Is ex-Prez Donald Trump about to be indicted, again? This time in Federal Court.
The investigation being led by Hague War Crimes Tribunal prosecutor Jack Smith.
The Feds only indict when the Case is solid. And Jack Smith is a tough guy. Having prosecuted War Crimes before taking the Trump criminal portfolio.
Excerpted from The New York Times 6.7.2023
Trump in New York Criminal Court indicted on State charges, April 4, 2023. Is the Federal indictment next?
Federal prosecutors have informed the legal team for former President Donald J. Trump that he is a target of their investigation into his handling of classified documents after he left office, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The notification to Mr. Trump’s team by prosecutors from the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, was the clearest signal yet that the former president is likely to face charges in the investigation.
It remained unclear when Mr. Trump’s team was told that he was a target of the special counsel’s inquiry, but the notice suggested that prosecutors working for Mr. Smith had largely completed their investigation and were moving toward bringing an indictment.
In court papers last year, prosecutors indicated that they were scrutinizing whether Mr. Trump had broken laws governing the handling of national security documents and whether he had obstructed government efforts to retrieve them.
Prosecutors Tell Trump’s Legal Team He Is a Target of Investigation
On May 7, 2018, Jack Smith was named to a four-year term as chief prosecutor for the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, investigating war crimes committed in the Kosovo War,[8][9][13] including the case of Salih Mustafa.[16] He took up the post on September 11, 2018, and was appointed to a second term on May 8, 2022.[8]
The Washington Post reports that the US government has sufficient documentation to point the finger at Ukraine for the September 2022 Nordstream 2 pipeline explosion hundreds of feet beneath the Baltic Sea.
An explosion which severely damaged the Russian built pipeline which was to have carried natural gas from Russia to Germany.
Setting sights on who blew up Nordstream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea – September 2022
For nearly nine months the party responsible has not been conclusively named. Even today’s Washington Post story is receiving a healthy dose of skepticism and pushback.
If Ukraine is responsible the optics will not be positive. Particularly since the Biden administration has discouraged these aggressive actions by the Kyiv government as it pushes to gain funding for its ongoing defense of Russia’s February 2022 invasion.
Excerpted from The New York Times 6.6.2023
U.S. intelligence agencies learned from a European ally that the Ukrainian military had planned an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines, three months before saboteurs bombed the underwater network, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
A Russian graphic of the Nordstream 2 pipeline
The Post withheld some details of the intelligence, including the name of the European country giving the report to the United States, to protect the sources of the information.
American officials had previously told The New York Times that they believed pro-Ukrainian groups were responsible for the Nord Stream attack. More recently, American officials have said that groups loosely directed by Ukraine’s government were responsible for a series of covert attacks, including on the Nord Stream pipelines.
But an intelligence summary posted on a Discord server and obtained by The Washington Post showed that U.S. and European allies had reason to believe even before the September attacks that Ukraine viewed the pipelines as a tempting sabotage target — and had specific details about a planned operation using divers and deepwater equipment.
The C.I.A. shared the European intelligence report with Germany and other countries last June, The Post reported. When warning Germany, officials said, nothing was held back from what the U.S. government knew.
While some U.S. officials are becoming more comfortable with Ukraine’s covert attacks on Russia, concerns remain about the possibility of miscalculation by Ukraine while conducting such operations. Sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines was exactly the kind of operation that would concern the United States — a symbolic attack with little military value that carries a high risk of fracturing the alliance supporting Ukraine.
So far, that has not happened. Even as Germany and other European countries have learned of Ukrainian involvement in the pipeline attack, they have nevertheless increased their military aid.
American officials insisted on Tuesday there has been no determination about who within the Ukrainian government may have planned or authorized the attack. If it is eventually pinned on senior officials, European attitudes about support for Ukraine could change.
Top photo – Detailed map of the Nordstream 2 pipeline. Mired in controversy deep beneath the Baltic Sea.
What is striking about political protest in Germany is the fact people take to the streets in what often become disruptive confrontations with the Police.
Leipzig– After clashes overnight, police broke up the demonstration when they were pelted with ‘stones, pyrotechnics and other objects
Confrontations which German police are organized to handle so that protesters, irrespective of political persuasion, are treated firmly. And treated by the Courts in a manner which respects their rights. While meting out to the accused firmly and, for the post part, fair sentences to the Guilty.
In America law enforcement more often comes down hard on progressive protestors. And, too often treats right wingers with the proverbial kid gloves.
Vigorous street protest is rarely seen in America where, for the most part, aggrieved Progressives satisfy themselves with generally peaceful marches and overheated rhetoric.
