Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has responded positively to a letter from U.S. President Donald Trump that encouraged him to promote democracy and improve strained relations between the two countries.
A letter from Hun Sen, dated Tuesday and shared online Wednesday by members of his government, accepted Trump’s invitation to a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders in the United States early next year, as well as an offer for the two countries’ foreign policy teams to hold talks.
Washington has long criticized Hun Sen’s government for its poor record on democratic and human rights. Hun Sen, in power for 34 years, has accused the U.S. of seeking “regime change” to oust him.
Trump’s Nov. 1 letter assured Hun Sen that the U.S. does not seek regime change.
Month: November 2019
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has hosted leaders of Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgency and discussed efforts aimed at finding a negotiated settlement to the Afghan war.
A Taliban spokesman said Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the political deputy chief and head of the insurgent group’s Qatar-based office, led the visiting delegation at the meeting.
This is the second time Taliban officials have traveled to Tehran since their yearlong peace negotiations with the United States collapsed in early September.
The latest visit also comes a week after the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) alleged that Iran continues to provide the insurgent group with military support in a bid to counter Washington’s influence in Afghanistan.
Iranian official media reported Wednesday that in his discussions with Taliban visitors, Zarif underscored the need to launch an intra-Afghan peace dialogue for “the formation of an all-inclusive government” in the war-shattered neighboring country.
The top Iranian diplomat is said to have voiced Tehran’s readiness to take part in efforts aimed at facilitating such a peace process that would be participated by the Taliban and government officials as well as representatives from other influential political forces in Afghanistan.
Iran’s Press TV reported that Zarif conveyed to the Taliban his country’s support for “any effort by various Afghan forces to find common ground for cooperation towards paving the way for the departure of all foreign forces from Afghanistan” as an outcome of intra-Afghan reconciliation talks.
‘Iranian military support’
The Pentagon released the DIA report on Iran’s military power earlier this month, alleging the Shi’ite nation has provided weapons, training, and funding to the Taliban in a bid to counter U.S. and Western influence in Afghanistan.
It went on to stress Tehran’s “calibrated support” is also meant to combat Islamic State’s affiliates in the country and increase Tehran’s influence in any future government in Kabul that emerges as a result of a political reconciliation among Afghan warring sides.
The Afghan Taliban are “less receptive” to Iranian guidance but still it helps further Iranian regional objectives because they combat common enemies, the report noted.
“Tehran does not seek to return the Taliban to power but aims to maintain influence with the group as a hedge in the event that the Taliban gains a role in a future Afghan government,” it said.
Iran engages both the insurgents and the Afghan government as part of its “dual-track strategy” to achieve its “broader security goals” in the country, the DIA report said.
The Taliban denies allegations it receives military support from Iran or Pakistan, which also shares a long border with Afghanistan. The insurgent group maintains the “propaganda” is an attempt to defame the Taliban and its “jihad” against U.S.-led “foreign occupation” forces in the country.
Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday claimed without evidence that recent protests across the Islamic Republic over government-set gasoline prices rising were part of a “conspiracy” involving the U.S., as authorities began to acknowledge the scale of the demonstrations.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the comment while addressing members of the Revolutionary Guard’s all-volunteer Basij force, which help put down the demonstrations.
Meanwhile, one lawmaker was quoted as saying authorities arrested more than 7,000 people over the protests while a security official claimed demonstrators attempted to take over Iranian state television.
Iran’s government still hasn’t offered any statistics on injuries, arrests or deaths in the protests and security crackdown that followed government-set gasoline prices rising Nov. 15. Amnesty International says it believes the violence killed at least 143 people, something Iran disputes without offering any evidence to support its claims.
In his comments reported by state media, Khamenei said the Iranian people extinguished “a very dangerous deep conspiracy that cost so much money and effort.” He praised the police, the Guard and the Basij for “entering the field and carrying out their task in a very difficult confrontation.”
Khamenei, who has final say on all matters of state, described the protests as being orchestrated by “global arrogance,” which he uses to refer to the U.S. He described America as seeing the price hikes as an “opportunity” to bring their “troops”` to the field but the “move was destroyed by people.”
Wednesday marks the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Basij. Videos from the protest purport to show plainclothes Basij officials and others on motorcycles beating and detaining protesters.
Meanwhile, the moderate news website Entekhab quoted Hossein Naghavi Hosseini, a member of parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, as saying more than 7,000 people had been arrested in the demonstrations. He did not elaborate.
Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli also claimed in an interview late Tuesday on state television that “some 500 people” tried to storm Iran’s state television offices. He did not elaborate and no protests had been previously reported in the northern Tehran neighborhood home to the state broadcaster.
Fazli also estimated as many as 200,000 people took part the demonstrations, higher than previous claims. He said demonstrators damaged over 50 police stations, as well as 34 ambulances, 731 banks and 70 gas stations in the country.
“We have individuals who were killed by knives, shotguns and fires,” he said, without offering a casualty figure.
Starting Nov. 16, Iran shut down the internet across the country, limiting communications with the outside world. That made determining the scale and longevity of the protests incredibly difficult. While home and office internet has been restored, access on mobile phones remains rare.
The gasoline price hike came as Iran’s 80 million people have already seen their savings dwindle and jobs scarce under crushing U.S. sanctions. President Donald Trump imposed them in the aftermath of unilaterally withdrawing America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
Many new refugees in America experience culture shock when they first arrive in the United States. Many have to deal with a new language, culture, and even holidays. But settled refugees can play a big role in helping new arrivals adapt to life in the U.S. One example is the Ethiopian Community Center, which hosts a Thanksgiving meal every year for new refugees. VOA’s Shahnaz Nafees has more on the event.
Critics say the widespread African tradition of giving cash and gifts to a bride’s family before marriage, known as a “bride price,” degrades women by putting a required, monetary value on a wife. In Nigeria, the financial pressure in a recent case ended in suicide, underscoring those concerns. But supporters of the bride price tradition uphold it as a cherished cultural and religious symbol of marriage, as Chika Oduah reports from Yola, Nigeria.
Thousands of Palestinians marched throughout the West Bank on Tuesday in what they call “a day of rage” over the recent change in U.S. policy regarding Jewish settlements.
Protesters set tires on fire and threw stones at Israeli soldiers, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades.
Demonstrators burned an effigy of U.S. President Donald Trump dressed in Israeli flags and held up a banner declaring Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a partner in war crimes.
No serious injuries were reported. Later Tuesday, two rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza. There was apparently no damage.
Last week, the Trump administration abandoned a 40-year U.S. policy that declared Israeli Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank “inconsistent with international law.”
Pompeo said the old policy has not “advanced the cause of peace.”
He also said this does not mean the United States is making up its mind at this time about the status of the West Bank, saying that question is part of a final peace deal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Trump administration is righting a “historical wrong” by supporting “truth and justice.”
Thanksgiving came early for a group of New York City commuters who enjoyed a holiday feast on a subway train.
Video footage shows riders standing behind a white-clothed table covered with plates of turkey, mashed potatoes and cornbread in the middle of a Brooklyn-bound L train on Sunday.
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Wintry Weather Threatens to Snarl US Holiday Travel
Thanksgiving travel is an ordeal under the best of circumstances, and a one-two punch of bad weather threatens to make it even more exhausting
Stand-up comedian Jodell “Joe Show” Lewis tells the New York Post he organized the Thanksgiving dinner to “bring a little excitement to commuters” and feed any New Yorkers who might be hungry.
Lewis says he chose the L train after he saw how “dreary and upset” riders were at the inconvenience of a construction project that has cut service on the line.
In September 1789, members of America’s first Congress approached the nation’s first president, George Washington, and asked him to call for a national Thanksgiving.
That seemingly benign request ignited a furor in Congress over presidential powers and states’ rights. Critics had two main concerns with the idea of a presidential proclamation to declare a national Thanksgiving.
First, some viewed Thanksgiving as a religious holiday, which put it outside of the purview of the president. Secondly, opponents of the measure believed the president did not have the authority to call a national Thanksgiving because that was a matter for governors.
It was a challenging time for the young nation. America had won the Revolutionary War but the country — made up of the 13 former colonies — was not fully unified yet. Calling a national Thanksgiving was a way to bring Americans together.
In the end, Washington did issue a proclamation, the first presidential proclamation ever, calling for a national “day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” He also came up with a solution designed to appease the opposition.
“When he issued the proclamation, he sent copies of that to governors of each of the states, 13 at the time, and asked them to call a national Thanksgiving on the day that Washington specified, the last Thursday of November,” says Melanie Kirkpatrick, author of “Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience,” and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “And, of course, Washington’s prestige being what it was, every governor did.”
Yet the battle over a national Thanksgiving did not end there.
As president, Thomas Jefferson refused to issue Thanksgiving proclamations, even though he had done so as governor of Virginia. John Adams and James Madison did issue proclamations calling for days of “fasting, prayer, and thanksgiving.”
However, after Madison, no U.S. president issued a Thanksgiving proclamation until Abraham Lincoln. He did so in the middle of the U.S. Civil War in 1863 in an effort to unify the country.
“The Battle of Gettysburg had been fought a few months earlier. It was becoming clear that the Union was going to win,” Kirkpatrick says. “Every family in America was deeply affected by that terrible war. In the midst of all that, he was talking about the blessings of the country and what we had to be grateful for. And then he asks the people to come together as one, with one heart and one voice, to celebrate the holiday.”
Since then, every president has called for a national Thanksgiving.
It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who stirred the pot again in 1939, by moving Thanksgiving to the third Thursday in November. Up until then, Americans had marked the holiday on the last Thursday in November, a date first specified by Lincoln.
The new date was Roosevelt’s bid to lengthen the Christmas shopping season and boost the nation’s economic recovery after the Great Depression.
“It was very annoying to some businesses. For example, the calendar industry, which had printed its calendars for the next year already,” Kirkpatrick says. “But one of the most vocal groups were colleges and universities, specifically the football coaches, because a tradition had developed of having Thanksgiving football championship games on Thanksgiving weekend.”
The divide over when to celebrate the holiday was so deep that half of the states adopted the new day, while the other half stuck to the traditional day. Roosevelt eventually reversed his decision, and Congress ended the long national debate over Thanksgiving in 1941 by passing a law making the fourth Thursday in November a legal holiday.
Today, Thanksgiving continues to unify millions of Americans who gather to celebrate the holiday with family and friends. Many will serve traditional foods like turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce.
George Washington made a point of declaring that Thanksgiving should be celebrated by people of all faiths, a distinction that still resonates for Americans, including immigrants marking their first Thanksgiving.
“It’s 398 years since the so-called first Thanksgiving. It’s America’s oldest tradition,” Kirkpatrick says. “It’s tied up with a lot of seminal events in our history, such as the Revolution and the Civil War, and it’s also a rite of passage for new Americans. The idea is that once you celebrate Thanksgiving, you know you are truly participating in a national festival that cements your position as an American.”
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order creating a White House task force on missing and slain American Indians and Alaska Natives.
The task force will be overseen by Attorney General William Barr and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. It is tasked with developing protocols to apply to new and unsolved cases and creating a multi-jurisdictional team to review cold cases.
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Alaska Natives: Expand Violence Against Women Act
Trump administration has shown little support for granting broader jurisdictions to tribal courts
Trump on Tuesday called the scourge of violence facing Native American women and girls “sobering and heartbreaking.”
