The EU’s message to Britain: We’re going to be just fine without you

In a review of Jean-Claude Juncker’s state of the European Union speech, Joris Luyendijk writes: “Never before have I seen so little common ground between our member states,” said Juncker, himself an EU veteran like few others. The EU is in greater danger than ever before, he continued, with greater levels of selfishness, nationalism and parochialism.

Yet Juncker also slipped in good news of the sort that somehow rarely reaches the mainstream British press. There had been one million jobs created in Spain over the past three years, and seven million more elsewhere. Public deficits are, on average, now below 2% across the eurozone, down from a terrifying 6.3% in 2009. Juncker might have added the eurozone’s healthy current account surplus, meaning it continues to export more than it imports. This is a stark contrast to the US and Britain, two nations that are becoming ever more indebted because they buy more from foreign countries than they sell.

Easily the most refreshing element in the speech, at least for those who have had to endure the Brexit “debate”, was Juncker’s emphasis on realism. Where Brexiteers continue to indulge in narcissistic fantasies about getting the best of all worlds from the EU while making Britain a world power again, Juncker struck a very different tone. Insisting that “solidarity is the glue that holds the union together” he pointed out that Europeans today make up 8% of the world population. In 2050 that will be down to 5%. “By then you would not see a single EU country among the top world economies,” Juncker went on. “But the EU together? We would still be topping the charts.”

To which he might have added: “And that is true with or without Britain.” [Continue reading…]

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Theresa May ‘likely’ to launch Brexit talks in early 2017, suggests Donald Tusk

The Guardian reports: The UK is expected to launch formal talks to leave the European Union in January or February next year, one of Europe’s top leaders said after a special summit without Britain, aimed at rallying the bloc battered by Brexit and the migration crisis.

The European council president, Donald Tusk, said British prime minister Theresa May had told him article 50 was “likely” to be triggered in January or February next year, dashing remain voters’ hopes of delaying the UK’s EU exit.

The British government was also sent a stark warning not to expect any compromise on the EU’s cherished principle of free movement of people, if it wants access to the single market.

Speaking of his meeting with May in London last week, Tusk said the prime minister had been “open and honest” about her difficulties in launching EU exit talks this year.

“She declared that it was almost impossible to trigger article 50 this year but it’s quite likely that they will be ready, maybe in January, maybe in February, next year.” He said the rest of the EU was ready to start negotiations tomorrow. [Continue reading…]

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Powell acknowledges Israel’s nuclear arsenal

Eli Clifton reports: According to hacked emails reviewed by LobeLog, Former Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged Israel’s nuclear arsenal, an open secret that U.S. and Israeli politicians typically refuse to acknowledge as part of Israel’s strategy of “nuclear ambiguity.” Powell also rejected assessments that Iran, at the time, was “a year away” from a nuclear weapon.

The emails, released by the hacking group DCLeaks, show Powell discussing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial speech before a joint meeting of Congress with his business partner, Jeffrey Leeds.

Leeds summarizes Netanyahu as having “said all the right things about the president and all the things he has done to help Israel. But basically [he] said this deal sucks, and the implication is that you have to be an idiot not to see it.”

Powell responded that U.S. negotiators can’t get everything they want from a deal. But echoing a point that many Iran hawks have questioned, Powell said that Israel’s nuclear arsenal and rational self-interest make the construction and testing of an Iranian nuclear weapon a highly unlikely policy choice for Iran’s leaders. [Continue reading…]

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The race is tightening for a painfully simple reason

Matthew Yglesias writes: Despite a couple of days’ worth of bad polls, Clinton still leads in national polling averages. It remains the case that if the election were held tomorrow, she would win.

In that context, her 42-56 favorable/unfavorable split in national polling is truly, freakishly bad. Political junkies have probably heard the factoid that Clinton is the least-popular major party nominee of all time — except for Donald Trump. But conventional dialogue still underrates exactly how weird this situation is. John McCain, John Kerry, Al Gore, and Bob Dole were all viewed favorably by a majority of Americans on the eve of presidential elections that they lost, and Mitt Romney was extremely close.

It is totally unheard of to win a presidential election while having deeply underwater favorable ratings, and it is actually quite common to lose one despite above water favorable ratings. [Continue reading…]

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Why Glenn Greenwald relentlessly attacks Hillary Clinton — even if it helps Donald Trump

In an interview with Jeff Stein, Glenn Greenwald says: Maybe it’s just a personality trait, but I think as a journalist it’s my role to constantly push back against unity of thought. In this election, there’s a really unique dynamic that’s unhealthy — even if it’s justified — where you have almost no members of the elite class engaged in any dissent. There’s almost no prominent journalists or people at think tanks or professors who are supporting Donald Trump the way you have an elite split in most elections.

That’s in part because they become stigmatized if they do, and in part because they’re genuinely horrified of the things he would do and the things he represents.

So you can sit on Twitter all day, and — unless it’s Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter — you’re going to have this incredible homogeneity of opinion. And it builds on itself, and it becomes more sanctimonious and convicted of its own righteousness, and it kind of leads to places that I think are unhealthy, even if the cause is justified.

One of the roles I want to perform — that I think is necessary — is to just push back against that, asking questions of it, and finding ways that consensus is poorly thought through or wrong. [Continue reading…]

Constantly pushing back against unity of thought — yep, that’s a personality trait that could also be described as knee-jerk reactivity and compulsive contrarianism. But much as Greenwald may claim that this is his role as a journalist, I suspect he’s being a bit disingenuous on this point.

On the issue of climate change, there is strong unity of thought among scientists and informed lay people. Does that make Greenwald feel that it’s his duty to amplify the voices of climate skeptics? Not as far as I’m aware.

The underlying issue in Greenwald’s position in covering this election seems to not simply be to challenge unity of thought but more importantly it’s about avoiding at any cost appearing to be in alignment with the establishment.

In Greenwald’s eyes, a unified elite is apparently scarier than Trump.

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U.S. to pay €1m to family of Italian aid worker — one of hundreds of civilians killed in drone strikes

The Guardian reports: The Obama administration has agreed to pay €1m to the family of an Italian aid worker who was killed in a US drone strike in 2015.

Giovanni Lo Porto, 37, was being held hostage by al-Qaida at the time of his death and his family had been led to believe a month before the strike that he was close to being released.

Last year, the US president, Barack Obama, acknowledged that Lo Porto and an American named Warren Weinstein, 73, had accidentally been killed in a secret counter-terrorism mission.

The payment was confirmed by the US embassy in Rome and Lo Porto’s brother, Daniele. Details of the agreement were first reported by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

A spokesman for the US embassy in Rome said the government had confirmed at the time the deaths were announced that it would be providing a condolence payment to both families. [Continue reading…]

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Third of Saudi air raids on Yemen have hit civilian sites, data shows

The Guardian reports: More than a third of all Saudi-led air raids on Yemen have hit civilian sites, such as school buildings, hospitals, markets, mosques and economic infrastructure, according to the most comprehensive survey of the conflict.

The findings, revealed by the Guardian on Friday, contrast with claims by the Saudi government, backed by its US and British allies, that it is seeking to minimise civilian casualties.

The survey, conducted by the Yemen Data Project, a group of academics, human rights organisers and activists, will add to mounting pressure in the UK and the US on the Saudi-led coalition, which is facing accusations of breaching international humanitarian law.

It will refocus attention on UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the role of UK military personnel attached to the Saudi command and control centre, from which air operations are being mounted. Two British parliamentary committees have called for the suspension of such sales until a credible and independent inquiry has been conducted. [Continue reading…]

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Pentagon grudgingly accepts Syria deal amid deep mistrust of Russia

The Washington Post reports: Hours after reaching an agreement on Syria last Friday with Secretary of State John F. Kerry and clearing the final deal with Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wandered the halls of their meeting venue in Geneva, waiting for Kerry to get the okay from Washington.

In a secure room upstairs, a frustrated Kerry was on hold. Already deep into a conference call with President Obama’s top national security team, he was waiting for the Defense Department to locate its legal counsel to sign off on one of the many provisions of the accord that Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter was questioning.

“I hope before Washington gets some sleep, we can get some news,” Lavrov said as he offered pizza and vodka to reporters awaiting an announcement. Clearly on a propaganda roll, he observed that the wheels of government appeared to turn more efficiently in his country than in the United States.

Obama, who did not attend the principals’ meeting, ultimately approved the agreement and a news conference was held at midnight, Geneva time.

But beneath the politics and diplomacy of the deal — which began with a cease-fire Monday, to be followed, if it succeeds, by coordinated U.S.-Russian counterterrorism airstrikes — the prospect of military-to-military cooperation does not sit well with the Defense Department.

“There is a trust deficit with the Russians; it is not clear to us what their objectives are,” Gen. Joseph L. Votel, head of the U.S. Central Command, said Wednesday. “They say one thing, and we don’t necessarily see them following up on this.”

That mistrust resides most deeply in Carter, who officials familiar with the Russia negotiations said almost single-handedly delayed Friday’s final agreement with his repeated questions during the conference call. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, voiced little objection during the principals’ meeting, officials said. [Continue reading…]

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75,000 Syrians are trapped near Jordan’s border. Satellite images show some are dying

The Washington Post reports: Over the past five years, Jordan has become one of the biggest recipients of refugees fleeing its war-torn neighbor, Syria. Almost 700,000 Syrians have been registered as refugees in the country, which has a population of just 6.5 million. Those are just the ones who have registered; Jordanian officials say the real number is far over 1 million.

But Jordan’s hospitality may have hit a limit.

In the past year, as the trickle of new refugees entering the country slowed to a crawl, thousands of Syrian refugees have become trapped in an isolated no man’s land between Syria and Jordan known as “the berm.” Current estimates suggest more than 75,000 people are stuck in this area, but Jordanian authorities refused to allow access to the site for journalists and only limited access for aid groups.

A report from Amnesty International published Wednesday evening shows just how dire the situation on the berm has become. Using information from satellite images, video footage and a number of first-person accounts, Amnesty was able to show not only a dramatic growth in the size of the settlement at the border, but also what may be evidence of death and disease at the site. [Continue reading…]

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Clashes between Germans and refugees spark new tensions. This is what ISIS envisioned

The Washington Post reports: The city of Bautzen in eastern Germany has been at the center of tensions between refugees and anti-immigration protesters in recent months. In February, Germans applauded as a refugee accommodation burned down, allegedly after an arson attack.

But on Wednesday evening, those tensions reached a new peak when 20 refugees were involved in violent clashes with 80 German nationals, according to police. The incident occurred nearly exactly one year after the influx of refugees into Germany reached its climax, with thousands arriving in the country every day.

There have been attacks on refugee residences nearly every day since then. But frustration among migrants and newcomers with their increasingly unwelcoming host nation has also caused stirs, and has raised worries among counter-terrorism experts and officials. [Continue reading…]

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Julian Assange says he’ll turn himself in if Obama pardons Chelsea Manning

The Verge reports: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would turn himself in to US authorities if President Barack Obama grants clemency to Chelsea Manning, the organization said on Twitter Thursday. WikiLeaks’ statement was released one day before a Swedish appeals court decided to maintain a warrant for Assange’s arrest over a 2010 rape charge. Assange has said that extradition to Sweden would lead to his eventual extradition to the US, where he could face charges related to WikiLeaks’ publication of secret government documents.

“If Obama grants Manning clemency, Assange will agree to US prison in exchange — despite its clear unlawfulness,” WikiLeaks said in a tweet on Thursday. The tweet included a link to a letter from Assange’s attorney, Barry Pollack, calling on the Justice Department to be more transparent about its investigation into WikiLeaks.


Manning, a former US Army private, was convicted in 2013 for providing a trove of documents and videos to WikiLeaks, and is currently serving a 35-year sentence at the US Disciplinary Barracks in Leavenworth, Kansas. She was hospitalized after a reported suicide attempt in July, and this month went on a hunger strike to seek treatment for her gender dysphoria. Manning ended her hunger strike this week after the military agreed to allow her to have gender reassignment surgery. She still faces indefinite solitary confinement due to administrative charges related to her suicide attempt.

It’s not clear whether US authorities are taking Assange’s offer seriously. When reached by CNN, the Justice Department said it was not aware of any deal offered by Assange. [Continue reading…]

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Some British taxi drivers being trained to spy on passengers

Middle East Eye reports: Taxi drivers in the UK are being trained to become the “eyes and ears” of local authorities and police in the hunt for potential terrorists as part of safeguarding schemes being rolled out across the country.

Drivers in several British towns and cities are receiving Prevent counter-terrorism training as part of mandatory “knowledge” tests introduced by local councils.

One flagship scheme, run by Calderdale Council in West Yorkshire, northern England, was considered so successful that councillors discussed extending it to staff working in takeaway food outlets and bars.

Manchester City Council also incorporated Prevent awareness into a safeguarding handbook issued to taxi drivers last year, while Dartford Borough Council in Kent is among the latest to introduce Prevent training as part of its safeguarding requirements for taxi drivers.

But taxi industry organisations and trade unions have raised concerns about the training which they say is being introduced in a piecemeal and inconsistent way across the country and risks creating an “air of suspicion” within communities.

Critics of Prevent also questioned the legality of the training and accused the Government of seeking to turn the UK into a “counter-terrorism state” in which citizens were expected to spy on each other. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey plans to build 174 new jails after post-coup crackdown

The Washington Post reports: Authorities in Turkey plan to construct 174 prisons over the next five years to “meet the unanticipated increase in the number of convicts,” according to a Justice Ministry statement. Though not explicitly stated, the move is most probably linked to the strain placed on Turkey’s penal system amid a nationwide purge launched in response to a coup attempt on July 15.

In the weeks since, authorities have rounded up and jailed tens of thousands of people suspected to be connected to a movement led by Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in exile in the United States who Ankara claims was behind the coup plot.

Some of the plans for the new facilities were already in place before the failed putsch, in which a mutinous faction of the military attempted to seize institutions of the state, bomb parliament and turn their weapons on protesting civilians before being quashed by loyalist forces. In March, reports suggested that Turkish jails were already at capacity.

But the sweeping purge, which has netted a vast number of journalists, lawyers, teachers and other members of civil society, has accelerated the need for new facilities. According to statistics from officials last month, about 35,000 people have been detained as part of the crackdown, and about 17,000 of them have been formally arrested. [Continue reading…]

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Ethical shifts come with thinking in a different language

Julie Sedivy writes: What defines who we are? Our habits? Our aesthetic tastes? Our memories? If pressed, I would answer that if there is any part of me that sits at my core, that is an essential part of who I am, then surely it must be my moral center, my deep-seated sense of right and wrong.

And yet, like many other people who speak more than one language, I often have the sense that I’m a slightly different person in each of my languages — more assertive in English, more relaxed in French, more sentimental in Czech. Is it possible that, along with these differences, my moral compass also points in somewhat different directions depending on the language I’m using at the time?

Psychologists who study moral judgments have become very interested in this question. Several recent studies have focused on how people think about ethics in a non-native language — as might take place, for example, among a group of delegates at the United Nations using a lingua franca to hash out a resolution. The findings suggest that when people are confronted with moral dilemmas, they do indeed respond differently when considering them in a foreign language than when using their native tongue.

In a 2014 paper led by Albert Costa, volunteers were presented with a moral dilemma known as the “trolley problem”: imagine that a runaway trolley is careening toward a group of five people standing on the tracks, unable to move. You are next to a switch that can shift the trolley to a different set of tracks, thereby sparing the five people, but resulting in the death of one who is standing on the side tracks. Do you pull the switch?

