Egyptians under Abdel Fattah al-Sisi are further from democracy than ever

Steven A Cook writes: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is visiting Washington. Since being elected in 2014 after orchestrating a coup d’état in the summer of 2013, the Egyptian leader has sought a White House meeting. President Barack Obama resisted, given the iron fist Sisi has employed to establish control over Egyptian society. The country is now among the top jailers of journalists in the world, thousands of others have been arrested for their opposition to the government, and Egyptian security forces killed about 800 people on a single day in August 2013.

Sisi’s visit signals the end of this period of mistrust and tension between the two countries. Egyptian officials were extremely pleased when, after meeting Sisi last September in New York, then-candidate Donald J. Trump’s campaign declared, “Mr. Trump expressed to President el-Sisi his strong support for Egypt’s war on terrorism, and how under a Trump Administration, the United States of America will be a loyal friend, not simply an ally, that Egypt can count on in the days and years ahead.”

It is hard to know for sure given the Trump administration’s policymaking style, but it seems clear that the White House wants to turn back the clock to the Hosni Mubarak era. During those three decades, successive U.S. administrations supported Mubarak because he ensured that the Suez Canal would stay open, maintained peace with Israel and kept his boot on the throat of Islamists. For the Trump White House, with its emphasis on fighting extremists, a Mubarak redux makes a lot of sense. American officials will likely discover that this is going to be hard. Egypt is very different today, and does not necessarily compare well to the country that Mubarak once ruled. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS says U.S. ‘being run by an idiot’

Reuters reports: Islamic State said on Tuesday the United States was drowning and “being run by an idiot”.

In the first official remarks by the group referring to President Donald Trump since he took office, spokesman Abi al-Hassan al-Muhajer said:

“America you have drowned and there is no savior, and you have become prey for the soldiers of the caliphate in every part of the earth, you are bankrupt and the signs of your demise are evident to every eye.”

“… There is no more evidence than the fact that you are being run by an idiot who does not know what Syria or Iraq or Islam is,” he said in a recording released on Tuesday on messaging network Telegram. [Continue reading…]

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Trump travel ban ‘simplistic and wrongheaded’, says former CIA chief

The Guardian reports: The former CIA director John Brennan has described Donald Trump’s travel ban on visitors from Muslim countries as “simplistic and misguided”, predicting it would be counterproductive if implemented.

Brennan, who was director of central intelligence from March 2013 until the last day of the Obama administration on 20 January this year, was highly critical of a range of Trump policies and actions in an interview with the BBC Newsnight programme aired on Monday night.

He said the administration’s use of the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” served to legitimise terrorists in their own eyes, and warned that the president’s disparagement of US intelligence agencies would hurt morale and recruitment. [Continue reading…]

 

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Syria: Suspected chemical attack kills dozens in Idlib province

The Guardian reports: Dozens of people have been killed in a suspected chemical attack in northern Syria, aid workers and local activists have said, in one of the largest mass casualty incidents using a toxic gas in the six-year conflict.

The attack on Tuesday morning on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province was followed by a series of air raids in the early afternoon on the same town, according to medical workers.

More than 50 people were killed when planes carrying weaponry laced with unidentified chemicals raided Khan Sheikhoun. Victims exhibited symptoms resembling those caused by exposure to sarin gas.

“Everyone is horrified and the children are in total shock,” said Mohammad Hassoun, a spokesman for civil defence rescue workers in the nearby town of Sarmin, which received 14 of the wounded.

Hassoun said the victims were bleeding from the nose and mouth, had constricted irises and suffered from convulsions.

The casualties have been distributed across a wide range of hospitals in Idlib, with some sent north towards Turkey. There were reports that casualties driven to the Bab al-Hawa crossing on the Turkish border were experiencing difficulties in entering the country for emergency relief.[Continue reading…]

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Trump associates didn’t have to be under surveillance to be unmasked

The current Trump/White House narrative designed to distract and deflect attention away from the massive array of ties Trump and his associates have with Russia, is to cast themselves as victims of politicized intelligence who were illegitimately spied on and thence illegitimately “unmasked.”

One of the key deceptions at the heart of this narrative is the notion that Trump and/or his associates were parties to the intercepted conversations from which their names were subsequently unmasked.

As Business Insider notes:

[F]ormer NSA Director Michael Hayden, who also served as the principal deputy director of national intelligence and the director of the CIA, cautioned against “automatically assuming that the US person was party to the conversation” that may have prompted an unmasking.

“My life experience suggests that the overwhelming proportion of these cases of incidental collection is not information to or from an American, but information about an American,” Hayden said. “In this case, it is very likely in most instances two foreigners talking about the Trump transition.”

