Mereja.Forum

[Zmeselo]

Even an über liberal stand up comedian, knows better. Don't mess, with Russia:

[Zmeselo]

Amazing!

Having called for collective punishment against an entire nation + argued for acts of piracy, he's disappointed that people had the audacity to disagree and push back against his position.




_____________________






INTERNATIONAL
GOP digs in on blocking Biden diplomatic picks

BY LAURA KELLY

https://thehill.com/policy/internationa ... -picks?amp

November 08, 2021



Republicans are putting up an intense series of roadblocks to confirmation for President Biden's diplomatic nominees, issuing maximalist demands and raising objections to both policies and personalities.

More than 10 months into Biden's administration, the Senate has confirmed only seven of his ambassadorial picks, while more than 50 nominees for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are awaiting votes, many of them held up by GOP objections.

Democrats have issued stark warnings against the Republican moves.

Republicans who are holding up these nominees are endangering our national security, making it harder for our country to respond to threats at home and abroad,

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor Tuesday night, ahead of objections levied by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) against the quick confirmation of at least eight nominees.

Hawley, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and other GOP senators are exercising their ability to place a "hold" on a nominee or demand a vote on the record, moves that can force Democrats to drag out the confirmation process, sometimes for days, and eat up critical Senate floor time that the majority needs for legislative priorities.

On Wednesday, the Senate was able to confirm by a quick voice vote Biden's ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, after Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) lifted his hold. A Republican Senate aide said Scott did so after speaking with Nides earlier in the day, adding the senator makes a point to speak to every high-level nominee before a confirmation vote.

But other key Biden picks face more daunting obstacles.

Hawley, for his part, has issued holds on at least five nominees and said he will only lift them if several of Biden's top officials - Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan - quit over their handling of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan.

Hawley's holds include the president's nominee for ambassador to NATO, two Assistant Secretary positions, the nominee for coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization and the nominee for director general of the Foreign Service.

Likewise, Cruz is maintaining a blanket hold on nearly all State Department nominees over his opposition to the administration's waiving of congressionally mandated sanctions on a Russian natural gas pipeline.

The logjam has prompted alarm from former senior government officials in the foreign service and national security sphere.

Last month, 350 of these professionals sent a letter to Senate leadership and the top lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urging the quick confirmations of State Department and USAID nominees.

The resulting vacancies have damaged U.S. national security and our ability to address international threats. We ask for your urgent attention to resolving this situation,

read the letter, organized by Foreign Policy for America, a nonpartisan advocacy organization.

In addition to placing the United States at a strategic disadvantage, Washington has sent an unfortunate message of neglect and indifference.

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) has also emerged as a roadblock for nominees to advance out of the Foreign Relations panel, a necessary step in bringing a nomination to the Senate floor.

Risch, the committee's ranking member, has opposed hearings and committee votes for a handful of nominees because they are still being vetted by the GOP minority.

The fact of the matter is that it's not going to be a situation where we're going to roll over on ones that we're not done with,

Risch said during a committee business meeting on Wednesday.

This includes Biden's nominee for ambassador to Germany, Amy Gutmann, who is being scrutinized by Republicans over her contacts with China as president of the University of Pennsylvania. GOP lawmakers have raised concerns over whether the university accepted unreported and anonymous donations that came from Beijing, a charge that the university reportedly refutes.

This is a complex matter. We're looking at it and we will get to a conclusion on that,

Risch said during the meeting.

Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) has said he is committed to consensus with the ranking member in scheduling hearings to preserve comity, but he urged Risch to allow hearings to go forward, in particular for Gutmann and other top posts - including the nominee for assistant administrator for the Middle East at USAID, the nominee for under secretary of State for management and two assistant secretary positions.

They have done everything they can do to be poised at least for a hearing and, or a committee vote. We should give them that opportunity and let the chips fall where they may,

he said.

What's more, Risch's refusal to hold a hearing for Biden's nominee for ambassador to monitor and combat antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, has garnered rare pushback from the Anti-Defamation League and two prominent Jewish organizations, the Jewish Federations of North America and the Orthodox Union.

Risch has said the minority has concerns over tweets that Lipstadt has written,

particularly about members of the committee,

and is looking into them.

Further raising the stakes in the 50-50 Senate are nominees that have received pushback from Democrats, such as Biden's pick for ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel.

Progressives are lobbying against Emanuel's confirmation over his handling, as mayor of Chicago, of the 2014 investigation into the police killing of Laquan McDonald, a Black teenager who was unarmed and walking away from officers when he was fatally shot.

Emanuel's nomination advanced out of the Foreign Relations Committee by voice vote on Wednesday, but at least two Democratic senators recorded their opposition.

One area where Republicans and Democrats have both expressed support is with Biden's nominee for ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns.

Both Cruz and Hawley have said they would not block Burns's confirmation vote from moving forward, and he advanced out of Foreign Relations on Wednesday, setting him up for a Senate floor vote.

China is viewed by both Republicans and Democrats as the greatest geo-strategic threat facing the United States.

Democrats, seeking to appeal to their Republican colleagues, argued the dangers of deadlock in advancing the president's nominees as a propaganda win for China.

China's making a pitch that authoritarianism is the best alternative because democracy doesn't work because they're looking at our Congress,

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), a Foreign Relations member, said during the Wednesday business meeting.

I don't know how we fix this, but what's happening now is not working and it's not working just for the Senate, but it's not working for the country.

[Aba]

Scandinavian welfare queen,
Focus on Singapoor.

Please wait, video is loading...

[Zmeselo]

Slave, your massa uncle Sam has gone bananas & it's scary to watch! Babylon is falling!



How is wealthy Chgray doing, btw? Bye junta & tnx for all the laughs, like the 1 below:

Scandinavian welfare queen,
Focus on Singapoor.

Please wait, video is loading...

[kibramlak]

These guys are loosing their heads and going wild wild west.


BTW, I enjoy the comedian who made the laughter for my day

Even an über liberal stand up comedian, knows better. Don't mess up, with Russia:

[James Dahl]

I look forward to Amhara voting for this maniac because they think Biden is TPLF

[Zmeselo]

The terror junta supporters themselves, believe Biden is their patron (not merely a member like you put it). Why the need then, to roll around in the streets screaming "oooo Joe Biden" if it wasn't so?

Ethiopia's " Juan Guaidó", Berhane Gebre-Christos, met with US and European diplomats about how to overthrow the government of PM Abiy Ahmed Ali and install a "Transitional Government of Ethiopia" led by the TPLF. I talked to, Ann Fitz-Gerald.

AnnGarrison: @AnnGarrison

I look forward to Amhara voting for this maniac because they think Biden is TPLF

[Aba]

Please wait, video is loading...

Slave, your massa uncle Sam has gone bananas & it's scary to watch! Babylon is falling!

htts://twitter.com/thomascmountain/status/1468336119179845637?s=20

How is wealthy Chgray doing, btw? Bye junta & tnx for all the laughs, like the 1 below:


htts://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7oOfVE1kgpc

Scandinavian welfare queen,
Focus on Singapoor.

Please wait, video is loading...

[Aba]

Focus, welfare queen.

Please wait, video is loading...

[Zmeselo]

USA Loses Ethiopia; Biggest Strategic Blunder Since Loss of Iran

By: Thomas C. Mountain

7 December 2021

With the failure of the US backed TPLF Terrorist coup attempt against the democratically elected government of Ethiopia, the USA is facing its greatest strategic blunder since losing Iran in 1979.

The Ethiopian Army and its allied militias have in the last 10 days of fighting regained all the territory it lost in several months, to the TPLF Terrorist coup attempt. By all reports from the front lines, the TPLF Terrorists are on the run with thousands of their conscripted fighters heeding Ethiopian PM Abiy’s call to surrender.

Ethiopia was once the USA’s “Policeman” in the Horn of Africa, with the strategically critical Red Sea and its chokepoint gateway Baab Al Mandeb between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, being key to control of the enormously important shipping lanes between Europe and Asia. Statements made repeatedly by the Ethiopian government have made it abundantly clear, that there is no going back to a neo colonial relationship with the west and that Ethiopia has turned to China for economic and political support.

To make matters worse the US General in command of their base in Djibouti, lying at the entrance to the Red Sea, made it clear that the US was prepared to attack Ethiopia from Djibouti, leaving Ethiopia little choice but to quietly begin preparations to force Djibouti; economically dependent on Ethiopia, to close down this threat.

At one point the western neo colonialists unleashed the full force of their media lackeys to try and undermine Ethiopia’s democratically elected government, with CNN broadcasting a fabricated claim that the TPLF terrorist forces were on the outskirts of the capital Addis Ababa.

Slanderous fabrications by the western media, backed by the UN and the Human Rights Mob of “genocide” and “aid blockades” in the home province of the TPLF terrorists, were shot down by no other than the UN’s own Human Rights clique in a report issued in cooperation with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.

The recent rapid advances on the battlefield by the Ethiopian Army led by PM Abiy Ahmed, have pretty much silenced these pack of presstitutes and imperial lackeys and left that liar (Blinken) being “alarmed” by these developments. Now that it is clear that it is no longer IF but WHEN the TPLF terrorist clique will be defeated militarily the LiarsForHire in the western media, the UN and the Human Rights Mob have grown remarkable silent.

Of course the military defeat of the TPLF terrorist gang is not the end of this problem for they saw the backbone of their army defeated mainly by the Eritrean intervention in November of 2020, at the request of PM Abiy. The Ethiopian army had been hollowed out by the withdrawal of about 80% of its most experienced fighters, when the TPLF withdrew its military supporters to its home province of Tigray in 2019/2020. With the weakness of the Ethiopian military being well known the US threw its weight behind the TPLF coup attempt in November 2021, thinking that with a successful attack and capture of the Ethiopian Army’s main national arms depot in Tigray the TPLF terrorist clique would have little opposition in marching on the capital Addis Ababa and overthrowing PM Abiy’s government.

What they didnt take into account was Abiy Ahmed’s close relationship with Eritrea and its President Isaias Aferwerki, who, at Abiy Ahmed's request, quickly mobilized Eritrean mechanized and artillery brigades into Tigray that destroyed the backbone of the TPLF fighters and leadership in a matter of a little over two weeks culminating in the wiping out of almost 80% of the top leadership of the TPLF with the capture of the capital Mekele at the end of November 2021.

Though their army was defeated, almost 100,000 TPLF fighters survived and melted away with their small arms back to their villages and communities. Knowing the futility of trying to fight terrorists on their home soil without the active support of the Tigrayan people, PM Abiy withdrew his troops from Tigray and called for a unilateral ceasefire.

The point of doing this was to force the Tigrayan people to experience first hand just how corrupt and brutal the TPLF terrorists really were and to let them learn the hard way just how destructive to the interests of the people of Tigray, the TPLF was.

With a mass wave of forced conscription and child soldiers, the TPLF mafia assembled a large armed force and began invading the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions.

This resulted in an unprecedented outpouring of Ethiopian national pride and support for PM Abiy’s democratically elected government and when Abiy Ahmed took direct personal command of the fighting, the TPLF terrorists suffered major losses in territory and personnel. It is expected that within a matter of a couple of weeks the Ethiopian Army and supporting militias will once again be on Tigrayan soil, with the imminent military defeat of the TPLF terrorist forces.

The main question remaining is: what will the people of Tigray do? After seeing their children dragooned to be cannon fodder for the TPLF and slaughtered in their thousands will the Tigrayan people turn against the TPLF, remain silent or even continuing a reduced level of support for them. Until this question is decisively answered by the actions of the Tigrayan people themselves, peace in Ethiopia is not assured.

The one thing that is clear is that the US has seen its Ethiopian bastion of neo colonialism turn against it and as so many Ethiopians at home and in the diaspora have made clear,

Ethiopia Will Never Kneel Down.

I have long predicted that the day the USA loses control of the strategically critical Red Sea/Baab Al Mandeb, marks the beginning of the end of Pax Americana’s dominance of the world. With this blunder against Ethiopia the USA has shot itself in the foot, leaving itself increasingly weakened and no longer viewed by the people of Africa as an omnipotent force that can do what it pleases.


Thomas C. Mountain is an educator and historian with a specialty in the Horn of Africa going back almost 40 years. You can reach him at thomascmountain on twitter or [email protected]