2 Dominican journalists killed during live transmission on Facebook

A Dominican policeman guards outside while investigations are going on at the facilities of the FM 103.5 radio station following the murder of two members of the media, in San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic.-EPA/ORLANDO BARRIA

By Staff The Associated Press-February 14, 2017 5:08 pm

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – A radio producer and an announcer were fatally shot in the Dominican Republic while one of them was reading the news during a live transmission on Facebook.

Police said the shooting occurred Tuesday in San Pedro de Macoris, just east of the capital of Santo Domingo. Three men have been detained, but no one has been charged.

Gunfire is heard during the Facebook Live video, along with a woman yelling “Shots! Shots! Shots!” before the transmission cuts off. Police say they don’t yet have a motive.

READ MORE: Boyfriend of slain Virginia reporter Alison Parker speaks out in grief

The victims were identified as announcer Luis Manuel Medina and producer and director Leo Martinez at radio station 103.5 HICC. Police say a secretary was injured and is undergoing surgery.

Medina was also the official announcer of the Estrellas Orientales baseball team.

© 2017 The Canadian Press

Bangladesh police shoot dead militant linked to cafe attack

Army soldiers take their positions near the Holey Artisan restaurant after Islamist militants attacked the upscale cafe in Dhaka, Bangladesh, July 2, 2016. Mahmud Hossain Opu/Handout via REUTERS/Files

 Tue Feb 14, 2017

Bangladesh police on Tuesday shot dead a suspected militant commander and a close aide of the mastermind of the cafe attack last year that killed 22 people, mostly foreigners, a police official said.

Police said Abu Musa, 32, was a close associate of Jahangir Alam, one of the masterminds of the July attack who was arrested last month, and wanted for killings of religious minorities and a Japanese citizen in the northern region. Alam not been formally charged.

Musa was killed in a shootout when police raided a town in Bogra district, about 200 km northwest of the capital, Dhaka, local police chief Nur Alam Siddiqui said.

"We had to fire back when a group militants opened fire on a police patrol," he said, adding police also recovered firearms and other weapons.

Musa was a commander of a faction of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) militant group, known as New JMB, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State, and which police believe was involved in organising the cafe attack.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the July 1 assault, when gunmen charged into the cafe in the diplomatic quarter. Nine Italians, seven Japanese, an American and an Indian were among the dead.

The five gunmen who attacked the cafe were all killed.

Police have killed about 50 suspected militants in shootouts since the attack, including the man they say was its main planner, Bangladesh-born Canadian citizen Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury.

Al Qaeda and Islamic State have made competing claims for a series of killings of liberals and members of religious minorities in the country over the past year.

The government dismissed the claims and instead blamed domestic militant groups, but security experts say the scale and sophistication of the cafe assault suggested links to a trans-national network.

(Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Alison Williams)

Death in a dynasty: What led to the demise of Kim Jong-nam?

AP-Image captionKim Jong-nam (seen on a monitor) grew up in secret, literally sealed behind palace gates---North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has remained tight-lipped on the latest murder claims

REUTERSImage caption--Kim Il-sung (left) with his son Kim Jong-il at a mass rally in Pyongyang in September 1983---Kim Jong Nam

By Michael Madden-14 February 2017

Kim Jong-nam was the eldest son of late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and the elder half-brother of current leader Kim Jong-un.

Jong-nam was born in May 1971 in Pyongyang. His mother was North Korea's film actress Song Hye-rim. She was the daughter of South Korean communist intellectuals who migrated to the North during the Korean War.

She was four or five years older than Kim Jong-il and was still married to another man (with whom she had a child) when they began their romantic relationship.

By the conservative standards of North Korean society, this was a fairly sordid relationship, and for many years Kim Jong-il concealed his common law wife and new son from his father, Kim Il-sung.

At the time of Kim Jong-nam's birth, Kim Jong-il was the leading candidate to succeed his father, and details of his relationship with Ms Song, if they had become public, could have derailed his ambitions (particularly as his nearest political rival was his despised stepmother).

Because of the nature of the relationship, Kim Jong-nam was shuttered away in a large residence in central Pyongyang.

As his mother suffered from a variety of physical and mental infirmities requiring treatment outside North Korea, he lived with his maternal grandmother and his maternal aunt, Song Hye-rang.

The second Ms Song was an author and widow with two children of her own.

10-year odyssey

When Jong-nam was an infant, his aunt, Kim Kyong-hui, (Kim Jong-il's sister) tried to take the baby away and adopt him as her own child. She was overruled, but she would always support Jong-nam.

Instead, he grew up in secret, literally sealed behind palace gates.

Kim Jong-il doted on his son - co-sleeping with him, eating dinner and telephoning him when he was too busy to return home.

Despite rumours perpetuated by South Korean sources, Jong-nam did eventually meet and forge a relationship with grandfather Kim Il-sung.

In 1979, Jong-nam began a 10-year odyssey studying and living outside North Korea.

He stayed in Russia and Switzerland and eventually became fluent in French and English, returning to North Korea in the late 1980s.

His exposure to the outside world and his impatience living in relative social isolation in Pyongyang and Wonsan led him to question North Korea's political and economic system.

At several points, Kim Jong-il became so frustrated with Jong-nam that he threatened to send the young man to a political prison camp to work in a coal mine.

According to his aunt, the threat of imprisonment was so real that the family took measures to buy adequate clothing and shoes for the day when they would be sent away.

'Party boy'

Instead of being incarcerated, Jong-nam spent his 20s contending with his father's demands and unrealistic expectations.

Jong-nam would never be a viable candidate as his father's successor, but he still joined the family business. He would be linked to North Korea's internal security apparatus and its foreign exchange-earning operations outside the country.

During the Arduous March of the 1990s, as thousands of North Korean citizens starved to death, Jong-nam participated in audits in which central party officials reviewed the finances and business practices of state-owned factories.

After some of these audits, Jong-nam would witness the public executions of factory managers accused of stealing from the state.

All of this would be enough to disillusion Jong-nam about the country in which he was born and the political system his father and grandfather led.

He married in the late 1990s and fathered several children. From the early 2000s onward, Jong-nam would begin to reside outside the DPRK, living at the Kim family's houses in Macau and a separate residence in Beijing.

He would be tasked with managing some of the family's financial accounts (which total billions of dollars). He also would be involved in some of North Korea's illicit business operations.

While Jong-nam was never directly involved in such activities as narcotics trafficking or arms smuggling, he did have an active role in seeing that some of the monies from both legitimate and illicit activities avoided the scrutiny of legal authorities.

It was no accident that Jong-nam frequented casinos throughout Asia and maintaining some of these financial interests led to a jet-set lifestyle and cemented his reputation as something of a "party boy".

Family rivalries

Rewind back to 1979, when Jong-nam went overseas.

Kim Jong-il got drunk as Jong-nam departed the country and tearfully reproached Song Hye-rang: "You... you are doing this. You are taking my boy away from me."

By the late 1970s, Kim Jong-il had begun a relationship with a dancer in the prestigious Mansudae Art Troupe, an ethnic Korean repatriated from Japan named Ko Yong-hui.

With his son out of the country, Kim Jong-il set up a household with Ko and fathered three children with her, the middle one being the current leader Kim Jong-un.

In contrast to his other wives and common law partners, Ko actually took an interest in Pyongyang's palace politics and, what is more, Kim Jong-il fell passionately in love with her.

Jong-nam would later tell an outsider that - once he had left North Korea to study - his father used his relationship with Ko and their children to fill the void left by Jong-nam.

India: Supreme Court convicts Sasikala

SC convicts Sasikala in Rs 66 cr DA case, shatters her hopes to become TN CM

The SC has asked Sasikala and her 2 relatives to surrender before the trial court in Bengaluru and serve remaining part of 4-year jail term.

After SC verdict, Sasikala out of Tamil Nadu CM race for 10 years

( February 14, 2017, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) AIADMK General Secretary V K Sasikala was on Tuesday convicted by the Supreme Court that set aside the Karnataka High Court verdict acquitting her in the 19-year-old disproportionate assets case that also involved late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa.

A Bench of Justices Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Amitav Roy, who had reserved verdict on June 7, 2016, gave the verdict in the case.

The apex court restored in to the judgement and the findings of the trial court in Bengaluru which had held guilty all the accused including Sasikala’s two relatives, V N Sudhakaran and Elavarasi.

The two-judge bench comprising Justices P C Ghose and Amitava Roy directed Sasikala and the two relatives to surrender forthwith to the trial court in Bengaluru and serve the remaining part of four year jail term. Sasikala has already spent almost six months in jail.

