Trump's company asked Panama president to help with hotel fight

NBC "News" ^ | April 10, 2018 | by Associated Press

[Oldeconomybuyer]

PANAMA CITY - President Donald Trump's company appealed directly to Panama's president to intervene in its fight over control of a luxury hotel, even invoking a treaty between the two countries, in what ethics experts say was a blatant mingling of Trump's business and government interests.

That appeal in a letter last month from lawyers for the Trump Organization to Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela was apparently unsuccessful - an arbitrator declined to reinstate the Trump management team to the waterfront hotel in Panama City. But it provides hard proof of exactly the kind of conflict experts feared when Trump refused to divest from a sprawling empire that includes hotels, golf courses, licensing deals and other interests in more than 20 countries.

While never mentioning Trump or his role as president, the letter says lawyers representing the Trump Organization were aware of "the separation of powers" in Panama but essentially asks the country's president to intervene in the judicial process anyway. It goes on to say that the eviction violates an investment treaty signed by the two countries and suggests that the Panamanian government, not the hotel's new management team, could be blamed for any wrongdoing.

[dfwgator]

I still say, regardless, it never would have become an “Islamic Republic”.

[Rockingham]

Paradoxically, as Giles Keppel and other scholars point out, it was not the coup against Mossadeqh and other forceful interventions by foreigners but the larger processes of development and Westernization that provoked radical Muslim revival movements in Iran and elsewhere. As a matter of doctrine, Muslims were long taught that Islam had produced the most advanced, the best, and most harmonious societies.

Then Westerners showed up, bearing superior weapons and attractive goods and ideas. In the postwar era, Muslims found America and Western Europe eager to provide help in developing Muslim nations along modern lines. For a long time, modernity carried the day in the Muslim world. A simple Internet search will find, for example, pictures showing that in the 1970s even in remote Afghanistan, young Muslim women were being educated and were wearing Western-style dress and makeup.

Modern communications in the form of TV now propagate images that show Muslims how superior Western societies are. Cheap and easy jet travel also permits tourism from virtually all Muslim countries. Even in remote villages, TV and hence America are now ubiquitous through DVDs and mpeg files. If Keppel is right, Islam's response in the form of radical Islamist movements is a dead end.