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Hypocrisy of the US Position on the Syrian #SDF and the Turkish/Jihadist invasion. @CENTCOM
Starting in late 2014, ISIS began to look like it could be beaten. The Syrian Kurdish forces under the banners of the YPG and YPJ, with American help, turned the tide. Now over three years later, another Islamist force has invaded Syria. This time in NATO member uniforms accompanied by a collection of miscreant jihadists including ISIS, al-Qaeda and Taliban. Needing only the Russian mobster/mass murderer Putin’s permission and Putin’s stooge Trump’s cowardice, Erdogan is now planning his future victories all the way to Mecca after he ethnically cleanses Afrin. I’m sure the Iranians are rejoicing.
The US claims it intends to remain in Syria. Its betrayal of its Syrian ally may put that in jeopardy but I am addressing only the legal right of the US to be in Syria in contrast to the right of the SDF to be there and defend Syria from the invasion.
US claims it is threatened by the very parties listed on the 2001 AUMF that Trump just gave cart blanch to for the murder our Kurdish, Christians and Yazidi allies. We claim that Syria is unable to function as a state so we can step in without Assad’s permission to fight the islamist enemy. The same enemy that Trump just green lighted to kill our allies.
That is no legal justification for US to be in Syria. The US fall back justification is that the sole functioning democratic government qualified to participate per the Geneva Communique, the SDF, has invited the US to stay. At least for now. Beyond that, the US, like Turkey, is simply a trespasser.
But what about the Kurds? They unlike the US, Turkey or its Jihadist ally forces are actually Syrians. They unlike US, Turkey and Jihadists have an inherent right of civil defense, in Syria. But that inherent right of self defense when attacked by a neighboring aggressor under international law includes the right to bring the war to the aggressor. Every state has that right.
In counties like Syria where the state ceases to function to protect its citizens, as the US claims as the basis for its right to be in Syria, the right of territorial self defense falls to the militia like the SDF. That’s international law generally but moreover specifically the law under Article I, Sec. 10 of the US Constitution that gives each sovereign united American state the absolute right to make war if the Presidency fails in performing its Constitutional duty to defend from invasion.
If the SDF has the power to give the US authority to be in Syria, the SDF has the right to self defense unlimited like any other sovereign power. Turkey may want to consider the cost of a protracted war with Syria especially if some part of that war is fought on Turkish soil.
Tim
Sam Nunberg: Some quick background material.
It appears that Nunberg was interviewed by the Mueller investigators on Thursday February 22, 2018. Here is the link to the NY Times story. Link> Nunberg to be interviewed.
You might recall that Nunberg was the Trump aid fired in August 2015 for a 2007 racist Facebook post related to Al Sharpton’s daughter. Here is the August 3, 2015 NY Times story. Link> Aug. 3, 2015 NY Times.
My NY Times archive search found a story from Aug. 12, 2106 but the link is dead. Here is the lede:
Trump, Former Campaign Aide Settle Confidentiality Dispute: Donald Trump reached a confidential settlement with a former political consultant he accused of violating a nondisclosure agreement, concluding his latest attempt to use the legal system to enforce the silence of his employees.
The Times has buried the story but I found this August 12, 2016 article in the Detroit News: Trump, ex-campaign aide settle confidentiality dispute http://detne.ws/2bcH8bT via @detroitnews
New York — Donald Trump reached a confidential settlement with a former political consultant he accused of violating a nondisclosure agreement, concluding his latest attempt to use the legal system to enforce the silence of his employees.
Trump launched the legal dispute with Sam Nunberg in late May by seeking $10 million in damages from the former aide in a private arbitration proceeding. Nunberg responded by filing a countersuit in New York state court last month.
On Friday, attorneys on both sides declined to provide further details about the settlement.
“All I can say it that it was amicably resolved, the whole dispute,” said Alan Garten, general counsel for the Trump Organization.
Nunberg’s attorney, Andrew Miltenberg, issued a similar statement in an email to The Associated Press. Nunberg declined to comment on the details of the settlement, saying only that his court case and the arbitration were resolved.
Nunberg served as a consultant to Trump’s campaign until about a year ago when he was fired for racist comments he posted on Facebook.
Trump, who has said he rarely settles lawsuits, has made a point of pursuing legal action to aggressively enforce confidentiality agreements.
The Associated Press reported earlier this year that nearly every Trump employee must sign legally binding nondisclosure agreements. The agreements bar them from releasing any confidential or disparaging information about the real estate mogul, his family or his companies.
A copy of Nunberg’s agreement, which became public as part of a counter lawsuit he filed against Trump, covered all of Trump’s children including his 10-year-old son, Barron.
In Nunberg’s case, Trump accused him of making disparaging comments and leaking confidential information to reporters. Trump made the claims in private arbitration, another common requirement written into his confidentiality agreements that seeks to keep the details of the disputes from a public airing in court.
But in response to Trump’s claims, Nunberg filed a lawsuit in New York state court last month, making the details of the arbitration public. In the lawsuit, Nunberg denied that he had disparaged Trump and accused Trump of trying to bully him into silence him because he chose to support Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the GOP primary.
Nunberg said Trump falsely accused him of being the source of a New York Post story that detailed a public spat between former Trump campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks. Nunberg referred to the quarrel as evidence of “an apparent affair,” an allegation that Trump’s attorneys have called “categorically untrue.”
Nunberg has been an outspoken critic of Lewandowski, who Trump fired in June.
In a GQ Magazine article earlier this year, Nunberg was quoted as saying he would suck the “blood out of (Lewandowski’s) skull by the time I’m done with him.”
Is Twitter censoring accounts for foreign powers? Isn’t that a FARA violation and revenue from it in US banks is money laundering? Ask Manafort. @FBI
First, I’m guessing Twitter will move to shut me up for good. So watch this space. I may be starting my own Rojava news service. Also watch my Face Book account Tawan Ceng (“War Crimes”) exposing Afrin war crimes. I’m cross posting to that site.
Here is why Twitter’s management should all see their own attorneys.
This is a page from Manafort’s recent superseding indictment. See para. 39.
Based on the recent activity in the dockets in DC and EDVA, don’t be shocked if it’s a #Mueller Monday.
Did Tillerson sell out the #YPG in Ankara? Is that why he had no US witnesses? @StateDept @statedeptspox @DefenseIntel @brett_mcgurk
Everything points to Trump using Tillerson to pick up where Flynn left off to work Trump family deals with al-Qaeda affiliated AKP and Erdogan.
Though only a remote observer, I think a significant fact that distinguishes the PYD in Syria from the folks in Northern Kurdistan is they don’t appear to adhere to Marxist orthodoxy. In four years of observation I did not detect Marxism as part of SDF ideology. Mildly strict military and social discipline but no overreaching socio economic philosophy other than a form of collectivism that appears to me to have grown out of military necessity based more on cultural norms as opposed to political ideology.
In support of my thesis is that fact that I went to UMass Amherst. While in attendance, I had three Marxist instructors, one former Marxist professor purged by the Soviets from the University of Moscow plus an anarchist legal studies professor.
Remember what happened when #Turkey tried to extradite Fetulah #Gulen? Nothing. Discussion of #Czech Republic Extradition.
Though I’m not familiar with extradition law generally and in particular European extradition law, I will try to show some of the materials I was able to find online ahead of Tuesday’s 11:00a.m. hearing.
It appears that the Czech Republic is a member of the “European Convention on Extradition.” So is Turkey.
Here is a link to the Czech Republic’s National Procedures that detail some of the procedures that are used there. Link >Czech Republic – National Procedures for Extradition.
Here is a link to the full text of Link >European Convention on Extradition.
The CIA said in 1976 that Afrin was Kurdish. Has Pompeo passed a polygraph?
Here is my 2015 post to the #CIA World Fact Book map that in 1976 before the Hafez al-Assad Arabization ethnic cleansing that shows that Afrin was Kurdish.
TimInHonolulu 