The verdict disqualifies Sasikala from contesting elections for 10 years and consequentially, she can’t be chief minister either.

The bench read the operative portion of the voluminous judgement saying that “according to the materials and evidence place on record, we set aside the judgement and the order of the high court and affirm in toto the judgement and order the trial court convicting the accused persons.”

The bench said since Jayalalithaa has expired, the proceeding against her is abated.

“Nevertheless, we reiterate that having regard to the facts, the charge framed against them by the trial court is restored,” the bench said.

“Since the charges framed by the trial court have been restored against all of them they will surrender forthwith before the trial court and serve the remaining part of the sentence,” the bench said.

The trial court had sentenced Sasikala and her two relatives to four years imprisonment with a fine of Rs 10 crore each. Jayalalithaa was sentenced to four years with a fine of Rs 100 crore.

Sasikala has been involved in a long and protracted power struggle with acting Chief Minister O Panneerselvam for the CM’s post, following Jayalalithaa’s death.

Meanwhile, the numbers in Panneerselvam’s camp continue to boost, with Mettur MLA Semmalai backing the CM. OPS now has 9 MLAs in his camp.

However, Sasikala still holds the majority, with 125 of 134 MLAs still in her camp. She has moved a number of MLAs to Koovathur resort near Chennai, where they have been staying for several days. Sasikala on Monday stayed overnight at the resort

– Agencies 

University of Vienna urged to cancel talk by genocide advocate Ayelet Shaked

Ayelet Shaked, right, tours Israeli colonies in the occupied West Bank with settler leader Avi Roeh. (via Facebook)

Ali Abunimah-14 February 2017

More than 350 activists and scholars from universities around the world, and a Jewish group in Germany, are calling on the University of Vienna’s law faculty to cancel a lecture by Israeli justice minister Ayelet Shaked.

Shaked, a member of parliament for the Jewish Home party, a pro-settler grouping, is scheduled to speak on 15 February as part of a “distinguished lecture series,” on the topic of “protecting human rights while countering terrorism.”

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.@univienna has invited right-wing extremist Ayelet Shaked. Imagine a Muslim students group inviting Hamas spox.

5:02 PM - 13 Feb 2017

 
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Meanwhile, on Monday night, activists in New York protested and disrupted a speech at Columbia University by Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador at the UN.

Call for genocide

Ayelet Shaked became globally notorious after The Electronic Intifada published a translation of a post she put on Facebook in July 2014 supporting a call for the genocide of Palestinians.

She shared the text of what she said was a previously unpublished article by Uri Elitzur. Written 12 years earlier, she claimed “It is as relevant today as it was at the time.”

The article declares that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” and justifies its destruction, “including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.”

It demands the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to “little snakes.”

Shaked posted this call for genocide just days before Israel went on a 51-day rampage in the besieged Gaza Strip, killing more than 2,200 Palestinians, including an average of 11 children per day.

Embarrassed by words she evidently believed would only be seen by her Hebrew-speaking extremist supporters, Shaked falsely claimed that The Electronic Intifada had mistranslated them. But she also doubled down in her endorsement of what she termed Elitzur’s “sober, legally minded discussion.”

In an open letter to the university published Tuesday, scholars, including many at Vienna, urged that the event be cancelled on ethical grounds.

“In light of the growing popularity of hate speech and racism on a global level, we believe that the University of Vienna has an ethical responsibility for eliminating the perpetuation of these divisive narratives within its grounds,” the scholars state.

“Therefore, we demand a cancellation of the event and we demand that the University of Vienna take a clear position against the Israeli extreme right politician and justice minister who stands for hate speech and racism.”

An announcement for the talk has been circulated on social media, but cannot be found at the University of Vienna’s website. Invitations to the lecture were sent by email, and potential participants have been asked for detailed information, including their nationality and from whom they received the invitation.

An assistant to University of Vienna law faculty dean Paul Oberhammer would not provide information about the event, and Oberhammer did not respond to an email from The Electronic Intifada requesting comment.

Incitement against Africans

European Jews for a Just Peace Germany also condemned the Austrian university’s invitation to Shaked in a letter to law faculty dean Oberhammer.

In addition to her stance on Palestinians, their letter cites Shaked’s support for incarceration, expulsion and other harsh measures against refugees and migrants in Israel. “In addition, she supported racist demonstrations in South Tel Aviv, which have turned into pogroms against dark-skinned people,” the letter states.

Shaked engaged in racial incitement using social media, posting a video on Facebook that she falsely claimed showed a Black migrant attacking a local resident.

As persons of Jewish origin in Germany, the letter writers state, “we know from the historical experiences of our ancestors the degradation and the pain to which humans are subjected if they are systematically excluded and deprived.”

Shaked’s Jewish Home is an extremist anti-Palestinian party whose leader, education minister Naftali Bennett, has boasted about killing “lots of Arabs.”

In line with her party’s platform, Shaked advocates outright annexation of most of the occupied West Bank.

Shaked stewarded a law through the Israeli parliament targeting human rights defenders that even staunchly pro-Israel European Union officials criticized – albeit with their customary timidity.

Her invitation as a “distinguished” lecturer by the University of Vienna recalls the University of Chicago’s notorious invitation to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert to give its “King Abdullah II Annual Leadership Lecture.

His October 2009 speech was heckled and protested. This came just weeks after the release of the independent, UN-commissioned Goldstone report into Israel’s 2008-2009 attack on Gaza, and as Olmert faced corruption charges.

Olmert is now in prison for bribery.

Israeli ambassador protested in New York

Universities have regularly provided distinguished platforms to Israeli leaders implicated in war crimes, while criticizing or suppressing their own students and faculty who call for accountability in the form of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Israeli officials have also continued to face protests – including Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon, who spoke at New York’s Columbia University on Monday night.

Columbia University Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, joined by other groups, gathered outside chanting “racists not welcome” and “from Palestine to Mexico, border walls have got to go,” according to a post on the Facebook page of Columbia University Apartheid Divest featuring video of the protest.

The activists say that protesters inside the lecture hall on Monday night disrupted Danon’s 45-minute speech seven times before they were removed.

Read More

As Trump prepares to meet Netanyahu, American Jews feel divided

For some, Trump's hawkishness on Israeli security is a blessing, for others, his link to the anti-Semitic far-right is too dangerous to overlook

Steve Bannon, Trump’s right-hand man and chief strategist, once ran the archconservative Breitbart news website that blends conspiracy theories with anti-Semitism (AFP)

James Reinl-Tuesday 14 February 2017 

NEW YORK, United States – At first glance, President Donald Trump’s talk of boosting Israeli security and shifting the US embassy to Jerusalem is the kind of oratory that many American Jews want to hear, especially after years of strained US-Israel relations. 

But the 45th president’s vocal support for Israel is only part of the story. Last month, the White House dropped any mention of Jews from an annual statement on the Holocaust. Anti-Semitic motifs in his campaign adverts and links to far-right white supremacists stoke fears further.

Meanwhile, Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban” on travellers from seven Muslim-majority nations rekindles painful memories of European Jews being denied a large-scale migration exit to US shores during the Nazi Holocaust.

“This administration is empowering and enabling the white supremacists,” Rabbi Jill Jacobs, executive director of T’ruah, a Jewish human rights community of some 1,800 rabbis focused on North America, Israel and Palestine, told Middle East Eye.

Jacobs was one of 19 rabbis from her group arrested while protesting against the travel ban at New York’s Trump International Hotel on 6 February. She was charged with disorderly conduct and is due in court in April.

“This administration is empowering and enabling the white supremacists” - Rabbi Jill Jacobs

She pointed to the International Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, a Trump campaign advert that linked Jewish financiers with corruption, and Swastikas scrawled in New York subway cars and other examples of neo-Nazi graffiti since Trump’s election victory in November.

“We have not seen overt anti-Semitism like this in the US, certainly in my lifetime. Even if the president doesn’t come out and directly make anti-Semitic statements, he’s both dog whistling and enabling anti-Semites,” Jacobs told MEE.

She pointed to Steve Bannon, Trump’s right-hand man and chief strategist, who once ran the archconservative Breitbart news website that blends conspiracy theories with anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia and anti-Muslim jingoism.

American Jews are broadly left-leaning. In the 2016 election, 71 percent chose Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton against the 24 percent who voted for Trump. Both candidates spoke of their unflinching support for Israel at campaign events.

