Sunday, October 9, 2016

Israel's Self-Obsession Obstructs the Path to Peace

Photo: The Nobel Peace Prize laureates for 1994 in Oslo. From left to right: PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Credit: Saar Yaacov, GPO - Government Press Office, Israel | Wikimedia Commons

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power- 04 OCTOBER 2016

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - The many world leaders who gathered in Jerusalem on September 30 for the funeral of Shimon Peres, the former president of Israel, are safely ensconced back home. They will not bother much to think about Israel again until the next Palestinian uprising. But the Israelis will continue to only think about themselves.

The Israelis are obsessed with themselves, with their history, with the present time and with their destiny. Every nation has some of this but Israeli navel gazing is something else. At this level of intensity it makes compromise difficult and condemns Israel to political paranoia and limitless inflexibility.

The Israeli notion that they can have this land and no one else can is so anachronistic by any contemporary standards that it is amazing that outside powers, whether they be the U.S., the EU or Russia, have given its arguments the time of day.

If every ethnic group in the world asserted so vigorously truly ancient yearnings to exclusive possession the world would become totally chaotic in short time. Where would the white North Americans or South Americans be?

Should Russia return to the rule of Mongolia, the seat of Genghis Khan’s Mongols? It was they who laid down the boundaries, more or less, of the modern Russian state. What if China grabbed back Taiwan?

If the Israelis want to believe that Temple Mount (on which Islam’s sacred Dome of the Rock is built) is “the focal point of creation” and that in the centre of the hill lies the “foundation stone” of the world, and that here “Adam came into being”, they may be allowed to believe it.

But that the arbiters of the United Nations could go along with this myth for decade after decade at the expense of traditional Palestinian centuries-old occupancy rights is almost impossible to digest.

Even worse is that many of the most liberal voices in the Western and Russian political world who do call for Israel to hurry up and compromise appear to accept that a deal would probably mean that the Palestinians would end up with only 22% of the land that was Palestine under the British mandate, (which ended in 1948).

The Jews and Muslims over a long history did not go to war with each other, until the creation of Israel in 1948. This was the first time in their joint history that they struggled over the same piece of land. (The ancient Jewish struggle for an independent Jewish territory was waged against the Egyptians and then the Romans, long before Mohammed was born.)

The Jews left what we now call Palestine, Israel and Jordan two millennia ago. In AD 70, after the Jewish insurrection, the Roman occupiers destroyed the Jerusalem Temple and the majority of Jews fled to Babylon in modern Iraq. Other Jews went to Egypt. The Romans enslaved many and others were dispersed by war and catastrophe to Italy, Spain, Gaul and Eastern Europe. The Jews had lived by the sword, even slaughtering women and children, (see the Bible’s Books of Exodus and Numbers), and were dispersed by the sword.

In subsequent centuries the Jews were dwarfed by the almighty and ubiquitous Christians and Muslims. The Christians surged to dominance because a powerful Roman emperor in the fourth century, Constantine, made their faith the state religion. The Muslims later surged because of their prowess on the battlefield.

Nevertheless, over Islam’s 1,400 years the Jews were reasonably protected by their Muslim rulers. Like Christians they were accorded the status of dhimmi (protected minority) which gave them civil and military protection. The Jews were rarely persecuted and there was no tradition of anti-Semitism like what developed in the second millennium in the Christian world.

Until the Middle Ages the Jews in Christian Europe lived rather securely. It was only after the turn of the millennium there were some intense periods of persecution culminating in the 19th century expulsions and pogroms in Poland and Russia and the “Final Solution” in Nazi Germany.

Even so in most of Europe for most of the centuries anti-Semitism was subdued. After the Reformation it was Christians persecuting each other. Protestants and Catholics were often at war with each other while the Jews were usually left alone.

All this perspective was lost because of the Nazi genocide. But Nazi Germany was defeated, and most Western anti-Semitism with it. Come 1948 there was truly no good reason for a “Jewish state”.

