Music: Lars Danielsson, Verneri Pohjola & John Parricelli — ‘Le Calme au Château’
Trump delivers ‘massive victory for China’ as he weakens Western alliance
The South China Morning Post reports: The world shook this weekend as deep cracks appeared in the transatlantic alliance during a glitzy security summit in Munich. One guest was ready to capitalise: China. Top officials from the United States and Europe spent a chaotic weekend trading barbs over values, Ukraine and democracy, with US Vice-President J.D. Vance clashing with a series of German leaders over his courting of the far-right ahead of next week’s federal election. “The threat that I…
Former WTO chief says China-EU ‘united front’ can counter Trump trade curbs
The South China Morning Post reported in November: China and the European Union should address their disagreements and form a united front against a “triumphant” Donald Trump, said a former chief of the World Trade Organization, calling the incoming US president a threat to global trade. The assessment from Pascal Lamy – director general of the Geneva-based multilateral trade organisation between 2005 and 2013 – comes as worries mount over the future of globalisation after the US presidential election last…
Trump adopts view of legal impunity invoked by neo-Nazi terrorist Anders Behring Breivik
In his 1500-page manifesto, “A European Declaration of Independence,” Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist who murdered 77 people on July 22, 2011, in the section headed “Because our survival depends on it,” writes, “He who saves his country, violates no law,” which has been attributed (without evidence) to Napoleon. Donald Trump has now emphatically made the same declaration. The New York Times reports: President Trump on Saturday posted on social media a single sentence that appears to encapsulate his…
Trump official destroying USAID secretly met Christian nationalists abroad in defiance of U.S. policy
By Brett Murphy and Anna Maria Barry-Jester This story was originally published by ProPublica Before Peter Marocco was selected to dismantle America’s entire foreign aid sector on behalf of President Donald Trump, he was an official with the State Department on a diplomatic mission. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, Marocco was a senior political appointee tasked with promoting stability in areas with armed conflict. That summer, he made a two-week trip to the Balkans, visiting several Eastern European countries…
DOJ’s independence is threatened as Trump’s team asserts power over cases and staff
The Associated Press reports: Pam Bondi had insisted at her Senate confirmation hearing that as attorney general, her Justice Department would not “play politics.” Yet in the month since the Trump administration took over the building, a succession of actions has raised concerns the department is doing exactly that. Top officials have demanded the names of thousands of FBI agents who investigated the Capitol riot, sued a state attorney general who had won a massive fraud verdict against Donald Trump…
What happens if Trump administration officials repeatedly and defiantly ignore court orders?
Trevor W. Morrison and Richard H. Pildes write: For an official to stand in continued, open defiance of a court order, he might have to defy the entire judicial system. At that point, there is no question we would be in a constitutional crisis, and the courts could well run out of options. Here, the resolution of an ultimate confrontation between the branches, which would dominate the news, would also depend on the response of a range of actors in…
To better understand the world, follow the paths of mathematics
Gordon Gillespie writes: In 1959, the English writer and physicist C P Snow delivered the esteemed Rede Lecture at the University of Cambridge. Regaled with champagne and Marmite sandwiches, the audience had no idea that they were about to be read the riot act. Snow diagnosed a rift of mutual ignorance in the intellectual world of the West. On the one hand were the ‘literary intellectuals’ (of the humanities) and on the other the (natural) ‘scientists’: the much-discussed ‘two cultures’….
Music: Tuomo & Markus with Verneri Pohjola — ‘Vega’
Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine has emboldened Putin and pulled the rug from under NATO allies
Simon Tisdall writes: In Graham Greene’s 1955 novel, The Quiet American, Alden Pyle, a CIA agent, reckons he has all the answers to conflict in colonial era Vietnam. Pyle’s ignorance, arrogance and dangerous scheming, intended to bring peace, result instead in the deaths of many innocents and ultimately his own. In today’s too-real, nonfiction world, Donald Trump is Pyle. Except he’s The Noisy American. He thinks he’s a great deal-maker. He never stops trumpeting his brilliance. Yet his North Korea “deal of the century”…
New lawsuits accuse Musk of violating the Constitution’s rules about the appointment of federal officers
Politico reports: Elon Musk’s efforts to disrupt and dismantle the federal government at the behest of Donald Trump have already sparked a legion of lawsuits. Now the legal challengers are setting their sights on a new target: Musk himself. Two new cases accuse the ultra-wealthy CEO of illegally amassing too much government power without the accountability typically required of high-level executive branch officials. They are seeking court orders that would force Musk to halt the cost-cutting and information-gathering activities he…
Federal workers in the firing line as DOGE tries to create a ‘government without people’
Brian Merchant writes: Over the last few weeks, as Elon Musk and DOGE have infiltrated government agency after government agency, proclaiming their intent to slash budgets, cut jobs, and embrace AI, we’ve watched a brazen, extralegal effort to hollow out the state unfold in real time. Now up to 200,000 workers are being targeted in mass layoffs. Much of the collective horror has stemmed from the broader implications this campaign—orchestrated by an unelected tech billionaire who has enriched himself with…
The Bay Area Zizian ‘death cult,’ links techies to terrorism
SF Gate reports: A sprawling web of violence across America, which has left at least six dead, has been linked to a fringe group of radical Berkeley pseudo-intellectuals known as the Zizians. Investigators across the country are piecing together connections between the double homicide of a wealthy married couple in Pennsylvania, a deadly shootout in Vermont and two brutal knife attacks on a landlord in Vallejo. Four people who are allegedly Zizian cult members are in custody facing homicide charges,…
Israel fortifies its presence in seized Syrian territory
Hoda Matar reports: In the small Syrian village of al-Hamidia, some 50 kilometers southwest of Damascus, most homes, like that of sheep herder Abu Mo’ath, are built from black basalt stone, a hallmark of the region’s volcanic terrain. The air carries a scent of lavender and sage across the secluded rural landscape. But over the past two months, life in the village has come to be defined by military occupation, with Israeli tanks and troops entrenching their presence on newly…
JD Vance is merely the latest Christian nationalist to use Nazi camps to cover up his antisemitism
Joel Swanson writes: On Thursday of this past week, Vice President JD Vance visited the site of the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, making him the latest in a string of American public officials to visit a former Nazi camp. The visit, timed to coincide with Vance’s trip to Germany for the Munich Security Conference, comes a year after Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and newly-installed most powerful person in the United States, visited Auschwitz last January. It’s worth recalling the circumstances that…
Harvard’s new antisemitism policy hurts Jews and helps Trump
Jonathan Feingold writes: President Trump recently issued an executive order that purports to combat antisemitism by directing civil and criminal action against foreign students who participated in last year’s campus protests. A related fact sheet, under the heading “Deport Hamas Sympathizers and Revoke Student Visas,” issues the following warning: “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.” For more than a…