Category Archives: Trump Administration

The Beltway Lawyer Chatter about the Trump Admin

Posted on by

As Trump Tests Legal Boundaries, Small DOJ Unit Poised for Big Role

Zoe Tillman, The National Law Journal

President-elect Donald Trump moved quickly in naming his picks for two key legal posts, selecting a conservative politician in Sen. Jeff Sessions to run the U.S. Department of Justice and a loyal adviser in Jones Day partner Donald McGahn II to serve as White House counsel.

Washington lawyers now have their eyes on a less visible appointment, but one that could set the tone on issues ranging from how completely the incoming president separates himself from his business interests to how his administration acts on campaign promises to spike trade agreements and revive harsh interrogation policies.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which handles legal questions from the White House and federal agencies, often has the last word on murky areas of law and there are plenty trailing Trump into the White House. That positions the next OLC chief to play a key role as the White House maps out its agenda but may also mean navigating delicate politics in an administration that seems bent on testing conventional legal doctrine.

Former OLC officials say the next head of the office will have to walk a fine line to be a lawyer Trump trusts and won’t try to circumvent, without being seen as a rubber stamp.

“It’s going to be an interesting time at OLC because a number of issues are going to be turned upside down,” said Walter Dellinger, a partner at O’Melveny & Myers who led the office from 1993 to 1996.

Citing Trump’s statements in favor of waterboarding, for instance, Dellinger said “the fact that the incoming president has stated in several areas that he intends not to follow existing law will make the position more challenging—and more interesting.”

The Office of Legal Counsel often has a behind-the-scenes role in controversial executive branch policies. Under President George W. Bush, the Office of Legal Counsel established the legal framework for harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding; under President Barack Obama, it signed off on the deferral of deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants.

Questions about Trump’s ties to his eponymous company are expected to reach the office early in the new administration. In 2009, the OLC published an opinion about Obama’s acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, concluding that it didn’t violate the constitutional prohibition on receiving gifts or titles from foreign governments. Trump’s business dealings overseas and ties that his U.S. properties have to foreign governments present a new set of ethics questions.

Should Trump follow through on his campaign pledges to roll back Obama’s executive actions and federal regulations on everything from immigration to climate change, the office would advise him on whether he could do it, and how.

Early in Obama’s presidency, the OLC withdrew legal opinions from the second Bush administration about the use of harsh interrogation techniques on terror suspects. Trump, who said on the campaign trail that “torture works,” could ask the office to revisit the issue.

A large part of the office’s work is resolving legal spats among agencies and interpreting federal laws and regulations. The lawyers review executive orders, and serve as an adviser to the executive branch on separation-of-powers issues. Occasionally, a big legal question—like torture or government surveillance—will come through.

John McGinnis, a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law who served as deputy assistant attorney general in the office from 1987 to 1991, cautioned against assuming that Trump’s campaign proclamations signal the policies he’ll embrace as president.

“People in campaigns, this is all politicians, do not speak in policy legal terms. I would not want to predict that what will come to OLC can be captured in the soundbites of a campaign,” McGinnis said.

Since the election, Trump has continued to express his interest in reviving the practice of waterboarding, although he said in a recent interview with The New York Times that he was intrigued by his conversation with a military general who said the practice wasn’t effective.

LEGAL CREDIBILITY

The Office of Legal Counsel is staffed by about 25 attorneys and has a budget of roughly $8 million. Yet because of its influence, it is one of the more politically contentious offices at the Justice Department. That was especially true in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when the office faced criticism for providing a legal rationale for torturing terror suspects. Both Bush and Obama saw nominees to lead the office stall in the Senate amid partisan opposition.

With a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate and weakened filibuster rules for executive nominees, Trump is expected to have an easier time getting his nominee through.

Some former DOJ officials questioned whether Trump might have a tough time finding a lawyer willing to serve, given the nature of the legal questions they’re expected to confront and the president-elect’s reputation as someone who doesn’t like to be told “no.”

A former top DOJ official in the second Bush administration who spoke on condition of anonymity said he knew lawyers who were hesitant about working for the department and for the OLC, given the controversial questions that office takes on. However, he said that there were many others who would want to work in government regardless of reservations they might have about the president-elect. .

