There’s ‘absolutely evidence’ to begin obstruction of justice case on Trump, says former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara

 

ABC News reports: Former New York U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said “there’s absolutely evidence to begin a case” for obstruction of justice against President Donald Trump.

The former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York was responding to a question from ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview on “This Week” Sunday.

Stephanopoulos asked whether as a former prosecutor, Bharara believes there is enough evidence for a case claiming that Trump tried to obstruct the FBI investigation of the president’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

“There is absolutely evidence to begin a case” for obstruction of justice by Trump, Bharara said in his first television interview since being fired by Trump in March. [Continue reading…]

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Macron’s takeover of French politics is all but complete

The Associated Press reports: Emmanuel Macron’s takeover of French politics is all but complete. The newly elected French leader’s gamble that voters wanted to throw out old faces and try something new is paying off in full — first by giving him the presidency and, on Sunday, the crucial first step toward securing the legislative power to deliver on his pledge of far-reaching change.

As when voters turned the previously unelected Macron into France’s youngest president last month, Sunday’s first round of voting in two-stage legislative elections again brought stinging black eyes to traditional parties that, having monopolized power for decades, are being utterly routed by Macron’s political revolution.

His fledgling Republic on the Move! — contesting its first-ever election and fielding many candidates with no political experience at all — was on course to deliver him a legislative majority so crushing that Macron’s rivals fretted that the 39-year-old president will be able to govern France almost unopposed for his full five-year term.

Record-low turnout, however, took some shine off the achievement. Less than 50 percent of the 47.5 million electors cast ballots — showing that Macron has limited appeal to many voters.

Macron intends to set his large and likely pliant cohort of legislators, all of them having pledged allegiance to his program, to work immediately. He wants, within weeks, to start reforming French labor laws to make hiring and firing easier, and legislate a greater degree of honesty into parliament, to staunch the steady flow of scandals that over decades have eroded voter trust in the political class.

With 94 percent of votes counted, Macron’s camp was comfortably leading with more than 32 percent — putting it well ahead of all opponents going into the decisive second round of voting next Sunday for the 577 seats in the lower-house National Assembly.

Macron’s prime minister, Edouard Philippe, confidently declared Sunday night that the second round vote would give the assembly a “new face.”

“France is back,” he said.

Pollsters estimated that Macron’s camp could end up with as many as 450 seats — and that the opposition in parliament would be fragmented as well as small. [Continue reading…]

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Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS

 

The complete documentary airs on National Geographic Channel, Sunday evening (6/11) at 9pm Eastern, 8pm Central.

It can also be viewed on YouTube Movies from 6/12.

David Denby writes: Sebastian Junger, who co-produced the documentary with Nick Quested (the head of Goldcrest, a documentary-production company in London), narrates “Hell on Earth,” which he also wrote. Junger points out that foreign players (Iran, the Kurds, Turkey, Russia, America) have all pursued their own interests in Syria. “Once you get involved in a proxy fight, so many people have so huge a stake in the outcome that it’s almost impossible to stop,” he states. The trouble is, not only does foreign involvement keep the war going, the war itself comes back and bites its enablers. American politics has been materially altered by the fear of ISIS and of Syrian refugees. Our hopes for a normal life have been dislodged as well.

In 2010, Junger and the late Tim Hetherington made the classic documentary “Restrepo,” a portrait of an American combat unit in Afghanistan. After Hetherington was killed, in Libya, Junger refashioned the “Restrepo” outtakes into another strong movie, “Korengal,” in 2014. For those films, the two men did the camera work themselves. But Junger and Quested couldn’t get into Syria, so they adopted a different strategy. They drew on various media sources (network news, Human Rights Watch, ISIS propaganda), and they interviewed a wide range of experts (including the British writer Robin Yassin-Kassab and, in a lucid moment, Michael Flynn). The core of the movie, however, was shot by Middle Eastern news outfits, and by activists, witnesses, and citizen journalists. Most of this footage is devastatingly effective. The participatory camera has become commonplace, but you don’t often see one (usually a cell phone, I would guess) being carried into a tumultuous firefight or threading through the shocked, incoherent wake of a bomb blast. Or capturing shots of panic as a crowd falls under open fire. Or sharing eloquent views of rubble-strewn streets and grieving relatives. The movie dramatizes the destruction of a society from within that society. Watching “Hell on Earth” is not an easy experience; I can’t recall another documentary with so many corpses. It’s a grief-struck history of cruelty, haplessness, and irresponsibility—a moral history as well as a history of events. [Continue reading…]

