Payments to Michael Cohen show how ‘shadow lobbying’ eludes US law

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Cohen has said he provided consultancy services rather than lobbying, and is not required by law to register as a lobbyist and disclose payments

The disclosure that Donald Trump’s legal fixer Michael Cohen was quietly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to advise corporations highlights the inability of US laws to prevent secretive “shadow lobbying”, analysts said.

Companies such as the telecoms giant AT&T and Novartis, a major pharmaceuticals firm, confirmed they paid Cohen, the president’s personal attorney, large sums last year in return for what they describe as guidance on navigating the new administration.

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Forcibly outing LGBT children to their parents is monstrous

horrid pseudo-Christian politicos what to kill people.

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A proposal in Alberta, which would require schools to inform parents if their teenagers join gay-friendly groups, shows how fragile social progress is – even in Canada

How much control does a parent have over the inner life of their adolescent child?

This thorny philosophical issue has come to a head in Canada, where the conservative party in Alberta has endorsed a policy that would require schools to inform parents if their children enroll in “extracurricular activities of a religious or sexual nature”.

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New NRA president says gun control activists are ‘civil terrorists’

He wants war against Americans

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As students and victims of shooting violence push for stronger laws, Oliver North compares NRA’s struggles to the civil rights movement

Activists pushing for stronger gun laws are engaged in “civil terrorism”, Oliver North, the former Fox News commentator appointed as the next president of the National Rifle Association, has claimed.

The former Reagan-era security adviser, who was once convicted on charges related to the Iran-Contra affair, also claimed the NRA was the target of a “cyberwar”.

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Arab Authors, Publishers Reportedly Stopped from Entering Palestine for Book Fair

ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY

The Palestine International Book Fair, now in its eleventh year, opened May 3 in Sarda, north of Ramallah, boasting 500 publishers from all around the world.

This year’s fair is the first event being held on the grounds of the new Palestinian National Library.

The Palestine Information Center reported on Sunday that Jordanian and other Arab publishers had been stopped at the Allenby border crossing, even though their books had already made it through ahead of them and delivered to the fairgrounds.

The Jordanian Publishers Association (JPA) denounced the measure. The association said the Palestinian Authority has always submitted entry permits for publishers so they can attend the annual book fair and that they “have been always accepted except for this time.”

Fair director Nawal Heles told Arab News that “nearly 300 Arab authors and publishers” were denied permits. Heles further told Arab News she’d received no explanation from the Israeli…

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Just an Oil Company? The True Extent of Russia’s Dependency on Oil and Gas

Official statistics suggest that Russia’s oil and gas industry accounts for only a quarter of the country’s GDP. However, when other factors are factored in, the economy is seen to be much more heavily dependent on hydrocarbons. With oil prices looking set to stay low for a long time, this is bad news for the Russian economy.

In March 2014, Lindsey Graham, the outspoken U.S. Republican senator who is now running for president, referred to Russia as merely “an oil and gas company masquerading as a country.” Graham is known for making alarmist and controversial statements—he recently said that falling oil prices were the result of a plot by Sunni Arabs against Iran and Russia—and it would be easy to dismiss this one as yet another outlandish bid for publicity.

Before we quickly dismiss Graham, however, we should recall the words of Leonardo da Vinci, “We derive more benefit from having our faults pointed out by our enemies than from hearing the opinions of friends.” Given that the fall in oil prices appears to be a long-term trend, if Graham is actually right, Russia is facing an economic crisis the like of which it hasn’t seen for many years.

At first glance, it is absurd to call Russia “merely an oil and gas company.” The share of hydrocarbon production in the country’s GDP has not exceeded 26.5 percent for 25 years and the share of oil and gas export has not risen above 14.5 percent of GDP. Those who champion Russia’s underlying economic stability point to these very reasonable numbers. But things aren’t quite so simple. Although three quarters of Russia’s official GDP is not pouring out of its oil wells, the country is still heavily dependent on oil. We also need to identify how the non-oil components of Russian GDP are financed.

A more detailed analysis is less rosy. Trade accounts for 29 percent of Russian GDP, but Russia imports about 60 percent of its total consumption and pays for imports with earnings from exports, which are overwhelmingly dominated by oil and gas. That means that the share of hydrocarbons in the GDP is in effect 17.5 percent higher.

Next, 20-22 percent of GDP is comprised of state budget expenditures. At least 60 percent of consolidated budget revenues come from the mineral extraction tax, excise duties, export duties, value-added tax on imports and other taxes attributable to the oil and gas sector directly or indirectly. This adds an additional 13 percent to our calculation of the oil-based GDP.

