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Category: Politics

Only a fool takes Putin at his word in Syria

Only a fool takes Putin at his word in Syria

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Nic Robertson writes: Trusting Russia to keep its word in Syria is rather like believing in good faith that its intelligence agents only visited the UK to see Salisbury Cathedral. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s new peace plan — forged with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan — to protect the three million civilians crowded in camps in Idlib is staggeringly hard to take at face value for a multitude of reasons — not least, because of Putin’s history of denying…

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New revelations about the Sabra and Shatila massacre

New revelations about the Sabra and Shatila massacre

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Seth Anziska writes: Historians try not to audibly gasp in the reading rooms of official archives, but there are times when the written record retains a capacity to shock. In 2012, while working at the Israel State Archives in Jerusalem, I came across highly classified material from Israel’s 1982 War in Lebanon that had just been opened to researchers. This access was in line with the thirty-year rule of declassification governing the release of documents in Israel. Sifting through Foreign…

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Leaked files expose WikiLeaks’ inner workings

Leaked files expose WikiLeaks’ inner workings

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The Associated Press reports: Julian Assange had just pulled off one of the biggest scoops in journalistic history, splaying the innards of American diplomacy across the web. But technology firms were cutting ties to his WikiLeaks website, cable news pundits were calling for his head and a Swedish sex crime case was threatening to put him behind bars. Caught in a vise, the silver-haired Australian wrote to the Russian Consulate in London. “I, Julian Assange, hereby grant full authority to…

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#MeToo in the monastery: A Chinese abbot’s fall stirs questions on Buddhism’s path

#MeToo in the monastery: A Chinese abbot’s fall stirs questions on Buddhism’s path

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The New York Times reports: Over the past two decades, religion in China has boomed, and no faith has benefited more than Buddhism. The number of temples has tripled, monks and abbots have become well-known public figures, and China has used the faith to build ties around the world, sending out nuns and monks on good-will missions. The person most closely associated with this revival is the Venerable Xuecheng, a charismatic monk who was fast-tracked for success. He became abbot…

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Kavanaugh’s accuser has proved she isn’t lying and now she’s sacrificed her right to privacy

Kavanaugh’s accuser has proved she isn’t lying and now she’s sacrificed her right to privacy

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The Washington Post reports: Earlier this summer, Christine Blasey Ford wrote a confidential letter to a senior Democratic lawmaker alleging that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her more than three decades ago, when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. Since Wednesday, she has watched as that bare-bones version of her story became public without her name or her consent, drawing a blanket denial from Kavanaugh and roiling a nomination that just days ago seemed all…

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Give Britain a new referendum on Brexit, says Mayor of London

Give Britain a new referendum on Brexit, says Mayor of London

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The Observer reports: The mayor of London has issued a dramatic call for another referendum on EU membership, insisting that the people must be given the chance to reject a Brexit deal that will be bad for the economy, jobs and the NHS. Writing in the Observer, Sadiq Khan says that, with so little time left to negotiate, there are now only two possible outcomes: a bad deal for the UK or “no deal” at all, which will be even…

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Russia’s brazen lies mock the world. How best to fight for the truth?

Russia’s brazen lies mock the world. How best to fight for the truth?

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"If you don't stop asking me if we are nearly there yet, I will turn this bus round; and none of you will get to see Salisbury cathedral. Do you hear me?" pic.twitter.com/Z1o2bZ4CVS — Walnut (@PaoloWalnuts) September 13, 2018 Jonathan Freedland writes: Comedy is now diplomacy by other means. A mighty nation has taken to conducting a grave international dispute by means of humour, expecting a similarly comic response in kind. How else are we to view the interview granted…

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Trump administration engages in ‘diplomatic malpractice’ by sabotaging Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation

Trump administration engages in ‘diplomatic malpractice’ by sabotaging Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation

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The New York Times reports: As part of its policy to end all aid for Palestinian civilians, the United States is blocking millions of dollars to programs that build relationships between Israelis and Palestinians, according to current and former American officials briefed on the change. The move to prevent Palestinians — including, in many cases, children — from benefiting from the funds squeezes shut the last remaining channel of American aid to Palestinian civilians. The money had already been budgeted…

