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Showing posts with label Azerbaijan. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

What Does Trump Making Money In Muslim Countries Have To Do With His Ban

CNN Money: Donald Trump Makes Millions in Muslim Countries

Donald Trump (Getty)

By F McGuire | Wednesday, 09 Dec 2015 08:39 AM

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Donald Trump is pushing to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. but the Republican presidential candidate is reportedly making millions from business deals in countries where Islam is the main religion.

“In his latest personal financial disclosure required by all candidates, and on his web site, Trump lists various interests in the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan and Turkey, and two new ventures in Indonesia,” CNN Moneyreported.

Here's what he declared, according to CNN Money, in predominately Muslim countries:

Dubai, United Arab Emirates
“The Trump Organization has plans for two golf resorts in the Arab emirate of Dubai. In the filing, Trump lists what is described as a "management deal with Damac Crescent Properties" and states the underlying asset "value is not readily ascertainable." He lists no income. Neither resort has opened, although one is due to be completed this year,” CNN Money reported.

Baku, Azerbaijan
In November 2014, Trump announced a partnership to open a luxury hotel in Baku, Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea. In the filing, Trump lists income of $2.5 million for "management fees" for the Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku, CNN Money reported.

Istanbul, Turkey
“Trump Towers, Sisli is a 40-story residential tower in Istanbul, Turkey. On his web site, Trump makes it clear he does not own the development, but the owners have licensed his name. In his filing, Trump lists royalty income of $1 million to $5 million. It's standard in the hotel business for brands to license their names for use by local owners,” CNN Money reported.

Indonesia
Trump has announced plans for an ultra-luxury resort in Bali and a golf course in West Java, Indonesia.

Meanwhile, one of Trump's Middle Eastern business partners is drawing a line between the presidential candidate and his company, Bloombergreported.

Damac Properties Dubai Co., which is building two Trump-branded golf courses outside of Dubai, distanced itself from the developer, who said the U.S. should ban Muslims from entering the country in the wake of a mass shooting that officials say was an act of terrorism by a radicalized Muslim couple.

“We would like to stress that our agreement is with the Trump Organization as one of the premium golf course operators in the world ,” Damac said in a statement. “As such, we would not comment further on Mr. Trump’s personal or political agenda, nor comment on the internal American political debate scene.”

Trump’s comments will put pressure on executives in the Middle East to decide whether they can do business with the New York property mogul, who licenses his name for use in projects around the world. His website touts an office and residential development in Istanbul, and retailers in the United Arab Emirates sell Trump-branded home furnishings and furniture.

Some executives began speaking out against him even before this week’s controversy. Billionaire Khalaf Al Habtoor, who described Trump as “a breath of fresh air among usual suspects” in August, retracted his comments. “I was wrong about Donald Trump and I don’t mind admitting it,” the Dubai owner of hotels wrote in The National newspaper on Nov. 25.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

America's Big Blunder Of Electing Obama

WORST POLITICAL BLUNDER OF ALL TIME?

From an article by Thomas Sowell

Iran deal causes us to ‘think the unthinkable’ about Obama

The United States seems at this moment about to break the record for the worst political blunder of all time, with its Obama administration deal that will make a nuclear Iran virtually inevitable.

… During the years when we confronted a nuclear-armed Soviet Union, we at least realized that we had to “think the unthinkable,” as intellectual giant Herman Kahn put it. Today it seems almost as if we don’t want to think about it at all.

Our politicians have kicked the can down the road – and it is the biggest, most annihilating explosive can of all, that will be left for our children and grandchildren to try to cope with.

Back in the days of our nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union, some of the more weak-kneed intelligentsia posed the choice as whether we wanted to be “red or dead.” Fortunately, there were others, especially President Ronald Reagan, who saw it differently. He persevered in a course that critics said would lead to nuclear war. But instead it led to the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War.

President Barack Obama has been following opposite policies, and they are likely to lead to opposite results. The choices left after Iran gets nuclear bombs – and intercontinental missiles that can deliver them far beyond Israel – may be worse than being red or dead.

… The Obama administration’s leaking of Israel’s secret agreement with Azerbaijan to allow Israeli warplanes to refuel there, during attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, was a painfully clear sabotage of any Israeli attempt to destroy those Iranian facilities.

But the media’s usual practice to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil in the Obama administration buried this news and allowed Obama to continue to pose as Israel’s friend, just as he continued to assure Americans that if they liked their doctor they could keep their doctor.

Some commentators have attributed Barack Obama’s many foreign policy disasters to incompetence. But he has been politically savvy enough to repeatedly outmaneuver his opponents in America. For example, the Constitution makes it necessary for the president to get a two-thirds majority in the Senate to make any treaty valid. Yet he has maneuvered the Republican-controlled Congress into a position where they will need a two-thirds majority in both Houses to prevent his unilaterally negotiated agreement from going into effect – just by not calling it a treaty.

If he is that savvy at home, why is he so apparently incompetent abroad? Answering that question may indeed require us to “think the unthinkable,” that we have elected a man for whom America’s best interests are not his top priority.

- See more at: http://israel-commentary.org/?tag=obama-actions-lead-to-only-one-conclusion-think-the-unthinkable-that-we-have-elected-a-man-for-whom-americas-best-interests-are-not-his-top-priority#sthash.uv3wq7AJ.dpuf

Thursday, April 24, 2014

UN Is A Bankrupt Organization. Turns Over Women's Rights To Iran and Other Women Unfriendly Nations.

APRIL 24, 2014 · 12:00 AM

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Iran sweeps coveted UN rights posts

Canada Free Press - UN Watch

GENEVA, – The United Nations today elected the Islamic Republic of Iran and more than a dozen other repressive regimes to top committees charged with protecting women’s rights and with overseeing the work of human rights organizations, according to an exclusive report by UN Watch, a non-governmental Geneva-based human rights group.

Human rights activists are expressing outrage.

“Today is a black day for human rights,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch. “By empowering the perpetrators over the victims, the UN harms the cause of human rights, betrays its founding principles, and undermines its own credibility.”

“Civil society loses as repressive states win election,” said the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR).

Despite the sharp condemnation of Iran’s human rights record by UN chief Ban Ki-moon—who recently reported how women in Iran are “subject to discrimination, entrenched both in law and in practice” and how “women’s rights activists continue to face arrest and persecution”— the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in New York today elected Iran to a four-year term on its 45-nation Commission on the Status of Women, the principal intergovernmental body dedicated to protecting women’s rights. Equitorial Guinea was among other dictatorships also named to the global gender equality panel.

Meanwhile, in a separate vote today, the UN additionally rewarded Iran by making the regime a member of its powerful 19-nation Committee on NGOs, a coveted position because it allows governments to silence criticism by acting as the gatekeeper and overseer of all human rights groups that seek to work inside the world body.

Other egregious human rights abusers elected to the influential panel include Azerbaijan, China, Cuba, slave-holding Mauritania, Russia, and Sudan, whose leader, President Omar al-Bashir, is wanted by the ICC for genocide. All were deemed “not free” in the 2014 annual survey by Freedom House.

Burundi, Guinea, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Turkey, Venezuela, flagged as problematic and only “partly free” by Freedom House, were also elected.

Impact of Today’s Election: What This Means for NGOs

ISHR had warned earlier this month that the failure of democracies to throw their hat in the ring would mean that “the Committee’s membership will worsen considerably during the next term” and severely harm the freedom of NGOs—even as it praised the election of Greece, Israel, South Africa, Uruguay, and the U.S., countries ranked by the ISHR as “strong, pro civil society candidates,” but who now constitute a tiny opposition.

UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said that NGOs within the UN are now increasingly under threat, citing an incident from last month, as reported in a series of New York Times articles, of how UN security officers protected a UN Watch delegate, daughter of jailed Chinese dissident Wang Bingzhang, from a spying attempt by a Beijing-backed organization bearing NGO credentials.

“The very UN committee that is meant to judge our complaint against this dangerous front group is now stacked more than ever before by China, Sudan and their non-democratic allies, who control some 70 percent of the seats. When the criminals are made the judges—the arsonists named as fire-fighters—it’s a travesty of justice. The crucial role of civil society within the world body is being eroded, its voice at risk of being silenced,” said Neuer.

“Tragically, the UN’s election today of regimes such as Iran, Sudan and Mauritania—governments that rape and torture political prisoners, subjugate women, and commit crimes against humanity from slavery to genocide—sends a message that crass politics trumps basic human rights. The UN is letting down millions of victims around the globe who look to the world body for vital protection,” said Neuer.

Friday, October 18, 2013

Can Shiite Nations Be Friends Of US?

Azerbaijan: An American ally in a sea of threats

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=7702

Redacted from an article by Ashish Kumar Sen
The Washington Times
October 7, 2013

In an increasingly polarized world, the small Caspian Sea nation of Azerbaijan is a tantalizing study in contradictions. It’s a staunch American ally sandwiched between the U.S. nemeses of Iran and Russia, providing a critical transit for U.S. troops and supplies in and out of Afghanistan. Yet most Americans probably can’t spell the country’s name on first chance or pinpoint its location on a map.

It’s also a Shiite Muslim country that rejects the theocracy of Tehran in favor of a secular government while expanding its already friendly relationship with Israel. It’s also a former Soviet republic that has cast off the shackles of its once socialist economy to experience significant growth around its booming oil industry. All that makes Wednesday’s election in Azerbaijan of keen interest to U.S. diplomatic, intelligence and military circles even though there’s little suspense: President Ilham Aliyev is widely expected to win his third five-year term.

“It is the only country that borders both Russia and Iran. Therefore, it becomes a pivotal state when it comes to issues such as containment of Iran, as well as access for Americans, not only into the Caucasus, but also into Central Asia,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official who is now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “If Azerbaijan weren’t resource-rich and if it didn’t have the geopolitical position it has, I don’t imagine that so many Americans would be increasingly interested in the former Soviet republic.”

The U.S.-Azerbaijani relationship is based on cooperation in several areas, including regional security and energy. Azerbaijan has supplied troops to work with U.S. forces in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since 1988, Azerbaijan has been mired in a conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, a primarily Armenian-populated landlocked region in Azerbaijan that is held by ethnic Armenian forces and unilaterally declared itself an independent republic in 1991. While Armenia, once a powerful lobby in Washington, has embraced Russia, Azerbaijan has leaned toward the West. “There is a sense that if Azerbaijan changes its orientation, American influence will be checkmated in the region,” Mr. Rubin said. “Political stability in Azerbaijan is to the benefit of America’s strategic interests.”

Those interests have left the Obama administration to wrestle with concerns about what critics say is Azerbaijan’s authoritarian rule. A monthslong crackdown on political opposition and a clampdown on freedoms of expression and assembly has concerned some human rights groups. The National Assembly has passed measures that increase prison sentences and fines for public-order offenses. In June, Mr. Aliyev signed legislation that criminalizes defamatory views posted on the Internet and allows prison sentences of up to three years. The Azerbaijani government is engaged in a “deliberate, abusive strategy to limit dissent,” Human Rights Watch said in a report in September.

Azerbaijani officials brush off the criticisms, pointing to their strong support of American interests in the region and their friendly relations with Israel. The Obama administration is monitoring developments in Azerbaijan, straddling a careful line of embracing an ally in a critical region while prodding it behind closed doors and in public to enhance freedoms. In September, the Aliyev government barred a delegation led by Mr. Melia from traveling to Azerbaijan to observe preparations for the presidential election.

“We will continue to urge respect for fundamental freedoms and the rule of law, including due process before, during and after the presidential contest,” a U.S. official said, speaking only on the condition of anonymity. The official said the administration has called on Azerbaijan to ensure “a free, fair, and transparent electoral process that reflects the will of the people.”

“I respectfully reject the wrongful claim about going to authoritarianism in Azerbaijan,” Ambassador Elin Suleymanov said. “We do not accept that. What is going on in Azerbaijan is a truly independent nation with a vibrant political system and a free-market economy.” He conceded that there is room for improvement: “Just like every nation on Earth, we are not perfect.”

Azerbaijan won independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. In 1993, Mr. Aliyev’s father, Heydar Aliyev, was elected president. A decade later, in October 2003, the younger Mr. Aliyev was elected to succeed his ailing father. He inherited a nation on the cusp of major oil revenues and plagued by corruption. In the ensuing years, the economy improved, and with it, the standard of living.

Its human rights record aside, Azerbaijan has plenty of advocates inside the United States, including former Rep. Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican who wrote in a Washington Times op-ed last month that America must be patient with its Caspian ally.
“I know that Azerbaijan is not perfect. The Azerbaijani government is often criticized over its human rights record,” Mr. Burton wrote. “However, considering that Azerbaijan — like other former Soviet republics — has scant experience with democracy, its human rights record is better than most. In fact, Azerbaijan’s religious tolerance, inclusiveness and protection of women’s rights should be recognized.”

Mr. Burton also stressed Azerbaijan’s increasing ties with Israel. Azerbaijan’s bilateral trade with Israel reached $4 billion last year and about 40 percent of Israel’s oil imports come from Azerbaijan, he noted. And when Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov visited Israel in May, Israeli President Shimon Peres described the trip as historic.

Ashish Kumar Sen is a reporter covering foreign policy and international developments for The Washington Times.

- See more at: http://israel-commentary.org/?p=7702#sthash.NRd4QUFW.dpuf