Most people agree that they would. But what if the only way to stop the trolley is by pushing a large stranger off a footbridge into its path? People tend to be very reluctant to say they would do this, even though in both scenarios, one person is sacrificed to save five. But Costa and his colleagues found that posing the dilemma in a language that volunteers had learned as a foreign tongue dramatically increased their stated willingness to shove the sacrificial person off the footbridge, from fewer than 20% of respondents working in their native language to about 50% of those using the foreign one. [Continue reading…]

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Totalitarianism is already a harsh reality in Russia

Garry Kasparov writes: There are less than two weeks remaining before Russia holds its so-called legislative elections. But we can already draw conclusions about what is going on. We can see that it is not only pointless, but even harmful, for the opposition to participate in the “voting” if its goal is to oppose the regime of President Vladimir Putin.

It has long been commonplace to say the process that is called “elections” in Russia does not play any role in determining matters of political power. Rather it is an imitative mechanism intended to give the appearance of legitimacy to the regime.

Nonetheless, again and again, politicians claiming to be in opposition try to participate, either not understanding or pretending not to understand that by doing so they are playing into the Kremlin’s hands, willingly or not. They are helping it draw Russian citizens into a political process with predetermined results. And by doing so, they become parasites on the understandable human desire of society to believe in the possibility of nonviolent change.

The problem, however, is that Russia long ago passed the point of no return after which change without upheaval (that is, through the ballot) is impossible. In addition, the longer the regime’s agony continues, the more profound the upheavals will be for Russia.

By arguing that it is important to participate in the elections, these “oppositionists” are cultivating false hopes in society, which then become an obstacle to any change in principle.

The arguments used to justify participating in these electoral games entirely ignore current political reality and, in particular, the changes that have occurred in the last few years. [Continue reading…]

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As Russia reasserts itself, U.S. intelligence agencies focus anew on the Kremlin

The Washington Post reports: U.S. intelligence agencies are expanding spying operations against Russia on a greater scale than at any time since the end of the Cold War, U.S. officials said.

The mobilization involves clandestine CIA operatives, National Security Agency cyberespionage capabilities, satellite systems and other intelligence assets, officials said, describing a shift in resources across spy services that had previously diverted attention from Russia to focus on terrorist threats and U.S. war zones.

U.S. officials said the moves are part of an effort to rebuild U.S. intelligence capabilities that had continued to atrophy even as Russia sought to reassert itself as a global power. Over the past two years, officials said, the United States was caught flat-footed by Moscow’s aggression, including its annexation of Crimea, its intervention in the war in Syria and its suspected role in hacking operations against the United States and Europe.

U.S. spy agencies “are playing catch-up big time” with Russia, a senior U.S. intelligence official said. Terrorism remains the top concern for American intelligence services, the official said, but recent directives from the White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) have moved Russia up the list of intelligence priorities for the first time since the Soviet Union’s collapse. [Continue reading…]

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How Russian hacking has tied U.S. government in knots

CNN reports: Whatever Vladimir Putin’s goal is in a year-long campaign of apparent cyberattacks against the US political system, the Russian leader has accomplished this much: tying the US government in knots over what to do about it.

There’s debate in the Obama administration about how to respond to the hacks targeting Democratic Party organizations and increasing evidence that Russian hackers also were behind attacks on election registration websites.

FBI and Justice Department officials believe there’s strong evidence to warrant publicly naming Russia as responsible for the political organization attacks, law enforcement and intelligence officials briefed on the investigation say.

But there is opposition from US intelligence agencies and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, who have cautioned about moving to “name and shame” Russia, in part because of concerns about Russian retaliation and the possible exposure of US intelligence operations, the routine spy work that the US carries out against Russia and other countries.

White House officials, meanwhile, are cautious for other reasons, administration officials say: the political overtones of making such an attribution against Russia weeks before the US presidential election. Some White House officials also believe the FBI and intelligence agencies have more work to do to show definitive links between Russian intelligence hackers, whom US investigators believe stole documents from the Democratic National Committee, and WikiLeaks, the organization that published the material the weekend before the Democratic Party’s convention. [Continue reading…]

 

Politico reports: House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul said that he “misspoke” Wednesday when he told CNN that Russian hackers had penetrated the computer systems of the Republican National Committee.

In a statement released shortly after his TV appearance ended, McCaul (R-Texas) said it was “Republican political operatives,” not the RNC, that had been hacked. The RNC also swiftly denied that its systems had been breached. [Continue reading…]

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