Dial it back a bit, America. Your country is still being run by an unprincipled, ignorant and arrogant sociopath. But yeah, I expect an uptick in Trump's approval polls. I'm actually relieved that this Syrian distraction came along when it did, saving us (for now) from the spectre of a North Korean debacle.
Back in December, as Russia and Turkey unveiled their surprise agreement on how to settle their Syria spat, I wrote a piece here suggesting that Trump would want in on the despots' deal, and that exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen would be his key bargaining chip. It turns out the Trump camp were way ahead of me. Michael Flynn, then a Trump adviser, had already floated the idea -- in September! -- of a non-judicial way to hand Gulen over to Erdogan. Was Flynn free-lancing or was he actually negotiating with the Turks on behalf of then-candidate Trump?
Lots of people will feel lots of pain once the Trump administration takes power. Perhaps the first casualty will be Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish cleric now in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania.
A moderate Islamist leading a popular movement, Gülen was once allied with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They split over accusations of government corruption. Since then, Gülenism has been branded a terrorist organization, Gülen followers were accused of staging July’s failed military coup, and hundreds of thousands have been rounded up, fired or arrested. Gülen denies any involvement, but Erdogan demands he be extradited to face trial in Turkey.
It turns out Obama -- not the Russians -- was behind those damaging leaks of DNC emails. Why? Well, obviously to smear blame for them on the Trump campaign! I had to check the transcript (partway down) because I thought surely Bolton was being paraphrased. But no, that is what he thinks, and he stuck to his guns as even his Fox News interviewer pointed out what a "serious" charge he was making. The man was a certifiable loon under George Bush, and he seems to have gotten loonier with age.
Dejected and desperate Democrats are grasping at hope that recounts in three (relatively) close states could reverse Trump's win and make Hillary Clinton president. They've tossed $6 million-plus into third-party candidate Jill Stein's recount campaign. Delusional. Meanwhile, they are ignoring the reality that Republicans have (so far) won only 51 of the 100 Senate seats. Louisiana will hold a runoff vote in less than two weeks.
Alternate title: What's the matter with the Democrats' strategy toward the WTHOA? We're deep into the election woods right now, and Hillary (with lots of help from Donald Trump) is doing a pretty good job of locking in most demographics that make up the party's base. So I doubt any Democratic strategists are fretting about their expected failure to recapture West Virginia's once-gettable five electoral votes. It's sad that so many voters have lost all hope that they are buying what Trump is selling, but there's no way the party can promise them a turnaround. Those jobs are gone and they ain't coming back.
It's official: Debbie Wasserman Schultz will not speak at the Democratic convention. She's still nominally chairwoman of the DNC, though Hillary was forced to strip her of all actual power as down payment toward winning Bernie's endorsement. The issue for the convention was not whether Debbie would be booed by Sanders delegates if she took the podium, it was whether she would be booed off the stage a la Ted Cruz. The question became pretty much moot Friday, after Wikileaks released 20,000 hacked DNC emails, some of which detailed how she and her staffers basically colluded with the Clinton campaign to sabotage Bernie's run. Then yesterday, Robert Reich called for her to be fired immediately, rather than just demoted out of the way.
The NYT's Roger Cohen puts yesterday's Turkish chaos in sharp perspective: the failure of the military coup attempt doesn't translate into a victory for democracy, not at all. Erdogan has the excuse he needed to purge all his perceived rivals, neuter the army, and crack down even more on even mild dissent. The country is in for a very rough stretch.
In case anyone still cares ... As the United Kingdom faces this existential crisis (and its continued existence really is in doubt), Britain's political class have left it rudderless. Johnson stabbed Cameron in the back by jumping to the Leave side, and now his own Brexit ally Gove has sabotaged him -- all of it in personal bids to seize the Tory leadership and power. Meanwhile, Labour leader Corbyn has lost the support of 80% of his party's MPs but refuses to resign.
The writer focuses on the failures of the British ruling class, but I tend to see it as a global phenomenon. It's easy to blame uninformed Brexit voters for lashing out at what they (rightly) see as an accelerating loss of conttol. But national and even supranational political leaders also seem inept and directionless when it comes to managing the side-effects of globalization.
In the opposition's view, the deal with Russia contains a de facto admission of the legitimacy of the Assad government, undermining the goal of Syrian uprising and the likelihood that any peace talks will result in Assad's removal.
The question needs to be asked, because this is part of a pattern. The surveillance state has one basic credo: all your information belongs to us, and none of our information belongs to you.
"Washington doesn't do contrition very well," commented one Latin America expert. Right on that score. Don't blame this on Edward Snowden. The initial blame falls on the NSA, for its White House-backed overreach. Next it falls on the State Department, which pooh-poohed the issue for months while popular anger grew in Brazil. Kerry and Obama finally reached out personally to the spied-upon president once it was too late. Some might say Washington doesn't do diplomacy very well.
Egypt's democratic revolution is effectively over. The army has decided to roll back things back further than they stood when Mubarak fell. For several election cycles, the Muslim Brotherhood had been illegal but tolerated, even electing legislators as long as they ran as independents. That won't happen again.
Most Canadians will be tuned in to the Oscars tomorrow night, with Ben Affleck's speech after Argo's (expected) best-picture win their main focus.
Do the right thing, Ben. As you're thanking your cast and crew and financial backers, and your mom and dad who always believed in you, take a moment to give credit where credit is due.
The cosmos put on quite a show yesterday, sending two massive asteroids (one a total surprise) Earth's way within hours of each other.
A good thing, all in all. Nobody died, but the astronomic coincidence -- and especially the stunning dash-cam images out of Chelyabinsk -- focused a lot of minds on a real threat our civilization faces.
Every Israeli election is interesting (in the sense of the old Chinese curse), but this one was a stunner. All the polls predicted Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition coasting to victory, the only real question being how many seats the even more right-wing Jewish Home party would draw away from his Likud-Beiteinu joint list.