Trump team appeals to conservative Jews

Since Trump won, his Jewish-American fans can point to gains. He appointed his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as his Middle East advisor. Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and is a family friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump talks of shifting the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Israel’s self-proclaimed capital and a holy city at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and of de-funding United Nations agencies that recognise Palestinian administrations.

People walk past signs bearing Donald Trump's name in Tel-Aviv on 16 November 2016 (AFP)

This month, Trump’s UN envoy, Nikki Haley, blasted the UN for an anti-Israel bias and objected to the appointment of Salam Fayyad, 64, a Western-educated economist and former Palestinian prime minister, to head the UN political mission in Libya.

Many see Trump as a chance to boost US-Israeli ties that were flagging after years of testiness between Netanyahu and former US president Barack Obama, who criticised settlement building in the West Bank and drew back support for Israel at the UN. 

Since Trump’s inauguration, Israel has announced 5,000 new permits for Israeli settlement units in the West Bank and passed a controversial “land grab” law. Israeli hard-liners speak of dropping the goal of a “two-state” solution with Palestinians.

Iran climbs past Palestine in security concerns for Israel

Trump’s team is also taking a tougher line on Iran, which Netanyahu and Israeli security chiefs see as their main threat, at a time when the Islamic Republic is poised to gain influence in any peace deal that ends Syria’s catastrophic civil war.

When the Israeli leader meets Trump at the White House on Wednesday, he may seek assurances that Russia will not help Iran open a new front in southern Syria, with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) building a power base that could threaten Israeli towns.

“While many ears will tune to nuanced differences on settlements, the two-state solution and Jerusalem embassy – that’s mostly mood music,” Benny Avni, a New York Post columnist and Israel specialist, told MEE.

“Beyond emotions, the Israel-Palestine dispute is no longer central to Mideast turmoil, if it ever was. Netanyahu will want to mostly talk about the nuclear deal with Iran and total ban on missile tests, and the role of Hezbollah and the IRGC in a future Syria peace deal.”

Analysts disagree on Israel’s best way forward, but they all recognise that American Jews are split over Trump. For some, his hawkishness on Israeli security is a blessing, for others, his link to the anti-Semitic far-right is too dangerous to overlook.

For Avni, claims that “Trump is a closet Nazi” are bogus, while the Holocaust omission was a “gaffe by a junior staffer”. “The idea that he was elected by an anti-Semitic, racist mob simply doesn’t stand up to America’s reality,” Avni told MEE.

Seth Morrison, a campaigner for the liberal group, Jewish Voice for Peace, disagreed.

“Netanyahu ignores Trump’s alt-right connections just as he ignores the fact that Christian Zionists only support Israel to bring on Armageddon,” Morrison told MEE. “Trump’s a populist and opportunist with poor understanding of history and ideology. 

"Netanyahu ignores Trump’s alt-right connections just as he ignores the fact that Christian Zionists only support Israel to bring on Armageddon" - Seth Morrison

“He uses both Jewish support for Israel and alt-right fundamentalism equally to his own ends.”

Michael Koplow, an analyst at the Israel Policy Forum think tank, said that while there are “plenty of bright red flashing warning signs” from Trump’s hardliners, it was still too soon to tell how the dynamic between the US, Israel and American Jews would play out.

This week’s meeting with Netanyahu is an opportunity for Trump to state his “red lines” on settlement-building and other policies, he said. Despite the racist headlines on Breitbart, there may yet be deep synergies between right-wingers in Washington and Jerusalem.

“You have to remember that [Trump’s team] supports right-wing nationalist populist movements wherever they are, and certainly the far right in Israel would be classified as a right-wing populist nationalist movement,” Koplow told MEE.

In the early weeks of the new administration, the humbling of a president

President Trump listens as Steven Mnuchin participates in a ceremonial swearing-in for Treasury secretary in the Oval Office of the White House. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By Dan Balz February 14 at 12:05 PM

The presidential campaign was a heady experience for Donald Trump: months of triumph and, better yet, disproving all the so-called experts who said he never had a chance of winning. The early weeks of the new administration have been the opposite: the public humbling of a new president.

Trump’s campaign was never entirely smooth, but instincts that served him so well then appear to be less helpful now that he is in office. As president, Trump’s early moves — with some exceptions — have been marked by poor judgment, botched execution, hubris among some advisers, and a climate of fear and disorder all around.

The complexities of governing have quickly caught up with a politician determined to shake up Washington as quickly as possible. The president gets credit from many Americans for keeping his campaign promises, but government by chaos is not a known recipe for success. The result is an administration that begins its second month weakened and on the defensive. What Trump takes away from all this will determine the future of his tumultuous presidency.

Monday’s resignation of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser is certainly the biggest embarrassment, probably setting some sort of record for an early exit by a top official in a new administration. Flynn was Trump’s hand-picked choice, a fierce loyalist whose baggage nonetheless was there for all to see. Trump overlooked that and is now paying a price. Flynn’s decision to lie to Vice President Pence about the nature of his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak ultimately led to his downfall, but there is more to know than that.

The resignation removes a controversial adviser from the White House but hardly resolves the larger issue of the Russia connection. Questions about Flynn’s — and possibly other Trump team members’ — communications with the Russians, during the campaign and transition, remain unanswered. The swift elevation of a new national security adviser won’t make this go away. The Russia issue will continue to dog Trump’s presidency until more answers are forthcoming.

President Trump's national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned Feb. 13 after revelations that he had discussed sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. prior to Trump taking office. 

Here's what you need to know. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)

The fact that the Justice Department warned the White House weeks ago that Flynn had left himself susceptible to blackmail by the Russians, as The Post reported Monday night, makes it even more urgent for the president to explain what he and others knew and when, as well as what orders he might have conveyed to Flynn about signals he wanted sent before he took the oath of office.

[Disorder is the order of the day at the White House]

For Trump, nothing has proved as easy as it might have looked on the campaign trail, despite the flurry of executive orders and actions that flowed from his desk in the first days after the inauguration. He has signaled a radically different direction for the country, but only that. Senior policy adviser Stephen Miller’s claim that Trump has accomplished more in a few weeks than most presidents do in their entire administrations should be seen as the fanciful boast that it is. The record is only beginning to be written.

The powers of the president are vast, but they are not unlimited. Trump has come face to face with the checks and balances built into the Constitution and with the difficulty of commanding a huge bureaucracy of federal workers who value their role as public servants. He has seen anew the power of a free press to dig and report and hold those in power accountable. He has felt the power and sting of leaks from inside the government. There’s nothing new about any of this. It has been true for past presidents. Trump is learning the lesson painfully.

Things inevitably move slowly and not always to a president’s liking. Trump ordered a travel ban on refugees and on citizens from seven majority-Muslim nations, but it was hastily and poorly drafted, not subjected to the kind of thorough vetting such a measure requires, and its implementation was poorly done. Challenged in court, Trump could not force the judiciary to bow down and bless the order without independent review.

Trump can order the construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, but its completion is years away — and at a price to taxpayers that has caused some cost-conscious congressional Republicans to balk. Put aside how Trump will make good on his ultimate promise of getting the Mexican government to pay for it

[Hill Republicans find it harder to defend Trump amid stumbles]

Less than 24 hours after former national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned, some Republicans were calling for Americans to "move on," while at least one senator still had questions. (Video: Sarah Parnass/Photo: Getty/The Washington Post)

Trump promised as a candidate that he would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act in his first days in office. His party has had years to come up with an alternative and still struggles to find substantive or political consensus. He promised the imminent release of a health-care plan, but that is yet to be seen. Republicans already can feel blowback from angry citizens worried about what a repeal would mean for them.

At times, Trump appears a different person in office than he was on the campaign trail. This is more than the issue of being “presidential.” Spontaneity, one of the currencies that branded him as a candidate, has all but disappeared. He is scripted carefully and constantly, reading even mundane statements from prepared texts. He cannot be happy with what has happened around him, and it shows.

“Let Trump be Trump” was the cry during the campaign. Some transformation from the freewheeling style he exhibited as a candidate is required, but this president doesn’t appear to have found his comfort zone in his new role. Nor is he communicating effectively with the public.

His White House lacks structure and order. Who has real influence? Vice President Pence? Chief of Staff Reince Priebus? Chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon? Senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner?

Counselor Kellyanne Conway? Press secretary Sean Spicer? Policy adviser Miller? More important, who’s really in charge?

Trump hasn’t established lines of authority, and so, amid the confusion and chaos, his advisers must try to work together while watching their backs. Meanwhile, Trump’s executive branch remains hollowed out at the top. Many sub-Cabinet positions have not been filled. The confusion and distractions of the early weeks have slowed what in the best of presidencies is a laborious process of populating the executive branch.

