Vox: A Russian newspaper editor explains how Putin made Trump his puppet

Mikhail Fishman It is strange. It looks a bit irrational on Trump's part to be sure. Why does he have this strange passion for Putin and Russia? I have to say, I don't believe in the conspiracy theories about "golden showers" and blackmailing. I don't believe it exists and I don't believe it's a factor. But this, admittedly, makes the whole thing that much stranger. [...]

In their habits, they're radically different. Trump is a posturing performer, full of idiotic narcissism. He appears to be a disorganized fool, to be honest. Putin, on the other hand, is calculating, organized, and he plans everything. He also hides much of his personal life in a way that Trump does not.

Then there's also the fact that Putin is so much more experienced than Trump. He has more than 15 years of global political experience. He knows how to do things, how to work the system. He makes plenty of mistakes, but he knows how to think and act. Trump is a total neophyte. He has no experience and doesn't understand how global politics operates. He displays his ignorance every single day. [...]

Mikhail Fishman Because he knew that would mean an extension of Obama's harsh orientation to Russia, perhaps even more aggressive than Obama. Putin has experienced some difficult years since his 2014 invasion of Crimea, but he didn't expect this level of isolation. He saw — and sees — Trump as an opportunity to change the dynamic.Mikhail Fishman Because he knew that would mean an extension of Obama's harsh orientation to Russia, perhaps even more aggressive than Obama. Putin has experienced some difficult years since his 2014 invasion of Crimea, but he didn't expect this level of isolation. He saw — and sees — Trump as an opportunity to change the dynamic. [...]

Mikhail Fishman He didn't believe Trump would win, so he was preparing to sell Clinton's victory as a fraud. And this is part of his broader message across the board, which is that democracy itself is flawed, broken, unjust. Putin actually believes this. He doesn't believe in democracy, and this is the worldview that he basically shares with Trump: that the establishment is corrupt and that the liberal world order is unjust.

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Politico: Trump’s wet kiss to Putin seals a new world order

The president’s regard for Putin — who on Monday affirmed his preference for Trump in the 2016 election — contrasted sharply with his increasingly tough talk toward Europe, language that chips away at international order, to still unclear affect. A similar dynamic played out last month in Singapore, when Trump left flustered allies, including Canada, behind after departing the G-7 summit to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom he called “tough” and “very smart.” [...]

For Trump, who often expresses his views on trade and economics as a zero-sum game, his friendliness toward a country or region can be measured by the degree to which they are seen as an economic threat to the U.S., experts noted. By that measure, Europe and Canada are far scarier than Russia — despite it being at the center of years of Republican attacks on Democrats over security issues. [...]

“We can no longer completely rely on the White House,” Heiko Maas, the German foreign minister, told the Funke newspaper group. “To maintain our partnership with the U.S.A we must readjust it. The first clear consequence can only be that we need to align ourselves even more closely in Europe.” [...]

Trump opened Monday blaming American “foolishness and stupidity” and the investigation into Russian election meddling that he dismisses as a “rigged witch hunt,” for historically strained relations with Russia. Despite earlier listing Russia in his list of adversaries, his Europe trip seemed to give Putin few reasons to be displeased overall.

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openDemocracy: Georgia’s growing cultural divide: a sign of far-right populism?

Further developments over the past two months have shaken the government and led to changes in the cabinet. In May, Georgian police organised heavy-handed raids against two of Tbilisi’s most prominent nightclubs. In response, young people took to the streets of the capital to protest the abuse of power by police, calling for freedom of expression and entertainment, as well as an ease on the country’s strict drug policy. The situation intensified two days later when Tbilisi’s clubbers continued their protest, only for ultra-nationalist groups Georgian March and Georgian Idea to gather nearby and hold a counter-rally against young people with “coloured hair and piercings”. Finally, Georgia’s Interior Minister visited the demonstration and asked the young people to disperse due to the “high threat from another group” who tried to break through the police cordon and enter the crowd of “liberal protesters”, as local media dubbed them.  [...]

Journalist Onnik James Krikorian, a consultant for the OSCE and resident of Tbilisi for several years, believes that the far-right are definitely becoming more visible, vocal and active – just as throughout Europe as well as the United States. “As for the potential threat it poses,” Krikorian comments, “it’s worth noting that far-right political parties are making some progress electorally in places and Georgia is not immune from populism either. This in itself is not illegal, of course, but the effect it can have on society and social cohesion is very definitely one of concern.” [...]

According to OSCE data provided by Georgia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, the number of crimes committed on a hate speech basis has gradually increased since 2012. While 13 cases of hate crime were recorded in 2012, and there is no available data for 2013, in 2014 there were 19 crimes, 2015 – 20, 2016 - 44 crimes. Moreover, the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs recently released a report claiming 53 people were arrested for hate crimes in 2018, including racism and xenophobia, bias against Muslims and different sexual orientations. [...]

Georgian far-right groups deny connections with Russia, but some experts highlight their use of talking points similar to those of Russian groups, calling them channels of Russian “conservative soft power”. Indeed, parallels exist between the values and ideas of Georgian far-right nationalist groups and the type of social conservativism promoted in Russia, including Euroscepticism, homophobia and support for the role of the church in daily and political life.

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Politico: Europe’s dependence on the US was all part of the plan

As feared, the president of the United States arrived at last week’s NATO summit in a mood of preposterous spleen, profound contempt and shocking rudeness. He insisted on sharing before the cameras imaginary facts that hadn’t a thing to do with the summit agenda, and he refused to listen to anyone who tried, however gently, to correct him. In the words of Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, “These are not negotiating tactics. They are the tactics of someone who does not want a deal.” In a private meeting, Trump reportedly threatened that unless the allies boosted their military spending beyond previous agreements by January, the United States would “go it alone.” Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, implored Americans not to “normalize” this. “He is the first American president since Harry Truman,” Burns noted, “to not believe that NATO is central to American national security interests.” And Burns is a Republican. [...]

The open, liberal world order we know today was built in the wake of World War II and expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union. By design, it is led by the United States; by design, it ensures permanent U.S. military hegemony over Eurasia while uniting Europe under the U.S.’s protection. The goal of this American grand strategy is to prevent any single power from dominating the region and turning on United States and its allies. American hegemony serves, too, to quell previously intractable regional rivalries, preventing further world wars. Dean Acheson, George Marshall and the other great statesmen of their generation pursued this strategy because they had learned, at unimaginable cost, that the eternal American fantasy of forever being free of Europe — isolationism or America-Firstism, in other words — was just that: a fantasy. Four hundred thousand American men lost their lives in the European theaters of the First and Second World Wars. (American fatalities in all of the other 20th century conflicts — including Vietnam, Korea and the Persian Gulf — do not total one quarter of that number.) Our postwar statesmen were neither weak nor incompetent. They were the architects of the greatest foreign policy triumph in U.S. history. [...]

In recognizing this history of blood, however, we must recognize something equally true: In the wake of World War II, liberal democracy saw its fullest realization in the West. This flourishing of peace and human rights cannot be explained by a sudden outbreak of European pacifism. (Consider the 1956 Suez expedition, crushed by an infuriated President Dwight Eisenhower; or the 1954-62 Franco-Algerian War.) It happened because during World War II, Europe destroyed itself, leaving the United States overwhelmingly powerful by comparison, its only rival the Soviet Union. Through the application of economic, diplomatic and military force majeure, the United States suppressed Europe’s internal security competition. This is why postwar Europe ceased to be the world’s leading exporter of violence and became, instead, the world’s leading exporter of luxury sedans. [...]

At the same time, the United States built an open, global order upon an architecture of specific institutions: the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the International Court of Justice. This order is in many respects an empire — a Pax Americana — but it is more humane than any empire that preceded it, with institutions that are intended to benefit all parties. Postwar U.S. statesmen believed that prosperous, liberal democracies that traded freely with each other would neither go to war with each other nor the United States. They ascribed, in other words, to the so-called Democratic Peace theory — a theory with overwhelming empirical support.

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IFLScience: Scientists Just Examined The Shroud Of Turin, And They Found Something Awkward

Now, researchers from the University of Pavia, Italy, have used modern forensic techniques to analyze the blood patterns on the shroud in the first study of its kind. Taking a crime scene approach, the team simulated blood flows with the help of both a mannequin and a live volunteer, who (it might be worth adding) was not harmed in the process.

The team ran seven bloodstain tests using real and synthetic blood on different body parts, including the chest, hand, forearm, and lower back. During these tests, blood was pumped around the model and released at the various wound points shown on the shroud. This enabled the researchers to see at what angle the blood should naturally flow when left to gravity. [...]

The blood splatters on the shroud could not be replicated from any one pose. Instead, the angle of gravity that would be required to make the patterns on the shroud varied by body part. For example, blood marks from the hand would suggest they were held at a 45-degree angle, whereas those from the forearms would suggest that they had been held at a 90-degree angle. [...]

Given the conclusion, it is slightly surprising that the purpose of the experiment was to find out whether the shroud suggested a T-shaped or Y-shaped crucifixion, rather than whether it happened at all. The result so far: no evidence of crucifixion, T-shaped, Y-shaped, or otherwise, can be found in the cloth.

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CityLab: Photographing Urban 'Under-Spaces' (MAR 17, 2016)

In 2011, photographer Gisela Erlacher visited Chongqing city in China and became fascinated with urban “under-spaces”—small, unlikely pockets of life wedged between or tucked away under towering megastructures like expressways and bridges. She’d seen these before. Near her home in Vienna, Austria, stood a tiny house, with its roof just a few feet under two mammoth highways. [...]

While taking the photos for her book, Erlacher noticed some regional trends. In Chongquing, for example, these hidden spaces contained benches, parks, and tea houses where older folks could relax. In Europe, on the other hand, younger people typically occupied playgrounds and skate parks located in the shadows of colossal infrastructure.

But if there’s was one big lesson that Erlacher believes applies across the board, it’s that rapid, functionality-driven urbanization over the past couple of decades didn’t occur uniformly. “Now we (and future generations) need to come to terms with the consequences,” she says.

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Politico: Theresa May caves in on Brexiteer amendments to head off rebellion

Unless May is able to claw back enough support among MPs for her compromise plan, it is likely the impasse will only be resolved if either the U.K. crashes out with no deal at all, a solution favored by some hardline Brexiteers, there is a second referendum, which a small number of pro-EU MPs publicly endorse, or the prime minister can find a way to ask Brussels for more time.

In a bid to see off a Brexiteer uprising, No. 10 Downing Street accepted four “wrecking” amendments laid by hardline Euroskeptics in Rees-Mogg’s European Research Group of Tory MPs, all designed to undermine the prime minister’s new Brexit proposal agreed at Chequers, but insisted the new amendments did not undermine government policy. Defense Minister Guto Bebb quit after voting against one of the key changes, defying official government policy. [...]

In a major test of parliamentary strength for both sides of the Brexit debate, the government saw off the pro-EU rebels’ bid to remove the Euroskeptic clause banning any future customs arrangement with the EU which sees the U.K. collecting tariffs for Brussels without the EU doing the same for Britain in reverse. [...]

The fact May felt compelled to accept all four amendments proposed by Brexiteers exposes the precariousness of her situation in parliament as she battles to find a compromise Brexit deal with Brussels acceptable to both wings of the Conservative Party. Experts said the clause effectively killed off the prime minister’s proposed “customs facilitation agreement” — the center-piece of her Chequers plan for a compromise customs model designed to keep the Irish border open while also allowing the rest of the U.K. to strike free trade deals with new countries.  

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Al Jazeera: As Trump engages Putin, his deal with Kim collapses

Yet, there is little evidence to suggest his "fire and fury" diplomacy is working. Trump's self-proclaimed success in engaging North Korea is on the verge of becoming a failure, exposing the paucity of his strongman diplomacy. [...]

In late June, reports emerged detailing Pyongyang's expansion of nuclear facilities and its arsenal in advance of the Singapore summit. Trump was quick to respond to growing doubts about the results of his diplomatic efforts with North Korea, saying talks were "going well".  [...]

The problem is that if Trump were to choose to return to his prior brinkmanship, threatening North Korea with "preemptive war", the US will almost certainly find itself isolated this time. After all, Trump has helped transform the image of the North Korean supreme leader from a mad villain into a young peacemaker. [...]

And if Kim, the leader of small, impoverished North Korea, is able to play Trump and get what he wants out of him, then what can we expect from a strongman like Putin?

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The Atlantic: The Crisis Facing America

The United States was then a comparatively poor and vulnerable country, so the Founders imagined corruption taking the form of some princely emolument that would enable an ex-president to emigrate and—in the words of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney—“live in greater splendor in another country than his own.” Yet they understood that even the most developed countries were not immune to the suborning of their leaders. As Morris said, "One would think the King of England well secured [against] bribery. … Yet Charles II was bribed by Louis XIV.”

The reasons for Trump’s striking behavior—whether he was bribed or blackmailed or something else—remain to be ascertained. That he has publicly refused to defend his country’s independent electoral process—and did so jointly with the foreign dictator who perverted that process—is video-recorded fact.

And it’s a fact that has to be seen in the larger context of his actions in office: denouncing the EU as a “foe,” threatening to break up nato, wrecking the U.S.-led world trading system, intervening in both U.K. and German politics in support of extremist and pro-Russian forces, and his continued refusal to act to protect the integrity of U.S. voting systems—it adds up to a political indictment whether or not it quite qualifies as a criminal one.  

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