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Category: Politics

It’s time to focus on Trump’s corruption

It’s time to focus on Trump’s corruption

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Michael Paarlberg writes: It’s a fortunate thing for Donald Trump that the Democrats, and much of the media, spent the past two years focused on the narrow question of whether his 2016 campaign actively colluded with Russian agents to hack his opponents’ emails. Were it not for this singular obsession, we might have come to appreciate the full scope of graft, influence peddling and petty theft that has made this the most crooked administration in US history. One doesn’t have…

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For Russia, an assassin ends up as ‘a used bullet’ who can easily be replaced

For Russia, an assassin ends up as ‘a used bullet’ who can easily be replaced

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Michael Schwirtz writes: For months, I had been traveling in Russia and Europe, reporting on the poisoning last year in England of the former Russian spy, Sergei V. Skripal. It had touched off a geopolitical confrontation and brought talk of a new Cold War. Britain and its allies enacted sanctions and expelled more than 150 Russian diplomats after blaming the nerve agent attack on two officers from Russia’s military intelligence service, the G.R.U. For Ukraine, Russian interference was an old…

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How many innocent people does the U.S. kill by remote control?

How many innocent people does the U.S. kill by remote control?

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In an editorial, the New York Times says: The Pentagon says American airstrikes in Somalia have killed no civilians since President Trump accelerated attacks against Shabab militants there two years ago. Amnesty International investigated five of the more than 100 strikes carried out in Somalia since 2017 by drones and manned aircraft, and in just that small sampling found that at least 14 civilians were killed. The Pentagon says airstrikes by the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State killed at…

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Leaked reports reveal how Saudis torture political prisoners

Leaked reports reveal how Saudis torture political prisoners

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The Guardian reports: Political prisoners in Saudi Arabia are said to be suffering from malnutrition, cuts, bruises and burns, according to leaked medical reports that are understood to have been prepared for the country’s ruler, King Salman. The reports seem to provide the first documented evidence from within the heart of the royal court that political prisoners are facing severe physical abuse, despite the government’s denials that men and women in custody are being tortured. The Guardian has been told…

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Across the Middle East and North Africa, environmentalists are coming under attack like never before

Across the Middle East and North Africa, environmentalists are coming under attack like never before

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Peter Schwartzstein writes: Conservation NGOs have been closed or so suffocated that they’re as good as dissolved. Activists and experts have been threatened into silence—or worse. A community that had until recently mostly escaped the fate of much of the region’s civil society has suddenly fallen afoul of the authorities. Its plight mirrors the difficulties faced by environmentalists worldwide. Globally, 197 environmental defenders were killed in 2017, according to the UN Environment Programme, a fivefold increase from a decade ago….

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Trump directs State Dept. to end aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador

Trump directs State Dept. to end aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador

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The New York Times reports: President Trump said on Friday that there would be a “very good likelihood” that he would seal off the United States border with Mexico next week, even as he moved to punish Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for migrant caravans by cutting off all foreign aid to the countries. The moves escalated a sustained berating of countries he blames for being unable to stop the flow of migrants trying to make their way north. Mr….

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Literally no one but Trump actually wants to close border crossings

Literally no one but Trump actually wants to close border crossings

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TRUMP: "With a deficit like we have with Mexico and have had for many years, closing the border will be a profit-making operation." (That is not at all how trade works!) pic.twitter.com/jnuJpQEMfU — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 29, 2019 Dara Lind writes: Shutting down ports of entry would be an economic disaster. It would also disrupt the lives of border communities that rely on the flow of people between the US and Mexico — including the major cities of San…

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Trump’s order to open Arctic waters to oil drilling was unlawful, federal judge finds

Trump’s order to open Arctic waters to oil drilling was unlawful, federal judge finds

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The New York Times reports: In a major legal blow to President Trump’s push to expand offshore oil and gas development, a federal judge ruled that an executive order by Mr. Trump that lifted an Obama-era ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean and parts of the North Atlantic coast was unlawful. The decision, by Judge Sharon L. Gleason of the United States District Court for the District of Alaska, concluded late Friday that President Barack Obama’s…

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Bezos investigation finds the Saudis obtained his private data

Bezos investigation finds the Saudis obtained his private data

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Gavin De Becker writes: Some Americans will be surprised to learn that the Saudi government has been very intent on harming Jeff Bezos since last October, when the Post began its relentless coverage of Khashoggi’s murder. The Saudi campaign against Bezos has already been reported by CNN International, Bloomberg, The Daily Beast, and others. Saudi Arabia attacks people in many ways, obviously, including through their elaborate social media program that uses sophisticated technology and paid surrogates to create artificially trending…

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Trump-linked U.S. Christian ‘fundamentalists’ pour millions of ‘dark money’ into Europe, boosting the far right

Trump-linked U.S. Christian ‘fundamentalists’ pour millions of ‘dark money’ into Europe, boosting the far right

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Open Democracy reports: U.S. Christian right ‘fundamentalists’ linked to the Trump administration and Steve Bannon are among a dozen American groups that have poured at least $50 million of ‘dark money’ into Europe over the last decade, openDemocracy can reveal today. Between them, these groups have backed ‘armies’ of ultra-conservative lawyers and political activists, as well as ‘family values’ campaigns against LGBT rights, sex education and abortion – and a number appear to have increasing links with Europe’s far right….

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The only way forward is a delay, a rethink, and a softer form of Brexit

The only way forward is a delay, a rethink, and a softer form of Brexit

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Following the third defeat in parliament for Theresa May’s Brexit deal, the Financial Times, in an editorial, says: While a majority of MPs profoundly disagreed — like this newspaper — with the wisdom of leaving, many were ready to compromise to allow it to happen. Hardcore Brexit ultras would agree to nothing but the fantastical clean-break exit they craved. They cannot be allowed to take the country over the cliff into a no-deal crash-out, with perilous consequences for the UK’s…

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Jacinda Ardern at Christchurch memorial: Only through our common humanity can we confront extremism

Jacinda Ardern at Christchurch memorial: Only through our common humanity can we confront extremism

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  New Zealand PM, Jacinda Ardern, said: To the global community who have joined us today, who reached out to embrace New Zealand, and our Muslim community, to all of those who have gathered here today, we say thank you. And we also ask that the condemnation of violence and terrorism turns now to a collective response. The world has been stuck in a vicious cycle of extremism breeding extremism and it must end. We cannot confront these issues alone,…

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Mueller report will be delivered to Congress without White House preview by ‘mid-April, if not sooner,’ says attorney general

Mueller report will be delivered to Congress without White House preview by ‘mid-April, if not sooner,’ says attorney general

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The Washington Post reports: Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report detailing his investigation of President Trump and Russia’s election interference will be delivered to Congress “by mid-April, if not sooner,” Attorney General William P. Barr said Friday in a letter offering important new details about how the document will be edited before its public release. Barr’s letter aimed to reassure lawmakers and the public that the process for handling the report — which numbers nearly 400 pages, he said…

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Surge of asylum seekers highlights futility of Trump’s wall

Surge of asylum seekers highlights futility of Trump’s wall

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The Washington Post reports: While [Kevin] McAleenan [the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection] was emphasizing the need for more resources and legal authority to keep people from the U.S. interior, advocacy groups said the Trump administration should instead treat the migrants as refugees and invest in foreign aid. Migrants are streaming out of Central America for a complex set of reasons — including drought, poverty, violence and political instability — problems that will persist regardless of U.S. border…

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Mueller report: Did Barr write a summary or a cover-up?

Mueller report: Did Barr write a summary or a cover-up?

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The New York Times reports: The still-secret report on Russian interference in the 2016 election submitted by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, last week was more than 300 pages long, according to the Justice Department, a length that raises new questions about Attorney General William P. Barr’s four-page summary. Mr. Barr wrote to Congress on Sunday offering what he called the “principal conclusions” of the report — including that Mr. Mueller had not found that the Trump campaign…

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Oliver North showed Republicans the way out

Oliver North showed Republicans the way out

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Jamelle Bouie writes: Watergate, the modern template for an impeachment-worthy scandal, has informed much of the coverage of the Russia scandal, from congressional inquiries to the special counsel’s investigation into President Trump and his campaign. Central questions — Did the president conspire to illegally influence the election? Did he obstruct justice? — have clear antecedents in Watergate. And Trump himself bears more than a slight resemblance to Richard Nixon at his most paranoid and intransigent. But while Trump’s belligerent and…

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