sábado, 30 de novembro de 2024

Irish America wants a united Ireland. And it's ready to fund it.

 



Irish America wants a

united Ireland. And it's

ready to fund it.

 

The money for violence may have stopped flowing, but the fundraising for the cause of Irish nationalism has continued.

 

By Suzanne Lynch

in Yonkers, New York

Illustration by Peter Strain POLITICO

November 28, 2024 4:00 am CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/how-irish-america-went-from-bombs-to-ballots/

 

Inside McKeon’s, one of several Irish pubs that line the main street of Yonkers, the quiet hum of early evening has settled in. Baseball beams down from silent TV screens as locals nurse pints of Guinness.

 

Soon, talk turns to politics — not New York politics or United States politics, but Irish politics.

 

In an election scheduled for Nov. 29, Ireland’s traditional parties are facing off against Sinn Féin, a political party once affiliated with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the militant group that carried campaigns of murder and bombing in Ireland and the United Kingdom well into the 1990s.

 

There’s little doubt where the sympathies lie among McKeon’s regulars. After all, it was in Irish-American enclaves like Yonkers that the community once raised funds to send guns and bombs to the IRA, whose stated goal was to kick the British out of Northern Ireland and reunify the island within a single Irish Republic.

 

Karl, whose great-grandfather came from County Cork, says he would like to see a united Ireland, but admits he doesn’t follow the intricacies of Irish domestic politics.

 

“It should be one island. It shouldn’t have been split up by the Brits,” he says, referring to the 1921 partition of Ireland, which granted independence to the Republic of Ireland and left Northern Ireland as a part of the U.K.

 

Gerry, who moved from Ireland to the United States 40 years ago, thinks it’s time for a change. “I talk to my family back home, and they’re worried about Sinn Féin,” he says. “But I think their time has come. Why not give them a chance?”

 

The money for violence may have stopped flowing, but the fundraising for the cause of Irish nationalism has continued.

 

Department of Justice filings show that Friends of Sinn Féin, the party’s fundraising arm in the U.S., has been busy since the U.S.-brokered 1998 Good Friday Agreement brought peace to Ireland.

 

The group, which is registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as an agent of Sinn Féin, has raised $2 million over the past five years. Most of the money comes from fundraising events, such as its annual gala dinner in New York, as well as individual donations and merchandise sales.

 

While rules around political funding in Ireland prohibit money raised abroad from being sent to the Republic, Friends of Sinn Féin can legally send money to Northern Ireland. The group’s most recent filings show it sent $51,000 (€47,700) to its Belfast branch in the six months from November to April — just ahead of this summer’s election in Northern Ireland, in which Sinn Féin once again emerged as the most popular party in the region.

 

The money raised by Friends of Sinn Féin is used primarily to advocate for Irish nationalism in the U.S. — including splashy full-page advertisements in publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post, typically around St. Patrick’s Day in March.

 

Ciarán Quinn, Sinn Féin’s representative to the U.S. and Canada, says the group’s American supporters — more than 34 million people in the country claim Irish heritage — have long relinquished any talk of violence. Their focus now, he says, is “the next stage” — the reunification of Ireland.

 

“The dream of Irish unity, that grá [the Irish word for “love”] for Irish unity, Irish independence and sovereignty, has gone through generations,” Quinn says. “And this current generation now sees the potential of getting it across the line.”

 

When the Irish Republic was being founded around a century ago, nationalist hero Éamon de Valera, fresh from his audacious escape from Lincoln Prison in England, was hailed by crowds from Philadelphia to San Francisco as he embarked on an 18-month fundraising tour.

 

The founding document of Irish nationhood, the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, composed by the nationalist leaders of the Easter Rebellion of 1916, specifically references Ireland’s “exiled children in America.”

 

Irish-American culture is replete with shadowy memories of boxes being quietly passed around Irish bars from Boston to Chicago looking for money for the “cause.”

 

Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Féin from 2011 to 2018, was banned from traveling to the United States as violence raged in Northern Ireland. And yet, during “the Troubles” —  the 30-year conflict between Northern Ireland’s Catholics and Protestants — Noraid, an Irish-American organization, smuggled cash for weapons to Republican terrorists waging what they saw as Ireland’s fight for freedom.

 

After the Good Friday Agreement, the guns largely fell silent in Belfast. Sinn Féin slowly moved into the political mainstream, reinventing itself as a parliamentary party both in the Republic of Ireland and north of the border.

 

Irish-America also followed suit. Noraid was wound down; Adams was granted a visa and became a regular fixture at the annual White House St. Patrick’s Day reception.

 

Even today, Sinn Féin enjoys a sprinkle of stardust in the U.S. that it doesn’t have back home. The party’s luminaries are frequent visitors, enjoying name recognition that serving members of the government in Dublin can only dream of.

 

 

In 2019, Adams was given a hero’s welcome by then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as she presented him with a lifetime achievement award from Irish-American Democrats, even as then-Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe looked on, unnoticed, from the crowd.

 

Sinn Féin’s current leader Mary Lou McDonald also regularly travels to the U.S., where she’s greeted in some circles as a celebrity. In May, just weeks before European and local elections in Ireland, she found time to squeeze in a trip to a small Irish-American club in Massachusetts.