But Israel does exist. Now it is its turn to be tolerant and magnanimous. [IDN-INPS – 04 October 2016]

Note: Jonathan Power syndicates his opinion articles. He forwarded this and his previous Viewpoints for publication in IDN-INPS. Copyright: Jonathan Power

Photo: The Nobel Peace Prize laureates for 1994 in Oslo. From left to right: PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Credit: Saar Yaacov, GPO -Government Press Office, Israel | Wikimedia Commons

Saudi to investigate attack on Yemen funeral denounced as 'heinous' by UN

The US has warned that Saudi Arabia did not have a 'blank cheque' with its allies as condemnations pour in over funeral hall strike

Yemenis attend the 8 October funeral of members of the same family killed in a reported air strike by Saudi-led coalition jets that hit their house in Bajil, in western Hudaida province (AFP)

Sunday 9 October 2016

The Saudi-led coalition fighting rebels in Yemen said on Sunday it will investigate an air raid that killed more than 140 people, after Washington announced it was reviewing support for the alliance.

The Houthi rebels have blamed the Arab coalition for Saturday's attack, one of the deadliest since it launched a military campaign against the insurgents in March last year.

The attack could further sour US-Saudi ties already strained over the coalition's military intervention, which is suspected of causing almost half of the more than 4,000 civilian deaths in Yemen's conflict.

After initially denying any responsibility, the coalition said it was ready to launch an inquiry into the "regrettable and painful" strike, which the UN said also wounded more than 525 people

"The coalition will immediately investigate this case along with... experts from the United States who participated in previous investigations," it said in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.

"The coalition is also willing to provide the investigation team with any data and information related to its military operations today, at the incident's location and the surrounding areas," it said.

The UN said aid workers were "shocked and outraged" by the attack that hit a community hall in Sanaa where mourners had gathered.

The Houthi-controlled news site sabanews.net said coalition planes hit after hundreds had gathered to mourn the death of the father of rebel interior minister Jalal al-Rowaishan and denounced the "massacre".

The Houthis did not say if Rowaishan was present in the building at the time of the attack, nor did they indicate if other senior figures were attending the funeral.

But Sanaa mayor Abdel Qader Hilal was among those killed, according to the rebels' Almasirah television.

'Volcano of Rage'

Thousands of Yemenis also took to the streets to protest outside the UN headquarters chanting against the Saudi royal family in a rally dubbed the "volcano of rage".

According to ARY News, prominent rebel Mohammed Ali al-Houthi told the crowd: "After this massacre, we are more determined to confront the assailants."

He also said: “Open the fronts with the Saudi enemy immediately.”

US 'deeply disturbed'

Riyadh's key ally Washington warned it had launched an "immediate review" of support to the Arab coalition.

"We are deeply disturbed by reports of today's air strike on a funeral hall in Yemen, which, if confirmed, would continue the troubling series of attacks striking Yemeni civilians," White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

"In light of this and other recent incidents, we have initiated an immediate review of our already significantly reduced support to the Saudi-led coalition and are prepared to adjust our support so as to better align with US principles, values and interests."

Price stressed that "US security cooperation with Saudi Arabia is not a blank cheque," and called on all sides to implement an "immediate" ceasefire.

The latest attack has renewed calls for British and US arms sales to Saudi Arabia to be halted in light of its campaign in Yemen.

A Yemeni officer confirmed a bomb fragment found in the funeral hall by ITN news had in fact been US-made.

In August, the US military announced it had slashed its number of intelligence advisers supporting the coalition following concerns over civilian casualties.

UN humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, called for an immediate investigation into the funeral strike and said the international community must exert pressure to ensure civilians are protected.

"This violence against civilians in Yemen must stop immediately," said McGoldrick.

A "horrified and extremely disturbed" UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien called for a prompt and "impartial" probe.

"I also call on all parties to protect civilians and stop using explosive weapons or conducting aerial bombardments in civilian-populated places in Yemen. Surely enough is enough," he added.

'Horrendous and heinous'

"This horrendous and heinous attack displayed an utter disregard for human life," said O'Brien.

The Saudi-led coalition has come under increasing international scrutiny over civilian deaths.

In September 2015, a suspected coalition air strike killed at least 131 civilians at a wedding near the Red Sea city of Mokha.

The Saudi-led alliance denied any involvement.

In March this year, Saudi-led air strikes on a market killed at least 119 people, including 106 civilians, of which 24 were children, in the northern rebel-held province of Hajja.

On Saturday, emergency workers pulled out at least 20 charred remains and body parts from the gutted building in southern Sanaa as others scoured the wreckage for survivors.

Some of the wounded had their legs torn off and were treated on the spot by volunteers.

In an initial statement to AFP, the Saudi-led coalition said it had no operations at the location and "other causes" for the incident must be considered.

The coalition "has in the past avoided such gatherings and [they] have never been a subject of targeting," it said.

In its latest statement, however, the coalition expressed its "deepest condolences and support to the families of the victims of hostilities since the coup takeover of power in Yemen during 2014".

The coalition - which also comprises Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Qatar, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates - has faced repeated criticism from rights groups over civilian casualties in its campaign in Yemen.

The Houthis swept into Sanaa in September 2014 and advanced across much of Yemen, forcing the internationally recognised government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi to flee.

The conflict has killed more than 6,700 people, almost two-thirds of them civilians, and displaced at least three million since the coalition launched military operations, according to the United Nations.

UN rights office spokesman Rupert Colville said Tuesday that from March 2015 through 30 September, 4,014 civilians had died and nearly 7,000 had been injured.

India rejects Pak. references at U.N.

Maleeha Lodhi

PTI-October 9, 2016

India has strongly rejected Pakistan’s references on Kashmir at the U.N., saying such remarks are a self-serving attempt by Islamabad to bring extraneous issues to the world body for its “territorial aggrandisement.”

India, exercising the Right of Reply after Pakistan’s envoy to the U.N. Maleeha Lodhi raised the Kashmir issue at the U.N, said on Friday that Pakistan had made references to the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir in a self-serving attempt to bring extraneous issues before the committee.

Such efforts were a flagrant misuse of the body for Pakistan’s own territorial aggrandisement, India said, recalling that the Special Committee on Decolonisation was concerned only with Non-Self-Governing Territories.

It asserted that Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part of India.

Pakistan responded by saying that the United Nations recognised that all people under alien subjugation had a right to self-determination.

Exercising its Right of Reply, Pakistan said India continued to perpetrate misinformation on the Kashmir issue year after year. Raking up the Kashmir issue again at the U.N., Pakistan had said the non-implementation of the U.N. Security Council resolutions for a plebiscite in Kashmir was the “most persistent” failure of the U.N.

“The decolonisation agenda of the U.N. will remain incomplete without resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, among the oldest items on the U.N.’s agenda,” Lodhi had said the day before at a debate of the Special Political and Decolonisation Committee in the General Assembly.

She asserted that Jammu and Kashmir “never was and can never be” an integral part of India but is a disputed territory, the final status of which has yet to be determined in accordance with several resolutions of the UN Security Council.

Ms. Lodhi said the U.N. has a moral responsibility towards people suffering under colonial domination and foreign occupation.

“There is an urgent need to bring the work on this unfinished agenda to closure and eliminate the last remaining vestiges of colonialism. We hope that we will be able to achieve this shared goal sooner rather than later,” she said.

The United States and Russia Are Prepping for Doomsday

BY JEFFREY LEWIS-OCTOBER 7, 2016

The other day, a little present arrived in the mail. It was book, or rather a pair of doorstops. Titled Doomed to Cooperate, the massive two-volume set is about 1,000 pages of essays, interviews, and vignettes from more than 100 participants in the remarkable period of cooperation between the nuclear weapons complexes of the United States and Russia in the immediate post-Cold War period. Siegfried Hecker, who edited the volumes, titled them after the remark of a Soviet scientist, who said of the shared danger that nuclear weapons pose, “Therefore, you know, we were doomed to work together, to cooperate.” Not everyone got the message, certainly not Vladimir Putin. Set against relations between Washington and Moscow today, the incredible stories in Hecker’s two volumes seem to be from another era entirely. On Monday, Putin issued a decree suspending a plutonium disposition agreement with the United States due to its “unfriendly actions.” (An unofficial translation is available from the Center for Energy and Security Studies in Moscow, as is a draft law submitted by the Kremlin.) Putin’s decree ends one of the last remaining forms of cooperation from that remarkable era.

“Plutonium disposition” is a fancy sort of phrase, the kind of term of art that, when I drop it at a cocktail party, sends people off to refill their drinks. But plutonium is the stuff of which bombs are made.After the Cold War, the United States and Russia agreed to dispose of tons of plutonium to make sure it could never be put back into bombs. So believe you me, when the Russians decide that maybe they should just hang on to that material for a while longer, it’s not so boring.

And we’re talking about a lot of plutonium here. If you recall the dark days of the Cold War, or maybe just read about them in a book, the United States and Soviet Union each had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. That’s sort of insane if you think about what just one nuclear bomb did to Hiroshima and another to Nagasaki. But the United States and the Soviet Union each built stockpiles in excess of 30,000 nuclear weapons at their peak, massive arsenals of nuclear weapons that vast exceeded any conceivable purpose. And at the beating heart of the vast majority of those bombs were tiny little pits of plutonium.

Washington and Moscow have made great strides in reducing their vast nuclear arsenals, although we still have more than enough nuclear weapons to kill each other and then make the rubble bounce. The United States, for example, has reduced its stockpile from a peak of 31,255 nuclear weapons in 1967 to 4,571 in 2015. Let’s just say Russia’s stockpile is comparable, though perhaps not quite as modest.

Of course, retiring a nuclear weapon requires it to be dismantled. In the United States, a backlog of thousands of weapons awaits dismantlement. That queue stretches to 2022, and few experts think the United States willmeet that target. And even once a weapon is dismantled, that still leaves the plutonium. As long as the plutonium exists, it can be turned back into a nuclear bomb.

The United States and Russia have lots and lots of plutonium left over from the Cold War. Neither country makes new plutonium anymore, or at least no weapons-grade plutonium, but don’t worry — there’s still more than enough to keep you up at night. The International Panel on Fissile Materials, at Princeton University, estimates the stockpiles of weapons-grade plutoniumat 88 metric tons for the United States and 128 metric tons for Russia. To give you a sense of how much plutonium that is, it is an unclassified fact that a nuclear weapon can be made with as little as 4 kilograms of plutonium. It’s aslightly touchier subject that this is the average in the U.S. stockpile — one can make do with less. But let’s do the math: Even at 4 kilograms per nuclear weapon, 88 metric tons represents enough material for 22,000 nuclear weapons.

One hundred and twenty-eight metric tons is enough for 32,000 nuclear weapons. Want to get your arms race on?

When the Cold War ended, the more enlightened souls among us realized that reducing these stockpiles of plutonium was a critical task. As long as the plutonium remained, so did the possibility of resuming the arms race. Or, god forbid, the possibility the material might fall into the wrong hands. A pair of studies by the National Academy of Sciences (published in 1994 and1995) called excess fissile material a “clear and present danger to national and international security.”

The United States and Russia freely admitted that much of their stockpiles of plutonium and highly enriched uranium was excess to any conceivable need. In addition to programs to help Russia keep track of its massive amount of material, Washington and Moscow agreed to eliminate some of it. For the plutonium stockpile, in 2000 the United States and Russia each offered 34 metric tons for elimination under the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement. That represents 8,500 nuclear weapons that Russia will never build and another 8,500 nuclear weapons that will never enter the U.S. arsenal. Of course, that was only a portion of the massive stockpile, but along with an agreement to “downblend” highly enriched uranium, it was a promising start to making sure the arms race never started up again.

And then … nothing happened. As it turns out, Washington and Moscow make better enemies than friends. Plutonium isn’t easy to dispose of, and the United States and Russia quarreled endlessly about how to eliminate the material. The story of why the material was never disposed of is long and complicated, involving different technological attitudes in Russia and the United States, as well as healthy helpings of South Carolina barbecued pork. The simplest way to put it is this: The United States and Russia quickly fell to arguing, requiring a new disposition plan in 2007, followed by more arguing until the disposition plan was amended in 2010, and both sides were still arguing about amending the deal when Putin finally pulled the plug this week. Pavel Podvig, who literally wrote the book on Russia’s nuclear program, tells the whole sordid story if you want to read about it.

At some level, though, the details don’t matter. The technical and political questions of how best to eliminate the plutonium pale in comparison to the political urgency of eliminating the threat it poses — they should. If either side wanted a solution, there were options. Knowledgeable observers like Podvig offered plenty of constructive solutions that might have kept the agreement alive. We collectively chose to do nothing.

And so here we are. Putin’s decree states that Russia isn’t planning on turning the plutonium back into weapons just yet. But there is no reason it couldn’t. And there is no clear plan for what happens to it now.

