Biden, Putin Discuss Cyber Breach, Arms Control, In Phone Call posted at 10:56:51 UTC via Reuters: World News
Biden and Putin - GS - 1.27.21 | Trump and KGB - GS - 1.27.21
Michael_Novakhov shared this story from  Comments on: Commentary: Biden is right to keep Christopher Wray as FBI director. |
President Joe Biden has let it be known that he will retain Christopher A. Wray, one of President Donald Trump’s appointees, as director of the FBI. It’s a wise decision.
Biden could replace Wray, just as Trump named Wray to replace the fired James B. Comey. Congress in 1976 set a 10-year term for an FBI director, but it’s generally accepted that the president has the authority to dismiss a director before the end of that term.
Nevertheless, the 1976 law created two expectations: that no future FBI director would be able to become entrenched the way J. Edgar Hoover did in his nearly 48-year reign, and that directors would have a degree of independence from any given president. Some directors haven’t served the full 10 years, and in 2011 Congress acceded to a request by President Barack Obama that it pass legislation to allow a two-year extension of Robert S. Mueller III’s term as director.
Although it sometimes has been honored in the breach, the ideal of a 10-year term for the FBI director serves the important purpose of insulating the bureau from political pressure.
Unless a director is incompetent or has engaged in misconduct, he or she should be retained by a new president. Unlike some Trump appointees — including former Attorney General William Barr — Wray hasn’t been seen as a Trump crony. Some eyebrows were raised when Wray didn’t hold a news conference about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, but that discretion is understandable given reports that Trump had considered firing Wray.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., who was a House manager in Trump’s first impeachment trial, welcomed the news that Biden would keep Wray, saying the director had served with “great professionalism and integrity.”
Biden’s decision to retain Wray is consistent with his choice of Merrick Garland as his attorney general. Unlike some other candidates for the position, Garland, a sitting federal judge, hadn’t endorsed Biden’s candidacy. Both decisions send a signal that the new president is serious about not interfering in prosecutorial decisions, whether it involve investigations into his political opponents — including Trump — or persons close to him — including Biden’s son Hunter, who has acknowledged that his “tax affairs” are being investigated by the Justice Department.
That’s a welcome change from Trump, who complained that the Justice Department wasn’t investigating his political opponents and threatened to “get involved” if the department and the FBI didn’t “start doing their job and doing it right.” Biden recognizes that “doing it right” means not politicizing justice.
Michael McGough is the Los Angeles Times’ senior editorial writer, based in Washington, D.C.
Michael_Novakhov shared this story . |
Experts say that former U.S. President Donald Trump may find it difficult to pay back the mountain of debt his empire owes over the next four years, with revenues of some of his key businesses plunging amid the coronavirus pandemic and his reputation bruised by two impeachments.
Financial statements released on January 20, the day Trump left office, show that he owes hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, and most of it needs to be paid back by 2025. Experts have told Newsweek that the pandemic has had a devastating financial impact on Trump Organization businesses—many of which are in tourism and real estate.
Trump’s reputation has also been sullied by the deadly attack on the Capitol building on January 6, which led to him being impeached by the House of Representatives for the second time. Since then, many leading financial institutions and banks have refused to lend to the former president. Among them are Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley.
On top of this, the New York City government and the PGA of America pulled out of business arrangements with the Trump Organization, hitting the former president’s income.
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The National Doral Golf Club outside of Miami, typically the biggest money maker of Trump’s golf properties, made $44.2 million in revenue in 2020—$33 million less than the previous year.
The Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., once a popular place for officials and lobbyists to stay in the capital, saw its revenue to drop to $15.1 million in 2020, down more than 60 percent from the year before.
The Turnburry club, Trump’s famous golf club in Scotland, took in less than $10 million in 2020, 60 percent lower than the previous year. The family’s golf club in Aberdeen saw a similar fall in revenue.
However, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago holiday club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he now lives, saw revenue rise 10 percent to $24.2 million.
The presidential financial report, which is filed each year with federal ethics officials, does not tell the whole story. Although the statements only show revenue rather than profits, financial experts have said the picture doesn’t look good for the Trump Organization, which has not responded to Newsweek’s request for comment.
Phillip Braun, Clinical Professor of Finance at Northwestern University, believes that Trump’s sources of funding are running out.
“Trump has somewhere around $300 million in loans coming due in the next three years. Furthermore, Forbes estimates all his debts total close to $1 billion, just not all of it coming due in the next few years. With some of Trump’s banks cancelling their business relationship with Trump, it will be difficult for him to access credit markets in the future to refinance these loans,” he told Newsweek.
