Category Archives: News

Sen. Jeff Sessions, defined by race and immigration, selected by Trump to become attorney general

The New York Times reports: President-elect Donald J. Trump has selected Senator Jeff Sessions, a conservative from Alabama who became a close adviser after endorsing him early in his campaign, to be the attorney general of the United States, according to officials close to the transition.

Mr. Sessions was also under consideration for secretary of defense, creating debate within the Trump transition team over which job he should fill.

Mr. Sessions, a former prosecutor elected to the Senate in 1996, serves on the Judiciary Committee and has opposed immigration reform as well as bipartisan proposals to cut mandatory minimum prison sentences. [Continue reading…]

In July, NPR reported: In 1981, President Reagan appointed him U.S. Attorney in Mobile. That’s when Sessions first gained national attention over the issue of race. He prosecuted three black civil rights workers for voter fraud. And Hank Sanders was one of their defense lawyers.

“They called them voter fraud cases, and we called them voter persecution cases. Not prosecution, persecution. It was all about stopping black folks from voting, in our opinion,” said Sanders, who’s also a Democratic state senator in Selma.

Sessions accused the defendants of crimes like forging signatures on absentee ballots — and in less than three hours of deliberating, the jury delivered zero convictions.

But it wasn’t a career setback for Sessions. Soon after, in 1986, President Reagan tapped him to be a federal district court judge. And the issue of race would follow Sessions again.

During the confirmation hearings, a Justice Department lawyer alleged that Sessions had called the NAACP “Communist-inspired” and “un-American.” One witness said Sessions once referred to a white civil rights lawyer as a “disgrace to his race.” And a black prosecutor who worked closely with him testified that Sessions had called him “boy.” Sessions denied all of this at the hearing.

“I am not the Jeff Sessions my detractors have tried to create. I am not a racist. I am not insensitive to blacks. I have supported civil rights activities in my state. I have done my job with integrity, equality and fairness for all,” Sessions told senators in 1986.

But a bipartisan group of 10 senators on the Judiciary Committee wasn’t convinced, and voted him down. Sessions was the first Reagan judicial nominee the Senate rejected. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Transition team says Trump’s campaign talk should not be taken literally

Following an informal meeting between President-elect Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, CNN reports: Like other Asian leaders, Abe was keen to discover how much of Trump’s campaign-trail rhetoric will become policy, in particular whether Trump will follow through on a suggestion he might withdraw US troops from the region.

A top aide to Abe, Katsuyuki Kawai, said that he’d been told by members of Trump’s transition team that Trump’s previous remarks should not be taken literally.

It’s not hard to see why Abe wanted to get first word with Trump.

The Japanese government was concerned by remarks made by Trump during his campaign about relations between the two countries. In particular, officials were rattled by Trump’s suggestions that Japan, which until last year had a pacifist constitution, should obtain nuclear weapons to protect itself from North Korea.

“Japan is better if it protects itself against this maniac of North Korea,” Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in March.

At the time, Abe said that “whoever will become the next president of the United States, the Japan-US alliance is the cornerstone of Japan’s diplomacy.”

A special adviser sent in advance by Abe to meet with members of Trump’s transition team said he was told Japan shouldn’t take Trump’s campaign talk literally. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Facebook fake-news writer: ‘I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me’

The Washington Post interviewed Paul Horner, the 38-year-old impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire: You mentioned Trump, and you’ve probably heard the argument, or the concern, that fake news somehow helped him get elected. What do you make of that?

My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist.

Why? I mean — why would you even write that?

Just ’cause his supporters were under the belief that people were getting paid to protest at their rallies, and that’s just insane. I’ve gone to Trump protests — trust me, no one needs to get paid to protest Trump. I just wanted to make fun of that insane belief, but it took off. They actually believed it.

