Music: Arve Henriksen — ‘Blue Silk’
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Leaving the Iran nuclear deal ‘is a crisis of Trump’s own making,’ say nuclear experts
Motherboard reports: President Trump has pulled America out of the Iran nuclear deal, the Obama-era treaty aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. “If I allowed this deal to stand, there would soon be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East,” Trump said in a televised statement. “It’s clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and root structure of the current arrangement.” The Iran Deal eased economic sanctions on Iran in…
For Netanyahu, vindication and new risk after Trump’s Iran decision
The New York Times reports: Netanyahu waged an Ahab-like struggle against the nuclear pact from before its inception during the Obama administration. Now, President Trump has adopted his point of view — not only about the agreement’s flaws but also about Israeli evidence that Mr. Trump said “conclusively” showed Iran had lied when entering into it. Mr. Trump also aligned with Israel on the need to increase pressure on Iran in hopes of curtailing its expansionism in the Middle East….
Iranian forces fire missiles towards Israeli military outposts in the Golan Heights, says Israeli army
Haaretz reports: A barrage of 20 rockets was fired Wednesday night from Syria towards Israeli military outposts in the Golan Heights. No injuries were reported. Several rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system. The Israeli army is attributing the attack to members of the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The rocket fire struck near the border with Syria. The military said intelligence assessments earlier in the week anticipated that after U.S. President Donald Trump announced…
Iran may step up nuclear program, supreme leader says
The New York Times reports: Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday hinted that his country might step up its nuclear program, signaling a possible escalation in an already volatile relationship with Washington after President Trump announced he was pulling the United States out of the 2015 nuclear deal. Mr. Trump said on Tuesday that the United States would leave the agreement under which Iran agreed to strict limits for 15 years on its development of nuclear fuel. The deal was intended…
Khamenei lambasts Trump as Iranian hardliners rejoice over U.S. nuclear deal exit
The Guardian reports: Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has lambasted Donald Trump over his decision to unilaterally pull the US out of the 2015 nuclear deal, saying that his statement was “ludicrous and shallow”, as hardliners rejoiced at the US exit. “I say it on behalf of Iranian people, Mr Trump, you can’t do a damn thing,” said Khamenei, who wields ultimate power in Iran, a day after the US president broke with European allies over what he said…
Trump’s dumb decision to withdraw from the deal gave Iran the advantage
Aaron Stein writes: President Donald Trump’s decision to stop abiding by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has undercut American interests and has positioned the United States to fail. The debate in Washington about “fixing or nixing” the deal was never anything more than a euphemism for American abrogation of an international commitment. The discussion has ignored how isolated the United States now is and how its options to deal with Iran are far worse than they were before…
If the Iran deal had been a Senate-confirmed treaty, would Trump have been forced to stay in? Nope
Andrew Rudalevige writes: Back in 2015, there were loud calls — not least from senators — for President Barack Obama to ask the Senate to ratify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, calling it a “treaty.” Instead, he chose to enter into an executive agreement, which has become something of a trend: Treaties are a tiny fraction of international agreements overall. A 2007 study by political scientists Kiki Caruson and Victoria Farrar-Myers found that between 1977 and…
Mahathir-led opposition wins historic Malaysian election
Nikkei Asian Review reports: Malaysia’s opposition coalition, led by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, won a majority of lower house seats in Wednesday’s general election, paving the way for the country’s first change of power since its independence in 1957. Mahathir, 92, is expected to become Malaysia’s seventh prime minister, returning to power 15 years after leaving office. According to the country’s Election Commission, the opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan, or Alliance of Hope, with an affiliate party has secured at…
Warning signs: how early humans first began to paint animals
Painting from El Castillo cave (Cantabria, Spain). Early Upper Palaeolithic or older. Photo Becky Harrison and courtesy Gobierno de Cantabria., Author provided By Derek Hodgson, University of York and Paul Pettitt, Durham University Visual culture – and the associated forms of symbolic communication, are regarded by palaeo-anthropologists as perhaps the defining characteristic of the behaviour of Homo sapiens. One of the great mysteries of archaeology is why figurative art, in the form of the stunningly naturalistic animal depictions, appeared relatively…
Free will, video games, and the most profound quantum mystery
David Kaiser writes: The word “predictable” first entered the English language two centuries ago. Its début came in neither a farmer’s almanac nor a cardsharp’s manual but in The Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature, a Unitarian periodical. In 1820, one Stephen Freeman wrote a dense treatise in which he criticized the notion that human behavior—seemingly manifest “amidst the conflicting, boisterous, unreasonable wills of men, all acting, as they feel they do, their various parts with complete freedom of…
Trump destroys the Iran deal — and a lot more
Robin Wright writes: After months of threatening, President Trump withdrew from the historic Iran nuclear deal on Tuesday, unravelling the Obama Administration’s signature foreign-policy achievement and putting the United States on a collision course with allies as well as with Tehran. “This was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” the President said. “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.” Trump also announced that the United States is re-imposing economic sanctions…
Michael Cohen took cash from Russian oligarch after election
The Daily Beast reports: The Daily Beast can confirm that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a company controlled by Putin-aligned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. The allegations were initially made Tuesday by Michael Avenatti, porn actress Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, and confirmed by a source familiar with the matter. “How the fuck did Avenatti find out?” the source asked The Daily Beast. According to a dossier published by Avenatti on Tuesday evening, “Vekselberg and…
Dear leftists: Going on Tucker Carlson is not going to stop imperialism
Noah Berlatsky writes: “I just feel like I had my best girlfriend break up with me,” Alex Jones declared in a live rant last month during the American bombing of Syria. “I will tell Trump that you really betrayed your family and your name, and everything you stood for with this horse manure.” Jones’ comments were, as is his wont, more than a little ridiculous. But they weren’t isolated. Many people on the right and far right, including Fox hosts…
U.S. embassy cables warned against expelling 300,000 immigrants. Trump officials did it anyway
The Washington Post reports: In the past six months, the Trump administration has moved to expel 300,000 Central Americans and Haitians living and working legally in the United States, disregarding senior U.S. diplomats who warned that mass deportations could destabilize the region and trigger a new surge of illegal immigration. The warnings were transmitted to top State Department officials last year in embassy cables now at the center of an investigation by Senate Democrats, whose findings were recently referred to…
The fake news Russians hear at home
Anne Applebaum writes: Because it touches us, because it involves the U.S. president, and because it has produced a lot of headlines, the strategy and tactics of Russian government disinformation in the West have lately been big news. Because it’s far away, and because it happens in a different language, we’ve thought a lot less about Russian government propaganda in Russia. But it will eventually matter to us — maybe sooner than we think. The transformation of Russian media hasn’t…