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Republican lawmakers ignored scientists’ warnings on rising sea levels in North Carolina

Republican lawmakers ignored scientists’ warnings on rising sea levels in North Carolina

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The Washington Post reports: The coastal and marine geologist once felt his state valued his work. North Carolina was a leader in coastal management, said Stanley Riggs, a distinguished professor of geology at East Carolina University. It heeded the advice of a “tremendous team of scientists” studying the origins and evolution of the Eastern Seaboard, of which the Tar Heel State has a particularly broad swath. As a result, lawmakers adopted policies in the 1970s and 1980s to safeguard the…

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The Watergate ‘Road Map’ and the coming Mueller report

The Watergate ‘Road Map’ and the coming Mueller report

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Stephen Bates, Jack Goldsmith, and Benjamin Wittes write: According to countless media accounts and President Trump’s own lawyers, Special Counsel Robert Mueller is writing some kind of report on allegations of presidential obstruction of justice. Exactly what sort of report this may be is unclear. But to the extent that Mueller is contemplating a referral to Congress of possible impeachment material, he has two historical models of such documents to draw on. One, the so-called Starr Report, is famous and…

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Patrick Leahy: Brett Kavanaugh misled the Senate under oath. I cannot support his nomination

Patrick Leahy: Brett Kavanaugh misled the Senate under oath. I cannot support his nomination

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Sen. Patrick Leahy writes: Last week, I uncovered new evidence that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh misled the Senate during his earlier hearings for the D.C. Circuit Court by minimizing and even denying his involvement in Bush-era controversies. I gave him the opportunity to correct his testimony at his hearing last week; he chose instead to double down. I make no claim that Kavanaugh is a bad person. But when his prior confirmation to our nation’s “second highest court”…

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The Oslo accords are dead, but there is still a path to peace

The Oslo accords are dead, but there is still a path to peace

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Daniel Levy writes: Twenty-five years ago, U.S. President Bill Clinton presided over a famous handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat on the South Lawn of the White House as they signed the Oslo Accords. Those accords, initiated at secret Norwegian-hosted talks between Israeli academics and PLO officials, set an agenda and a five-year timetable for a full peace deal that would initially allow limited Palestinian self-governance in parts of the occupied territories…

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How Trump has sunk the hopes of refugees

How Trump has sunk the hopes of refugees

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Ishaan Tharoor writes: Historically, the United States has been the most welcoming nation on the planet for refugees. Since the adoption of the 1980 U.S. Refugee Act, it has taken in around 3 million of the more than 4 million refugees who have been resettled around the world. But President Trump has made the denigration of refugees a core theme of his presidency, and his administration has all but barred the gates to foreigners seeking refuge in America. According to…

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Hungary serves as a warning on the populist threat to democracy

Hungary serves as a warning on the populist threat to democracy

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Zack Beauchamp writes: Over the course of his eight years in power, Prime Minister Orbán has chipped away at the foundations of Hungarian democracy. It has been replaced with an authoritarian regime that wields a cynical interpretation of the law as a weapon; the country is governed by rules like the border journalism permits, regulations that can seem reasonable on their face but actually serve to undermine essential democratic freedoms. Elections there are free, in the sense that the vote…

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Russians planned cyber attack on lab testing Salisbury nerve agent, Swiss say

Russians planned cyber attack on lab testing Salisbury nerve agent, Swiss say

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The New York Times reports: Two Russian spies caught in the Netherlands and expelled had been plotting cyber sabotage of a Swiss defense laboratory analyzing the nerve agent used to poison a former Russian agent in Britain, Swiss officials said Friday. The story — first reported by the Dutch newspaper NRC and the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, and confirmed by Swiss officials — adds a new dimension to the charges by Western governments that the Kremlin is waging a sophisticated and…

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Michael Avenatti: The case for indicting Trump

Michael Avenatti: The case for indicting Trump

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Michael Avenatti writes: Sol Wachtler, a former chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals, once famously remarked that grand juries were so easily swayed that they would “indict a ham sandwich” if a prosecutor requested it. Many times, there is truth to this. But an indictment does not end the process of determining guilt or innocence. It begins it. Following indictment, criminal defendants can question the validity of the charges, the methods used to acquire the evidence…

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