 

Irish nationalists have also been able to rely on the support of U.S. politicians. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton played a vital role in bringing about the Good Friday Agreement, and key players in the U.S. Congress helped bring the warring factions to the table and ultimately persuaded the IRA to decommission its arms.

 

As the U.K. was leaving the European Union, of which the Republic of Ireland is a member, Pelosi intervened in the negotiations between the two sides. She told the Conservative government in London that it could forget about a trade deal with Washington if it allowed a hard border to be erected on the island of Ireland.

 

After months of political chaos, the U.K. agreed instead to hold controversial checks between Northern Ireland and the British mainland.

 

In recent weeks, Mary Lou McDonald also wrote to Irish citizens abroad ahead of this month’s election, urging them to ask their family and friends in Ireland to vote Sinn Fein. “As an Irish Citizen living abroad, you should have the opportunity to return and live, raise a family, and prosper in Ireland,” she said, the latest effort by the party to engage the diaspora in an election happening thousands of kilometers away.

 

‘A Nation Once Again’

For Ireland’s traditional political forces, the popularity of Sinn Féin in the U.S. can sometimes be a source of dismay.

 

“The unification project does not and should not belong to any one political party,” Leo Varadkar, a former Irish taoiseach, or prime minister, told POLITICO. “It belongs to all parties, civic organizations and individuals that believe in it.”

 

He contends that many Irish-Americans believe that Sinn Féin “has stronger support at home than it does” — a reference to the fact that the party has been losing ground in the Republic of Ireland in the run-up to this month’s election. Having brought Sinn Féin within touching distance of government, its leader McDonald has seen support slip away as the party has dealt with a number of personnel scandals and struggled to articulate a policy on immigration, a key issue for the Irish electorate in November’s election.

 

Varadkar, a member of the centrist Fine Gael party who often clashed with McDonald before he stepped down as taoiseach in March, has taken up the banner of reunification since his resignation. In a speech in Northern Ireland in September, Varadkar said that unification should be an “objective” and not just an “aspiration” for whoever is in power after the election.

 

His intervention is the latest indication that the unification question has moved into the political mainstream, regardless of how Sinn Féin performs in this election. The U.K.’s exit from the EU has also pushed the issue to the forefront, even among the Protestant communities that historically have wanted to remain part of Britain.

 

Under the Good Friday Agreement, it’s up to London to decide whether and when to call a referendum on whether Northern Ireland should leave the U.K. and rejoin Ireland. In reality, it’s a decision that would be taken in conjunction with Dublin — with input from Washington.

 

Richard Neal, a member of the U.S. Congress who co-chairs the Friends of Ireland caucus on Capitol Hill, says that the U.S. has long had an interest in what’s happening in Ireland. “The Good Friday Agreement is one of the most-significant American foreign policy achievements in recent memory.”

 

He’s bullish that the next chapter in Irish nationhood — unity — is not far away. “That is where this is heading,” Neal says. “The nationalist question, which has been debated for centuries, is going to be resolved.”

 

“The nationalists have to win it, but they have to also prepare for it,” he adds. As they do, they’re sure to be able to count on their supporters across the Atlantic.

 

The Irish-American network can be relied upon to play a key role in any referendum on the status of Northern Ireland, says Dan Mulhall, who served as Ireland’s ambassador in Washington between 2017 and 2022.

 

“I think you can expect that funding will flow toward any campaign for Irish unity,” Mulhall says. “The Irish in America have been a factor in movements toward Irish independence and debates about nationhood for 150 years. I don’t see that changing.”

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in pole position to form new Irish government

 


Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in pole position to form new Irish government

 

Despite trailing Sinn Féin in a close three-way result, outgoing coalition parties are best place to secure governing majority

 

Lisa O'Carroll in Dublin

Sat 30 Nov 2024 15.05 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/30/fianna-fail-fine-gael-irish-government-sinn-fein-coalition

 

Ireland has bucked the European trend of elections going against incumbent governments, with two of the parties in its ruling coalition in pole position to lead the next parliament.

 

An exit poll showed an appetite for change, with 60% backing opposition parties. But the prospect of an alternative left-leaning government still looks unlikely to materialise.

 

The poll showed leftwing, nationalist Sinn Féin slightly ahead, with 21.1% of first-preference votes, followed by the two main parties in the outgoing coalition, centre-right Fine Gael at 21% and centre-right Fianna Fáil at 19.5%.

 

But with both those parties ruling out a partnership with Sinn Féin, they remain favourites to form the next government. They are expected to get between 30 and 40 seats each, which, with a third party, could make the 87 seats needed for a majority.

 

The deputy leader of the Social Democrats, Cian O’Callaghan, said early tallies suggested it would emerge as the fourth biggest party, with more than eight seats. Making an early pitch for a role in a coalition, he said: “This is our best election in our nine years. After the results are all in, we will talk to all parties. We talked to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael last time, and we will again this time round.”

 

Arriving at the main count centre in Dublin, Sinn Féin’s leader, Mary Lou McDonald, was met with a chaotic media scrum.

 

Flanked by the party’s leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, she declared her intention to try to create a government, saying the result had given Sinn Féin the same legitimacy as the two established parties.

 

“Two-party politics is now gone,” she said. “It’s been consigned to the dustbin of history. That, in itself, is very significant. The question now arises for us: what do we do with that? And we are clear that we want to change people’s lives. I believe another five years of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is bad news for society.”

 

The biggest upset is expected to be the wipeout of the Green party, which, with 12 seats, had been the third partner in the outgoing coalition.

 

By Saturday evening, they looked to have lost nearly all their seats, with leader Roderic O’Gorman also in danger.

 

Migration, an inflammatory issue in many recent elections in Europe, failed to fire up the electorate, with an exit poll showing it was the top priority for just 6% of voters, despite violent clashes over asylum seekers in the last year. Housing and homelessness was the the top issue, followed by the cost of living, health and the economy.

 

Counting of votes in the 43 constituencies began at 9am on Saturday but with Ireland’s proportional representation system final results may not be known until Sunday night or Monday.

 

The Green party’s former leader, Eamon Ryan, said he had been “sharing commiserations” with colleagues but “holding heads high”.

 

He told RTÉ: “Change is difficult. Sometimes, when you’re driving change, it upsets things. … I think in a general election people were voting for government and maybe we were caught in that squeeze. People who wanted to retain the current government have voted Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and not us.”

 

The tallies suggest potential trouble for Fianna Fáil in Wicklow, where the party’s only candidate in the constituency – the health minister, Stephen Donnelly – is in danger of losing his seat.

 

Jack Chambers, the departing Fianna Fáil finance minister, said the national result was “too close to call” but said the exit poll showed the public did not want the “volatility” that had spread in other countries on the back of the rise of the far right.

 

Gary Murphy, a professor of politics at Dublin City University, told RTÉ:“I think there is a problem that Irish politics has faced since the fragmentation and the economic crash in 2011 – that now we’re not sure who’s going to be in government.”

 

Fine Gael’s director of elections, Olwyn Enright, said the exit poll had been a “positive” prediction for the party, but that she had been “surprised” with survey results that put Sinn Féin’s McDonald as the preferred taoiseach against the incumbent, Simon Harris, who had a difficult final campaign week. In the poll, 34% said they would like McDonald to be taoiseach against 27% for Harris.

 

The inconclusive results mean that all eyes will now turn to the search for coalition partners. Government formation talks could take weeks – with, possibly, no new government until January.

 

Elsewhere, the election threw up surprises. In Dublin Central, Gerry Hutch, a gangland figure released from bail recently in Spain to run for election, looked to be in contention for the last of four seats.

 

Social Democrat Gary Gannon, a certainty for the third seat behind Fine Gael’s Paschal Donohoe and McDonald, said “austerity from the financial crash” had destroyed some communities, which felt a “real sense of loss and pain over housing and poverty” that the current government had failed to fix in the last five years.

 

As the postmortem into the election began, Bríd Smith of the socialist party People Before Profit–Solidarity blamed Sinn Féin for not setting out a narrative of change stronger and earlier.

 

Another small party, the conservative republican party Aontú, said the country needed alternatives. Its leader, Peadar Tóibín, told RTÉ that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, two parties that emerged from the ashes of the civil war in the 1920s, were “becoming one party in many ways” and impossible to distinguish from each other.

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Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelenskyy suggests war could end without return of seized land / Ukranian political analysts have argued Donald Trump’s choice of special envoy for Ukraine and Russia is “acceptable for Ukraine”.

 


Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelenskyy suggests war could end without return of seized land

Ukraine’s president said that Ukrainian territory under his control should be taken under the ‘Nato umbrella’ to try to stop the ‘hot stage’ of the war

 

Charlie Moloney

Sat 30 Nov 2024 06.04 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/nov/30/russia-ukraine-war-zelenskyy-nato-peace-putin-latest-news

 

From 3h ago

03.11 EST

Zelenskyy proposes reclaiming lost Ukrainian territory diplomatically

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested that Ukrainian territory under his control should be taken under the “Nato umbrella” to try to stop the “hot stage” of the war with Russia.

 

Speaking to Sky News, the Ukrainian president said that such a proposal has “never been considered” by Ukraine because it has never “officially” been offered.

 

Speaking via a translation, Zelenskyy said: “If we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take under Nato umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control. That’s what we need to do fast, and then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically.

 

Zelenskyy suggests territory still under Ukrainian control be made part of Nato – video

“This proposal has never been considered by Ukraine because no one has ever offered that to us officially.”

 

In the same interview, Zelenskyy also said that any invitation should be given “within its internationally recognised border, you can’t give invitation to just one part of a country”.

 

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk traveled Saturday to his country’s border with the Russian region of Kaliningrad to inspect progress in the construction of military fortifications along the eastern frontier, calling it “an investment in peace.”

 

“The better the Polish border is guarded, the more difficult it is to access for those with bad intentions,” Tusk said at a news conference near the village of Dabrowka as he stood in front of concrete anti-tank barriers.

 

“Everything we are doing here - and we will also be doing this on the border with Belarus and Ukraine - is to deter and discourage a potential aggressor, which is why it is truly an investment in peace,” Tusk said. “We will spend billions of zlotys on this, but right now the whole of Europe is observing these investments and our actions with great satisfaction and will support them if necessary.”

 

He said he wants Poles “to feel safer along the entire length of the eastern border.” Tusk also said the fortifications would include Poland’s border with Ukraine, a close ally, but did not elaborate.

 

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said military fortifications along his country’s eastern frontier were “an investment in peace.”

 

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has suggested that the war in his country could end without totally taking back territories occupied by Russia under Kyiv’s control. Zelenskyy suggested that land controlled by the Ukrainian army could be taken under the Nato umbrella to end the ‘hot war’, and then diplomacy used to regain the remainder.

 

Ukraine has asked Latin American parliamentarians and diplomats to assist in its defence in the war with Russia.

 

Representatives of Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, El Salvador, Ecuador, Peru, and Costa Rica arrived in Kyiv for a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, pictures show.

 

The President urged them to join the peace process – according to Ukraine - work together to facilitate the return of illegally deported Ukrainian children, address food security issues and help Ukraine recover from shelling.

 

“These are not weapons issues; these are other issues. These are issues of people having something to eat, something to feed their children, something to cook, electricity to keep them warm at night. Especially now, in winter,” Zelenskyy emphasized.

 

He called the visit of the Latin American delegation to Kyiv important for “countering Russian disinformation”. Zelenskyy urged them to share their experiences and impressions and create platforms that would facilitate the exchange of reliable data on the Ukrainians’ struggle against Russian aggression.

 

You’re probably being bombarded with discounts on consumer goods. But we’ve got something a little bit different to offer you this Black Friday.

 

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Ukranian political analysts have argued Donald Trump’s choice of special envoy for Ukraine and Russia is “acceptable for Ukraine”.

 

Trump announced this week he would appoint Keith Kellogg – who was the chief of staff of the National Security Council from 2017 to 2018 and national security advisor to Vice President Mike Pence from 2018 to 2021 – to the role.

 

“There will be no (outright) pro-Ukrainian appointments (under Trump),” Ukrainian political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko told the Kyiv Independent. “But it’s good if an appointee is not anti-Ukrainian.”

 

“From this standpoint, if you compare (Kellogg) with others, he’s absolutely acceptable for Ukraine,” Fesenko added. “His position is understandable (for Kyiv), and we can adapt to it.”

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Trudeau in Florida to meet with Trump after 25 per cent tariff threat

Tariff Threats Show Trump’s Commitment to Upending Global Trade

 



News Analysis

 

Tariff Threats Show Trump’s Commitment to Upending Global Trade

 

The president-elect’s threat to hit Canada, Mexico and China with new tariffs is already rocking business and diplomatic relationships and could topple the trade pacts he signed in his first term.

 

Ana Swanson

By Ana Swanson

Ana Swanson covered trade during both the Trump and Biden administrations

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/26/us/politics/trump-tariffs-global-trade.html

Nov. 26, 2024

 

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threats to impose damaging tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China may ultimately be an opening wager to try to use the power of the American market to persuade other countries to stem a flow of drugs and migrants across U.S. borders.

 

But even if the threat to impose vast tariffs on some of the world’s largest economies is a negotiating tactic, it is also a gambit that has immediate real-world consequences.

 

Before Mr. Trump even sets foot in the Oval Office, his threat to put tariffs on America’s three largest trading partners on his first day in office was reverberating around the world, shocking international businesses, rocking diplomatic relationships and calling into question two big trade deals that Mr. Trump negotiated during his first term.

 

Mr. Trump’s pronouncement late Monday that he would impose a 25 percent tariff on all goods from Canada and Mexico and a 10 percent tariff on products from China was immediately denounced by business groups, who said such a move would cause economic harm. Foreign officials rushed to reassure the incoming Trump administration that they had been working to stop drugs and migrants from coming into the United States — while warning that they were also ready to turn around and impose their own tariffs on American exports.

 

Mr. Trump’s threats may have been intended to silence investors and economists who have recently questioned whether the president-elect would go through with imposing the big levies he promised while campaigning. In the run-up to the election, Mr. Trump pledged to put a 60 percent tariff on goods from China and a tax of at least 10 percent on all other imports. Such a move could ignite a global trade war, slowing economies around the world.

 

Whether Mr. Trump’s threats ultimately show his prowess as a deal-maker or simply sow chaos, they are a reminder that the president-elect is eager to upend global relationships to try to secure points for the United States. That includes a willingness to potentially topple the trade pacts that he himself worked to put in place with Mexico, Canada and China during his first term after he used bruising tariffs to force them into making concessions.

 

One of those deals was the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. That trade pact replaced and updated the previous deal, the 30-year old North American Free Trade Agreement, which Mr. Trump called the “worst trade deal ever made.”

 

Under the U.S.M.C.A., goods that meet certain requirements can move around the continent without being subject to tariffs. A 25 percent tariff on all Mexican and Canadian products would be a clear violation of that agreement, and could call into question the future of the deal itself.

 

Wendy Cutler, a vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute and former U.S. trade negotiator, said the threats put Mexico and Canada “in a tough spot” given their dependence on the U.S. market. The pressure on them to take measures to placate the president-elect would be strong, she said.

 

“Like Trump’s first term, some of these tariff threats may never lead to the actual imposition of tariffs,” she said. “Nevertheless, our trading partners need to be prepared for additional threats, and many are developing strategies as we speak for navigating around them.”

 

The threats offered a preview of what could be another four years of trade tumult, mirroring Mr. Trump’s first term when he scrambled the country’s economic and diplomatic relationships. The president-elect has long viewed tariffs as a powerful source of leverage that, when coupled with his unpredictable style, encourages other countries to swiftly make concessions.

 

After taking office in 2017, Mr. Trump hit a slew of countries with tariffs on steel and aluminum. He wielded those taxes as leverage against Canada and Mexico to renegotiate NAFTA. He also put significant tariffs on China in 2018, then continued to ratchet them up over the next 18 months until his administration signed a trade deal with Beijing in January 2020.

 

This time, Mr. Trump said he would hit China for failing to prevent chemicals used in fentanyl from coming into the United States. He said he would impose tariffs on Mexico and Canada to force those countries to stem the flow of fentanyl and end illegal migrant crossings into the United States.

 

In a public letter on Tuesday, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said her country had developed a comprehensive policy that had led to far fewer encounters at the U.S. border and said tariff threats would not solve the problem.

 

The number of illegal border crossings from Mexico has fallen significantly in 2024, in part because of a Mexican crackdown on migrants crossing through their country, as well as new U.S. restrictions on asylum at the southern border.

 

Ms. Sheinbaum also threatened to answer Mr. Trump’s tariffs with levies on American products, even if that harmed automakers and other businesses that trade goods along both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

 

“For every tariff, there will be a response in kind, until we put at risk our shared enterprises,” she said.

 

Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, said Tuesday that he would hold an emergency meeting on Mr. Trump’s tariff proposal with all of Canada’s provincial and territorial leaders. He also responded to accusations in the House of Commons that he was not acting forcefully enough by saying he was working to defuse the threats.

 

“Rather than panicking, we’re engaging in constructive ways to protect Canadian jobs like we have before,” Mr. Trudeau said. “The idea of going to war with the United States isn’t what anyone wants.”

 

Speaking in Ottawa, Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative opposition leader, indicated that he was open to removing Mexico from the free trade agreement.

 

Asked by reporters if he would exclude Mexico from any talks to prevent Mr. Trump’s proposed tariffs, Mr. Poilievre said he would put Canada first and “do what is necessary to preserve that relationship above all others.”

 

Imposing 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico could cause significant damage to many industries that organized themselves around an integrated North American market. Since NAFTA was signed more than three decades ago, makers of cars, textiles, snack foods and other products have set up supply chains that snake between the countries, as they move from raw materials to their final consumers.

 

Kim Glas, the chief executive of the National Council of Textile Organizations, which represents American textile makers, said that her industry welcomed an increase on tariffs on Chinese textiles and apparel, but that imposing tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods could undermine American manufacturing.

 

Factories in the United States, Mexico and Canada are linked together in a co-production chain under the current trade agreement, she said. The U.S. textile industry exports 53 percent of its products to factories in Mexico and Canada, where they are turned into finished products that then come back into the United States.

 

“This is a vital supply chain that sustains U.S. textile manufacturers, our regional trade partners and their workforces,” she said, adding that the arrangement “competes directly with China and Asia.”

 

David McCall, the president of the United Steelworkers, a trade union that represents metal makers and other industries in both Canada and the United States, said in a statement that tariffs on Canada would “dramatically harm workers in both our countries,” because the economies are so integrated.

 

“There is no question that we must address the holes in our global trading system, but Canada is not the problem,” he said.

 

Trade lawyers said Mr. Trump would have the legal authority to sign an executive order on his first day in office to issue the tariffs, though he might choose to delay the date at which the tariffs go into effect in order to force countries to the negotiating table. Mr. Trump took that approach when he first imposed tariffs on Chinese goods.

 

U.S. markets shrugged off the threats on Tuesday, with the Dow Jones industrial average rising to offset losses in the morning.

 

Analysts at Goldman Sachs said in a note Tuesday that they still expected it was more likely that Mexico and Canada would avoid across-the-board tariffs. If the tariffs were imposed, however, they estimated they would raise the U.S. effective tariff rate by 8.6 percentage points and push up a core inflation index closely watched by central bankers by 0.9 percent.

 

John Murphy, a senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement on Tuesday that Mr. Trump was right to focus on fentanyl, but that the business community believed those issues could be addressed “without the harm to the American people that tariffs would bring.”

 

“If imposed,” he said, “tariffs themselves would not solve our border problems, and instead would send prices soaring, costing the typical American family more than $1,000, with significant harm to U.S. manufacturers, farmers and ranchers.”

 

Hamed Aleaziz and Ian Austen contributed reporting.

 

Ana Swanson covers trade and international economics for The Times and is based in Washington. She has been a journalist for more than a decade. More about Ana Swanson

Trump having dinner with Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago


Trudeau in Florida to meet Trump after tariffs threat – reports

 

Canada’s PM to dine with US president-elect at Mar-a-Lago resort, news reports say, days after Trump threatens 25% tariff on Canadian imports

 

Reuters in West Palm Beach, Florida

Fri 29 Nov 2024 20.28 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/30/trudeau-in-florida-to-meet-trump-after-tariffs-threat-reports

 

The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has arrived in Palm Beach, Florida, ahead of a meeting Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort, according to media reports, days after the US president-elect threatened the US’s neighbour with import tariffs once he takes office.

 

The Canadian prime minister’s public itinerary does not list a scheduled visit to Florida. Neither Trudeau’s office nor Trump’s representatives immediately responded to requests for comment.

 

Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper, citing two unidentified sources, reported that Trudeau was in Florida to meet with Trump. Trump was going to have dinner with Trudeau on Friday night at Mar-a-Lago, CNN reported later, citing a source.

 

Canada’s public safety minister, Dominic LeBlanc, was travelling with Trudeau, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp reported.

 

Trump threatened on Monday to impose a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico until the countries clamped down on drugs, particularly fentanyl, and migrants crossing the border.

 

Officials from Mexico, Canada and China, along with major industry groups, have warned that the hefty tariffs threatened by Trump would harm the economies of all countries involved, cause inflation to spike and damage job markets.

 

Any hit to the Canadian economy would add to Trudeau’s woes at a time when his popularity has sunk in part due to a slowing economy and a rapid surge in the cost of living over the past few years. Polls show Trudeau’s Liberals would lose to the opposition Conservative party in an election that must be held by late October 2025.

 

 

Trudeau this week pledged to stay united against Trump’s tariffs threat, and called a meeting with the premiers of all 10 Canadian provinces to discuss US relations.

 

Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer and sixth-largest natural gas producer. The vast majority of its 4m barrels a day of crude exports go to the US.

 

Trump’s plan did not exempt crude oil from the trade penalties, two sources familiar with the plan told Reuters on Tuesday.

 

More than three-quarters of Canadian exports, worth C$592.7bn ($423bn), went to the US last year, and nearly 2m Canadian jobs are dependent on trade.

 

A government source said Canada was considering possible retaliatory tariffs against the United States.

 

Some have suggested Trump’s tariff threat may be bluster, or an opening salvo in future trade negotiations. But Trudeau rejected those views when he spoke with reporters earlier in Prince Edward Island province.

 

“Donald Trump, when he makes statements like that, he plans on carrying them out,” Trudeau said. “There’s no question about it.”

 

With Agence France-Presse


Zelensky ‘prepared to END war’ – even if Russia ‘doesn’t immediately give back land’

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Zelenskyy says Ukrainian territory should be under ‘Nato umbrella’ to stop war

 


Zelenskyy says Ukrainian territory should be under ‘Nato umbrella’ to stop war

 

President suggests bringing Kyiv-controlled land into western military pact could stop ‘hot stage’ of war

 

PA Media

Fri 29 Nov 2024 16.12 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/29/zelenskyy-says-ukrainian-territory-should-be-under-nato-umbrella-to-stop-war

 

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested that Ukrainian territory under his control should be taken under the “Nato umbrella” to try to stop the “hot stage” of the war with Russia.

 

Speaking to Sky News, the Ukrainian president said that such a proposal has “never been considered” by Ukraine because it has never “officially” been offered.

 

Speaking via a translation, Zelenskyy said: “If we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take under Nato umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control. That’s what we need to do fast, and then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically.

 

“This proposal has never been considered by Ukraine because no one has ever offered that to us officially.”

 

In the same interview, Zelenskyy also said that any invitation should be given “within its internationally recognised border, you can’t give invitation to just one part of a country”.

 

Last month Zelenskyy revealed a victory plan. The Associated Press reported that the plan to win his country’s fight against Russia’s invasion could bring peace next year, he said, but it contains a step that some crucial western allies have so far refused to countenance: inviting Ukraine to join Nato before the war ends.

 

The interview comes in the same week that Russian drone and missile attacks have hit civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, leaving more than 1 million people without heat and power in freezing temperatures.

 

Keir Starmer discussed the attacks with Zelenskyy in a call on Thursday. Downing Street said the leaders “discussed the egregious Russian missile strike in the early hours of this morning, which had deprived more than a million people of heat, light and electricity”.

 

The prime minister described the “systemic attacks on Ukraine’s energy sector” as “depraved”, No 10 said.

 

After reports that a fresh consignment of Storm Shadow missiles have been sent to Kyiv, Zelenskyy said in his call with Starmer they “discussed advancing our defence cooperation and strengthening Ukraine’s long-range capabilities”.

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Trump Disavowed Project 2025 During the Campaign. Not Anymore.

 



Trump Disavowed Project 2025 During the Campaign. Not Anymore.

 

President-elect Donald J. Trump has filled his administration with people who have ties to the right-wing manifesto.

 


Zolan Kanno-YoungsErica L. Green

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Erica L. Green

The reporters cover the White House and the presidential transition.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/us/politics/trump-project-2025.html

Nov. 29, 2024

Updated 1:06 p.m. ET

 

During the campaign, President-elect Donald J. Trump swore he had “nothing to do with” a right-wing policy blueprint known as Project 2025 that would overhaul the federal government, even though many of those involved in developing the plans were his allies.

 

Mr. Trump even described many of the policy goals as “absolutely ridiculous.” And during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he said he was “not going to read it.”

 

Now, as he plans his agenda for his return to the White House, Mr. Trump has recruited at least a half dozen architects and supporters of the plan to oversee key issues, including the federal budget, intelligence gathering and his promised plans for mass deportations.

 

The shift, his critics say, is not exactly a surprise. Mr. Trump disavowed the 900-page manifesto when polls showed it was extremely unpopular with voters. Now that he has won a second term, they say, he appears to be brushing those concerns aside.

 

“President-elect Trump has dropped all pretense and is charging ahead hand in hand with the right-wing industry players shaping an agenda he denied for the whole campaign,” said Tony Carrk, the executive director of Accountable.US, a government watchdog agency that has been tracking Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks with ties to the project.

 

A set of conservative policy proposals called Project 2025 has put into words what a second term for Donald J. Trump could look like. Trump has distanced himself from the plan, but it aligns with many of his campaign promises. Political reporter, Jonathan Swan, explains.

 

Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks and other appointments have reaffirmed the fears of many Democrats and government watchdogs who say Mr. Trump will use Project 2025 as a road map to expand his executive power, replace civil servants with political loyalists and gut government agencies like the Department of Education.

 

Mr. Trump has picked Russell T. Vought, one of the authors of Project 2025, to lead the powerful Office of Management and Budget. In choosing Mr. Vought, Mr. Trump will have someone who views the position as far more expansive than just overseeing the budget.

 

Mr. Vought wrote in Project 2025 that the person picked for the job should view themselves as an “approximation of the president’s mind,” while establishing a reputation of the keeper of “commander’s intent.”

 

In the report, Mr. Vought wrote that the incoming administration should overhaul executive branch institutions, such as the National Security Council and National Economic Council to align with Mr. Trump’s agenda, while abolishing White House offices for domestic climate policy and gender policy.

 

Earlier this year, Mr. Trump tried to distance himself from his former staffers like Mr. Vought, who also served as budget chief during his first term. Democrats were ramping up attacks that tied Mr. Trump to Project 2025 as voters grew unsettled by its promises to amass power in the executive branch.

 

“I have no idea who is behind it,” Mr. Trump said on social media in July, despite his ties to former staffers like Mr. Vought.

 

In a statement this week, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, argued Mr. Trump “never had anything to do” with Project 2025.

 

“All of President Trump’s cabinet nominees and appointments are wholeheartedly committed to President Trump’s agenda, not the agenda of outside groups,” Ms. Leavitt said.

 

Mr. Trump has also tapped Stephen Miller to be his deputy chief of staff for policy and Thomas Homan to be a “border czar,” positions that do not require Senate confirmation. Mr. Homan is listed as a contributor to Project 2025. The legal organization Mr. Miller founded during Mr. Trump’s time out of office, America First Legal, was listed at one point as an adviser group to Project 2025.

 

Both officials will be responsible for elements of Mr. Trump’s goals of establishing detention camps and carrying out mass deportations. The Project 2025 blueprint also recommends rescinding restrictions that prevented immigration agents from carrying out arrests in schools and churches.

 

Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, wrote a chapter in Project 2025 that called for reining in “Big Tech,” eliminating immunity protections for social media companies and imposing transparency rules on companies like Google, Facebook and YouTube.

 

“It is hard to imagine another industry in which a greater gap exists between power and accountability,” he wrote.

 

Other contributors to Project 2025 include Pete Hoekstra, Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to the Netherlands and his current pick to be ambassador to Canada, as well as John Ratcliffe, Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the C.I.A.

 

A former director of national intelligence, Mr. Ratcliffe was cited repeatedly in the document, including in a chapter on the intelligence community written by Dustin Carmack. Mr. Carmack was Mr. Ratcliffe’s chief of staff when he served as Mr. Trump’s director of National Intelligence in his first administration.

 

Mr. Carmack made the case in Project 2025 for empowering the director of national intelligence, as the leader of the intelligence community. He also said the leader needed to “address the widely promoted ‘woke’ culture that has spread throughout the federal government with identity politics and ‘social justice’ advocacy replacing such traditional American values as patriotism, colorblindness, and even workplace competence.”

 

Alex Floyd, the rapid response director of the Democratic National Committee said that “after months of lies to the American people, Donald Trump is taking off the mask.”

 

“He’s plotting a Project 2025 Cabinet to enact his dangerous vision starting on day one,” Mr. Floyd said.

 

Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent, covering President Biden and his administration. More about Zolan Kanno-Youngs

 

Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent, covering President Biden and his administration. More about Erica L. Green

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22 Apr 2023: The world’s most perfect places are being turned into backdrops for our tourist selfies

 



The world’s most perfect places are being turned into backdrops for our tourist selfies

Tobias Jones

Italy depends on tourism but despairs at the hordes who descend on its beauty spots. Its solutions are being watched around the globe

 


Sat 22 Apr 2023 13.31 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/22/as-la-dolce-vita-turns-sour-thanks-to-overtourism-hotspots-are-turning-away-their-visitors

 

Last week Italy was, again, struggling with the conundrum of mass tourism. One of the country’s most charming seaside towns, Portofino, has just introduced legislation to dissuade tourists lingering for selfies: there will be fines of up to €275 (£243) if they block traffic or pedestrians in two “red zones” of the beautiful bay.

 

It’s the latest in a series of draconian measures adopted by Italian councils to deal with herds of holidaymakers: there are fines of up to €2,500 for walking the paths above the Cinque Terre (five villages in Liguria) in flip-flops or sandals; you are no longer allowed to eat snacks outside in the centre of Venice or in four central streets in Florence; you can be fined €250 just for sitting down on Rome’s Spanish Steps; and one beach, in Eraclea, has even banned the building of sandcastles (maximum fine €250) because they’re considered unnecessary obstructions.

 

Italy, of course, more or less invented the concept of tourism: as a cradle of ancient civilisation and Renaissance splendour, the peninsula became de rigueur for aesthetes and aristocrats. The famous “Grand Tour” was born in the 17th century and ever since then tourism has been vital to the Italian economy: pre-Covid, the country received 65 million visitors a year and, according to the Bank of Italy, tourism (considered in the widest sense) represented 13% of the country’s GDP.

 

But Italy, so dependent on tourism, is also beginning to despair of it. Last week, a new display was introduced in a bookshop in Venice that reveals, painfully and in real time, the number of beds available in the city to tourists: at 48,596 (and counting), it is perilously close to overtaking the number of residents in the city: 49,365 (and falling). As recently as 2008, the respective figures were 12,000 and 60,000.

 

So a city that is famously concerned about drowning in water is now more fretful about drowning in humans. In January, Venice even introduced an entrance fee (varying between €3 and €10) to access the city and its islands. The move wasn’t controversial because it monetised tourism – that has always happened – but because it made the city appear precisely what it is trying to avoid becoming: a theme park, a time capsule for gawking, snap-happy visitors, more a relic than actually alive.

 

The problem is that mass tourism is turning destinations into the opposite of what they once were. The attraction of the Cinque Terre is their stunning simplicity: they have no great monuments as such, neither grand cathedrals nor castles, just a sense of serenity, of human ingenuity and topographical grandeur (the steep mountains, terraced and criss-crossed by paths where possible, host pastel houses perched above an azure sea).

 

But the serenity and simplicity can’t survive millions of wham-bam visitors a year. Two weeks ago, Fabrizia Pecunia, the mayor of one of the five villages, Riomaggiore, complained: “It’s no longer possible to postpone the debate about how to handle tourist flows. If we don’t [find a solution], our days as a tourist destination are numbered.” What tourist hot spots most yearned for a decade or two ago – high numbers, influx and flows – is precisely what is now causing them problems. During the peak season, the Balearic island of Mallorca now has more than 1,000 flights landing every day.

 

The World Tourism Organization predicts that by the end of this decade the flow of international tourists will surpass 2 billion. What’s called “overtourism” is already so acute that popular destinations are now doing the unthinkable, and actively trying to dissuade or block arrivals. Last month, Amsterdam launched “stay away” ads aimed at badly behaved Brits. The Greek island of Santorini, a mere 29 square miles, had to cap cruise ship passengers to 8,000 a day in 2017. Venice has blocked cruise ships and, in 2012, the anti-tourism message proved a winning formula for a mayoral candidate in Barcelona.

 

Now the road is so designated that you feel forced through a well-oiled funnel as someone picks your pockets

 

But if the tourism boom is often bad for locals, it’s equally depressing for visitors. The fiction of tourism in the social media age is that we, as rugged adventurers, are there by ourselves. But we’re only alone for that Instagram money shot. The rest is full of crowds and discomfort. When a friend of mine foolishly went to the Cinque Terre at Easter, there were long queues just to get on the footpaths or to drink a coffee. She then had to queue for three hours just to board one of the rickety trains home.

 

Anyone who has been to Niagara Falls, say, or Stonehenge knows that natural or human wonders have been mercilessly monetised. It now costs, for example, €34 to visit the Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia. Visitors to famous sites often come away feeling not uplifted, but fleeced by car-park charges, entry prices, food stalls and so on. We’re bemused by the inauthenticity of the experience. Travel used to be about adventure and hardship, sometimes solitude, but invariably surprise and spontaneity. Now the road is so well-trodden and designated that you feel forced through a well-oiled funnel as someone picks your pockets.

 

But the sense of unease goes deeper. In the past we travelled to broaden and educate the mind. Travellers suffered discomfort – a mule over the Alps, a clipper across the Bay of Biscay – to absorb the wideness of the world, to feel small or vulnerable perhaps, and to allow the learning of other cultures to infiltrate their beings. Now, it seems, all that is reversed: there’s minimal danger or risk to travel, and our big egos are imposed on a small world. Sites are nothing more than the backdrop for our selfies because we go places not to learn from them, but just to post and boast to others that we’ve been there.

 

 Tobias Jones lives in Parma. His latest book is The Po: An Elegy for Italy’s Longest Ri