| Sanders retracts controversial endorsement less than 24 hours after making it Posted: 13 Dec 2019 02:03 PM PST  Sen. Bernie Sanders retracted his endorsement of congressional candidate Cenk Uygur on Friday, less than 24 hours after making it, as allegations of sexism hit the former online talk show host.
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| Judge's decision may shine light on secret Trump-Putin meeting notes Posted: 13 Dec 2019 10:49 AM PST  A district court judge in Washington, D.C. has ordered administration lawyers to explain why, for more than two years, the White House has refused to turn over to the State Department an interpreter's notes from a meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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| 2 children dead after being swept away in Arizona floodwaters Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:34 AM PST  The bodies of two children were found about three miles from the crash scene.
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| Judge: 234K Wisconsin voter registrations should be tossed; victory for conservatives Posted: 13 Dec 2019 04:36 PM PST  A Wisconsin judge on Friday ordered that the registration of up to 234,000 voters be tossed out because they may have moved, a victory for conservatives that could make it more difficult for people to vote next year in the key swing state.
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| Kamala Harris flames out: Black people didn't trust her, and they were wise not to Posted: 14 Dec 2019 02:00 AM PST  Younger blacks and black progressives took a deeper, dispassionate dive into Kamala Harris' real-world record. They didn't like what they found
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| Man gives DNA to find out if he's Detroit boy missing since 1994 Posted: 13 Dec 2019 11:30 AM PST  A Michigan man give a DNA sample to the Livonia Police Department to find out if he is D'Wan Sims, a boy who has been missing for 25 years.
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| Nazi Germany's 'Stealth Fighter' Could Not Stop Hitler From Losing World War II Posted: 12 Dec 2019 08:00 PM PST  A sign of things to come.
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| The CEO of a Silicon Valley startup was quietly fired after allegedly spending over $75,000 at strip clubs and charging it to a company credit card Posted: 14 Dec 2019 04:25 PM PST  Turvo named a new CEO in November named Scott Lang. The company was last valued at $435 million, according to Pitchbook.
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| US Pacific commander says China seeks to intimidate region Posted: 13 Dec 2019 02:28 AM PST  China's activities in territory it claims in the South China Sea are meant to intimidate other nations in the region, the commander of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet said Friday. Adm. John Aquilino said China's actions, including constructing islands in the disputed waters, are intended to project its military capacity. China's vast territorial claims, far beyond its shores, have been challenged by other claimants, including Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.
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| Warren, slumping in the polls, attacks Biden and Buttigieg Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:39 PM PST  With polls showing her once steady rise to the top tier of the Democratic race stalling, Elizabeth Warren went on the attack in New Hampshire.
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| Iran Demands $6 Billion Oil Payment From South Korea: Chosun Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:47 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Iran's Foreign Ministry called in the South Korean ambassador last month to demand payment of 7 trillion won ($6 billion) for oil it sold to the Asian country, Chosun Ilbo reported, citing officials it didn't identify.Iran expressed "strong regret" over Seoul's failure to complete the payment, which has been deposited at two South Korean banks without being transferred to Iran's central bank for years due to U.S. sanctions against the Middle Eastern country, the newspaper said. It added that other Iranian authorities including the central bank also complained.South Korea sent a delegation to the Middle East late last month and explained that the country will cooperate with the U.S. to successfully complete transfer of the payment, it added.To contact the reporter on this story: Kanga Kong in Seoul at kkong50@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Sara Marley, Siraj DatooFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Turns out I'm Jewish after all Posted: 13 Dec 2019 02:45 AM PST ![Turns out I'm Jewish after all]( "Turns out I'm Jewish after all") Being Jewish has become hard again.After decades when Jews in America permitted themselves to believe they had finally found a welcoming home in a majority Christian, creedally universalist country, things have begun to shift in familiar and terrifying ways. Jews have been murdered in synagogues and kosher delis in the United States. They are regularly harassed and beaten on the streets of American cities. Swastikas scrawled on walls, acts of attempted arson and vandalism at synagogues, shouted slurs — the stories add up, amplifying one another and mixing with similar and worse stories from abroad.Over a hundred gravestones in a Jewish cemetery in France were spray-painted with swastikas earlier this month. It was the latest in a seemingly endless series of incidents across the continent. And of course leaders (and would-be leaders) of nations, along with prime-time TV pundits, now actively encourage such demonization, turning Jewish philanthropists into scapegoats, blaming them for a wide range of injustices. As enemies of the Jewish people have always done.It's a painful spectacle for anyone committed to liberal ideals of pluralism and tolerance. But it's especially, existentially, agonizing for Jews themselves — even for bad, part-time Jews like me.I was born Jewish — my father is the son of orthodox Jewish immigrants from Central Europe (Poland and Austria), and my mother a convert — but for much of the past two decades, that hasn't much mattered. I grew up identifying as a Jew, but we never worshipped at a synagogue (even on high holy days). I received no Jewish education. There was no Hebrew school. No bar mitzvah.By the time I started to sense religious stirrings in my late 20s, I knew far more about Christian, and especially Catholic, theology and moral teaching than I did about Judaism. Plus, by then I'd gone and done what American Jews are often warned against doing (and yet increasingly do anyway): I married a non-Jew. That my wife's family hoped and expected our children to be raised Catholic made the path forward obvious. I would repudiate my upbringing by converting to Catholicism.As regular readers know, the conversion didn't take. After 17 years, in August 2018, I publicly renounced Catholicism. The decision was mainly motivated by disgust at the church's systematic sexual perversion and corruption. But there was also something else going on.Exploration of existential possibilities is relatively easy in good times. When I turned away from my birthright, I knew it was a rejection — a turning of my back on my family, an act of disregard for the demographic fate of the Jewish community, which would lose me and my progeny forevermore. But I would still express love for my family in other ways, and my rejection of Judaism seemed like the infliction of a very small harm. True, there aren't that many Jews in the world. But really, how important was little old me, my kids, and those who would follow us? And anyway, the Jews were doing just fine — in the U.S., in other liberal democracies around the world, in Israel. My contribution seemed pretty close to infinitesimal, utterly irrelevant in the grand scheme of Jewish history.But things look and feel very different in dark times. Not that I'm now deluded enough to think the fate of Judaism in the world depends in any measurable way on whether or not I call myself a Jew or rise in defense of Jews when they face threat or come under outright attack. Of course it doesn't. I'm as infinitesimal and irrelevant as ever. Yet the fact remains that my youthful shirking of my inheritance no longer feels like a liberation. It feels more like an act of cowardice, perhaps even an expression of decadence, a sign that I took certain things for granted that no Jew should ever treat as a given.I also fear that at some level I was trying to hide, conceal, or camouflage myself by seeking to blend in so thoroughly and completely to the default Christianity of the surrounding culture. At the time of my conversion, in the center-right circles where I then worked, that culture was maximally welcoming of my spiritual decision while also treating the Judaism I left behind with a great deal of sincere respect. The borderline between traditions and faiths felt porous. Permeable.But not anymore. Walls are going up. Hard edges and irreconcilable differences are returning all over the liberal democratic world, raising a serious question about whether and to what extent that world will remain liberal and democratic. It would be nice if the cosmopolitan universalism that prevailed in the decade or so following the conclusion of the Cold War — during the era when so many of us permitted ourselves to believe that history had come to a peaceful end — could continue to feel compelling in the face of this threat. But it doesn't. It feels like foolishness. The world has changed, and we are changing with it. And we don't know how far the change is going to go.Turns out I'm Jewish after all. However malformed and badly enacted that Jewishness is and has been. The times are no longer compatible with, they no longer afford me the luxury of, denying it. Anything else would be irresponsible.That certainly doesn't mean I'll stop being infuriatingly, unreliably contrarian in my judgment of political issues and disputes. I'll continue to judge Israel's settlement policies and some of its punitive actions against the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza to be acts of moral and strategic idiocy. But I'll also continue to defend Israel's unconditional right to exist and defend itself against military threat. I'll continue to view President Trump's gestures of support for Jews with considerable skepticism — as incompatible with free speech and as doing little to compensate for the much greater harm precipitated by his intolerant and inflammatory rhetoric, which has done so much to activate previously dormant racism and anti-Semitism in the country. But I'll also continue to think of Judaism as a nationality or ethnicity as well as a religion. (Otherwise I could never have been considered a Jew in the first place.)But then what does my reaffirmation of my own Judaism amount to?All it means is that if things get worse — and who would dare try to reassure a Jew that it won't? — I will know exactly how and where I'll be taking my stand: in proud, defiant self-defense with my fellow Jews.More stories from theweek.com Trump's pathological obsession with being laughed at The most important day of the impeachment inquiry Jerry Falwell Jr.'s false gospel of memes
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| Iowa Democrats worry 'Medicare for All' hurts key industry Posted: 13 Dec 2019 09:43 PM PST  Nearly 17,000 Iowans are either directly employed by health insurance companies or employed in related jobs, according to data collected by America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry advocacy group. Des Moines, the seat of the state's most Democratic county, is known as one of America's insurance capitals partly because of the high number of health insurance companies and jobs in the metro area.
