Trump Asks For Jan. 6 Dismissal Because Coup Attempt Was Part Of His Official Duties

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is asking a federal judge to dismiss criminal charges against him based on his actions leading up to his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt because, as president, that coup attempt should be considered part of his presidential duties.

Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and John Lauro, in Thursday’s 52-page filing to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, attempted to minimize Trump’s actions leading up to the violent assault on the Capitol that day and that, regardless, the law allowed Trump to act based on his belief that the election had been stolen from him.

France to withdraw ambassador and troops from Niger

France will withdraw its ambassador from Niger followed by the French military contingent in the next months, Emmanuel Macron has said in the aftermath of the coup in the west African country that ousted the pro-Paris president.

The French president’s announcement appeared to end two months of defiance in which Paris’s ambassador had been kept in place in Niamey despite coup leaders ordering him to leave.

What we are witnessing in Africa is not an anti-colonial revolution

On August 17, Arikana Chihombori-Quao, former permanent representative of the African Union to the United States, claimed the recent military coups in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea were part of the early stages of an “African revolution” against Western neocolonialism.

“What is going on now in Africa is a revolution similar to what we saw with the demise of the mighty Roman Empire, similar to what we saw with the fall of the mighty British Empire,” Chihombori-Quao said in an interview with New York-based Nigerian news channel Arise TV.

U.S. troop presence in Niger could drop by half as Pentagon repositions forces

The U.S. military is preparing to cut its presence in Niger nearly in half in the next few weeks, as troops move out of the capital of Niamey amid widespread protests, according to two Defense Department officials with direct knowledge of the move.

DOD recently began repositioning a number of forces away from the airport at Niamey to a second, smaller base at Agadez, some 500 miles away, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters on Thursday. As a result, the overall number of troops in Niger could drop from 1,200 before the July 26 coup to somewhere “right in the middle” of 500 to 1,000 in the next few weeks, said one of the DOD officials, who like others interviewed for this story was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive plans.

Russia uses social media channels to exploit Niger coup

Social media channels associated with the Russian state have launched a major effort to exploit last month’s military coup in Niger, seeking to reinforce Moscow’s influence in the country and possibly open opportunities for intervention.

Mohamed Bazoum, the pro-western elected president, was ousted by senior army officers on 26 July and is being held prisoner in his official residence in Niamey. African leaders have threatened military action to oust the new regime but advocates of intervention have so far been unable to rally sufficient support.

Niger coup leader agrees to hold direct talks with ECOWAS: Nigerian scholar

A group of Nigerian Islamic scholars who met Niger’s coup leader have said the general has agreed to hold direct talks and resolve a standoff with West African leaders.

Sheikh Abdullahi Bala Lau, who led the Nigerian delegation, made the announcement on Sunday, a day after his group held talks with General Abdourahamane Tchiani in the Nigerien capital Niamey.

The meeting took place as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) explores its options to restore civilian rule in Niger, including potential military intervention, following the removal of President Mohamed Bazoum last month – the seventh coup in West and Central Africa in three years.

Bolsonaro diehards take to streets of Brazil to urge firing squads and coup

André Meneses made a gun sign with his hands to convey what he thought should happen to those who opposed Jair Bolsonaro’s project for Brazil.

“The right thing to do is put them on the wall and fucking … shoot them,” the 60-year-old protester declared on Tuesday morning as thousands of the Brazilian president’s most loyal supporters gathered in the country’s capital to celebrate their leader.

“They are traitors. They are traitors to Brazil,” Meneses said of the supreme court justices and leftist senators he claimed deserved to meet the firing squad for daring to thwart Bolsonaro’s plans.

Brazil: warning Bolsonaro may be planning military coup amid rallies

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, and his allies could be preparing to mount a military coup in Brazil, according to an influential group of former presidents, prime ministers and leading public figures on the left.

An open letter claims rallies that Bolsonaro followers are staging on Tuesday represent a danger to democracy and amount to an insurrection modelled on Donald Trump supporters’ attack on the US Capitol on 6 January.

Maduro: ‘Coup attempt’ defeated as police clash with protesters

Demonstrators clashed with police on the streets of the Venezuelan capital, spurred by opposition leader Juan Guaido’s call on the military to rise up against President Nicolas Maduro, who said he defeated an attempted coup.

An apparently carefully planned attempt by Guaido to demonstrate growing military support disintegrated into rioting as palls of black smoke rose over eastern Caracas.

Coups and murder: the sinister world of apartheid’s secret mercenaries

Keith Maxwell, the self-declared “commodore” of the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR), liked to dress up on special occasions in the garish costume of a 18th-century admiral, with a three-cornered hat, brass buttons and a cutlass. Ordinary members of his organisation were expected to show up in crisp naval whites.

Gathered together in upmarket restaurants, or the quiet of the Wemmer Pan naval base in south-central Johannesburg, they had the air of eccentric history buffs. Maxwell talked about the group’s roots in a Napoleonic-era treasure-hunting syndicate, and told outsiders it was still focused on deep-sea exploration.

Egypt 'worse off on every indicator' since 2013 coup

Four years ago today, Egypt witnessed the overthrow of its first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in a military coup.

The Muslim Brotherhood member had been in office for just a year when army chief, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, announced his overthrow on state television, along with the suspension of the constitution and the installment of an interim government.

What To Know About The Secretive Group Turkey Blames For Coup Attempt

Hours after an attempted coup in Turkey on June 15, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his officials were already clear who was to blame: Fethullah Gulen.

The elderly Muslim cleric has lived in exile in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, for nearly two decades. He’s the leader of a religious movement known as Hizmet, which espouses education, community service and interfaith dialogue. The movement is associated with a vast network of businesses, schools and other institutions around the globe.

Amidst Constant Crisis, Michel Temer Appears Ill-Equipped To Lead Brazil

BRASILIA, Brazil — Earlier this week a source close to Michel Temer and member of the interim president’s PMDB party candidly admitted: “There is a new crisis every day. If the government makes a drastic decision every time there is negative news, it would all be over in two weeks.”

We’re Starting To Get A Bad Feeling About Brazil’s New Interim President

After just one week in office, Brazil’s unelected, interim President Michel Temer has begun hacking away at three decades of social progress, fielding a leadership team composed entirely of 21 white men — including a congressman under investigation for attempted homicide — to take the reins of a government bogged down by a far-reaching corruption scandal.

Temer’s apparent disregard for diversity contrasts sharply with a regional trend that has seen women, indigenous people and Afro-descended people rise to increasingly high elected offices in Latin America in recent years.

'A lot of testosterone and little pigment': Brazil's old elite deals a blow to diversity

Brazil’s image as a socially liberal, multi-ethnic democracy may always have been more myth than reality, but any lingering illusions of this type have been swept away by interim president Michel Temer’s appointment of the country’s first all-male cabinet since the end of dictatorship in1985.

After conspiring to suspend Brazil’s first female president, his former running mate Dilma Rousseff, the 75-year-old patrician quickly showed his conservative instincts with a mostly white lineup of ministers that also included a soy baron in charge of agriculture, and a finance minister who immediately declared the need for sweeping cuts.

Brazil’s First Female President Has Just Been Suspended, And The New Cabinet Is All Men

On Thursday, Brazil’s Senate voted after an all-night debate to suspend President Dilma Rousseff and begin an impeachment trial. Rousseff, the country’s first female president, has been replaced by Vice President Michel Temer, who immediately unveiled a new cabinet entirely devoid of women or people of color.

Although Brazil is hardly a leader when it comes to female representation — women are less than 10 percent of lawmakers — Temer’s cabinet marks a decided step back in representation for the country. Brazil has more female than male voters, and in a 2010 census, 50.7 percent of Brazilians defined themselves as black or mixed race.

Brazil’s Democracy to Suffer Grievous Blow Today as Unelectable, Corrupt Neoliberal is Installed

In 2002, Brazil’s left-of-center Workers Party (PT) ascended to the presidency when Lula da Silva won in a landslide over the candidate of the center-right party PSDB (throughout 2002, “markets” were indignant at the mere prospect of PT’s victory). The PT remained in power when Lula, in 2006, was re-elected in another landslide against a different PSDB candidate. PT’s enemies thought they had their chance to get rid of PT in 2010, when Lula was barred by term limits from running again, but their hopes were crushed when Lula’s handpicked successor, the previously unknown Dilma Rousseff, won by 12 points over the same PSDB candidate who lost to Lula in 2002. In 2014, PT’s enemies poured huge amounts of money and resources into defeating her, believing she was vulnerable and that they had finally found a star PSDB candidate, but they lost again, this time narrowly, as Dilma was re-elected with 54 million votes.

Thailand's Army Declares Martial Law

BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand's army declared martial law before dawn Tuesday in a surprise announcement it said was aimed at keeping the country stable after six months of sometimes violent political unrest. The military, however, denied a coup d'etat was underway.

The move effectively places the army in charge of public security nationwide. It comes one day after the Southeast Asian country's caretaker prime minister refused to step down and follows six months of anti-government demonstrations that have failed to oust the government.

THE EGYPTIAN ARMY’S UNLIKELY ALLIES

When the Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany took the stage in October at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris to promote the French translation of his latest novel, he was presumably not expecting to be heckled and chased from the venue by a crowd of his own countrymen. But minutes into his talk, the author’s voice was drowned out by the shouts of Egyptian emigrés who had come out for the chance to tear him to bits.

One of the Arab world’s most popular novelists, Aswany was a prominent supporter of the demonstrations that climaxed with the dramatic fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. (Wendell Steavenson wrote a Profile of Aswany for the magazine in early 2012.) More recently, in his columns for the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm (and, since October, for the International New York Times), Aswany has been a relentless critic of Mohamed Morsi and his followers in the Muslim Brotherhood—and a passionate defender of the man who deposed him, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whom Aswany has called “a national hero.”

Egypt declares Brotherhood 'terrorist group'

Egypt’s interim government has declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation, a move that gives authorities greater freedom to crack down on the group.

Hossam Eissa, a deputy prime minister, announced the decision on Wednesday night after a lengthy cabinet meeting.

“The cabinet has declared the Muslim Brotherhood and its organisation as a terrorist organisation,” he said.