Attention to the Unseen

Michael Greenberg writes: A kindling sense of apocalypse is business as usual for Californians, who live almost nonchalantly with impending doom. Wildfires eat up the landscape, roar into the cities, drop tons of choking ash in the mountain-locked valleys. Mudslides come in winter and spring. Underfoot is the constant threat of “the big one,” the earthquake that will end everything in a few minutes. Dwindling rivers, drained lakes, and recurring droughts keep the southern and most populous part of California…

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The New York Times reports: When the Hungarian government coerced the Central European University, a leading college in Budapest, into shutting some of its operations in December, it did not do so by threat of physical force. Viktor Orban, the far-right prime minister of Hungary, never jailed a C.E.U. professor or ordered the university to close by government decree. Instead, the Orban government quietly changed the rules by which all foreign universities like C.E.U. can operate, allowing Mr. Orban to…

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Bloomberg reports: Russia warned the U.S. against any effort to influence the royal succession in Saudi Arabia, offering its support to embattled Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who’s under continuing pressure over the killing of a government critic. President Vladimir Putin’s envoy to the Middle East said Prince Mohammed has every right to inherit the throne when the ailing 82-year-old King Salman dies. “Of course we are against interference. The Saudi people and leadership must decide such questions themselves,”…

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Politico reports: Key House Democrats plan to use their newfound power to force a debate about the war-making authority that Congress approved after 9/11 — after years of being stifled by the chamber’s Republican leaders. Democrats will still face a tough fight to impose greater oversight on the U.S. military deployments that have mushroomed during the past 17 years. But prospects will be much brighter for the lawmakers who have spent years pushing Congress to weigh in on the use…

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The New York Times reports: Less than two hours after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis went to the White House on Thursday to hand a resignation letter to President Trump, the president stood in the Oval Office and dictated a glowing tweet announcing that Mr. Mattis was retiring “with distinction” at the end of February. But Mr. Trump had not read the letter. As became apparent to the president only after days of news coverage, a senior administration official said, Mr….

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Susan Rice writes: [T]wo factors combined to ensure the collapse of the decision-making apparatus. First, it appears that the national security adviser, John Bolton, rarely convenes his cabinet colleagues, known as the principals committee, to review the toughest issues. Instead, key players are cut out, as reportedly the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was from the final, fateful meeting on Syria. Mr. Bolton has not named a replacement deputy national security adviser, leaving vacant a crucial position whose…

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Politico reports: [Former Boeing executive, Patrick] Shanahan, who has been the Pentagon’s No. 2 for 18 months [and will become acting defense secretary on Jan 1], is little known outside the halls of the national security community — and even there his views are not well understood. A mechanical engineer by training with scant policy background, the public record of his positions is slim compared to Mattis, a retired four-star Marine general. “Imagine if we drew a Venn diagram of…

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The Independent reports: Mass re-education camps used to hold Uighur and other Muslim minorities in China are being run like “wartime concentration camps”, Amnesty has said. Up to one million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other minorities have been arbitrarily detained in internment camps in the far-west Xinjiang region, according to human rights groups and a UN panel. China maintains that it is detaining people guilty of minor crimes, and has sent them to “vocational centres” and that inmates are “grateful” to…

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The New York Times reports: When President Trump grows frustrated with advisers during meetings, which is not an uncommon occurrence, he sits back in his chair, crosses his arms and scowls. Often he erupts. “Freaking idiots!” he calls his aides. Except he uses a more pungent word than “freaking.” For two years, Mr. Trump has waged war against his own government, convinced that people around him are fools. Angry that they resist his wishes, uninterested in the details of their…

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