The plan seems to be that the United States and Russia will simply continue to sit on tens of thousands of nuclear weapons’ worth of plutonium for the indefinite future. (Oh, and plutonium ages better than Sophia Loren, so the bombs that might be built out of it could be menacing your grandchildren.) If you think about it, this isn’t really a plan at all — just a terrible inability to do anything in the face of a common danger or head off what looks like a return to Cold War animosity.

If anything makes Hecker’s collection of stories seem like they come from another time, it is that. Once upon a time, there was a collective belief among American and Russian scientists that they could do something about the shared danger posed by nuclear weapons. They may have joked about being “doomed to cooperate,” but it was a wry humor. These men and women who were charged with building the weapons to destroy one another still believed that we could work together to make the world a safer place. We’ve lost that sense. And without the belief that we can cooperate, what are we other than doomed?

Photo Credit: -/AFP/Getty Images

Trump remains defiant ahead of debate as surrogates grapple with tape fallout

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton arrives in St. Louis for her second debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

By Katie Zezima and David A. Fahrenthold October 9

Hours before a televised debate widely expected to define the presidential campaign — and the political career of Donald Trump — the GOP nominee remained defiant even as a growing number of fellow Republicans continued to call on him to exit the race.

The second debate between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton will begin at 9 p.m. Eastern time at Washington University in St. Louis. For Trump, the stakes would have been high in any event: He had seen his poll numbers begin to slide after a weak and rambling performance during the first debate in late September.

Now, however, Trump is in worse shape — and in far greater need of a surprising, campaign-changing performance. That’s due to the release of a 2005 video in which Trump used crude language to brag about forcing himself on women sexually. The video, first published by The Washington Post, set off a cascade of criticism from Trump’s fellow Republicans — and led dozens of them to formally renounce the party’s nominee.

Trump’s supporters said they were hoping to see a humble, focused performance, in which he could seem contrite about the 2005 remarks, and then move on.

“He has to reach inside himself and realize what he’s capable of doing. He has to live it out, and it’s going to be a uniquely personal moment. No one else can figure it out,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

In the wake of a new Washington Post report showing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaking in very lewd terms about women in 2005, some Republicans are calling for Trump to step down as nominee. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)

On Sunday, however, Trump was showing no sign of a contrite approach. Instead, in interviews and social media posts, Trump made clear that he has no plans to back down — and that he intends to criticize Clinton for her treatment of women who over the years have accused her husband of unwanted sexual advances.

Trump also seemed to blast his fellow Republicans, scorning them for leaving him at this moment.

“So many self-righteous hypocrites. Watch their poll numbers — and elections — go down!” read one Trump tweet Sunday.

“Tremendous support (except for some Republican “leadership”). Thank you,” another read.

The video shows Trump bragging in crude terms about kissing and groping women, something he said he has license to do because he is a “star.” The remarks were taped in 2005 as part of a segment for the NBC entertainment show “Access Hollywood.”

[Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005]

Dozens of elected officials, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said Saturday that they could no longer support Trump. A growing chorus called for him to drop out of the race. Even his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, said he could not defend Trump’s remarks. Trump was scheduled to campaign with House Speaker Paul Ryan on Saturday in Wisconsin, but Ryan asked the nominee not to attend. Pence was scheduled as a stand-in, but he, too, decided to stay away. Although Ryan criticized Trump’s remarks, he has not withdrawn his support for the candidate.

Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani was Donald Trump’s only adviser to appear on political television shows Oct. 9 ahead of the second presidential debate. Giuliani insisted that Trump won’t quit the race. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

As Trump jetted to St. Louis, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) was on the campus of debate host Washington University on Sunday afternoon with his phone to his ear urging fellow congressional Republicans to settle down and stick with the party’s standard-bearer.

“He’s charged up,” Sessions said of Trump in an interview with The Post. “I believe he can turn this around. I think our party leaders need to slow down and give him a chance to make his case.”

He added, “I’m disappointed some people felt the need to respond so quickly.”

Sessions also denied a rumor that has circulated among GOP insiders that he had candidly suggested to Trump on Friday that the businessman should consider leaving the race.

“It’s not true, and I never came close to saying that,” Sessions said. “I came to [Trump Tower] toward the end of the night, and he asked me some questions. He was serious and understood the problems and the significance of it. So we talked. But it was about the significance, and he wasn’t in denial that this was some normal little blip that wasn’t going to have any impact. He understood it had a life of its own and was already taking off.”

Several Clinton advisers and allies said they expect Trump to enter the debate angry, on the defensive and ready to lash out. Clinton will be prepared, but she sees no need to respond point by point, one aide said.

There is a view, however, that Trump could adopt the mindset of a “wounded animal,” as one aide put it, which could make him more dangerous and unpredictable.

“The dynamic is he’s done and is he going to blow things up and take other people down as he goes? It’s what a bully does or what a loser does,” said Jim Manley, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “You know you’re losing, so you might as well inflict a maximum amount of damage. With him, you never know.”

Added Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri: “We understand that this is uncharted territory to face an opponent that is in the grips of a downward spiral in terms of his own party belatedly walking away from him. So she has a lot of experience, she is very tough, and she’ll be prepared to handle whatever comes her way.”

[GOP consumed by crisis as more Republicans call on Trump to quit race]

Palmieri also sought to measure expectations by predicting that the town hall format could help Trump. En route to St. Louis on Clinton’s campaign plane, Palmieri said Trump did well in a forum on national security in terms of tone, and she noted that voter questions could keep him relatively focused.

There are “guardrails that may keep him from spiraling as he did in the first debate,” Palmieri said. “For Secretary Clinton, it’s a great format when she’s able to talk directly to voters about issues that they care about in their lives.

“We think there are a lot of voters who are newly open to hearing from her. And that’s what we spent most of our time in prep doing and that’s what we see the opportunity is here,” she added.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani gave a hint Sunday of how Trump plans to respond, stating that the real estate mogul will probably apologize. Giuliani said Trump is prepared to talk about the issues facing the country. He said that Trump feels badly about the controversy and that the remarks don’t reflect who he is.

“I think he made a full and complete apology for it,” Giuliani said of the tape on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday morning. “He’s probably gonna do it again tonight.”

But Giuliani also signaled that Trump has not ruled out using former president Bill Clinton’s infidelities to attack his opponent. Trump again tweeted Sunday morning about Juanita Broaddrick, whose accusation that the former president had raped her in 1978 was never litigated in criminal court and has been denied by the Clintons.

Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the Clintons had a “rough time in their marriage 20 years ago” and that voters want to focus on the issues facing the country.

“I think Donald Trump’s campaign is spiraling. They are trying to figure out a way to dig out of this mess,”

Mook said, noting that the race is between Trump and Hillary Clinton, not Bill Clinton. “If we need to discuss issues that were raised in that video with Donald Trump, that’s fine, but the question here is what is Hillary Clinton’s take on that issue, not her husband’s.”

Giuliani appeared in place of Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who declined to show up for scheduled appearances on the Sunday morning talk shows, as did Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, and top surrogate Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.)

Giuliani had difficulty justifying Trump’s words and the defiant apology the nominee issued late Friday, which morphed into an attack on the Clintons.

“You’re saying that the words are wrong. How about the actions?” Chuck Todd asked Giuliani on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“Well, the actions would be even worse if they were actions. Talk and action are two different things,” Giuliani said.

On ABC’s “This Week,” he seemed to acknowledge that Trump’s comments on the tape suggested sexual assault.

“What Trump is describing in that tape is sexual assault,” host George Stephanopoulos said.

“That’s what he’s talking about,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani got into a tense exchange with “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper, who tore into the defense that Trump engaged in “locker room” banter on the tape.

“First of all, I don’t know that he did that to anyone. This is talk, and, gosh almighty, he who hasn’t sinned cast the first stone here,” Giuliani told Tapper.

Tapper responded tersely: “I will gladly tell you, Mr. Mayor, I have never said that, I have never done that. I am happy to throw a stone. I don’t know any man — I’ve been in locker rooms, I've been a member of a fraternity — I have never heard any man, ever, brag about being able to maul women because they get away with it. Never.”

Giuliani responded: “The fact is men, at times, talk like that, not all men, but men do. He was wrong for doing that. I’m not justifying it. I believe it’s wrong.”

After the controversy erupted Friday, Clinton pinned a tweet that contained the Trump video and the words “Women have the power to stop Trump.”

