Month: December 2022

The year 2022 saw the Taliban imposing restrictions on women’s rights, bringing back the memory of its past rule.

Tony Blair described the Russian leader as a ‘patriot’ and wanted to give him a place at the ‘top table’ of nations

Former UK prime minister Tony Blair believed Russian President Vladimir Putin should be encouraged to embrace Western values and allowed “a position on the top table” after he was elected in 2000, papers released by the National Archives on Friday reveal.

Blair reportedly described Putin as “a Russian patriot, acutely aware that Russia had lost its respect in the world” in a meeting with then-US vice president Dick Cheney in 2001, likening his mindset to that of “a Russian de Gaulle” while cautioning against any further comparison with the French leader.

While acknowledging Putin’s “low approval rating in the US,” the Labour politician told Cheney he thought it best to “encourage Putin to reach for Western attitudes as well as the Western economic model.”

Read more

Era of Western dominance ending – Tony Blair

Blair’s cabinet was not so convinced, according to a briefing note included in the archives, which complained about “the Russian intelligence effort against British targets” continuing “at Cold War levels.”

Despite reassuring Blair that he did not want to be considered “anti-NATO,” Putin was nevertheless attempting “to try to post active and hostile officers to work against British interests worldwide,” the author of the memo claimed. 

Like his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, Putin had expressed interest in joining NATO, even allegedly asking its director outright when they planned to “invite us to join NATO” in 2000. Meetings on the subject of Russia’s possible accession to NATO had been taking place for years under Yeltsin, and Putin himself declared it was “hard for me to visualize NATO as an enemy” shortly before his election victory in 2000.

But while officials in some NATO countries embraced the idea of Russia as a member, many more didn’t, and the bloc’s eastward expansion in the early 2000s along with Western-backed uprisings in former Soviet territories eventually convinced Putin a partnership was not in the cards.

At the same time, the British PM pledged to continue working to bring out the “very best of Britain”

PM Rishi Sunak shared his first in-office New Year message on Saturday, admitting that “it’s been a very tough year for the UK” and that the country’s problems “won’t go away” in 2023 either. The PM largely blamed Britain’s hardships on Russia and its conflict with Ukraine.

“I’m not going to pretend that all our problems will go away in the New Year,” Sunak said in his address, posted on Twitter. “But 2023 will give us the opportunity to showcase the very best of Britain on the world stage, defending freedom and democracy wherever we find it under threat,” he added.

Read more

Sunak concerned over report of MPs carousing abroad – spokesman

Just as the UK and the world as a whole “recovered from an unprecedented global pandemic,” the PM went on, “Russia launched a barbaric and illegal invasion across Ukraine.” The ongoing conflict has had a “profound economic impact” worldwide, and Britain is by no means “immune” to it, Sunak stated.

“Now, I know many of you have felt that impact at home. That’s why this government has taken difficult but fair decisions to get borrowing and debt under control. And it’s because of those decisions that we’ve been able to help the most vulnerable with the rising cost of energy bills,” the PM claimed.

Sunak, who took the reins at the end of October after the short-lived tenure of Liz Truss, has faced a multitude of assorted challenges, ranging from ballooning inflation and soaring energy costs to massive strikes by public sector workers demanding salary hikes. The new PM himself has singled out skyrocketing inflation as one of Britain’s key economic problems, pledging to make tackling it one of his priorities.

The former president has shared an article suggesting that he should split from Republicans if they don’t support his candidacy

Former US President Donald Trump has signaled a possible disaster for the Republican Party, floating a suggestion that he might divide conservative votes in the 2024 presidential election by running as a third-party candidate.

Trump shared an article this week on his social media platform, Truth Social, that called for him to launch a third-party campaign if Republican leaders don’t support his 2024 bid to reclaim the White House. The article, which was published on Tuesday in a conservative journal called American Greatness, argued that Republican leaders intend to defy the will of voters by blocking Trump from winning the party’s presidential nomination.

“They’d rather lose an election to the Democrats, their brothers in crime, than win with Trump,” the article’s writer, Dan Gelernter, said. He argued that even though an establishment candidate would be better than electing a Democrat, caving into such expedient choices has allowed “the uniparty” to control and ruin the country.

Read more

Republicans want MAGA, not Trump – poll

“Do I think Trump can win as a third-party candidate? No,” Gelernter said. “Would I vote for him as a third-party candidate? Yes, because I’m not interested in propping up this corrupt gravy-train any longer.”

Trump reportedly flirted with forming his own party in 2021, after losing to Democrat nominee Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. He told Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel that he was “done” with the party, according to ‘Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,’ a book by ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl. McDaniel reportedly replied, “You cannot do that. If you do, we will lose forever.” Trump shot back, “Exactly – you will lose forever without me. I don’t care. This is what Republicans deserve for not sticking up for me.”

While Gelernter argued that Trump is the first choice of Republican voters, recent polling suggests otherwise. Republicans still favor Trump’s Make America Great Again policies, but by a margin of nearly 2-to-1 (61%-31%), they want someone else to be the standard-bearer for that agenda in the 2024 election, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released earlier this month. Republican voters prefer Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over Trump by a 56-33 margin, the same poll showed.

READ MORE: Trump should be barred from White House – lawmakers

The president says Beijing overcame unprecedented challenges in the battle against COVID amid a new wave of cases China.

The Wikileaks founder fighting extradition to the US will seek leave from Belmarsh, his wife says.

Ukraine’s president says his country will never forgive Russians for the terror they have inflicted.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Moscow wants to cause darkness and leave the country “in the dark for the New Year,” as deadly strikes swept several regions on Saturday.

A congressional advisory body has outlined issues lawmakers could face over the supply of anti-aircraft systems to Kiev

The US Congress is facing issues “in both its legislative and oversight roles” over the planned delivery of Patriot anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) has warned. The research institute is a US government agency that provides expert support to members of Congress on a nonpartisan basis.

The US government pledged to deliver one battery of the advanced MIM-104 Patriot anti-aircraft system to Kiev earlier this month, following an unannounced visit to Washington by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

The timeframe for the delivery remains unclear, as the operation of the system requires dozens of trained personnel. US media outlets have suggested that Ukrainian troops may be invited to America for training, which has yet to occur in the context of the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Training repair crews for the Patriot system alone takes some 53 weeks, the CRS noted, adding that “there is a lot of learning to do before Ukraine will have a functioning Patriot system on the ground.”

Read more

US assures Russia over Patriots – Lavrov

The research body also urged lawmakers to examine the exact source of the battery to be supplied to Kiev. It’s still unclear whether Washington itself or some of its NATO allies will provide the Patriot battery. The CRS warned that, ultimately, the “battery and associated interceptors being sent to Ukraine could be taken from existing army units and stockpiles.”

“If it is withdrawn from other operational forces, such as US Central Command or US Indo-Pacific Command, transferring the system to Ukraine may create opportunity costs and potential risks in those theaters,” it said, adding that supplying a battery from the US homeland “could impede training or modernization cycles.”

The research agency also raised concerns over the “massive price tag” of the Patriot systems and their interceptor missiles, which are “estimated to cost about $4 million per missile.” According to available data, “a newly produced Patriot battery costs about $1.1 billion, including about $400 million for the system and about $690 million for the missiles,” the CRS said.

Congress should therefore consider the question of whether certain “restrictions [would] be imposed on what types of hostile systems can be engaged by” the systems operated by Ukrainian troops, the agency suggested.

Barbados is hoping to secure payments from “descendants of white plantation owners”

The Caribbean island nation of Barbados is hoping to receive reparations for slavery from a number of people, including a British MP and a popular actor, as part of a wider campaign to get former slave-owning families to contribute.

“Any descendants of white plantation owners who have benefited from the slave trade should be asked to pay reparations, including the Cumberbatch family,” David Denny, general secretary of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, told the Telegraph on Friday, adding that the funds should “be used to turn the local clinic into a hospital, support local schools, and improve infrastructure and housing.”

David Comissiong, deputy chairman of the national commission on reparations, told the UK outlet that the island was only at the “earliest stages” of assessing who would have to pay, implying there was plenty of time going forward to extract their share of the Cumberbatch family’s wealth. “We are just beginning. A lot of this history is only really now coming to light,” he said.

Read more

Pakistan issues climate reparations demand

The government is already pursuing Conservative UK MP Richard Drax for his family’s ancestral property, which it wants to turn into a monument to slavery. Comissiong last month made it clear that if the government cannot convince families like the Draxes and Cumberbatches to pay reparations of their own free will, it will seek an international arbitration court’s judgment to force them. Even the British royal family will be targeted with reparations claims, he warned, while acknowledging it would have been impossible to pursue such claims if Barbados was still part of the British Commonwealth.

Apparently, Cumberbatch’s mother saw this coming, having urged her son not to use his real surname in acting, lest he be targeted with claims for reparations over his family’s slave-owning history. The Cumberbatch family was reimbursed for about £1 million in modern terms for their slaves after the practice was abolished across the British Empire in 1833, and Cumberbatch himself appeared in the 2012 film 12 Years a Slave as plantation owner William Ford. He also played William Pitt the Younger in the film Amazing Grace, hinting he had taken the role in an attempt to apologize for his ancestors’ deeds.

Barbados only became an independent republic last year, exiting the British Commonwealth after nearly four centuries. Its prime minister, Mia Mottley, also chairs the regional Caribbean committee on reparations for slavery.