I thought they’d fact-check it, and it’d make them look worse. I mean that’s how this always works: Someone posts something I write, then they find out it’s false, then they look like idiots. But Trump supporters — they just keep running with it! They never fact-check anything! Now he’s in the White House. Looking back, instead of hurting the campaign, I think I helped it. And that feels [bad]. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Days before election, U.S. used secret hotline to ask Russia to halt cyber interventions

David Ignatius writes: The White House sent a secret “hotline”-style message to Russia on Oct. 31 to warn against any further cyber-meddling in the U.S. election process. Russia didn’t escalate its tactics as Election Day approached, but U.S. officials aren’t ready to say deterrence worked.

The previously undisclosed message was part of the high-stakes game of cyber-brinkmanship that has been going on this year between Moscow and Washington. How to stabilize this relationship without appearing to capitulate to Russian pressure tactics is among the biggest challenges facing President-elect Donald Trump.

The message was sent on a special channel created in 2013 as part of the Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, using a template designed for crisis communication. “It was a very clear statement to the Russians and asked them to stop their activity,” a senior administration official said, adding: “The fact that we used this channel was part of the messaging.”

According to several other high-level sources, President Obama also personally contacted Russian President Vladimir Putin last month to caution him about the disruptive cyberattacks. The senior administration official wouldn’t comment on these reports.

The private warnings followed a public statement Oct. 7 by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson charging that “Russia’s senior-most officials” had authorized cyberattacks that were “intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Ukrainians worry they’re the big losers in the U.S. election

The Washington Post reports: Vitaly Sych, the editor of the Ukrainian weekly Novoye Vremya, had readied a profile for only one candidate, Hillary Clinton, to run once the results came in after what he called “the most closely watched U.S. election by Ukrainians” of all time.

Then came the bombshell that echoed all the way from the Potomac to the Dnieper.

“AMERICA PLAYS THE FOOL” was the headline looming above a portrait of Donald Trump the next day. (Sych’s colleagues talked him down from his first choice: “A boor, an ignoramus, and a racist: Meet the new president of the United States.”)

“The major emotion here is anxiety and concern because he really said all those things, so he must believe some of them,” Sych said. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Russia withdraws signature from international criminal court statute

The Guardian reports: Russia has said it is formally withdrawing its signature from the founding statute of the international criminal court, a day after the court published a report classifying the Russian annexation of Crimea as an occupation.

The repudiation of the tribunal, though symbolic, is a fresh blow to efforts to establish a global legal order for pursuing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In recent months, three African countries who were all full members of the ICC – South Africa, Burundi and Gambia – have signalled their intention to pull out, following complaints that ICC prosecutions focused excessively on the African continent.

The Russian foreign ministry made the announcement on Wednesday on the orders of the president, Vladimir Putin, saying the tribunal had failed to live up to hopes of the international community and denouncing its work as “one-sided and inefficient”.

Russia signed the Rome statute in 2000 and cooperated with the court, but had not ratified the treaty and thus remained outside the ICC’s jurisdiction. This means that the latest move, though highly symbolic, will not change much in practice. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Trump’s Muslim registry would not be illegal, constitutional law experts say

Politico reports: The day after Donald Trump won the White House last week, the American Civil Liberties Union wrote on Twitter that if the president-elect attempts “to implement his unconstitutional campaign promises, we’ll see him in court.”

But when it comes to the immigrant registration program that would target Muslims entering the United States — outlined Wednesday by an adviser to Trump’s transition team — three constitutional lawyers say the ACLU won’t have much of a shot before a judge.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, known for his hard-line stance on immigration, told Reuters in a story published Wednesday that he has been in regular contact with Trump’s immigration advisers and that the president-elect’s team is considering a system modeled after a controversial one implemented in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It fulfills Trump’s promise of “extreme vetting” for immigrants from countries affected by terrorism, a threshold he has yet to flesh out more fully.

That program, labeled the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, required those entering the U.S. from a list of certain countries — all but one predominantly Muslim — to register when they arrived in the U.S., undergo more thorough interrogation and be fingerprinted. The system, referred to by the acronym NSEERS, was criticized by civil rights groups for targeting a religious group and was phased out in 2011 because it was found to be redundant with other immigration systems.

Robert McCaw, director of government affairs for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said a reinstitution of NSEERS would be akin to “just turning back the clock.” CAIR will lobby heavily against the system as not only discriminatory but also ineffective, McCaw said, if it ends up being proposed by the Trump administration.

He also accused Kobach, an architect of the original NSEERS program when he was with the Justice Department under the George W. Bush administration, of having “a long ax to grind with the Muslim community.”

“NSEERS and registries like it are totally ineffective and burdensome and they’re perceived by Muslims and other minorities as just being a massive profiling campaign that, in the past, targeted Muslim travelers solely based on their religion and ethnicity,” he said. “When every country on that list happens to be a majority-Muslim country, it is religious profiling. Because there are threats from other nations and other communities and groups that don’t make it on NSEERS.”

But a program like NSEERS would likely pass constitutional muster before a judge, multiple experts said, in part because it already has. The system was never struck down by a court in the nearly nine years it was in place. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, could get key White House role

The Wall Street Journal reports: Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who became a close adviser in the presidential campaign, is likely to take a top White House job, people familiar with the presidential transition say.

Jared Kushner, who has emerged as a lightning rod as departures have mounted in recent days from the team vetting possible appointees, is being pushed to join the president’s inner circle by new White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and presidential counselor Stephen Bannon, these people say.

Mr. Kushner is regarded as Mr. Trump’s eyes and ears inside the evolving presidential transition. He is weighing formally joining his father-in-law in the White House, people familiar with the transition say. The 35-year-old Mr. Kushner would have a role in the White House along the lines of senior adviser or special counsel.

He also is weighing the option of maintaining an influential role informally, without an official White House post, according to people familiar with his thinking. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: After days of reports that President-elect Donald J. Trump had requested a top-secret security clearance for his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, people close to Mr. Kushner said that was not the case. No such request has been made, they said on Wednesday, and he will not sit in on the president’s highly classified daily intelligence briefing.

But should Mr. Trump change his mind, former government officials and experts on classified information said he would have wide latitude as president to bring a family member into the most secret circles of the government.

“The president can authorize clearance for anyone he wants,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. “It’s part of his commander-in-chief role. He has broad, essentially unlimited, access in this area.”

Like anyone else, Mr. Kushner would be subject to a background check by the F.B.I. But the president’s authority is so broad, Mr. Aftergood said, that he could override red flags — like fraud, huge personal debt or ties to foreign governments — that would disqualify other applicants.

Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post on Wednesday that he was not seeking security clearances for his children, who he has said will run his businesses while he is in the White House. But he did not address the case of Mr. Kushner, who is married to Mr. Trump’s elder daughter, Ivanka. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Viral fake election news outperformed real news on Facebook in final months of the U.S. election

Buzzfeed reports: In the final three months of the US presidential campaign, the top-performing fake election news stories on Facebook generated more engagement than the top stories from major news outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, NBC News, and others, a BuzzFeed News analysis has found.

During these critical months of the campaign, 20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook.

Within the same time period, the 20 best-performing election stories from 19 major news websites generated a total of 7,367,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook. (This analysis focused on the top performing link posts for both groups of publishers, and not on total site engagement on Facebook. For details on how we identified and analyzed the content, see the bottom of this post. View our data here.)

Up until those last three months of the campaign, the top election content from major outlets had easily outpaced that of fake election news on Facebook. Then, as the election drew closer, engagement for fake content on Facebook skyrocketed and surpassed that of the content from major news outlets. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The United States is giving Putin the green light for atrocities in Aleppo

In an editorial, the Washington Post says: On Monday, Vladi­mir Putin and Donald Trump spoke by phone about Syria and agreed on “the need to work together in the struggle against the No. 1 common enemy — international terrorism and extremism,” according to a Kremlin statement. Hours later, Russia and its Syrian allies launched a massive new bombing campaign against eastern Aleppo and other rebel-held territories. Just a coincidence? Not likely, given what we know about Mr. Putin.

There are no Islamic State forces in Aleppo, though Mr. Trump does not appear to be aware of that fact. There are an estimated 250,000 civilians who, according to the United Nations, received the last available food rations last week. There are also rebel forces that until now have been trained and supplied by the United States and its allies, as well as groups linked to al-Qaeda. Surrounded by Syrian, Iranian and Shiite militia forces since July, all face the same brutal ultimatum President Bashar al-Assad has delivered to other rebel-held areas: Surrender, or die through bombing or starvation.

Mr. Putin’s evident aim is to support the Assad regime in a campaign to overrun the city, and perhaps other rebel-held areas, during the 2½ months of the U.S. presidential transition. If so, the result will likely be the worst humanitarian catastrophe yet in a war that has already seen more than 400,000 people killed by bombing, chemical weapons, torture and other depravities. Yet neither the outgoing nor the incoming U.S. president appears willing to do anything to prevent this calamity.

President Obama was asked about Aleppo at his news conference Monday by a journalist who pointed out that the United States had intervened to prevent a similar assault on the Libyan city of Benghazi. “We don’t have that option easily available to us,” said Mr. Obama, who recently set aside several such options, such as grounding the Syrian air force. He added that the administration would continue to press for “humanitarian safe spaces and cease-fires” before conceding, “I recognize that that has not worked.” While the honesty was welcome, Mr. Obama’s apparent willingness to watch fecklessly as hundreds of thousands of people are starved and bombed during his final weeks in office is morally abject. It will deepen the ineradicable stain Syria will leave on his legacy.

Mr. Trump, for his part, has all but given Mr. Putin the green light for atrocities. While we don’t know the specifics of what was said in his conversation with the Russian ruler, the president-elect in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday repeated that “Syria is fighting ISIS and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria.”

Again, the Syrian regime is not fighting the Islamic State in Aleppo. It is bombing and besieging its own citizens, with Russian and Iranian help. In refusing to allow aid deliveries and in targeting hospitals, it is willfully committing crimes against humanity. “I don’t think anybody wants a quarter of a million people to be starving in east Aleppo,” said Jan Egeland, the head of a U.N.-backed humanitarian task force. Tragically, he is wrong. The Assad regime and Mr. Putin want it. Mr. Obama is unwilling to prevent it. And Mr. Trump is, at best, indifferent. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports: In an interview broadcast Tuesday with Portugal’s state-run RTP television, Assad accused armed groups he called “terrorists” of occupying eastern Aleppo and refusing government offers to evacuate. He said his mission was to liberate civilians.

Assad also identified president-elect Trump as a possible “natural ally,” if he turned out to be “genuine” about his commitment to fight terror in Syria. Trump has indicated he would prioritize defeating the Islamic State group in Syria over regime change, saying the rebels could be “worse” than the sitting president. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Lindsey Graham calls for Senate investigation into whether Russia hacked DNC

Huffington Post reports: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Tuesday said he wants Senate hearings to investigate whether Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in the U.S. election, casting doubts on President-elect Donald Trump’s desire to improve relations with Russia.

“Assuming for a moment that we do believe that the Russian government was controlling outside organizations that hacked into our election, they should be punished,” Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill. “Putin should be punished.”

U.S. officials have said the Kremlin was responsible for hacking into Democratic National Committee computers over the summer and releasing information that damaged Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Graham, who was defeated by Trump during the primary, urged fellow Republicans to not “let allegations against a foreign government interfering in our election process go unanswered because it may have been beneficial to our cause.”

He said congressional hearings would include “Russia’s misadventure throughout the world,” including its military aggression in Eastern Europe and whether it committed war crimes in Syria.

Trump has repeatedly expressed a desire to cozy up to Russia. During the campaign, he called for closer relations with Russia in fighting the Islamic State and praised Putin for being a “stronger leader” than President Barack Obama. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Trump team preparing plans for wall, mulling Muslim registry, says adviser

Reuters reports: An architect of anti-immigration efforts who says he is advising President-elect Donald Trump said the new administration could push ahead rapidly on construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall without seeking immediate congressional approval.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who helped write tough immigration laws in Arizona and elsewhere, said in an interview that Trump’s policy advisers had also discussed drafting a proposal for his consideration to reinstate a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries.

