Browsed by
Category: Politics

Russia’s first known act of war against a NATO and EU member-state

Russia’s first known act of war against a NATO and EU member-state

Roman Dobrokhotov, Christo Grozev, and Michael Weiss report: It started with a contest. The Russian spies were to invent their own remote-controlled detonators. They also had to devise disguises for the triggers. Over the course of four days in a mosquito-infested guesthouse across the road from the infectious diseases hospital in Krasnodar, southern Russia, they hid their inventions in the casing of a WiFi router, within an apple juice container and inside a cell phone. In the end, everyone won….

Read More Read More

Trump operates ‘like the mafia’ says Australian billionaire, Anthony Pratt

Trump operates ‘like the mafia’ says Australian billionaire, Anthony Pratt

The New York Times reports: New details of how an American president and an Australian billionaire bonded over their mutual self-interest help to document the transactional ethos of the Trump presidency, and show how Mr. Trump melded his White House with his personal business in a way that, according to prosecutors, had ramifications for national security. Mr. Pratt was hardly the only favor seeker circling Mar-a-Lago, which became the fulcrum of the president’s two overlapping worlds, and a marketplace of…

Read More Read More

Trump’s really bad week

Trump’s really bad week

Joyce Vance writes: It turns out it wasn’t just a bad day for Trump, as I captioned my column Thursday night. It was a bad week. A really bad week. After Sidney Powell’s guilty plea, there was Kenneth Chesebro’s plea. His was to a felony charge of filing false information, but like Powell, he spends no time in prison and will be eligible under Georgia’s first-time offender provision to have his record expunged after he completes his probationary sentence successfully….

Read More Read More

Jordan’s implosion in House speaker bid lays bare GOP civil war

Jordan’s implosion in House speaker bid lays bare GOP civil war

Paul Kane writes: Rep. Jake Ellzey (R-Tex.) described his Monday meeting with Rep. Jim Jordan as “very cordial,” one that ended with the retired Navy fighter pilot explaining why he would quietly oppose the Ohio Republican’s bid for speaker. Three days later, as a group of Republicans opposed to Jordan’s candidacy met with the speaker-designate, Ellzey remained quiet, again. But he was restraining himself from yelling at Jordan. “I didn’t say anything. Because I would have said something to him,…

Read More Read More

Jordan’s King Abdullah: International law loses all value if it is implemented selectively

Jordan’s King Abdullah: International law loses all value if it is implemented selectively

كلمة جلالة الملك عبدالله الثاني في #قمة_القاهرة_للسلام التي تستضيفها جمهورية مصر العربية في إطار الجهود المبذولة لوقف الحرب على غزة #الأردن His Majesty King Abdullah II’s Speech at the #CairoSummitForPeace, held within the framework of efforts to stop the war on Gaza#Jordan pic.twitter.com/UrFf0XwjbU — RHC (@RHCJO) October 21, 2023 [Remarks in English start at minute 1 in the video above.] Cairo Peace Summit, October 21, 2023 Allow me to speak in English to our friends from Europe and the world…

Read More Read More

We are seeing urgent signs of more mutual mass atrocities to come in Israel and Gaza

We are seeing urgent signs of more mutual mass atrocities to come in Israel and Gaza

Omar Shakir, Yasmine Ahmed and Akshaya Kumar write: The image of haggard doctors standing amid bodies and rubble following the explosive strike on al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza has sent shock waves around the world, which was still reeling from horrific Hamas-led attacks and the relentless Israeli bombardment and siege of Gaza. In the past two weeks, thousands of Israeli and Palestinian civilians have been killed with a speed and brutality that was previously unimaginable in Israel and Palestine. There is little sign that the spiral of…

Read More Read More

Netanyahu’s attack on democracy left Israel unprepared

Netanyahu’s attack on democracy left Israel unprepared

Anne Applebaum writes: This summer I spent several days in Israel talking with people who were afraid for their country’s future. They were not, at that moment, focused on terrorism, Gaza, or Hamas. They feared something different: the emergence of an undemocratic Israel, a de facto autocracy. In January, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his justice minister had announced a package of judicial “reforms” that, taken together, would have given their coalition government the power to alter Israeli legal institutions…

Read More Read More

Seven influential accounts are warping Israel-Hamas news on X, researchers find

Seven influential accounts are warping Israel-Hamas news on X, researchers find

NBC News reports: A handful of influential but unreliable accounts, some of which have been promoted by Elon Musk, are dominating the flow of news on X around the Israel-Hamas war and easily outpacing established mainstream news outlets, according to research published Friday by the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. Researchers analyzed viral posts about the conflict during a three-day period starting from the beginning of the attack against Israel on Oct. 7. They concluded that the…

Read More Read More

Back-to-back plea deals pose grave legal threat to Donald Trump

Back-to-back plea deals pose grave legal threat to Donald Trump

CNN reports: Two stalwart allies of former President Donald Trump flipped against him this week, a staggering turn of events that could now pose a grave threat to his ability to fend off criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The rapid-fire developments are a massive boost for prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, and the separate but overlapping federal case against Trump that was filed by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. The pleas are…

Read More Read More

Concerns about Jordan’s election denialism flare during failed bid for speaker

Concerns about Jordan’s election denialism flare during failed bid for speaker

The Washington Post reports: As Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) waged his battle to become House speaker, some House Republicans were uncomfortable with the possibility of having an election denier occupying the most powerful legislative seat in the U.S. government heading into a presidential election year. Jordan, who relinquished his nomination for the speakership on Friday after his third defeat on the House floor, was among the most prolific and vocal GOP lawmakers who worked to convince voters that the 2020…

Read More Read More

‘Mutiny brewing’ inside State Department over Israel-Palestine policy

‘Mutiny brewing’ inside State Department over Israel-Palestine policy

HuffPost reports: President Joe Biden’s approach to the ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine is fueling mounting tensions at the U.S. government agency most involved in foreign policy: the State Department. Officials told HuffPost that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his most senior advisers are overlooking widespread internal frustration. Some department staff said they feel as if Blinken and his team are uninterested in their own experts’ advice as they focus on supporting Israel’s expanding operation in Gaza, where…

Read More Read More

Instagram sorry for adding ‘terrorist’ to some Palestinian user bios

Instagram sorry for adding ‘terrorist’ to some Palestinian user bios

BBC News reports: Meta has apologised for adding “terrorist” to the biographies of some Instagram users describing themselves as Palestinian. Meta said it fixed a problem “that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations” in some of its products. “We sincerely apologise that this happened,” it told the BBC. The platform has also faced accusations of suppressing content voicing support for Palestinians during the Israel-Gaza conflict. Some users say they have been “shadow banned” on Instagram over pro-Palestinian posts. This is when…

Read More Read More

House GOP drowning as crisis reaches breaking point

House GOP drowning as crisis reaches breaking point

Politico reports: When Matt Gaetz stepped to the microphones during Thursday’s three-hour private House GOP meeting on the speakership, the speaker he ousted promptly yelled at him to “sit down.” Kevin McCarthy was not the only Republican to vent fury with Gaetz, the Florida conservative who successfully ousted the House’s leader. The room met Gaetz with booing, profanities and calls to back off, according to multiple lawmakers in the room. When Gaetz refused, Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.) stood up and…

Read More Read More

U.S. intelligence report alleging Russia election interference shared with 100 countries

U.S. intelligence report alleging Russia election interference shared with 100 countries

Reuters reports: The United States on Friday released a U.S. intelligence assessment sent to more than 100 countries that found Moscow is using spies, social media and Russian state-run media to erode public faith in the integrity of democratic elections worldwide. “This is a global phenomenon,” said the assessment. “Our information indicates that senior Russian government officials, including the Kremlin, see value in this type of influence operation and perceive it to be effective.” A senior State Department official, briefing…

Read More Read More

Team Trump never dreamed Sidney Powell would flip on them — and then Kenneth Chesebro flipped too

Team Trump never dreamed Sidney Powell would flip on them — and then Kenneth Chesebro flipped too

Rolling Stone reports: Sidney Powell was the wildest of MAGA diehards — someone who swore long past the bitter end that Donald Trump won by a landslide in 2020, and insinuated that a long-dead Venezuelan dictator helped hatch a plot that flipped votes away from her guy. That’s why the former president and much of his inner circle didn’t think the conspiracy-addled lawyer would ever cooperate with prosecutors seeking to convict the ex-president. “Crazy as she was, she really believed…

Read More Read More