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| Joe Biden told a protestor at his Texas campaign rally that he's 'just like Donald Trump' for asking about corruption in Ukraine Posted: 14 Dec 2019 09:13 AM PST  At a campaign event in San Antonio, Joe Biden was interrupted by a protestor. Biden told the crowd not to hurt him, because it wasn't a 'Trump rally.'
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| Satellite evades ‘day of reckoning' to discover puzzling weather phenomenon on Jupiter Posted: 13 Dec 2019 04:51 PM PST  At first glance, these newly released images by NASA may look like lava churning in the heart of a volcano, but they reveal otherworldly storm systems whirling in a way that surprised scientists.The swirls in the photos are cyclones around Jupiter's south pole, captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft on Nov. 3, 2019. Juno has been orbiting the solar system's largest planet since 2016 and has seen these polar cyclones before, but its latest flight over this region of the planet revealed a startling discovery - a new cyclone had formed unexpectedly. Six cyclones can be seen at Jupiter's south pole in this infrared image taken on Feb. 2, 2017, during the 3rd science pass of NASA's Juno spacecraft. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM) Prior to its early November pass, Juno had photographed five windstorms arranged in a uniform, pentagonal pattern around one storm sitting stationary over the south pole."It almost appeared like the polar cyclones were part of a private club that seemed to resist new members," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.It is unclear when exactly the new cyclone formed, but it changed the arrangement of the storms from a pentagon to a hexagon.Winds in these cyclones average around 225 mph, according to NASA, wind speeds higher than any tropical cyclone ever recorded on Earth. An outline of the continental United States superimposed over the central cyclone and an outline of Texas is superimposed over the newest cyclone at Jupiter's south pole give a sense of their immense scale. The hexagonal arrangement of the cyclones is large enough to dwarf the Earth. (Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM) The discovery of this evolving meteorological phenomenon almost didn't happen as Jupiter itself almost caused the mission to end abruptly.Juno is a solar-powered spacecraft that relies on constant light from the sun to keep the craft alive. Flying through Jupiter's enormous shadow would take about 12 hours to complete, which would cut off the power source, drain the spacecraft's battery and potentially spell the end of the mission."Our navigators and engineers told us a day of reckoning was coming, when we would go into Jupiter's shadow for about 12 hours," said Steve Levin, Juno project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.To avoid the potential mission-ending eclipse, Juno fired up its engine (which was not initially designed for such a maneuver) and adjusted its trajectory just enough to avoid the icy grip of Jupiter's shadow. Jupiter's moon Io casts its shadow on Jupiter whenever it passes in front of the Sun as seen from Jupiter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Tanya Oleksuik, (C) CC BY) "Thanks to our navigators and engineers, we still have a mission," said Bolton. "What they did is more than just make our cyclone discovery possible; they made possible the new insights and revelations about Jupiter that lie ahead of us."NASA scientists will continue to study these polar vortices in future flights over Jupiter's south pole to better understand the atmosphere over this part of the planet."These cyclones are new weather phenomena that have not been seen or predicted before," said Cheng Li, a Juno scientist from the University of California, Berkeley. "Nature is revealing new physics regarding fluid motions and how giant planet atmospheres work. Future Juno flybys will help us further refine our understanding by revealing how the cyclones evolve over time."
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| How to Get a Green Deal Done: Europe’s Lessons for U.S. Democrats Posted: 14 Dec 2019 03:00 AM PST ![How to Get a Green Deal Done: Europe's Lessons for U.S. Democrats]( "How to Get a Green Deal Done: Europe's Lessons for U.S. Democrats") (Bloomberg) -- When it comes to Green Deals, Europe has a lesson or two for liberal politicians in the U.S. trying to engineer far-reaching policies to address climate change.An American lawmaker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, may have done more than anyone else to popularize the concept of a sweeping "green deal" to shift away from fossil fuels. But now the European Union is much closer to translating the goal into concrete policies that have a decent chance of actually being implemented.Both the U.S. Green New Deal resolution and the European Green Deal, which was unveiled this week by the EU's executive arm, share the same targets: limiting global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, in line with the landmark Paris climate accord. To meet this objective, backers of the plans in the EU and the U.S. aim to eliminate emissions by 2050 at the latest. Both plans trace their lineage explicitly to the New Deal of the 1930s, a series of social programs, public work projects and financial reforms championed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a way to counteract the Great Depression. The Green Deals may have identical goals and nearly matching branding, but the policies are oceans apart when it comes to the means of delivery.The European version is strictly focused on climate, and those policy areas which can affect it, such an industry, energy and public procurement. The U.S. Green New Deal — as it is laid out in the Ocasio-Cortez-sponsored resolution and the policy programs of Democratic presidential hopefuls such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — is tied to a series of contentious issues unrelated to climate, from health care coverage to employment.Europe's narrow focus helped the plan gain the backing of conservative, centrist and center-left governments across the 28 nation-bloc, while the sweeping U.S. manifestos have little chance of garnering across-the-aisle support from legislators. Even ultra-conservative European governments, such as Poland's, which resisted committing themselves to Green Deal goals, didn't object to the bloc striving to meet the objective. Across the Atlantic, even modest efforts to curb climate change have been met with hostility by conservatives in the U.S. Congress, so reaction to the resolution was bound to split along political fault lines from the start. However, the Green New Deal's very broad ambition has made it a favorite target of Republicans, who have tried to cast it as an illustration of how their liberal opponents are both dangerous and laughably unrealistic.Larry Kudlow, Trump's chief economic advisor, stated that it would "literally destroy the economy." Republican Senator John Barrasso suggested that the Green New Deal would result in the banning of cows, who burp methane, a greenhouse gas, and therefore the end of ice cream. The House Republican Conference and U.S. Chamber of Commerce dismissed it as a "Trojan horse for socialism."The European Green Deal is also more concrete. The EU Commission unveiled on Wednesday a roadmap of specific legislative proposals divided by sector, measurable policy goals with due to be agreed interim benchmarks, and fixed dates. On the other hand, there are few numbers and details to be seen in any version of the Green New Deal advocated by U.S. Democratic hopefuls, other than public spending pledges.Europe's step-by-step and sector by sector approach has already delivered real wins. The world's biggest multilateral financial institution, owned by EU governments, has announced it will end funding for fossil fuel energy projects and its intention to mobilize a trillion euros ($1.1 trillion) over the next decade to finance the bloc's transition to a low-carbon economy.To minimize risks for a pushback from skeptics, the EU's Green Deal is also more flexible. While its U.S. counterpart aims 100% electricity production from renewables by 2030 — a target criticized by many as unrealistic — the EU lets its member states choose their energy mix, including zero-emitting nuclear power.The benefits of flexibility may end up outweighing any costs in terms of ambition and speed. Through a series of incentives and deterrents, such as the world's biggest cap-and-trade program for polluters and progressively stricter limits on emissions from transport, the EU is effectively pushing its industries and companies toward ever cleaner technologies.Another way the European climate push differs is by successfully engaging the private sector. The continent's biggest business leaders threw their weight behind a plan to make the bloc climate neutral, on the condition that appropriate safeguards "to avoid carbon and investment leakage and guarantee a global level playing field for competition," are adopted. The EU is already considering such measures, including adjusting restrictions on state aid for companies, changing public procurement rules and penalizing imports from countries with looser emissions controls.In a sign of such private-sector support, earlier this month Spain's Repsol SA became the first oil major to align itself with the Paris climate goals, saying it will eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions from its own operations and its customers by 2050. Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal — the world's largest steel-maker — announced on Friday that it set a target to reduce emissions by 30% by 2030 to contribute to the Green Deal.To be sure, the European Green Deal is facing its own headwinds. Leading airlines attacked plans to impose a region-wide kerosene tax as part of a sweeping new environmental strategy, saying investment in sustainable fuels and electric planes would be more effective in reducing carbon emissions. More is still to come. While the European Commission will draft all the rules to bring the bloc's Green Deal to life, they will require the support of EU governments and the bloc's assembly. Expect every word and comma to be analyzed by national governments, parliamentarians, companies, industry lobbies and environmental activists. But rallying more than two dozen governments behind a shared goal to eliminate emissions and initiating the process of legislative proposals is something to start with. That's the way the EU does things — one small, tedious, win at a time. \--With assistance from Jonathan Stearns and Ewa Krukowska.To contact the authors of this story: Nikos Chrysoloras in Brussels at nchrysoloras@bloomberg.netLeslie Kaufman in New York at lkaufman27@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Aaron Rutkoff at arutkoff@bloomberg.net, Ben SillsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Thousands join biggest protest for years in Thai capital Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:07 AM PST  Several thousand people took part in Thailand's biggest protest since a 2014 coup on Saturday after authorities moved to ban a party that has rallied opposition to the government of former military ruler Prayuth Chan-ocha. The demonstration in Bangkok, called just a day earlier by Future Forward party leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, a 41-year-old billionaire, revived memories of the spasms of street protest that have roiled the Thai capital periodically during the past two decades of political turbulence. "This is just the beginning," Thanathorn told the cheering crowd that spilled across walkways and stairways close to the MBK Centre mall, in the heart of Bangkok's shopping and business district.
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| Crashed Chile plane had emergency in 2016: Air Force Posted: 14 Dec 2019 05:31 PM PST  The Chilean Hercules C-130 plane that crashed on its way to Antarctica, killing all 38 people on board, suffered an emergency three years ago on the same route, the Air Force said Saturday. In a statement, the Chilean Air Force said the plane shown in the footage is the same one that crashed during a crossing of the Drake Passage connecting the Atlantic and Pacific, en route to a Chilean airbase. As it approached the Antarctica base in 2016 "the crew realized that the left main gear of the aircraft did not travel to the down position and secure when activating the landing gear," the statement said.
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| Body of 21-year-old vet recovered from volcano island as family fight for survival in hospital Posted: 14 Dec 2019 09:02 AM PST  Krystal Browitt, an Australian veterinary student from Melbourne who had just turned 21, was sightseeing with her sister and father on the island of Whakaari when toxic ash clouds spewed rocks and dust high into the air. Her mother stayed on the cruise ship, safe from the hot blanket of fumes and stones that rained down on the group of tourists hoping to see inside the crater of one of the country's most active volcanoes. The body of Ms Browitt was finally recovered from the island in a daring mission by elite military bomb squads on Friday. She was formally identified as among the 15 to have died so far on Saturday morning. The closure is likely to be little comfort for her mother Marie who was on Saturday keeping a bedside vigil for her surviving daughter, Stephanie, 23, and husband Paul fighting for their lives among the critically injured in hospital. Fourteen people remain hospitalised in New Zealand, 10 of whom are in critical condition with horrific burns. Thirteen others have been transported to Australia for treatment. One person succumbed to their injuries on Saturday morning, officials said. Police divers prepare to search the waters near White Island off the coast of Whakatane Credit: NZ Police Some patients have burns to up to 95 per cent of their bodies. Surgeons ordered 1.2 million sq cm of donor skin from the US earlier in the week in a desperate attempt to keep victims alive. It is understood that two British women are among the injured in hospital. The nature of the gas meant that survivors were found with third-degree burns to their skin but their clothing largely intact, and many suffered burnt lungs from inhaling the superheated gas, made up of sulphur dioxide and hydrogen chloride. Dr Watson said the gases would have reacted with the eyes, skin and mucous membranes, causing agony to the victims. Two people are missing, assumed dead, on the island itself. A team of nine from the Police National Dive Squad resumed their search at 7am on Saturday for a body seen in the water. Deputy Commissioner Tims said the water around the island is contaminated, requiring the divers to take extra precautions to ensure their safety, including using specialist protective equipment. "Divers have reported seeing a number of dead fish and eels washed ashore and floating in the water," he said. "Each time they surface, the divers are decontaminated using fresh water."
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| A Mobster's Murder, and the Jockeying to Move Up the Hierarchy Posted: 14 Dec 2019 07:20 AM PST  NEW YORK -- On a quiet night in March, a mob leader was executed in New York City for the first time since 1985. The body of Francesco Cali, a reputed boss of the Gambino crime family, lay crumpled outside his Staten Island home, pierced by at least six bullets.Hours later, two soldiers in the Gambino family talked on the phone. One of them, Vincent Fiore, said he had just read a "short article" about the "news," according to prosecutors.No tears were shed for their fallen leader. The murder was "a good thing," Fiore, 57, said on the call. The vacuum at the top meant that Andrew Campos, described by authorities as the Gambino captain who ran Fiore's crew, was poised to gain more power.Cali's death was just the beginning of surprises to come for the Gambino family.Last week, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged Fiore and 11 others in a sprawling racketeering scheme linked to the Gambinos, once the country's preeminent organized crime dynasty. The charges stemmed from a yearslong investigation involving wiretapped calls, physical surveillance and even listening devices installed inside an office where mob associates worked.As part of the case, the government released a court filing that offered an extremely rare glimpse at the reactions inside a Mafia family to the murder of their boss -- a curious mix of mourning and jockeying for power. The case showed that life in the mob can be just as petty as life in a corporate cubicle."Mob guys are the biggest gossips in the world," said James J. Hunt, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's office in New York. "You think they're tough guys, but they're all looking out for themselves. The only way they get promoted is by a guy dying or going to jail."While Fiore initially plotted how Cali's death would help him and his faction, he adopted a different tone when calling his own ex-wife a few days later, prosecutors said. He warmly referred to Cali as "Frankie" and seemed to mourn the boss as a man who "was loved." He speculated about the killer's motive, saying he had watched the surveillance tape from Cali's home that captured the murder.Vincent Fiore appeared ambitious, court documents showed, eager to reveal his connections to other gangs and organized crime families. About two weeks after Cali's death, Fiore bragged in another wiretapped conversation about how he could take revenge on students who had hit his son at school, a government filing said.Fiore talked first about sending his daughter to beat the students up.But he also had other options, he said on the call. His ex-wife's father was a Latin King, her nephews were Bloods, and her cousin was a member of the Ching-a-Lings, the South Bronx motorcycle gang.Vincent Fiore and the other defendants have each pleaded not guilty to the charges. A lawyer for Fiore did not respond to a request for comment.Despite decades of declining influence in New York City, the Gambino family, led by the notoriously flashy John J. Gotti in the 1980s, is still raking in millions of dollars, according to the government. Prosecutors said they had evidence that the family had maintained its long-standing coziness with the construction industry, infiltrating high-end Manhattan properties.The indictments accused Gambino associates of bribing a real estate executive to skim hundreds of thousands of dollars from New York City construction projects, including the XI, a luxury building with two twisting towers being built along the High Line park in West Chelsea.At the height of their power in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Gambinos and other organized crime families had a stranglehold on New York City construction, through their control of construction unions and the concrete business.Some of the defendants charged last week operated a carpentry company called CWC Contracting Corp., which prosecutors said paid kickbacks to real estate developers in exchange for contracts.Despite the scramble after Cali's death in March, the Gambino crime family continued to thrive through fraud, bribery and extortion, investigators said.The wiretaps quoted in court papers hinted at the crime family's capacity for violence. One of the defendants was recorded in April claiming that he had a fight in a diner and "stabbed the kid, I don't know, 1,000 times with a fork." Inside another defendant's home and vehicle, agents found brass knuckles and a large knife that appeared to have blood on it.Among the notable names in last week's takedown were two longtime Gambino members, Andrew Campos and Richard Martino, who were once considered by Gotti to be rising stars in the Mafia, according to former officials."John was enamored by these guys," said Philip Scala, a retired FBI agent who supervised the squad investigating the Gambino family. "He couldn't believe what they were doing. These kids were making millions of dollars as entrepreneurs."In particular, Martino has long been viewed by mob investigators as somewhat of a white-collar crime genius, former officials said. Prosecutors have previously accused him of orchestrating the largest consumer fraud of the 1990s, which netted close to $1 billion. One part of that scheme involved a fake pornography website that lured users with the promise of a free tour and then charged their credit cards without their knowledge.Campos, 50, and Martino, 60, each pleaded guilty in 2005 to their role in the fraud and served time in federal prison.But as soon as they were released, the government said, they returned to the family business.Martino is now accused of hiding his wealth from the government to avoid paying the full $9.1 million forfeiture from his earlier case.After Martino's release from prison in 2014, he still controlled companies that conducted millions of dollars in transactions, using intermediaries to obscure his involvement, the government alleged. This included investments in pizzerias on Long Island and in Westchester County, according to a person familiar with the matter.Martino's lawyer, Maurice Sercarz, said his client fully paid the required forfeiture before reporting to prison. He added, "The suggestion that Mr. Martino concealed his ownership of businesses and bank accounts to avoid this obligation ignores or misrepresents his financial circumstances."Campos, meanwhile, climbed the ranks to become a captain inside the Gambino family, according to prosecutors.Henry E. Mazurek, a lawyer for Campos, said the government's photos and surveillance footage of his client were not evidence of a crime. "The government presents a trumped-up case that substitutes old lore for actual evidence," Mazurek said.After searching Campos' home in Scarsdale, New York, a wealthy suburb north of New York City, investigators found traces of a storied mob legacy. In his closet there were photos taken during his visits with Martino to see Frank Locascio, Gotti's former consigliere, or counselor, in prison.Locascio is serving a life sentence. He was convicted in 1992 alongside Gotti by the same U.S. attorney's office that brought last week's indictment. Gotti, who died in prison in 2002, was found guilty of, among other things, ordering the killing of Paul Castellano in 1985, the last time a Gambino boss was gunned down in the street.On March 14, the day after Cali's death, Campos drove into Manhattan around 5:50 p.m. to discuss the circumstances of the murder with Gambino family members, seemingly unaware that law enforcement was tracking his every move.He parked near a pizzeria on the Upper East Side, according to a person familiar with the matter. As the night progressed, he met with Gambino family captains on the Upper East Side and near a church in Brooklyn. They stood in the street, chatting openly, but law enforcement officials could not hear the conversations.Several days later, Campos and Fiore drove to Staten Island for a secret meeting. A group of about eight high-level Gambino lieutenants gathered to discuss Cali's murder, a court filing said. In a wiretapped call the next day, Fiore complained that he had stayed out past midnight.Fiore said on the call that a woman had been at Cali's home the night of his death, pointing to her as a possible connection. Court papers do not reveal the woman's identity.Nobody within the mob family seemed to suspect the person who was charged: a 25-year-old who appeared to have no clear motive.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Will the Navy's New LRASM Missile Change the Balance of Power? Posted: 13 Dec 2019 08:00 PM PST  Or will it keep the status quo?
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| The 25 Best Survival Games Posted: 14 Dec 2019 06:00 AM PST |
| After UK election, Trump sees 'harbinger' of things to come Posted: 13 Dec 2019 02:14 PM PST  After a tumultuous tenure in office, a controversial candidate expanded his grip on power, surpassing a weak opponent and drawing support from unlikely pockets of voters. It's the same scenario President Donald Trump is eager to replicate in next year's American election and Democrats are desperate to avoid. Others cautioned against drawing too many lessons from the British elections.
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| Naive Brazil to Rethink Relations With U.S., Bolsonaro Ally Says Posted: 13 Dec 2019 02:00 AM PST ![Naive Brazil to Rethink Relations With U.S., Bolsonaro Ally Says]( "Naive Brazil to Rethink Relations With U.S., Bolsonaro Ally Says") (Bloomberg) -- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was "naive" to align fully with the U.S. and should change course, the head of the powerful agribusiness caucus in Brazilian Congress said.Alceu Moreira, a Bolsonaro ally and the president of the Parliamentary Agriculture Front, said two developments have prompted a review of Brazilian foreign policy: The continuation of a U.S. ban on Brazilian raw meat; as well as President Donald Trump's decision to prioritize Argentina's bid to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development after publicly endorsing Brazil's membership."That's when we stopped being naive," Moreira said in an interview at Bloomberg's office in Brasilia. "Being naive is when I think that, just because I like you, you should like me back in the same way. Now I see that I like you but you don't actually like me that much."Read more: All-In Trump Bet Backfires for Bolsonaro Amid Tariff ThreatsSince taking office in January, Bolsonaro has abandoned Brazil's longstanding diplomatic tradition of multilateralism in favor of full-throated alignment with the U.S. and Israel. To date, however, the policy has yielded few gains for Brazil, prompting unease among some prominent supporters of the administration.New ApproachAs a top lobbyist for Brazil's thriving agribusiness sector, Moreira said he is assisting the government in setting a new approach, without providing details.In October, the U.S. told Brazil that it would maintain a ban on fresh-beef imports from Latin America's largest economy. The U.S. suspended imports in 2017 after finding meat containing blood clots and lymph nodes. Brazil said the findings were abscesses stemming from a reaction to components of a vaccine against foot-and-mouth disease. After the U.S. measure, Brazil reduced the vaccine dose and changed the feed stock in an effort to see the ban overturned.Last month, an official from the agriculture ministry said Brazil was "100% confident" that the U.S. would remove the ban. But Trump's decision last month to reinstate tariffs on Brazilian steel and aluminum, which took the Bolsonaro's government by surprise, poured cold water on Brazilian expectations that the U.S. would soon resume fresh beef imports.According to Moreira, Trump's tough stance is a response to pressure from American farmers, who compete with Brazilian exporters in global markets."The Americans are losing market share on a daily basis and have no room to really increase production," the lawmaker said. Meanwhile, he added, Brazil has the technology and land to dramatically increase productivity and attend to the world's growing demand for food, especially from China."It used to take three years and two months to produce 240 kilos of beef," he said. "Now it takes only one year and eight months."European RelationsBrazil's agricultural potential also affects its relation with Europe, Moreira said.Countries like France and Ireland are blocking the implementation of a trade deal between the European Union and the South American trade bloc Mercosur by blaming Bolsonaro for Amazon fires as cover for their fear of competitors, according to him.Read more: Tears of Joy as Mercosur Leaders Celebrate Historic EU DealBut on the other hand, European countries need to put the deal into practice to guarantee access to abundant, affordable agricultural products. "It's a matter of food security," Moreira said.He added Brazilian farmers will likely benefit from a recent government-backed bill that seeks to ease restrictions on foreign land ownership to stimulate agriculture. The bill, currently in Brazil's Senate, would lift current restrictions, but set limits on the size of property foreigners could buy. It would also block land purchases in border areas.Senator Iraja Abreu, author of the project, says that approval of the bill would attract 50 billion reais ($12.2 billion) per year in investments for agribusiness and encourage job creation.To contact the reporters on this story: Samy Adghirni in Brasilia Newsroom at sadghirni@bloomberg.net;Simone Iglesias in Brasília at spiglesias@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Walter Brandimarte at wbrandimarte@bloomberg.net, Bruce DouglasFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Dems: Postponing impeachment vote was tactical Posted: 13 Dec 2019 06:37 AM PST  After a marathon session of debate, the House Judiciary Committee abruptly postponed a historic vote late Thursday on articles of impeachment against President Trump.
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| Challenge to immigration law is tossed on eve of enactment Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:47 PM PST  A law that will allow New Yorkers to get driver's licenses without having to prove they are in the country legally weathered a second court challenge Friday, days before its enactment. A federal district judge ruled against Rensselaer County Clerk Frank Merola, saying he lacked the legal capacity to bring the lawsuit. Merola, a Republican, had argued that the state law conflicts with federal immigration law.
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| Democrat Jeff Van Drew, who opposes impeaching Trump, is reportedly in talks to switch to the Republican Party Posted: 14 Dec 2019 01:51 PM PST  Democratic Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who opposes impeaching President Donald Trump, could reportedly switch to the GOP as early as next week.
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| Bloomberg Vows to Finish Off Coal Plants: Campaign Update Posted: 13 Dec 2019 07:30 AM PST ![Bloomberg Vows to Finish Off Coal Plants: Campaign Update]( "Bloomberg Vows to Finish Off Coal Plants: Campaign Update") (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg wants to retire all remaining coal-fired electricity plants in the next decade and "immediately" stop the construction of new gas facilities to cut U.S. emissions in half by 2030.His campaign said he's still developing a cost estimate for his climate plan as well as figuring out where to find the revenue for it. It's the second policy plan he's rolled out this week without a price tag or a plan to pay for it.The former New York mayor released a climate proposal on Friday near a closed coal-fired power plant in Alexandria, Virginia, where he helped launch a campaign in 2011 to retire almost 300 coal facilities so far. He has committed $500 million for a "Beyond Carbon" campaign and said President Donald Trump "refuses to lead on climate change, so the rest of us must."Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.Bloomberg wants to reach net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century, which is in line with with plans released by front-runner Joe Biden and other leading candidates Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg. But it's less aggressive than the 10-year timetable in the $93 trillion "Green New Deal." Like other Democratic candidates, Bloomberg seeks to end subsidies for fossil fuels, impose fossil-fuel moratoriums on federal lands, and achieve 100% clean energy "as soon as humanly possible."Bloomberg's plan proposes more stringent limits on emissions and pollution to retire the remaining 251 coal plants. He said the regulation would also deter the building of new gas plants, though it's unclear how quickly that could happen. Bloomberg would push Congress to expand solar and wind tax credits and enact new tax incentives for clean-energy technology.COMING UPJoe Biden will travel to San Antonio, Texas, for a community event on Friday afternoon.Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Tom Steyer will participate in a forum organized by 11 public education organizations in Pittsburgh on Saturday.Seven Democratic presidential candidates have so far qualified for the final debate of 2019 in Los Angeles on Dec. 19.(Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Niquette in Columbus at mniquette@bloomberg.net;Ari Natter in Washington at anatter5@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Kevin WhitelawFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| EF1 tornado flips over camper, leaves a path of damage, downed power lines Posted: 14 Dec 2019 11:12 AM PST  Thunderstorms erupted in parts of the southeastern United States, which spawned an EF-1 tornado Saturday morning in Flagler County, Florida.Numerous trees are down and several structures have been damaged, according to WOGX. There are also reports that a tree has gone through a home."A tornado touched down on the south side of Flagler Beach this morning at approximately 5:45 a.m. There have been no reported injuries and a camper was overturned in Gamble Rogers State Park. SRA1A is open and there was no damage to the Pier or any Dune Walkover," The Flagler Beach Police Department said in a Facebook post. The tornado overturned a camper in Flagler County, Florida. Image via The Flagler Beach Police Department Officials said in a press release that 'significant damage' was found from south of Bunnell to the Gamble Rogers area of Flagler Beach."A cold front pushing south and east across northern Florida early this morning helped initiate a squall line during the pre-dawn hours, and one of these thunderstorms was able to take advantage of strong winds in the upper atmosphere to produce a tornado," AccuWeather Meteorologist Randy Adkins said.> We found EF1 damage consistent with 110 mph winds from the tornado this morning in Flagler County. Read more in our Public Information Statement below. https://t.co/nXgmFSfJK2> > -- NWS Jacksonville (@NWSJacksonville) December 14, 2019The Flagler Beach Police Department posted photos of tornado damage on social media, including one that appeared to show a camper overturned. A camper was blown on its side during the tornado. Image via The Flagler Beach Police Department Tornado damage of a road sign that was knocked over in the tornado. Image via The Flagler Beach Police Department
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| U.S. sanctions on Iran violate international law: Mahathir Posted: 13 Dec 2019 10:52 PM PST  The American sanctions imposed on Iran violate the United Nations charter and international law, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told a conference in Qatar on Saturday. ''Malaysia does not support the reimposition of the unilateral sanctions by the US against Iran,'' he told the Doha Forum, also attended by Qatar Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.
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| Justin Trudeau moves forward with ban on LGBT+ conversion therapy across Canada Posted: 14 Dec 2019 10:18 AM PST  LGBT+ conversion therapy could soon be banned across Canada after Justin Trudeau made this one of the priorities for his new government.In a letter to the country's justice secretary on Friday, the prime minister stated that banning the controversial practice of attempting to forcibly change people's gender or sexuality must be a "top priority".
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| Police arrest 7 suspected militants in Indonesia's Papua Posted: 14 Dec 2019 06:59 AM PST ![Police arrest 7 suspected militants in Indonesia's Papua]( "Police arrest 7 suspected militants in Indonesia's Papua") Indonesian police said Saturday that they have arrested seven suspected Islamic militants in the country's easternmost Papua province as authorities beef up security ahead of Christmas and New Year's celebrations. Papua police's deputy chief, Yakobus Marjuki, said the elite counterterrorism squad arrested a man, identified only as Karwanto, in a raid at a house in Sentani town in Dec. 5 after receiving a tip from intelligence that some members of the extremist group have fled to Papua from other Indonesian islands since last year.
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| Report: The U.S. Could Run Out of Smart Bombs Posted: 14 Dec 2019 06:30 AM PST  And you can't fight a modern war without them.
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| A 91-year-old was arrested for blockading a Home Depot. He was upset about his generator Posted: 13 Dec 2019 10:29 AM PST ![A 91-year-old was arrested for blockading a Home Depot. He was upset about his generator]( "A 91-year-old was arrested for blockading a Home Depot. He was upset about his generator") Edward Hayden was arrested in November at a Home Depot after he blockaded a door with his pickup. "I don't like to be stepped on," he said.
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| How Biden Kept Screwing Up Iraq—Over and Over and Over Again Posted: 14 Dec 2019 02:18 AM PST  In September, former Vice President Joe Biden attempted to portray himself as an opponent of the Iraq war he voted for 17 years ago. Sure, as a U.S. senator, he voted to authorize the war, Biden told an NPR interviewer who asked about his foreign policy judgment. But that was only after Biden got a "commitment" from George W. Bush, the war's architect, that the former president "needed the vote to be able to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam Hussein was engaged in dealing with a nuclear program." Alas, he continued, "before we know it, we had a shock and awe"—the opening aerial bombardment of the March 2003 invasion—and then "immediately, the moment it started," Biden opposed the war. His mistake, he said, was trusting Bush. Much like Donald Trump's own flexible history on Iraq, it was bald revisionism that a wag might call malarkey. Journalists and fact-checkers quickly called attention to the persistence of Biden's support for the war. Biden soon conceded he misspoke and at a Democratic debate, called his vote a mistake. But all that had the effect of obscuring Biden's distinct and—now that he's running for president again—relevant history with Iraq.Reviewing Biden's record on Iraq is like rewinding footage of a car crash to identify the fateful decisions that arrayed people at the bloody intersection. He was not just another Democratic hawk navigating the trauma of 9/11 in a misguided way. He didn't merely call his vote for a disastrous war part of "a march to peace and security." Biden got the Iraq war wrong before and throughout invasion, occupation, and withdrawal. Convenient as it is to blame Bush—who, to be clear, bears primary and eternal responsibility for the disaster—Biden embraced the Iraq war for what he portrayed as the result of his foreign policy principles and persisted, most often in error, for the same reasons. Biden contextualized the war within an assertion that America has the right to enforce its standards of behavior in the name of the international community, even when the international community rejects American intervention. While Biden, as the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for most of the war, had unique prominence for his views, they didn't come out of nowhere. For while Biden bullshitted through his September NPR interview, he also said something true: "I think the vast majority of the foreign policy community thinks [my record has] been very good." That will be important context should Biden become president. He's the favorite of many in Democratic foreign policy circles who believe in resetting the American geopolitical position to what it was the day before Trump was elected, rather than considering it critical context for why Trump was elected. * * *Early in 2002, Biden became alarmed that the Bush administration was prematurely losing focus on Afghanistan in favor of Iraq, which Bush's advisers had decided to invade soon after 9/11. Yet that did not drive Biden into opposition. Instead, by the summer of 2002, with the foreign relations committee gavel in his hand, Biden held a series of hearings to start "a national dialogue" on Iraq. He postured as picking no side at all, to avoid "prejudic[ing] any particular course of action." Biden's position meant Bush, at the height of his popularity and without the obstacle of the opposition party's premier foreign policy voice, could do as he liked. It is important to remember the commanding political position that Bush held for two years after 9/11. By the time of Biden's hearings, Gallup recorded Bush's approval rating at 71 percent. By the time of the Iraq vote, it was 67 percent. National Democrats embraced the war on terrorism with enthusiasm and, with few exceptions, were disinclined to challenge Bush on foreign policy even as that foreign policy became more militant and extreme. Biden, one of the leading Democratic voices on foreign affairs, recontextualized this extremism within the patina of traditional Democratic internationalism. Not only could Democrats wage the sort of politically beneficial war Bush had monopolized, they could augment it with international legitimacy, allied contributions, and greater preparation for the difficulties ahead. Rather than questioning the purpose of the proposed Iraq invasion, Biden took it for granted that the world would go along, if only America had the wisdom to ask it. He considered that both a substantive alternative to Bush and the responsible, sober course of American foreign policy. Biden's hearings highlighted the dangers of occupation, such as the basic uncertainty around what would replace Saddam Hussein, as well as the bloody, long, and expensive commitment required to midwife a democratic Iraq. "In many ways, those hearings were remarkably prescient about what was to happen," said Tony Blinken, Biden's longtime aide on the committee and a deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration. "He and [GOP Sen. Richard] Lugar talked about not the day after but the decade after. If we did go in, they talked about the lack of a plan to secure any peace that followed the intervention."But the balance of expert testimony concerned guessing at Saddam's weapons program, the pragmatic questions of invading, and the diplomatic legwork of an action whose justice—if not necessarily its wisdom—was presumed. A future occupation-era Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., Rend al-Rahim Francke, assured Biden's committee, "there will not be a civil war in Iraq." The neoconservative scholar Fouad Ajami said "kites and boom boxes" would greet the U.S. military. The chairman himself broke his agnosticism to say that "one thing is clear, these weapons must be dislodged from Saddam Hussein, or Saddam Hussein must be dislodged from power." He reflected the regnant foreign policy consensus in America: Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had sealed his fate by doing so. It was an enormous factual mistake born out of an inability to see that Saddam believed that transparent disarmament would spell his doom at the hands of Iran. This misapprehension led advocates to accept that the U.S.—preferably with others, but alone if necessary—was justified or even obligated to get rid of Saddam. By late summer, Bush's secretary of state, Colin Powell, convinced the White House to attempt securing United Nations support for the war. It was a cynical maneuver: the Security Council could accept additional weapons inspections but not war; Bush could claim he tried for an internationalist solution before invading unilaterally. Its primary effect was to legitimize the war in the eyes of uncomfortable congressional Democrats who had made the tactical error of disputing the war for insufficient multilateralism rather than arguing it was wrong. Biden, however, had a principle he wanted to uphold. For nearly an hour on the Senate floor, Biden contextualized his vote for the war within a patina of unreality. There was no rush to war, he insisted, only "a march to peace and security." Voting against the war would "enhance the prospects that war is likely to occur." He had already been undercut by a House Democratic agreement that obviated Biden's preferred choice of putting greater restrictions on Bush's ability to go to war. Nevertheless, he persisted.Biden's argument was that congressional unity in threatening war would compel sufficient international resolve as to somehow compel Saddam's peaceful disarmament. He highlighted that the wording of the war resolution concerned disarming Saddam Hussein, not overthrowing him, although Biden conceded that an American army on the march would mean Saddam's downfall. Still, it was better to obscure the objective of the war, since declaring Saddam's impending end would "alienat[e] other countries who do not share that goal and whose support we need to disarm Iraq and possibly rebuild it, and it would significantly weaken our hand at the United Nations." For Biden, the critical point, "what this is about," was America daring to "enforce" U.N. Security Council disarmament resolutions that the U.N. was saying did not justify war. When the world stood against America, in the forum Biden considered critical and Bush considered pretextual, America would simply act in the world's name. He approvingly quoted the infamous Henry Kissinger: "As the most powerful nation in the world, the United States has a special, unilateral capacity, and indeed obligation, to lead in implementing its convictions, but it also has a special obligation to justify its actions by principles that transcend the assertions of preponderance of power." America's confidence in its nobility was, in the end, all the justification it required. Extraordinarily, Biden acknowledged that the "imminence and inevitability" of the threat Iraq posed was "exaggerated," although that recognition was irrelevant to both his reasoning and his vote. He performed an end-zone dance over Bush advisers who favored what he called the doctrine of preemption—a euphemism for wars of aggression—as if his vote did not authorize exactly the preemptive war those advisers wanted. The trouble Biden saw was that elevating preemption to a foreign policy "doctrine" would grant "every nation an unfettered right of preemption." Left unsaid was that it would be better for America to keep that unfettered right for itself. He credited Bush with choosing a "course of moderation and deliberation." And Biden, in his own unique idiom, heralded his own influence over Bush's choice to take the basic constitutional step of allowing congressional approval for a war: "I had two private meetings with the president myself where I made clear that I thought that was dead wrong and he would be, to use the slang on the east side of my city, in a world of hurt if he attempted to do that." Biden advisers, with some exasperation, continue to reject the notion that Biden voted for war. "It's so facile. People tell you an Authorization to Use Military Force means you voted for war," said Blinken. "No, you voted to enforce your diplomacy, if necessary, and that makes it more likely, hopefully, that the diplomacy actually works without having to enforce it. It worked at the U.N. Unfortunately, tragically, it didn't work with President Bush."* * *Nothing that followed went the way Biden expected. Bush did not share Biden's distinction between the U.N. weapons-inspection process and the invasion. Iraq did not passively accept its occupation. And Biden did not reap the political benefit of endorsing the war that seemed so obvious to the Democratic consultant class in the autumn of 2002. Iraq was an abstraction to Biden—as it was, ironically, to the neoconservatives Biden had criticized—a canvas on which to project theories of American power. During a Brookings Institution appearance four months after the invasion, Biden explained that he had cast "the right vote [on the war], and it would be a correct vote today," even though the insurgency was beginning to coalesce. The issue for Biden was that Saddam's intransigence over U.N. disarmament regimes, without military consequence, "renders useless such international commitments." The fact that the weapons of mass destruction had not materialized–and would soon be shown not to exist–didn't factor into Biden's calculation. He asserted that had the war not happened, "I have no doubt that within five years, [Saddam] would have gained access to a tactical nuclear weapon." Similarly, Biden's worries about the war that summer were only tangentially about the war itself. The danger he saw in Iraq was not occupation, but leaving before "winning the peace." Bush's infamous Mission Accomplished banner ought to have read "We've Only Just Begun," he said, heralding a challenge he considered within America's power.Still, Biden preferred talking about abstract principle and geopolitical challenge. Months after boasting that his vote for war rewarded Bush for repudiating the doctrine of preemption, Biden lamented that Bush had indeed turned preemption into an "ill-defined doctrine." But Biden was unprepared to break from prevention, which is always the prerogative of hegemonic powers. Boxed in, he continued to argue that the trouble was Bush elevating preemption to centrality in foreign policy, and fretted that predatory states would cite that "doctrine" to prey on weaker ones. He neglected to see that all those states needed was the example of the Iraq war itself. Eleven years later, when Biden was vice president, Vladimir Putin cited Iraq as a reason the U.S. had no standing to criticize him for invading Ukraine. Other delusions abounded. Biden praised the leadership of the Coalition Provisional Authority, a shockingly corrupt and incompetent organization. Its chief, Jerry Bremer, was "first-rate," Biden said mere months after Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army, the greatest gift America could have given the insurgency. Rebuilding Iraq's police force was left to former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik, whom Biden called "a serious guy with a serious team." Iraq's police would soon become indistinguishable from sectarian death squads; Kerik would soon plead guilty to tax fraud and other federal corruption charges. Biden's solution to the palpable breakdown of security in the summer of 2003 was "more foreign troops to share our mission." It was a fantasy, beloved of that era's pro-war Democrats, that would never materialize, despite Biden's assurance that aiding the occupation was "in their naked self-interest."By the next summer, with Iraq in flames, Biden continued his misdiagnosis. The original sin wasn't the war itself, it was Bush's stewardship—the same stewardship Biden praised in 2002. "Because we waged a war in Iraq virtually alone, we are responsible for the aftermath virtually alone," he thundered at the 2004 Democratic convention. The intelligence "was hyped to justify going to war," Biden continued, causing "America's credibility and security [to] have suffered a terrible blow." Yet Biden made no call for withdrawal. It was easier to pretend that Bush was waging a different war than the one he empowered Bush to wage. Writing in The New Republic, Biden insisted that Bush was wrong but he was right, since "the international community's need to enforce these U.N. resolutions provided a compelling case for war." The "most pernicious legacy" of U.S. failure in Iraq, he continued, would be not the hundreds of thousands the war killed, maimed, and traumatized, nor the millions more it turned into refugees, but "a further hardening of the Vietnam syndrome that afflicts some in the Democratic Party—a distrust of the use of American power." Those who had been right about the war—those that had forecast its disaster—could not be allowed to gain influence. By 2006, Iraq had plunged into the civil war that Ambassador Francke had told Biden's committee would not happen. Now Biden, posturing as a third way between withdrawal and the status quo, offered an extraordinary proposal to defuse it. The U.S., he wrote, ought to "establish three largely autonomous regions" for each of Iraq's major ethnic and confessional groups, presided over by a nominally national Baghdad government, something he called "unity through autonomy." Biden justified it through federalist language in the Iraqi constitution, a document written and voted on under occupation. The U.S., unable to win the war it chose, would be better off reshaping the map of Iraq into something that better suited it. The proposal was a natural outgrowth of viewing Iraq as an abstraction. Now that Iraq had undermined American power, Iraq would be subject to a kind of dismemberment, a theoretically cleaner problem to solve than a civil war or a weak client state. In September 2007, Biden prevailed upon his fellow senators to endorse his proposal on a staggering 75-23 vote. There was no support for the idea among actual Iraqis outside Kurdistan, but they were beside the imperial point. "They shouldn't be proposing its division. That could be a disaster not just for Iraq but for the region," said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, at that point America's client. The Los Angeles Times noted that Iraqis, in the midst of a civil war, united against Biden. A statement from leading Sunni and Shia politicians said Congress set "a dangerous precedent to establishing the nature of the relationship between Iraq and the U.S.A. and shows the Congress as if it were planning for a long-term occupation by their country's troops." Biden, by then running for president a second time, rejected the criticism of actual Iraqis, insisting to Time, "It is not partition! It is not foreign imposition!" "The Iraqis were free to accept, reject, or act on it," Blinken said. "If the Iraqis felt the constitution was written under wrong pretenses, they always could redo it, but it was totally grounded in the constitution. A lot of folks came around to the basic idea that federalism was a way to keep the country together. But he was not imposing it on anyone."At the same time, 2007 saw Biden's most valorous act on Iraq. With the war a morass, Biden secured $23 billion, far more than the Pentagon requested, to buy Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, whose hull design proved more survivable against the insurgency's improvised bombs. Replacing insufficiently armored Humvees with MRAPs was "a passion," he said. While the number of lives MRAPs saved over the course of the program's $45 billion lifespan has been disputed, the Pentagon estimated in 2012 that over 2,000 service members are alive today because of the vehicle. Biden counted securing the funding for the MRAP among his greatest congressional achievements.While Biden's campaign failed, it provided him with an unexpected opportunity for redemption. Barack Obama had opposed the Iraq war, but was hardly afflicted with the "distrust of the use of American power" that Biden feared in 2004. Selecting Biden as his vice president laundered Biden's reputation. No longer was Biden the man whose faith in American exceptionalism had driven the U.S. into a morass. He was the lovable uncle in aviators who washed his metaphorical Trans Am on the White House lawn. Obama gave him responsibility for a three-year project of U.S. withdrawal, one that Biden considers an accomplishment. But Iraq had been so shattered by war and occupation that it could not withstand the rise of the so-called Islamic State. It would be absurd to consider that Biden's fault alone. But, as Mike Giglio recently explored in The Atlantic, Biden and other U.S. officials appeared at times dangerously unconcerned about Maliki's consolidation of power that once again marginalized Sunni Iraq, which the war had already proven would give jihadis the opportunity they needed. Biden successfully argued within the administration for continued support of Maliki as prime minister during Iraq's nine-month process of forming a new government in 2010—even as blatant U.S. intervention, predicated on empowering rivals to mitigate Maliki's excesses, failed. A former senior State Department official who worked with Biden on Iraq at the time told Giglio that "we should have been much more outspoken" about the need for Maliki to share power. In any event, while the administration believed itself a driver of Iraqi politics ahead of the withdrawal, an aide to the Iraqi Kurdish president told The New York Times that the Americans were "picking events and reacting on the basis of events. That is the policy." Blinken, who was part of the diplomatic team shuttling between Baghdad and Washington at the time, rejects the criticism. Biden "absolutely had no brief for Nouri al-Maliki," he said, but there was no viable alternative. Biden reflected America's schizophrenic attitude toward ending post-9/11 wars, in which leaving a residual force amidst an unsettled conflict does not count as continuing a war. He reportedly predicted that Maliki, whom Biden had argued for supporting, would modify an expiring troop-basing accord known as a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) to permit an extended U.S. presence. "I'll bet you my vice presidency Maliki will extend the SOFA," the Times quoted him. Instead, the following year, the Iraqi parliament did no such thing. The U.S. withdrew in full at the end of 2011. Not three years later, when ISIS overran Mosul, Obama felt compelled to reinvade with a smaller U.S. force—though this time, the U.S. refused to support Maliki. Five thousand U.S. troops remain in Iraq today. "Once Maliki was back [in power], what tore Iraq apart again and led to the rise of ISIS was his extreme sectarianism. It was not for want of us trying, and berating, and arguing, pushing and pulling and prodding that he was headed for disaster if he continued down that path," Blinken said. "We obviously failed at getting him to change course, but it was not for lack of trying."* * *Biden was hardly the hawk inside the Obama administration that fellow Iraq-war supporter Hillary Clinton was. He opposed the Afghanistan escalation, although he argued for even more drone strikes instead. He opposed overthrowing Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, a 2011 decision that has left Libya in chaos for nearly a decade. He was reportedly against a CIA plan to arm Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's opposition for fear of enmeshing America within another Mideast civil war, though he helped lobby Congress to approve an ultimately abandoned plan to attack Assad militarily. Biden is the last of the pre-Obama generation of Democratic foreign policy grandees who enabled the Iraq war. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton both lost their presidential bids, saddled in both cases with the legacy of the war they supported. Now Biden confronts rivals like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who are both sketching out foreign policies that begin with ending a generation of war. Sanders in particular is offering a geopolitical worldview that stands as a polar opposite to Biden's, one of international bottom-up resistance to worldwide oligarchy. Should Biden get past Sanders, Warren, and Pete Buttigieg, Trump lies in wait—another GOP president whom Biden has misdiagnosed, to the point of expressing shock that Trump would seek to weaponize U.S. influence over Ukraine to harm his family. A President Biden is likely to find himself a man out of time. Writing in The Guardian, David Adler and Ben Judah recently described Biden as a "restorationist" in foreign policy, aiming at setting the American geopolitical clock back to what it was before Trump took office. Yet now an emergent China, a resurgent Russia, and the ascent of nationalism and oligarchy across Europe, India, and South America have fragmented the America-centric internationalist order that Biden represents. While Trump has accelerated these dynamics, he is far less responsible for them than is the martial post-9/11 course of U.S. foreign policy that wrecked itself, most prominently in Iraq. It remains to be seen if the U.S. foreign policy community can reckon with its new geopolitical reality. As Biden noted to NPR, he has a deep well of support within foreign policy circles, where supporting the Iraq war is treated as an unfortunate, understandable detail and a smaller problem than Iraq-inspired domestic skepticism of American power—an update of what Biden and others used to call the "Vietnam Syndrome." Recently, The Washington Post's Josh Rogin reported that 133 diplomatic, military, and development heavyweights backed Biden. They consider him an "antidote" to Trump, not an example of the political failures that seeded the bed for Trump. Kerry, the former secretary of state, recently endorsed his longtime friend and ally Biden. Blinken pushed back on the idea that Biden's blend of liberal internationalism has passed its relevance. "He's said explicitly, we can't go back to the way the world was, it has changed significantly even since [President Trump's election]. We have to engage the world as is and as we anticipate it will be, not as it was, but some of the basic principles he would bring to our foreign policy still hold," he said. In a 2016 interview, Biden rejected a more hawkish Syria policy. When asked about overthrowing Middle Eastern dictators, he said, "I don't think we should use force unless it meets certain basic criteria. Is it in the national security interest of the United States, are our interests directly threatened, number one, or our allies? Number two, can we use it efficaciously, will it work? And number three, can it be sustained?" For someone who has been for decades a pillar of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, Biden's criteria are notably generic. They are flexible enough that every presidency, including Trump's, portrays itself as meeting them. It wasn't so long ago that Biden thought the Iraq war met his tests. It yielded an America far less able to shape the world it wants but unrepentant in its right to do so. Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Salvadoran man murdered in Mexico waiting U.S. asylum hearing Posted: 12 Dec 2019 07:49 PM PST ![Salvadoran man murdered in Mexico waiting U.S. asylum hearing]( "Salvadoran man murdered in Mexico waiting U.S. asylum hearing") A Salvadoran man seeking asylum in the United States was kidnapped and murdered in the Mexican border city of Tijuana where he was sent to wait for his asylum court hearing under a migrant protection program instated by President Donald Trump. Critics of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) have argued that the migrants affected by the initiative, mostly from the impoverished and violence-plagued countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, are at risk in Mexico. The 35-year-old Salvadoran man, father of two, had waited for four months in Tijuana where he had found a job at a pizzeria, said his widow.
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| The Ruthless Vote Machine Behind Boris Johnson's Big Win Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:37 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Sign up to our Brexit Bulletin, follow us @Brexit and subscribe to our podcast.Boris Johnson was momentarily stunned. The official U.K. election exit poll wasn't just predicting he would hold on to power, it put his Conservative Party on course for its biggest win for more than 30 years.As the British prime minister watched the results on television in his Downing Street study at 10 p.m., an elated Johnson leaped from his seat and hugged his partner, Carrie Symonds.The exit poll was accurate. As the votes were confirmed in the hours that followed, Johnson's gamble on a snap election paid off in full. He now stands to complete the Brexit divorce that he began three years ago as leader of the referendum campaign to leave the European Union.After that, Johnson, 55, has pledged to heal the deep divisions that Brexit has carved into British society by moving the toxic public debate onto other priorities, such as improving schools and hospitals, cutting taxes and boosting business. Nationalists in Scotland and Northern Ireland still pose a challenge, but his biggest rival has been crushed.For the 70-year-old Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, election night brought disaster. His four-year project trying to sell a radical socialist agenda to Britain was resoundingly rejected. A wall of working class districts deserted the party that had dominated them for decades, recoiling at Corbyn's leadership and his proposal for another Brexit referendum.In Labour's London headquarters, there was total silence when the exit poll was announced, broken only by a single wail from one young staffer. Officials had laid on pizza and bottles of beer labeled "Corbynista Victory Ale." Few had the desire to drink it.The atmosphere was "harrowing," according to a person who was there.Broken DeadlockJohnson triggered the election after trying and failing to rush his new Brexit deal through a deadlocked parliament. His core message to voters was that if they gave him a working majority he would "get Brexit done" so the country can move on.Yet while Johnson's aides always believed they had a good chance of success, they were haunted by the failure of his predecessor, Theresa May, when she called a snap vote two years ago. A dismal and robotic campaign and a resurgent Labour party under Corbyn cost May the majority she started with, plunging Britain into political chaos and ultimately dooming her premiership.This time, Johnson took no chances. He began eyeing up an election even before he became Tory leader in July. When the contest began in earnest, he hired the 35 year-old Australian election strategist Isaac Levido to be his campaign director. Slim, softly spoken, and bearded, Levido was the famously calm presence at the heart of the Tory election headquarters at No 4 Matthew Parker Street, in Westminster.Levido was a demanding boss, starting every day with a 5:40 a.m. meeting and ending it still in the office, late at night. But he rallied his troops by playing music in the office -- including 1980s hit "The Final Countdown," and in the last day of campaigning, "One Day More" from the musical Les Miserables.He also handed out daily awards to party activists for their efforts on the election campaign. Usually, this involved giving particular Tory staffers a small trophy star.But for the most impressive work, the Aussie handed out a soft toy kiwi bird -- a tribute to his New Zealander colleagues who joined the campaign. These included a young duo, Ben Guerin and Sean Topham, who ran the party's often controversial social media war.Levido is a protege of Lynton Crosby, the veteran political strategist who helped deliver a majority for David Cameron in 2015 and Scott Morrison in Australia earlier this year. Like his former boss, he espoused a safety-first campaign, focused on precise use of electoral data, and insisted on strict message discipline. Johnson did as he was told, rarely veering from his slogan to "get Brexit done," and dodging the most difficult television interviews that risked tripping him up.Labour DismayIt was a message Corbyn's Labour Party struggled to counter. Poll after poll during the six-week contest put Johnson's Tories ahead, while Labour failed to set out a clear position on whether they supported leaving the EU.Instead, Corbyn tried to convince voters Johnson could not be trusted with the future of the much-loved National Health Service, warning he would put it up for sale in a trade deal with Donald Trump.Johnson was ready for that attack, though the wheels almost came off his campaign when he showed a flash of temper instead of compassion after he was confronted by a photograph of a four year-old boy being treated on an overcrowded hospital's floor.On Thursday, the weather for Britain's first December election in almost 100 years was appalling. Rain and wind swept much of the country, leaving some Tories deeply nervous about the impact on voter turnout.After six long weeks of campaigning, the clock ticked down to the exit poll, a usually accurate survey based on how tens of thousands of voters have cast their ballots during the day. Labour MPs were now nervous.World Cup WinInside Conservative headquarters, 100 staffers got ready for a long night. A buffet of bagels, sausage rolls and Spanish tortilla had been prepared.When the numbers flashed up on the screens, projecting the biggest Tory majority since Margaret Thatcher's victory in 1987, the room erupted.Levido turned to embrace his girlfriend as staffers cheered and roared with delight, hugging each other as if they were celebrating at a soccer match. "It was like we'd won the World Cup," one Tory official said. The party continued in Conservative HQ, with wine, beer and prosecco flowing throughout the night.As the results came in, Corbyn's team knew he would have to go. At 3.24 a.m. a weary Labour leader announced he would resign.In Downing Street, Johnson and Symonds celebrated with close aides including his senior adviser Dominic Cummings, and Lee Cain, the Conservative communications director.Soon after, Johnson made the short trip to Tory HQ, where he gave a speech thanking his team as they bellowed "Boris Boris! Boris!""We must understand now what an earthquake we have created," Johnson told his staffers. The country had chosen to complete Brexit, and the political map of Britain had been redrawn, he said. "You should be incredibly proud of what you have achieved. I hope you will allow yourselves some brief celebration because the work is going to begin."\--With assistance from Alex Morales, Robert Hutton, Joe Mayes and Jessica Shankleman.To contact the reporters on this story: Kitty Donaldson in London at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.net;Tim Ross in London at tross54@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net, Rodney JeffersonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warns Iran of 'decisive response' if harm in Iraq Posted: 13 Dec 2019 03:52 PM PST  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday warned Iran of a "decisive" response if U.S. interests are harmed in Iraq, after a series of rocket attacks on bases.
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