Kobach, who media reports say is a key member of Trump’s transition team, said he had participated in regular conference calls with about a dozen Trump immigration advisers for the past two to three months. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Meet Frank Gaffney, the anti-Muslim gadfly now advising Donald Trump’s transition team

Update: CNN reports:

Frank Gaffney, an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist, denied a media report that he had been named to Trump’s transition crew.

“An unattributed quote appeared in the press yesterday indicating that I had been appointed to the Trump transition team,” Gaffney, the founder of the Center for Security Policy, said in a statement. “In fact, I had not been contacted by anyone from the team and appreciate the campaign’s clarification today that the previous day’s reports were inaccurate. I look forward to helping the President-elect and the national security-minded team he is assembling in whatever way I can.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that following the latest shake-up in the Trump transition team, Frank Gaffney has been brought in to assist on national security issues.

Philip Bump writes: In June 2009, shortly after President Obama wrapped up his visits to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the Washington Times ran an opinion piece suggesting that the newly inaugurated president might be the first to be a Muslim.

It starts slowly, saying that Obama might be the “first Muslim president” in the same sense that Bill Clinton was once dubbed the “first black president” — which is to say that he’s not Muslim, he’s just sympathetic to the community. But a few paragraphs later, that conceit evaporates.

“With Mr. Obama’s unbelievably ballyhooed address in Cairo Thursday to what he calls ‘the Muslim world’,” columnist Frank Gaffney wrote, “there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself.” That evidence? Obama referred to the “Holy Koran.” He said he knew about Islam. And he used the phrase “peace be upon them” when mentioning Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. Obama, Gaffney wrote, was engaged in “the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Twitter suspends Richard Spencer, other prominent alt-right accounts

The Washington Post reports: Ever since alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulous sent actress Leslie Jones a string of deeply offensive tweets, insulting the comedian’s race and intelligence, Twitter has made banning abusive accounts a priority.

At the time, the company offered a statement, which read in part:

. . . our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others . . . we’ve seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of Tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension.

We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behavior on Twitter. We agree. We are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to better allow us to identify and take faster action on abuse as it’s happening and prevent repeat offenders

Recently Twitter suspended many more accounts associated with the alt-right, which is the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as “a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that ‘white identity’ is under attack by multicultural forces using ‘political correctness’ and ‘social justice’ to undermine white people and ‘their’ civilization.”

Included among them was the verified account of Richard Spencer, which The Washington Post described as a leader of the alt-right and “one of the most media-savvy thinkers in the movement.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Growing tumult in Trump’s national security transition team

The Washington Post reports: President-elect Donald Trump, who clashed with leading Republicans throughout his campaign, faced growing tumult in his national security transition team on Monday as key members of his own party appeared to question his views and personnel choices.

Former congressman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), a respected voice on national security thought to be a leading candidate to run the CIA, was among those pushed out of the team over the past two days, two individuals with direct knowledge said, in a series of moves that have added to the anxiety across the upper ranks of U.S. intelligence agencies.

The changes came as Trump met Tuesday with incoming Vice President Mike Pence to discuss Cabinet and top White House personnel choices. Pence last week replaced New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) as head of Trump’s overall transition efforts, and Christie’s associates — who had been Trump’s link to the GOP mainstream for months — now find themselves losing influence.

A number of Christie allies have been told they were no longer in line for top posts, according to several people familiar with the transition, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly.

Also on Tuesday, perhaps the most influential Republican on national security matters, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), weighed in on Trump’s efforts to work with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, saying any efforts to “reset” relations with Russia are unacceptable.

McCain, the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman who had a difficult relationship with Trump during the campaign, issued a statement blasting Putin as “a former KGB agent who has plunged his country into tyranny, murdered his political opponents, invaded his neighbors, threatened America’s allies and attempted to undermine America’s elections.’’

