Attention to the Unseen

Fred Kaplan writes: It is tempting to chortle over the string of inanities that President Donald Trump unfurled at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, this weekend. Asked about the status of “Western liberalism,” which Russian President Vladimir Putin had just pronounced dead in an interview with the Financial Times, Trump ranted about liberal Democrats in California, apparently thinking that’s what the term was referring to. Asked for his views about bussing, which had been a hot topic at the…

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David Rothkopf writes: As the first round of debates among Democratic candidates for president clearly showed, the intellectual vitality of the Democratic Party right now is coming from progressives. On issue after issue, the vast majority of the candidates embraced views that have been seen as progressive priorities for years—whether that may have been a pledge to provide healthcare for all or vows to repeal tax cuts benefiting the rich, whether it was prioritizing combating our climate crisis or seeking…

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Kenan Malik writes: The relationship between liberalism, radicalism and conservatism began to change in the last decades of the 20th century, largely as the left disintegrated. The idea of an alternative to capitalism seemed to many chimerical, more so after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even before the Berlin Wall had come down, a new kind of economic liberalism, unstitched from the restraints of social need, had emerged – what many now call “neoliberalism”. At its core was a…

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Der Spiegel reports: It was just before midnight when Fabian Heinz lost his faith in Europe. The Alan Kurdi, a ship belonging to Sea Eye, a German sea-rescue organization, was bobbing up and down between Lampedusa, in Italy, and Malta. Heinz, a 29-year-old photographer from Würzburg, remembers holding watch on deck that evening. He looked up from his post to the dozens of refugees that he and other rescuers had saved from the sea near the Libyan coast. They were…

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The Washington Post reports: President Trump on Saturday professed to be “very angry” over the murder last year of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate, but the president again declined to pin responsibility on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom he called “my friend.” Trump said nothing about Khashoggi at a photo op Salman before their meeting on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit here, ignoring shouted questions about the matter from reporters. In brief…

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