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Trump aide Sebastian Gorka backed violent anti-Semitic militia

The Forward reports: As a Hungarian political leader in 2007, Sebastian Gorka, President Trump’s chief counter-terrorism adviser, publicly supported a violent racist and anti-Semitic paramilitary militia that was later banned as a threat to minorities by multiple court rulings.

In a video obtained by the Forward of an August 2007 television appearance by Gorka, the future White House senior aide explicitly affirms his party’s and his support for the black-vested Hungarian Guard (Magyar Gárda) — a group later condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for attempting to promote an “essentially racist” legal order.

Asked directly on the TV interview program if he supports the move by Jobbik, a far-right anti-Semitic party, to establish the militia, Gorka, appearing as a leader of his own newly formed party, replies immediately, “That is so.” The Guard, Gorka explains, is a response to “a big societal need.” [Continue reading…]

 

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Trump can pull money from his businesses whenever he wants — without ever telling us

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Here’s what we know so far about Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests

The Washington Post reports: Congress and U.S. intelligence agencies are scrutinizing connections between Russia and the Trump campaign as they investigate evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Here are members of Team Trump who are known to have Russian connections and the story lines that have made those ties relevant. [Click here to view extensive graphical analysis]

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Lithuania fears Russian propaganda is prelude to eventual invasion

The Guardian reports: Russia is trying to create a false history that denies the Baltic states’ right to exist, with alarming parallels to its justifications for the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, top Lithuanian officials have said.

The country’s defence minister and officials from the army’s department of strategic communication have told the Guardian that they are taking very seriously the threat of disinformation campaigns orchestrated by Moscow that aim to destabilise the region.

“Russia is a threat,” the defence minister, Raimundas Karoblis, said. “They are saying our capital Vilnius should not belong to Lithuania because between the first and second world wars it was occupied by Poland. It’s history of course, but Russia is using this pretext.

“Sometimes [the disinformation] is through [the government-run news agency] Sputnik, sometimes through their TV, but usually from politicians in the Duma.

“There are now reports that Klaipėda [Lithuania’s third largest city] never belonged to Lithuania; that it was the gift of Stalin after the second world war. There are real parallels with Crimea’s annexation [from Ukraine] … We are speaking of a danger to the territorial integrity of Lithuania.” [Continue reading…]

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Former Trump adviser, Carter Page, met with a Russian spy

BuzzFeed reports: A former campaign adviser for Donald Trump met with and passed documents to a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013.

The adviser, Carter Page, met with a Russian intelligence operative named Victor Podobnyy, who was later charged by the US government alongside two others for acting as unregistered agents of a foreign government. The charges, filed in January 2015, came after federal investigators busted a Russian spy ring that was seeking information on US sanctions as well as efforts to develop alternative energy. Page is an energy consultant.

A court filing by the US government contains a transcript of a recorded conversation in which Podobnyy speaks with one of the other men busted in the spy ring, Igor Sporyshev, about trying to recruit someone identified as “Male-1.” BuzzFeed News has confirmed that “Male-1” is Page.

The revelation of Page’s connection to Russian intelligence — which occurred more than three years before his association with Trump — is the most clearly documented contact to date between Russian intelligence and someone in Trump’s orbit. It comes as federal investigators probe whether Trump’s campaign-era associates — including Page — had any inappropriate contact with Russian officials or intelligence operatives during the court of the election. Page has volunteered to help Senate investigators in their inquiry. [Continue reading…]

 

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Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel

The Washington Post reports: The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladi­mir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.

The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.

Though Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant, according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian.

Prince was an avid supporter of Trump. After the Republican convention, he contributed $250,000 to Trump’s campaign, the national party and a pro-Trump super PAC led by GOP mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, records show. He has ties to people in Trump’s circle, including Stephen K. Bannon, now serving as the president’s chief strategist and senior counselor. Prince’s sister Betsy DeVos serves as education secretary in the Trump administration. And Prince was seen in the Trump transition offices in New York in December. [Continue reading…]

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If Trump’s looking for a Mideast winner, he’s made a bad bet on Sisi

Bel Trew reports: “Are you Christian?” were the only words the masked men asked Misaq, 58, an Egyptian hospital worker, as they poked their machine guns through the car windows.

Moments before, the Coptic father of four and his Muslim colleague had passed through an Egyptian military check point, and then watched as an Egyptian army vehicle passed them.

They were on their daily drive home to Arish city in North Sinai from the government hospital where they both work. Driving the short distance between two official checkpoints, it hadn’t occurred to them to be on the lookout for fighters from the so-called Islamic State. But now they were looking at the barrels of ISIS guns.

