*Putin’s Political Checkmate | Boring Billionaires | Israel’s Intel Dossier on Iran

“For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.” – Suzanne Collins

“You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Grandmaster Putin’s Political Checkmate: Before President Trump met with Russian President Putin in Helsinki, people spoke about what might be the worst-case scenario coming out of that meeting. It was worse than they imagined. After a private 90 minute plus meeting between just Trump, Putin and their interpreters, the world got to watch a 45 minute press conference at which the American president failed every opportunity to support and defend his country and its institutions. Rather than say he believed US intelligence communities, and challenge the perpetrator of an all-out attack on an American election, Donald Trump said Putin “was extremely strong and powerful in his denial” that he had interfered in the 2016 election, so what was he (Trump) supposed to do? He even said that he didn’t “see any reason why” Russia would be responsible for such a thing. Then he pivoted to complain about the Democratic National Committee’s server and missing emails from Hillary Clinton’s personal account. The president clearly still equates US intelligence agencies uncontroverted assessment about Russian interference with an imaginary attempt to delegitimize his election, which he revisited yet again even though it ended 615 days ago.

When a reporter asked the president if he blamed Russia for anything, Trump replied that he holds both countries responsible, that both sides had made mistakes. And while saying he holds both the US and Russia responsible for the breakdown in the bilateral relationship, he attributes special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe as causing the most damage, saying it — not Russian meddling — has “kept us (the US and Russia) apart.” The president spoke not a word about Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea, or Russia’s shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) in 2014 over Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew onboard, or Russia’s poisoning people in Great Britain, or….

When another reporter asked Putin whether he would extradite the 12 Russian intelligence officers charged with election interference in Mueller’s latest indictment, the autocrat launched into word painting a fantastical world of joint criminal investigation, where Russian law enforcement officials would interrogate the Russian agents indicted by Mueller, with American investigators invited to the Kremlin to participate, and then Russians would get to interrogate Americans indicted by Mueller’s team. Trump thought that was an “incredible” idea, as he did the proposition that the two countries combine their cyber-security efforts.

(Even) Republicans criticized the president’s performance. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who rarely rebukes Trump’s controversial statements, said “there is no question that Russia interfered in our elections….The President must appreciate that Russia is not our ally.” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said Trump’s comments “made us look like a pushover.” And John Brennan, the former CIA director and a career intelligence officer, called Trump’s comments “nothing short of treasonous.”

– To counter Canada’s record-level opioid-related overdose deaths, Toronto’s chief medical officer has urged the city’s board of health to pressure the federal government to eliminate legal penalties for the possession of drugs and to scale up “prevention, harm reduction and treatment services.” Government officials are so concerned about the public health crisis that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has embraced a number of “harm reduction” measures, including supervised injection sites, prescription heroin programs for those with severe addictions and even vending machines that dispense prescription opioids. (WaPo)

– Last week the Israeli government showed three reporters key documents from Iran’s clandestine nuclear archive that were snatched from a warehouse last January by operatives, after a year of surveillance by the Israel spy agency, Mossad. The archive captures the Iranian program at a moment in time, 15 years ago. The archive revealed that the “Iranian program to build a nuclear weapon was almost certainly larger, more sophisticated and better organized than most suspected in 2003” and Iran likely had help from Pakistan.” This April Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the material to sway President Trump’s decision to pull out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. He argued, questionably, that the documents proved Iranian deception and an intent to resume bomb production. Trump seems to be more swayed by the intel provided by leaders of other countries than from America’s intelligence agencies. (NYT)

– The number of deaths caused by scorpions in Brazil have more doubled in the last four years. Small children, in particular, are very vulnerable to these poisonous arachnids, and it has been stated that many small villages do not have the proper anti-venom to deal with the growing presence of scorpions. There are four main scorpion gangs (species) lurking the streets and areas of Brazil, but the yellow scorpions, also known as Tityus Serrulatus have proven to be the most prevalent and dangerous. (Guardian)

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Myanmar saw a string of riots and violent outbursts following rumors and posts spreading fake news and hate speech against Muslims on Facebook. A Buddhist country, residents of Myanmar were appalled by rumors spread on Facebook and took action, rioting and attacking many Muslim shop-owners and innocent bystanders. Not a new trend, the government has attempted to battle against Facebook for months with very little success. (Wired)

An unspeakable tragedy plays out every day in refugee camps where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims must live. It is the consequence of what has been done to the women and girls by the Myanmar military’s brutal campaign to obliterate an unwanted minority through massacre, rape and mass burnings of villages. Girls, some not yet teenagers, are giving birth to babies conceived by rape. And if that weren’t tragic enough, in traditional Rohingya Muslim society, rape brings shame to households, with any resulting pregnancies heaping even more disgrace upon families. Survivors are made to suffer twice, first from the trauma of sexual violence, and again from the ostracism of a conservative society that abandons them when they most need support. (NYT)

– After an Indonesian villager was killed by a crocodile, hundreds of village-folk flocked to the licensed crocodile sanctuary and slaughtered almost three hundred endangered saltwater and New Guinea crocodiles. No charges have been made against the perpetrators of the act, but public media outcry has shown disdain from fellow village members, slandering those who committed the heinous act. (WaPo)

– California Senator Robert Hertzberg introduced a bill forcing automated social media accounts to identify themselves as bots. The online boogeyman, bots come in wide assortments and have a wide variety of purposes. In the wrong hand, they are powerful agents used to spread misinformation and hate speech, which is what many, including Hertzberg, worry about. (NYT)

– Water is a necessity for survival, but in San Cristobal De Las Casa, Mexico, it is a luxury. Though the city is located in one of Mexico’s rainiest regions, many households are lucky to have running water once or twice a week, and most residents have resorted to drinking Coca Cola, which is just as cheap as water and more bountiful. Residents reportedly drink an average of almost half a gallon of soda a day, which has caused a 30 percent increase in deaths caused by diabetes between 2013 and 2016. (NYT)

– “The Extraordinary Life of Martha Gellhorn, the Woman Ernest Hemingway Tried to Erase” (Town & Country)

– An analysis on “Why Are Young Billionaires So Boring?” reveals that “Where earlier generations’ formative experiences revolved around paper routes and pathos, today’s prototypical founding story involves an upper-middle-class childhood, early access to a computer, and an elite education—even if that education was abandoned.” (Bloomberg)

– Don’t take a walk on the wild side instead “Take a Walk in the Woods. Doctor’s Orders.: “Forest bathing,” or immersing yourself in nature, is being embraced by doctors and others as a way to combat stress and improve health.” (NYT)

LAST MORSELS

“A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don’t know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn’t even be worth reading.” – Yevgeny Zamyatin

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