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Category: Politics

Iraq is a freer place, but not a hopeful one, 20 years after the U.S. invasion

Iraq is a freer place, but not a hopeful one, 20 years after the U.S. invasion

Alissa J. Rubin writes: A couple of streets away from the new buildings and noisy main road of the desert city of Falluja, there was once a sports stadium. The goal posts are long gone, the stands rotted years ago. Now, every inch is covered with gravestones. “This is the martyrs’ graveyard,” said Kamil Jassim Mohammed, 70, the cemetery’s custodian, who has looked after it since 2004, when graves were first dug for those killed as U.S. troops battled Iraqi…

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Manhattan grand jury may hear new witness on Monday; won’t vote on Trump indictment until it’s over

Manhattan grand jury may hear new witness on Monday; won’t vote on Trump indictment until it’s over

Insider reports: The surprise final witness provides an updated clue to the timing of a possible indictment of Trump and of any co-defendants. The grand jury, which meets in secret in a lower Manhattan office building, only gathers to hear testimony during three-hour afternoon sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Its members — anywhere from 16 to 23 in number — could conceivably reach a vote by the end of Monday’s three-hour session. But that would be unlikely. Experts who…

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Sandy Hook families are fighting Alex Jones and the bankruptcy system itself

Sandy Hook families are fighting Alex Jones and the bankruptcy system itself

The New York Times reports: The Infowars conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones, who faces more than $1.4 billion in legal damages for defaming the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, has devised a new way to taunt them: wriggling out of paying them the money they are owed. Mr. Jones, who has an estimated net worth as high as $270 million, declared both business and personal bankruptcy last year as the families won historic verdicts in two lawsuits over his…

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Landmines and explosive remnants of war in Ukraine will take decades to clear

Landmines and explosive remnants of war in Ukraine will take decades to clear

Steve Brown writes: In his Dec. 8 address to the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Michael Tirre, the Europe Program Manager for the U.S. State Department’s Office of Weapons Removal, said: “The humanitarian impact of landmines and unexploded ordnance was already severe in eastern Ukraine following the 2014 invasions and, tragically, this has been magnified exponentially by Russia’s [2022] full-scale invasion.” Tirre estimated that the area of Ukraine severely impacted by ERW was at least 160,000 square…

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The disarming of Iraq: What went wrong and what went right

The disarming of Iraq: What went wrong and what went right

Henrietta Wilson writes: On the night of Sept. 25, 1991, Chief Inspector David Kay and his deputy, Robert Galluci, had a strange request for a group of Iraqis who were stopping them from leaving a carpark. If you’re going to beat anyone up, they asked, will you make sure it’s us? It was three days into a week-long standoff involving a team of unarmed inspectors mandated by the U.N. Security Council and their armed Iraqi inspection hosts. The issue at…

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Pro-Moscow voices tried to steer Ohio train disaster debate

Pro-Moscow voices tried to steer Ohio train disaster debate

The Associated Press reports: Soon after a train derailed and spilled toxic chemicals in Ohio last month, anonymous pro-Russian accounts started spreading misleading claims and anti-American propaganda about it on Twitter, using Elon Musk’s new verification system to expand their reach while creating the illusion of credibility. The accounts, which parroted Kremlin talking points on myriad topics, claimed without evidence that authorities in Ohio were lying about the true impact of the chemical spill. The accounts spread fearmongering posts that…

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A four-decade secret: One man’s story of sabotaging Jimmy Carter’s re-election

A four-decade secret: One man’s story of sabotaging Jimmy Carter’s re-election

The New York Times reports: It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States. It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran…

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Averting crisis, Europe learns to live without Russian energy

Averting crisis, Europe learns to live without Russian energy

Paul Hockenos writes: When a cold snap hit northern Europe last November, ordinary citizens and industry leaders alike feared the onset of an agonizing winter of deprivation, spiraling energy prices, unheated buildings, and work stoppages. After all, embargoes in place as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had severely curtailed oil and gas deliveries to many countries and upended supply chains that much of Europe had come to rely on. Germany — whose industrial economy depended heavily on Russian…

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The International Criminal Court issues war crimes arrest warrant for Putin

The International Criminal Court issues war crimes arrest warrant for Putin

The Associated Press reports: The International Criminal Court said Friday it has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. Although world leaders have been indicted before, it was the first time the ICC has issued a warrant against a leader of one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. The court said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible…

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Turkey’s president says he will back Finland’s NATO bid

Turkey’s president says he will back Finland’s NATO bid

The Associated Press reports: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that his government would move forward with ratifying Finland’s NATO application, paving the way for the country to join the military bloc ahead of Sweden. The breakthrough came as Finnish President Sauli Niinisto was in Ankara to meet with Erdogan. Both Finland and Sweden applied to become NATO members 10 months ago in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, abandoning decades of nonalignment. NATO requires the unanimous approval…

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Xi, cast as peacemaker, wades into Russia’s war in Ukraine

Xi, cast as peacemaker, wades into Russia’s war in Ukraine

The New York Times reports: China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has cast himself as a global statesman, helping Saudi Arabia and Iran broker a deal to restore diplomatic ties while extolling the virtues of “Chinese solutions and wisdom” in solving the world’s biggest security challenges. Now, Mr. Xi is putting himself at the center of Russia’s war with Ukraine, working to portray himself as a mediator who could cool down the protracted fight. The Chinese leader is expected to meet…

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Could the GOP divide over Ukraine become a lasting split?

Could the GOP divide over Ukraine become a lasting split?

Amanda Carpenter writes: The great hope among many Republicans is that Ron DeSantis will run for president in 2024 as a smarter version of former President Donald Trump. But DeSantis’s stance on the U.S. interest in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is proving unfortunate for anyone harboring that hope. In the past, the Florida governor’s backers may have been able to explain away his more controversial decisions—to align himself with election deniers, say, or use false pretenses to send migrants to…

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Chinese companies are shipping rifles, body armor to Russia

Chinese companies are shipping rifles, body armor to Russia

Politico reports: Chinese companies, including one connected to the government in Beijing, have sent Russian entities 1,000 assault rifles and other equipment that could be used for military purposes, including drone parts and body armor, according to trade and customs data obtained by POLITICO. The shipments took place between June and December 2022, according to the data provided by ImportGenius, a customs data aggregator. China North Industries Group Corporation Limited, one of the country’s largest state-owned defense contractors, sent the…

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Fighter jets coming ASAP, Poland tells Ukraine

Fighter jets coming ASAP, Poland tells Ukraine

Politico reports: Poland will deliver four Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine “in the next few days,” President Andrzej Duda said Thursday. Poland is the first country to formally commit to sending combat planes to Ukraine, which Kyiv says it urgently needs to repel the Russian invasion, which has become a brutal war of attrition in the eastern Donbas region. “We will be handing over four fully operational planes,” Duda said at a joint press conference with Czech President Petr…

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Pentagon analyst kept intel job after joining January 6 mob, planned to kidnap Jewish leaders

Pentagon analyst kept intel job after joining January 6 mob, planned to kidnap Jewish leaders

James Risen reports: In 2018, a newly hired software engineer at a defense and intelligence contractor in the Washington, D.C., suburbs was assigned to a team led by a senior developer named Hatchet Speed. At first, the new engineer, Richard Ngo, got along well with Speed. They sometimes went out to lunch together and socialized away from the office. “Speed was my mentor at Novetta as the software lead,” Ngo later said in court testimony. “We worked together every day.”…

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More than a quarter of Republicans approve of Capitol attack, poll shows

More than a quarter of Republicans approve of Capitol attack, poll shows

The Guardian reports: More than a quarter of Republicans approve of the January 6 Capitol attack, according to a new poll. More than half think the deadly riot was a form of legitimate political discourse. The Economist and YouGov survey said 27% of Republicans either strongly or somewhat approved of the riot on 6 January 2021, which Donald Trump incited in an attempt to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden. Nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides, have been linked…

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