“Beyond his debt, we also need to take into account the losses that his businesses are suffering, due to the pandemic, loss of his brand value, and other factors. His most recent financial disclosure shows that his properties lost more than $120 million last year. That is an enormous cash drain on his businesses, and will be difficult for Trump to sustain in the future.”
Braun expects Trump to stop paying some of his loans to conserve money, causing some of his businesses to default on their outstanding debt. This will cause his lenders to either renegotiate the terms of his loans or take Trump to court.
“My expectation is that his banks will renegotiate his loans rather than go to court (which is what ultimately happened with his loans for the Trump Tower in Chicago). Given the long time frame for the resolution of lawsuits, the ultimate financial demise of Trump could be years away,” said Braun.
“It will be difficult for Trump to recover from this. When his loans come due, we can expect his current banks to try not to roll over his current debt into new loans. This will require Trump to search for new lines of credit. This will be hard for him to do. If he is able to raise new credit, that credit will be rated as junk debt and the interest rate on the debt will be very high (the current interest rate on CCC rated junk debt is just under 8 percent).”
Like Braun, John Pottow, a commercial law professor at the University of Michigan, believes the president could face a barrage of lawsuits that could eventually lead to personal bankruptcy.
“Absent the consent of the lenders, he has no option other than filing for bankruptcy,” Pottow told The Hill. “I mean, that’s just the way it works. If you owe someone money and you can’t pay it, then they can either forgive it or they can sue you.
“There’s a bunch of corporate actors who are running away from him, like Deutsche Bank, so I think the last thing they want to do is to refinance him,” Pottow added.
Jeffrey Harris, professor in the department of finance and real estate at American University in Washington, D.C., says that despite the pandemic hitting Trump’s businesses, he still has a strong brand among many Americans, which will mean money-making opportunities. The academic noted that former presidents often reap large windfalls for books and speaking arrangements.
“It is true that the industries in which Trump has been most visible (leisure, for the most part) have been hit the hardest from the COVID crisis. With vaccines being distributed and optimism around the corner, my guess is that these industries will start to rebound in the 2nd and 3rd quarter of 2021,” he told Newsweek.
Because Trump caters to the top-end consumers in this sector, Harris predicts that the former president’s hotels and golf courses will rebound even before the general hotel industry.
“The most wealthy are most likely to begin travel and leisure activities first, once the vaccines become more widely implemented,” he explained.
Harris said it remains to be seen whether the Capitol riots will have a profound impact on the president’s reputation in the long-term.
“Trump has morphed from businessman to TV star to politician and has shown a remarkable ability to make these transitions. If his businesses are capable, he will likely find financing to move forward,” he said.
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There was no immediate comment from Sudanese officials or from the US embassy in Israel.
P Aul Robeson was a world glory, and American revolutionary unionism experienced successes and tragedies worthy of being told with epic fervor. Unless you take a close interest in the struggles of African Americans and the labor movement, except to frequent the works of Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky, we have little more than a vague idea, and it is probably a understatement. As the famous saying goes, history is written by the victors; more precisely, it is rewritten, and whole sections of the struggle for the transformation of the world are erased, as well as their tenacious and magnificent actors, which one cannot certainly not reduce to the status of vanquished.
The Italian writer Valerio Evangelisti, made famous by his cycle devoted to the figure of the Inquisitor Nicolas Eymerich ( 1 ) , closes with Breakers ( 2 ) a trilogy centered on the history of American trade unionism ( 3 ) . This last well-documented novel first and foremost accounts for the genesis, debates, victories and defeats of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) over some fifteen years from their beginnings in 1905. The book is bushy, sometimes ungrateful, especially as his ” hero Is a sad bastard, who chooses to be the thug of a security agency, evoking the Pinkerton, made famous by its efficiency in the service of employer repression. Without the slightest qualm, he carries out his infiltration missions by posing as a “ red ” worker , which allows him to denounce sympathizers and inform his masters of the wobblies ‘ plans , as the members are called. of IWW.
But, if its frequentation is often trying, the fact remains that we are thus accompanying the great moments of an organization of the working class (railway workers, miners, seasonal agricultural workers, etc.), which includes women as well. as blacks or foreigners, with the unmistakable stated aim of abolishing capitalism. Their propaganda was remarkably effective, from tracts written in the language of immigrants to sassy songs, like those of Joe Hill. They knew how to always be on the ground (especially thanks to the hoboes, the homeless), modulate all forms of strike, impose considerable improvements and face repression commensurate with the fear of the owners.Leaders and demonstrators were killed in numbers by the police and the henchmen of these informant agencies, one of which was institutionalized to become in 1908 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In the interwar period, laws against ” criminal unionism ” will allow the arrest of thousands of wobblies, then the factory of oblivion will be exercised. But the IWW, internationalists and revolutionaries, still exist, tenuous perhaps but stubborn, with in their ranks Chomsky and Tom Morello, the guitarist of the group Rage Against the Machine.
Slave descendant Paul Robeson (1898-1976) shines until the beginning of the 1950s. He could have contented himself with a career thanks to a remarkable bass baritone voice, which Ol ‘Man River made famous. . On the contrary, he decides not to dissociate his artistic choices and his political choices, to put himself fully, concretely, grandiosely, at the service of the fight for racial and social justice. His biography is a little applied at times ( 4 ), but it gives an account of an effervescent and intrepid life, which leads him to sing for the workers as for the jet-set, to affirm his sympathy for the Soviet Union and his rejection of the Korean War, to support the separatists Africans and to play a major role in the militant intellectual debates of the time. He will be discredited in his country as a communist, and his career will be shattered. While his birthday was a national holiday in many countries, his concerts and his declarations were events with international repercussions, he will be erased or almost from the dominant memory. Just like Joe Hill, which he sang, and the wobblies.
( 1 ) Valerio Evangelisti, Nicolas Eymerich, inquisitor, twelve volumes published, Payot & Rivages – La Volte – Le Livre de poche, Clamart-Paris, 1998-2021.
( 2 ) Valerio Evangelisti, Breakers de strike, translated from Italian by Paola de Luca and Gisèle Toulouzan, Libertalia, Montreuil, 2020, 528 pages, 18 euros. Announced for April 22, 2021: Peter Cole, David Struthers and Kenyon Zimmer (ed.), Solidarité forever. Global history of the Industrial Workers of the World union, Hors d’Ateinte, Marseille.
( 3 ) Valerio Evangelisti, Anthracite and We are nothing are everything !, Rivages, coll. “ Noir ”, Paris, 2008 and 2010 respectively.
( 4 ) Gerald Horne, Paul Robeson, translated from English (United States) by Joëlle Marelli, Otium, Ivry-sur-Seine, 2020, 332 pages, 25 euros.
( 1 ) Valerio Evangelisti, Nicolas Eymerich, inquisitor, twelve volumes published, Payot & Rivages – La Volte – Le Livre de poche, Clamart-Paris, 1998-2021.
( 2 ) Valerio Evangelisti, Breakers de strike, translated from Italian by Paola de Luca and Gisèle Toulouzan, Libertalia, Montreuil, 2020, 528 pages, 18 euros. Announced for April 22, 2021: Peter Cole, David Struthers and Kenyon Zimmer (ed.), Solidarité forever. Global history of the Industrial Workers of the World union, Hors d’Ateinte, Marseille.
( 3 ) Valerio Evangelisti, Anthracite and We are nothing are everything !, Rivages, coll. “ Noir ”, Paris, 2008 and 2010 respectively.
( 4 ) Gerald Horne, Paul Robeson, translated from English (United States) by Joëlle Marelli, Otium, Ivry-sur-Seine, 2020, 332 pages, 25 euros.
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4:44 AM 1/27/2021 — How the KGB Hooked Trump.
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1 day ago — How the KGB Hooked Trump. ‘American Kompromat,’ a new book by Craig Unger, gets the lowdown from former Russian and U.S. spies …
Is Trump an agent of Russia? It’s the unanswered question …
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#Holocaust–#Gedenktag: Am 27.01.1945 befreiten #Soldaten der Roten Armee die Häftlinge des KZ Auschwitz-Birkenau, des größten Vernichtungslagers des NS-Regimes. „Auschwitz“ avancierte nach 1945 zum Symbol für den von Deutschen begangenen Massenmord. 
https://www.bundeswehr.de/de/organisation/weitere-bmvg-dienststellen/zentrum-militaergeschichte-sozialwissenschaften/zmsbw-aktuelles-holocaust-gedenktag-5021462 …
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MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell claims Twitter – ‘took over my account and secretly posted as me’ – before permanently banning him https://trib.al/siVC2Lf
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Capitol riot exposes long-standing issue of far-right police officers https://www.businessinsider.com/capitol-riot-exposes-far-right-police-officers-longstanding-issue-2021-1 …
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