Attention to the Unseen

The Observer reports: Arron Banks, the millionaire businessman who bankrolled Nigel Farage’s campaign to quit the EU, had multiple meetings with Russian embassy officials in the run-up to the Brexit referendum, documents seen by the Observer suggest. Banks, who gave £12m of services to the campaign, becoming the biggest donor in UK history, has repeatedly denied any involvement with Russian officials, or that Russian money played any part in the Brexit campaign. The Observer has seen documents which a senior…

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The New York Times reports: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia arrived in Austria on Tuesday sensing an opportunity almost unimaginable just months ago: to overhaul frosty relations with a European Union infuriated by President Trump on a host of issues, from climate and Iran to, most recently, tariffs and trade. Never mind that Mr. Putin was until recently virtually a pariah in Europe after his military interventions in Ukraine, Crimea and Syria; after meddling in European elections and working…

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The Guardian reports: A Cambridge Analytica director apparently visited Julian Assange in February last year and told friends it was to discuss what happened during the US election, the Guardian has learned. Brittany Kaiser, a director at the firm until earlier this year, also claimed to have channelled cryptocurrency payments and donations to WikiLeaks. This information has been passed to congressional and parliamentary inquiries in the UK and US. Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks are already subjects of special counsel Robert…

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Al Monitor reports: Dozens of politicians, writers and human rights activists were attacked June 5 by unknown assailants at the iftar dinner party for the breaking of the daily fast during Ramadan organized by the Civil Democratic Movement. The assailants crashed the iftar at the Swiss Club in Cairo and overturned the dinner tables while chanting “Traitors! Spies!” The head of the Constitution Party, Khaled Dawoud, who attended the dinner, said in a Facebook post on the day of the…

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RFE/RL reports: An important but widely overlooked demographic transformation has been under way in the Ukrainian region of Crimea since it was annexed by Russia in 2014. Ukrainian officials and analysts say hundreds of thousands of people from across Russia have been brought into the disputed region in an effort by Moscow to transform the composition of its population. “Since 2014 there has been a mass movement of people from Siberia,” Sergei, who moved to Crimea from St. Petersburg and…

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14% of Germans consider the US a reliable partner36% of Germans consider the Russia a reliable partner43% consider China a reliable partner Source: Politbarometer, 17 May 2018, sample size 1,200 pic.twitter.com/NhcRPsp5M0 — Thomas Rid (@RidT) June 5, 2018

Jay Rosen writes: There is alive in the land an organized campaign to discredit the American press. This campaign is succeeding. Its roots are long. For decades, the Republican coalition has tried to hang together by hating on elites who claim to know things, like: “What is art?” Or: “What should college students be taught?” Or: “What counts as news?” The media wing of this history extends back to Barry Goldwater’s campaign in 1964. It passes through Spiro Agnew’s speeches…

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The New York Times reports: The former acting F.B.I. director, Andrew G. McCabe, wrote a confidential memo last spring recounting a conversation that offered significant behind-the-scenes details on the firing of Mr. McCabe’s predecessor, James B. Comey, according to several people familiar with the discussion. Mr. Comey’s firing is a central focus of the special counsel’s investigation into whether President Trump tried to obstruct the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia. Mr. McCabe has turned over his memo to…

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Coda Story reports: When the news broke that the prominent Russian journalist and Putin-foe Arkady Babchenko had been murdered in exile in Kiev, it looked like everything was following a sadly familiar script. As tributes began pouring in, his fellow journalists across the world wrote up their obituaries about the third critic of the Russian leader to be killed in the Ukrainian capital in the last 18 months alone. Reportedly shot in the back at home, Babchenko’s murder, as Ukraine’s…

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