Music: Lars Danielsson, Verneri Pohjola & John Parricelli — ‘Morgonpsalm’
Trump’s confidential plan to place Ukraine in a legal stranglehold
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports: Donald Trump’s demand for a $500bn (£400bn) “payback” from Ukraine goes far beyond US control over the country’s critical minerals. It covers everything from ports and infrastructure to oil and gas, and the larger resource base of the country. The terms of the contract that landed at Volodymyr Zelensky’s office a week ago amount to the US economic colonisation of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity. It implies a burden of reparations that cannot possibly be achieved. The document…
Former NATO commander: Without strong defense, Europe will be at war with Russia within five years
“The way to prevent that is strong defense to spend money on defence to be prepared for the worst case, because that is the only way we are going to deter Russia.” US withdrawal from NATO and failure to challenge Putin in ceasefire talks would cause a war in Europe in five years warns Former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Richard Shirreff on Frontline.
WSJ: Trump tilts toward a Ukraine sellout
In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal says: Trump on Tuesday mimicked Russian propaganda by claiming Ukraine had started the war with Russia and that Kyiv is little better than the Kremlin because it hasn’t held a wartime election. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky replied on Wednesday that Mr. Trump was living in a “disinformation space,” which may have been imprudent but was accurate. Mr. Trump escalated on Wednesday, as he usually does, calling Mr. Zelensky a “dictator,” and suggesting Ukraine’s…
Bill Browder: It’s time to confiscate Russia’s frozen assets
James O’Brien is joined by Sir Bill Browder, an anti-corruption campaigner who is the head of the Magnitsky Global Justice Campaign, and chief executive of the finance company Hermitage Capital. Sir Bill Browder offers hope on Ukraine’s bleak situation following Donald Trump’s comments about Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The US president took aim at Zelenskyy after he accused Trump of “helping Putin to come out of isolation” by working with him. On Wednesday evening, Number Ten released a statement expressing…
DOGE’s incompetence is a feature, not a bug
Brian Barrett writes: Within just the last week or so, Elon Musk’s DOGE hit team of mostly young, almost exclusively male engineers and executives have done the following: Pushed a website live to track “savings” that showed no savings for several days, and made it trivially easy for random people on the internet to make changes to it. Published classified information on that same website. Got called out for accidentally inflating that savings amount by $7,992,000,000, and doubled down on their inaccuracy before they fixed it. Fired hundreds of people…
Christian asylum seekers and other migrants deported to Panama forced into ‘fenced cages’ in jungle
The New York Times reports: Nearly 100 migrants, recently deported by the United States to Panama where they had been locked in a hotel, were loaded onto buses Tuesday night and moved to a detention camp on the outskirts of the jungle, several of the migrants said. It is unclear how long the group, which was deported under the Trump administration’s sweeping effort to expel unauthorized migrants, will be detained at the jungle camp. Conditions at the site are primitive,…
Gaza transfer plan: The banality of ethnic cleansing
Member of the Knesset, Ahmad Tibi, writes: Widespread support for the idea of transferring the population of Gaza to other countries, alongside the notion that “there are no innocent people” in the Palestinian enclave, constitute a betrayal of every moral principle that should guide a people who endured the Holocaust. All those who support the “voluntary migration” proposal should understand: the Palestinian people are not going anywhere. The fact that polls show overwhelming support among Jewish Israelis for the idea…
Music: Verneri Pohjola — ‘The Dead Don’t Dream’
The 50-year-old law that might, eventually, stop DOGE
Wired reports: As Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency rampages through the US government, its access to sensitive data is alarming federal agencies and Americans who interact with them. In the month since the Trump administration began its purge of federal workers, opponents fighting DOGE in court have been pinning their hopes of stopping the world’s richest man on a 50-year-old law. In just a few weeks, DOGE staffers have accessed federal employee records at the Office of Personnel Management, government payment data at the Department of the…
GOP in Congress ‘scared shitless about death threats’ if they were to defy Trump
Gabriel Sherman reports: Senate and House Republicans know Trump will orchestrate the running of a primary challenger backed by Elon Musk’s unlimited resources if a member defies him. But this is not the whole story of Republican subservience to the president. In private, Republicans talk about their fear that Trump might incite his MAGA followers to commit political violence against them if they don’t rubber-stamp his actions. “They’re scared shitless about death threats and Gestapo-like stuff,” a former member of…
Zelenskyy commits cardinal sin: he tells the truth about Trump
Julian Borger writes: All the effort Kyiv had expended in wooing the White House, combining flattery with bribery and a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, imploded in minutes when Volodymyr Zelenskyy broke the fundamental rule of the new global reality: he told the truth about Donald Trump. All America’s allies, the great majority of Republican leaders who have bowed to him, and a good number of his own cabinet, know full well that Trump is trapped in a disinformation bubble,…
Trump expresses fawning admiration for ‘leader’ Musk
The Hill reports on Sean Hannity’s joint interview with Musk and Trump: Trump had high praise for Musk throughout the interview, highlighting his successful tech career and his intelligence. The president noted he was impressed with Musk when he saw Musk’s team had the ability to catch a rocket booster instead of having it crash into the ocean. “Something that had an effect on me was when I saw the rocket ship come back and get grabbed like you grab…
DOGE has ‘God mode’ access to government data across many federal agencies
Charlie Warzel, Ian Bogost, and Matteo Wong write: DOGE has achieved “God mode.” That’s according to an employee in senior leadership at USAID, who told us that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency now has full, unrestricted access to the agency’s digital infrastructure—including total control over systems that Americans working in conflict zones rely on, the ability to see and manipulate financial systems that have historically awarded tens of billions of dollars, and perhaps much more. The employee’s account, along…
Scientific research: ‘I fear we’ll lose a generation of talent that will take decades to recover’ — if at all
Sam Stein writes: In the first month of the second Trump administration, the world’s richest man—underinformed, chronically online, and staffed by a coterie of teenaged and twentysomething former engineering interns—has been moving at warp speed to reshape, reduce, and even dismantle the United States government. But while Musk’s rampage has been feverishly covered, the scope of its impact remains largely underappreciated. Experts say it can’t be measured in weeks or months or even in government services affected. Rather, it will…
Gaza, Syria, and the Middle East’s next crisis
Maha Yahya writes: Iran, Israel, the United States, and the Arab Gulf countries have all spent decades trying to shape the region to their liking without addressing the root causes of conflict, and they have repeatedly failed. They have sought security over peace and ended up with neither. And yet their current plans are strikingly similar, at least in spirit, to past efforts. All these countries are committing again to visions of a new regional order in which reconstruction takes…