By this rough tally, 57 percent of Russia’s GDP already depends on oil. But we also need to factor in the direct influx of petrodollars that is converted into investments and spending in other sectors of the economy and additional consumption. It is hard to put a number on this, but by various estimates it has ranged between 10 and 13 percent of GDP in recent years. So our overall figure is now up to 67—70 percent.

The nature of the oil dependence is illustrated in Table 1 by tracking changes in Russia’s consolidated budget revenues against WTI oil prices. No explanation is needed. Table 2, which compares the rise and fall of Russia’s gold and foreign-exchange reserves with changes in oil prices, paints exactly the same picture. And, as Table 3 shows, if we take Russia’s dollar denominated GDP growth rates and track them against changes in oil prices, the curves again practically coincide.

This begs the question: What are the effects of this dependence? An indirect answer can be found by measuring Russia’s GDP in terms of barrels of oil. In 1992, when Russia was almost at the bottom of a structural crisis, its non-oil GDP (GDP minus actual production of oil) was equivalent to 19.5 billion barrels of oil in 1992 prices. In 1999, when oil prices were at their lowest, Russia’s non-oil GDP dipped below the equivalent of eight billion barrels. However, even today, in 2015, Russia’s non-oil GDP is still only worth 16.7 billion barrels in current prices (see Table 4). During the same period, Poland’s non-oil GDP increased by 37 percent, while Norway, which has almost halved its oil production in the last 25 years, has maintained its non-oil GDP calculated in barrels of oil at the same level (see Table 5).

Even the ruble, it transpires, is ruled by the world oil market, not the Central Bank. When the oil price is above 60 U.S dollars a barrel, the real ruble exchange rate is higher than the inflation-adjusted exchange rate. When the oil price is below 60 dollars, the ruble is cheaper (see Table 6). The oil price is currently below 60 dollars, so the ruble has caught up with its inflation rate for the first time since 2005 and the value of dollars measured in rubles is rising above the “inflation curve.” Furthermore, the extent of the ruble’s deviation from its theoretical value, based on historical inflation, can be determined almost exactly by the oil price. (See Table 7).

This time at least, it turns out that Senator Graham got it right. The health of Russia’s economy depends not on domestic policies, sanctions, technological innovations, the decision to seek rapprochement with the West or friendship with China. The only factor that influences Russia’s economy is the price of oil and gas.

There is more bad news. The fall in world oil prices is not, as Graham believes, a plot by Sunni Arabs. The world oil supply exceeded 95 million barrels per day (mbpd) at the end of 2014, while demand plateaued at 93 mbpd. The trend looks set to continue. Over the last five years, the increase in oil supply in percentage points has outpaced demand by a factor of almost two. All indicators suggest that we are at the start of a long phase of low oil prices. By the end of this period, the oil industry will encounter better solar panels and super-batteries, more efficient car and aircraft engines, a mass market for electric vehicles, more energy-efficient construction materials, and other innovations.

Maybe in ten years’ time we will remember today’s oil prices as having been unreasonably high and think of Lindsey Graham’s provocative comment about Russia as a friendly warning, which we sadly failed to heed.

By:

  • Andrey Movchan

A victim is the suspect at the trial of the soldiers who killed him

Samir Awad was unarmed when he was shot in the back eight times by soldiers. During his killers’ trial, the judge and defense treated the dead boy as if he was the one being charged with a crime.

Samir Awad is evacuated for medical treatment after being shot in the back of the neck by Israeli soldiers, January 13, 2013. (Nader Morar/B’Tselem). Awad later died from his wounds.

Samir Awad is evacuated for medical treatment after being shot in the back of the neck by Israeli soldiers, January 13, 2013. (Nader Morar/B’Tselem).

In Israeli courts, the rare trial of a soldier who killed a Palestinian invariably becomes a trial of the Palestinian they killed. Tuesday morning in the Ramle Magistrate’s Court, where two former Israeli soldiers are on trial for killing 16-year-old Samir Awad, was no exception.

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Samir was not mentioned once by name during the nearly four-hour cross-examination of one of the two soldiers on trial. The judge and defense lawyers reflexively referred to Samir as “the suspect” — as if the dead boy was being charged with a crime instead of the soldiers who shot him.

“It is as if nobody died,” remarked one of the Israeli activists who had come to support Ahmad, Samir’s father.

Samir Awad was shot in the back eight times by soldiers who had been lying in ambush near a hole in Israel’s separation barrier. Samir was not armed. He did not pose a threat to anyone. He was running away at the time he was shot.

For shooting and killing Samir, A. and B., the two former soldiers whose names are under gag order, are charged with “reckless and negligent use of a firearm.”

Ahmad Awad, whose son, Samir, was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers, stands outside Ramle Magistrate's Court, September 22, 2016. (photo: Haggai Matar)

Ahmad Awad, whose son, Samir, was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers, stands outside Ramle Magistrate’s Court, September 22, 2016. (photo: Haggai Matar)

When Ahmad Awad, Samir’s father, finally reached Room 207 in the Ramle Magistrate’s Court Tuesday morning, he was not allowed to enter. He had woken up early that morning to make it from the West Bank village of Budrus, through a checkpoint that he needed a special military permit to cross. From there, an Israeli activist picked him up and drove him to the courthouse, a drab, tan building on a street named after Israel’s first president.

Ahmad has been making this trip since 2015, when Israeli authorities — after a more than two-year delay — indicted the two soldiers who shot and killed 16-year-old Samir in January 2013.

Teeth gritted and arms folded across his chest, Ahmad toed at the waxed-tile floor and waited outside the courtroom where his sons’ killers sat. Inside, the presiding judge, Rivka Glatz, held a short, closed-door mediation session between the prosecution, the soldiers who shot Samir, and their lawyers. Ahmad asked to be present for the mediation but was told to leave since he is not technically a party to the case.

“The case has been badly damaged,” the prosecutor told Ahmad when he emerged from the closed-door session. The defense, he explained, thinks they have a chance of getting off completely — and they might be right.

The defense is arguing that prosecuting the two soldiers for illegally killing Samir would constitute “selective enforcement” of the law. To prove their point, they are demanding that the state reveal statistical data regarding criminal investigations and prosecutions of other soldiers who have killed Palestinians, as well as the case materials themselves.

Israeli authorities do not want to provide those files, on which the outcome of the case might depend.

An Israeli solider shoots tear gas toward Palestinian demonstrators during a protest against the occupation in the West Bank village of Budrus, three days after soldiers shot and killed 16-year-old Samir Awad, January 18, 2013. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

An Israeli solider shoots tear gas toward Palestinian demonstrators during a protest against the occupation in the West Bank village of Budrus, three days after soldiers shot and killed 16-year-old Samir Awad, January 18, 2013. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

The distance between the courtroom and the often incomprehensible reality of the occupation felt immense on Tuesday morning. The judge seemed to struggle to grasp the technical details of the soldier’s testimony and the prosecutor’s questions about the precise angle of B.’s gun when he opened fire on Samir; the respective positions of B. and Samir relative to the various parts of the separation barrier; and the complex nature of the separation barrier.

Throughout the testimony of B., a tall, soft-spoken twenty-something with dark brown hair pulled back into a short ponytail, a casual observer never would have guessed that the “reckless and negligent use of a firearm” for which he was being tried had actually resulted in eight bullets in 16-year-old Samir’s body, one of which pierced the nape of his neck.

Part of the absurdity of Tuesday’s hearing stemmed from the fact that the case, of two active duty soldiers committing a crime during a military operation, is being heard in a civilian court. It took Israeli authorities more than two years to indict the soldiers who shot Samir — only after Ahmad, with the help of Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, sued to force the Military Advocate General to either file an indictment or close the investigation. By the time authorities finally reached a decision to prosecute, A. and B. were no longer under the jurisdiction of the military justice system. They are being tried as civilians by civilian prosecutors in a civilian court not designed to adjudicate military matters.

When the hearing was finally over, Ahmad went to the court’s administrative office to receive documents that will enable him to get a travel permit from the army so he can cross through the checkpoint for the next hearing, tentatively scheduled for May 15, Nakba Day. That is, if the prosecution decides to hand over all of the data and case files of other Israeli soldiers who were investigated and prosecuted for killing Palestinians.

If they don’t hand over the files, there is a chance that the final time Ahmad makes the journey from Burdus to Ramle will be to watch his son’s killers walk free.

Trump praises controversial pundit Candace Owens as a ‘very smart thinker’

RACIST!

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Owens was thrust into the spotlight after defending neo-Nazis and calling police killings of black men trivial on TMZ with Kanye West

Donald Trump tweeted praise for conservative YouTube star and TV pundit Candace Owens Wednesday morning, calling the controversial commentator part of “an ever expanding group of very smart ‘thinkers’.”

“Candace Owens of Turning Point USA is having a big impact on politics in our Country,” the president said. “It is wonderful to watch and hear the dialogue going on … so good for our Country!”

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