The office has been a stepping stone for many influential lawyers. Among those who held the post under past Republican presidents are the late Supreme Court justices William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia; Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Theodore Olson; J. Michael Luttig, general counsel of The Boeing Co. and a retired judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; and Ninth Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, who ran the office in the aftermath of 9/11 and signed the legal opinion authorizing “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Carl Nichols, a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr and a former principal deputy associate attorney general during the second Bush administration, said the OLC chief is typically one of the most trusted advisers to the attorney general.

The office has “enormous legal credibility,” Nichols said. The specifics of the legal questions surrounding Trump and his agenda differ in some ways from his predecessors, Nichols said, but the ultimate task of grappling with the scope of executive power is a familiar one for the OLC.

“It’s a place where the White House and the agencies know if they have a hard question, they’ll have really terrific legal minds thinking about it,” he said.

HARD QUESTIONS

OLC lawyers aren’t the only ones who give legal advice to the executive branch. There are White House lawyers and each agency has its own legal department. During the Obama administration, a body of senior agency lawyers known as “The Lawyers’ Group” met to consider national security-related legal questions.

Harold Koh, a professor at Yale Law School who served as the legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State during the Obama administration and worked as a lawyer in the OLC, wrote in a recent blog post that he thought the interagency approach, which had been used in previous administrations, was the most effective process.

“Different agencies have different equities, perspectives, and areas of expertise and getting the input of all relevant legal arms of our vast executive branch is vital to sound decisionmaking,” Koh wrote.

But the OLC’s decisions carry significant weight, said Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, and although the president isn’t bound by the office’s conclusions, there’s strong precedent against defying them. That has led presidents to occasionally try to circumvent the office, Adler said, rather than having to deal with a contrary opinion. He cited as one example Obama’s decision in 2011 to reportedly eschew the usual OLC process in soliciting opinions about the legality of military action in Libya without congressional approval.

The office’s legal opinions “reflect, or are supposed to reflect, serious, largely neutral or as neutral as possible assessments of important legal questions about what the executive branch may or may not do,” Adler said.

A successful OLC head will take an “extremely proactive” approach to find ways for the administration to legally achieve policy goals, building up political capital for the occasions when the office has to tell the White House or an agency that they can’t do something within the bounds of the law, McGinnis said.

Dellinger said that his advice to an incoming president would be to pick an OLC head “who has a substantial career that gives him or her substantial stature and the ability to say no, and that will help keep you out of trouble.”

To the next head of the OLC, Dellinger said he would advise he or she to make sure to consult with career government attorneys, to always give an honest opinion of the law, and to have a good career to fall back on in the event of a serious disagreement with the White House.

“The job will drive you crazy if you’re not prepared to walk out the door,” he said.

 

The Vatican and Jimmy Carter Team up Against Israel?

Posted on by

When is enough…enough? How much land does Israel need to give up before the Palestinians are satisfied? The answer? ALL OF IT. If Israel was to vacate all of Israel and land on Mars, all the anti-Israel factions would still not be happy….why? Countless leaders and organizations was Israelis ….dead.

****

Vatican to Recognize Palestinian State in New Treaty

 Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2014 with Presidents Shimon Peres of Israel, left, and Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. Franco Origlia/Getty Images

ZOA Appalled: Vatican Tours Erase Israel –– Visiting Jerusalem Sites Labeled ‘Palestine’

A Sinister Echo of Replacement Theology

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has criticized the Vatican for organizing and promoting tours of Christian sites in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital city, as part of tours to ‘Palestine,’ erasing Israel from the picture. The ZOA regards this a sinister reiteration of Catholic replacement theology, whereby Jews and Judaism are theologically dismissed from history. Replacement theology served for centuries as the warrant and inspiration for theologically-inspired hatred, as well as vicious persecution of, and violence against, Jews.