A former U.S. official with ties to the Trump team described the ousters of Rogers and others as a “bloodletting of anybody that associated in any way on the transition with Christie,” and said that the departures were engineered by two Trump loyalists who have taken control of who will get national security posts in the administration: retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Mr. Pence took the helm of the transition on Friday after Mr. Trump unceremoniously removed Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who had been preparing with Obama administration officials for months to put the complex transition process into motion. That effort is now frozen, senior White House officials say, because Mr. Pence has yet to sign legally required paperwork to allow his team to begin collaborating with President Obama’s aides on the handover.

An aide to Mr. Trump’s transition team who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters said that the delay was taking place because the wording of the document was being altered and updated, and that it was likely to be signed later Tuesday.

Still, the slow and uncertain start to what is normally a rapid and meticulously planned transfer of power could have profound implications for Mr. Trump’s nascent administration. It challenges the president-elect’s efforts to gain control of the federal bureaucracy and to begin building a staff fully briefed on what he will face in the Oval Office on Day 1. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

We can fix climate change, but only if we refuse to abandon hope

Zoe Williams writes: When it looked like the news couldn’t get any worse, it did: worse in a way that dwarfed our petty elections and clueless, pendulum analyses, worse in a way that dusted the present with the irrelevance of history. In the journal Science Advances, five of the world’s most eminent climatologists warned of the possibility that warming may be significantly worse than we thought. Previous consensus was that the Earth’s average temperature would go up by between 2.6C – life-altering but manageable – and 4.8C – cataclysmic. Now, the range suggested by one projection goes up to 7.4C, which is “game over” by the 22nd century.

It relates to the US because their incoming president has promised actively, determinedly to bring about the worst-case scenario, acting on the now familiar, pre-enlightenment logic that because it’s beyond the limits of his intellect to comprehend it, climate change doesn’t exist. But it relates to, or rather clarifies, things on a deeper level.

Rational American citizens are, post-Trump, going through the same grief trajectory as many of us did after Brexit: the debate is all fierce conjecture about how they lost, whom they failed to listen to, whose anger had been ignored and by which people for how many decades. But underneath that is a profound crisis of civic engagement – a deep, agonising question: what is the point? If reason doesn’t matter, if truth doesn’t, if solidarity is for wimps, if experts are charlatans, what’s the point of getting involved in this circus?

Paul Krugman identifies it as a creed of quietism, conceding: “It’s definitely tempting to conclude that the world is going to hell, but that there’s nothing you can do about it, so why not just make your own garden grow?” Ultimately, he chooses engagement to save the soul: “I don’t see how you can hang on to your own self-respect unless you’re willing to stand up for the truth.” The American journalist Nancy LeTourneau took it one step further and tried to find a positive in the powerlessness, via Gandhi: “Whatever you do in life will be insignificant, but it’s very important that you do it.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. forces may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan, prosecutor says

The New York Times reports: The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Monday that she had a “reasonable basis to believe” that American soldiers committed war crimes in Afghanistan, including torture.

The international prosecutor has been considering whether to begin a full-fledged investigation into potential war crimes in Afghanistan for years. In Monday’s announcement, the prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, signaled that a full investigation was likely.

Still, the prosecutor did not announce a final decision on an investigation, which would have to be approved by judges, and it is unlikely that the United States will cooperate. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Israel’s right, cheering Donald Trump’s win, renews calls to abandon two-state solution

The New York Times reports: Emboldened by the Republican sweep of last week’s American elections, right-wing members of the Israeli government have called anew for the abandonment of a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians.

“The combination of changes in the United States, in Europe and in the region provide Israel with a unique opportunity to reset and rethink everything,” Naftali Bennett, Israel’s education minister and the leader of the pro-settlement Jewish Home party, told a gathering of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem on Monday.

Mr. Bennett, who advocates annexing 60 percent of the occupied West Bank to Israel, exulted on the morning after Donald J. Trump’s victory: “The era of a Palestinian state is over.”

That sentiment was only amplified when Jason Greenblatt, a lawyer and co-chairman of the Trump campaign’s Israel Advisory Committee, told Israel’s Army Radio that Mr. Trump did not consider West Bank settlements to be an obstacle to peace, in a stark reversal of longstanding American policy. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail