#^d 2019-04-14 #^h Weekend Roundup
I don't feel up to writing much about Julian Assange, but following his arrest in London, I anticipate that I'll find a bunch of links this week and should collect them together. Assange is an Australian, a computer programmer who came up with Wikileaks, a system to collect and publish anonymously submitted documents. That's always seemed like a noble endeavor, an aid in exposing how the rich and powerful conspire in private to manipulate and profit, and for a while he seemed to be doing just that. He quickly ran afoul of those powers, most notably the US government, which set out to charge him with various crimes, and quite possibly orchestrated a broader smear campaign against him. Assange, in turn, sought asylum from criminal charges, and since 2012 has been sheltered by the Ecuadorean embassy in London. I don't know how much Assange has had to do with Wikileaks since 2012 (or how much freedom he has had to do anything), but his brand name wound up playing a role in Trump's 2016 campaign when it framed the release of hacked emails from the Clinton campaign. One effect of the DNC dump was to expand the Democratic side of bipartisan outrage against Assange, especially as Clinton's drones tried to paint him as a Putin accomplice.
I don't have strong opinions about Assange one way or the other, but I did welcome his release of leaked documents on the Iraq War and the US State Department. (See my September 2, 2010 entry, Troops, on the "Collateral Murder" video, anti-war vet Ethan McCord, and a related speech by Barak Obama -- what I said then is still pretty relevant today.) Releasing the DNC emails didn't particularly bother me either, although the timing was suspicious (immediately after the release of Trump's Access Hollywood tape, allowing the media to spin scandal on top of scandal), as was the lack of any RNC/Trump campaign emails to balance the picture.
Anyhow, the Assange links:
James Ball: You don't have to like Julian Assange to defend him.
Nicholas Casey/Jo Becker: As Ecuador harbored Assange, it was subjected to threats and leaks.
John Cassidy: The indictment of Julian Assange is a threat to journalism.
Patrick Cockburn: Accusing Assange of being a 'narcissist' misses the point.
Jonathan Cook: After 7 years of deceptions about Assange, the US readies for its first media rendition.
Glenn Greenwald/Micah Lee: The US government's indictment of Julian Assange poses grave threats to press freedom.
Colin Lecher: Read the United States' indictment against Julian Assange: "One count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion."
Anna North: The rape allegation against Julian Assange, explained.
Richard Pérez-Peña: Extraditing Assange promises to be a long, difficult process.
John Pilger: The Assange arrest is a warning from history.
Andrew Prokop: Julian Assange was just arrested and now faces extradition to the United States.
Nathan Robinson: Many Democrats and liberals are cheering Assange's arrest. That's foolish.
Emily Stewart: The debate over what Julian Assange's arrest means for freedom of the press, explained.
Matt Taibbi: Why the Assange arrest should scare reporters.
Let's also break out multiple links on Israel's elections:
Klulood Badawi: The Israeli election put the bigotry of its political class front and center.
Zack Beauchamp: Israeli democracy is rotting from the inside: "Tuesday's election results exposed two major threats to Israeli democracy."
Patrick Cockburn: Netanyahu's victory tells us who holds power in the Middle East.
Jonathan Ofir: Why Israeli election results may have a positive aspect. Well, not really, but anyone who still clung to the notion that the center-left might agree to a two-state deal should realize now that there's no such group left to pin your hopes on (as opposed to the old days when there were groups that seemed willing to consider a deal, even though none actually went through with it).
Israel Shamir: The Israeli elections came to naught.
Richard Silverstein: Netanyahu wins and will be next Prime Minister of the Judeo-Ethno-State. Not on Israel, but also by Silverstein: Sudan democratic awakening, Libya civil war pose regional threat, invite Saudi meddling: with automatic support from Trump, natch.
Kate: Israeli forces shoot 66 Palestinians at Gaza protest, killing 15-year-old boy: Not on the elections, just another routine week of occupation and conflict.
Scattered links on other topics this week:
Matthew Yglesias:
Trump's sister quietly retired in February, and it's actually a big deal: Something here I didn't know: that Trump has a sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, who is a US Court of Appeals judge (appointed, by the way, by Bill Clinton in 1999, although Ronald Reagan appointed her to US District Court in 1983). She retired to escape an investigation into the possibly fraudulent scheme whereby Fred Trump transferred property to his children to evade taxes.
Elizabeth Warren's new plan to make sure Amazon (and other big companies) pays corporate tax, explained: "No more claiming big profits to investors while paying nothing to the IRS."
Progressives should worry more about the odds that Joe Biden will win: "Liberals are assuming the former vice president will fade on his own, a trap Republicans fell for with Trump." They may both be front-runners, but not many similarities beyond that. Trump campaigned as an outsider, whereas Biden is the most complete insider even considering a run. The most comparable 2016 Republican is Jeb Bush, although I'd give Biden better odds than I gave Bush -- he may not have much of a program or a real following, but at least he's not a laughingstock.
Immigration makes America great. This is a good general "explainer" on most of issues related to immigration. I'm more of a moderate (or maybe skeptic?) when it comes to promoting immigration: I'm concerned about the downward pressure on labor markets immigrants pose; I worry that immigration feeds our right-wing tendencies to ignore the needs of impoverished natives; I've noted that many immigrants lean to the political right (in many cases becoming jingoistic -- the Cubans are an obvious case, since US immigration law favors anti-communists). I've noted, for instance, that no less than five (of 16) Republican presidential candidates in 2016 has at least one foreign-born parent (including Trump, who also has a foreign-born wife). Still, I don't doubt the general economic advantages of immigration at present (or slightly elevated) levels. And the problems I've noted would go away if we had a better political atmosphere.
Trump's flailing shake-up of the Department of Homeland Security, explained: Key subhed here: "Trump's been in tantrum mode for weeks."
But Trump is an all-stick, no-carrot kind of guy. His idea of doing a deal with Democrats was to cancel DACA protection for young undocumented immigrants and then offer to reinstate it in exchange for sweeping concessions. And he wants to get Mexico to do favors for him by threatening to hurt both countries' economies unless they do what he wants. This incredibly punitive, wildly ineffective approach to dealmaking has been a hallmark of Trump's approach to the presidency from Day 1, and it appears to be derived from his success as a business executive at using his greater wealth to stiff contractors and shareholders.
But in the presidency, this kind of bullying doesn't work at all, as you can see from his lack of success in getting border wall money appropriated. A reasonable response to policy failure would be to try to go in a new direction, but Trump seems entirely uninterested in that. So rather than rethink his approach, he's now inclined to burn through administration personnel, even though shuffling the names on an org chart around isn't going to alter any of the fundamentals of the situation.
Howard Schultz only has one idea about politics, and it's bad: "Making him president won't fix the problems of partisanship."
Trump's possibly illegal designation of a new acting homeland security secretary, explained.
Zack Beauchamp: Republicans are taking Ilhan Omar's comments on 9/11 out of context to smear her. Well, when did they ever let context complicate a good smear?
David Dayen: Betsy DeVos quietly making it easier for dying for-profit schools to rip off a few more students on the way out.
Sean Illing: Why conspiracy theories are getting more absurd and harder to refute: Interview with Nancy L Rosenblum, co-author (with Russell Muirhead) of A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy.
Umair Irfan: A brief guide to David Bernhardt, Ryan Zinke's replacement at the Interior Department: "Three things to know about the former oil lobbyist who's just been confirmed as the new Secretary of the Interior."
Kalpana Jain: 4 key things to know about India's elections Thursday.
Jen Kirby: The new Brexit deadline is October 31.
Dara Lind: The post-purge agenda: what the White House wants next on immigration: "Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are pushing for a multi-pronged asylum crackdown."
German Lopez:
Ella Nilsen: Why the Senate is blocking a new net neutrality bill, a year after trying to save it. The House passed a bill. McConnell refuses to allow the Senate to consider it. Trump says if passed he will veto it.
Anna North: A Texas bill would allow the death penalty for patients who get abortions: "The bill is unlikely to pass, but it's part of a larger trend."
Trita Parsi: Trump's Iran terrorist designation is designed to lock in endless enmity. Related: Daniel DePetris/Richard Sokolsky: Bolton and Pompeo are steering Trump toward war with Iran; Robert Mackey: On the eve of Israel's elections, Netanyahu thanks Trump for sanctioning Iran at his request.
Andrew Prokop:
Former Obama White House counsel indicted in charges stemming from Mueller probe: Greg Craig, "charged with two counts of making false statements in a Justice Department inquiry into whether his law firm Skadden Arps should have registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) because of its work for the Ukrainian government." Craig left the Obama administration in 2010. Got involved in Ukrain at Paul Manafort's behest.
What does Bill Barr mean when he says he'll review US "spying" on Trump's campaign? "Barr voiced sympathy to some long-running conservative criticisms about the Russia probe's handling."
Gabriela Resto-Montero:
Josie Duffy Rice: Jussie Smollett and the impulse to punish. Chicago's outgoing mayor Rahm Emmanuel, cementing his reputation as a grandstanding dickhead, ordered the city to sue Jussie Smollett for the costs of investigating him before dropping charges, some $130,000.
Given the failures of law enforcement in Chicago, [F.O.P. president Kevin] Graham is not in a strong position to castigate [Cook County states attorney] Foxx. In the first half of 2018, Chicago police made an arrest or identified a suspect in just fifteen per cent of murder cases. Similarly, Emanuel's concern about the costs of the Smollett investigation is misguided at best; in 2018 alone, the city paid a total of a hundred and thirteen million dollars in police-misconduct settlements and related legal fees. . . .
As Matthew Saniie, the chief data officer for Foxx's office, recently wrote, in Cook County, cases in which the defendant, like Smollett, pleads not guilty to a fourth-degree felony end in a deferred prosecution seventy-five per cent of the time. Foxx runs the second-largest prosecutor's office in the country, responsible for prosecuting crimes in Chicago and a hundred and thirty-four municipalities. Her staff sees almost half a million cases every year. Prosecutorial discretion is one of the pillars of our justice system, and it is her job to discern what deserves her staff's attention, as opposed to what has grabbed the most public attention.
Aaron Rupar: Trump promised his sons would keep business out of politics. He's admitting that was a lie. This links to: Elaina Plott: Inside Ivanka's dreamworld: "The 'first daughter' spent years rigorously cultivating her image. But she wasn't prepared for scrutiny."
Kirk Semple: Central American farmers head to the US, fleeing climate change.
Peter Stone: Trump hotels exempted from ban on foreign payments under new stance.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells: Bernie Sanders imagines a progressive new approach to foreign policy: While the rest of the field plays catch up with his 2016 platform, he breaks new ground. But his main break with the bipartisan orthodoxy is thus far limited to sensibility. He's more likely to promote peace and respect than the others because he values them, but he's yet to get down to the specifics it will take to deal with Israel/Palestine, to pick the one case other politicians most fear.
Alex Ward: