Obama issues scathing critique of President Trump, ‘politics of fear’

Agencies
September 8, 2018

Urbana, Sep 8: Former President Barack Obama issued a scorching critique of his successor Friday, blasting President Donald Trump’s policies and his pattern of pressuring the Justice Department.

Obama also reminded voters that the economic recovery — one of Trump’s favorite talking points — began on his watch.

Obama’s speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was delivered less than two months before midterm elections that could determine the course of Trump’s presidency. The remarks amounted to a stinging indictment of political life in the Trump era.

“It did not start with Donald Trump,” Obama said. “He is a symptom, not the cause. He’s just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years.”
Noting the history of former presidents avoiding the rough and tumble of politics, Obama acknowledged his sharp critique of Trump was something of a departure from tradition. But he said the political moment required a pushback and called for better discourse.

“Appealing to tribe, appealing to fear, pitting one group against another, telling people that order and security will be restored if it weren’t for those who don’t look like us or don’t sound like us or don’t pray like we do — that’s an old playbook,” he said. “It’s as old as time. And in a healthy democracy, it doesn’t work. Our antibodies kick in and people of good will from across the political spectrum call out the bigots and the fear-mongers and work to compromise and get things done and promote the better angels of our nature.”

But, Obama added, when there is a vacuum in democracy, “other voices fill the void. A politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment takes hold.”

Trump, meanwhile, claimed he fell asleep watching Obama’s speech. “I found he’s very good for sleeping,” Trump said at a campaign appearance in Fargo, North Dakota. He said Obama was trying to take credit for this “incredible thing that’s happening to our country.”

Even as he has largely remained out of the spotlight, Obama made clear he’s paid close attention to the steady stream of headlines chronicling the Trump administration and said the news is a reminder of what’s at stake in the November midterm elections.

“Just a glance at recent headlines should tell you this moment really is different,” Obama said. “The stakes really are higher. The consequences of any of us sitting on the sidelines are more dire.”

He later added, “This is not normal.”

He was especially stern in his condemnation of Trump’s pattern of pressuring law enforcement officials, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The president has repeatedly called on Sessions to fire special counsel Robert Mueller and earlier this week blamed the Justice Department for indicting two incumbent Republican members of Congress, arguing the moves could jeopardize their seats.

“It should not be a partisan issue to say that we do not pressure the attorney general or the FBI to use the criminal justice system as a cudgel to punish our political opponents,” Obama said. “Or to explicitly call on the attorney general to protect members of our own party from prosecution because an election happens to be coming up. I’m not making that up. That’s not hypothetical.”

As Obama spoke, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he believed Sessions should investigate the identity of the author of an anonymous New York Times opinion piece that was sharply critical of his leadership, saying the essay was a “national security issue.”

Obama, reacting to the op-ed account, said, “That’s not how our democracy is supposed to work.”

“The claim that everything will turn out OK because there are people inside the White House who secretly aren’t following the president’s orders, that is not a check,” Obama said. “I’m being serious here. ... These people aren’t elected. They’re not accountable.”

Obama also jabbed Trump on the issue the current president frequently heralds as one of his greatest achievements: the strong economy. Obama reminded the audience that the economic recovery began during his administration and defended his handling of the 2008 economic collapse.

“When you hear how great the economy’s doing right now, let’s just remember when this recovery started,” he said.

He also criticized Trump’s response to the violence last year at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in the death of a counter-protester.
“We’re supposed to stand up to discrimination,” Obama said. “And we’re sure as heck supposed to stand up clearly and unequivocally to Nazi sympathizers. How hard can that be, saying that Nazis are bad?“

The speech was a preview of the argument that Obama is likely to make throughout the fall. On Saturday, the former president will stump for House Democratic candidates at an event in Orange County, a conservative-leaning part of California where Republicans are at risk of losing several congressional seats.

Next week, Obama plans to campaign in Ohio for Richard Cordray, the Democratic nominee for governor, and other Democrats.

Obama’s campaign activity will continue through October and will include fundraising appearances, according to an Obama adviser. The adviser was not authorized to discuss Obama’s thinking publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. While the former president will be visible throughout the general election, the adviser said Obama will not be a daily presence on the campaign trail.

Republicans said voters won’t find Obama’s argument appealing.

