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Home Front: Politix

WATCH: Soros-Linked Smartmatic Chairman Admits ‘Technology Is Licensed From Dominion'

2020-11-30

Smartmatic is the owner of the vote-stealing Venezuleans’ vote-stealing software.
The comments came from Smartmatic company Chairman Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, who enjoys intricate financial relations and a "famous friendship" with leftist mega-donor George Soros. During a June 2015 interview with Philippine news outlet ABS-CBN, Lord Malloch-Brown admitted, "...yes part of our technology is licensed from Dominion."

The news will raise further questions as to why both Dominion and Smartmatic have gone to recent lengths to distance themselves from one another, following allegations of corruption during the 2020 U.S. elections.

The interviewer follows up by inquiring if "the license issued by Dominion for you to use their proprietary software" is "live," "active," "and has not been revoked." Malloch-Brown confirms all three answers are "yes."

SOROS CONNECTION.
When moving to New York, Malloch-Brown rented his home from Soros, for what critics allege was priced below market rate.

Noting "they are good friends," a United Nations spokesperson described the arrangement, as "since both are public figures, they decided to set up the living arrangement as a commercial transaction, rather than a gift."

In 2007, he was appointed Vice-President of Soros’s Quantum Fund as well as vice-chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute in the same year.

Despite this, Smartmatic maintains it "has no ties to governments or political parties."

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India-Pakistan

Elements within Pak army back terrs

2009-08-03

A powerful group of British MPs expressed concern yesterday that elements within Pakistani Army and intelligence services do not share their civilian government's resolve to fight Islamic terrorists and continue to be fixated on India.

The concern expressed by the British parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee was echoed by Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, the minister of state for foreign affairs who quit his job last week citing personal and family reasons.

In a report published Sunday, the Foreign Affairs Committee also said that whereas Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari had pointed to terrorism as the main enemy of his country, 'large parts of the security establishment' of Pakistan continue to be fixated on India.

The report on Afghanistan and Pakistan commended the civilian government in Islamabad for having taken some 'important steps' to counter-insurgency at a considerable cost in terms of military lives lost. "We welcome the increasing recognition at senior levels within the Pakistani military of the need for a recalibrated approach to militancy but we remain concerned that this may not necessarily be replicated elsewhere within the army and ISI," it added.

The report welcomed Zardari's recent remarks that he regards terrorism rather than India the real threat to his country. "However, we further conclude that doubts remain as to whether the underlying fundamentals of Pakistani security policy have changed sufficiently to realise the goals of long-term security and stability in Afghanistan," it added.

Lord Mark Malloch-Brown offered a similar view to the committee. He said, "We are convinced that [the ISI] is on board institutionally, and that the leaderships of both the army and the ISI are supportive of the president and his strategy, which is reflected through the meetings that we have had with (Chief of Army Staff) General Kayani."

"There is a difficulty, that within the ISI there may remain individuals who have some sympathy with these groups," said Malloch-Brown, a respected minister.

The Foreign Affairs Committee said, "President Zardari's comments at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (in June) as well as his recent remarks to the effect that terrorism, not India, was now seen by Pakistan as the greater threat, while welcome, do not dispel the suspicion that a large part of his country's security establishment continues to be fixated on India and on the possibility of a future military conflict between the two countries."

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Russia accuses U.N. Agency of funding Georgian president

2008-09-30

Russia's confrontation with the West is escalating, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accusing the U.N. Development Program of collaborating with the financier George Soros to fund Mikheil Saakashvili's rise to the Georgian presidency.

Russia has long accused Mr. Soros of financing the 2003 Rose Revolution, and Mr. Saakashvili in particular. Yesterday, Mr. Lavrov called for an examination of the ties between Mr. Soros and the UNDP. "At the time, George Soros was sponsoring members of the Georgian government," Mr. Lavrov told reporters, adding that UNDP "funds and finances" were also used to support Georgian officials. "We should clearly check and establish clear rules for controlling the spending by international organizations," he said. "We should not allow that such organizations be privatized."

American officials have raised questions about the relationship between Mr. Soros's Open Society Institute and the UNDP in the past. And as The New York Sun first reported in June 2006, a former UNDP administrator, Mark Malloch Brown, rented a house adjacent to Mr. Soros's estate in Katonah, N.Y., paying the financier what real estate agents in the area characterized as below market rate rent. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Mr. Soros's OSI has concentrated much of its pro-democracy activities in former Soviet republics striving to break with their totalitarian past, with local leaders and their nationalist supporters pledging to sever ties with Moscow.

Information about the UNDP's activities in Georgia is available to all the members of the agency's board, including Russia, a spokesman for the agency, Stéphane Dujarric, told the Sun yesterday. Launched in January 2004, the program in Georgia included "salary top-ups for leading officials," he said, and was designed "to enable the government to recruit the staff it needed, and also to help remove incentives for corruption." The Georgian president, prime minister, and speaker of the Parliament received monthly salary supplements of $1,500 each; ministers received $1,200 a month, and deputy ministers $700, Mr. Dujarric said.

The program was funded initially by Mr. Soros's OSI, which gave $1 million, while the UNDP gave $500,000. A Swedish government agency later added another $1 million. An "exit strategy" was built into the program, Mr. Dujarric said, and the Georgian government assumed responsibility for the salaries after three years.

Mr. Lavrov's contention that the UNDP must avoid being "privatized" came at the end of a week in which Russia significantly sharpened its rhetoric against America. At a press conference yesterday and in his speech before the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday, Mr. Lavrov repeatedly denounced Washington's disruption of the existing world order by invading Iraq. "The solidarity of the international community fostered on the wave of struggle against terrorism turned out to be somehow privatized," he said in his assembly speech, referring to the Iraq invasion.

Separately, Mr. Lavrov declined yesterday to provide new details about his country's resumption of military cooperation with Syria, amid reports that the Russian navy sent several ships to the Mediterranean port of Tartus. "This cooperation is conducted in the framework of the international law and does not endanger anyone's security," Mr. Lavrov said.

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Sri Lanka

Dozens of Tamil Tigers killed in fresh fighting

2008-07-16

Dozens of Tamil Tiger rebels and four soldiers have been killed in the latest fighting in Sri Lanka's north in the past two days, the defence ministry said yesterday.

The deaths coincide with a visit by British lawmaker Mark Malloch-Brown, who is in the country to discuss allegations of rights abuses.

The defence ministry said 49 Tamil Tiger rebels were killed during fighting on Sunday and Monday, bringing to 4,956 the total number of rebels killed by government forces since January.

Four soldiers were also killed, according to the ministry, bringing the total deaths for the same period to 441.

Casualty figures on both sides cannot be independently verified as the defence ministry bars journalists from travelling to the frontlines.

The British High Commission in Colombo said Malloch Brown, Britain's minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, would discuss Sri Lanka's deteriorating human rights situation and the Sri Lankan government's plans to settle the 36-year-old ethnic conflict.

He will meet with senior government officials, civil society organisations and religious leaders during his visit, which ends Thursday. "The Minister will discuss the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, in particular ways of strengthening the mechanism for monitoring and investigating allegations of human rights abuses," the High Commission said.

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Africa Subsaharan

Britain to press EU to act against Zimbabwe regime

2008-07-13

British Prime Minster Gordon Brown will press the European Union to take harsher action against Zimbabwe, after Russia and China vetoed proposed new sanctions at the U.N. Security Council, his office said Saturday.

Brown plans to discuss EU action against President Robert Mugabe's regime when the British leader meets with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana at a summit starting Sunday in Paris.

The three will be among 43 leaders of European, Middle Eastern and North African nations at the summit.

Brown's office said he would propose new EU travel bans on members of Mugabe's government and action against companies owned by Mugabe allies.

Russia and China on Friday vetoed a proposal from the United States and Britain for a new U.N. arms embargo and other punitive measures against Zimbabwe's president and top aides. Western powers mustered nine votes, the minimum needed to gain approval in the 15-nation council, but the action failed because of the vetoes by two of the five permanent members.

And Obama wants 'tougher sanctions' on Iran. Oh yeah, that'll work well in a U.N. that can't even sanction Zimbabwe ...

The vetoes came as a surprise and disappointment for Brown. The British prime minister believed he had secured sufficient international backing for U.N. sanctions against Mugabe during last week's summit of leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized nations, said a Brown spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government policy. "It was a high-stakes gamble, which earlier in the week looked promising because the Russian president had made commitments at the G-8 to go along with financial sanctions," said Mark Malloch-Brown, Britain's minister for African, Asia and the U.N.

Zimbabwe's opposition party said Friday that at least 113 of its members have been killed in political violence since March.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Britain would continue to press Mugabe over government-backed violence and intimidation of the opposition during Zimbabwe's first-round presidential vote in March and runoff ballot in June. "Mugabe is more isolated within his own country than ever before," Miliband told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "We have got to make sure, though, that the final hold that he has on power, which is at a barrel of a gun, is as short as possible because the misery for those people is absolutely overwhelming."

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Africa Subsaharan

Harare tells West to 'go hang'

2008-07-02

Robert Mugabe's spokesman told the West yesterday it can 'go hang' over its criticism of the Zimbabwean president's widely discredited reelection which has seen Washington push for UN sanctions. 'They can go and hang a thousand times, they have no basis, they have no claim on Zimbabwe politics at all,' spokesman George Charamba said at the African Union summit in Egypt about Western criticism of Mugabe's violence-marred election.

Charamba also appeared to reject a Kenyan-style power-sharing deal. 'I don't know what power-sharing is,' Charamba said.

There's a true statement ...

'Kenya is Kenya, Zimbabwe is Zimbabwe.'

Meanwhile, Botswana called on AU to bar Mugabe from regional meetings as the summit adopted a resolution calling for dialogue between Zimbabwe's political opponents and a government of national unity. Egypt's foreign ministry said Mugabe did not object to the AU resolution.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon pledged to work to broker a solution, repeating his view that the election lacked legitimacy. Zimbabweans should be able to 'enjoy genuine freedom' so they can 'choose their leaders out of their own will without being intimidated,' Ban said.

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga called for Mugabe's suspension from the AU until he allows a free and fair election.

Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma, a member of the West and East African group most critical of Mugabe said: 'The people of Zimbabwe have been denied their democratic rights. We should, in no uncertain terms, condemn what has happened'.

British Junior Foreign Office minister Mark Malloch-Brown said Mugabe must not be part of any power-sharing deal with the opposition if the country is to receive economic aid from Britain.

The European Union will only accept a government headed by Tsvangirai, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, whose country has taken over the EU presidency, said. French foreign ministry said European governments are looking at a raft of sanctions to be imposed on Zimbabwe.

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International-UN-NGOs

3 Countries Vie for U.N. Rights Council Seats

2008-05-02

Three European countries are mounting a campaign for two available seats on the U.N. Human Rights Council, even as the prestige of the Geneva-based body reaches a new low. France, Britain, and Spain are lobbying the 192 U.N. member states, seeking to gain support for their claim to two available slots among the seven that are reserved for Western countries on the 47-member council. America has declined to run for membership on the council, which in the two years since its inception has faulted only Israel for human rights violations.

The council committee in charge of organizing a follow-up to a 2001 conference on racism, known as Durban II, suffered a new setback this week when African countries reportedly decided not to host the parley. The first indication that South Africa would not host the conference which is named for Durban, the South African city that was home to the first parley emerged two weeks ago, when President Mbeki said "no decision" had been made on the conference's venue. Diplomats now are saying that next year's conference is likely to take place in Vienna or Bangkok.

In an indication that Durban II would see a repeat of the anti-Semitic overtones that plagued the first conference, the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy this week withdrew its application to the organizing committee for credentials as a nongovernmental organization. One member of the committee, Iran, set up a series of obstacles to the Canadian NGO's application "for no apparent reason other than the inclusion in its name of the words Jewish and Israel," the executive director of U.N. Watch, Hillel Neuer, said.

Canada has already said it will skip Durban II, and Israel and America are expected to follow suit. But the European Union has yet to decide on participation, the French ambassador for human rights, François Zimeray, told reporters yesterday in New York, where he was visiting to lobby for a seat on the Human Rights Council. A British Foreign Office minister and former deputy U.N. secretary-general, Mark Malloch Brown, recently visited several countries, including China, and lobbied U.N. member states in New York in an attempt to gain one of the two council seats.

The "Western European and Others" council bloc includes America, Canada, Australia, and Israel. Spain has mounted a similar campaign, as has France. "France and human rights is an old couple," Mr. Zimeray said yesterday. Mr. Zimeray described the first Durban conference as a "laboratory of hatred" and said it would have become the most significant event in international "political life" had it not been immediately followed by the attacks of September 11, 2001. Durban II risks the same fate, he said, and he acknowledged that the Human Rights Council "is not perfect." Asked why France should lend its prestige to a body that he said has an "obsession" with Israel, Mr. Zimeray said that if Western countries withdrew from the Human Rights Council and established a separate rights panel, they would create a situation like that in ancient Greece, where democracy was reserved for Athenians only.

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China-Japan-Koreas

France raises idea of boycotting Olympics ceremony over Tibet

2008-03-19

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France said Tuesday that the European Union should consider punishing China's crackdown in Tibet with a boycott of the opening ceremony of this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing. His comments followed an appeal by the press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders to governments across the world to shun the highly symbolic ceremony during which the Olympic flame is lighted.

European leaders have been conspicuously quiet since protesters and the Chinese police first clashed in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, a week ago.

The usual invertebrate posturing ...

~~Whether~~ How to exert pressure on Beijing touches a broader debate in the European Union about how the bloc should manage its relationships with important economic partners such as China and Russia, whose governments are accused of violating democratic standards.

Senior European officials, including Kouchner, have ruled out an outright boycott of the Olympics, arguing that not even the Dalai Lama had demanded one. But in the latest sign that the Games remain the most powerful lever Western powers have, the foreign minister called the idea of a more symbolic partial boycott "interesting."

Because the EU is all about symbolism ...

Cautioning that the proposal was not yet French government policy, he indicated that he would bring it up with fellow European foreign ministers at an informal meeting next week. "The initiative of Reporters Without Borders, which does not have the French government's support, was made this morning," Kouchner said. Let's consider it."

A day earlier, Mark Malloch Brown, the British minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations, who is also opposed to a complete boycott, told the BBC that the Olympics were "China's coming-out party and they should take great care that nothing will wreck that."

They're not the ones who would wreck it -- we would be. Question is whether we should.

There was no official reaction to Kouchner's proposal from other major capitals on Tuesday, but a senior British official said that London was not considering any kind of boycott to do with the Olympics, even one of the opening ceremony.

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Britain

Barack Obama 'will repair image of US in UK'

2008-03-07

America needs to work hard to regain the trust of the British public following the Iraq war and the Bush years, a senior adviser to Barack Obama says today.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Samantha Power, who is a key member of the Presidential hopeful's foreign policy team, ...

... not anymore she's not ...

says anti-Americanism is now "vehement" in the United Kingdom. "A restoration of trust will have to occur between the US Government and the British public," she says. "There is a sense of disappointment but people still want to believe in the USA."

The "special relationship" between Britain and America would, she believes become stronger if Mr Obama won the White House because he would make voters in this country warm to the United States. "Any British leader is harmed domestically in terms of public standing by association with President Bush, the reverse will happen with President Obama. Obama reminds people of ~~Jesus~~ ~~Oprah~~ the better angels of America."

Mr Obama would also try to heal the divisions between Europe and America, caused by the war in Iraq. "Obama can go door-to-door in Europe and say, 'Look like you I opposed the war in Iraq but what are we going to do together about Al Qaeda?'"
*Ding-dong*
"Who is it?"
"O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA!..."
"Bloody 'ell!"
The United States must show more respect for international institutions, she adds. "We have to show that we know we can't do it alone. It matters not just intrinsically that we close Guantanamo, it matters because we need to be credible at the UN. You can't be against genocide on a Monday and for water boarding on Tuesday, then on Wednesday show up at the UN."
"To show up at the UN you must support Oil for Genocide on a Monday and condemn Israel for building a wall against those who celebrate the holocaust on Tuesday. Make sure to bring plenty of cash when you show up on Wednesday."
Miss Power is the self proclaimed "genocide chick", who won the Pullitzer Prize for her reporting from Bosnia. She plays basketball with George Clooney and is the inspiration for the latest David Hare play.

Punched her ticket all the right ways, did she ...

This auburn haired Irish journalist is a professor at Harvard, the founder of a human rights think tank and was cited by Men's Vogue as one of the most beautiful women in the world. She is also one of Mr Obama's most trusted advisers on foreign policy. The would-be President of the United States texts her with, ~~"O-BA-MA!"~~ "It's Obama, call me" in the middle of the night. Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the British Ambassador to Washington has already called on her three times.

Neither she nor Obama have met Gordon Brown or David Cameron. Their main point of contact is Mark Malloch Brown, the Prime Minister's ~~agent provocateur~~ eminence grise in the Foreign Office. "David Miliband seems impressive to me. I am confused by what's happened to Gordon Brown. I thought he was impressive."

In America, Miss Power has been compared to Condoleeza Rice. "I'm nothing like her," she says. "I don't have any conventional political ambition."
"I'm simply pro-human . . . like the UN."

Nope, no political ambition at all, that's why she hangs around Senators and works on a political campaign ...

But if Mr Obama wins the Presidential race she is likely to remain a powerful force. "I'd do anything he asked me to do. It's not about working for the next President of the United States, it's Obama. If he ran General Motors I'd be working for him."

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Europe

Euros unlikely to meet UN appeal for Darfur mission

2007-12-08

European Union nations, burdened with operations in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo, appear unlikely to meet the U.N.'s urgent calls for helicopters for a peacekeeping force in Darfur. (M)any European governments have said they support deploying a peacekeeping force in Darfur. But when it comes to Sudan, verbal support is one thing; helicopters are another matter entirely.

"There's something like 12,000 military helicopters in Europe, so it's bizarre that not one has been found available so far to commit to this force," said Thomas Cargill, Africa program manager at Chatham House, an international affairs think tank in London. And European countries, Cargill said, risk undermining their credibility "if they commit themselves to resolving a crisis but then can't commit themselves to providing the necessary hardware."

A U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force of 26,000 troops is scheduled to officially take over from an AU force in the Darfur region in three weeks. But U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that 24 aircraft 18 transport helicopters and six light tactical helicopters are essential. Otherwise, he said, the force will not be able to protect its own soldiers, let alone the area's civilians.

Sudan also has put up road blocks. The U.N. Security Council agreed that the force should be predominantly African at Sudan's insistence. Khartoum has refused to approve non-African units from Thailand, Nepal and the Nordic countries, even though 90 percent of the ground troops and 75 percent of the proposed force are from Africa. On helicopters, Ban said he had approached every country that could possible contribute a helicopter "to no avail."

Ban sent two high-level envoys to pressure leaders attending an EU-Africa summit in Lisbon, Portugal, this weekend. And European military officials and diplomats have continued to insist this week that they are trying to find some helicopters to contribute. But there has been no movement on the issue this week, the officials and diplomats said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of negotiations.

Those trying to put it together say the mission is at risk. "We need helicopters," said Brig. Gen. Solomon Giwa-Amu, a spokesman for the Nigerian Army, which now has 3,500 troops, the largest African contingent, in the current force and plans to send more to the joint force. "If we have six helicopters that will be of great help for the troops because of the terrain."

Poland said it would soon send four transport helicopters and four attack helicopters similar to those the U.N. says are vital in Sudan to Afghanistan, not Darfur. "These helicopters were long ago tabbed for the Afghanistan mission," Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Paszkowski explained Friday. "We aren't particularly rich in helicopters."

Germany, too, will not increase its commitment to the Darfur mission because its military is stretched elsewhere, said Defense Ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe. "That's just the way it is," Raabe said. "We have no capacity for this concrete mission."

The problem, he said, is that Germany has the third-largest contingent in Afghanistan and is the largest contributor of troops to the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo. Britain offered a similar explanation earlier in the week.

"I've been working the phones hard to try and get helicopters from other governments," Mark Malloch Brown, Britain's Africa minister, told British Broadcasting Corp. on Wednesday. But Britain is unable to contribute its own military helicopters because their reserves are deployed in Afghanistan, he said.

Both countries say they are contributing to the Darfur mission. Germany has sent two officers and provided troop transportation. Britain has given 75 million pounds (104.1 million, US$151.5 million) to help fund the operation.

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Afghanistan

Taliban not credible threat: Britain

2007-11-30

The Taliban does not pose a real threat to the government of Afghanistan and is far from being a resurgent force, junior British foreign minister Mark Malloch-Brown said in a letter published on Thursday. In the letter to The Independent newspaper, the former UN deputy secretary-general dismissed the findings of a European think-tank report last week which said that the country risks becoming a divided state. The Taliban do not pose a credible threat to the democratic Afghan government, Malloch-Brown wrote.

Control: The Taliban do not control a single province or have the ability to hold territory, showing they are far from being a resurgent force. He continued: Much progress has been made since 2001, but we recognise that many challenges remain.

The Senlis Council wrote in a report last week that Afghanistan is in crisis and risks becoming a divided state, as Taliban insurgents now control vast areas of unchallenged territory, and called for the NATO-led force there to be doubled in size to 80,000. The Talibans regime was toppled in late 2001 by a US-led offensive, but they have stepped up their attacks recently.

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Europe

Doing the Sarkozy

2007-11-15

Nicolas Sarkozy's star turn in America last week didn't escape notice in London, which used to pride itself on the "special relationship."

Of late, the friendship has felt less than special. On becoming Prime Minister this summer, Gordon Brown threw a few bones to the Harold Pinter gallery. He brought the America-skeptic Mark Malloch Brown from the U.N. to serve in his cabinet. In his first meeting with President Bush, the PM was all straight talk, making a point to strike a contrast with the chumminess on display whenever Tony Blair dropped by Camp David. Little changed on policy, but the symbolism and body language were cool. And, it turns out, out of step with the new Continental zeitgeist.

In France "Sarkozy l'Américain" went from a derisive nickname to a compliment in the six months since his election. Speaking openly of his admiration for the U.S., the new President works closely with Washington on Iran, Kosovo and other issues. He vacationed in New Hampshire this summer. His moving address to a joint session of Congress last week sealed the rapprochement. Then this weekend, Chancellor Angela Merkel paid the first visit by a German Chancellor to the Bush ranch in Crawford to talk about Iran's nuclear program.

So Monday night, in his first major speech on foreign policy since moving into 10 Downing Street, Mr. Brown sought to out-Sarkozy the Frenchman. "It is no secret that I am a lifelong admirer of America," he said in London. "I have no truck with anti-Americanism in Britain or elsewhere in Europe. I believe that our ties with America -- founded on values we share -- constitute our most important bilateral relationship." In noting the recent pro-U.S. tilt across the Channel, Mr. Brown said, "It is good for Britain, for Europe and for the wider world that today France and Germany and the European Union are building strong relationships with America."

Whether the Prime Minister's sudden effusiveness about the Yanks was prompted by the Sarkozy visit doesn't matter. But his speech recognized that the action today in Europe is in France and Germany. Paris and Berlin buried disagreements over the Iraq war and reached out to Washington on the strategic challenges faced by the trans-Atlantic alliance. London feels left out.

In the meantime, one can marvel at the sight, unimaginable this time last year, of a new generation of European leaders clamoring to make friends with America.

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