A report from Italian journalist Giulio Meotti, a writer for the Italian daily, Il Foglio, indicates that Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi, a Vatican office that organizes pilgrimages to Christian sites around the world, sponsors a trip in “Palestine,” with iconic Christian sites in Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem. This is in addition to the fact that, as Meotti writes, “Catholic tourist maps and pilgrimage brochures omitted the name ‘Israel,’ using instead the sanitized expression ‘Holy Land,’ one of the visible effects of the Catholic ‘replacement theology,’ which adopts a de–Judaizing language. It [is also] no secret that Catholic pilgrims spend virtually all their time visiting holy sites in Palestinian-run territory, staying in Palestinian Arab hotels and listening to Palestinian Arab tour guides. As a result, these pilgrims return filled with hatred towards Israel” (Giulio Meotti, ‘Vatican buses promote trips to Jerusalem, “Palestine,”’ Israel National News, November 23, 2016).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “The ZOA is deeply critical of the Vatican’s organizing and promotion of tours to Israel, the biblical, historical and legal homeland of the Jewish people, which erase and thus deny the Jewish identity, indeed the very name, of the country, substituting ‘Palestine.’

“‘Palestine’ was never and is not now a sovereign state, much less one with legal responsibility or effective control of many of the sites being visited on these tours. Palestine is not even an Arab name but named by the Romans.

“With its Nostra Aetate declaration in 1965, the Catholic Church repudiated its historical position holding the Jewish people responsible for the death of Jesus, renounced its traditional claim that Jews had been rejected by God, condemned anti-Semitism, and called for ‘mutual understanding and respect’ between Catholics and Jews. It is difficult to see how this epoch-making new affirmation and policy is being in any way honored by the Vatican with respect to the tours to Israel that it organizes and promotes.

“When Pope John Paul II visited the Rome Synagogue in 1986 –– the first pontiff to visit a synagogue –– he embraced Rabbi Elio Toaff and declared Jews the ‘elder brothers’ of Christians. One does not treat an elder brother as non-existent and revise one’s language to avoid referring to him, while exclusively seeking the company of his hostile neighbors.

“We urge the Vatican to cease organizing and promoting tours to Israel that do not name the country, do not refer to its Jewish history and which shun contacts with the country of its ‘elder brothers.’”

**** On to Jimmy Carter:

Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama: Recognize the State of Palestine

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter delivers a lecture on the eradication of the Guinea worm, at the House of Lords, February 3, London. Carter has called for Barack Obama to recognize the State of Palestine. Eddie Mullholland-WPA Pool/Getty

Newsweek: Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, who brokered peace between Egypt and Israel at Camp David, has called on Barack Obama to recognize the State of Palestine (as the United Nations refers to the non-member observer state) before he leaves office in January.

Of the U.N.’s 193 members, 136—more than 70 percent—recognize the State of Palestine and the Palestinian push for an independent state. But the U.S., Israel and dozens of other nations do not, with many arguing that the recognition of a Palestinian entity can only come about through direct talks and agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

The current U.S. government supports a two-state solution but Israeli ministers have suggested that the election of Donald Trump as the next president has dealt a huge blow to hopes of a Palestinian state. On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and called for continued Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Carter has now stepped into the debate with an op-ed for the New York Times on Monday.

“It has been President Obama’s aim to support a negotiated end to the conflict based on two states, living side by side in peace. That prospect is now in grave doubt,” he wrote. “I am convinced that the United States can still shape the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before a change in presidents, but time is very short.

“The simple but vital step this administration must take before its term expires on Jan. 20 is to grant American diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine, as 137 countries have already done, and help it achieve full United Nations membership.”

Carter added that U.S. recognition of Palestinian hopes for a sovereign state, combined with a U.N. Security Council resolution “grounded in international law,” and U.N. membership for the Palestinians would assist future diplomatic efforts to seal a lasting peace agreement.

The former president, who published a book on the conflict entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in 2006, warned that the prospect of peace is slowly slipping away from the Israelis and the Palestinians.

He said that Israeli moves in the West Bank, past the armistice lines marked before its capture of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War, are bringing both sides ever closer to a “one-state reality” where Israel would preside over more than four million Palestinians living in the two territories, as well as the Gaza Strip.

“Israel is building more and more settlements, displacing Palestinians and entrenching its occupation of Palestinian lands,” Carter writes in the New York Times. “Over 4.5 million Palestinians live in these occupied territories, but are not citizens of Israel. Most live largely under Israeli military rule, and do not vote in Israel’s national elections.”