Misaaq, a devout Copt, refused to lie to the jihadists, his friend later told the family. The ISIS fighters, perhaps taken aback by the man’s bravery, demanded to see his ID card, which confirmed his religion. They even checked the cross tattoo on his wrist, which most Coptic Christians have.

“Convert, infidel, and we will spare your life,” they told him, as they dragged him out of the vehicle and forced him to his knees. But again he refused. So they shot him 14 times and left the corpse in the desert.

“The terrorists have no schedule. They appear out of nowhere. They hunt us down,” Misaq’s impoverished widow, Magda, 52, said as she described the nightmare Christians are forced to live in Arish. It is the largest city in North Sinai, a region that has been a battleground for four years between the Egyptian army and insurgents.

Magda’s is one of the nearly 300 Christian families who fled their hometown in February, after ISIS murdered seven Copts in less than three weeks. The majority, like Magda, fled to Ismailia, a Suez Canal city where they are now in partial hiding in ramshackle flats.

“This ISIS checkpoint appeared between two military checkpoints,” she told me. “The soldiers must have heard the shots. They have towers, they could have easily seen what was going on. My husband was driving behind a military vehicle but it never turned back. No one came to help him.”

Magda, echoing other families who spoke to The Daily Beast, said the security forces were worried about their own safety. “They are targets, too. They are often too scared to do anything.”

February’s mass exodus of Christians from the troubled peninsula, which followed the ISIS-claimed bombing of a major Cairo cathedral in December, are stark reminders of how the government is not winning its heavily-touted war against terrorism. [Continue reading…]

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Trump says U.S. will act alone on North Korea if China fails to help

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump has issued China with an ultimatum that if it fails to put pressure on North Korea to disable its nuclear programme, then the US is prepared to take action against Pyongyang on its own.

“Well, if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will,” the president said in an interview with the Financial Times that has alarmed experts on the region.

Asked how he would tackle North Korea, Trump said: “I’m not going to tell you. You know, I am not the United States of the past where we tell you where we are going to hit in the Middle East.”

Trump will host the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, on Thursday and Friday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where the two leaders are expected to discuss North Korea, China’s ambitions in the South China Sea and trade. There is speculation that North Korea could conduct another nuclear missile test to coincide with the talks.[Continue reading…]

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Trump has become Fox News’ No 1 assignment editor

Lloyd Grove writes: The jury is still out on whether Team Trump colluded with Russian operatives during last year’s presidential campaign—the subject of an extensive FBI investigation.

But the evidence is overwhelming that the Trump White House is colluding every day with the Fox News Channel, with Donald Trump himself acting as the right-leaning cable network’s cheerleader-in-chief and No.1 assignment editor.

The latest example is Fox News’s relentless promotion–abetted by the president’s Twitter feed and Monday’s installment of Fox & Friends—of a story that Los Angeles correspondent Adam Housely first told on Friday’s edition of Outnumbered, a noon weekday program in which four women on a couch and “one lucky guy” seated in the middle flirt and banter about the news of the day.

Appearing remotely from L.A., Housely reported that unnamed U.S. intelligence agencies, acting on orders from an unnamed Obama intelligence official, had improperly “unmasked” the identities of Team Trump members and associates who were caught up last year in surveillance operations; Housely also claimed that top Obama administration officials used the information for political gain.

The assertion, so far uncorroborated by other news outlets with the exception of Bloomberg’s Eli Lake, offered aid and comfort to Trump, who has been under intense media and congressional scrutiny for his alleged Russian connections ever since he tweeted on March 4 that President Obama—a “Bad (or sick) guy”—had ordered the “wiretapping” of Trump Tower. [Continue reading…]

Lake’s piece is noteworthy for this:

In February Cohen-Watnick discovered Rice’s multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities. He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel’s office, who reviewed more of Rice’s requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy [my emphasis].

The following month, Trump’s new national security adviser H.R. McMaster removed Cohen-Watnick from his position as NSC senior intelligence director only to get overruled by Trump. And then we learned about Cohen-Watnick’s family ties to the Russian government.

Michael Flynn’s request for immunity probably has much less to do with his desire to tell his story than his fear that his protege will be granted immunity first at which point the White House implodes as Trump aides rush for the exits.

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A bomb hits Russia’s St. Petersburg metro. Conspiracy theories follow

The Daily Beast reports: An explosion killed at least 9 people and injured about 50 adults and children in the metro of Saint Petersburg, Russia, on Monday, according to Russian news agencies.

The crowded metro train hit by the attack was traveling between Sennaya and Tekhnologichesky Institut stations at about 3:00 p.m. Witnesses in one of the cars described a “deafening blast, sharp smell, and smoke.” Surviving victims were bleeding, many with hair burned off their heads and bodies. On seeing the smoke, “passengers in other wagons panicked, two women fainted,” according to a local student named Polina speaking to the Paperpaper internet outlet.

Senator Victor Ozerov, responsible for security at the Russian Federal Assembly said that “there are all the signs of a terrorist attack.” Izvestia reported that according to a special unit veteran investigating the attack, the bombing was carried out by a jihadist suicide-bomber.

The first images of the tragedy featured terrified, bloodied passengers, bloodied floors, blasted windows and doors in the bombed metro carriage.

In reaction, Russian authorities closed down the metro, which caused transport issues and traffic jams in Saint Petersburg. Taxi drivers gave people free lifts.

The attack coincided with a Kremlin-organized annual “Truth and Justice” event in St. Petersburg attended by President Vladimir Putin and 500 journalists from all over Russia. [Continue reading…]

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Donald Trump’s strange relationship with Jared Kushner (updated)

Hardly a day goes by without Jared Kushner being anointed with a new role in the Trump administration. Is Kushner, Trump’s Kissinger? A man of such genius that he inspires in this president so much confidence that whenever Trump asks himself, who’s the most gifted individual in whose hands I can place this awesome challenge? the answer is always Kushner?


My hunch — nothing more than that — is that the reason Kushner keeps on getting new roles has nothing to do with his abilities and everything to do with Trump’s relationship with his own daughter Ivanka.

In spite of Trump’s repeated indications of being sexually attracted to Ivanka, the man who has lived his whole life with the expectation that he can grab whatever he wants, was in this instance forced to rein in his own desires. (I am willing to assume he has successfully done that primarily because I see no indications that Ivanka feels the need to maintain a safe distance from her father.)

At the same time, given Trump’s grandiosity, it’s hard to believe that he truly believes that Kushner or any other man would really be good enough for his daughter.

So perhaps the reason Trump keeps on giving Kushner new roles is because he wants Kushner to fail.

Does Kushner look like a man brimming with such immeasurable confidence that he can conquer anything?

Not really.

More like a timid young man who’s afraid of saying “no” to his tyrannical father-in-law.

Footnote (update): However Trump views Kushner, it is, let’s say strange, that the White House would tell the world (and that includes ISIS) that the Senior Advisor to the President and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are on board an aircraft that’s shortly going to land in Iraq.

The Washington Post reports:

Colin Kahl, a senior administration official under former president Barack Obama, called the Trump administration’s move to release information about the trip ahead of Dunford and Kushner arriving in Iraq very unusual.

“Given how dangerous Iraq is, and the likelihood that senior U.S. officials could be targeted, the Obama administration always waited to announce any high-level visit until the official was on the ground,” Kahl said. “Political imperatives may incline some to advertise these trips — but in life-and-death situations, safety of our officials comes first.”

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The government Gorsuch wants to undo

Emily Bazelon and Eric Posner write: At recent Senate hearings to fill the Supreme Court’s open seat, Judge Neil Gorsuch came across as a thoroughly bland and nonthreatening nominee. The idea was to give as little ammunition as possible to opponents when his nomination comes up this week for a vote, one that Senate Democrats may try to upend with a filibuster.

But the reality is that Judge Gorsuch embraces a judicial philosophy that would do nothing less than undermine the structure of modern government — including the rules that keep our water clean, regulate the financial markets and protect workers and consumers. In strongly opposing the administrative state, Judge Gorsuch is in the company of incendiary figures like the White House adviser Steve Bannon, who has called for its “deconstruction.” The Republican-dominated House, too, has passed a bill designed to severely curtail the power of federal agencies.

Businesses have always complained that government regulations increase their costs, and no doubt some regulations are ill-conceived. But a small group of conservative intellectuals have gone much further to argue that the rules that safeguard our welfare and the orderly functioning of the market have been fashioned in a way that’s not constitutionally legitimate. This once-fringe cause of the right asserts, as Judge Gorsuch put it in a speech last year, that the administrative state “poses a grave threat to our values of personal liberty.”

The 80 years of law that are at stake began with the New Deal. President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed that the Great Depression was caused in part by ruinous competition among companies. In 1933, Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act, which allowed the president to approve “fair competition” standards for different trades and industries. The next year, Roosevelt approved a code for the poultry industry, which, among other things, set a minimum wage and maximum hours for workers, and hygiene requirements for slaughterhouses. Such basic workplace protections and constraints on the free market are now taken for granted. [Continue reading…]

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