Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: The email arrived in Washington before dawn. An official at the American Embassy in Beijing was urgently seeking advice from the State Department about an “ethics question.” “I am writing you because Mission China is in the midst of preparing for a visit from Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao,” the official wrote in October 2017. Ms. Chao’s office had made a series of unorthodox requests related to her first scheduled visit to China as…

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Bloomberg reports: Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner said in an interview that the Palestinians aren’t yet able to govern themselves and declined to promise them an independent state in the White House’s long-awaited Mideast peace plan. “The hope is that they over time will become capable of governing,” Kushner said in an interview with Axios on HBO that aired on Sunday. Kushner is leading a White House effort to draft a new peace proposal for the Israelis…

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Gilbert Achcar writes: Images of popular protests that recall the revolutionary movement of 2011 have dominated news from the Arabic-speaking world for months. Uprisings began in Sudan on 19 December and in Algeria with the marches of Friday 22 February. They revived memories of the huge, peaceful demonstrations early in the Arab Spring that shook Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and Syria. Commentators have been more cautious this time, asking questions rather than commenting directly, mindful of the bitter disappointment…

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Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, writes: Praising the “very fine people on both sides” when torch-wielding white supremacists and antisemites marched through the streets clashing with anti-racist campaigners. Threatening to veto a ban on the use of rape as a weapon of war. Setting an immigration policy that forcefully separates young children from their parents at the border. The deliberate use of xenophobia, racism and “otherness” as an electoral tactic. Introducing a travel ban to a number of predominately…

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National Journal reports: President Trump’s abrupt threat to impose tariffs on Mexico doesn’t just threaten to stagnate the country’s economy and raise the price of goods for consumers back home. It poses a serious threat to Senate Republicans, who are fighting to hold their majority in battleground states that will suffer from a protracted trade war with our southern neighbor. It’s no coincidence that most of the Republican senators who spoke out against Trump’s move late last week are up…

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The Associated Press reports: The Pentagon has told the White House to stop politicizing the military, amid a furor over a Trump administration order to have the Navy ship named for the late U.S. Sen. John McCain hidden from view during President Donald Trump’s recent visit to Japan. Trump’s top aide scoffed at the idea that anyone working for the White House might be punished. “We think it’s much ado about nothing.” A U.S. defense official said Patrick Shanahan, Trump’s…

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