President Obama, speaking Sunday at a fundraiser for Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who is seeking to unseat incumbent GOP Sen. Mark Kirk, said he doesn’t need to repeat some of the things Trump has said “because there’s children in the room.”

“Are we really going to risk giving Donald Trump the majority he needs to roll back all the progress we’ve made over the last eight years?” he asked the crowd.

Obama said Trump has demeaned and degraded women, minorities, immigrants, people of different faiths and the disabled.

“That tells you a couple things. It tells you that he is insecure enough that he pumps himself up by putting other people down. Not a character trait that I would advise for somebody in the Oval Office,” Obama said.

More tapes showing Trump making crass remarks about sex and women surfaced on Saturday, including one in which the Republican nomineedescribed his own daughter as “voluptuous.”

Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said on “Fox News Sunday” that Trump’s remarks show his true character.

“This is who this guy is,” Podesta said. “I hope every voter actually takes the time to see what is really on that tape, and I hope that all of their children don’t get to see what’s on that tape.”

Gingrich, an experienced debater, said he had been in touch with Trump advisers since arriving home from a trip to Italy. While Gingrich was dismissive of the spate of GOP defections and the calls throughout the party for Trump to drop out — “a fantasy” — he acknowledged that the stakes are very high for the nominee. “It’s going to be a real war. The other side will hit as hard as they can, and you can’t flinch.”

Gingrich said Trump “has got to be contrite about his language but far more aggressive about his policy” so that the large national television audience walks away with a firmer-than-ever grasp his economic populism and views on trade.

“He has to reach inside himself and realize what he’s capable of doing. He has to live it out, and it’s going to be a uniquely personal moment. No one else can figure it out,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich urged Trump to go after Hillary Clinton — but not for former president Bill Clinton’s past.

Gingrich said putting an emphasis on the latter, long a favorite GOP target, was risky: “The only hope for the Trump campaign is to make sure Hillary’s leaked speeches to Wall Street are as well known by mid-October as Trump’s bad language.”

Meanwhile, Clinton’s allies tried to tamp down the significance of remarks the Democratic nominee apparently made to Wall Street groups that included her dreams of “open trade and open borders,” remarks that were taken from hacked emails and are likely to come up during Sunday’s debate.

[Hacked emails appear to reveal excerpts of speech transcripts Clinton refused to release]

Although Clinton’s surrogates did not deny that she gave the speeches, they said they could not verify the authenticity of the hacked emails, which were made public Friday by WikiLeaks and were apparently lifted from Podesta’s account. They also tried to counter critics who said the emails illustrate how Clinton is out of touch with working Americans and bends her positions to suit the audience to which she is speaking.

“Her public position and what she’s going to fight for as president are one in the same,” Mook said.

Robert Costa, Jose A. DelReal, Abby Phillip and John Wagner in St. Louis; Anne Gearan in Washington; and Mike DeBonis in Chicago contributed to this report.

Thailand: US prosecutors urge cooperation to nab suspects in sex trafficking case

A group of transgender sex workers cluster around the entrance to a popular bar named Temptations. Pic: Caleb Quinley.

9th October 2016

FOLLOWING the arrest of 17 members of of a global trafficking operation involving hundreds of Thai women, prosecutors in the U.S. are seeking more cooperation from the Thai government to expand their investigations.

12 Thai nationals and five Americans were charged this week with transporting the women from Thailand to the U.S. to be sold into a sex ring.

U.S. assistant attorney Laura Provinzio said during a radio broadcast on U.S. Public Radio: “We hope to work with police in Thailand to identify additional people involved in the trafficking and more of the victims.”

SEE ALSO: Thailand’s Tourism Ministry looking to put an end to sex tourism

An indictment unsealed by Andrew Luger, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, revealed other charges including sex trafficking, forced labor, money laundering, and visa fraud, reports the Bangkok Post. The women were reportedly placed in several cities around the U.S. to work off “debt bondages” of up to US$60,000 (2 million baht).

Luger described the organization as “highly sophisticated” that promised Thai women a shot at having the “American dream” but instead forced them into modern day sex slavery.

According to CNN, the Department of Justice issued a statement that said: “Once in the United States, victims were allegedly placed in houses of prostitution, where they were forced to work long hours – often all day, every day.