Top US Generals Discuss Cooperation With Israel
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US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., center, accompanied by the commander EUCOM, Gen. Philip Breedlove, left, meet with Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon at Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel, on March 3.(Photo: Matty Stern/US Embassy Tel Aviv)
US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., center, accompanied by the commander EUCOM, Gen. Philip Breedlove, left, meet with Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon at Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel, on March 3.(Photo: Matty Stern/US Embassy Tel Aviv)
TEL AVIV — US Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford and Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove held high-level talks in Israel on Thursday, meeting with Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and senior security officials on plans to further strategic cooperation in the face of chronic regional instability.
Among topics of discussion, sources in Israel said, were ways in which both countries are coordinating deconfliction protocols with Russian forces waging war beyond Israel’s northern border on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad; the role of Turkey in the region; and Israel’s requirements as it works to conclude a new 10-year military aid package with Washington.
Security talks held in Israel will be followed by a visit next week by US Vice President Joe Biden, hosted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In his second visit here in less than five months, Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he is committed to strengthening military-to-military ties, which he recognizes is just one aspect of the ties that bind the two nations.
Turning to Breedlove, commander of US European Command (EUCOM), which is responsible for Israel, Dunford noted that EUCOM works daily to hone strategic cooperation with its Israeli partners.
“Gen. Breedlove works it every day; and I’m committed to building on his efforts,” Dunford told Ya’alon.
Earlier in the day, the two generals visited US and Israeli military personnel participating in the closing session of the joint Juniper Cobra air defense exercise, followed by professional talks hosted by Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkott, Israel Defense Forces chief of staff.
During a high-level working meeting Thursday afternoon, Ya’alon told American officials he welcomed the opportunity to discuss cooperative ways of addressing myriad regional challenges.
“Looking around at the Mideast together, with instability in the region, we see many challenges ahead of us. I’m glad for another opportunity to discuss the developing situation,” Ya'alon said.
To which Dunford replied: “We do have a lot of issues. And the thing that gives me confidence that we can deal with these challenges is the fact that we’re partners and allies.”
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The unprecedented spectacle on Thursday of the last Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, blasting his likely successor, Donald Trump, as a "phony" and immoral "fraud" represented more than just an extraordinary moment in a surreal political year.
It may be remembered as the moment that the GOP establishment's long-brewing horror over the billionaire businessman burst into open political combat and an active bid to bring him down at the party convention.
"I believe with all my heart and soul that we face another time for choosing, one that will have profound consequences for the Republican Party and more importantly, for the country," said Romney, channeling former President Ronald Reagan in his stunning speech in Utah.
Romney's concise, categorical takedown of Trump's intellect, character and motivation amounted to a tipping point in a long-building revolt among Republican elders now openly despairing of the former reality TV star's grip on the GOP nomination and his staunch armies of outsider voters who refuse to abandon their outspoken champion.
But Trump dismissed Romney as if he was swatting a fly. "He was a failed candidate," Trump said at the Fox News debate Thursday night, branding Romney as an "embarrassment" who just wants to be relevant and get back in the political game.
However, Romney was not alone. His assault won an endorsement from the previous GOP nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain. It also came on a day when a group of prominent conservative national security experts warned darkly that Trump was not qualified to be president. And it coincided with a drive by Republican super PACs and other anti-Trump forces to halt the billionaire with attack ads.
A risky civil war
But unleashing a Republican civil war is fraught with risk, has staggering implications for the party itself and appears to fly in the face of the grim precedent of divided parties in American political history.
The path Romney and his allies have chosen leaves Republicans with a dilemma, assuming Trump extends his march toward the nomination in coming primaries and caucuses -- and there is little reason to think he won't.
Either they must embrace a Romney-led attempt to overturn the democratically expressed will of millions of voters and risk alienating Trump supporters who, if they reject the GOP, could effectively hand the election to the Democrats.
Or they must accept Trump as their figurehead even though embracing him would change the party itself in the eyes of moderate and conservative Republicans alike who see him as the antithesis of what they believe the GOP stands for.
Not all of Trump's policy positions are clear. But a party he leads would implicitly go into the general election as an anti-free trade, somewhat isolationist, immigration hardliner force that embraces economic nationalism and has unclear positions on social issues. That contrasts with the GOP's heritage as a pro-globalization, internationalist and even interventionist party laced with social conservatism and dedicated to a creed of small government.
The dilemma hasn't been resolved by all of the GOP's leadership, despite the full frontal attack Romney delivered. That equivocation could dilute some of the efficacy of the anti-Trump wing's efforts. And it's far from certain that Romney, who is seen by many GOP voters as a flawed candidate who botched an attempt to bounce President Barack Obama out of office, is the best messenger for such an offensive.
Party higher-ups on Thursday were sticking to the position that there could be no change to the process -- in an apparent attempt to stop the civil war from flaring out of control.
"Another day, another fascinating development," Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "When we get to a nominee, this party is going to support that nominee 100%. I don't care who the nominee is. Our job is to support the person who gets the majority of delegates."
Not following Romney's lead
Other members of the Republican establishment in Washington -- who have more to lose than Romney because they are still in office -- were not quite so keen to rush to the barricades.
House Speaker and Romney confidant Paul Ryan declined to endorse the former GOP nominee's warning, saying only that he would speak out if he saw conservatism being "disfigured."
And Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a short statement pushing back at the notion that party grandees should intervene to thwart Trump.
"Here's my message to the Republican Party leaders: Focus more on listening to the American people and less on trying to stifle their voice," Corker said.
But one person who was happy to engage was Trump, who thrives on conflict and seemed to sense that he couldn't lose from a confrontation with an unsuccessful establishment nominee, lashing Romney as a "choker" who had begged him for an endorsement in 2012.
It does seems counterintuitive that in an election that has been defined by a rejection of the Republican establishment, the man to deliver a body blow to Trump would be a symbol of the GOP elite.
"I think that Romney's speech today is not going to change a single vote," said Mark McKinnon, a former strategist for President George W. Bush on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper."
"If anything," he continued, "it will probably harden the support that Trump supporters have because it is just another example of the establishment all these supporters are against circling the wagons."
The idea of framing a strategy to thwart the will of Republican primary voters is also a troubling concept to some conservatives, even those who do not support Trump.
"Win it, lose it, but don't steal it," former Minnesota governor and presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty told CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront."
Whether or not they are successful or defensible, the widening anti-Trump attacks may have important electoral implications for the Republican Party. It was, after all, the spiritual leader of the party, Abraham Lincoln, who warned in another context: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
Divided parties don't fare well
Internecine warfare has rarely made parties prosper in presidential elections.
"The short answer is it doesn't end well for that party generally," said David Karol, an political parties expert at the University of Maryland.
In recent political history, splintered parties have crashed to defeat. In 1972, Democratic nominee George McGovern was a divisive figure in his party, and he won only one state.
In 1964, another candidate that played to the extremist fringe of his party, Republican nominee Barry Goldwater, was also crushed.
Further back, in 1912, the Republican Party split over its rejection of a comeback attempt by former President Theodore Roosevelt, who decided to go it alone with his new progressive "Bull Moose Party." A Democrat, Woodrow Wilson profited from the chaos to win the White House.
"I could see Trump being a failed nominee, and the whole thing being a debacle for them with lasting consequences," said Karol. "They would probably lose the Senate, then they would lose the Supreme Court."
There is also precedent in U.S. history for a party to split completely. After all, the Republican Party itself emerged after such a schism in the Whig Party in the 1850s -- in that case over slavery -- though there is no similar sign or foundational issue suggesting that this crisis is an existential one for the GOP.
There is another downside from waging war with Trump: If he prevails over those who would block him, he would only emerge emboldened and would then have the capacity to change the party itself, while the party leadership would only look that much more powerless.
Still, the escalating political war may be one that the GOP has to have, given the fervent anger against a string of failed establishment nominees that has stoked the grass-roots fury that Trump has been able to exploit. In some ways, the party has been at war since at least 1994 following former Congressman Newt Gingrich's Republican revolution through to the tea party challenge to establishment forces in more recent years.
"We are going to have a really rocky year," said Heather Cox Richardson, a Boston College historian whose history of the Republican Party argues that several times in its past, the GOP has gone through a cycle of purging its more extreme elements.
"If you are really looking long term, that implies this is something that has got to be released before the party can rebuild itself in a healthy way," she said.
Richardson's advice to the party's up-and-coming leaders: "I would hide under my desk until 2020."
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A helicopter crash in Russia's western region of Vladimir on March 4 has killed two people.
LONDON (Reuters) - European leaders told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday that a fragile truce in Syria must be used to try to secure a lasting peace without President Bashar al-Assad, the spokeswoman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said.
At stake is whether opposition groups will continue to support the cease-fire.
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RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) -- Brazilian police on Friday were questioning former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and searching his home and other buildings linked to him, one of the most dramatic developments yet in the sprawling corruption case at the oil giant Petrobras....