“In 2016, voters rejected President Obama’s policies and his dismissiveness toward half the country,” Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Ahrens said in response to the Friday speech. “Doubling down on that strategy won’t work in 2018 either.”

Meanwhile, Michelle Obama is also stepping up her political involvement ahead of the November midterm election. She will headline voter registration rallies in Las Vegas and Miami later in September as part of a week of action by When We All Vote, the new nonpartisan organization she co-chairs.

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News Network
April 11,2024

vietnamfraud.jpg

Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced Thursday to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh city in southern Vietnam in the country's largest financial fraud case ever, state media Thanh Nien said.

It's a rare verdict - she is one of very few women in Vietnam to be sentenced to death for a white collar crime, i.e. looting one of the country's largest banks over a period of 11 years.

The decision is a reflection of the dizzying scale of the fraud. Truong My Lan was convicted of taking out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. The verdict requires her to return $27bn, a sum prosecutors said may never be recovered. Some believe the death penalty is the court's way of trying to encourage her to return some of the missing billions.

The habitually secretive communist authorities were uncharacteristically forthright about this case, going into minute detail for the media. They said 2,700 people were summoned to testify, while 10 state prosecutors and around 200 lawyers were involved.

The evidence was in 104 boxes weighing a total of six tonnes. Eighty-five defendants were tried with Truong My Lan, who denied the charges.

"There has never been a show trial like this, I think, in the communist era," says David Brown, a retired US state department official with long experience in Vietnam. "There has certainly been nothing on this scale."

The trial was the most dramatic chapter so far in the "Blazing Furnaces" anti-corruption campaign led by the Communist Party Secretary-General, Nguyen Phu Trong.

A conservative ideologue steeped in Marxist theory, Nguyen Phu Trong believes that popular anger over untamed corruption poses an existential threat to the Communist Party's monopoly on power. He began the campaign in earnest in 2016 after out-manoeuvring the then pro-business prime minister to retain the top job in the party.

 The campaign has seen two presidents and two deputy prime ministers forced to resign, and hundreds of officials disciplined or jailed. Now one of the country's richest women has joined their ranks.

Truong My Lan comes from a Sino-Vietnamese family in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. It has long been the commercial engine of the Vietnamese economy, dating well back to its days as the anti-communist capital of South Vietnam, with a large, ethnic Chinese community.

She started as a market stall vendor, selling cosmetics with her mother, but began buying land and property after the Communist Party ushered in a period of economic reform, known as Doi Moi, in 1986. By the 1990s, she owned a large portfolio of hotels and restaurants.

Although Vietnam is best known outside the country for its fast-growing manufacturing sector, as an alternative supply chain to China, most wealthy Vietnamese made their money developing and speculating in property.

All land is officially state-owned. Getting access to it often relies on personal relationships with state officials. Corruption escalated as the economy grew, and became endemic.

By 2011, Truong My Lan was a well-known business figure in Ho Chi Minh City, and she was allowed to arrange the merger of three smaller, cash-strapped banks into a larger entity: Saigon Commercial Bank.

Vietnamese law prohibits any individual from holding more than 5% of the shares in any bank. But prosecutors say that through hundreds of shell companies and people acting as her proxies, Truong My Lan actually owned more than 90% of Saigon Commercial.

They accused her of using that power to appoint her own people as managers, and then ordering them to approve hundreds of loans to the network of shell companies she controlled.

The amounts taken out are staggering. Her loans made up 93% of all the bank's lending.

According to prosecutors, over a period of three years from February 2019, she ordered her driver to withdraw 108 trillion Vietnamese dong, more than $4bn (£2.3bn) in cash from the bank, and store it in her basement.

That much cash, even if all of it was in Vietnam's largest denomination banknotes, would weigh two tonnes.

She was also accused of bribing generously to ensure her loans were never scrutinised. One of those who was tried used to be a chief inspector at the central bank, who was accused of accepting a $5m bribe.

The mass of officially sanctioned publicity about the case channelled public anger over corruption against Truong My Lan, whose fatigued, unmade-up appearance in court was in stark contrast to the glamorous publicity photos people had seen of her in the past.

But questions are also being asked about why she was able to keep on with the alleged fraud for so long.

"I am puzzled," says Le Hong Hiep who runs the Vietnam Studies Programme at the ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

"Because it wasn't a secret. It was well known in the market that Truong My Lan and her Van Thinh Phat group were using SCB as their own piggy bank to fund the mass acquisition of real estate in the most prime locations.

"It was obvious that she had to get the money from somewhere. But then it is such a common practice. SCB is not the only bank that is used like this. So perhaps the government lost sight because there are so many similar cases in the market."

David Brown believes she was protected by powerful figures who have dominated business and politics in Ho Chi Minh City for decades. And he sees a bigger factor in play in the way this trial is being run: a bid to reassert the authority of the Communist Party over the free-wheeling business culture of the south.

"What Nguyen Phu Trong and his allies in the party are trying to do is to regain control of Saigon, or at least stop it from slipping away.

"Up until 2016 the party in Hanoi pretty much let this Sino-Vietnamese mafia run the place. They would make all the right noises that local communist leaders are supposed to make, but at the same time they were milking the city for a substantial cut of the money that was being made down there."

At 79 years old, party chief Nguyen Phu Trong is in shaky health, and will almost certainly have to retire at the next Communist Party Congress in 2026, when new leaders will be chosen.

He has been one of the longest-serving and most consequential secretary-generals, restoring the authority of the party's conservative wing to a level not seen since the reforms of the 1980s. He clearly does not want to risk permitting enough openness to undermine the party's hold on political power.

But he is trapped in a contradiction. Under his leadership the party has set an ambitious goal of reaching rich country status by 2045, with a technology and knowledge-based economy. This is what is driving the ever-closer partnership with the United States.

Yet faster growth in Vietnam almost inevitably means more corruption. Fight corruption too much, and you risk extinguishing a lot of economic activity. Already there are complaints that bureaucracy has slowed down, as officials shy away from decisions which might implicate them in a corruption case.

"That's the paradox," says Le Hong Hiep. "Their growth model has been reliant on corrupt practices for so long. Corruption has been the grease that that kept the machinery working. If they stop the grease, things may not work any more."

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News Network
April 24,2024

columbia.jpg

Pro-Gaza US protesters in New York's Columbia University say they will stay put despite the university's harassment and police crackdown.

The protesters said they refuse to concede to "cowardly threats and blatant intimidation" by university administration, asserting that they will continue to peacefully protest.

Columbia University threatened the students with the national guard after refusing to bargain in good faith.

The university announced a midnight deadline for talks regarding the removal of pro-Palestine encampments on the varsity campus, warning that their campsite will be forcefully cleared by police if no agreement is reached.

The university campus is being used as a campsite for hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters and other activists, who have gathered and set up numerous tents.

Pro-Palestinian protests at colleges have demanded that their universities divest from corporations doing business with Israel or profiting off the war in Gaza. At Columbia, protesters have also asked the university to end a dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University.

The deadline was announced by Columbia University President Minouche Shafik late Tuesday, as authorities across major American universities have launched their repression campaigns against the pro-Palestinian protests on campuses, amid rising anger over US's support for Israel. 

Shafik has issued a midnight deadline to protesters and organizers, warning that failure to comply will result in the forcible clearance of the camp by the New York Police Department (NYPD).

The university has engaged in discussions with student leaders behind the protests, which are part of a series of protests taking place at various colleges nationwide and resulting in multiple arrests.

The purpose of these talks is to address the encampment on the west lawn of Columbia's Morningside Heights campus.

American universities are grappling with the challenge of maintaining a delicate balance between the right to protest and freedom of speech, while also ensuring campus rules and safety, as tensions surrounding the ongoing war in Gaza continue to permeate across campuses.

Meanwhile, Shafik underscored the importance of free speech and the right to demonstrate, but highlighted significant safety issues, disruptions to campus activities, and a strained environment due to the encampment. She firmly stated that any form of intimidation, harassment, or discrimination would not be accepted.

The arrest of more than 100 protesters at Columbia University last week led to more campus demonstrations, at New York University, Yale, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Palestinian university professor Sami al-Arian said what is happening across US university campuses is unprecedented.

Al-Arian said, "I lived four decades in the US, 28 years of which were in academic settings. During my time, it was a very challenging struggle to present an anti-Zionist narrative."

"But the passion, courage, humanity, creativity, and determination displayed these days by students across US campuses make me proud. The Zionist grip on US society is weakening and waning."

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