The same protest tactics can’t be said for the far right in America. Proud Boys, Q’Anon etc. The neo-fascist extremists whose attempted coup d’etat on January 6, 2021 laid bare the incendiary intentions of these political thugs.
The Courts in America seem unable to differentiate between neo-nazi extremists and legitimate political protest. In America the Courts often hand out unduly long prison sentences.
Particularly for political offenses; i.e. whistleblowing and making public government documents. Charged as serious crimes which do not deserve lengthy, if any, incarceration.
If nothing else, in Germany the Courts are more adept at making the punishment fit the crime.
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 6.3.2023
Anti-fascist protest in Germany
Several police officers were injured in the eastern German city of Leipzig on Saturday in clashes with left-wing protesters.
Leipzig police spokesman Olaf Hoppe described the situation as “very dynamic,” with “sometimes massive clashes here in the south of Leipzig.”
He said that “roughly 1,500 people” turned up to the demonstration, even though several courts had refused to authorize it.
“According to our estimates, one-third of them were either inclined towards violence, or were actively seeking violence,” Hoppe said. “We observed numerous cases of people intentionally obscuring their faces, which is an offense in and of itself.”
Major protests in Germany require authorization from authorities. Local governments and courts can restrict them if they deem that the event could pose a risk to public safety, among other reasons.
The scheduled date for the verdict had been known for months, and Lina’s supporters evidently were not optimistic about her chances of acquittal, as they had been drumming up support for protests on the following weekend since last year.
Symbols of support for convicted 28-year-old Lina E. could be seen around Connewitz in southern Leipzig
They referred to it as “day X” (Tag X), a term often used in German to describe a moment in the future that you believe will be somehow decisive or crucial.
They wanted to stage the march under a motto that roughly translates as “United we stand — defend autonomous antifascists, in spite of all this.”
Leipzig city authorities and two courts in the city ruled that Saturday’s demonstration should not go ahead, saying that advanced online appeals calling on people to protest either showed a tendency towards violent acts or sometimes even included explicit calls for violence.
Lina E. hails from Leipzig, one of the three German cities — along with Berlin and Hamburg — that law enforcement often cite as the hotspots for radical left-wing activism
“Leipzig’s Higher Administrative Court is also of the conviction, that the city of Leipzig plausibly predicted that the protests could turn violent and therefore pose a threat to the broader public,” Leipzig’s Higher Administrative court said late on Friday when upholding the first court decision finding that the march should not be allowed.
The German Constitutional Court, meanwhile, said on Saturday that it would not hear a last-gasp emergency injunction on the issue, meaning the protesters had exhausted their legal avenues.
It was 55 years ago today that Andy Warhol was shot in New York City by Valerie Solanas.
The notorious event was memorialized in the 1996 film “I Shot Andy Warhol.”
In 2019 The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art had a retrospective of Andy Warhol’s massive works of art. My daughter Atlanta and I attended the Members Only preview. I took a number of photos. Four years after viewing the exhibit I am putting up a representative sampling of my photographic memories.
Atlanta studies Warhol’s famous Campbell Soup work
Jackie Kennedy. Top photo. Just prior to the assassination of President Kennedy and immediately after – 11.22.1963
Richard Nixon
Andy Warhol: Mao, 1972. Acrylic, silkscreen ink, and graphite on linen, 14 feet 8 1⁄2 inches x 11 feet 4 1 ⁄2 inches.
Marlon Brando – The Wild One
Elvis Presley
Attendees at the MOMA Members only preview – 5.17.2019
The Exploding Plastic Inevitable – live – ANDY WARHOL. THE VELVET UNDERGROUNDand NICO – circa 1967
Femme Fatale – NIco – Velvet Underground (1967)
Museum of Modern Art – San Francisco – May 17, 2019
I woke this morning to read that Chesa Boudin, who was recalled a year ago in a vicious political coup d’etat funded with 9M in MAGA money is back.
Chesa now has a forum at the prestigious University of California School of Law where he can advocate for true Progressive Justice reform. Unencumbered by swamp dwelling thinly veiled fascists who promote law and order in the name of public safety.
Interviewed in the The New York Times, Chesa was unsparing in his comments about the State of criminal justice and his unvarnished thoughts about the person who worked to destroy him and was awarded with his job as San Francisco District Attorney.
Chesa Boudin campaigning during the Recall election – May 2022
“I absolutely do not agree with scapegoating or attacking immigrants for what are clearly deep-rooted structural inequities and a public health crisis,” Boudin said. “It has never worked, and it’s often been a red flag for fascism. Scapegoating immigrants is not who we are in San Francisco, and it will not make us safer.”
