Music: Erik Truffaz & Murcof — ‘Good News From the Desert’
The Mar-a-Lago connection to the Cindy Yang affair raises huge security risks
David Rothkopf writes: Just take what we know now, thanks to the great reporting of the Miami Herald and Mother Jones, both of which have broken a series of important stories about this tangled web of creeps trying to make a buck in the worst ways possible: Cindy Yang founded a chain of massage parlors. One of those was busted by Florida police. Robert Kraft, owner of the perennial Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots was arrested for what he…
How should we talk about the Israel lobby’s power?
Andrew Sullivan writes: The question [of how to “write honestly about the Israel lobby’s power in D.C. without using any anti-Semitic ‘tropes’ at all”], it seems to me, is one of proportion. Take foreign aid. The U.S. provides the Jewish state with $3.8 billion a year in aid, and has committed to doing so for each of the next ten years. Compare that with what the U.S. gives other allies who are as wealthy as Israel: The U.K. got $150,000…
The more we learn about Brexit, the more crooked it looks
Anne Applebaum writes: Britain has become a place where untransparent money, from unknown sources, is widely accepted with a complacent shrug. London is the world capital of offshore banking, home to the most sophisticated accountants and lawyers; a third of British billionaires have availed themselves of those services and moved their money beyond the reach of the state, according to a report Thursday in the Times of London. Many of them nevertheless continue to make donations to British political parties,…
Obscure group promoting no-deal Brexit is UK’s biggest political spender on Facebook
The Guardian reports: The single biggest known British political advertiser on Facebook is a mysterious pro-Brexit campaign group pushing for a no-deal exit from the EU. The revelation about Britain’s Future, which has never disclosed the source of its funding or organisational structure, has raised concerns about the influence of “dark money” in British politics. The little-known campaign group has spent more than £340,000 on Facebook adverts backing a hard Brexit since the social network began publishing lists of political…
Climate change: Rain melting Greenland ice sheet ‘even in winter’
BBC News reports: Rain is becoming more frequent in Greenland and accelerating the melting of its ice, a new study has found. Scientists say they’re “surprised” to discover rain falling even during the long Arctic winter. The massive Greenland ice-sheet is being watched closely because it holds a huge store of frozen water. And if all of that ice melted, the sea level would rise by seven metres, threatening coastal population centres around the world. Precipitation usually falls as snow…
The case for reparations
David Brooks writes: Nearly five years ago I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Atlantic article “The Case for Reparations,” with mild disagreement. All sorts of practical objections leapt to mind. What about the recent African immigrants? What about the poor whites who have nothing of what you would call privilege? Do we pay Oprah and LeBron? But I have had so many experiences over the past year — sitting, for example, with an elderly black woman in South Carolina shaking in rage…
Elizabeth Warren proposes breaking up tech giants like Amazon and Facebook
The New York Times reports: Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who is bidding to be the policy pacesetter in the Democratic presidential primary, announced another expansive idea on Friday: a regulatory plan aimed at breaking up some of America’s largest tech companies, including Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook. The proposal — which comes on the same day Ms. Warren will hold a rally in Long Island City, the Queens neighborhood that was to be home to a major new…
How Identity Evropa, a white-supremacist group, joined the GOP
The Daily Beast reports: The white nationalist group Identity Evropa is so cozy with the Republican Party that members led their College Republican clubs and campaigned in support of GOP congressional candidates. At least one Identity Evropa fan, who is not a member of the group, attended CPAC last weekend where he demanded an autograph from a leftist podcaster who, tripping on acid, signed the book “eat shit.” Identity Evropa is a fascist organization. Its members have been involved in…
Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to de-legitimize the 2020 election
Chris Cillizza writes: Even as the 2020 race begins in earnest, President Donald Trump is already suggesting that Democrats cannot beat him fairly — raising the specter that if he loses next November, he will suggest that the election was not legitimate. “The Democrats in Congress yesterday were vicious and totally showed their cards for everyone to see,” Trump tweeted Tuesday, referring to House Democrats’ launching of a broad-scale investigation into him. “When the Republicans had the Majority they never…
Is AIPAC too powerful?
The New York Times reports: Has Aipac — founded more than 50 years ago to “strengthen, protect and promote the U.S.-Israel relationship” — become too powerful? And with that power, has Aipac warped the policy debate over Israel so drastically that dissenting voices are not even allowed to be heard? Those questions have grown louder with the controversy around Ms. Omar and will grow louder still in the run-up to this month’s annual Aipac policy conference — a three-day Washington…
As an Israeli American, I agree with Ilhan Omar much more than the U.S. politicians weaponising antisemitism
Mairav Zonszein writes: While freshman Minnesota Congresswoman Omar’s alleged antisemitism has been dominating the headlines in the US in recent weeks, in Israel, the controversies have barely been reported on in Hebrew media, and you’d be hard-pressed to find many Israelis who even know who she is. Yet much of the attacks and condemnations she is facing originate in talking points and policies created by the Israeli right, specifically under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the last decade. Omar has…
The shameful campaign to silence Ilhan Omar
Ben Ehrenreich writes: History has been curling back lately in the most uncomfortable ways. Nearly 125 years ago, a French military court convicted the artillery captain Alfred Dreyfus of treason for handing military secrets to the Germans. Dreyfus, who was Jewish, would eventually be exonerated, but not before his case was turned into a national referendum on the nature of loyalty to the state and the place of Jews in French society. Leading the charge against Dreyfus was the journalist…
The Ilhan Omar controversy shows how little we care about Palestinian lives
Hanna Alshaikh writes: [Rep. Ilhan] Omar has experienced firsthand how innocent humans pay the price for militarism, warfare, and systemic injustice, and is using her platform to protect the most vulnerable. She challenges the Democratic Party to adopt a more progressive and humane foreign policy, one that will not inflict upon others the type of suffering she has faced. Instead of dismissing her, or questioning her role on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, we should defer to her expertise…
Sanders, Harris and Warren defend Ilhan Omar amid controversy over Israel comments
CNN reports: Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday defended Rep. Ilhan Omar against the backlash to her comments slamming pro-Israel groups and politicians, which have been called anti-Semitic. Sanders, who is Jewish, said criticism of Omar and efforts to get her taken off the House Foreign Affairs Committee, primarily from House Republicans, are aimed at stopping a discussion about American’s foreign policy toward Israel. “What I fear is going on in the House…
Wilbur Ross broke law, violated Constitution in census decision, judge rules
The Washington Post reports: Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acted in “bad faith,” broke several laws and violated the constitutional underpinning of representative democracy when he added a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. In finding a breach of the Constitution’s enumeration clause, which requires a census every 10 years to determine each state’s representation in Congress, the 126-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco went further than a similar decision on…