| | | | Music to President Trump's Ears? | | Vladimir Putin's 13th annual news conference felt a little like "Groundhog Day" as he once again promoted his domestic record. "But he did save a few jabs for the United States on election meddling and Olympic doping," The New York Times reports.
"'This is all made up by people who oppose Trump to make his work look illegitimate,'" Putin said when asked about allegations of collusion, "adding that there is a 'deep state' in the United States that fosters hostility toward Moscow: 'Do they want to ban all contact?'"
The Times adds: "'You are interesting guys,' the president said with a smirk. American lawmakers appear to be good-looking, well dressed and smart, he said, but they 'are placing us on the same shelf with D.P.R.K. and Iran while simultaneously pushing Trump toward solving the North Korean and Iran nuclear problems through joint efforts with us. Are you normal at all?'" - Why a question about fish could suggest trouble. The lack of fireworks at the news conference might speak to one of the biggest problems facing the Russian President ahead of his campaign to be reelected next year, suggests Shaun Walker for The Guardian: Russians might be a little bored.
"Some questions are agreed with the Kremlin press service in advance. Others are asked by journalists who bring placards, flags or other items to wave in the air in the hope of attracting Putin's attention. This year, the most passionate question was about the price of fish, asked by a man who admitted he had posed as a journalist to get in, and was in fact the director of an Arctic fish plant," Walker writes.
"The handful of probing questions are likely to be Putin's toughest grilling before the election. But much of the press conference was dour and procedural, and lacked the spark of Putin's meetings with the press earlier in his rule.
"It illustrated a central dilemma for his electoral campaign: after 18 years of Putin, how can the Kremlin keep things interesting without risking a loss of control?"
| | A Brexit Vote Do-Over Would Be a Terrible Idea | | Wednesday's surprise defeat for Prime Minister Theresa May's government in a key parliamentary vote on Brexit might provide further ammunition for "Remainers" who believe the whole process should be scrapped and another referendum called. But aside from the huge practical hurdles of redoing the vote before Britain legally leaves the European Union in March 2019, there's another problem, argues Therese Raphael for Bloomberg View: It would simply be the wrong thing to do.
"[E]ven if the U.K. parliament could agree on a referendum before the Article 50 clock runs out, it seems reckless to do so," Raphael argues. "At a time when public confidence in politicians is weak, how does it encourage faith in democracy for a government to call a vote that is meant to be definitive and then replay it? More importantly, having seen the toll that uncertainty has already brought on the U.K. economy, it would be folly to drag out the uncertainty with a new campaign and vote. And at a time when other important issues—from housing shortages to inequality and a severely strained national health care service—are starved of the oxygen of government attention, it would be a profligate use of government energies."
"Perhaps one day—possibly decades into the future—there will be a strong enough case for revisiting the June 2016 decision. That isn't now. Those who want a close relationship with Europe should instead think about how to influence the trade negotiations that are about to begin."
| | Why America's Gun Violence Problem Is Worse than We Realize | | | Five years on from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, and something important is frequently lost in the discussion of gun violence in America. The fact is that around six out of seven people who suffer a gunshot wound will survive (excluding suicide attempts), although often with devastating long-term injuries. The result? "Americans are both vastly underestimating and misunderstanding gun violence," writes David Bernstein for The Atlantic.
"Underestimating, because researchers are only barely beginning to measure the personal, familial, local, and societal costs of what [Bindu] Kalesan and others estimate are more than a million shooting survivors living in the United States; and misunderstanding, because nonfatal shootings can be quite different from those that result in death," Bernstein writes.
"The dearth of research makes it near impossible to fully illustrate the realities of gun violence to the broader public. As of now, for example, nobody really knows how often people are shot by their intimate partners, how many victims are intended targets or bystanders, how many shootings are in self-defense, how such incidents affect community investment and property values, or how much it costs taxpayers to care for victims."
"As a result, survivors of gun violence are largely invisible, even to the people who work closely on the issue—including policymakers, academics, and medical professionals." | | Turkey "World's Worst Jailer" of Journalists: Report | | "The number of journalists imprisoned worldwide hit another new record in 2017," according to a new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), with Turkey remaining the "world's worst jailer for the second consecutive year."
"[H]alf of those jailed for their work are behind bars in Turkey, China, and Egypt," according to the CPJ. "The pattern reflects a dismal failure by the international community to address a global crisis in freedom of the press."
The report says that 73 journalists remain behind bars in Turkey, while "dozens more still face trial, and fresh arrests take place regularly. In several other cases in Turkey, CPJ was unable to establish a link to journalism. Other press freedom groups using a different methodology have higher numbers. Every journalist CPJ found jailed for their work in Turkey is under investigation for, or charged with, anti-state crimes, as was true of last year's census."
| | Israel, Be Careful About Getting Too Cozy with Trump: Chollet | | If nothing else, President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has "fueled the love affair for Trump among Israel's government and strategic community," writes Derek Chollet for Foreign Policy. But Israel is making a mistake by tying itself to the President. After all, Trump won't be around forever.
"The strength of the US-Israel relationship comes from its solid bipartisan foundation, and there are signs that, like so much else, it is cracking. This began in the Obama years—the seismic event being Netanyahu's speech in Congress against the Iran deal—but has become worse," writes Chollet, who served in the Obama administration.
"The danger is that being 'pro-Israel' becomes a status confined only to Trump's Republicans. Israel will not benefit from a relationship defined by partisanship, and it is foolish for Israeli leaders to fuel this, even if they are doing so unwittingly. Think of the next generation of Democratic political leaders, who will mainly remember the bitterness of the Obama era and stand against pretty much anything Trump is for. How will the Israeli government's big bet on Trump look to them?" | | | | | | |
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