Music: Snarky Puppy — ‘Grown Folks’
CIA concludes Saudi crown prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination
The Washington Post reports: The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month, contradicting the Saudi government’s claims that he was not involved in the killing, according to people familiar with the matter. The CIA’s assessment, in which officials have said they have high confidence, is the most definitive to date linking Mohammed to the operation and complicates the Trump administration’s efforts to preserve its relationship with…
How extreme weather is shrinking the planet
Bill McKibben writes in The New Yorker: Thirty years ago, this magazine published “The End of Nature,” a long article about what we then called the greenhouse effect. I was in my twenties when I wrote it, and out on an intellectual limb: climate science was still young. But the data were persuasive, and freighted with sadness. We were spewing so much carbon into the atmosphere that nature was no longer a force beyond our influence—and humanity, with its capacity…
Trump plans on keeping his coal warrior in charge of the EPA
HuffPost reports: President Donald Trump said Friday he plans to nominate Andrew Wheeler to be the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, installing the former coal lobbyist permanently in a position he’s filled in an acting role since July. Speaking at a Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony at the White House, Trump said: “Acting administrator, who I tell you is going to be made permanent, he’s done a fantastic job and I want to congratulate him.” Jeff Goodell writes: If…
Julian Assange has been charged, prosecutors reveal inadvertently in court filing
The Washington Post reports: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged under seal, prosecutors inadvertently revealed in a recently unsealed court filing — a development that could significantly advance the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and have major implications for those who publish government secrets. The disclosure came in a filing in a case unrelated to Assange. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer, urging a judge to keep the matter sealed, wrote that “due to the sophistication…
Brexit can still be stopped
The European Union is “best prepared” for Britain to backtrack and abandon Brexit, EU President Donald Tusk says. Matt Kelly writes: As Theresa May announced her Cabinet’s collective approval of the withdrawal deal she negotiated with Brussels, she listed three options: her deal, no deal and no Brexit. It was the first time she acknowledged that not doing Brexit at all is even a possibility. And she couldn’t avoid it, since no Brexit is today — on form at least…
Russian disinformation: From Cold War to Kanye
With U.S. collusion, Saudis shield crown prince as death penalty sought over Khashoggi murder
The Guardian reports: Saudi Arabia says it will pursue the death penalty for five suspects charged with ordering and carrying out the killing of the Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, in the latest effort to distance the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, from the grisly murder. The Saudi public prosecutor claimed Saudi agents, including the head of forensics at the national intelligence service and members of Prince Mohammed’s security detail, had orders to abduct Khashoggi but decided…
Delay, deny and deflect: How Facebook’s leaders dealt with issues such as foreign interference in elections
The New York Times reports: Sheryl Sandberg was seething. Inside Facebook’s Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, top executives gathered in the glass-walled conference room of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. It was September 2017, more than a year after Facebook engineers discovered suspicious Russia-linked activity on its site, an early warning of the Kremlin campaign to disrupt the 2016 American election. Congressional and federal investigators were closing in on evidence that would implicate the company. But it wasn’t the looming disaster at…
Forget impeachment. Mueller’s real threat to Trump is in 2020
Jonathan Chait writes: Well-functioning democracies don’t have criminal oligarchies running the country with legal impunity. The kind of deep systemic corruption Trump is implementing, in which establishing a political alliance with a ruling family is a key step in amassing and protecting wealth, depends on selective legal enforcement. More to the point, it requires business partners. Maybe Donald Trump can’t be hauled off to prison, but his partners can. And that prospect can scare off the collaborators Trump needs. Second,…
Conservative lawyers say Trump has undermined the rule of law
The New York Times reports: The annual convention of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group, has long been a glittering and bustling affair. In the Trump era, though, the group has become more powerful than ever, supplying intellectual energy and judicial candidates to an assertive administration eager to reshape the legal landscape. But as the group prepares to gather on Thursday for the start of this year’s convention, more than a dozen prominent conservative lawyers have joined together to…
Inside Trump’s Paris temper, election woes and staff upheaval
The Washington Post reports: As he jetted to Paris last Friday, President Trump received a congratulatory phone call aboard Air Force One. British Prime Minister Theresa May was calling to celebrate the Republican Party’s wins in the midterm elections — never mind that Democrats seized control of the House — but her appeal to the American president’s vanity was met with an ornery outburst. Trump berated May for Britain not doing enough, in his assessment, to contain Iran. He questioned…
How Brexit broke up Britain
Fintan O’Toole writes: So, at long last, it seems that the negotiations on Brexit between the United Kingdom and the European Union have produced a draft agreement. We do not yet know what it contains but it will be a compromise that falls far short of the high expectations of June 2016 when the British voted to leave. It will tie Britain to the EU’s customs union and single market for an indefinite but probably very long time. Instead of…
Marie Colvin: Lindsey Hilsum’s revealing biography of courageous war reporter is compelling stuff
Marie Colvin, who died after being targeted in a shell attack in Homs, Syria, in 2012. Wikipedia By Idrees Ahmad, University of Stirling For Marie Colvin, it was Lebanon’s War of the Camps that brought home the power of journalism. In April 1987 Burj al Barajneh, a Palestinian refugee camp, was besieged by Amal, a Shia militia backed by the Syrian regime. Colvin and her photographer Tom Stoddart paid an Amal commander to briefly hold fire while they ran into…
The myth of the traumatized Neanderthal
Ed Yong writes: The very first Neanderthal to be described in the scientific literature, back in 1856, had an old elbow injury—a fracture that had since healed, but had deformed the bone in the process. Such injuries turned out to be incredibly common. Almost every reasonably complete Neanderthal skeleton that was found during the subsequent century had at least one sign of physical trauma. Some researchers attributed these lesions to fights, others to attacks by predators. But whatever the precise…
Music: Knower — ‘Die Right Now’