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RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazilian police on Friday were questioning former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and searching his home and other buildings linked to him as part of the sprawling corruption case at the oil giant Petrobras.
Silva’s spokesman, Jose Crispiniano, confirmed that police were at addresses belonging to Silva, including his residence in Sao Bernardo do Campo in the greater Sao Paulo area and the Instituto Lula, his nonprofit organization. Crispiniano said Silva was speaking to investigators at the federal police station at Sao Paulo’s Congonhas airport.
Brazil’s O Globo news network ran images of police officials around a building they was the Sao Bernardo do Campo apartment, and the broadcaster said police were also at an address connected to one of his sons. Images showed clashes breaking out between Silva’s supporters and detractors outside the Sao Bernardo do Campo apartment.
Crispiniano said police are acting on a warrant that requires Silva to answer questions as part of the continuing probe into corruption at Brazil’s Petrobras oil giant.
Christianne Machiavelli, the spokeswoman of Judge Sergio Moro, who is spearheading the so-called Car Wash investigation into corruption at Petrobras, said that Silva is permitted to answer questions at any federal police station in the country and will not be taken to Curitiba, where Moro is based.
In a statement on their website, the police said they are carrying out 44 judicial orders as part of the Car Wash probe.
The statement did not provide the names of those targeted, but it did specify that some of the orders are taking place in the beachfront city of Guaruja, as well as the rural town of Atibaia.
Silva is suspected of having homes in both places, and investigators are probing reports they may have been remodeled by construction companies caught up in the Petrobras scandal, which has already ensnared top businessmen and heavyweight politicians from the governing Workers’ Party as well as the opposition.
Last week, Silva and his wife, Marisa, were initially meant to appear before state investigators over the matter, but their lawyers said the two would not come and the appearance was cancelled.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court allowed corruption charges in the case to be brought against Eduardo Cunha, a top opposition figure and speaker of the lower house of Congress.
Prosecutors say more than $2 billion was paid in bribes by businessmen to obtain Petrobras contracts. Investigators also have said that some of the money made its way to several political parties, including the Workers’ Party.
Silva last week denounced suggestions of personal corruption, accusing the media and opposition of spreading “lies, leaks and accusations of criminality.”
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The Guardian |
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Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose News UK company publishes The Times and The Sun newspapers, marries actress-model Jerry Hall in London.
The Most of the Master by Matthew Walther
When Carlyle dismissed economics as “the dismal science,” he could not have anticipated the glimmering pen of Maynard Keynes, who from the time he began writing at the turn of the last century until his early death in 1946 brought sweetness and light into the gloomy chamber of Ricardo and Marshall, where the general murkiness has not dissipated much since.
Lord Skidelsky’s new anthology of Keynes’s writings, drawn from the 30 volumes of his collected works ably edited by Elizabeth Johnson and Donald Moggridge between 1971 and 1980 as well as his unpublished papers, is the first book of its kind to have appeared. It is long overdue.
It would be a mistake to think that when Keynes was writing to offer advice to the Beveridge Commission or disputing with academic colleagues he was aspiring to the quality of literature. But even in these occasional writings he has a wonderful ear and the ability to produce witty and memorable aphorisms. “When statistics do not make sense,” he wrote to his research assistant Erwin Rothbarth in 1940, “I find it generally wiser to prefer sense.” “Money is that which one accepts only to get rid of it.”
He also had a marvelous talent for verbal abuse. Stanley Baldwin, he told readers of theTimes, “has invented the formidable argument that you must not do anything because it will mean that you will not be able to do anything else.” “No wonder that man is a Mormon,” he wrote of Mariner Eccles, the chairman of the Federal Reserve during the Roosevelt administration. “No single woman could stand him.”
For nearly every reader of this book there will be surprises in store. In an unpublished 80-page sketch, he writes approvingly of Burke, who “held, and held rightly, that it can seldom be right to sacrifice the well-being of a nation for a generation, to plunge whole communities in distress, or to destroy a beneficent institution for the sake of a supposed millennium in the comparatively remote future.” In passage after passage, he castigates greed, and in “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” expresses his hope that one day “love of money … will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.”
Of equal interest are his remarks about the nature of his discipline. In a letter to Roy Harrod on July 16, 1938, Keynes uses the image of Newton’s apple to argue against the view that economics is a natural, as opposed to a “moral,” science. “It is as though the fall of the apple to the ground depended on the apple’s motives, on whether it is worthwhile falling to the ground, and whether the ground wanted the apple to fall, and on mistaken calculations on the part of the apple as to how far it was from the centre of the earth.” Professional economists—who do not, as a rule, spend much time reading their predecessors—might profit from revisiting the passage in the General Theory in which Keynes condemns a“ large portion of recent ‘mathematical’ economics” as “concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols.”
But it is outside economics and public policy, in his essays and biographical sketches, where we see Keynes at his best, at his most mannered and ebullient. TheEconomic Consequences of the Peaceand Essays in Biography, from the latter of which it would have been nice to see more excerpted here, belong to the same group of slight prose masterpieces as E.M. Forster’s Pharos and Pharillon, the essays of Lytton Strachey, and Logan Pearsall Smith’s Trivia. It is easy to see why, following the advice of Margot Aqsuith, he withheld his fantastical pen portrait of Lloyd George, until after the great man’s death:
How can I convey to the reader, who does not know [Lloyd George], any just impression of this extraordinary figure of our time, this syren, this goat-footed bard, this half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity? One catches in his company that flavour of final purposelessness, inner irresponsibility, existence outside or away from our Saxon good and evil, mixed with cunning, remorselessness, love of power?
Nearly as amusing, for those who enjoy this sort of thing, is “Prince” Woodrow Wilson, the fair-haired monarch of the Western Isles who sets out to free “the maid Europe, of eternal youth and beauty,” also omitted from Economic Consequences of the Peace:
If only the Prince could cast off the paralysis which creeps on him and, crying to heaven, could make the Sign of the Cross, with a sound of thunder and crashing glass the castle would dissolve, the magicians vanish, and Europe leap to his arms. But in this fairy-tale the forces of the half-world win and the soul of Man is subordinated to the spirits of the earth.
Also of strictly literary interest is “My Early Beliefs,” a paper he gave to members of the Bloomsbury Memoir Club in 1938, a beautifully written autobiographical fragment that leaves the reader wishing Keynes had produced a full-length volume of memoirs. This is true despite his occasional eccentricities of judgment—for example, his contention that a single chapter of G.E. Moore’s Principia Ethica, to my mind a windy and tedious book, has “no equal … in literature since Plato”—and his ultimate failure, it seems to me, to defend himself and his contemporaries from the charge of frivolity leveled against them by D.H. Lawrence, the occasion for which the essay was produced.
Not everything here sparkles. Most of the extracts remind us that, its many flashes of wit and humor notwithstanding, the General Theory is a serious book meant for an audience that has studied economics at the post-graduate level. It must be remembered, too, that Keynes was a quintessential Liberal. Everything abhorrent in the Liberalism of his day—the class snobbery that led him to oppose communism in no small part because the proletariat was “boorish”; the unthinking support for the “original genius” of Francis Galton’s eugenics; above all the supreme, unreflective arrogance—is on full view in this anthology.
“In the long run,” Keynes famously wrote, “we are all dead.” This wonderful book reminds us that his dictum does not apply to literature.
The post The Most of the Master appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
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A partial cease-fire in Syria showed signs of unraveling Friday amid mounting accusations of government assaults and a lack of promised humanitarian aid deliveries to scores of besieged people.
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Accuracy In Media |
FBI Edits Radical Islam Out of Anti-Terror Video Game: Who Is the Real 'Puppet'?
Accuracy In Media The FBI has released a new edition of its anti-terror video game, Don't Be a Puppet, that conforms to demands from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to exclude Islamic jihad from a list of potential terror threats. In the game, a player ... |
Re/code |
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The Early Edition: March 3, 2016 by Nadia O'Mara
Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and abroad. Here’s today’s news.
IRAQ and SYRIA
Syria ceasefire. Rebel group, Jaish al-Islam says that the conflict has not stopped since the temporary truce agreement went into effect, accusing the government of violating the agreement and adding that a cessation of hostilities was not feasible while “militias and states kill our people.” [Reuters] Meanwhile, UN special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura said that the ceasefire is holding, with violence “greatly reduced.” [Al Jazeera]
Syria is in a state of de facto partition which seems likely only to continue, reports Yaroslav Trofimov, commenting that division of the war torn country will not assist in the fight against the Islamic State. [Wall Street Journal]
Syria’s government reported a countrywide electricity outage yesterday; Syria’s utilities infrastructure has been damaged during the conflict which in part accounts for the frequent outages experienced. [CNN’s Jason Hanna and Hamdi Alkhshali]
US-led airstrikes continue. The US and coalition military forces carried out eight airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria on March 3. Separately, partner forces conducted a further 21 strikes against targets in Iraq. [Central Command]
SURVEILLANCE, PRIVACY and TECHNOLOGY
Apple v. FBI. A “flood” of support for Apple’s position in its ongoing encryption battle with the FBI streamed into the court yesterday, reports Mario Trujillo, citing a brief submitted by 17 companies, including Twitter, which described the FBI’s attempts to compel Apple to unlock one of the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone as “extraordinary and unprecedented.” [The Hill] Apple has compiled the amicus briefs in support of its position here.
The National Security Agency is “mysteriously absent” from the Apple-FBI fight, observes Jenna McLaughlin, considering the possible reasons for why the NSA has not become involved. [The Intercept]
Amazon will no longer encrypt customers’ data on its Fire tablets, streaming media devices and Kindle e-readers with the latest software update, though the company does not appear to have mentioned removing the full-disc encryption from Fire OS in any public facing materials. [The Guardian’s Nathaniel Mott]
The Pentagon aims to stay up-to-date with technology innovation, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said during an appearance at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. [DoD News]
ISRAEL and PALESTINE
A Palestinian woman has been shot dead after she ran her car over an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank, wounding him. [Reuters]
Israel is close to completing a US-funded multi-billion dollar missile defense system, which will allow it to destroy ballistic missiles and even orbiting satellites. Once complete, it will be superior to any other system in the Middle East. [Washington Post’s Ruth Eglash and William Booth]
“The missiles of the resistance cover each and every spot in occupied Palestine,” but “we do not want war.” Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah touted Lebanon’s missile capabilities in a televised address last month, comments which then took over Israel’s media. The episode is illustrative of the “tense cold war” taking place between Israel and Hezbollah, which dominates Israeli military strategy. [The Daily Beast’s Neri Zibler]
Israel’s “draconian new laws, policies and regulations reinforced by incitement campaigns” target Palestinians living in Israel and, more and more, Jewish liberals, in what Neve Gordon refers to as “an inversion of Israel’s colonial project.” [Al Jazeera]
NORTH KOREA
Leader Kim Jong-un has told North Korea’s military to “bolster up nuclear force” and to “get the nuclear warheads deployed for national defense always on standby so as to be fired any moment,” in response to the new UN sanctions, which the Korean Central News Agency has called “unprecedented and gangster-like.” It is still unclear how advanced North Korea’s nuclear program is. [New York Times’ Choe Sang-Hun; BBC]
Sanctions against North Korea will only be effective if they are enforced, observes the New York Times editorial board, particularly by North Korea’s main ally, China. Then, sanctions must be followed up by an effort to reinstate negotiations with North Korea to close down its nuclear program.
SOUTH CHINA SEA
The US Navy has sent ships and an aircraft carrier to the South China Sea, following Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s warning to China on Tuesday to desist in its militarization of disputed islands. According to Navy Commander Clay Doss, a spokesperson for US Pacific Fleet, the aircraft carrier is conducting a routine patrol of the South China Sea. [Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe]
China is set to increase its military spending by 7-8% this year, although this constitutes the smallest increase for several years. The slow-down is a reflection of the country’s flailing economic growth. [Wall Street Journal’s Jeremy Page; AP]
UKRAINE
“It was a very difficult meeting,” according to Ukraine’s foreign minister. Attempts by Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany to revive the peace process in eastern Ukraine have been stalled by disagreements between Ukraine and Russia. [Wall Street Journal’s Matthew Dalton]
Fighting between Ukraine government forces and pro-Russian armed groups in eastern Ukraine has resulted in the deaths of an estimated 9,160 civilians since it began in April 2014. The rate of casualties has slowed recently, but reports of killings, abductions and torture of prisoners by rebel groups continue to be received by monitor groups. [New York Times’ Nick Cumming-Bruce]
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
Congress must act on Islamic State and the closure of Guantánamo Bay since President Obama has failed to provide a suitable strategy on either front, the House Armed Services Committee chairman, Mac Thornberry said yesterday. Neither issue is “going to go away,” he told reporters, and will need to be dealt with in an upcoming defense policy bill. [The Hill’s Rebecca Kheel]
There were 69 allegations of sexual exploitation or abuse against UN peacekeeping personnel in 2015, according to a UN report, which calls for on-site courts-martial for those accused and the creation of a DNA registry of all peacekeepers. Almost a third of the allegations come from the Central African Republic. [Reuters; AP]
A car bomb detonated by Kurdish rebels has killed two police officers in Nusaybin, on Turkey’s border with Syria. The explosion, at a police station and police lodgings, also wounded 35 others. [AP]
Spanish authorities have seized around 20,000 military uniforms bound for Islamic State and other militant groups. They were hidden in a shipment labeled “secondhand clothing” in the ports of Valencia and Algeciras. [New York Times’ Raphael Minder]
Almost 700 Islamic State fighters have returned home to Tunisia, to date. Sarah Souli examines the reasons behind the returns: disillusionment with their role, the entreaties of their families, or a desire to recruit others. [Al Jazeera]
Did Hillary Clinton’s aides share computer passwords? The FBI is investigating this as a possibility as it attempts to work out how classified emails “jumped the gap” onto Clinton’s private server. [Fox News’ Catherine Herridge and Pamela K Browne] The investigation may be nearing a conclusion, according to legal experts, as indicated by yesterday’s revelation that one of the former secretary of state’s staffers has been granted immunity by the FBI in exchange for his cooperation. [Washington Post’s Matt Zapotosky]
Japan’s prime minister has stopped work on the expansion of the US military base in Okinawa. While the government was hoping to relocate the base to a less populous area, locals want the base removed entirely. The halt in work is the result of a court-mediated settlement between the two sides. [BBC]
Senator Jeff Session has been nominated as chairman of Donald Trump’s national security advisory committee. The Senator is the first to endorse Trump, publicly backing him last weekend by referring to his campaign as a “movement” which “must not fade away.” [The Hill’s Mark Hensch]
The US military is already recruiting women for combat roles, plans endorsed by Defense Secretary Ash Carter reveal. [The Daily Beast]
Britain leaving the EU “could have disastrous repercussions for a US-led post-Cost War order,”experts say. A united Europe is vital to deterrent measures such as economic sanctions, and to the sharing of information. There is also the impact of the loss of the world’s fifth-largest economy and defense budget to consider. [Washington Post’s Griff Witte]
“War games” involving simulated Russian military interventions are “all the rage” among Western military experts, as they try to gauge how best to deal with the country they increasingly see as a global threat. Richard Galpin considers how the West should respond to Russia’s military actions and more assertive foreign policy. [BBC]
Hunting for food rather than burning homes and abducting hostages. The latest attack by Boko Haram on a Cameroon-Nigeria border town saw fighters stealing livestock and whatever food they could find before fleeing with it, further indication that the terrorist group is “falling victim to a major food crisis of its own creation.” [New York Times’ Dionne Searcey]
A bomb exploded under a police van in Belfast, Northern Ireland, this morning, injuring a prison officer. Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers said the attack was “a demonstration of how lethal the terrorist threat continues to be in Northern Ireland.” [BBC]
Since 9/11, Mexican border security has been a “political issue,” with Congress funnelling $90 billion into 650 miles of new fence and military hardware in an attempt to appease an electorate “fearful about terrorism and angry about illegal immigration.” Mark Binelli focuses on the killing of a 16-year-old boy in 2012 as he discusses some “troubling questions” about the US Border Patrol. [New York Times]
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Bilateral military collaboration between Finland and Sweden could potentially lead to the establishment of a treaty-based defense union between the two nonaligned Nordic states.
NATO has stepped up military cooperation and special forces training with Egypt, Tunisia and Mauritania.
Outside the Great Hall of the People on Friday in Beijing, where delegates from the National People’s Congress and an advisory body have been gathering this week.
A 25-year-old German has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison for joining the Islamic State group and working for its secret police.
Reuters |
Brazil's ex-president Lula detained in anti-graft bust
Reuters SAO PAULO Brazil's federal police detained former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for questioning on Friday in an anti-corruption and money laundering operation and said that illegal gains had financed campaigns and expenses of the ruling Workers ... Brazil's Ex-Leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Is Held for QuestioningNew York Times Lula Targeted in Brazil Police Raid Into Corruption ScandalBloomberg Brazil police detain ex-president Lula in corruption probeYahoo News San Francisco Chronicle -BBC News -Chicago Tribune all 66 news articles » |
PARIS (Reuters) - The foreign ministers of France, Britain and Germany called on the main Syrian opposition to attend inter Syrian peace talks due to begin next week, but warned that the negotiations would only succeed if humanitarian access was granted and a ceasefire respected.
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Brazilian police raid home of ex-President Inacio Lula da Silva as part of inquiry into corruption at state oil company Petrobras.
Iraq is calling for an international donor conference to raise funds for rebuilding areas previously held by the Islamic State group.
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - A car bomb and rocket attack by Kurdish militants killed two police officers and wounded 35 people in the southeastern Turkish province of Mardin on Friday, security sources told Reuters.
PARIS (Reuters) - An Air France Airbus A320 jet narrowly avoided colliding with a drone while descending for an approach to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport last month, the French aviation investigation agency BEA said.
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's justice ministry has sent to the prime minister's office a request for parliament to lift the immunity from prosecution of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) leaders, state-run Anadolu Agency said on Friday.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - War planes struck twice on Friday on the outskirts of Syria's Douma, northeast of Damascus, the first raids there since a cessation of hostilities agreement went into effect, a monitoring group said.
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission outlined a plan on Friday to restore the fraying 26-nation Schengen open border area by year-end, warning it would cost the European economy up to 18 billion euros ($19.7 bln) a year if passport-free travel collapses.
Venezuela’s opposition coalition decided Thursday to call on the Organization of American States to help resolve its power struggle with the government of President Nicolás Maduro.
The legislature invoked an article that allows the regional organization to launch initiatives for restoring democracy when an “unconstitutional alteration of the constitutional regime” threatens a member state’s order, according to Agence France-Press.
The opposition has been honing a strategy to oust President Maduro since it took control of the National Assembly in December, a landmark win against years of socialist rule that began under the late Hugo Chávez in 1999. But Venezuela’s Supreme Court has curtailed the opposition’s power.
Amid the political struggle, Venezuela is in the throws of a major economic crisis, fueled by failing oil prices and expensive social policies. The oil-rich nation’s economy shrunk 5.7% last year.
[AFP]
The leaders of Russia, France, and Germany say the have agreed that they need to use the opportunity created by a truce in Syria to work on a more substantial peace process.
European Council President Donald Tusk is meeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on March 4 for talks about how to deal with the migrant crisis.
United Nations officials said they were on the verge of an agreement with the Syrian regime to get relief flowing and to lift a ban on medical aid to opposition-held areas.
Meeting between foreign ministers of France, Russia, Germany and Ukraine aimed at reviving peace process for eastern Ukraine ends in acrimony.
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Experts warned that “Brexit” could be a boon to adversaries such as Russia, while weakening the West.
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canadians would appreciate it if Americans paid more attention to what’s going on around the globe.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov has met with the U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Tefft to discuss the nearly week-old cease-fire in Syria.
GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency proposed a six-point plan to European Union heads of state on Friday to resolve the migrant crisis, warning that the situation was quickly deteriorating in Greece where some 30,000 refugees are stuck.
PARIS (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that President Vladimir Putin confirmed Russia's commitment to a ceasefire that took hold in Syria last weekend during a phone conversation with four EU leaders.
The theoretical question of whether the U.S. military would obey illegal orders from a potential President Trump got a lot less theoretical with his recent string of wins.
Some of Trump’s chest beating about how he would handle ISIS and other terrorists has generated ripples of concern in military circles. That’s because when it comes to giving orders to the U.S. military, Presidential powers are circumscribed, not only by the laws passed by Congress, but by the policies, regulations and traditions of those charged with carrying out those commands.
“The military officer belongs to a profession upon whose members are conferred great responsibility, a code of ethics, and an oath of office,” Marine Lieut. Colonel Andrew Milburn wrote in a Pentagon scholarly journal in 2010. “These grant him moral autonomy and obligate him to disobey an order he deems immoral. … Indeed, the military professional’s obligation to disobey is an important check and balance in the execution of policy.”
Two of Trump’s military pledges highlight the limits of a commander-in-chief’s power. One, involving stepped-up interrogation techniques that would include but also go beyond waterboarding, could be a gray zone where the government’s lawyers who rule on such things might disagree among themselves. The second—hunting down and killing the relatives of terrorists—is a black-and-white case that the U.S. military’s lawyers would refuse to sanction, and its troops to carry out.
“I would bring back waterboarding,” Trump said last month. Waterboarding involves pouring water over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning. “And I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized such so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” that went beyond those allowed by the Army’s interrogation manual in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Congress barred such techniques in 2005, and did so again in October. But government lawyers—especially civilian appointees—can always try to justify legally whatever their President wants them to justify.
“Any democracy has to be concerned about the kind of civil-military crisis that could arise if its armed forces comes to doubt the lawfulness of the orders its being given,” says Charlie Dunlap, a retired Air Force judge advocate general now teaching at Duke Law School. “You don’t want the military thinking it has to constantly question and second-guess the legality of every order being given by the commander-in-chief.”
The targeting of terrorists’ families isn’t a close call. “You have to take out their families,” Trump said in December, referring to members of ISIS and other terrorist groups. “They say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.”
The logic of Trump’s call is clear: use the threat of death against terrorists’ families as a crowbar to change the terrorists’ behavior. So, ironically, is its legality: “Any order to specifically target civilian family members who are not directly participating in hostilities is simply a nonstarter for today’s military,” says Dunlap, who says he has no public opinion on any candidate. Such a command, he adds, would be a “classic example of an illegal order that could not and would not be obeyed.”
If legalities don’t stay the hand of a President Trump, perhaps the prospect of impeachment might. “Whether giving such orders would constitute a high crime or misdemeanor and thereby expose Mr. Trump to impeachment is another matter,” says Eugene Fidell, a lecturer at Yale Law School and former president of the National Institute of Military Justice. “Assuming he lacks political support in Congress, I wouldn’t rule it out. If he does so on Day 1, it could be a very short presidency.”
There is, of course, a yuge difference between pursuing unwise, as opposed to illegal, policies, when it comes to issuing orders to the U.S. military. Since 9/11, the U.S. has conducted far more unwise than illegal actions. But as Trump moves closer to winning the Republican nomination, it will be worth watching to see if he backs away from his illegal pledges . If not, he will join a long list of Presidential candidates making promises they can’t keep once elected.
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A car thief pushed his way through an open door and hit James Holmes repeatedly around the head during an October attack.
Jaime Stiuso, who for almost 40 years was central to Argentina's secret services, has returned from self-imposed exile to testify before a judge in the Nisman case, and shock a television chat show
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People Magazine |
Who Was Legendary Singer Nina Simone - and Why Is Zoë Saldana's Movie About Her So Controversial?
People Magazine Who Was Legendary Singer Nina Simone – and Why Is Zoë Saldana's Movie About Her So Controversial? Nina Simone: All About the Legendary Singer and Civil Rights Advocate. Nina Simone; (inset) Zoë Saldana. Jack Robinson/Getty; Inset: Matt ... Nina director responds to casting controversyEntertainment Weekly Nina Simone's Daughter Is 'Not Upset' at Zoe Saldana Over Biopic RoleTIME Zoe Saldana Isn't Black Enough to Play Nina Simone? Please Report to the Principal's Office (Commentary)TheWrap Cinema Blend -Reuters -Indie Wire (blog) all 628 news articles » |
With Brazil’s economy tumbling and her campaign strategist jailed, President Dilma Rousseff now confronts a report that a senator from her party will accuse her in a plea deal.
The Daily Vertical: Putin's Bait And Switch (Transcript)by support@pangea-cms.com (Brian Whitmore)
Russia's escalation of hostilities in Ukraine this week, just as a cease-fire in Syria was kicking in, was as cynical as it was predictable.
A 23-year-old Ukrainian is being held in custody in the United States after pretending for four years that he was a high school teenager.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tentative plans for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to visit Cuba before mid-March for a human rights dialogue have been canceled, two U.S. officials said on Thursday, amid concerns over the Cuban government's human rights record.
French troops have reportedly killed a Spanish citizen who was a senior commander of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), one of the most prolific al-Qaeda-linked groups in Africa.
March 4, 2016, 8:53 AM (IDT)
Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the king’s son, is choreographing escalated Saudi intervention in the Syrian war. He plans to arm Syrian rebels militias with missiles capable of striking the new Russian T-90 tanks, which debkafile’s intelligence sources disclose were shipped directly to the Syrian army’s armed divisions in the last two weeks from the Russian Black Sea base of Novorossiysk.
Study: Some Birds as Smart as Apesby webdesk@voanews.com (Faith Lapidus)
Bird-brain is not the insult it once was, according to new research into the cognitive skills of birds. A pair of European scientists reports that crows and parrots can think logically, recognize themselves in a mirror and feel empathy - abilities "as sophisticated and diverse as those of apes." Birds' brains do not have a neocortex, the structure in mammalian brains that controls cognitive skills. They're also much smaller than simian brains. So how can they perform as well as apes on certain tasks? Onur Güntürkün, from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum suggested that different mechanisms for complex processes developed independently in birds and mammals. Writing in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, he and Thomas Bugnyar at the University of Vienna report that while the two brains have different structures, there are similarities in the brain architecture. Both groups have a pre-frontal brain structure that controls similar high-level functions. The authors propose a separate evolutionary path for the similarities, because both animal groups faced the same challenges. They conclude that neither a multi-layered cortex nor a big brain is required for complex mental skills.
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The criminal trial is the first Spain has seen with members of the royal family among the accused
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Trump responds to Mitt Romney's criticism, by saying Romney begged him for an endorsement during the presidential candidate race in 2012
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