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Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance spreads fear worldwide, but we won’t be silenced

Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance spreads fear worldwide, but we won’t be silenced

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Manal al-Sharif writes: The disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, the prominent Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor, has reverberated among journalists, activists and critics of authoritarianism all over the world. My first encounter with his writings was in 2011, year one of the Arab Spring, in Al-Hayat, the Saudi newspaper that we both wrote for. In his columns, he called for seizing the moment and pushed for reforms within Saudi Arabia. For his courageous views, he was banned from writing and…

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Second Skripal poisoning suspect identified as Dr. Alexander Mishkin

Second Skripal poisoning suspect identified as Dr. Alexander Mishkin

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Bellingcat Investigation Team reports: In the preceding report from the current investigation into the two suspects in the Skripals poisoning case, Bellingcat and its reporting partner the Insider disclosed the identity of one of the two suspects. The person travelling under the alias of Ruslan Boshirov was identified as GRU’s Col. Anatoliy Chepiga, recipient of Russia’s highest state award. Bellingcat can now report that it has conclusively identified the second suspect, who travelled to Salisbury under the alias Alexander Petrov….

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Beto O’Rourke: Is this the man to take down Trump?

Beto O’Rourke: Is this the man to take down Trump?

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Ed Pilkington reports: On a balmy night in Austin, against the backdrop of the glittering high-rises of the city’s booming downtown, Beto O’Rourke is laying out his audacious plan to change the face of Texas, and America. In front of him, packed into an open-air park, a largely young crowd of 40,000 is thrumming with scarcely contained glee. Even in the liberal bubble of Austin they have never experienced anything like this: a Democrat seriously in the running for a…

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Kavanaugh’s first vote could be in Trump executive power fight

Kavanaugh’s first vote could be in Trump executive power fight

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Politico reports: Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s first vote as a member of the Supreme Court could come as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday on a Trump administration request testing how much power courts should wield over top executive branch officials. The administration has already made one unsuccessful run at the high court on the issue: It asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last week to step in to block depositions of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Justice Department civil rights chief John…

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The price of speaking out against a powerful man

The price of speaking out against a powerful man

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Tanya Selvaratnam writes: Early in our relationship, he told me that he could tap my phone and have me followed. I knew he had the power to do this. His power was a thread that ran throughout our relationship. We met in July 2016 at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. I had been involved in the arts and social justice causes for more than 20 years, but producing election-related videos in 2016 was my first step into electoral politics….

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The junk science Republicans used to undermine Ford and help save Kavanaugh

The junk science Republicans used to undermine Ford and help save Kavanaugh

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The Washington Post reports: The politically convenient, scientifically baseless theory that sexual assault so traumatized Christine Blasey Ford she mixed up her attacker is now something like common wisdom for many Republicans. President Trump explicitly endorsed the theory Saturday, shortly after Brett M. Kavanaugh was narrowly confirmed as a Supreme Court judge, telling reporters he was “100 percent” sure Ford accused Kavanaugh in error. In days leading up to the confirmation vote, the same notion was implicit in the rationale…

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Whiteness won’t save white women

Whiteness won’t save white women

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Alexis Grenell writes: The voting patterns of white women and white men mirror each other much more closely, and they tend to cast their ballots for Republicans. The gender gap in politics is really a color line. That’s because white women benefit from patriarchy by trading on their whiteness to monopolize resources for mutual gain. In return they’re placed on a pedestal to be “cherished and revered,” as Speaker Paul D. Ryan has said about women, but all the while…

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Khashoggi: Case against Saudi agents reverberates through Ankara and Riyadh

Khashoggi: Case against Saudi agents reverberates through Ankara and Riyadh

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Martin Chulov reports: Jamal Khashoggi had weighed the risks before he walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last Tuesday. He had sought assurances from friends, given a number for his fiancee to call if he failed to reappear – and even received an overture to return to Riyadh from Mohammed bin Salman himself. Convinced that he faced no official threat from the powerful crown prince, and feeling pressure from his future father-in-law to get the marriage process rolling, Khashoggi…

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Brett Kavanaugh cannot have it both ways

Brett Kavanaugh cannot have it both ways

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Robert Post writes: Brett Kavanaugh and I differ on most fundamental questions of constitutional law. Nevertheless, as a former dean of the institution where he received his law degree, I have withheld comment on the merits of his appointment. I am proud of the rich diversity of views that Yale Law School has produced. Over the past decade, Kavanaugh has been a casual acquaintance. He seemed a gentle, quiet, reserved man, always solicitous of the dignity of his position as…

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Sen. Susan Collins and Brett Kavanaugh are both in the Bush family inner circle. That helps explain her vote

Sen. Susan Collins and Brett Kavanaugh are both in the Bush family inner circle. That helps explain her vote

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The Intercept reports: The announcement Friday by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that she would vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was about family. Namely, the Bush family. George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush have both been welcomed into the ranks of the resistance to President Donald Trump, but their most consequential action since his election has been to help lift Kavanaugh into the Supreme Court. Collins is an honorary member of the Bush family….

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Turkey concludes Saudi journalist Khashoggi killed by ‘murder’ team, sources say

Turkey concludes Saudi journalist Khashoggi killed by ‘murder’ team, sources say

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The Washington Post reports: Turkey has concluded that Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent journalist from Saudi Arabia, was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this week by a Saudi team sent “specifically for the murder,” two people with knowledge of the probe said Saturday. Turkish investigators believe a 15-member team “came from Saudi Arabia. It was a preplanned murder,” said one of the people. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. They offered no…

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How China used a hardware hack to infiltrate Amazon, Apple and dozens of other U.S. companies

How China used a hardware hack to infiltrate Amazon, Apple and dozens of other U.S. companies

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Bloomberg Businessweek reports: In 2015, Amazon.com Inc. began quietly evaluating a startup called Elemental Technologies, a potential acquisition to help with a major expansion of its streaming video service, known today as Amazon Prime Video. Based in Portland, Ore., Elemental made software for compressing massive video files and formatting them for different devices. Its technology had helped stream the Olympic Games online, communicate with the International Space Station, and funnel drone footage to the Central Intelligence Agency. Elemental’s national security…

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Social media is revolutionizing warfare

Social media is revolutionizing warfare

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P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking write: “The exponential explosion of publicly available information is changing the global intelligence system … It’s changing how we tool, how we organize, how we institutionalize—everything we do.” This is what a former high-level intelligence official told us back in the summer of 2016, explaining how the people who collect secrets—professional spies—were adjusting to a world increasingly without secrets. We were asking him about one of the most important changes in technology and…

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Russia accused of cyber-attack on chemical weapons watchdog

Russia accused of cyber-attack on chemical weapons watchdog

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The Guardian reports: A Russian cyber-attack on the headquarters of the international chemical weapons watchdog was disrupted by Dutch military intelligence just weeks after the Salisbury novichok attack, it emerged on Thursday, amid fresh revelations of spying that escalated the diplomatic war between the west and Vladimir Putin. The incident, which was thwarted with the help of British intelligence officials, came after the Sandworm cybercrime unit of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU had attempted unsuccessfully to hack the UK…

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How the UN has saved Lebanon

How the UN has saved Lebanon

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Max Boot writes: Imagine 125 million refugees flooding into the United States (population: 328 million). That is what Lebanon has experienced on a per capita basis. Since 2011, this nation of 4 million people has seen an influx of some 1.5 million refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war next door. “I find it a miracle this country hasn’t exploded,” a Western diplomat told me last week. “Most countries would never have allowed this to happen.” This is the dog that…

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How the Republican Party is gradually killing American democracy

How the Republican Party is gradually killing American democracy

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Christopher R. Browning writes: As a historian specializing in the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and Europe in the era of the world wars, I have been repeatedly asked about the degree to which the current situation in the United States resembles the interwar period and the rise of fascism in Europe. I would note several troubling similarities and one important but equally troubling difference. In the 1920s, the US pursued isolationism in foreign policy and rejected participation in international organizations like…

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