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SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Bosnia on Monday said it will take back the country’s citizens who have been captured while fighting for the Islamic State group and who will face legal proceedings upon return to the Balkan country. About 260 Bosni…
November 11, 2019Read More
The revelation from International Atomic Energy Agency is the first time it has acknowledged in a report that allegations made by the U.S. and Israel against Iran are true. The IAEA did not identify the site in the confidential quarterly report distri…
November 11, 2019Read More
The U.N. atomic watchdog says Iran’s stockpiles of low-enriched uranium are still growing in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal. In a confidential quarterly report distributed to member states, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran’s stockp…
November 11, 2019Read More
Nikki Haley wants you to know two things: First, she is very loyal to President Trump. Second, she feels kind of bad about the things he does.If that sounds incoherent, well, too bad. Those contradictions — on display in her new memoir, With All Due Respect — contain her road map for becoming president.Public impeachment hearings against Trump start this week in Washington, D.C., but Haley, Trump’s former U.N. ambassador, pretty clearly is already looking ahead to the 2024 presidential election. If you want to know how the Republican Party plans to salvage its electoral prospects in the wake of Trump’s presidency, when women and suburban voters have fled the GOP en masse, look no further than Haley’s book.There are two things that are likely to be true for a few years after Donald Trump leaves the presidency. The first is that the GOP base will remain essentially Trumpist, and Trump himself will probably remain a kingmaker within the party for the foreseeable future. The second is that the broader electorate — which has never really liked Trump — might well reject any GOP candidate too closely associated with him.Haley’s game plan? Split the difference.Her book — as reported on Sunday afternoon by The Washington Post — suggests she plans a careful balancing act, simultaneously demonstrating her loyalty to Trump and her independence from him.The question is whether it is truly possible to do both things at once.She accomplishes the first half of the task by rebuking two of her colleagues, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and then-Chief of Staff John Kelly. According to the Post, Haley writes that she disdained their efforts to circumvent some of the president’s decisions — while she remained steadfast in her loyalty to the boss.”It should’ve been, ‘Go tell the president what your differences are, and quit if you don’t like what he’s doing,'” Haley told CBS News. “But to undermine a president is really a very dangerous thing. And it goes against the Constitution, and it goes against what the American people want. And it was offensive.”The problem is that Haley herself provides several examples of the president’s questionable judgment. Many of these incidents are known — Trump’s equivocating between racists and anti-racists in the aftermath of violence in Charlottesville is probably the best known — but Haley wants us to know that while she was silent publicly, she was firm with the president behind closed doors.”A leader’s words matter in these situations. And the president’s words had been hurtful and dangerous,” Haley wrote. “I picked up the phone and called the president.”In the book — and in interviews promoting the book — Haley attempts this balancing act over and over again. She doesn’t always approve of the president. His opponents, though, are somehow always worse.Should Trump have said that Democratic women of color should “go back” to where they came from? No, Haley says, but she understands why he did so. “I can also appreciate where he’s coming from, from the standpoint of, ‘Don’t bash America, over and over and over again, and not do something to try and fix it,'” she said.Should the president have pressured Ukraine to investigate his political opponents? No, Haley says, but neither is the act impeachable. “So, do I think it’s not good practice to talk to foreign governments about investigating Americans? Yes,” she said, in a bit of a grammatical loopty-loop. “Do I think the president did something that warrants impeachment? No, because the aid flowed.”One key test of whether Haley’s “yes, but” approach to defending Trump is whether Trump himself allows it. The president hasn’t exactly shown himself to be fond of subordinates who are loyal but independent. Indeed, on Sunday he was on Twitter, urging Republicans to declare his communications to be “perfect” — better than merely unimpeachable. “Loyal but independent” might well be insufficiently loyal in Trump’s eyes. If he does play the kingmaker role going forward, that could be a problem for Haley.> The call to the Ukrainian President was PERFECT. Read the Transcript! There was NOTHING said that was in any way wrong. Republicans, don’t be led into the fools trap of saying it was not perfect, but is not impeachable. No, it is much stronger than that. NOTHING WAS DONE WRONG!> > — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2019Her two-pronged approach may well offer Republicans their best chance at winning elections in the post-Trump era, however — unless the party decides to go all-in on voter suppression. Successful politicians often find themselves trying to be all things to all people.Nikki Haley, it appears, is getting ready to put that proposition to the ultimate test.More stories from theweek.com The coming death of just about every rock legend The president has already confessed to his crimes Why are 2020 Democrats so weird?
November 11, 2019Read More
Veterans Day falls on the second Monday in November this year. The federal holiday is always celebrated on Nov. 11
November 11, 2019Read More
In her new book, Haley is doubling down on her support for Trump – and hoping it will lead to fame and fortune in the Republican party‘Haley is making a bet that her future depends on devotion to Trump and his brand of populism.’ Photograph: Olivier Do…
November 11, 2019Read More
Two shocking incidents of violence mark a day that saw police use tear gas and water cannons against protesters — who threw bricks and Molotov cocktails.
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A Dutch court says the government must attempt to bring home children whose mothers traveled to Syria to join Islamic extremist groups. The decision Monday at a court in The Hague came in a case filed by lawyers on behalf of 23 women and their 56 chil…
November 11, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg Opinion) — Russian opposition leaders rejoiced at the forced resignation of Bolivian President Evo Morales, while the Russian foreign ministry branded it an “orchestrated coup.” The interest in the drama playing out so far from Moscow is understandable, and not just because Morales had handed lucrative projects to Russian state companies. In 2024, President Vladimir Putin faces the same choice that Morales faced this year — to obey the constitutional term limit or to sweep it aside and try to keep power.Bolivia has a long history of military coups and aborted presidencies. Carlos Mesa, the current opposition leader, resigned after two years as president in 2005 amid mass protests. That paved the way for the first electoral victory of Morales in December of that year. The new president declared that power now belonged to the indigenous people of Bolivia and that the country’s natural resources would be nationalized — a decision that had been backed by a referendum held during Mesa’s presidency but not implemented by him.Morales, who doesn’t have a college degree, has turned out to be the most successful leader in Bolivia’s dolorous history of poverty, strife and military defeat. Poverty declined during his rule.Per-capita economic output, meanwhile, rose faster than the regional average.Morales, however, was an authoritarian ruler who quickly found rapport with the leaders of Cuba and Venezuela — and with the Putin regime in Russia, which finds it easy to do arms and energy business with autocrats. Rosatom Corp., the Russian state nuclear monopoly, got a contract to build a $300 million nuclear center near La Paz, the Bolivian capital, and began negotiating a concession to develop Bolivia’s large lithium reserves. Gazprom PJSC, the Russian state-controlled natural-gas company, has been present in Bolivia since 2010. Russia also has been trying to sell weapons to Bolivia, especially helicopters; Putin himself has tried to talk Morales into it, but actual sales have been held back by Bolivia’s shortage of funds.Bolivia’s constitution has included a two-term limit for presidents since 2009, meaning Morales could serve for three terms because his first one started before the limit took effect. In 2016, he tried to remove the cap but lost a referendum.Morales appeared to accept that he’d have to leave, but in 2017, the country’s constitutional court controversially ruled against the term limit, and he was allowed to run again. Rosatom reportedly even sent a team of Russian election experts to back his campaign and thus protect the Russian state companies’ interests. On Oct. 20, however, Morales was still unable to beat Mesa by the margin he needed to avoid a runoff, and then major vote-counting irregularities became so obvious that mass protests erupted and even Bolivia’s labor unions turned against the president.But Morales only resigned when the military said it wouldn’t crush the protests and urged him to go. Clearly, Bolivian generals have learned the lessons of 2003, when they followed then-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada’s orders to use force against protesters demanding the nationalization of the country’s natural-gas deposits. At least 67 people were killed and some 400 injured; Lozada was sued by the victims’ families in the U.S., where he lives now, but was cleared last year because the judge found the evidence of his culpability insufficient. (Mesa, who served as Lozada’s vice president, had opposed the violence).Morales described the events that forced him to resign as a coup, and his words were echoed not just by Russia, whose contracts in Bolivia are at risk now, but by a roster of international leftists, ranging from U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar to U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Putin’s opponents in Russia were, on the contrary, encouraged.Corruption fighter Alexei Navalny tweeted a photo of Morales with Putin, accompanied by this caption: “A corrupt president who was illegally holding on to power through lies and falsifications, has fled the country. For now, just the one on the left.”Leonid Volkov, another leading opposition figure, tweeted, “I really wish we could be like Bolivia.”The jubilation and the envy won’t pass unnoticed in the Kremlin. Putin has more than four years to explore his options for 2024, when his own presidency comes up against a constitutional term limit, but there is no obvious quasi-legitimate scenario that would allow him to stay in the Kremlin. There appears to be no appetite for a risky move to a parliamentary republic, which would make the prime minister’s office the most powerful and allow Putin to get re-elected as many times as he can. And ruling by proxy, as Putin did during Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency between 2008 and 2012, clearly disappointed Putin himself since he moved to undo Medvedev’s feeble attempt at liberalizing the country.The most obvious option is simply to alter the constitution to remove the term limit. But the Morales example shows the pitfalls of this strategy. While he’s respected and his contribution to reducing poverty is widely acknowledged, even his supporters are tired of him after 13 years in power; it’s only natural for people to grow restless without change. When that happens, critical decisions must eventually be taken by the military and the police.In Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro has managed to keep the military loyal, and he still hasn’t been deposed. In Bolivia, Morales had retained the military’s support throughout his rule because he didn’t demand too much from his enforcers. But when popular protest reached a high point, the generals wouldn’t move against them, and Morales was finished.All this Latin American experience, closely monitored in Moscow because of state companies’ business dealings in the region, will serve to convince Putin that an authoritarian’s natural term limit isn’t the one specified in the constitution. In reality, he can rule until his enforcers decide they can’t afford to follow his orders. That means Putin must keep buying the loyalty of Russia’s vast security apparatus, which is already costing the government about 10% of its non-classified budget. The National Guard, which includes riot police, is slated for big spending increases in the next four years.To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at [email protected] contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Landman at [email protected] column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
November 11, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg) — Bolivia is in chaos after another night of arson attacks and clashes as the resignation of President Evo Morales left the nation with no clear leadership and no date set for new elections.Morales quit on Sunday after election irregularit…
November 11, 2019Read More
Recent editorials published in Iowa newspapers Lexington Herald Leader
November 11, 2019Read More
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