He continued: “Meanwhile, about 600,000 Israeli settlers in Palestine enjoy the benefits of Israeli citizenship and laws. This process is hastening a one-state reality that could destroy Israeli democracy and will result in intensifying international condemnation of Israel.”

The last U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed in April 2014 and Israel has rejected international initiatives proposed since, the most recent being the French plan to host an international peace conference in Paris. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he is open to talking with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas but only bilaterally and without pre-conditions, such as the removal of settlers from the West Bank or the end of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank.

A Trifecta of Early Trump Admin Attacks Brewing?

Posted on by

oversight-letter-on-trump

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

letter-to-chaffetz-re-trump-conflict-of-interests

Read the full letter in the link above. It has 17 signatures noted on the last page. It is obvious there is an operation underway to interfere in the Trump administration from the outset and to continue to political division within Congress.

It should also be mentioned that Politico posted an item regarding Hillary political operative David Brock that is working to destroy Trump. With Jill Stein challenging the voting results in a few states, something else is afoot here. Could the money raised so far which is estimated above $6 million be the launch of early petty cash to recruit, cultivate and mentor a new bench of democrat political hit personnel?

Brock: The Nation has described Brock as a “conservative journalistic assassin turned progressive empire-builder”; National Review has called him a “right-wing assassin turned left-wing assassin” and Politico has profiled him as a “former right-wing journalist-turned-pro-Clinton crusader.”      (Wikipedia)

David Brock gathering donors to ‘kick Donald Trump’s ass’

The Clinton enforcer is launching Koch brothers-like donor network to rebuild liberal power.

Hillary Clinton’s attack dog David Brock is launching his own Koch-brothers-like donor network to finance attacks on President-elect Donald Trump and to rebuild the political left after Trump’s stunning victory over Clinton last week.

Brock on Thursday night emailed more than 200 of the biggest donors on the left — including finance titans George Soros, Tom Steyer and Donald Sussman — inviting them to a retreat in Palm Beach over inauguration weekend to assess what Democrats did wrong in 2016, figure out how to correct it and raise cash for those initiatives.

“This will be THE gathering for Democratic donors from across the country to hear from a broad and diverse group of leaders about the next steps for progressives under a Trump Administration,” Brock wrote to the donors in an email obtained by POLITICO.

The retreat, planned as the first in a series of regular gatherings, will feature appearances by an array of Democratic elected officials, operatives and liberal thinkers and group officials, Brock explained in an interview.

Though he said he had yet to extend invitations beyond those sent to donors Thursday night, he predicted there would be significant interest, noting that the keynote address at his last major donor conference, back in 2013, was delivered by former President Bill Clinton.

“What better way to spend inaugural weekend than talking about how to kick Donald Trump’s ass?” Brock said.

Brock — a self-described right-wing hitman-turned-Clinton enforcer — has used his relationships with some of the left’s deepest pockets to build an armada of aggressive political outfits that have become pillars of the institutional left and that raised a combined $65 million during the 2016 cycle.

Brock’s groups include the conservative media monitoring nonprofit Media Matters, the opposition research super PAC American Bridge and the legal watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Other groups in his network include the liberal media-funding vehicle American Independent Institute, the media-training nonprofit Franklin Forum and the for-profit social media operation ShareBlue, which The New York Times described as “Hillary Clinton’s Outrage Machine.”

A seventh group, a super PAC called Correct the Record that was created to coordinate directly with Clinton’s campaign, is winding down, though Brock said that a number of its functions and personnel likely will be absorbed by his other groups.

While the entire political left is grappling with how to move on after Clinton’s devastating loss, it could be a particular challenge for Brock and his groups, since he was so closely associated with Clinton.

Brock acknowledged in the interview: “There is no question that we poured our heart and soul into this election for Hillary, but these institutions were built before her campaign and were intended to outlast it.”

And in his email to donors, he pointed out that he created Media Matters more than a decade ago to help the left push back during George W. Bush’s presidency.

“In 2005, we were part of a successful progressive effort to regroup, retool and recover,” he wrote. “While today’s situation is more dire, media matters more than ever.”

One of the areas where the left has been at a disadvantage is using the legal and regulatory system to call out Republican politicians and groups, Brock said. He cited the success of the conservative group Judicial Watch in using the Freedom of Information Act and legal system to pry free emails from Clinton’s State Department.

“Judicial Watch has a $30 million budget, and they had a significant impact on the election,” he said, comparing it to CREW’s $2-million budget. “And if we’re heading into an administration that looks like it could well be as corrupt as the gilded age, we need to significantly reinforce the capacities for an aggressive ethics watchdog.”

The Palm Beach retreat in some ways seems to be a challenge to the 12-year-old Democracy Alliance, a club of liberal financiers that was started by Soros and a handful of other major donors to fund the institutional left.

In fact, the club, which held its annual winter meeting this week in Washington, helped launch Media Matters, and many of Brock’s donors are included among its ranks.

Brock said he’s inviting the president of the DA, as the club is known, to his Palm Beach retreat.

But, while the Democracy Alliance at its winter meeting discussed ways to push back on the Trump administration, many of the group’s members have tried to train its focus on pressuring Democrats from the left on issues like fighting climate change, money in politics and drug laws.

Brock’s network, on the other hand, is more overtly and aggressively political, and has been largely agnostic on the philosophical divisions with which Democrats are grappling.

“We don’t think of this as representing a faction of the Democratic Party, but a cross-section of it, so we’re not going to precook things ideologically,” he said. “It is very politically minded, and there is an urgency to it.”

To All those Paying Tribute to Fidel Castro

Posted on by

In 2014: Fidel Castro has signed an international manifesto “supporting Palestine,” demanding that Israel respect UN resolutions and withdraw from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Obama Directs Intelligence to be Shared with Cuba

Fidel Castro at the National Press Club, April 20, 1959

By the time Castro arrived in New York City in September 1960, relations between the United States and Cuba were rapidly deteriorating. Since taking power in January 1959, Castro had infuriated the American government with his policies of nationalizing U.S. companies and investments in Cuba. Some American officials, such as Vice President Richard Nixon, believed that Castro was leaning perilously toward communism. (Castro did not publicly proclaim his adherence to communism until late-1961, when he declared that he was a “Marxist-Leninist”.) More here.

Forbes: Founded by their wealthy landowner father in 1915, Fidel and younger brother Raul Castro’s childhood home in Birán burnt down in 1954 but a replica was erected in its place in 1974.

Cuban President Fidel Castro examines photos of his relatives at his native house in Birán, Cuba. (Photo by Pablo Pildain/AFP/Getty Images)

A picture of Cuban leader Fidel Castro in his ancestral home which is now a museum. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Fidel and Raul’s parents, Ángel Castro and Lina Ruz González, are laid to rest at the Birán plantation. Castro’s privileged background (although non-bourgeois) contradicted his message, so to give himself street cred, he touted his grandparent’s background as “exploited Galician peasants” from Spain.

The burial site of Cuban leaders Fidel and Raul Castro’s parents on the grounds of their childhood home in Birán, Cuba. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Like JFK, Castro’s father sent him to boarding school where he received a quality education (despite mediocre grades). Baseball, reading, and politics were among his interests. At 14, he even penned a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt congratulating him on his re-election while brazenly asking for $10 American cash (sounds like a secret capitalist).

As a 14-year old, Fidel Castro congratulated FDR on his re-election in 1940.

As a 14-year old, Fidel Castro congratulated FDR on his re-election in 1940. (National Archives document)

The Birán estate was more than a working sugar plantation. Prominent landowner Ángel Castro also established a primary school, hotel, pub, post office, a market store, and a ring for cockfighting (again, it sounds like a capitalist venture).

A building that served as a guest house on the Birán sugar plantation, founded by Fidel Castro’s father in 1915. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Castro ruled Cuba for 49 paranoid years. He moved frequently due to an estimated 600 assassination attempts by the CIA and other foes. The failed plots are infamous—exploding cigars and poison milkshakes included. Castro eventually ceded power to his brother Raul and retired to the gated community “Punto Cero” (Point Zero), his top-secret 75-acre suburban Havana home which resembled a vast military compound.

Fidel Castro meets with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his brother President Raul Castro at Punto Cero near Havana in 2010. (Photo by Ricardo Stuckert/AFP/Getty Images)

Fidel Castro, Cuba’s communist dictator, former president and divisive world figure, died on November 25 at 90 years old—53 years and three days after his nemesis U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Despite their adversarial status, both men were born into wealth via extremely ambitious fathers, both loved sports, both had a mistress weakness, and both fought for their country to oust dictators. That’s where the similarities end.

JFK died young and Castro lived a long, well-heeled life. Castro survived 10 U.S. presidents. Although he didn’t live in a palace and streets weren’t named for him, Castro still lived more extravagantly and hypocritically than he wanted the world to know. Cuba’s revolution leader wasn’t as modest as he led on. A decade ago, Forbes estimated Fidel Castro’s personal net worth at $900 million. That’s a lot of socialist rationing for one person. Luxurious living arrangements were especially appealing to Castro. But for security reasons (after hundreds of assassination attempts), Castro’s paranoid personal life and residences were top secret. Even Cuban citizens didn’t know where he resided.

Fidel Castro was born on his father Ángel Castro’s prosperous 25,000-acre, 400-employee sugar plantation (called Las Manacas farm) in small town Birán, Cuba—about 500 miles from Havana on the eastern end of the island. The property now serves as a Castro museum.

Punto Cero, a pre-revolution golf course property, was reportedly set up by Castro in the 1970s. According to Castro’s former bodyguard, the estate complex includes orange, lemon, mandarin, grapefruit and banana trees, as well as cows and six greenhouses to grow food.

Castro's compound is on the former grounds of the Havana Biltmore Yacht and Country Club.

Castro’s compound is reportedly on the former grounds of the Havana Biltmore Yacht and Country Club.

Punto Cero was far from the “fisherman’s cottage” Castro publicly claimed as his main asset. The luxurious complex in the Jaimanitas neighborhood (15 miles outside Havana proper) served as Castro’s summer residence near the capital city’s embassy district. According to Castro’s former bodyguard (as reported by InCuba Today), he also owned a residences in Cayo Piedra (a stones throw from the Bay of Pigs), La Caleta del Rosario, which featured a private marina; and La Deseada, a chalet in Pinar del Río—reportedly one of Castro’s favorite duck hunting spots.

Fidel Castro in Pinar del Río after the 1959 Cuban revolution. Castro frequently visited and took up residence in the area too.

Fidel Castro in Pinar del Río after the 1959 Cuban revolution. Castro frequently visited and took up residence in the area too.

Retired Fidel Castro met foreign leaders, dignitaries and Popes at Punto Cero, including Pope John Paul II in 1998, Pope Benedict in 2012, and Pope Francis in 2015. Despite his Jesuit background, Castro was an atheist. Yet he still reveled meeting Popes, even exchanging religious books with them.

Pope Francis meets Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba in 2015. The Vatican described the meeting at Castro’s residence as informal and familial, with an exchange of books. (AP Photo/Alex Castro)

Both Countries Have Nuclear Weapons Too

Posted on by

 

Pakistani air force chief warns India against full-scale war

FNC: –  Pakistan’s air force chief on Thursday warned archrival India against escalating the dispute over Kashmir into full-scale war, urging New Delhi to exercise restraint.

Marshal Sohail Aman’s warning came as tensions are soaring between Islamabad and New Delhi over the contested Himalayan territory where Pakistan said Indian fire on Wednesday killed 12 civilians and three soldiers — the deadliest incident in weeks of border clashes.

Aman said that if Indian forces escalate the crisis, Pakistani troops “know full well how to deal with them.”

On a visit to Islamabad, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson held talks with his Pakistani counterpart, Sartaj Aziz.

Afterward, Johnson expressed concern over the Kashmir escalation and appealed to the two South Asian countries “to maintain a positive dialogue” to resolve the dispute of the territory, which is split between Pakistan and India and claimed by both in its entirety.

The two neighboring countries have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, which remains one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.

In Wednesday’s escalation, Indian artillery and shelling hit several villages along the Line of Control that divides the Pakistan- from India-controlled sector of Kashmir, killing 12 civilians. Three Pakistani soldiers were later also reported killed in an exchange between the two sides.

