Browsed by
Category: Politics

U.S. joins Russia, North Korea in refusing to sign cybersecurity pact

U.S. joins Russia, North Korea in refusing to sign cybersecurity pact

Comments 0 Comment

Caroline Orr reports: More than 50 countries signed onto a historic cybersecurity pact Monday as part of the Paris Peace Forum, marking an important step forward in the global fight against cyberwarfare and criminal activity on the internet. In addition to the governments that pledged to work together to combat malicious online activities, at least 150 tech companies and 90 charitable organizations and universities also signed onto the agreement. However, there were a few notable absences from the list of…

Read More Read More

‘I see him as a modern day Pablo Escobar’: Inside Bill Browder’s war against Putin

‘I see him as a modern day Pablo Escobar’: Inside Bill Browder’s war against Putin

Comments 0 Comment

Marie Brenner reports: Perhaps all you need to know to understand the essense of Bill Browder is what he carried with him in his briefcase when he lived in Putin’s Russia. “At all times,” he told me not long after we met, “I had $5,000 in cash in case I had to flee for the border and pay off the guards.” Bill Browder’s stories are melodramas. They often begin with a ringing phone—or a knock on a door. In May…

Read More Read More

Time for a Green New Deal?

Time for a Green New Deal?

Comments 0 Comment

Grist reports: Democrats successfully flipped the House last week, and they’ve set their priorities for January: reforming voting, government ethics, and campaign finance laws. Surprise! Climate change isn’t on the list. Not exactly a shocker considering that Democrats don’t even have an economy-wide plan to tackle climate change yet. Guess who does? Young people and newly elected Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. A group of 150 youth activists held an hour-long sit-in in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office in D.C….

Read More Read More

How World War I ushered in the century of oil

How World War I ushered in the century of oil

Comments 0 Comment

The Navy converted to oil from coal a few years before the U.S. entered World War I, helping to solidify petroleum’s strategic status. Naval History and Heritage Command By Brian C. Black, Pennsylvania State University On July 7, 1919, a group of U.S. military members dedicated Zero Milestone – the point from which all road distances in the country would be measured – just south of the White House lawn in Washington, D.C. The next morning, they helped to define…

Read More Read More

Trump fooled himself about North Korean nuclear disarmament

Trump fooled himself about North Korean nuclear disarmament

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: North Korea is moving ahead with its ballistic missile program at 16 hidden bases that have been identified in new commercial satellite images, a network long known to American intelligence agencies but left undiscussed as President Trump claims to have neutralized the North’s nuclear threat. The satellite images suggest that the North has been engaged in a great deception: It has offered to dismantle a major launching site — a step it began, then halted…

Read More Read More

‘Tell your boss’: Recording is seen to link Saudi crown prince more strongly to Khashoggi killing

‘Tell your boss’: Recording is seen to link Saudi crown prince more strongly to Khashoggi killing

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: Shortly after the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed last month at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, a member of the kill team instructed a superior over the phone to “tell your boss,” believed to be Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, that the operatives had carried out their mission, according to three people familiar with a recording of Mr. Khashoggi’s killing collected by Turkish intelligence. The recording, shared last month with the C.I.A. director, Gina Haspel,…

Read More Read More

In remembering WWI, Macron warns of resurging ‘old demons’ of nationalism

In remembering WWI, Macron warns of resurging ‘old demons’ of nationalism

Comments 0 Comment

The Associated Press reports: World leaders with the power to make war but a duty to preserve peace solemnly marked the end of World War I’s slaughter 100 years ago at commemorations Sunday that drove home the message “never again” but also exposed the globe’s new political fault lines. As Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and dozens of other heads of state and government listened in silence, French President Emmanuel Macron used the occasion, as its host, to sound a powerful…

Read More Read More

Saudis close to crown prince discussed assassinating enemies a year before Khashoggi killing

Saudis close to crown prince discussed assassinating enemies a year before Khashoggi killing

