TBR News August 25, 2017

Aug 25 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., August 26, 2017:”The small clique of American communists that has been disrupting the political scene with screams of rage against ‘fascists’ is having an effect on the public that is opposite of their, and their handlers and supporters, wishes. Screaming that Robert E. Lee was a fascist, black-hating racist or that anyone supporting him is an evil Nazi is typical of the professional left-wing screamer. As empty of brains as a ladle, these misfits are beginning to annoy a usually complaisant middle class and in the end, when this class becomes annoyed, the object of their annoyance becomes very silent. But the puppet masters, who are known, are in a very sensitive position because of the nature of their wealth. What goes up can certainly come down, rigged on either side. They rejoice when they can manipulate prices upwards but if an enemy finds the means to force the values down, they sweat, boil and explode.”

 Table of Contents

  • Murderous Manipulations
  • Here’s Where George Soros REALLY Puts His Money: Fast Food, Junk Food, Energy, Environment and Guns
  • Borderline Insanity: What Does Brexit Mean for Northern Ireland?
  • SECRECY NEWS
  • Whistleblower Lawsuit Charges Illegal Retaliation, Dangerous Practices at CIA’s Elite Directorate of Operations
  • In stinging attack, France’s Macron says Poland isolating itself in Europe

 Murderous Manipulations

by Christian Jürs

In the great flood of private emails from, and to, the leadership of the Democratic National Committee, there are very important points raised that have been buried in the mass of paperwork. Also, there are many additional postings from the WikiLeaks people that supplement these messages. Here are several that show the connection between the Clinton people and the highly manipulative and demanding billionaire Hungarian-born George Soros. One of the messages is extremely important and dangerous in its implications of remote control murder and the suggested release of deadly viruses on an unsuspecting population.

Forwarded message ———- From: Jesse Ferguson jferguson@hillaryclinton.com Date: Wed, May 6, 2015 at 5:24 PM Subject: Priorities USA To:

HRCRR hrcrr@hillaryclinton.com,

Dennis Cheng dcheng@hillaryclinton.com,

Marc Elias melias@hillaryclinton.com,

Robby Mook re47@hillaryclinton.com,

Charlie Baker Charlie.Baker@deweysquare.com,

Jennifer Palmieri jpalmieri@hillaryclinton.com,

Kristina Schake kschake@hillaryclinton.com

FYI – the New York Times will soon report that HRC is doing meetings for Priorities USA.(A George Soros funded organization. Ed) We have NOT confirmed the meeting and will not be confirming these types of meetings. We are, however, reflecting how will support Priorities USA work where needed and framed this up. If you get press questions as follow ups on this, please send them to me.

*DEEP BACKGROUND (CLINTON OFFICIAL/NO QUOTE)* · Like the Obama campaign did in the 2012 election, the Clinton campaign will support Priorities USA as is appropriate under the law. · Campaign officials, including the candidate may, from time to time, attend, speak at or be featured guests at their events. · No one with the campaign will solicit more than the federal limit ($5,000) for Priorities USA, as permitted by law.

*BACKGROUND (CLINTON OFFICIAL)*

“With some Republican candidates reportedly setting up and outsourcing their entire campaign to SuperPAC’s and the Koch Brothers pledging $1 billion alone for the 2016 campaign, Democrats have to have the resources to fight back. There is too much at stake for our future for Democrats to unilaterally disarm. Hillary Clinton and her campaign team will be encouraging of Priorities USA because they have the proven record of a successful national campaign that drove home a critical message in 2012.”

Jesse F. Ferguson Deputy National Press Secretary and Senior Spokesperson @JesseFFerguson

. On Oct 7, 2014, at 11:11 AM,

HumaAbedin Huma@clintonemail.com mail to: Huma@clintonemail.com wrote: She is having dinner with George Soros tonight. Do you know much about America Votes? As Greg Speed explained to me, they are the coordinated campaign for various outside groups. Soros is a big supporter of the group and he’s going to ask her tonight if she will come to a fundraiser for them at his house in December. Thoughts? ________________________________

From: Greg Speed GSpeed@americavotes.org

mailto:GSpeed@americavotes.org

Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 11:42 AM

To: Huma Abedin Cc: Lona Valmoro lvalmoro.hrco@gmail.com mailto:lvalmoro.hrco@gmail.com; Evan Kost

Subject: Invitation from America Votes

Hi Huma (and Lona): It was wonderful to see you last week. Thanks so much again for making the time in a very, very busy week. Attached is an invitation for Secretary Clinton to join us at an evening reception at the home of George Soros in December. We would be thrilled to have her serve as honored guest and speaker at this gathering of our top supporters honoring America Votes’ work over the past 10 years and looking forward to the next decade. Thanks so much in advance for your and the Secretary’s consideration of this request. We are now holding dates at Mr. Soros’ home in the middle of the month (Dec. 15-17) and hope we can find a mutually agreeable date during that window if possible or an alternative. Please let us know if we can provide any further information, address any questions, etc. Thanks very much again and look forward to talking again soon. Best, GS Greg Speed President America Votes gspeed@americavotes.org mailto:gspeed@americavotes.org

202.962.7251 tel:202.962.7251 direct 202.365.0594 tel:202.365.0594 mobile 1155 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 600 Washington, DC 20036 Connect with America Votes! Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/America-Votes/136180176422660 | Twitter http://www.twitter.com/americavotes | Website http://www.americavotes.org/

NOTICE: This information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of the communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by reply e-mail and delete the material from any computer. Thank you.

From: Greg Speed GSpeed@americavotes.org

mailto:GSpeed@americavotes.org

Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 11:42 AM

To: Huma Abedin

Cc: Lona Valmoro lvalmoro.hrco@gmail.com

Mail to:lvalmoro.hrco@gmail.com;Evan Kost

Subject: Invitation from America Votes

Hi Huma (and Lona): It was wonderful to see you last week. Thanks so much again for making the time in a very, very busy week. Attached is an invitation for Secretary Clinton to join us at an evening reception at the home of George Soros in December. We would be thrilled to have her serve as honored guest and speaker at this gathering of our top supporters honoring America Votes’ work over the past 10 years and looking forward to the next decade. Thanks so much in advance for your and the Secretary’s consideration of this request. We are now holding dates at Mr. Soros’ home in the middle of the month (Dec. 15-17) and hope we can find a mutually agreeable date during that window if possible or an alternative. Please let us know if we can provide any further information, address any questions, etc. Thanks very much again and look forward to talking again soon. Best, GS

From: Jesse Ferguson jferguson@hillaryclinton.com

Date: Wed, May 6, 2015 at 5:24 PM

Subject: Priorities USA

To: HRCRR hrcrr@hillaryclinton.com,

Dennis Cheng dcheng@hillaryclinton.com,

Marc Elias melias@hillaryclinton.com,

Robby Mook re47@hillaryclinton.com,

Charlie Baker Charlie.Baker@deweysquare.com, Jennifer Palmieri jpalmieri@hillaryclinton.com,

Kristina Schake kschake@hillaryclinton.com

FYI – the New York Times will soon report that HRC is doing meetings for Priorities USA. We have NOT confirmed the meeting and will not be confirming these types of meetings. We are, however, reflecting how will support Priorities USA work where needed and framed this up. If you get press questions as follow ups on this, please send them to me. *DEEP BACKGROUND (CLINTON OFFICIAL/NO QUOTE)* · Like the Obama campaign did in the 2012 election, the Clinton campaign will support Priorities USA as is appropriate under the law. · Campaign officials, including the candidate may, from time to time, attend, speak at or be featured guests at their events. · No one with the campaign will solicit more than the federal limit ($5,000) for Priorities USA, as permitted by law.

BACKGROUND (CLINTON OFFICIAL)

“With some Republican candidates reportedly setting up and outsourcing their entire campaign to SuperPAC’s and the Koch Brothers pledging $1 billion alone for the 2016 campaign, Democrats have to have the resources to fight back. There is too much at stake for our future for Democrats to unilaterally disarm. Hillary Clinton and her campaign team will be encouraging of Priorities USA because they have the proven record of a successful national campaign that drove home a critical message in 2012.”

From: john.podesta@gmail.com

To: hdr29@hrcoffice.com, ha16@hillaryclinton.com

Date: Wed, August 10, 2016

Subject: Soros and future health problems

George Soros now says in a confidential email that as he has been so supportive of Hillary,(mucho bread!) he requests her to see that Russia’s Putin ceases to block Russian attitude changes to globalization. As a former KGB man, Putin is very clever at protecting himself but surely the Company can manage to find a way for an accident to happen. After their doing the Smolensk crash, he says they can always make the impossible happen. Hillary has agreed and has spoken with Brennan whom she had had many dealings with and he has said this can happen. They talked about a car accident like the one used to shut Hastings up.

We have to watch out that galactic subjects such as the IMX program never get even hinted at around Hillary. If she makes reference to IMX, this might cause serious problems for everyone concerned. It is doubted that it will ever get used but if it does, we hope the important sections of America’s population are property vaccinated. The world has an overpopulation problem, true, but IMX is not the answer. The Dietrick people and those of the neoCons who know about it will be disappointed because curbing the rampant ambitions of the PRC is one of their goals but that game ain’t worth the candle, believe me!

Commentary

On April 10 2010, a Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft of the Polish Air Force crashed near the city of Smolensk, Russia, killing all 96 people on board. Among the victims were the President of Poland Lech Kaczyński and his wife Maria, the former President of Poland in exile Ryszard Kaczorowski, the chief of the Polish General Staff and other senior Polish military officers, the president of the National Bank of Poland, Polish Government officials, 18 members of the Polish Parliament, senior members of the Polish clergy and relatives of victims of the Katyn massacre. The group was arriving from Warsaw to attend an event marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre, which took place not far from Smolensk.

The pilots were attempting to land at Smolensk North Airport – a former military airbase – in thick fog, with visibility reduced to about 500 metres (1,600 ft). The aircraft descended through thick ground fog, far below the normal approach path until it struck trees, rolled inverted and crashed into the ground, coming to rest in a wooded area a short distance from the runway.

Both the Russian and Polish official investigations found no technical faults with the aircraft, and concluded that the crew failed to conduct the approach in a safe manner in the given weather conditions.

On the other hand, fogged-in fields use a ground-situated system that automatically advises incoming pilots of the correct altitude.

Should someone, concealed by a dense ground fog, get into these automatic systems, (they are in containers on the ground, not in control centers) they could very quickly and easily change the setting so that an incoming pilot would believe he was hundreds of feet above a fogged-in runway when in actuality he was only ten feet above the ground. Que bono? Not the Russians who had invited the Poles to a ceremony there for the purpose of rapprochement.

It was not, however, in the interests of a certain American foreign intelligence agency for Poland to establish firm relations with Russia. Poland was part of the Russian encirclement program and could not be allowed to break away.

In 2014, the CIA developed methods to infect a vehicle’s control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations. (Vault 7 releases)

And on September 6, 2016, less than a month after the last conversation concerning Mr. Soros’ concerns about Russian President Putin, there was a car accident in Moscow when a Mercedes suddenly accelerated while driving on Kutuzovsky Avenue, swerved and crossed into the oncoming traffic lane. It crashed into a BMW vehicle, instantly killing the driver.

The BMW in question was assigned to the Russian upper house of Parliament, the Federation Council, had no passengers when the crash occurred.

This was the vehicle, and the driver, used by Vladimir Putin while he was resident in Moscow.

Putin was not in the car at the time.

There have been other such accidents in which a moving vehicle suddenly accelerates and swerves into a targeted on-coming vehicle. In one other case (there are a number more) Gopinath Munde, India’s newly-appointed Rural Development Minister, died in a car crash in the capital, Delhi on June 3, 2014

The speeding car travelling at 80-90 km/hour suddenly swerved across the dividing line and hit the Minister’s sedan on the left side in Aurobindo Chowk

Munde, 64, along with his personal secretary Surendra Nair, was on his way to the IGI airport.

It is clearly evident that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is fully capable of using a vehicle as a method of destroying unwanted individuals with perfect impunity.

Journalist Michael Hastings died on June 18, 2013, in a fiery high-speed automobile crash in his Mercedes C250 Coupé following the publication of “Why Democrats Love to Spy On Americans” on BuzzFeed.

Witnesses said Hasting’s vehicle suddenly increased speed and veered across the road, slamming into a tree and killing the occupant instantly.

Hastings had been a vocal critic of the Obama administration.

The reference to IMX obviously refers to a man-made virus. ‘Dietrick’ refers to Ft.Dietrick, the United States Army Medical Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland. This institution is known for its work on viruses and other aspects of Bacteriological Warfare (BW)

A number of official American agencies view the PRC as a potential dangerous trade and military rival and it would not be surprising that there have been considerations of launching some kind of a virus that would cripple the PRC. The Germans considered using bubonic plague in the final stages of the Second World War but when it was realized that this could infect Germans as well, the project was dropped.

The chief architect, a General Schreiber, later worked for the US government’s virus lab in San Antonio, also developing a possible form of the plague. This project, too, was shelved for the same reason the German leadership used.

 

Here’s Where George Soros REALLY Puts His Money: Fast Food, Junk Food, Energy, Environment and Guns

August 24, 2017

The Daily Caller

Billionaire George Soros gives liberally to progressive causes, but he puts his financial bets on fast-food chains, GMO foods, coal, firearms and gas-guzzling cars, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group analysis of his latest financial filing.

Soros claims he is a fighter for human rights but that hasn’t kept his separate private family investment company, Quantum Group of Funds, from investing in oil exploration in Western Sahara, long viewed by human rights groups and the U.N. Security Council as a territory brutally occupied by Morocco.

Soros Fund Management, the billionaire’s main corporate investment company, disclosed his latest financial investments for the second quarter in August 2017, as required by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). A previous quarterly report showed he lost nearly $1 billion after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. The fund manages about $30 billion in assets.

Soros latest quarterly submission to the SEC shows he invested in companies opposed by left-wing advocacy groups on issues such as promoting healthy nutrition, increasing workers’ wages, protecting the environment, and fighting climate change.

“Soros is a socialist in ideology but a capitalist in methodology,” said Matthew Vadum, senior vice president of the conservative nonprofit Capital Research Center, which follows private money flows to foundations, charities and philanthropies. “So, George Soros is a bundle of contradictions.”

Soros’ nonprofit, tax deductible contributions range from a $5,225 donation to Human Rights Watch to $625,000 to the Center for American Progress, which was founded by John Podesta, campaign chairman for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2016 bid for the White House, according to Soros’ 2015 990 IRS tax filings.

Soros operates two non-profit Open Society groups – the Open Society Institute with net assets of $2.6 billion and the Foundation to Promote Open Society, with assets of $7.3 billion. Only a fraction of those funds are actually given in a single year.

Soros’ largest single donation in 2015 was $24 million, to his own Soros Economic Development Fund.

The billionaire’s second-quarter 2017 investments include:

Fast Food and “Junk” Food

Many low-income advocacy groups have launched community programs seeking healthier diets for the nation’s poor. Former First Lady Michelle Obama backed the campaign as one of her top priority causes when she was in the White House.

But Soros latest report shows he invested $317 million into fast-food and “junk food” companies.

Since 2016, Soros tripled his investment in a company called Mondelez, a firm largely unknown to most Americans but whose brands are very well known: Oreo cookies, Chips Ahoy, and Nabisco. He currently owns 1.35 million shares in the company. At the current market price of $45, he’s invested $79 million in Mondelez.

Soros also owns $39 million in stock in Kraft-Heinz, which sells Oscar Mayer, Velveeta, Kool-AID, A-1 Sauce and Cool Whip. He invested $19 million in Kellogg’s, maker of Cheez-It, Pringles, Pop Tarts, Fruit Loops and Frosted Flakes.

Soros invested $1 million in the last quarter in such fast food eateries as Wendy’s, Buffalo Wild Wings and Papa Johns. Minimum wage advocates scorn fast food outlets because of allegedly too-low wages, but that did not deter the billionaire.

Soros also invested $14.4 million in Monsanto, the world leader in products made from genetically modified soy, corn and soybeans. Many nutrition-oriented advocates detest such products. Monsanto is seeking a merger with GMO giant Bayer, which federal regulators are reviewing on anti-trust grounds.

Soros seemed to lose a little faith in Whole Foods, however, reducing his holdings in the organic food company before Amazon announced its acquisition of the Austin, Texas firm. Only $1.4 million of Soros’ $317 million total of food investments are in Whole Foods.

Energy and the Environment

Soros put $26.5 million in the Climate Policy Initiative, a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to achieving “low-carbon growth.”

But Soros’ other investments fly in the face of environmental advocates who insist fossil fuels are creating the problem of man-made global warming. Soros, for example, has a $4.4 million stake in Peabody Energy, the largest private sector coal company in the world, which generates 10 percent of U.S. electricity.

He also invested $5.9 million in Key Energy Services, $12.9 million in Plains GP Holdings, and $5.4 million in California Resources, all involved in oil and natural gas extraction.

There are also carbon investments Soros made with Quantum, his “family” investment firm. In 2011, the billionaire removed all outside investors from Quantum and converted it into a family company specifically to avoid reporting requirements under the Dodd-Frank Act, which was passed by the Obama administration.

Quantum invests in San Leon Energy, an oil and natural gas company with two licenses to drill for oil in the Western Sahara, a territory Morocco has occupied since Spain abandoned it as a colony in the 1970s.

A U.N. Security Council legal advisor concluded in 2002 that Morocco had no energy and mineral exploration rights in the Western Sahara and that its extractive ores should be solely “for the benefit of the peoples of those territories, on their behalf or in consultation with their representatives.”

Eugene Kontorovich, an international legal authority, concluded in a Columbia University report, “Morocco’s presence in the territory is in violation of a (1975) Security Council demand for a withdrawal.”

Erik Hagen, a board member of the Western Sahara Resource Watch, a human rights group in the region, told TheDCNF of his meeting with Quantum executives in which he raised their investment in the Western Sahara. “I’ve been working on investor contact for 16 years, and I’ve never had a more unpleasant investor meeting than with Quantum,” he said.

Soros likes the fossil fuel-driven automobile industry too, holding a $11.7 million stake in CARS.com. During the same quarter, he sold his remaining 400 shares in Tesla, which amounted to a scant $131,000.

He also likes airlines, investing slightly more than $1 million in Southwest Airlines, Spirit Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Air.

Soros is not solely invested in oil and gas, having put $13.4 million in Nextera Energy Group, a renewable energy company.

Guns

Cabelas is one of the nation’s largest hunting, camping and fishing chains with total revenue of more than $1.4 billion. Soros’ investment of approximately $1 million in Cabelas may shock some of his anti-gun groups. Cabelas’ home page currently features a Savage Arms bolt-action rifle.

No matter Soros’ political philosophy, he clearly understands how capitalist markets work, having almost broke the Bank of England in 1992 by betting against its currency and turning a $1 billion profit in the process.

“This is a man who hates freedom, hates markets and yet is brilliant and almost unparalleled in his grasp of how markets work,” Vadum said.

 

Borderline Insanity: What Does Brexit Mean for Northern Ireland?

For almost 20 years, Northern Ireland has largely been at peace. Brexit now threatens to tear the scabs off of old wounds. London recently presented a plan for the country, but it is vague and lacks detail.

August 24, 2017

By Jörg Schindler

Spiegel

Declan Fearon is standing with one leg on a grave while his second is in a different country. “The border runs right here,” he says, pointing to a wall covered with moss. The wall is part of the Church of the Sacred Heart in Jonesborough, as is the cemetery behind the church. But an invisible line runs in between, dividing those saying their prayers from those lying in eternal repose. For almost 100 years, the line has also divided the largely Protestant Northern Ireland from the Catholic southern part of the island.

Fearon walks over to a gravestone. In gold lettering on a black background, it reads: “Brian Fearon” and “Rest in Peace.” The dead man’s son grins: “After Brexit I’ll have to bring my passport along when I visit dad, just to be on the safe side.”

Declan Fearon, 60, is a soft-tempered Catholic with a thick accent. He was 11 years old when his homeland essentially became Europe’s most violent warzone. At the time, the centuries-old conflict over Northern Ireland — which belongs to Great Britain, but which most people on the island see as an integral part of Ireland — erupted once again. In the ensuing 30-year-long conflict, quaintly referred to by both the British and the Irish as the “Troubles,” some 3,500 people lost their lives, hundreds of them in County Armagh, where Fearon’s father lies buried.

“Bad days,” says Declan Fearon, but “they’re over, done, finito.” His company, which builds kitchens and sells them on both sides of the border, is located on top of the erstwhile demarcation line. The border is open and it is only possible to tell which side you are on by whether the mailboxes are red or green.

People from the north drink their Guinness in the south, parents from the south send their children to school in the north. In some houses, residents sleep in the north and brush their teeth in the south, or vice versa. People here run into the border all the time, without noticing. “We want it to stay that way,” says Fearon. But he knows that things are likely to change.

‘Investing in Your Future’

Ever since a small majority of United Kingdom citizens voted in favor of leaving the European Union in June 2016, the border has been back in the minds of the Irish. And in the future, it likely won’t just be there. If the UK leaves the EU in 2019, the European Union’s external border will run directly through the island of Ireland — 500 kilometers across 300 streets, including bridges that were only recently built using EU funds. The plaques on those bridges read: “Investing in your future.”

The future of the island hasn’t been this uncertain for quite some time. In London, the government only now seems to be realizing just how vast the task they are facing really is. Brexit has presented London with hundreds of unsolved problems for England, Scotland and Wales. And all of those problems are present in spades across the Irish Sea in Northern Ireland.

Particularly for the 1.8 million citizens of Northern Ireland, Brexit threatens to become a Kafka-esque maze of confusion. Ever since the Good Friday Agreement, which established a delicate peace between the conflict parties in 1998, they aren’t just citizens of the UK anymore. The Irish government in Dublin also guarantees them Irish citizenship, which means that they also belong to the EU. It is a right that Catholics in Northern Ireland are particularly eager to take advantage of. Following Brexit, they will become EU citizens outside of EU territory — and between them and their fellow Irish citizens in the south, there will be a border that won’t be nearly as invisible as it is today.

And this in a fragile region in which the majority of residents voted to remain a part of the EU and where questions as to which side one stands on have been answered with brutal violence for centuries. And sometimes still are.

Northern Ireland is a difficult case. Even Brexit Minister David Davis admits that the problem will be a difficult one to solve. The long-awaited position paper that the government released last Wednesday revealed little more than goodwill. The intention, the paper made clear, is for a border that is “as seamless and frictionless as possible” and one that should do nothing to endanger the peace process, yet no details are included regarding how that goal is to be achieved. The European Union has made clear that Brexit negotiations would fail absent a solution to the Irish question. But London seems to be at a loss. If Brexit is comparable to Britain playing simultaneous games of chess against 27 national grandmasters, then for Northern Ireland it is like playing such games blindfolded.

Five Different Countries

In McNamee’s Bakery, the men in their white chef hats look as though they are performing a complicated ballet. One throws the dough into baking molds while two others shake the molds to even it out. Four men empty and refill the huge oven, which is the size of a garage. They do so 14 times a day, producing 21,000 loafs of soda bread for the Irish and British markets.

“It is a well-practiced team,” says Michael Waddell, who runs the bakery and whose employees come from five different countries.

The bakery is in Crossmaglen, a Northern Irish border town that is still in the process of recovering from its dark history. Beginning in the 1970s, Republican paramilitaries and the British army transformed the place into a battlefield. Soldiers housed in the heavily defended barracks in the town center only emerged in helicopters while snipers waited on the surrounding rooftops. Reporters from around the world would drink up their courage in Paddy Short’s pub before describing the horrors they had witnessed in the heartland of the Troubles. Those who could, moved away.

Waddell describes a typical cake order when asked what Brexit would mean for McNamee’s, which is now the largest employer in Crossmaglen. When a customer orders a birthday cake in a branch across the border in Ireland, the order is sent to headquarters in Crossmaglen, where Waddell employs four cake bakers, two Croatians who live in Ireland, and one each from Latvia and Lithuania, both of whom live in Northern Ireland. Much of the flour comes from Germany, the margarine from Belgium, the sugar from France and the fruits from Greece and Turkey.

Once finished the next day, the cake is taken across the border, where the customer pays in euros, but it appears on the books in Northern Ireland and the company pays its sales tax in pounds. “Sound complicated?” Waddell asks. “It’s actually quite simple, as long as there isn’t a hard border.”

He says he would love to have the opportunity to speak with Boris Johnson. The foreign secretary produced one of the most memorable platitudes in the platitude-rich history of Brexit when he said: “Our policy is having our cake and eating it.”

Expecting the Worst

There are hundreds of companies on both sides of the border that are in the same predicament as Waddell’s, and they tend to be expecting the worst. In the 20 years of relative peace that have come following the Good Friday Agreement, the island of Ireland has transformed for them into a single economic entity. More than a third of the milk produced in Northern Ireland is processed south of the border while around 400,000 Irish sheep are slaughtered in the north every year. Even the Guinness brewery, which is headquartered in Dublin, operates a huge canning and bottling facility in Belfast. Fully 30,000 people commute to work across the border each day, including many people from elsewhere in the EU, particularly from Eastern Europe.

But if the UK ends up leaving the EU single market and customs union, goods will no longer be able to pass through the border as freely. Nor will people. Brexit hardliners, after all, have promised to protect their country from “mass immigration” from the EU. British Prime Minister Theresa May said in July that “nobody wants to return to the borders of the past” — a pledge that left many wondering: What borders will replace them?

It is inevitable that some sort of border control regime will have to be reintroduced. The EU also has an interest in such checks, if only to prevent products such as chlorinated chicken from finding their way into the bloc via Britain. Some in London have begun speaking of an “E-border,” which envisions using technology to monitor the border. While such a thing may sound enticing, the Irish government has said it won’t work. Dublin has also said that it cannot be relied upon to help the British construct any kind of border facilities.

Many have begun to fear the tensions that a visible border could produce. If even just one customs official were posted to the region, he or she would have to be sheltered somewhere. And each border structure could become a possible target for radicals from either side. They would have to be secured by police or even by soldiers. Slowly but surely, the border would become visible again — as would old wounds and new targets. The path to violence is a short one: Even if the division between the two Irelands has become largely invisible today, it is still there.

A Monstrosity of Stone and Steel

Nowhere is that easier to see than in Belfast itself. On a recent dreary summer’s day in the Northern Irish capital, Garrett Carr was standing in front of an eight-meter (26-foot) high monstrosity made of stone and steel. “If that’s not a border …” he said.

Carr had proposed a meeting at Short Strand, a Catholic enclave in Protestant East Belfast. The neighborhood is full of walls that are high enough to make it extremely difficult to throw garbage, bottles or excrement over the top to the other side. Known optimistically as “peace walls,” they divide Catholic republicans from Protestant unionists. There are hundreds of them in the city, population 340,000, more even than before the Good Friday Agreement. “But the new ones are prettier,” says Carr and points to a bright yellow bit of wall on Woodstock Link. The word “hope” has been painted on it.

Carr, 42, walked the entire length of the 500-kilometer border between Northern Ireland and Ireland for his book, “The Rule of the Land.” Nowhere, though, did he see as many barricades as he does back home. “In Belfast, you can see how obsessed we are with borders.”

Even today, almost 20 years after the peace deal, 90 percent of Belfast parents still send their children to exclusively Catholic or exclusively Protestant schools. Republicans and unionists don’t intermarry, they support different football teams and they are buried at different cemeteries. And not all of them end up in their graves as a result of natural causes. Between July 2016 and June 2017, Northern Irish police counted four dead and almost 100 injured by paramilitary violence, including 54 shootings and 32 “bomb incidents.”

Elsewhere, the dominant form of terrorism may have become Islamist in nature, but on the is

Brexit is the most treacherous explosive to have been laid on the island in the last 20 years — and far and wide, there is nobody who might be able to calm the situation. Northern Ireland hasn’t had a government since January, with the Catholic party Sinn Féin and the Protestant DUP — damned to forming a coalition together by the Good Friday Agreement — hopelessly at odds with each other. Now, the country is being administered by London where the hapless Theresa May is only able to hold on to power because she negotiated a deal with the 10 DUP members of the House of Commons. Since then, the Catholics have been furious.

Too Good to Be True

Given these circumstances, will it even be possible to negotiate a fair solution to the Irish question? And what might such a thing look like?

If you ask Irish and Northern Irish Catholics, they would like to see Northern Ireland receive a “special status,” which would allow the country to remain part of both the United Kingdom and the European Union. Were that to happen, the border between Britain and the EU would run through the Irish Sea, all controls would take place at air- and seaports and the current status quo on the island would remain. It is a nice idea. But likely too good to be true.

To make it true, not only would London and the remaining 27 EU member states all have to grant their approval, but so too would the almost 1 million Northern Irish Protestants, most of whom are loyalists through and through. For them, any solution that makes Irish unification more likely would be seen as treason. “Many of us served the United Kingdom in uniform and died for the United Kingdom. That should never be forgotten,” says Howard Brooker.

He is sitting in an old Mercedes bus on the shore of Lough Erne with a perfect rainbow arcing over the lake. It is the kind of landscape one typically associates with Ireland: verdantly green, lonesome and idyllic. Brooker, though, has turned his back to the view. He is looking at a farmhouse and telling the story of Doreen, a young woman who was shot here in February 1980 by two fighters from the Irish Republican Army, a Catholic terrorist group. “Because she was a Protestant,” Booker says. Behind him, 30 people nod solemnly — before the bus continues its journey to the next crime scene.

This bizarre tour through Fermanagh County in Northern Ireland lasts four hours and hugs the border. It is organized by the South East Fermanagh Foundation and founded by “victims and survivors” who refuse to forget and are unable to forgive. Like Brooker, many of them patrolled the border as members of the British army.

For them, there was always only one aggressor: Catholic terrorists who wanted to “ethnically cleanse” the north. And that is why Brooker tirelessly explains who was shot by how many bullets and when as the bus rolls through the most peaceful-looking landscape you can imagine. In the late evening, when the bus reaches its final destination, Brooker says in farewell: “Let’s not forget: We beat them. We beat them!”

It doesn’t sound like he and the others would accept a present or a future that included Northern Ireland coming even a little bit closer to Ireland. If that is the alternative, they would prefer a hard border. No matter how high the price.

 

SECRECY NEWS

From the FAS Project on Government Secrecy

Volume 2017, Issue No. 61

August 25, 2017

DOMESTIC TERRORISM: AN OVERVIEW, & MORE FROM CRS

The problem of “domestic terrorism” is examined in a new report from the Congressional Research Service, along with an assessment of the government’s difficulty in addressing it.

“Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11), domestic terrorists–people who commit crimes within the homeland and draw inspiration from U.S.-based extremist ideologies and movements–have not received as much attention from federal law enforcement as their violent jihadist counterparts,” the report says.

Among other obstacles to an effective response, “The federal government lacks a process for publicly designating domestic terrorist organizations.” See Domestic Terrorism: An Overview by CRS Specialist Jerome P. Bjelopera, August 21, 2017.

Other new and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following.

Confederate Names and Military Installations, CRS Insight, August 22, 2017

FY2018 National Defense Authorization Act: Selected Military Personnel Issues, August 22, 2017

Human Rights in China and U.S. Policy: Issues for the 115th Congress, July 17, 2017

North Korean Cyber Capabilities: In Brief, August 3, 2017

Justice Department’s Role in Cyber Incident Response, August 23, 2017

Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP): History and Overview, updated August 17, 2017

Remedies for Patent Infringement, July 18, 2017

Russia: Background and U.S. Interests, updated August 21, 2017

 

Whistleblower Lawsuit Charges Illegal Retaliation, Dangerous Practices at CIA’s Elite Directorate of Operations

August 24, 2017

by Adam Zagorin

Project on Government Oversight

An undercover CIA agent not long ago filed a federal lawsuit charging a high-ranking spymaster and others at the Agency’s elite Directorate of Operations with illegal retaliation against him. The unusual court action came roughly two years after the agent first made allegations of official misconduct that reportedly received no response from CIA or its Office of Inspector General. Partly for that reason, the case of James S. Pars—his name is a CIA-assigned pseudonym—could set a precedent for whistleblowers at the CIA and other secrecy-bound agencies.

The case also highlights a growing list of incidents where whistleblowers have called the Intelligence Community to account for failing to offer them protection or due process after they followed designated internal procedures to disclose wrongdoing, even if that wrongdoing allegedly involved senior officials or if the lives of America’s covert agents were at risk.

At the same time, the lawsuit provides a rare snapshot of bizarre and allegedly dangerous practices at one of the CIA’s secret forward operating bases, a reminder of past Agency failures, some of which led to loss of life or other tragic consequences.

“Whistleblowers in the Intelligence Community who use proper channels to disclose alleged wrongdoing deserve protection and due process,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) told POGO, referring to the Pars case. “We can’t expect better government if we silence those who are seeking to fix it. Long delays at the CIA OIG underscore serious weaknesses in the system, and raise concerns over accountability at the CIA.”

A New Precedent for Whistleblowers?Amid tension between the White House and the Intelligence Community over politically charged leaks to the press, the Pars case provides the Trump administration with an opportunity to enhance whistleblower protections for employees who use official channels to report wrongdoing within the “deep state.” Such protections are designed in part to stop leaks by encouraging Intelligence Community employees to report wrongdoing through proper channels without fear of retaliation, instead of revealing damaging information to the press or other outsiders.

President Trump has supported enhanced whistleblower protections for some federal employees, while his recently ousted strategist, Steve Bannon, oversaw numerous articles promoting whistleblowers when he ran Breitbart News, criticizing political opponents for failing to do so. One such article was headlined: “Obama Trashes Whistleblower Protection for Federal Employees.”

On the other hand, the Trump administration says it has tripled so-called “leak investigations,” and has promised a crackdown on any release of classified information, a process that risks the inappropriate and illegal targeting of whistleblowers.

Pars filed his federal lawsuit in December 2016. The little-noticed accusations send a signal about how some whistleblowers are treated in the Intelligence Community, say his lawyers, a message they have communicated to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein and other relevant committee chairs. If a court sides with Pars, it could oblige the CIA, and by extension other intelligence agencies, to respond to charges of whistleblower retaliation by conducting investigations and deciding cases in a more timely manner.

If, however, the court rules that the CIA has no obligation to conduct investigations or otherwise respond and can ignore mandated time constraints, that would mark a setback for whistleblowers who could be left in limbo with no end in sight.

Pars’ ongoing lawsuit lands at a time when the Intelligence Community’s record of responding to whistleblower complaints, especially retaliation, is poor, according to statistics released by the Intelligence Community’s Office of Inspector General, and obtained by McClatchy newspapers. Those statistics and subsequent cases that have been made public indicate that charges are often not substantiated, or not even investigated.

Against this backdrop, Pars’ lawsuit argues that by failing to probe his claims or reach a decision about them within a deadline of 240 days established under regulation, the CIA illegally denied him due process and his right to appeal under Presidential Policy Directive 19, a post-Edward Snowden executive order issued by President Obama in 2011. Key provisions of PPD-19 became law in 2014, affording Intelligence Community employees a way to press charges of retaliation and, if necessary, to seek redress at a higher level.

In response to Pars, the CIA has fired back with its own six-page argument contending that Presidential Policy Directive 19 imposes no legal requirements to do anything, and that Pars’ case should be dismissed. In reply to that, Pars’ lawyers argue that “if intelligence agencies cannot be required to follow the law, then Intelligence Community whistleblower protections set forth in PPD-19 and … the Intelligence Authorization Act are meaningless. “

The CIA declined to comment.

Risky Business in a War Zone

The Pars lawsuit claims that, in 2015, the CIA’s Chief of Base at a US military facility routinely required subordinates to risk their lives by passing through an area of hostile fire without any operational need to do so. The Chief of Base who did this, the lawsuit says, was an officer with “limited to no” previous experience operating in a conflict zone.

For reporting the misconduct to his superiors, the lawsuit says Pars was sent home in an act of unlawful retaliation, directed by the Chief of Station, the highest-ranking CIA official in the unnamed country which, given details in the complaint, appears to be Afghanistan. Since the alleged reprisal more than two years ago, the lawsuit says Pars, his career in shambles, has made dozens of unsuccessful attempts to get a new assignment. Meanwhile, there is no public record of any accountability for the Chief of Station or other CIA officials allegedly involved.

The CIA declined to comment.

Pars’ lawsuit also reports that his Chief of Base ran her command “like a college dormitory,” styling herself as the cloak-and-dagger den-mother to a coterie of favored agents and US military personnel. Apart from exposing agents to danger, she often ignored basic trade-craft and operating procedures. The lawsuit also details how she “put her personal needs of cooking, baking, socializing, entertainment, exercise and shopping above the needs of the mission, often going days and sometimes more than a week without meeting with key personnel.”

When Pars, as deputy, challenged her for placing subordinates in peril, the Chief of Base admitted to Pars that she was “horribly depressed,” and “wrecked” because of separation from her US-based family, the lawsuit says.

Pars, a more than 16-year Agency veteran with extensive experience working under fire, then made a series of legally “protected disclosures” about the alleged misconduct to the Chief of Station and other superiors, but no remedial action was taken. Instead, court documents say, Pars was sent home in the spring of 2015 after serving just a few months, only to discover that the Chief of Station had put a black mark on his record, employing what the lawsuit calls “false and derogatory information” in alleged reprisal for his reports of misconduct.

Soon after, Pars filed a formal complaint of retaliation with the CIA’s Office of Inspector General, citing the Chief of Station and others. His complaint was assigned number 2015-12538, but the lawsuit contends it was otherwise ignored and not investigated, while his repeated requests to know its status produced only vague answers or silence.

Ignoring Errors of the Past?

Pars’ lawsuit describes misconduct that did not lead to deaths or injury, though that might easily have been the result. As such, his court filing has reminded some at CIA of what happened on one of the Agency’s other Forward Operating sites in Afghanistan, at Camp Chapman in Khost province, when another allegedly ill-prepared Chief of Base was in charge.

In that 2009 incident, the Chief of Base, who had not previously served in a war zone, permitted a foreign agent to enter the secret compound, only to have him detonate a suicide vest, killing seven CIA personnel—including Chief of Base Jennifer Lynne Matthews—and five contractors in the second largest single-day loss in the Agency’s history.

In a report issued following the tragedy, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta offered recommendations that included, “Expanding our training effort for both managers and officers on hostile environments and counterintelligence challenges.” A variety of critics inside and outside the Agency were more specific, citing both Matthews’ lack of training or experience in a war zone and her apparent failure to follow trade-craft as key factors in the debacle. Her uncle Dave Matthews, a former CIA official, was quoted telling The Washington Post: ‘If Jenny followed trade-craft rules, this wouldn’t have happened … She wasn’t trained.”

Too Much Danger, Too Many Brownies

Among the charges Pars puts on the record, the most serious is that his Chief of Base “continually put herself and personnel in danger by insisting that they travel in areas of indirect fire attack (IDF) when not operationally necessary—such as trips for food, shopping or to the gym — contrary to US Military personnel movement guidance.”

Pars lawsuit also says his boss’s conduct “violated US laws,” as well as “CIA headquarters-mandated policies, procedures and direct orders” prescribed in “CIA official message traffic.”

As part of the alleged dysfunction, she gathered agents and certain US military personnel under her wing, calling them her “adopted sons,” and went on a campaign to “feed” and “entertain” them, often for “hours at a time,” giving preference to her protégées “to the detriment of other personnel”.

To keep the oven baking required too many shopping trips through zones targeted by the enemy.

Interpersonal conflict spread. The lawsuit says Pars began discussing his concerns about his boss’s conduct with the base’s “Psychological Officer” (PO). “The situation at the base continued to deteriorate,” the lawsuit asserts.

“There were increased personnel moves through … [danger zones] for non-mission essential purposes. The Chief of Base continued to miss meetings with key US personnel.” At one point, she concluded an official staff meeting with the statement, “Let’s get back to cooking.” And she apparently did just that, allegedly “causing her to miss a meeting with a very senior US military official.”

Meanwhile, the Chief of Base accused Pars of “failing miserably” and exhibited “belligerent and threatening behavior” toward him.

In the end, as the lawsuit puts it, “the sole reason [Pars] was sent home … was because he complained about the … [Chief of Base’s] behavior and mismanagement of personnel and resources,” court documents say.

A Troubling Pattern

Pars’ case is far from the only incident that raises concerns that the Intelligence Community is falling far short of providing effective whistleblower protections.

One disturbing episode involves the Inspector General of the National Security Agency, George Ellard, who the NSA’s Director, Admiral (Ret.) Michael Rogers proposed firing after a high-level review panel determined that Ellard illegally retaliated against a whistleblower. The Ellard case demonstrates the value of external review following  an Inspector General investigation.

Yet after Ellard appealed his proposed firing to the Secretary of Defense, the Department reversed the finding of retaliation and Ellard’s recommended termination in what his lawyer called a “… detailed and well-reasoned memorandum,” citing among other things Ellard’s “outstanding” record. With the stroke of a pen, the move obliterated years of due process that led to Admiral Rogers’ firing recommendation, highlighting the difficulties in disciplining senior intelligence officials.

In a case demonstrating the reluctance to report wrongdoing internally, Brett Jones, a former Navy Seal working as a contractor for the CIA on secret missions in Afghanistan claimed he faced brutal and repeated anti-gay harassment at the hands of Agency personnel. Out of fear and a belief the CIA would only “circle the wagons” in response to any report of misconduct he might make, he ended up quitting and went public with his story. The CIA subsequently repeated assertions that it has a “Zero Tolerance” policy for any sexual, racial, or other discrimination or harassment.

Then there is John Reidy, who worked for CIA subcontractors helping to identify, manage, and report on human assets in Iran, and possibly other countries, who had communicated with the Agency via computer links. In what is now a seven-year-old case, he warned CIA of fraud involving a subcontractor, and a “catastrophic intelligence failure” in which “upwards of 70% of our operations had been compromised” by hostile penetration of US intelligence computer networks.

Instead of fixing the problem, he has claimed his reports led to retaliation, loss of his security clearance, and other setbacks. In frustration at the lack of response from the CIA’s Office of Inspector General, Reidy recently wrote to a senior Member of Congress outlining his problems.

Why Afford Whistleblowers Any Due Process?

The obligation to create an orderly process allowing intelligence whistleblowers an opportunity to report wrongdoing—much or all of which may involve classified activity—has never been a priority for agencies where they work. “It runs against every reflex because all these agencies see themselves in the business of keeping secrets and virtually everything else hidden,” a senior Congressional staffer involved in Intelligence Community oversight recently told the Project On Government Oversight. “Helping or even listening to reports of misconduct [from whistleblowers] is an afterthought at best.”

But that strategy only led to ruin in a number of recent and highly embarrassing cases. In 2011, the US was forced to abandon its prosecution of senior NSA executive Thomas Drake after threatening him with 35 years in prison when he blew the whistle on internal waste, fraud, and abuse to the Defense Department’s Inspector General. Among other crimes, he was accused of releasing classified information to the media. After a five-year legal ordeal, Drake eventually pleaded guilty to a petty misdemeanor and currently works as a salesman in an Apple store. The Inspector General of the Department of Defense later conducted a very limited reprisal investigation that did not find in Drake’s favor, prompting his attorney to criticize the investigation as rigged.

Then came the fiasco created by Edward Snowden, a National Security Agency contract employee whose revelations of illegal domestic wiretapping in 2013 included the release of tens of thousands of additional secrets often described as damaging to national security. Snowden, who some critics argue is not a whistleblower, cited what happened to Drake in explaining his decision to publicly reveal internal abuses without going through official channels.

In one response to the wave of leaks by Snowden and others, the US government developed Presidential Policy Directive 19, a measure that provides the possibility of due process and redress for intelligence whistleblowers, strengthening their legal protection from official retaliation. Though there have been only a handful of cases so far under PPD-19, its track record for whistleblowers whose cases are publicly known is dismal.

These whistleblowers are permitted to appeal cases to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, or ICIG, which may convene a high-level panel to review disputed allegations. It was such a panel that found NSA IG George Ellard had illegally retaliated. Then came the Defense Department’s reversal of that decision  and Ellard’s proposed firing, which undermined the impact of the review panel and the PPD-19 process.

Presidents Trump and Obama have decried intelligence leaks, saying they threaten national security and must be punished to the full extent of the law. But the weak state of whistleblower rights as highlighted in the Pars case and others leaves intelligence employees with few good options. For some, skepticism of internal channels drives them to report to the media, a legally perilous choice strenuously opposed by CIA, other intelligence agencies, the Justice Department, and the White House.

These employees seem more willing to take their chances with anonymity as a protective shield rather than face the near-certainly of career suicide by being known as a whistleblower.

So Congressional overseers and others seeking to protect both national security and whistleblower rights would do well to examine the claims of Pars and others like him. How much sense does it make for the Intelligence Community to allow its inconsistent, frequently ad hoc system of dealing with whistleblower reports to continue on its merry way, to the detriment of the rule of law and employees, not to mention the mission and stature of agencies that defend the country? Pars and others—whatever their true names may be—should be treated as patriots with a message to be heeded, and not simply as outcasts whose rights can safely be ignored.

 

In stinging attack, France’s Macron says Poland isolating itself in Europe

August 25, 2017

by Tsvetelia Tsolova and Pawel Sobczak

Reuters

VARNA, Bulgaria/WARSAW (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday Poland was isolating itself within the European Union and Polish citizens “deserve better” than a government at odds with the bloc’s democratic values and economic reform plans.

Macron said Warsaw, where a nationalist, eurosceptic government took office in 2015, was moving in the opposite direction to Europe on numerous issues and would not be able to dictate the path of Europe’s future. Poland rejected the accusations, saying Macron was inexperienced and arrogant.

“Europe is a region created on the basis of values, a relationship with democracy and public freedoms which Poland is today in conflict with,” Macron said in Bulgaria on the third leg of a trip to central and eastern Europe to generate support for his vision of a Europe that better protects its citizens.

He described Poland’s refusal to change its stance on a revision of the EU’s directive on “posted” workers – cheap labor from eastern countries posted temporarily to more affluent western countries – as a mistake. Macron has said the practice leads to unfair competition.

“In no way will the decision by a country that has decided to isolate itself in the workings of Europe jeopardize the finding of an ambitious compromise,” he said.

In a scathing attack that could drag relations between western EU powers and the European Commission in Brussels on one side and Poland’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) government on the other to a new low, he said the Polish people deserved better.

“Poland is not defining Europe’s future today and nor will it define the Europe of tomorrow,” Macron said at a joint press conference with Bulgarian President Rumen Radev in the Black Sea resort city of Varna.

In response, Poland’s Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said Macron, 39, a former investment banker elected in May as France’s youngest president, lacked political experience and accused him of undermining the EU.

“I advise the president that he should be more conciliatory … Perhaps his arrogant comments are a result of a lack of (political) experience,” Szydlo said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

“I advise the president that he should focus on the affairs of his own country. Perhaps he may be able to achieve the same economic results and the same level of security for (French) citizens as those guaranteed by Poland.”

Her comments were an indirect reference to her government’s insistence that it will not accept migrants from the Middle East, despite pressure from Brussels, because it believes they pose a threat to national security. France has been hit hard by deadly Islamist militant attacks in recent years.

DEEPENING FEUD

Relations between Szydlo’s Law and Justice (PiS) party and the French government deteriorated soon after it won election in late 2015. In October 2016, Poland abruptly canceled a nearly $4 billion military procurement deal with Airbus.

Macron’s election deepened the rift, with the French globalization advocate fanning worries in Warsaw that his vision of a “multi-speed” Europe would undermine Polish influence within the European Union.

French officials have expressed concerns about Poland, and Hungary, drifting towards authoritarianism and said Macron would also make a defense of the rule of law and democratic principles one of the priorities of his mandate on the European stage.

On his three-day tour Macron sought backing for his plans to tighten EU rules on the employment abroad of labor from low-pay nations. Poland strongly opposes this initiative.

While “posted” workers comprise less than 1 percent of the EU work force, it is a political hot potato that has exacerbated the divide between the bloc’s poor east and rich west for years.

Macron managed to enlist the broad support of Czech Republic and Slovakia, and the lukewarm backing of Romania, all countries which fear being sidelined in a multi-speed EU, whereas Poland and Hungary remain defiant of what they see as an out-of-touch EU elite based in Brussels and Western capitals.

Poland is at loggerheads with the European Commission, the Brussels-based EU executive, over issues ranging from its refusal to accept EU migrant relocation quotas to the ruling conservatives’ tightening grip on the judiciary and media.

Macron shunned both Poland and Hungary on his trip through the region.

He said he wanted Bulgaria – like Poland, Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia a former communist state that joined the EU much later than western counterparts – to be at the negotiating table on European integration.

On the posted worker rules, Bulgaria’s Radev said the EU needed to balance the interests of countries in the rich west and the poor east. “It is important that changes are made in a way that unites rather than divides Europe,” he said.

Current EU rules allow workers to be posted from low-salary countries to other EU states on contracts that must guarantee the host country’s minimum wage, but under which taxes and social charges are paid in the home nation.

Poland and Hungary say increased restrictions on such contracts would flout the principles of the European single market and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Reporting by Tsevetelia Tsolova in Varna, Pawel Sobczak and Lidia Kelly in Warsaw, Michel Rose and Sudip Kar-Gupta in Paris; writing by Richard Lough; editing by Mark Heinrich

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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