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Category: Politics

U.S. diplomacy with North Korea

U.S. diplomacy with North Korea

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Robin Wright writes: As many of us spent the weekend celebrating Easter brunch or a Passover Seder, Mike Pompeo secretly slipped into North Korea to test the prospects for President Trump’s most daring diplomatic gambit. The C.I.A. director’s covert talks with North Korea’s mercurial young leader, Kim Jong Un, apparently went well. “Meeting went very smoothly and a good relationship was formed,” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning, shortly before his golf game with the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. “Details of…

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The internet promised utopia and instead gave us Trump

The internet promised utopia and instead gave us Trump

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Noah Kulwin writes: To keep the internet free — while becoming richer, faster, than anyone in history — the technological elite needed something to attract billions of users to the ads they were selling. And that something, it turns out, was outrage. As Jaron Lanier, a pioneer in virtual reality, points out, anger is the emotion most effective at driving “engagement” — which also makes it, in a market for attention, the most profitable one. By creating a self-perpetuating loop…

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Trump administration wants to shut door on abused women

Trump administration wants to shut door on abused women

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Politico reports: A woman from Honduras, who shall be identified only by her initials, L.C., was granted asylum in an immigration court in Chicago early this year. She came to the United States with her teenage daughter, fording the Rio Grande in Texas, after the girl had the extremely bad fortune of being a passer-by witness to a noonday massacre on a street near their home. Gunmen from the Mara 18 gang murdered eight people, mostly bus dispatchers, because the…

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Trump scraps new sanctions against Russia, overruling advisers

Trump scraps new sanctions against Russia, overruling advisers

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The New York Times reports: President Trump rejected, for now at least, a fresh round of sanctions set to be imposed against Russia on Monday, a course change that underscored the schism between the president and his national security team. The president’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, had announced on Sunday that the administration would place sanctions on Russian companies found to be assisting Syria’s chemical weapons program. The sanctions were listed on a menu of further…

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Objectives of Western strike in Syria not achieved, says Israeli intelligence

Objectives of Western strike in Syria not achieved, says Israeli intelligence

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Ynet reports: The US-led attack on Syria’s chemical weapons facilities did not achieve most of its objectives and will not deter President Bashar Assad, according to Israeli intelligence assessments. “If President Trump had ordered the strike only to show that the US responded to Assad’s use of chemical weapons, then that goal has been achieved,” according to a senior defense establishment official. “But if there was another objective—such as paralyzing the ability to launch chemical weapons or deterring Assad from…

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America’s first reality TV war

America’s first reality TV war

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Micah Zenko writes: One year after launching a limited strike against the Syrian government to deter future chemical weapons attacks, U.S. President Donald Trump did the same thing again Friday night. Within 12 hours, the Pentagon judged the operation as being “very successful,” which was a given since the three above-ground facilities were assuredly monitored for years and situated in a relatively low-threat air defense environment. The ability of a $700 billion military to destroy static targets is unremarkable. What…

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Journalist who exposed Russia’s secret mercenaries in Syria mysteriously fell to his death

Journalist who exposed Russia’s secret mercenaries in Syria mysteriously fell to his death

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Vice News reports: In February, Russian investigative journalist Maxim Borodin published a series of bombshell reports about the secret, substantial presence of Russian mercenary forces in Syria. On Sunday, he died, following a mysterious fall from his fifth-floor balcony. Now, a journalists’ advocacy group is calling for an investigation into his “suspicious” death — even though his own editor-in-chief has said there’s not yet any hard evidence of foul play. Local police said they’re investigating “several versions” of the death…

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How can Trump be commander-in-chief when he isn’t in command of himself?

How can Trump be commander-in-chief when he isn’t in command of himself?

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David Frum writes: So many people have so much difficulty joining their awareness of the president’s instability to their commentary on U.S. military actions. They mentally update the famous line of Donald Rumsfeld’s: “You don’t go to war with the commander-in-chief you want. You go to war with the commander-in-chief you have.” Yet if any other aspect of U.S. military power were in the same damaged condition as the supreme executive authority, responsible people would pause at going to war…

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Assad in a ‘good mood’ after U.S.-led strikes in Syria show no sign of threatening his hold on power

Assad in a ‘good mood’ after U.S.-led strikes in Syria show no sign of threatening his hold on power

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The Washington Post reports: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad praised Russian weaponry on Sunday as his government celebrated victory over rebels in the town where an alleged chemical attack took place, triggering U.S. airstrikes over the weekend. Assad made the comments during a meeting in Damascus with Russian lawmakers, who later told reporters that he was in a “good mood,” according to Russian news reports. Footage of the meeting broadcast by state television showed an animated Assad smiling and laughing as…

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Michael Cohen and the terminal phase of the Trump presidency

Michael Cohen and the terminal phase of the Trump presidency

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Adam Davidson writes: There are lots of details and surprises to come, but the endgame of this Presidency seems as clear now as those of Iraq and the financial crisis did months before they unfolded. Last week, federal investigators raided the offices of Michael Cohen, the man who has been closer than anybody to Trump’s most problematic business and personal relationships. This week, we learned that Cohen has been under criminal investigation for months—his e-mails have been read, presumably his…

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Has Assad’s survival made him dispensable?

Has Assad’s survival made him dispensable?

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Ewen MacAskill writes: The US-led operation against Syria, which included the contributions from the UK and France, was a modest one, limited to a short, sharp attack against targets alleged to be linked to chemical weapons. It is intended as a one-off, with no further strikes planned unless Syrian president Bashar al-Assad conducts chemical attacks in the future. There had been speculation in advance of the attack that there was a risk it could lead to world war three. It…

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Collusion: Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague in 2016, confirming part of dossier

Collusion: Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague in 2016, confirming part of dossier

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McClatchy reports: The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election. It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in…

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Key evidence ‘went missing’ from police records during investigation into Russian whistleblower’s death, court hears

Key evidence ‘went missing’ from police records during investigation into Russian whistleblower’s death, court hears

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BuzzFeed reports: Vital evidence disappeared from police custody during their investigation into the death of Russian whistleblower Alexander Perepilichnyy, a court has heard. When Perepilichnyy died, authorities scoured his computer and discovered that he had been receiving threats. They also found a bank statement showing a mysterious payment worth half a billion dollars from an unknown company called “Precious Metal”. But that and much of the other evidence from a forensic imaging of his computer “went missing” from both police…

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Trump is infecting our culture with the traits of organized crime, says James Comey

Trump is infecting our culture with the traits of organized crime, says James Comey

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In a review of A Higher Loyalty, by James Comey, Michiko Kakutani writes: A February 2017 meeting in the White House with Trump and then chief of staff Reince Priebus left Comey recalling his days as a federal prosecutor facing off against the Mob: “The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above…

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Former coal lobbyist becomes second in command at the EPA

Former coal lobbyist becomes second in command at the EPA

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BuzzFeed reports: The Senate just confirmed Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, to be the second in command at the Environmental Protection Agency. The Thursday vote was largely along party lines — 53-45. Sens. Joe Donnelly from Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp from North Dakota, and Joe Manchin from West Virginia were the only Democrats to vote in favor of the confirmation. Wheeler is one of only a handful of President Donald Trump’s picks for the EPA confirmed so far, and he…

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On Syria, uncharacteristic deliberation inside the White House quickly disrupted by Trump’s characteristic impulsiveness

On Syria, uncharacteristic deliberation inside the White House quickly disrupted by Trump’s characteristic impulsiveness

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The Washington Post reports: In a White House known for chaos, the process of developing the U.S. response to the Syrian government’s alleged latest gas attack was proceeding with uncharacteristic deliberation, including several national security briefings for President Trump. But then Wednesday morning, Trump upended it all with a tweet — warning Russia, the Syrian government’s backer, to “get ready” because American missiles “will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’ ” White House advisers were surprised by the missive and…

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