Concerning the fatal shooting of Banko Brown by a security guard at a downtown drugstore last month, Boudin had sharp words for his successor, Brooke Jenkins, who declined to file charges in the case. Her handling of the case sparked protests, especially over her public statements early in the investigation that the case appeared to be one of self-defense.
“Any experienced prosecutor knows, and Jenkins should have known perfectly well, that you don’t come out while a case is still under investigation, at least allegedly, and make the defense’s case for them,” he said.
Top photo – Chesa Boudin with family and friends on the night of his ouster – June 7, 2022
Here is a story receiving not one iota of coverage in the United States.
Neither in the mainstream media nor on more Progressive outlets such as Democracy Now.
Four Germans are on trial for their physical assaults against neo-nazis between 2018 and 2020.
The trial of “Lina E” and three co-defendants is expected to reach its conclusion with a verdict on May 31 when the decision is announced at the Dresden High Court.
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 5.30.2023
A 28-year-old German student is standing trial in Dresden accused of founding a criminal organization and committing six serious attacks on neo-Nazis, in an unusual case of violent left-wing extremism in Germany.
Banners with the inscription “Solidarity with all persecuted antifascists!” and “Out for the demo on day X” hang on the facade of a house in the east of Leipzig to draw attention to the planned demonstration on June 2, 2023 in connection with the pronouncement of the verdict in the Lina trial. Photo: Sebastian Willnow/dpa
State prosecutors say Lina E.* and her three co-defendants — Lennart A., Philipp M., and Jannis R. — carried out a series of attacks on neo-Nazis in the eastern states of Thuringia and Saxony between 2018 and 2020, including two attacks on Leon R., a notorious far-right extremist who was himself arrested for allegedly forming a far-right extremist organization.
The group around Lina E. is believed to have raided a well-known neo-Nazi bar in the town of Eisenach in late 2019 and attacked Leon R. with hammers and batons. When the initial attack failed, the group attacked him again a few weeks later outside his car. Other neo-Nazis were left with broken bones and other injuries after the attacks.
Handcuffed Lina E. on her way to the courthouse
German police are expecting the largest police deployment in two years for the autonomous left-wing “Day X” demonstration in the eastern city of Leipzig on Saturday, reported
As there are also calls for militancy and massive announcements of violence, the police are preparing “for a deployment with a partly unpeaceful course with a high potential for damage,” the Leipzig police directorate announced on Tuesday.
Prosecutors are asking for an eight year prison term for Lina E., who has already spent well over two years behind bars as the long and complicated trial continued, and up to 3 years and 9 months in prison for the co-defendants. The defense called for Lina E. to be convicted only of the lesser charges of attempted bodily injury and theft.
It’s amazing that War Criminal Henry Kissinger has lived to be 100 without being summoned to the International Court for Criminal Justice in The Hague.
At the beginning. Henry Kissinger and President Nixon – 1969
Why Kissinger continues to, and still does, receive such adulation in some parts of the mainstream media speaks volumes to his self promotion. It is also a stinging indictment of the American media and its subservience to Power.
Kissinger’s record of malevolence and slaughter is well documented. In the 1950’s he wrote a book about nuclear war.
In 1969 he joined the Nixon Administration after telling the South Vietnamese government to not agree to a Peace Deal prior to the 1968 election. Promising the Saigon puppet regime it would get a better deal with Nixon.
Once in the White House Kissinger oversaw the secret bombing of Cambodia which drove out a neutral regime and, ultimately, led to the murderous Pol Pot dictatorship and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians.
In 1972 Kissinger oversaw the ferocious Christmas time bombing of Hanoi which destroyed the Bach Mai Hospital.
Never to be forgotten is Kissinger’s role in the overthrow of the democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende and his replacement with Augusto Pinochet. 17 years of brutal dictatorship followed.
The list goes on and on.
Excerpted from Counterfire 5.25.2023
One of the world’s most notorious war criminals, Henry Kissinger, is about to reach one hundred years of age on 27 May. In the US, in 2021, there were only 89,739 centenarians, so, in a country with a population over 330 million, it’s fair to say that Kissinger has had a very good innings.
Henry Kissinger at 100. A paper trail of war crimes.
In any just society, Kissinger would undoubtedly be held accountable for his appalling track record of war crimes and human-rights abuses.
However, his brutal initiatives were undertaken in the service of an imperialist power that had need of his talents.
Prior to going into ‘public service’ in 1968, ‘Kissinger was a professor of international relations at Harvard.’ In this academic setting, he had already developed a view that ‘the United States should carefully pursue its own interests’ in such a way that, ‘Moral and ideological considerations … were less important than cold, hard evaluations of what could advance America’s strategic position.’
Not only has Kissinger lived long, but he has also prospered, with a net worth of some $50 million, largely attributable to his leadingrole in Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm. We may also fully expect that the US establishment and its media will greet Kissinger’s birthday with effusive praise and lavish tributes. He will be honoured as a veritable national and international hero.
Samantha Power, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning book ‘A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide’ was not immune to Kissinger’s star power
In 2015, the US anti-war organisation CodePink ‘attempted to perform a citizen’s arrest on former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger when he testified on global security challenges at a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting.’ It should be noted that the fact that Kissinger was making such a presentation before an official body only eight years ago, is an indication of his enduring status and influence in Washington.
The participants in the CodePink action wished to drive home the criminality of Kissinger on the world stage. They asserted that they were acting, ‘In the name of the people of Chile, in the name of the people of Vietnam, in the name of the people of East Timor, in the name of the people of Cambodia, in the name of the people of Laos.’
Protesters interrupt the start of a Senate Armed Services hearing on Capitol Hill as Kissinger prepares to testify
In any just society, Kissinger would undoubtedly be held accountable for his appalling track record of war crimes and human-rights abuses. However, his brutal initiatives were undertaken in the service of an imperialist power that had need of his talents.
Prior to going into ‘public service’ in 1968, ‘Kissinger was a professor of international relations at Harvard.’ In this academic setting, he had already developed a view that ‘the United States should carefully pursue its own interests’ in such a way that, ‘Moral and ideological considerations … were less important than cold, hard evaluations of what could advance America’s strategic position.’
Obviously Roger Waters fails to get the message. Evenif his intention is to make a political statement.
Nazi era paraphernalia is verboten in Germany 78 years after Hitler perished in a Berlin bunker and the 12 year Thousand Year Reich of mass murder and genocide came crashing down..
German authorities are serious about stamping out any vestige of Hitlerism and all the horrific things for which Nazism stood for. This includes iconic entertainers who should know better.
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 5.25.2023
“Good morning to every one but Roger Waters who spent the evening in Berlin (Yes Berlin) desecrating the memory of Anne Frank and the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry tweeted earlier this week.
The Pink Floyd co-founder wore a Nazi-style uniform at a concert in Berlin. Several other German cities previously tried to cancel the musician’s shows after he was accused of anti-Semitism.
Great news! Berlin police have launched a criminal investigation into Roger Waters following his concert in which he dressed like a Nazi SS officer holding a gun and denigrated the murder of Anne Frank.
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) May 25, 2023
German police have launched an investigation into Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters after he appeared on stage in Berlin last week wearing a Nazi-style uniform and firing an imitation machine gun.
Waters’ outfit comprised of a long black coat with a red armband featuring a Swastika-like emblem of two crossed hammers.
“We are investigating on suspicion of incitement to public hatred because the clothing worn on stage could be used to used to glorify or justify Nazi rule, thereby disturbing the public peace,” a police spokesperson told the AFP news agency on Friday.
Nazi uniforms, flags and other symbols are banned in Germany, but police said Waters is being investigated under a separate law of “incitement of the people.”
Roger Water’s concert prop. Inflatable pig with Star of David
Once the investigation is concluded, police will hand the findings to Berlin prosecutors who will decide whether to pursue any charges.
Waters is a well known advocate for Palestinians, but he has also been accused of anti-Semitism, which he denies.
During his German tour, including at the Berlin concert, he flashed the names of several deceased people on-screen.
Among these names were Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who died in a concentration camp, and Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American journalist who was shot dead while reporting on violence in the West Bank, prompting accusations of Holocaust relativization.
Waters’ shows also often feature giant inflatable pigs emblazoned with aggressive or brooding slogans. Some of these had the Star of David painted on them.
Roger Waters in Nazi garb (right). Anne Frank emblazoned on concert hall wall in Berlin
Several German cities previously tried, unsuccessfully, to cancel Waters’ concerts after Jewish groups, including the Central Council of Jews, accused the rock star of anti-Semitism.
However, some fans came to the defense of Waters on social media, arguing that the performance in Berlin and the armband emblem were a recreation of the satirical scene from the 1982 the feature film based on the band’s hit album “The Wall,” which was a critique of fascism.
Perhaps it’s only about the ‘Money’ when it comes to Roger Waters.
Lee's Perspective 