Group items tagged

The European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief, Federica Mogherini, argued that the EU should improve its ties to Moscow and re-engage in diplomacy and trade as gradual steps to ease tensions and toward resolving the crisis in and about Ukraine. The EU’s Foreign Ministers will convene on January 19 to discuss the normalization of EU – Russian relations and relations between the EEU and the EU. Mogherini‘s statement followed one week after French President Francois Hollande made a similar statement on France-Inter which was drowned by the media spectacle created due to the attack on the French cartoon magazine Charlie Hebdo and related incident which occurred less than 48 hours after Hollande’s landmark statement.

Hollande stressed that the regime of sanctions against Moscow must end, and be disbanded as progress on Ukraine is being made within the Normandy Framework. That is, without direct participation of the United States and the UK. A meeting of EU foreign ministers on January 19 in Brussels will reportedly focus on a more positive approach toward Moscow and a more proactive approach with regard to solving the crisis in and about Ukraine. Mogherini said that taking into consideration a common aim of a free trade from Lisbon to Vladivosok, the EU should study the possibility of expanding trade with Russia as well as with the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) which came into effect on January 1, 2015. Mogherini reportedly that: “There are significant interests on both sides, which may be conflicting but could serve as a basis for trade-offs and could imply a give and take approach.”

The EU Foreign Policy Chief also noted that the EU should consider reviewing joint efforts between the EU and Russia to solve problems pertaining Syria, Iraq, Libya, Iran, North Korea (DPRK) and Palestine. The Russian News agency Tass reports that Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, for his part, stated at the Gaidar Economic Forum on Wednesday, that he hopes Moscow would be able to return relations with the European Union to normal soon. It is noteworthy that Hollande’s, during his statement on France-Inter, last week, stressed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally assured him that Moscow has no plans, whatsoever, to annex any part of Ukraine’s Donbass region. Russia does, however, consider the predominantly Russian-speaking regions in southern and eastern Ukraine as its sphere of interests and perceives NATO’s eastwards expansion as a threat to Russia’s security.

In a major scoop said to put a “stake in the heart of the Muslim ban,” MSNBC‘s Rachel Maddow reported Thursday evening on a new leaked Department of Homeland Security (DHS) analysis which essentially shreds the Trump administration’s rationale for banning travel from seven Muslim-majority nations. The document, prepared by DHS’ internal intelligence agency, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, concludes that the majority of foreign-born, U.S.-based violent extremists were radicalized several years after their entry into the U.S.

The Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent on Friday suggested that the leaked analysis could be part of the “real reason for the delay,” rather than the stated reason of not wanting to sully the warm reception received by the president after his joint-session speech Tuesday evening. “The Trump administration can’t solve the problem that has always bedeviled this policy, which is that there isn’t any credible national security rationale for it,” he wrote. “Unlike on the campaign trail, when you’re governing, you actually have to have justification for what you’re proposing, or you often run into trouble.” Similarly, Maddow observed that “they really do have a problem here,” pointing to the document’s key finding, which states that “most foreign-born, U.S.-based violent extremists are likely radicalized several years after their entry to the United States, limiting the ability of screening and vetting officials to prevent their entry because of national security concerns.” “The national security justification for this whole ban—this setting up of extreme vetting—is bull-pucky,” Maddow said. “There’s nothing they can set up at the border to tell you years down the road who might become…a radical and violent person years from now.” This latest leak follows the release of another DHS analysis last week that similarly undermined the Trump administration’s claim that people traveling from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, and Somalia pose a severe threat to the United States. That document, obtained by the Associated Press, concluded that “citizenship is an ‘unlikely indicator’ of terrorism threats to the United States and that few people from the countries Trump listed in his travel ban have carried out attacks or been involved in terrorism-related activities in the U.S. since Syria’s civil war started in 2011,” as AP reported. Taken together, the two documents throw cold water on most of the administration’s stated justification for the pending executive order.