The New York Review of Books: Exporting the Technology of Occupation

This is just one of the more sinister examples of a lucrative business. According to the Jerusalem Post, Israel recently sold Saudi Arabia $250 million-worth of sophisticated spying equipment, and Ha’aretz also reported that the Kingdom was offered the NSO Group’s phone-hacking software shortly before Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman began purging opponents in 2017. Israel and Saudi Arabia both view Iran as a unique threat that justifies their cooperation.

Besides spyware and cyber tools, Israel has developed a growing industry based around surveillance including espionage, psychological operations, and disinformation. One of these corporations, Black Cube, a private intelligence agency with links to the Israeli government (two former heads of the Mossad have sat on its international advisory board), has recently gained notoriety—most notably for spying on women who’d accused Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. News reports have also identified the firm’s work on behalf of Hungary’s authoritarian government, as well as an alleged “dirty ops” campaigns against Obama administration officials tied to the Iran nuclear deal, and against an anti-corruption investigator in Romania. Black Cube and other agencies like it have close ties to the Israeli state because they hire many former intelligence personnel. [...]

Despite their occasional diplomatic gestures opposing Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, many nations have become willing customers of Israeli cyber-weapons and intelligence know-how. The Mexican government has also used NSO Group tools, in at least one case, according to The New York Times, apparently to track an investigative reporter who was subsequently murdered; human rights lawyers and anti-corruption activists have also been targeted. Amnesty International has accused the NSO Group of attempting to spy on one of its employees. A Canadian research group, the Citizen Lab, found that infected phones have shown up in Bahrain, Brazil, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, the UAE, the UK, the US, and elsewhere. [...]

Hever acknowledges that “authoritarian regimes definitely still want to learn how Israel manages and controls the Palestinians, but the more they learn, the more they realize that Israel does not actually control the Palestinians very effectively. Support for Israel from right-wing groups and politicians around the world is still strong—Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, being a particularly depressing example—but I think there is more focus on the racism, racial profiling and nationalism and less and less admiration for the ‘strongest military in the world.’” He even questions the Israeli government narrative about the success of the weapons and intelligence sector and argues that the industry is in decline because it is so dependent on short-term, ad-hoc alliances.

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UnHerd: Why Brexit Britain should welcome more refugees

Morally, I think we get our attitude to migration entirely the wrong way round. Too many count as common sense that we want an immigration system that prioritises those workers that our economy might benefit from – doctors, engineers, crop pickers etc. To my mind, these are the people who may not need a welcome on our shores. Those who are the brightest and the best should stay with their home community and be of service there.

Taking doctors and engineers from poorer parts of the world is a form of asset stripping. If we need people to do these jobs we ought to be training up our young people, not importing cheaper labour from elsewhere. The free movement of labour is an extension of the flexible labour market beloved of big business, one that’s purpose is to keep wages low. It also allows the business class easy access to the international playground. Little wonder big business loves the EU.[...]

When it comes to this group, we must be as generous and accommodating as we can be, and then some more. I have no truck with the disingenuous idea that migrants stop being vulnerable and in need the moment they first set foot in a county where they are no longer persecuted. To those who say that the migrants crossing the channel are hardly escaping oppression – having come from France – I would refer you to the horrendous and insanitary conditions of the French camps like the Calais Jungle. I saw better organised refugee camps in Iraq.

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UnHerd: Trump’s white identity politics

Academic research has shown that whites’ political opinions are frequently linked to their views of minorities. For example, whites’ opinions about a range of issues such as civil rights, crime, and social welfare programs are linked to how they view African Americans, and their opinions about anti-terrorism policies are linked to how they view Muslims.

But white group identity has typically been less prevalent and less potent when compared to minority group’s sense of identity with other minority group members. This is because group identity typically thrives under conditions of separation, marginalisation, and discrimination – conditions that are more commonly experienced by minorities. Thus, whites have not necessarily felt a strong connection to other whites or made political choices with their identity as whites at the forefront of their minds. By contrast, minority group members’ sense of connection to their own group routinely affects their political choices. [...]

In ‘activating’ white group consciousness, Trump made it a stronger predictor of how people voted. The salience of white identity was not evident in recent presidential elections precisely because it was linked to Trump himself. Just as Domenech feared, Trump made white identity politics a modern reality. [...]

One other finding also suggests that Trump himself was the key factor. In the spring of 2016, a separate ANES survey asked people how they would vote if the general election matched up Trump and Clinton, Cruz and Clinton, and Rubio and Clinton. The results are telling: perceptions of discrimination against whites were significantly associated with support for Trump over Clinton, but not with support for Rubio or Cruz over Clinton.

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FiveThirtyEight: Republicans In Congress Have Been Very Loyal To Trump. Will It Last?

Democrats largely voted against the president’s positions, but they weren’t quite as unified against Trump as Republicans were for him: In the House, the average Democratic member agreed with Trump 23 percent of the time; in the Senate, 31 percent of the time.

The voting behavior we saw in the 115th is pretty much what we’d expect. Because Republicans controlled both the executive and legislative branches, they were more likely to vote in unison on issues and avoid bringing votes to the floor that would be divisive or unsuccessful — although that certainly wasn’t always the case. Times when Republicans broke ranks and voted against the president — like a few did in July 2017 on legislation that would have repealed parts of the Affordable Care Act — drew attention, but votes like those weren’t the norm. The three GOP senators who sank the health insurance bill — Susan Collins of Maine, the late John McCain of Arizona and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — all had Trump scores of 75 percent by the end of the 115th Congress. [...]

But Trump’s approval rating might have to take a nose dive before Republicans defect. While it’s unclear how voting patterns will shift in the new Congress, what is particularly striking is just how effective Trump has been in securing party loyalty in the first two years of his presidency. As you can see in the chart below, Senate Democrats didn’t coalesce as neatly around Obama during his first two years in office as Senate Republicans did around Trump.

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