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WORLD BRIEFLY
East Oregonian
Under fi re —
from GOP —
Trump digs in on
Confederate icons
Tillerson, Mattis
insist military
options remain for
North Korea
Tech companies
banishing
extremists after
Charlottesville
BRIDGEWATER, N.J.
(AP) — With prominent
Republicans openly
questioning his competence
and moral leadership,
President Donald Trump on
Thursday burrowed deeper
into the racially charged
debate over Confederate
memorials and lashed out at
members of his own party
in the latest controversy to
engulf his presidency.
Out of sight, but still
online, Trump tweeted his
defense of monuments
to Confederate icons —
bemoaning rising efforts to
remove them as an attack
on America’s “history and
culture.”
And he berated his critics
who, with increasingly
sharper language, have
denounced his initially
slow and then ultimately
combative comments on
the racial violence at a
white supremacist rally last
weekend in Charlottesville,
Virginia.
Trump was much quicker
Thursday to condemn
violence in Barcelona, where
more than a dozen people
were killed when a van
veered onto a sidewalk and
sped down a busy pedestrian
zone in what authorities
called a terror attack.
He then added to his
expression of support a
tweet reviving a debunked
legend about a U.S.
general subduing Muslim
rebels a century ago in the
Philippines by shooting
them with bullets dipped in
pig blood.
“Study what General
Pershing of the United States
did to terrorists when caught.
There was no more Radical
Islamic Terror for 35 years!”
Trump wrote.
Trump’s unpredictable,
defi ant and, critics claim,
racially provocative behavior
has clearly begun to wear on
his Republican allies.
Sen. Tim Scott of South
Carolina said Trump’s
“moral authority is
compromised.”
WASHINGTON (AP)
— America’s diplomatic
and defense chiefs sought
Thursday to reinforce the
threat of possible U.S.
military action against
North Korea after President
Donald Trump’s top
strategist essentially called
the commander-in-chief’s
warnings a bluff.
Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson stressed after
security talks with close
ally Japan that the U.S.
seeks a peaceful solution
to the standoff over North
Korea’s nuclear weapons
program. But he said a
U.S.-led campaign of
economic pressure and
diplomacy needs to be
backed by potential military
consequences.
Washington is “prepared
militarily” to respond, if
necessary, he said.
Tillerson spoke after he
and Defense Secretary Jim
Mattis held annual security
talks with Japanese Defense
Minister Itsunori Onodera
and Foreign Minister
Taro Kono at the State
Department. Much of the
discussion focused on North
Korea, which also poses a
threat to Japan.
Neither Tillerson nor
Mattis responded directly
to strategist Steve Bannon’s
argument in an interview
published Wednesday that
there’s no military solution
to the North Korean threat.
But both Cabinet members
sought to rebut the claim.
“In close collaboration
with our allies, there are
strong military consequences
if DPRK initiates
hostilities,” Mattis said,
referring to an abbreviation
of the North’s offi cial name,
the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea.
Mattis said that if North
Korea launches a missile
toward Japan, the U.S.
Pacifi c island of Guam,
the United States or South
Korea, “we would take
immediate, specifi c actions
to take it down.
NEW YORK (AP)
— It took bloodshed in
Charlottesville to get tech
companies to do what civil
rights groups have been
calling for for years: take a
fi rmer stand against accounts
used to promote hate and
violence.
In the wake of the deadly
clash at a white-nationalist
rally last weekend in
Virginia, major companies
such as Google, Facebook
and PayPal are banishing a
growing cadre of extremist
groups and individuals for
violating service terms.
What took so long? For
one thing, tech companies
have long seen themselves as
bastions of free expression.
But the Charlottesville
rally seemed to have a
sobering effect. It showed
how easily technology can
be used to organize and
fi nance such events, and
how extreme views online
can translate into violence
offl ine.
“There is a difference
between freedom of
speech and what happened
in Charlottesville,” said
Rashad Robinson, executive
director of Color of Change,
an online racial justice
group. The battle of ideas
is “different than people
who show up with guns to
terrorize communities.”
The First Amendment
offers hate groups a lot of
speech protection, but it
applies only to government
and public settings. A private
company is typically free to
set its own standards.
‘Red Alert’ over
Zimbabwe fi rst
lady, accused
of assault
JOHANNESBURG (AP)
— Lawyers for the young
model who claims she was
assaulted by Zimbabwe’s
Friday, August 18, 2017
fi rst lady Grace Mugabe in
a Johannesburg hotel said
Thursday that her family had
been approached with an
offer of money to drop the
allegation.
South African police
issued a “red alert” to
prevent Mugabe from
leaving the country after
Zimbabwe’s government
requested diplomatic
immunity.
Lawyers for 20-year-old
Gabriella Engels threatened
to go to court if South
Africa’s government grants
Mugabe immunity, saying
it cannot be used to “escape
prosecution from grave
crimes.”
The lawyers said Engels’
family had been approached
with an offer of “fi nancial
compensation” by a third
party, which Engels refused.
“They made an offer and
said ‘Let us talk, this will
go away.’ ... There was no
amount mentioned,” said
Gerrie Nel, a prominent
South African lawyer who
has offered his assistance to
Engels.
In a letter sent Thursday
to the South African
government, Willie Spies,
another lawyer involved in
the case, said the offer was
made Tuesday and suggested
that Engels should “come up
with a fi gure so that parties
could meet in order to settle
the matter quietly.”
The scandal has become
a diplomatic mess for South
Africa’s government and
Zimbabwe’s 93-year-old
President Robert Mugabe,
who arrived in South
Africa’s capital late
Wednesday apparently to
deal with the crisis. He came
early for a regional summit
of southern African nations
this weekend.
South Africa’s minister of
police, Fikile Mbalula, said
all borders had been notifi ed
to prevent Grace Mugabe
from leaving the country
before the matter is resolved,
the African News Agency
reported. “The red alert has
been put,” Mbalula told
reporters.
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