between two different meetings of this board.

A range of volunteers received particular recognition, being bestowed with all the Year Awards.

Obtaining the best recognitions were Alana Ashley for both Covenant Administration, Tundi Nicole and Ariel Devitt for Environmental Services, Tim Golding and Bruce Morris for The Woodlands Fire Department, Darla Bell for Community Relations and Stephen Terni for Neighborhood Watch.

Also acknowledged were Steve Leakey, Deborah Sargeant, Chris Florack and Ken Anderson, together with proclamations recognizing them for their network support.

Sargeant and Florack, who had served on the Design Standards Committee for years, were recently replaced with two associates of the township’s board of directors. Anderson recently resigned from the committee, together with township officials saying his resignation coincided with his retirement.

EARTH DAY GREENUP VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

The Woodlands Township is seeking volunteers for its annual Earth Day GreenUp, an annual event to spruce up the neighborhood by picking up litter on pathways, open and inland areas.

This year’s event is set for March 24, coinciding with the nationwide Great American Cleanup. It is the eighth consecutive season The Woodlands is participate in the domestic job. Neighborhoods clubs, scouts, church groups, schools, households and individuals are encouraged to join in the attempt. Registration can be found online during March 12.

A limited amount of trash grabbers will soon be available for loan to groups that pre-register on the site. Walk-up enrollment can be welcome to March 24 at the 8 a.m. check-in region, which will be at a specified park in every village. All volunteers will awarded gloves, trash bags, directions and an assigned pick-up area at check-in. Beside working to clean up the neighborhood, residents are encouraged to the article pick-up party from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., at Northshore Park at 2505 Lake Woodlands Drive. For more information residents may call the township’s Environmental Services Department at 281-210-3800.

AD HOC ECONOMIC COMMITTEE TO MEET WEDNESDAY

The township’s Ad Hoc Economic Development Committee is scheduled to meet on Wednesday, Jan. 31, using all the arts being a subject of discussion. On the committee’s schedule is additional discussion of Stage III of a cultural arts analysis. Committee members had been scheduled to meet on Jan. 17, but had to cancel this meeting when a winter storm hit the region. The assembly is set to be held at 8 a.m. at the township’s offices at 2801 Technology Forest Blvd..

http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/woodlands/news/article/Volunteers-recognizes-at-banquet-in-The-Woodlands-12530889.php

from banquet hall rental http://www.allsaintsbanquethallrental.com/volunteers-recognized-at-feast-at-the-woodlands-township/

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wavenetinfo · 7 years

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The U.S. military continues to work with a blacklisted Iraqi special forces unit despite overwhelming evidence that its officers have engaged in human rights abuses for at least two years.

In hours of footage captured by Iraqi photojournalist Ali Arkady, licensed by ABC News and broadcast on World News Tonight with David Muir and Nightline last week, officers of an elite Iraqi unit called the Emergency Response Division (E.R.D.) are shown directing the torture and execution of civilians in Mosul late last year. A U.S. military spokesman said that while an investigation of new evidence of atrocities committed by the E.R.D. is warranted, there is no legal reason the U.S. cannot continue to work with the unit.

The unit had already been blacklisted in March 2015 under the Leahy Act, which requires foreign military units to be banned from receiving U.S. military aid if there is “credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.” Top American commanders, however, have continued to praise the successes of the E.R.D. and boast of a “fruitful partnership” between the U.S. military and the unit, including coordinating airstrikes on ISIS.

“The photos are sickening. They clearly depict war crimes,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who authored the federal law 20 years ago, said in a statement to ABC News. “That they were brazenly lauded by the unit’s leader suggests that they were far from aberrations. It is my understanding that the United States no longer supports the Iraqi unit involved, but we should insist that the individuals responsible, and particularly the leaders, be prosecuted and appropriately punished. The fact that U.S. military personnel praised the Iraqi unit’s cooperation is deeply disturbing and requires further investigation by the Pentagon.”

A spokesperson for the U.S.-led Operation Inherent Resolve in Baghdad said officials were not previously aware of the atrocities documented by Arkady, and the U.S. military has since contacted Iraqi officials to discuss the incidents exposed by ABC News. The spokesperson also defended, however, the U.S. military’s legal right to work with a unit deemed essential to the campaign to liberate Mosul.

“The Emergency Response Division was disqualified from receiving U.S. equipment and training in March 2015,” U.S. Army Col. Joe Scrocca, a spokesperson for the coalition, told ABC News. “Leahy vetting does not prevent the U.S. from working with the E.R.D., as we do with other elements of the Iraqi Security Forces, to help ensure a coordinated effort among different elements of the ISF in the fight to defeat ISIS in Mosul.”

A top adviser to Sen. Leahy, however, disagreed, questioning whether the military is adhering to the spirit of the law, given the credible evidence of human rights violations committed by E.R.D. soldiers.

“If we are providing advice or coordinating airstrikes, clearly we are assisting the actions of that unit,” Tim Rieser, senior foreign policy aide to Leahy, told ABC News on Tuesday. “One of Senator Leahy’s purposes in writing the law was to prevent the U.S. from being associated with or implicated in the actions of those who the law is intended to address.”

Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East executive director at Human Rights Watch, who has worked in Iraq since 1991, agrees.

“The U.S. government is playing a clunky shell game, pretending to move its assistance away from abusive Iraqi units like the E.R.D., while still working with them, training them and coordinating with them,” Whitson said. “The bottom line is that the U.S. is dangerously close to complicity in the disgusting torture and violence these forces are perpetrating on Iraqi citizens, and in reality, ensuring that the fight in Iraq will not be ending any time soon.”

At a Pentagon press briefing in January, U.S. Army Col. Brett Sylvia, then the commander of Task Force Strike in Baghdad, told reporters that American officers had recently advised the E.R.D. and called them “a very effective fighting force.”

This month, even as officers at Operation Inherent Resolve were responding to questions raised by ABC News in its investigation of Arkady’s footage, a top U.S. commander in Iraq tweeted praise for the Emergency Response Division.

“Watch the #Iraqi ERD send a message to #ISIS on #saturdaymorning in Western #Mosul,” tweeted U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Martin on May 13, with a link to a battlefield video on the E.R.D.’s official Facebook page showing the Iraqi troops in combat.

Despite the ban, the E.R.D. was also included in the latest request to Congress for millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars for the Iraq Train and Equip Fund in March. Scrocca claims that request was merely designed “to keep options open in the event E.R.D. … overcame Leahy vetting issues.”

“Requesting funding for such a unit, when there’s been no action to hold people accountable, sends the wrong message,” Rieser countered.

Whether the soldiers themselves will be held accountable for their actions remains unclear.

According to an E.R.D. officer, the U.S. military convened a meeting earlier this month with the E.R.D. soldiers who were to be named in the ABC News report. Scrocca confirmed that several such meetings took place with Iraqi officials, including representatives from Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s office.

Iraq’s Ministry of Interior said last week it “ordered the formation of an investigation committee” to look into the reports and “encouraged the investigators to conduct an honest and clear investigation.”

Iraqi officials told ABC News they have recalled all the officers implicated in the investigation from the field and dispatched a team of medics and social workers to the neighborhoods to interview victims’ families.

Though he had already confirmed much of ABC News’ reporting in an extraordinary on-camera interview, E.R.D. Capt. Omar Nazar attempted to refute some of the allegations in a 10-minute video posted to YouTube last week. Dressed in civilian clothes, Nazar asked a man who was shown being tortured in the footage about being abused by an E.R.D. intelligence team led by a different officer.

“You guys took me for interrogation, just interrogation, and you roughed me up. I don’t have any health issues, it was just an interrogation, I wasn’t hurt badly,” the man says, with Nazar at his side. “My sons joined ISIS. One of them blew himself up, the other turned himself in, that was their choice. They took their own path, but I don’t have any problem with you guys. My life has been much better since the liberation.”

Several experts told ABC News that the sectarian violence against Sunni Muslim civilians in Mosul depicted in Arkady’s videos is a major reason why ISIS captured Mosul so easily in 2014, so U.S. support for the E.R.D. — which has ties to Iran’s espionage service, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the strongest U.S. adversary in the region — might be counterproductive.

“Partnering with clearly sectarian forces backed by a radical and often sectarian state like the Islamic Republic of Iran, only helps fuel Anti-American extremism,” said Phillip Smyth, an expert on the militias and Iran at the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy, “and gives more reason for distrust, if not hatred for the U.S. within some Sunni communities.”

Ali Khedery, the longest-serving U.S. diplomat in Baghdad who also advised three commanders of U.S. Central Command, told ABC News that the U.S. is just supporting one bad actor instead of another.

“It is strategic folly,” Khedery said, “for the U.S. to attempt to defeat ISIS — a terrorist group — by backing another band of terrorists.”

31 May 2017 | 10:03 pm

Source : ABC News

>>>Click Here To View Original Press Release>>>

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