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Category: Politics

Trump welcomes foreign interference in 2020 campaign

Trump welcomes foreign interference in 2020 campaign

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Jennifer Daskal writes: Shockingly – if anything shocks anymore – President Donald Trump told ABC news Wednesday that he need not tell the FBI if the Russians once again reached out with an offer of “dirt” on his opponents in the race for president. When Trump was told that Christopher Wary, the FBI director the president himself appointed, said last month that this kind of attempted foreign election interference was something that should be reported to federal law enforcement, Trump’s…

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Republican and Democratic former EPA heads sound alarm on Trump administration

Republican and Democratic former EPA heads sound alarm on Trump administration

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Think Progress reports: Former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials — including three Republicans and one Democrat — sounded the alarm on Tuesday about the direction of the agency under President Donald Trump. They warned that decades of environmental progress are on the line. Former EPA administrators under the Obama and Reagan administrations, as well as both Bush administrations, shared their concerns during a House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing. “I am here today because I am deeply concerned that…

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Oil tankers attacked in Gulf of Oman, U.S. Navy says

Oil tankers attacked in Gulf of Oman, U.S. Navy says

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The Washington Post reports: Two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman came under suspected attack early Thursday amid soaring tensions between the United States and Iran. A Japanese-owned ship was targeted just as Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, wrapped up a high-stakes visit to Tehran to help cool hostilities in the region and potentially mediate U.S.-Iran talks. The attack appeared timed to undermine those efforts, which Abe had called “a major step forward toward securing peace and stability in…

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Leaked documents reveal Russian effort to turn Africa into strategic hub

Leaked documents reveal Russian effort to turn Africa into strategic hub

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The Guardian reports: Russia is seeking to bolster its presence in at least 13 countries across Africa by building relations with existing rulers, striking military deals, and grooming a new generation of “leaders” and undercover “agents”, leaked documents reveal. The mission to increase Russian influence on the continent is being led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman based in St Petersburg who is a close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. One aim is to “strong-arm” the US and the…

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The European left’s dangerous anti-immigrant turn

The European left’s dangerous anti-immigrant turn

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Karina Piser writes: Denmark’s center-left Social Democrats came in first in the country’s June 5 parliamentary elections—the third Nordic country where voters recently backed a left-leaning party in a Europe otherwise marked by social democracy’s decline. Wednesday’s outcome broke with the past two decades of Danish politics. Social Democrats leader Mette Frederiksen, 41, is set to become the country’s youngest-ever prime minister and the second woman to hold the job. Her coalition’s success—91 of the parliament’s 179 seats—upended a political…

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False promises: Confidential cabinet note shows UK govt is not prepared for October 31 Brexit

False promises: Confidential cabinet note shows UK govt is not prepared for October 31 Brexit

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Financial Times reports: Boris Johnson’s promise to take Britain out of the EU with or without a deal on the scheduled Brexit date of October 31 has been undermined by a confidential cabinet note warning that the country is still far from prepared for the disruption of a disorderly exit. The note, seen by the Financial Times, says the government needs six to eight months of engagement with the pharmaceutical industry “to ensure adequate arrangements are in place to build…

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Hong Kong’s identity as a city of rights and freedom is under threat – that’s why we protest

Hong Kong’s identity as a city of rights and freedom is under threat – that’s why we protest

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Antony Dapiran writes: In extraordinary scenes that could have been a direct replay of 2014’s Occupy Central protests, thousands of anti-government protesters surrounded the Hong Kong government offices and Legislative Council building at Admiralty today, blocking roads and forcing the government to postpone a planned meeting to debate a controversial proposed extradition law. Again, as in 2014, today’s protesters were primarily youths, clad in black t-shirts and chanting “Cit Wui!” (“Withdraw!”). Drawing on their experience from the Umbrella Movement, protesters…

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Trump publicly opposes using CIA informants against North Korea’s Kim

Trump publicly opposes using CIA informants against North Korea’s Kim

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Reuters reports: U.S. President Donald Trump took a public stance against the use of CIA informants to spy on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday, saying it would not happen on his watch and possibly taking away a valuable tool of the U.S. intelligence community. Trump’s remarks to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House represented a fresh attempt by the president to cozy up to the North Korean leader, a policy that has drawn criticism…

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UAE enlisted businessman to spy on Trump White House

UAE enlisted businessman to spy on Trump White House

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The Intercept reports: In January 2017, three days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, a businessman from the United Arab Emirates was invited to a lavish dinner planned by Trump’s longtime ally Thomas J. Barrack Jr., who was chair of the president’s inaugural committee. The guest list placed Rashid al-Malik, a onetime business associate of Barrack’s, amid more than 100 foreign diplomats and top members of the incoming administration. The president-elect himself made a surprise appearance at the gathering. Al-Malik’s name…

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How World War II almost broke American politics

How World War II almost broke American politics

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Joshua Zeitz writes: The story of how Americans surmounted their fractured political culture to mobilize for D-Day remains a trenchant example, in our own age of discord and division, of how a country desperately wanting for consensus can rally together in a moment of common purpose. “Our bond with Europe is a bond of race, and not of political ideology,” the famed aviator and outspoken isolationist Charles Lindbergh told a national radio audience in October 1939. “Racial strength is vital,…

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Rory Stewart: ‘The way that you change the world is being honest to the way the world is.’

Rory Stewart: ‘The way that you change the world is being honest to the way the world is.’

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With no notes — the eloquence, clarity, and conviction all his own — Rory Stewart tests a revolutionary proposition: that it is possible to become a national leader by being deeply committed to truthfulness; by being able to discriminate between reality and fantasy; and by placing national interest above personal ambition. In a world where clowns succeed, lies flow in all directions, and the media is perpetually focused on maximizing audience size, Stewart’s seriousness is utterly out of place. But…

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The princes who want to destroy any hope for Arab democracy

The princes who want to destroy any hope for Arab democracy

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Iyad el-Baghdadi writes: Since the Arab uprisings of 2011, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have used their considerable resources to promote authoritarian governments run by military strongmen in the region. They helped crush Bahrain’s uprising, bankrolled a return to military dictatorship in Egypt, armed a rogue military leader in Libya and mismanaged a democratic transition in Yemen before launching a destructive war there. A ghastly new chapter in the Saudi and the Emirati counterrevolution against democratic movements in…

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Hezbollah bomb factory in London found in 2015 but kept hidden from public and lawmakers, says report

Hezbollah bomb factory in London found in 2015 but kept hidden from public and lawmakers, says report

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Middle East Eye reports: A secret bomb factory run by members of the Iran-backed movement Hezbollah was found on the outskirts of London in 2015, with as much as three metric tonnes of bomb-making ingredients, the Daily Telegraph reported on Monday. The case, which was kept “hidden from the public”, unfolded after the British police and the MI5 intelligence service were tipped-off by a foreign government, security sources told the daily. Thousands of disposable ice packs containing three tonnes of…

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Elizabeth Warren’s plans that would remake the economy

Elizabeth Warren’s plans that would remake the economy

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The New York Times reports: As the 23 candidates seeking the Democratic nomination struggle to distinguish themselves, Senator Elizabeth Warren has set herself apart with a series of sweeping proposals that would significantly remake the American economy, covering everything from tax policy to business regulation to student debt relief. Together, her plans offer a detailed portrait of what her presidency might look like. Many of the proposals from Ms. Warren, a former Harvard law professor and hawk on financial regulation,…

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Buttigieg urges end to ‘endless’ U.S. war, return to Iran, climate deals

Buttigieg urges end to ‘endless’ U.S. war, return to Iran, climate deals

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Reuters reports: Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday urged a stop to the “endless war” that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and a return to the Iran nuclear deal and Paris climate accord scrapped by Republican President Donald Trump. Buttigieg, a Navy reservist who was deployed to Afghanistan, repudiated Trump’s go-it-alone, America First approach to the world in the first foreign policy speech of his 2020 White House campaign. He outlined a policy based on “America at our…

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