The exchange came a day after the mutilated body of an Indian soldier was found in Kashmir. The Indian military did not say whether the soldier was killed by Pakistani soldiers or Kashmiri rebels, who have been fighting against Indian rule since 1989.

Also Thursday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif held a high-level security meeting to review the Kashmir situation.

“We will never abandon our Kashmiri brethren in their freedom struggle,” Sharif later said, according to a government statement.

Fighting Intensifies Between India and Pakistan on Kashmir Line of Control

NEW DELHI — Shelling and gunfire intensified on Wednesday on the de facto border between India and Pakistan in the Kashmir region, killing nine civilians on a bus one day after the Indian Army promised retribution for what it said was the killing of three of its soldiers.

Pakistan said Indian troops fired on a bus in the Neelam Valley on Pakistan’s side of the Line of Control in the disputed Kashmir region, killing the nine passengers and seriously wounding nine others. The Indian military also fired on rescue workers in an ambulance trying to reach the wounded, Pakistan said.

In other violence reported on Wednesday, the Indian military also killed three Pakistani soldiers, including a captain, Pakistan said, and Pakistani forces retaliated, killing seven Indian soldiers.

A high-level Pakistani diplomat, Deputy High Commissioner Syed Haider Shah, called the violence “a serious escalation of the situation” and a “grave breach of international and humanitarian law.”

Brig. P. S. Gotra of the Indian Army’s northern command defended India’s actions but did not comment on Pakistan’s allegations that Indian forces had targeted civilians and fired on an ambulance.

Exchanges of gunfire along the Line of Control that divides Kashmir have been unrelenting in recent months, despite a cease-fire agreement that was signed in 2003. The violence was amplified Wednesday, with Pakistan asserting that civilians had been killed. Exchanges of fire took place at more than a dozen locations, Brigadier Gotra said.

The Indian Army, on its official Twitter site, said the directors general of military operations of the two sides held talks on a hotline on Wednesday evening at Pakistan’s request.

Maj. Gen. Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Pakistan’s director general of military operations, said in a statement that in the conversation he complained that targeting civilians was “highly unprofessional and unethical.”

“Pakistan reserves the right to respond at the time and place of our choosing,” General Mirza said.

His Indian counterpart, Lt. Gen. Ranbir Singh, said he “expressed grief” about the civilian casualties on the Pakistani side but asserted that his military had targeted only locations where cease-fire violations against India were being initiated. He complained of the mutilation of Indian soldiers by militants believed to have come across the border from Pakistan.

On Tuesday, the Indian Army said that three of its soldiers had been killed on the border and that one of the bodies had been mutilated. The army promised to retaliate for “this cowardly act.” In past statements, mutilation has referred to beheading; it was the second time in recent weeks that an Indian serviceman’s body had been reported to have been mutilated.

Brigadier Gotra said Tuesday that it was unclear whether the soldiers had been killed by the Pakistani Army, militants or a combination of the two.

Tensions between India and Pakistan have intensified since September, when militants killed 19 Indian soldiers at an army base in the border area. India said the militants had crossed over from Pakistan, and it announced a few days later that its army had conducted “surgical strikes” on militant bases along the Line of Control. Indians celebrated the response as a powerful assertion of force against Pakistan.

India and Pakistan each reported that they had summoned the other’s diplomatic representatives to register protests against continued cease-fire violations, among other grievances.

Mr. Shah, Pakistan’s deputy high commissioner, said more than 50 Pakistani civilians, including women and children, had been killed in recent violations of the truce. At least a dozen Indian civilians have been killed, said an official with the Indian border security force.

In June of 2016:

SASEBO, JAPAN (June 9, 2016) – Naval ships, aircraft and personnel from India, Japan and the United States will participate in the annual exercise Malabar 2016, June 9-17, 2016.

Malabar 2016 is the latest in a continuing series of complex, high-end warfighting exercises conducted to advance multi-national maritime relationships and mutual security issues.

Participants from the U.S. Navy include the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) with embarked Carrier Air Wing 9, the guided-missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay (CG 53) and guided-missile destroyers USS Stockdale (DDG 106), USS William P. Lawrence (DDG 110) and USS Chung-Hoon (DDG 93); a P-8A Poseidon aircraft; and a Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine.