Attention to the Unseen

Nicholas Farrell writes: We are in a hotel suite at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Zurich when Stephen K. Bannon tells me he adores the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. But let’s be clear. Bannon — as far as I can tell — is not a fascist. He is, however, fascinated by fascism, which is understandable, as its founder Benito Mussolini, a revolutionary socialist, was the first populist of the modern era and the first tabloid newspaper journalist. Il Duce, realising…

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Simon Tisdall writes: Putin has been crossing red lines, at home and abroad, with growing impunity since he first gained national prominence in 1999. He made his name with a brutal pacification campaign in Chechnya justified by a series of suspicious apartment bombings. Alexander Litvinenko, later murdered in London, blamed the bombings on the FSB and, by implication, Putin. Justified perceptions of western weakness, ambivalence and division have since encouraged Putin in a pattern of escalating, aggressive behaviour. Its main…

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The New York Times reports: The British authorities once devoted abundant resources to tracking the movement of Soviet agents here. But in recent years terrorist threats have become the clear priority, and MI5 has fewer resources to keep pace with Russia’s expanding operations, said John Bayliss, who retired from the Government Communications Headquarters, Britain’s electronic intelligence agency, in 2010 and now lectures on security threats. “I think it’s sort of accepted that there are more spies in London now than…

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On Tuesday, Trump named Mike Pompeo as his choice to replace Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. Last November, Peter Beinart wrote: Pompeo embraces anti-Muslim bigots, and defames Muslims, with almost as much gusto as Trump himself. Among Fransen’s closest American analogues are Brigitte Gabriel and Frank Gaffney. Gabriel, who has said a “practicing Muslim, who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America,” runs ACT for America, an organization…

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After firing Rex Tillerson and choosing Mike Pompeo, the current CIA director, as his next Secretary of State, Trump named Gina Haspel as his choice to become the CIA’s next director. In February 2017, the New York Times reported: As a clandestine officer at the Central Intelligence Agency in 2002, Gina Haspel oversaw the torture of two terrorism suspects and later took part in an order to destroy videotapes documenting their brutal interrogations at a secret prison in Thailand. On…

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This is what Russian president Putin said just two days after Skripal was poisoned with a nerve agent: "Those who serve us with poison will eventually swallow it and poison themselves" pic.twitter.com/Qqdz83ElEU — Kremlin Trolls CI (@KremlinTrolls) March 8, 2018 RFERL reports: News of the poisoning of a former Russian military intelligence officer in Britain came slowly to state-run television in Russia. For almost two days after the sudden hospitalization of Sergei Skripal, who has lived in England since being…

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Zheping Huang reports: Chinese president Xi Jinping has repeatedly told the world that China is ready to lead on issues like free trade and climate change. Now, he’s ready to extend his leadership to political parties everywhere. At the big annual gathering of Chinese lawmakers and political advisors that kicked off March 3, Xi said that China is offering a “new type of political party system”—a Chinese solution that contributes to the development of political parties around the world, according…

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Ankit Panda writes: North Korea has long sought to be treated as an equal by Washington; nuclear weapons, in addition to the pragmatic survival and deterrence benefits they confer, undoubtedly also bring Pyongyang status. Kim hopes to convert that status into diplomatic capital, sitting down with Trump for a comprehensive discussion about the future of the Korean Peninsula, nuclear weapon state to nuclear weapon state. It’s not clear that the Trump administration has internalized this. I’ve long supported governmental talks…

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