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Democrats begin to turn on DHS chief

Politico reports: John Kelly’s sterling reputation as a Marine general with an appreciation for nuance led many Democrats to back his nomination as Homeland Security secretary in the hope that he would rein in President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration and security policies.

Instead, Kelly has moved to impose those policies with military rigor. He has pursued an aggressive deportation campaign; defended Trump’s effort to ban visitors from several Muslim-majority countries; and hinted that he might separate migrant parents from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Kelly has joked with Trump about using violence against reporters and defended Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, amid allegations that he tried to set up a secret back channel to the Russian government. [Continue reading…]

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Supreme Court has opportunity to make sure people’s votes have equal value

The Washington Post reports: With newly elected Scott Walker in the governor’s office and a firm grip on the legislature, Wisconsin Republicans in 2011 had a unique opportunity to redraw the state’s electoral maps and fortify their party’s future.

Aides were dispatched to a private law firm to keep their work out of public view. They employed the most precise technology available to dissect new U.S. Census data and convert it into reliably Republican districts even if the party’s fortunes soured. Democrats were kept in the dark, and even GOP incumbents had to sign confidentiality agreements before their revamped districts were revealed to them. Only a handful of people saw the entire map until it was unveiled and quickly approved.

In the following year’s elections, when Republicans got just 48.6 percent of the statewide vote, they still captured a 60-39 seat advantage in the General Assembly.

Now, the Supreme Court is being asked to uphold a lower court’s finding that the Wisconsin redistricting effort was more than just extraordinary — it was unconstitutional.

Such a conclusion would mark a watershed moment for the way American elections are conducted.

The Supreme Court has regularly — and increasingly — tossed out state electoral maps because they have been gerrymandered to reduce the influence of racial minorities by depressing the impact of their votes.

But the justices have never found a plan unconstitutional because of partisan gerrymandering — when a majority party draws the state’s electoral districts to give such an advantage to its candidates that it dilutes the votes of those supporting the other party.

A divided panel of three judges in Wisconsin, though, decided just that in November. It became the first federal court in three decades to find that a redistricting plan violated the Constitution’s First Amendment and equal rights protections because of partisan gerrymandering.

The Supreme Court could announce as soon as Monday that it is either affirming or reversing the lower court’s decision, or, more likely, accepting the case for full briefing and arguments in the term that begins in the fall.

The case comes at a time when the dusty subject of reapportionment has taken on new significance, with many blaming the drawing of safely partisan seats for a polarized and gridlocked Congress. Barack Obama has said one of his post-presidency projects will be to combat partisan gerrymanders after the 2020 Census.

In Wisconsin, it already has become a hot topic.

“If there’s one word that defines the last year or year and a half in this country, it’s ‘rigged,’ ” said Dale Schulz, a Republican and former Wisconsin legislator who has joined with a Democratic counterpart to urge an end to the way the state handles redistricting. “People have come to realize their votes aren’t as important as they once were. And that’s really what this whole case is about: It’s about making sure people’s votes have equal value.” [Continue reading…]

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Theresa May is a ‘dead woman walking,’ says former chancellor George Osborne

The Guardian reports: George Osborne has called Theresa May “a dead woman walking” and suggested the prime minister would be forced to resign imminently.

The former chancellor said the campaign had undone the work of himself and former prime minister David Cameron in winning socially liberal seats such as a Bath, Brighton Kemptown and Oxford East, now lost to Labour and the Lib Dems.

“She is a dead woman walking and the only question is how long she remains on death row,” the editor of the Evening Standard said, defending his paper’s attacks on May as speaking from a “socially liberal, pro-business, economically liberal position” that he said had been consistent as editor and chancellor. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour will invite parties to defeat the government and vote for Labour’s manifesto in a “substantial amendment” to the Queen’s speech, as well as suggesting the party would also kill off the ”great repeal bill”.

“We are ready and able to put forward a serious programme which has great support in this country,” he said, though the Labour leader conceded his party “didn’t win the election”.

“We are going to put down a substantial amendment to the Queen’s speech which will be the main points of our manifesto so we will invite the House to consider all the issues we’ve put forward – jobs-first Brexit, policies for young people and on austerity,” he said. [Continue reading…]

Bloomberg reports: U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s hopes of clinging to power were dealt a fresh blow after her office was forced to admit that it hadn’t, after all, reached a deal to govern with the support of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, hours after announcing that it had.

May’s office said at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday it had “agreed to the principles of an outline agreement” in which the DUP would back the Conservatives on some key votes, ensuring the premier has a majority in the House of Commons. At midnight, the DUP said the talks would continue next week, and a half-hour later, the premier’s office issued another statement, saying that the accord hadn’t yet been finalized. [Continue reading…]

 

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Jeremy Corbyn could still become PM as new poll finds Labour would win a second general election

Business Insider reports: Jeremy Corbyn could be heading for Downing Street if a second general election is held this year, a new poll has found.

The Survation poll for the Mail on Sunday finds that Labour would win 45% of the vote to the Conservatives’ 39%, if voters were sent back to the polls.

Survation / MoS poll:

  • Labour: 45% (+5)
  • Conservative: 39% (-3)
  • Lib Dem: 7% (-)
  • UKIP: 3% (+1)
  • (Changes with the general election result)

It is the first time Labour have been ahead in a national opinion poll since March 2016.

Such a result would leave Labour as the largest party in parliament with Corbyn the favourite to lead a minority or coalition government.

The poll also found that voters now believe that Theresa May should resign as prime minister. 49% believe she should now stand down as opposed to 38% who believe she should stay.

Asked if she was a “strong and stable leader” just 36% agreed and 50% disagreed. [Continue reading…]

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Trump’s unwillingness to uphold his oath to defend the United States

Asha Rangappa writes: Reactions to former FBI director James B. Comey’s testimony Thursday mostly seemed to follow predictable, partisan lines. To many Democrats, Comey appeared to be describing a clear case of obstruction of justice by President Trump. To Republicans who support the White House, Comey’s recounting of “leaking” his memos about conversations with Trump showed that he deserved to be fired.

But as a former FBI counterintelligence agent, what I saw as the most explosive aspect of the testimony didn’t involve any legal violation of the U.S. code or questions about whether Comey had broken established Department of Justice protocols. Instead, it was the prima facie evidence that Comey presented that Trump appears unwilling to uphold his oath “to preserve, protect, and defend” the country — which puts the security of our nation and its democracy at stake. In the nine times Trump met with or called Comey, it was always to discuss how the investigation into Russia’s election interference was affecting him personally, rather than the security of the country. He apparently cared little about understanding either the magnitude of the Russian intelligence threat, or how the FBI might be able to prevent another attack in future elections. [Continue reading…]

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Understanding exactly what Trump means

Deborah Tannen writes: At Thursday’s Senate hearing, Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho) sought former FBI director James B. Comey’s agreement that President Trump did not tell him to drop his investigation of fired national security adviser Michael Flynn: “He did not direct you to let it go.” Comey agreed, “Not in his words, no.” Risch pressed his point: “He did not order you to let it go?” Comey concurred: “Again, those words are not an order.” Yet later in the hearing, in response to Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) asking whether the president’s words were “a directive,” Comey said, “Yes.”

Was Comey contradicting himself? Based on decades of studying indirectness in conversation — and a lifetime of using language to communicate — I’d say no. Risch was talking about the message: the literal meaning of words spoken. King, and later Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), were referring to the metamessage: what it means to say those words in that way in that context. When people talk to each other, they glean meaning from metamessages. But messages come in handy when someone wants to deny a meaning that was obvious when the words were spoken.

The president’s “exact words,” according to Comey’s notes, were: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” Risch cried literal meaning. Zeroing in on the word “hope,” he asked Comey if he knew of anyone being charged with a criminal offense because “they hoped for an outcome.” Though he confessed that he didn’t, Comey said, “I took it as, this is what he wants me to do.” Risch rested his case: “You may have taken it as a direction but that’s not what he said.” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, later made the same point in a tweet: “Hoping and telling are two very different things.”

Actually, they aren’t, when the speaker is in a position of power, as Harris noted. Referring to her experience as a prosecutor, she said, “When a robber held a gun to somebody’s head and said, ‘I hope you will give me your wallet,’ the word ‘hope’ was not the most operative word at that moment.” The gun gives the robber power to encourage another to make his hope a reality.

Trump Jr. also tweeted, “Knowing my father for 39 years when he ‘orders or tells’ you to do something there is no ambiguity, you will know exactly what he means.” He’s right. Comey knew exactly what he meant. [Continue reading…]

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The scope of the Russian threat

The New York Times reports: Lost in the showdown between President Trump and James B. Comey that played out this past week was a chilling threat to the United States. Mr. Comey, the former director of the F.B.I., testified that the Russians had not only intervened in last year’s election, but would try to do it again.

“It’s not a Republican thing or Democratic thing — it really is an American thing,” Mr. Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “They’re going to come for whatever party they choose to try and work on behalf of. And they’re not devoted to either, in my experience. They’re just about their own advantage. And they will be back.”

What started out as a counterintelligence investigation to guard the United States against a hostile foreign power has morphed into a political scandal about what Mr. Trump did, what he said and what he meant by it. Lawmakers have focused mainly on the gripping conflict between the president and the F.B.I. director he fired with cascading requests for documents, recordings and hearings.

But from the headquarters of the National Security Agency to state capitals that have discovered that the Russians were inside their voter-registration systems, the worry is that attention will be diverted from figuring out how Russia disrupted American democracy last year and how to prevent it from happening again. Russian hackers did not just breach Democratic email accounts; according to Mr. Comey, they orchestrated a “massive effort” targeting hundreds of — and possibly more than 1,000 — American government and private organizations since 2015.

“It’s important for us in the West to understand that we’re facing an adversary who wishes for his own reasons to do us harm,” said Daniel Fried, a career diplomat who oversaw sanctions imposed on Russia before retiring this year. “Whatever the domestic politics of this, Comey was spot-on right that Russia is coming after us, but not just the U.S., but the free world in general. And we need to take this seriously.” [Continue reading…]

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The implication of Comey’s testimony: Trump is a traitor

Starting at 6 min 38 sec, Christopher Dickey describes why the most important implication of James Comey’s testimony in the Senate is that Donald Trump is a traitor to the United States.

“What [Comey] didn’t say, explicitly, was that he thinks the president is a traitor, but that was implicit in what he was saying, because he said the president didn’t care that the United States was under attack.”

 

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Trump has no grasp on the extent of his ignorance

Fred Kaplan writes: After James Comey’s sworn Senate testimony Thursday, even stalwart Republicans are finding it harder to deny that Donald Trump has no business being president. But it’s not stopping them from defending him anyway or from bringing the nation closer to disaster.

House Speaker Paul Ryan tried to excuse the most incriminating portions of Comey’s statement—the highly detailed claims that Trump pressured him to swear loyalty, to drop the probe of Michael Flynn, and to tell the public that Trump himself was not under criminal investigation—by saying that the president is “just new to this.” In other words, Ryan was saying, Trump isn’t a crook; he’s just ignorant.

Leaving aside the civic bromide that ignorance is no excuse when it comes to breaking the law, Ryan is off the mark, at least in this case. Trump kicked several officials out of his office before twisting the FBI director’s arm. As Comey asked at his hearing, why would he do that if he didn’t know he was about to engage in improper behavior?

New Jersey Gov. (and former Trump transition-team chairman) Chris Christie came closer to honesty, dismissing the president’s exchanges with Comey as “normal New York conversation.” This might indeed be the perception of a man who once prosecuted white-collar criminals, including Jared Kushner’s father, in the New York metropolitan area. In other words, Christie was saying, Trump is just strutting like a slippery operator—not quite the exoneration that he may have intended.

So these are the GOP’s rationales for Trump’s behavior: He was only talking like a felon, he didn’t necessarily commit a crime; and if he did, it’s only because he didn’t know what he was doing. It’s hard to believe that even the likes of Ryan and Christie aren’t a little disturbed by this state of affairs—not only because of what might be uncovered next, but because of what they are facing and abetting right now. By the powers vested in his office, Trump has immense powers (among other things, he has the nuclear codes), and his defenders are tolerating his presence in this office, even while knowing the risks.

Yes, “He’s just new to this,” but that’s the problem, or part of the problem. In fact, all presidents are “new to this.” As most of them have confessed after their terms, no experience quite prepares one for the lonely pressures of the Oval Office. But Trump takes a novice’s limits to new levels. Not only did he enter the job with no knowledge of its nature (despite bragging that he alone could fix everything), he installed an equally clueless entourage. [Continue reading…]

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Drop hard Brexit plans, demand MPs

The Observer reports: Senior Tory and Labour MPs called on Theresa May to forge a new cross-party approach to Brexit as fears grew that the prime minister’s weakness could lead to the imminent collapse of talks on the UK’s exit from the European Union.

In a dramatic demonstration of May’s loss of authority, as a result of Thursday’s general election – which stripped her of a Commons majority – the MPs demanded that she in effect drop her own Tory “hard Brexit” plans in favour of a new “national” consenus, that would be endorsed by members from all sides of the House of Commons.

The proposal, if adopted, would throw open the debate on what kind of Brexit the country wants, with just a week to go before May is due to lead the country in formal negotiations with the EU on the terms of exit.

It comes as senior EU figures expressed their concerns that the process could collapse because of May’s lack of authority in what are bound to be many months of tough and complex talks. A leading Christian Democrat ally of the German chancellor Angela Merkel – the MEP Elmar Brok – told the Observer that the chances of a collapse in the talks had significantly increased. “The British people saw through her [May]. The negotiations have become more difficult because Britain has not got a government of real authority,” he said.

May went to the country asking for a mandate on Brexit only to lose her Commons majority. In an intervention that will alarm hardline pro-Brexit Tories, the former foreign office minister Alistair Burt, backed by ex-education secretary Nicky Morgan and other pro-EU Tories, said Brexit could only be agreed and delivered if the Conservative minority government built cross-party support behind a plan that would unite politicians and the country. [Continue reading…]

The Observer reports: Theresa May had set Britain on a course for a hard Brexit, prioritising sovereignty at the expense of close economic ties. Nevertheless, most EU governments had hoped she would win big on 8 June, so that she would be strong enough to face down the Tory right in pushing through painful compromises. They now face a prime minister whose authority is crumbling. Yet the general election makes the prospect of a softer Brexit plausible.

May’s instincts are probably to keep pushing for the hard Brexit that her right wing desires. But there is no parliamentary majority for a hard Brexit. Just a few pro-EU Tories could join opposition MPs to defeat May. If she wants to pass the Brexit deal – and the many Brexit-related laws that are required – she will have to collaborate with Labour and other opposition MPs.

Such a volte-face would be uncharacteristic of May. But if she doesn’t reinvent herself as a soft Brexiter, it is hard to see how she can stay in office. And if she falls, her successor will find that survival means working with the opposition to achieve a softer version of Brexit. [Continue reading…]

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Britain is more divided than ever. Now Labour has a chance to unify it

John Harris writes: The centre of Birmingham at midnight offered plenty of proof of what had just happened. On Broad Street, the neon-lit strip that sits at the heart of the city’s nightlife, an endless parade of young people were shouting their joy. “Corbyn! Corbyn!” yelped three twentysomething men; a woman told me she planned to drink a shot of tequila every time Labour gained a seat. They talked in emotional terms about student debt, the health service, and their belief in a diverse Britain. But perhaps the most moving part was played by a man in a wheelchair, who told us he was penniless and bemoaned the cruelties of the benefits system before he mentioned Jeremy Corbyn, and uttered seven words that made me well up: “Something has to change in this world.”

With my Guardian colleague John Domokos, I had spent the previous eight hours shooting a film for the Guardian’s Anywhere But Westminster series in nearby Walsall, where Labour held one seat and lost another, it frequently felt very different. There, in neighbourhoods such as Bloxwich and Bentley, an array of older voters echoed all the Tory attack lines on Corbyn, and talked about switching from Labour to Conservative, often via Ukip. Their sentiments sounded like the spirit of Brexit, full of a mixture of fear and obstinacy, and hardened anew by the attacks on London and Manchester: “I don’t think it’s fair that we should be worried in our own country,” said one woman.

But younger people appeared too, and told us they were voting Labour for very different reasons. No sooner had we met a man carrying a copy of the Sun and spitting bile about Corbyn and the IRA than a young nurse and her friend came round the corner, both first-time voters, deeply concerned about the fate of public services, impressed by the Labour leader and passionate about getting rid of the Tories. “Labour are more for young people,” said one. And we got a sense of politics at its most simple and urgent. [Continue reading…]

 

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Masquerading as reporter, assassin hunted Putin foes in Ukraine

The New York Times reports: Ukrainians have long struggled with fake news from Russia, but last week, they discovered something even more insidious: a fake journalist.

The man was tall and dapper. He wore a dark suit and spoke with a French accent. When he met politicians in Kiev, he introduced himself as Alex Werner, a reporter with the French newspaper Le Monde.

“He was elegant, calm and confident,” recalled Amina Okuyeva, who is a minor celebrity in Ukraine because she served with her husband as a volunteer soldier in the war against separatists in the eastern part of the country. Mr. Werner had interviewed her several times.

It was midway through one of those purported interviews, in a terrifying flash of gunpowder, that Mr. Werner’s true identity came to light: He was, in fact, a Chechen assassin, the Ukrainian authorities now say.

Under the guise of a journalist, the assassin, Artur Denisultanov-Kurmakayev, tried to murder Ms. Okuyeva and her husband, Adam Osmayev, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said. [Continue reading…]

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Anti-Muslim rallies across U.S. denounced by civil rights groups

The Guardian reports: A wave of anti-Muslim rallies planned for almost 30 cities across America on Saturday by far-right activists has drawn sharp criticism from civil rights groups and inspired counter-protests nationwide.

In cities including New York and Chicago, a few dozen “anti-sharia” demonstrators were outnumbered by counter-protesters.

Hundreds of counter-protesters marched through Seattle on Saturday to confront a few dozen people claiming sharia was incompatible with western freedoms. Local activists set up an “Ask an American Muslim” booth where attendees could meet and learn about their Muslim neighbors.

The rallies have been organized by Act for America, which claims to be protesting about human rights violations but has been deemed an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The demonstrations prompted security fears at mosques across the country and come at a time when hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise. [Continue reading…]

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Once again, climate change cited as trigger for war

 

Climatewire reports: The national security establishment needs to prepare for a series of global crises sparked by climate change, a group of experts wrote in a report released today.

The analysis by the Center for Climate and Security identifies 12 “epicenters” where climate change could stress global security, possibly igniting conflicts around the world.

American diplomats and military planners have already started grappling with some of these problems—but the links between them do not get enough attention, the experts said. And it is an open question whether the Trump administration confronts those challenges or tries to ignore them.

Many of the risk epicenters stem from resource shortages and dislocated populations, but the experts also consider an increased likelihood of nuclear war, more pandemics and tensions in the Arctic.

Any one of those factors is enough to cause serious problems, but together they threaten to undermine the international order, said Francesco Femia, one of the authors of the report, titled “Epicenters of Climate and Security: The New Geostrategic Landscape of the Anthropocene.”

“The humanitarian effects of [climate change] are massive,” he said. “But what we’re saying is that those humanitarian consequences are likely to spill over into broader security problems that speaks to the heart of how the world organizes itself.” [Continue reading…]

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