The National Institute of Justice estimates that 1.5 million Native American women have experienced violence in their lifetime, including many who are victims of sexual violence. On some reservations, federal studies have shown women are killed at a rate more than 10 times the national average.
Israel’s attorney general Avichai Mandelblit says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can stay on as head of government even after he was indicted last week for alleged corruption.
Although Cabinet ministers are required to step down after an indictment, the laws about a prime minister are not explicit.
Mandelblit says Netanyahu can stay in office unless he is convicted and all his appeals are exhausted.
Netanyahu is facing pressure from the opposition to resign after Mandelblit announced his indictment last week.
Netanyahu is charged with allegedly taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, cigars, champagne, and jewelry from billionaire friends in exchange for personal favors, including helping one wealthy friend get favorable newspaper coverage.
He also is accused of doing favors for a newspaper editor so the prime minister himself would receive positive stories.
Netanyahu has vowed not to resign, calling the indictment a “coup” bent on toppling a right-wing government.
Mandelblit, who was appointed by Netanyahu, denied any political motivation, saying he acted strictly according to the law.
Netanyahu’s legal woes comes as Israeli voters face the possibility of a third general election this year.
Neither Netanyahu or his centrist political rival Benny Gantz have been able to form a government after two previous inconclusive votes.
Gantz has ruled out a power-sharing government with Netanyahu.
His Blue and White party issued a statement saying “A prime minister up to his neck in corruption allegations has no public or moral mandate to make fateful decisions for the state of Israel.”
A majority of the Israeli parliament has until December 11 to throw its support behind Netanyahu, Gantz, or anyone else to form a government.
If not, another general election will be held.
Turkish riot police used force to break up a march by thousands of women calling for what they call an “end to impunity” for men guilty of violence against women.
Police stopped more than 2,000 from marching up Istikal Street in Istanbul’s main shopping district.
Police fired pepper spray at the protesters with some witnesses reporting the use of tear gas and plastic bullets. No casualties or arrests were reported.
March organizers say they are tired at what they believe are the relatively light sentences handed out to husbands and boyfriends who murder or abuse women.
Women at the front of Monday’s march spread out a banner reading “We cannot tolerate the loss of one more woman.”
A Turkish women’s rights group says nearly 380 women have been killed so far this year.
A Turkish court recently sentenced a man to life in prison for slashing his ex-wife’s throat in front of their 10 year-old daughter in August.
The murder was caught on video and sickened nearly everyone who saw it.
A Lebanese-born business tycoon says he is donating Hitler’s top hat and other Nazi memorabilia he won at an auction to an Israeli Jewish group to keep the stuff out of the hands of neo-Nazis.
Abdallah Chatila, who made his fortune in diamonds and Swiss real estate, paid $660,000 for the items last week.
He says he bought the the hat and memorabilia intending to destroy it, but decided it was better to hand it over to the Keren Hayeson-United Israel Appeal.
Along with the Nazi dictator’s hat, the items include a silver plated edition of “Mein Kampf,” and a typewriter used by Hitler’s secretary.
Although Chatila says some Lebanese are criticizing him for helping the so-called enemy, his act was totally non-political. He said he “wished to buy these objects so that they could not be used for the purpose of neo-Nazi propaganda.”
The European Jewish Association, which had originally protested the auction, is now applauding Chatila.
“Such a consequence, such an act of selfless generosity to do something that you feel strongly about is the equivalent of finding a precious diamond in an Everest of coal,” Rabbi Menachem Margolin wrote in a letter to Chatila.
It is unclear what the Jewish group plans to do with the objects.
More than 60 doctors have written to British authorities asserting that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange urgently needs medical treatment at a university hospital.
The doctors said in a letter published Monday that Assange suffers from psychological problems including depression as well as dental issues and a serious shoulder ailment.
Assange is in Belmarsh Prison on the outskirts of London in advance of an extradition hearing set for February. He is sought by the U.S. on espionage charges relating to his WikiLeaks work.
The letter was sent to Home Secretary Priti Patel.
Dr. Lissa Johnson of Australia said an independent medical assessment is needed to determine if Assange is “medically fit” to face legal proceedings.
The letter was distributed by WikiLeaks.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday offered another conflicting account of a leadership shakeup at the Pentagon, while defending his decision to intervene on behalf of a Navy SEAL convicted of battlefield misconduct during the fight against the Islamic State terror group in Iraq.
Asked about Sunday’s firing of the U.S. Navy’s top civilian, Secretary Richard Spencer, Trump told White House reporters, “We’ve been thinking about that for a long time.”
“That didn’t just happen,” he added during an appearance in the Oval Office with the Bulgarian prime minister. “I have to protect my war fighters.”
Trump also defended ordering Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Sunday to cancel a review board hearing for Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher.
Gallagher was acquitted by a military jury earlier this year of charges he murdered a wounded Islamic State terror group fighter during his deployment to Iraq in 2017. But he was found guilty of posing with the teenager’s body and demoted.
Earlier this month, Trump intervened, restoring Gallagher’s rank and pay. But some Navy officials, including Spencer, had said Gallagher would still need to appear before a review board, which would decide whether he could still retire as a SEAL and keep the Trident pin awarded to members of the elite unit.
“They wanted to take his pin away, and I said, No,'” the president told reporters Monday, calling Gallagher a “tough guy” and “one of the ultimate fighters.”
Hours earlier, Esper defended Trump’s order to abort the review board hearing for Gallagher.
“The president is the commander-in-chief. He has every right, authority and privilege to do what he wants to do,” Esper told reporters at the Pentagon.
But Esper’s account of the events that led to Spencer’s dismissal as Navy secretary appears to differ from Trump’s characterization that the firing had been under consideration “for a long time.”
Specifically, Esper alleged he learned after a White House meeting on Friday that Spencer had gone behind his back and tried to make a deal regarding the Gallagher case with White House officials.
“We learned that several days prior Secretary Spencer had proposed a deal whereby if president allowed the Navy to handle the case, he [Spencer] would guarantee that Eddie Gallagher would be restored a rank allowed to retain his trident and permitted to retire,” Esper told reporters.
“I spoke with the president late Saturday informed him that I lost trust and confidence in Secretary Spencer and I was going to ask for Spencer’s resignation,” the defense secretary added. “The president supported this decision.”
The White House late Monday pushed back against the idea that the president’s version of events and the Pentagon’s version were not aligned.
“Both of those things are true,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham told VOA, regarding Trump’s assertion that there had been plans to fire Spencer prior to his conduct in the Gallagher matter.
Yet other discrepancies remain.
In a letter acknowledging his termination Sunday, Spencer made no mention of the Pentagon’s allegations that he tired to broker a deal with the White House.Instead, he argued he could not abide by the president’s desire to bypass the review board process as required by the military justice system.
“The rule of law is what sets us apart from our adversaries,” he wrote. “I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believes violates the sacred oath I took in the presence of my family, my flag and my faith to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Spencer kept to that account late Monday in an interview with CBS News, his first since his firing.
“What message does that send to the troops?” Spencer said of the president’s interfence, answering, “That you can get away with things.”
“We have to have good order and discipline. It’s the backbone of what we do,” he added.
But, Esper on Monday insisted Spencer’s assertions did not match with what the former Navy secretary had told him directly.
Esper also contradicted claims made by Spencer on Saturday that he had never threatened to resign.
I would like to further state that in no way, shape, or form did I ever threaten to resign. That has been incorrectly reported in the press. I serve at the pleasure of the President.
— SECNAV76 (@secnav76) November 23, 2019
“Secretary Spencer had said to me that … he was likely, probably going to resign if he was forced to work to try to retain the Trident [pin for Gallagher],” Esper said. “I had every reason to believe that he was going to resign, that it was a threat to resign.”
“I cannot reconcile the personal statements with the public statements with the written word,” the defense secretary added.
Already, the president’s intervention in the Gallagher case and the firing of the Navy secretary have some Democratic lawmakers calling for an investigation.
“Throughout my work with Secretary Spencer, I’ve known him to be a good man, a patriotic American, and an effective leader,” Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Monday.
“We have many unanswered questions,” Kaine said, calling Spencer one of several officials who “served our country well despite having to work under an unethical commander-in-chief.”
“We’re working to get the facts,” the committee’s top Democrat, Senator Jack Reed, added in a separate statement. “Clearly, Spencer’s forced resignation is another consequence of the disarray brought about by President Trump’s inappropriate involvement in the military justice system and the disorder and dysfunction that has been a constant presence in this Administration.”
But the committee’s chairman, Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, indicated late Sunday he was ready to move on.
The president and defense secretary “deserve to have a leadership team who has their trust and confidence,” Inhofe said, acknowledging, “It is no secret that I had my own disagreements with Secretary Spencer over the management of specific Navy programs.”
Trump has nominated Ken Braithwaite, a former admiral and the current U.S. ambassador to Norway, to become the next Navy secretary.
White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
Turkey and the United States are seemingly closer to a collision course as Turkish media report Ankara testing a Russian anti-aircraft weapon system, despite threats of Washington sanctions.
Turkish F-16 jets flew low Monday across the Turkish capital, in a two-day exercise reportedly to test the radar system newly acquired Russian S-400 missile system.
Ankara’s purchase of the S-400s is a significant point of tension with Washington, which claims the system poses a threat to NATO’s defenses.
“There is room for Turkey to come back to the table. They know that to make this work, they need to either destroy or return or somehow get rid of the S-400,” a senior State Department official told reporters at a briefing Wednesday.
The official added that sanctions could follow if Ankara went ahead and activated the system.
Ankara’s purchase of the S-400 system violated U.S. Congress’s Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).
Despite September’s delivery of the S-400s, Washington appeared to step back, indicating that sanctions would only be imposed if Ankara activated the system.
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar reiterated Ankara’s stance, however, that the S-400 poses no threat to NATO systems.
“That’s what we have been saying since the beginning [of the dispute with the [U.S.]. [S-400s] will definitely be a ‘stand-alone’ system. We are not going to integrate this with the NATO systems in any way. It will operate independently,” Akar said Monday.
There is mounting frustration in Ankara with Washington over its stance, given President Barack Obama’s failure to sell U.S. Patriot missiles to Turkey.
“Russia has missiles, so do Iraq, Iran, Syria. So why doesn’t the U.S. doesn’t give us the patriot missile,” said Professor Mesut Casin, a Turkish presidential foreign policy adviser.
“Then we buy Russian S-400, and then you say you are the bad guy, you don’t obey the regulations, NATO principles, you buy Russian missiles.”
Congress called ‘anti-Turkish’
Monday’s testing of the S-400 radar system is widely seen as a challenge to Washington. Analysts claim it will likely add to calls in Congress to impose CAATSA sanctions and other measures against Turkey.
Sweeping new economic and political sanctions against Turkey are currently in Congress awaiting ratification.
“Congress is somehow has become so anti-Turkish. We have only a few friends remaining in the Congress,” said former Turkish ambassador Mithat Rende. “It so difficult to understand how they become so anti-Turkish so emotional.”
“CAATSA sanctions are waiting, and they are fundamentally important for the Turkish economy,” warned Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
The Turkish economy is still recovering from a currency crash two years ago, triggered by previous U.S. sanctions.
Trump, Erdogan
Ankara will likely be looking to President Donald Trump to blunt any new efforts to impose sanctions against Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seen to have built a good relationship with Trump.
Earlier this month, Trump hosted Erdogan in the White House for what he called a “wonderful meeting.”
“Turkish relations is so reduced to these two guys [Erdogan and Trump],” said Aydintasbas. “The entire relationship is built on this relationship and will rely on Trump to restrict Congress’s authority and make those bills go away.”
However, Ankara’s test Monday of S-400 components will make it unlikely Washington will end a freeze on the sale of the F-35 jet.
Trump blocked the Turkish sale, over concerns the fighter jet’s stealth technology could be compromised by the Russian missile’s advanced radar system.
The F-35 sale is set to replace Turkey’s aging fleet of F-16s. Ankara is warning it could turn to Russia’s SU 35 as an alternative.
“All should be aware that Turkey will have to look for alternatives if F-35s [fighter jets] cannot be acquired for any reason,” Akar said.
Role of Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin is courting Erdogan in a move widely seen as attempting to undermine NATO.
The two presidents are closely cooperating in Syria despite backing rival sides in the Syrian civil war. Bilateral trading ties are also deepening primarily around energy.
Analysts point out a large-scale purchase of Russian jets will likely have far-reaching consequences beyond Ankara’s S-400 procurement.
Training of Turkish pilots for the SU 35 would be in Moscow, as opposed to decades of U.S. training, while Turkey could find itself excluded from joint air exercises with its NATO partners.
Ankara, too, is warning Washington of severe consequences if it has to turn to Moscow to meet its defense requirements.
“Turkey will buy Russian aircraft if the F-35 freeze is not lifted,” said Casin. “If this happens, Turkey will not buy any more U.S. combat aircraft. This will be the end of the Turkish-U.S. relationship. I think like this; I am very serious.”
Putin is due to meet Erdogan in Turkey in January, an opportunity the Russian president is expected to use to try and confirm the SU 35 sale.
Feature films on slavery have been part of Hollywood since the beginning of the film industry in United States. However, only recently, movies on slavery have been told from the perspective of the slaves, and now, with the film “Harriet” from the perspective of a female slave. “Harriet”, the latest of antebellum dramas, focuses on Harriet Tubman a female runaway slave. Tubman played a significant role in the so called “Underground Railroad”, a human network helping enslaved African – Americans to flee to free American states and Canada. VOA’s Penelope Poulou has more.
When politicians try to win votes by blaming foreigners for stealing jobs, economists say they ignore technology, which is what is really replacing many of these jobs. However the issue remains that many workers and small businesses do not benefit from foreign trade as much as corporations do, and that is something Vietnam hopes to fix.
Hanoi is trying to avoid the mistakes of the U.S., Britain, and other countries where lower income citizens felt left behind by global trade, and one part of its approach is to focus on small business loans. Vietnam hopes to make loans available to family businesses and other small businesses, which in many cases do not have the right connections or the expertise to get these loans.
Last week the State Bank of Vietnam cut interest rates in an effort to encourage banks to lend to the less advantaged. The central bank said short term loan rates for small and medium size businesses would decrease to 6% from 6.5%. This decreased rate also applies to other priority areas, such as agriculture, high tech businesses, and supporting industries.
That last category, which can include small businesses, is important because Vietnam hopes to get more domestic companies to supply to foreign ones. That would get them involved in foreign trade, thus spreading the benefits of trade more widely across the Southeast Asian nation.
“Local producers and suppliers urgently need efficient financing to support their trade cycles with global partners,” Julius Caesar Parrenas, who coordinates a financial forum under an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation business organization, said. He added that there is a need to establish a finance ecosystem for “emerging markets like Vietnam, where trade is growing.”
Organizations like his should provide “government agencies with good insight to improve an effective regulatory framework for supply chain finance in Vietnam,” Ha Thu Giang, who is deputy director of the credit policies for economic sectors department at the State Bank of Vietnam, said.
The government is also working with donor agencies to increase accessibility of loans. It worked with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Hanoi, for instance, to have a guide published this year that helps small businesses find sources of financing.
Advocates say financing is needed because small business sometimes do not have the capital needed to expand, or to tide them over so they can cover the cost of meeting large orders and wait for payment. However critics caution that too much focus on financing is risky, and that small businesses are right to worry about taking on more debt than they can handle.
The private sector is interested in lending to Vietnam’s mom and pop businesses too. Validus Capital is a peer-to-business lending platform based in Singapore that expanded to Indonesia and Vietnam this year.
“We want to provide growing SMEs [small and medium enterprises] faster access to zero-collateral financing,” Vikas Nahata, who is co-founder and executive chairman of Validus Capital, said.
A lot of nations say they want “inclusive trade” so that less advantaged people do not feel left out of the benefits of globalization. For Vietnam, small business loans are one way to get there.
Hong Kong pro-democracy forces won a landslide victory in local elections Sunday. Though primarily symbolic, the vote represents a stunning rebuke to Beijing, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports from Hong Kong.
A summit this week between leaders of Pacific Rim allies South Korea and the Philippines is expected to show that both lean toward the West rather than China despite their efforts to get along with Asia’s superpower, analysts say.
A swing toward the West by either country would put Beijing further on the back foot in Asia, where its military expansion alarms multiple governments, and give the United States a new opening to get involved in the region, scholars believe.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on his office’s website November 20 he will meet his Korean counterpart at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations-South Korea summit in Busan Monday through Wednesday. Asian security issues will lead discussion, it said.
“The Philippines and Korea both have been fairly accommodating of China, because Korea given its proximity and Duterte because he wanted to make the best deals,” said Jeffrey Kingston, history instructor at Temple University’s Japan campus.
Now, he said, “both of them are countries that feel concerned about the rise of China. Both feel threatened.”
Ties with China
Duterte broke ice with China in 2016 by setting aside a maritime sovereignty dispute and accepting pledges of $24 billion in Chinese aid, key to his country’s infrastructure renewal effort. But Chinese activity in the disputed South China Sea including a boat collision earlier this year is worrying Filipinos again.
South Korea spars with China over ties with North Korea. The north, a Chinese ally, periodically tests missiles near the south, and in 2017 Beijing condemned the south for installing an advanced antimissile system. Chinese officials feared the U.S.-backed system could monitor activity in China.
China and South Korea separately dispute sovereignty over a tiny island, and South Korea’s coast guard has fired on Chinese fishing boats. However, the two sides, separated by just a few hundred kilometers, agreed last month to improve relations and pursue denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
“Although Korea has its own problems with China, especially with fishing and some islands, they’re handling it very, very differently from us,” Jay Batongbacal, international maritime affairs professor at University of the Philippines.
US alliances
The two leaders are expected to talk about China this week.
“The equilibrium of geopolitics will be high on the agenda including issues such as the tension in the Korean Peninsula and the Spratly Islands,” Manila’s presidential website quotes Duterte saying. Beijing and Manila dispute sovereignty over the Spratlys, an archipelago in the South China Sea.
South Korea and the Philippines, though both historic U.S. military allies in Asia, lack the clout on their own to take any action, said Fabrizio Bozzato, Taiwan Strategy Research Association fellow who specializes in Asia and the Pacific. They might instead jointly support a broader alliance, he said.
“I believe that they can be part of a regional U.S.-centric and Japan-centric regional architecture to resist China, but they cannot be the initiator of that,” Bozzato said. “What they have in common really is that they are both allies to the United States and that they are facing China’s pressure.”
A top U.S. defense official pledged in June more military cooperation in Asia — and criticized China’s military expansion. Washington regularly sends naval ships to the region as warnings to China.
Last month the Philippines joined U.S. and Japanese forces for annual military exercises that news reports from Manila said were designed to keep Asia “free and open,” wording that Washington uses to ask that China quit expanding. Duterte had resisted U.S. help in 2016 and 2017.
South Korea answered U.S. lobbying this month by saying it would stay in an intelligence-sharing pact with Japan despite a trade spat with the Japanese government.
South Korea still looks to China and the United States for help on North Korea issues, said Steven Kim, visiting research fellow at the Jeju Peace Institute.
“It will have to carefully calibrate its relations between the two great powers while occasionally hewing closer to one over the other depending on which of its interests are on the line or at stake,” he said.
Korean aid to the Philippines
Since 2017, South Korea has already emerged as a benefactor to the Philippines and their leaders are due to sign four economy-related deals at the summit.
Two years ago it offered $1.7 billion in credit and other financial aid to help the Philippines improve transportation and energy. Analysts told VOA Seoul hoped to offset Chinese influence in the developing Southeast Asian country.
South Korean companies also build ships for the Philippines as Manila seeks to upgrade its navy. Korean shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries started work this month on a Philippine frigate, news website Navaltoday.com reported. Another frigate is due for delivery in May.
“The Philippines is getting a lot of its modernization requirements like ships from Korea,” Batongbacal said.
Jessye Norman was remembered as a force of nature as thousands filled the Metropolitan Opera House on Sunday for a celebration of the soprano, who died Sept. 30 at age 74.
Sopranos Renee Fleming, Latonia Moore, Lise Davidsen and Leah Hawkins sang tributes along with mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges and bass-baritone Eric Owens that were mixed among remembrances of family and friends, dance performances of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and video of Norman’s career.
“Yankee Stadium is the house that Babe Ruth built and welcome to this house that Jessye Norman built,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said. “Of course Jessye wasn’t alone in filling this hallowed hall with her glorious voice. She was joined by rather important voices, from Leontyne Price to Luciano Pavarotti, but in her operatic prime in the ’80s and the 90s, her majestic vocal chords reigned supreme in the dramatic soprano and the mezzo range. Like Babe Ruth, who swung for the fences, Jessye swung for standing room in the family circle, and she always connected.”
Norman’s celebration took place shortly after a memorial to actress Diahann Carroll at the Helen Hayes Theater, about a mile south. On Thursday, author Toni Morrison was memorialized at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, a trio of black Americans who were leaders in their fields.
“Three monumental women who carried through and offered a bounty of gifts to the world,” actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith said.
Smith recalled signing letters “Little Sis” to Norman’s “Big Sis.” She remembered traveling to Norman’s performances around the world, focusing on one at the Festival de Musique de Menton on the French Riviera, near the Italian border. Organizers had arranged to stop traffic to clear the air for Norman but fretted over a train, asking whether Norman preferred they slow it down to lower the noise level in exchange for a lengthier time the noise would be audible.
“When the train came through Menton and Jessye was hitting the high note, I heard Jessye. She sang through it,” Smith said. “Until this morning, this very morning, I thought Jessye’s voice simply overrode that train. I don’t think so anymore. Now I understand that Jessye Norman had the ear, the timing, the love of song, the risk to share and the will to sing through – and with – the roaring train. In the same way, she integrated several musical histories to grace the world with the power of her voice.”
Speakers included Ford Foundation president Darren Walker and Gloria Steinem.
Younger sister Elaine Norman Sturkey and brother James Howard Norman told stories of their youth in Augusta, Georgia, and later travels together.
“Travel with Jessye was no small feat,” Norman Sturkey said with humor in her voice. “These Louis Vuittons that she bought were so heavy before you could even put anything in them. Then she would pack them to capacity, so that when we got to the airport, they were all going to be too heavy. We’re not going to have two maybe big suitcases or even three, we were going to have 10. And she’s not lifting anything. That’s somebody else’s problem. And she’s carrying everything from a humidifier to a teapot. And we’re going to be back in less than two weeks, sometimes a week.”
Carnegie Hall executive director Clive Gillinson spoke of summoning the courage to ask Norman to curate a festival, which she readily agreed to and became “Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy” in March 2009.
“Clive, this is the project I’ve been waiting my entire life to do,” he quoted her as responding.
Former French Culture Minister spoke of the controversy over his decision to hire Norman rather than a French singer to perform “La Marseillaise” at the Place de la Concorde in 1989 to mark the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. His remembrance was followed by a video of Norman’s iconic, blazing rendition.
Fleming received a huge ovation after “Beim Schlafengehen (When Falling Asleep)” from Strauss’ “Four Last Songs,” accompanied by pianist Gerald Martin Moore and Met concertmaster David Chan. Hawkins and Moore began and ended the program with traditionals, “Great Day” and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand.” Bridges sang Duke Ellington’s “Heaven” and Owen performed Wotan’s farewell from “Die Walkuere.” Davidson, who is to make her Met debut Friday, sang Strauss’ “Morgen!”
The voting process Sunday of Guinea-Bissau’s presidential election was “peaceful, calm and orderly,” said Oldemiro Baloi, who heads international observers of the Community of Portuguese speaking countries. Results of the balloting are expected Thursday.
The West African country has seen hardly any political stability since independence from Portugal 45 years ago.
President Jose Mario Vaz, who is seeking a second five-year term, is the only president since independence to survive a full term without a coup or assassination.
“The people of Guinea-Bissau are sovereign and I will respect the verdict of the ballot box,” Vaz said after voting in the capital, Bissau. “I have accomplished my mission of restoring peace and tranquillity.”
The president’s chief competitor was former Prime Minister Domingos Simoes Pereira, one of six prime ministers Vaz fired during his presidency.
Pereira also vowed to “respect” the results of the election. “These elections are crucial for future of the country,” he said.
Twelve candidates – all men – were running for president.
Vaz fired Prime Minister Aristides Gomes in late October and named a new head of government. But Gomes refused to step down. The regional bloc ECOWAS intervened to prevent the country from exploding into violence.
Whoever becomes the country’s next president will face numerous challenges in one of the world’s poorest countries, including poverty, corruption, drug trafficking, and badly needed improvements in health care and education.
If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the top two finishers will meet in a runoff December 29.
Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the Congressional committee investigating President Donald Trump, refused to answer questions Sunday as to whether he met with an former Ukrainian official to gather information on the son of former vice president Joe Biden.
A lawyer representing Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, has told multiple news outlets since Friday that Nunes met Ukraine’s former top prosecutor Victor Shokin in Vienna in 2018.
The claim is controversial because Nunes did not disclose any such meeting while leading the Republican defense of President Donald Trump during related impeachment hearings.
Speaking on Fox News Sunday morning, Nunes was asked point blank by the Fox news anchor whether he had met with Shokin. The congressman replied that he wanted to answer questions but could not do so “right now.”
Nunes has repeatedly denounced the impeachment proceedings, which are focused on whether Trump inappropriately pressured Ukraine to open investigations, including one that could prove embarrassing to Biden, a top contender for the Democratic Party nomination to run against Trump next year.
Democrats have said that if Parnas’ claim proves credible, Nunes could face an ethics investigation. Parnas, under indictment regarding suspect political contributions, is seeking immunity to testify to the House Intelligence Committee which is conducting the inquiry.
Congress will not convene again until Dec. 3. But speaking on CNN Sunday morning, committee Chairman Adam Schiff said that more depositions and hearings related to the impeachment probe are possible.
The timeline for an impeachment vote in the U.S. House is still unclear. Schiff’s committee still must write a report based on its investigation so far, which will be delivered to the Judiciary Committee. The latter committee would then prepare articles of impeachment for a vote by the full House.
Democrats, who control a majority of seats in the House, can impeach the president with a simple majority vote. At that point, a trial must be held in the Senate, where it would take a two-thirds majority to remove Trump from office. No Republicans in either chamber have indicated they will support the impeachment effort.
Trump denounced the hearings on Twitter Sunday, claiming that polls “have now turned very strongly against Impeachment, especially in swing states.”
Polls have now turned very strongly against Impeachment, especially in swing states. 75% to 25%. Thank you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2019
He did not indicate what polls he was referring to, but the latest averaging of polls shows public opinion is fairly evenly split on whether Trump should be impeached.
Twelve witnesses testified in Congress over the last two weeks, providing new details on allegations that Trump pushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate domestic political rival Joe Biden and his son.
Witnesses told lawmakers that Giuliani played a key role in pressing for Ukrainian officials to announce an investigation.
“We all understood that if we refused to work with Mr. Giuliani, we would lose an important opportunity to cement relations between the United States and Ukraine. So, we followed the president’s orders,” Gordon Sondland, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, testified Wednesday.
Machine gun fire answers rock-throwing protesters. Motorcycle-riding Revolutionary Guard volunteers chase after demonstrators. Plainclothes security forces grab, beat and drag a man off the street to an uncertain fate.
As Iran restores the internet after a weeklong government-imposed shutdown, new videos purport to show the demonstrations over gasoline prices rising and the security-force crackdown that followed.
The videos offer only fragments of encounters, but to some extent they fill in the larger void left by Iran’s state-controlled television and radio channels. On their airwaves, hard-line officials allege that foreign conspiracies and exile groups instigated the unrest. In print, newspapers offered only PR for the government or had merely stenographic reporting at best, the moderate daily Hamshahri said in an analysis Sunday.
They don’t acknowledge that the gasoline price hike Nov. 15, supported by its civilian government, came as Iran’s 80 million people already have seen their savings dwindle and jobs scarce under crushing U.S. sanctions. President Donald Trump imposed them in the aftermath of unilaterally withdrawing America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
Authorities also have yet to give any overall figures for how many people were injured, arrested or killed during the several days of protests that swept across some 100 cities and towns.
Amnesty International said it believes the unrest and the crackdown killed at least 106 people. Iran disputes that figure without offering its own. A U.N. office earlier said it feared the unrest may have killed “a significant number of people.”
Starting Nov. 16, Iran shut down the internet across the country, limiting communications with the outside world. That made determining the scale and longevity of the protests incredibly difficult. Some recycled days-old videos and photographs as new, making it even more difficult.
Since Saturday, internet connectivity spiked in the country, allowing people to access foreign websites for the first time. On Sunday, connectivity stood nearly at 100% for landline services, while mobile phone internet service remained scarce, the advocacy group NetBlocks said.
The restoration brought messaging apps back to life for Iranians cut off from loved ones abroad. It also meant that videos again began being shared widely.
Recently released videos span the country. One video from Shiraz, some 680 kilometers (420 miles) south of Tehran, purports to show a crowd of over 100 people scatter as gunfire erupts from a police station in the city. One man bends down to pick up debris as a person off-camera describes demonstrators throwing stones. Another gunshot rings out, followed by a burst of machine gun fire.
In Kerman, some 800 kilometers (500 miles) southeast of Tehran, the sound of breaking glass echoes over a street where debris burns in the center of a street. Motorcycle-riding members of the Basij, the all-volunteer force of Iran’s paramilitary Guard, then chase the protesters away.
Another video in Kermanshah, some 420 kilometers (260 miles) southwest of Tehran, purports shows the dangers that lurked on the streets of Iran in recent days. Plainclothes security forces, some wielding nightsticks, drag one man off by the hair of his head. The detained man falls at one point.
“Look, [the agents] wear styles like the youth,” one man off-camera says, swearing at them.
On Sunday, it remained unclear if and how widespread any remaining demonstrations were. The acting commander of the Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Ali Fadavi, repeated the allegation that America was behind the protests, without offering any evidence to support his claim.
“Why did [the Americans] get angry after we cut off the internet? Because the internet is the channel through which Americans wanted to perform their evil and vicious acts,” Fadavi said. “We will deal with this, Islamic Republic supporters, and our proud men and women will sign up to make a domestic system similar to the internet with operating systems that [the Americans] can’t [control] even if they want.”
That likely refers to what has been known as the “halal net,” Iran’s own locally controlled version of the internet aimed at restricting what the public can see. The system known as the National Information Network has some 500 government-approved national websites that stream content far faster than those based abroad, which are intentionally slowed, activists say. Iranian officials say it allows the Islamic Republic to be independent if the world cuts it off instead.
But while Fadavi earlier said the protests were put down in 48 hours, he also acknowledged the scope of the unrest by comparing it to Operation Karbala-4, one of the worst military disasters suffered by Iran during its bloody 1980s war with Iraq.
That scope could be seen in one video. In the capital, Tehran, footage earlier aired by the BBC’s Persian service shot from a car purports to show a tableau of violence on Sattarkhan Street, as anti-riot police officers clashed with protesters.
In the video, a woman’s scream rises over the shouts of the crowd as plainclothes security forces wearing white surgical masks accost one man, who puts his hands up to his face and hunches over to shield his body. Men walk backward to watch the chaos amid police with batons and riot shields, then run.
A woman in a green headscarf argues with one anti-riot police officer in front of a car.
“What do you say?”‘ the police officer asks.
“He kicked my car,” she responds.
“Move,'”the police officer orders. “Whom do you want to blame in this situation?”
Someone chases a man in front of a bank as people curse. The car makes a right-hand turn onto another street. A police officer off-camera shouts: “Come here!”
“Go, go, go!” a woman in the car cries out.
The car speeds away, passing burning debris. The clip ends. It lasts only 35 seconds.
More than three dozen people are reported dead in a series of security-related incidents in Afghanistan, including a fatal attack on a U.N. vehicle in the capital, Kabul. Several of the dead were civilians.
Afghan officials said Sunday that Taliban rebels assaulted a security outpost in central Daykundi province overnight, killing eight soldiers and wounding four others.
Senior provincial authorities claimed the ensuing firefight also killed at least 20 assailants, though the Taliban disputed those claims.
Meanwhile, doctors and residents in western Farah province said an Afghan government air strike has killed at least nine civilians and injured several others.
The mainstream local TOLO news channel reported Sunday relatives took to the streets with bodies of the victims to protest and demand an immediate investigation into the deadly incident.
In Kabul, interior ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said one foreign national was killed and five people were injured by a hand grenade hurled at a U.N. vehicle in the Makrorayan area of the city. The spokesman did not provide details but local news reports suggest the death toll may climb.
The United Nations condemned the attack and confirmed the death of an international employee in the Sunday night attack. It said two other staffers, including a foreigner and an Afghan, were injured.
“No further information about the identity of our international colleague who was killed, nor of those injured, an Afghan and another international colleague, will be released in the immediate future,” said a U.N.statement.
The world body demanded Afghan authorities swiftly investigate the attack and bring the perpetrators to justice.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack. Both the Taliban and militants linked to the Afghan branch of the Islamic State terrorist group have taken credit for previous attacks in Kabul.
TOLO quoted protesters in Farah province saying the worshipers were leaving a mosque in the Pusht Rod district after offering Saturday evening prayers when the air strike hit them.
Provincial authorities told the media outlet anti-insurgency operations were carried out in Posht Rod and a nearby district, but they would not confirm whether the action caused any civilian casualties.
Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the Afghan war. The United Nations has documented around 2,600 Afghan civilian deaths in the first nine months of 2019 while more than 5,600 were injured.