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: Top Saudi intelligence officials close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman asked a small group of businessmen last year about using private companies to assassinate Iranian enemies of the kingdom, according to three people familiar with the discussions. The Saudis inquired at a time when Prince Mohammed, then the deputy crown prince and defense minister, was consolidating power and directing his advisers to escalate military and intelligence operations outside the kingdom. Their discussions, more than…

Read More Read More

Wave of violence against Brazil’s indigenous communities follows Bolsonaro’s election

Wave of violence against Brazil’s indigenous communities follows Bolsonaro’s election

Comments 0 Comment

Grist reports: Even before Jair Bolsonaro won Brazil’s Presidential race last week, many environmentalists were on high alert. The far-right politician’s positions on agriculture and economic development (he’s gone back and forth on whether he’ll keep environment ministries and agriculture ministries separate) could open up Brazil’s precious rainforests to deforestation and economic exploitation. But it’s not just the Amazon that’s threatened — the lives of many of Brazil’s indigenous peoples are under siege as well. A little over a week…

Read More Read More

Matthew Whitaker: An attack dog with ambition beyond protecting Trump

Matthew Whitaker: An attack dog with ambition beyond protecting Trump

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: President Trump first noticed Matthew G. Whitaker on CNN in the summer of 2017 and liked what he saw — a partisan defender who insisted there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. So that July, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, interviewed Mr. Whitaker about joining the president’s team as a legal attack dog against the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. At that point, the White House passed, leaving…

Read More Read More

FBI is investigating Florida company where Whitaker was advisory-board member

FBI is investigating Florida company where Whitaker was advisory-board member

Comments 0 Comment

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting a criminal investigation of a Florida company accused of scamming millions from customers during the period that Matthew Whitaker, the acting U.S. attorney general, served as a paid advisory-board member, according to an alleged victim who was contacted by the FBI and other people familiar with the matter. The investigation is being handled by the Miami office of the FBI and by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, according…

Read More Read More

Tape of Khashoggi’s killing has been given to U.S., Saudi, Europeans, Erdogan says

Tape of Khashoggi’s killing has been given to U.S., Saudi, Europeans, Erdogan says

Comments 0 Comment

The Washington Post reports: An audio recording tracking the dying moments of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul has been shared with Saudi Arabia, Britain, France and Germany in addition to the United States, the leader of Turkey said Saturday. “We gave it to Saudi Arabia,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at the Ankara airport before departing for Paris for commemorations to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. “We gave it to…

Read More Read More

Trump played central role in cover-up of his affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal

Trump played central role in cover-up of his affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal

Comments 0 Comment

The Wall Street Journal reports: As a presidential candidate in August 2015, Donald Trump huddled with a longtime friend, media executive David Pecker, in his cluttered 26th floor Trump Tower office and made a request. What can you do to help my campaign? he asked, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Pecker, chief executive of American Media Inc., offered to use his National Enquirer tabloid to buy the silence of women if they tried to publicize alleged sexual…

Read More Read More

After calling acting AG a ‘great guy,’ Trump now says ‘I don’t know him’

After calling acting AG a ‘great guy,’ Trump now says ‘I don’t know him’

Comments 0 Comment

The Associated Press reports: Matthew Whitaker’s future at the helm of the Justice Department appeared uncertain at best Friday as President Donald Trump denied even knowing the man he had named acting attorney general just two days earlier. The Senate’s top Republican predicted a permanent replacement could be named soon for Whitaker, who is now overseeing the Trump-Russia probe. In addition to the negative comments from Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Whitaker’s past business ties and comments on…

Read More Read More

It’s probably too late to stop Mueller

It’s probably too late to stop Mueller

Comments 0 Comment

Benjamin Wittes writes: Here are 10 reasons to think that [acting attorney general, Matthew] Whitaker may have less capacity to foil Mueller than the current moment—and his formal powers—may suggest. First, Mueller has spread the wealth around. The normal critique of special-counsel investigations is that they hoard jurisdiction, endlessly expand, and become personal roving inquests into their political subjects’ lives. The opposite is the case with Mueller. He has not merely referred to other Justice Department components matters at the…

Read More Read More