b+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Rolland is a very dear artist friend and is having a retrospective showing in New Orleans. We own two of his works and contributed several to GMOA.
I am hoping GMOA will be having a show of his Katrina Series which received several awards and much praise.
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Genesis of Steele Dossier to be documented after extended investigation. Once again, the truth will win out in the end and it will snare a lot of hypocrites and sanctimonious Democrats and those on the high steps of the Obama Ladder. (See 1 below.)
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We are very fortunate to live in a wonderful community of great, caring and bright people. We could not have found a better place to spend our remaining years than at The Landings and we have all the benefits of Savannah, one of Georgia's unique cities and an American Treasure. (See 2 below.)
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Muller's comment about Trump's fate had he not been a sitting president. (See 3 below.)
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Lonely Erdogan? (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) Barr Reveals The Truth About Russian Attacks
Bill Barr reminded Congress that the Steele report could have been produced with Russian disinformation. The Daily Caller reports:
Attorney General William Barr said Wednesday he is reviewing whether the infamous Steele dossier was a product of Russian disinformation.Barr made the explosive revelation during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing regarding the results of the special counsel’s probe. The investigation severely undercut the Democrat-funded Steele dossier, which alleged a “well-developed conspiracy” between the Trump campaign and Russian government.Barr was asked about the origins of the dossier during an exchange with Texas Sen. John Cornyn.“Can we state with confidence that the Steele dossier was not part of the Russian disinformation campaign?” asked Cornyn, a Republican.
It is mind boggling that the only Russian collusion was introduced to American politics through a report that the Clinton campaign paid for, and has managed to blame Trump for it.
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2)Dear Landings Club Members,
The Landings Club offers a warm, friendly, and relaxed atmosphere to our members. It’s a place that feels like home, where all are welcome and there is always an extra seat at the table. It’s a place that brings people together and offers them the opportunity to relax from the stress of everyday life. There is a sense of community and activities for all that enrich members’ lives. These are our values.
Our members represent our Club. Though Savannah’s favorite son, Johnny Mercer, famously urged us all to “accentuate the positive,” our Club is open to debate, constructive suggestions and well-meaning criticism. When done in a professional manner and demonstrating respect for fellow members and employees, those suggestions help our Club better serve its members. There are appropriate channels for those suggestions; through the Directors, the Board, and our committee structure. However, we think we can all agree of the need to avoid the rhetorical poison that has infected much of the public discourse in our society and are contrary to our values. Specifically, it is in our collective best interest as a Club and community that we refrain from public statements that are disrespectful, dishonest, harassing, damaging or bring reputational harm to the interests of our members, our employees or our Club. Accordingly, the Board wishes to share the Club’s guidelines for the use of social media and related sites.
The Board does not take the establishment of this policy lightly. We understand that electronic means of communication are effective and powerful and an integral part of the everyday life of our Club’s members. It is precisely because of that power that this policy was designed and the use of appropriate channels is critical. Both the Membership, Marketing and Communications committee and the Board unanimously approved this policy. Links to the member-led committees, the Board of Governors, the Staff Directory and the Member Forum are provided below.
Click here to view the Staff Directory.
Click here to view the Board of Directors information.
Click here to visit the Member Forum.
Please click here to view the social media policy.
Respectfully,
The Board of Governors
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3) Barr Bombshell: Mueller Told Us He Was NOT Saying That Trump Would Be Charged If He Was Not President
Attorney General William Barr revealed during a hearing on Wednesday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had repeatedly told Barr that he was not indicating that he would have charged President Donald Trump if Trump were not a sitting president.
"Special counsel Mueller stated three times to us in that meeting in response to our questioning that he emphatically was not saying that but for the OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion, he would have found obstruction," Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "He said that in the future, the facts of the case against a president might be such that a special counsel would recommend abandoning the OLC opinion, but this is not such a case."
The point made by Barr was significant, as some Democratic politicians and journalists had tried to push the narrative that Mueller would have charged Trump but could not do so because Trump is a sitting president.
Barr also addressed the latest narrative pushed by the media and Democratic Party that Barr mischaracterized Mueller’s Russia report in his March letter to Congress.
"[Mueller] was very clear with me that he was not suggesting that we had misrepresented his report," Barr told the committee. "I told Bob that I was not interested in putting out summaries, and I wasn’t going to put out the report piecemeal. I wanted to get the whole report out. And I thought summaries by very definition, regardless of who prepared them, would be under-inclusive and we’d have sort of a series of different debates and public discord over each tranche of information that went out, and I wanted to get everything out at once."
"The Deputy Attorney General and I, therefore, conducted a careful review of the report, looking at the facts found and the legal theories set forth by the Special Counsel," Barr continued. "Although we disagreed with some of the Special Counsel’s legal theories and felt that some of the episodes examined did not amount to obstruction as a matter of law, we accepted the Special Counsel’s legal framework for purposes of our analysis and evaluated the evidence as presented by the Special Counsel in reaching our conclusion."
"We concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense," Barr added. "The responsibility of the Department of Justice, when it comes to law enforcement, is to determine whether crimes have been committed and to prosecute those crimes under the principles of federal prosecution."
"With the completion of the Special Counsel’s investigation and the resulting prosecutorial decisions, the Department’s work on this matter is at its end aside from completing the cases that have been referred to other offices," Barr concluded. "From here on, the exercise of responding and reacting to the report is a matter for the American people and the political process. As I am sure you agree, it is vitally important for the Department of Justice to stand apart from the political process and not to become an adjunct of it."
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4) Poor Friendless Erdoğan
"World leaders hail Erdoğan on local vote win," the news headline ran, referring to the outcome of Turkey's local elections on March 31. They laboriously ignored that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Islamist AKP party lost in all of Turkey's three biggest cities -- and for the first time in 25 years in Ankara and Istanbul. They were nevertheless able to find one element to hail regarding Turkey's strongman. But who are these "world leaders"?
Here is the full list: Russia's President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, tripartite Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Chairman Milorad Dodik, former Bosniak member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Bakir Izetbegovic, Guinean President Alpha Conde, and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.
Those gentlemen are "world leaders," according to Erdoğan's propaganda machinery.
In reality, with the exception of Qatar's emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Venezuela's troubled man, Nicolás Maduro, Erdoğan is increasingly friendless.
In theory, Turkey and Russia are going through the honeymoon period of a new alliance. But this newfound love affair is fragile: Ankara's and Moscow's affair is a tactical alliance rather than a strategic one, with an official break-up looking like a slow-fuse time bomb. China, like Russia, is more of an economic partner for Turkey, but the decades-old dispute over China's treatment of Uighurs, the Turks' ethnic brethren in Western China, has invariably been a source of tensions between Ankara and Beijing.
With its economy in recession and posting record-high jobless and inflation rates, a further deterioration is Erdoğan's worst nightmare.
Europe is also a place where Turkish diplomats must work as if they are part of a Department of Cold War, not the Foreign Ministry. French President Emmanuel Macron recently announced that France would make April 24 a "national day of commemoration of the Armenian genocide." Erdoğan's spokesman, Ibrahim Kalın, responded:
Erdoğan's party spokesman, Ömer Çelik, said that "French authorities should face the human rights violations and murders they were involved in from Cameroon to Algeria".
Almost simultaneously, Italy's lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, also approved a motion officially to recognize as a genocide the mass-killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire that began in 1915. Turkey's Foreign Ministry condemned that step as well, calling it "an example of using Armenian claims for domestic political interests".
In Africa, too, things are not moving in the direction Erdoğan might wish them to. It was a shock to the Turkish president to wake up the other day and learn that the genocide suspect whom he embraced as "brother", President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, had been ousted by a coup d'état. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir in 2010 on a series of genocide charges.
Turkey's pro-Erdoğan media claim that the military intervention in Sudan that ousted Bashir was "directly against Turkey," and that Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were behind the coup -- "the trio's intervention serves American and Israeli interests in the region."
Haftar, targeting radical Islamists, infiltrated into the western Libyan government -- supported by Erdoğan -- and launched an offensive to take Tripoli. Qatar calledfor an arms embargo on Haftar's forces to be more strictly put in place. Accordingto The Independent:Sudan is not the only fresh African headache for Erdoğan. In Libya, Turkey and Qatar have supported the Tripoli government in the Western part of the country in Libya's civil war. At the other end of the conflict spectrum, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE have supported Khalifa Haftar, a general based in eastern Libya, with whom Russia has also met.
One analyst said Mr Haftar and his Arab allies may have chosen to launch the attack after spotting what was described as suspicious plane traffic from Turkey to western Libya, and hoped to take advantage of possible aviation disruption during the planned 6 April switch of operations from Istanbul's old Ataturk airport to a major new airport.
The strongman of Turkey is running fast to become the solitary man of the world.
Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey's leading journalists, is a fellow at the Middle East Forum.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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