The country is divided over Trump’s presidency, but a majority of Americans say they consider him a strong and decisive leader. There are no signs in public opinion or anecdotally that his base is souring on his presidency, a valuable asset amid all the turbulence. Trump nation is standing behind him. The same is true, at least on the surface, for Republican elected officials, although their tolerance for mistakes and turmoil will be limited.

When Trump is challenged, his combative instincts call for him to plow ahead. He can argue that that has served him well, in business and in the campaign. He is likely to remain in perpetual motion. But inevitably he and his senior team will have to absorb the effects of what they have been through in the first weeks of his presidency and take some corrective action — as others before him have been forced to do.

A Strategic Human Rights Agenda for the Tillerson State Department

BY WILL INBODEN-FEBRUARY 13, 2017

During his Senate confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson rightly identified China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and militant Islamism as his priorities for the threats they pose to American interests. He also declared that “supporting human rights in our foreign policy is a key component of clarifying to a watching world what America stands for.” While Tillerson did not explicitly connect that general conviction with his specific statements on his priority countries, it was a promising insight. Bringing human rights back to the forefront of America’s diplomatic agenda offers a rare opportunity to regain the initiative and strategic advantage.

One regrettable legacy of the Obama era is the relative neglect of human rights and democracy promotion in American foreign policy. Arriving in office with a reflexive, ideological rejection of anything associated with its predecessors in the Bush Administration, the Obama team ostentatiously marginalized human rights in its efforts to pursue a “re-set” with Russia, an economic partnership with China, a rapprochement with Iran, and “strategic patience” with North Korea. Setting aside the relative failures of those policy initiatives on substantive grounds, the abandonment of human rights was a missed opportunity, especially as reformers and dissidents in nations such as Iran, Russia, China, Cuba, Egypt, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia implored the Administration for support that either arrived too little, too late, or not at all. The Obama Administration did make some gestures towards recalibrating this in its second term, especially with the appointments of principled professionals like Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Rights, and Labor (DRL) Tom Malinowski and Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom David Saperstein. Yet even then, human rights never enjoyed meaningful support on the 7^th floor of John Kerry’s State Department or at the White House, as the administration dogmatically pursued legacy items such as the Iran nuclear deal and the Cuba opening while giving human rights short shrift.

Secretary Tillerson already confronts an overwhelming in-box of international challenges and urgent management needs such as appointing his deputy, under, and assistant secretaries (the latter category made all the harder by the White House’s very regrettable rejection of Tillerson’s choice of Elliott Abrams for Deputy Secretary). As he ponders the vexing challenges posed by China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, the understandable temptation will be to shunt human rights to the side as a tangential distraction from the priority issues of nuclear proliferation, territorial disputes, and economic differences.

This would be a missed opportunity. In addition to the moral imperatives of supporting human rights, doing so now also offers considerable strategic advantages. For one, bringing human rights back to the forefront will help the United States regain the diplomatic initiative. At this juncture Pyongyang, Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran all control the agendas of their troubled bilateral relations with the United States, as they push forward on their particular interests and force the United States to respond.

Tillerson first needs to strengthen America’s diplomatic hand and gain negotiating leverage before confronting issues such as Russian territorial aggression, China’s destabilizing land grabs in the South China Sea, Iran’s support for terrorism and ballistic missile program, and North Korea’s nuclear adventurism and missile testing. Bringing human rights and support for dissidents into the agenda will give the United States an asymmetric advantage, for these regimes fear their own populations and devote considerable resources to maintaining control. American efforts to highlight this repression and support freedom activists will bring aggravating internal and external pressure to bear on each government, and bolster America’s standing at the negotiating table.

I have elsewhere observed some of the similarities between former Secretary of State George Shultz and Tillerson, both in their respective backgrounds as CEOs of multinational companies and also the complex challenges each confronted in taking the helm at Foggy Bottom. Here Tillerson would do well to take a page out of the Shultz diplomatic playbook. With President Reagan’s full support, Shultz insisted on including human rights as one of the four core agenda items (along with regional issues, arms control, and bilateral issues) in all American negotiations with the Soviet Union. This irked the Soviets to no end, but America’s principled resolve in this respect played a key role in the Cold War’s peaceful dénouement.
Crafting an effective human rights policy is not easy, but the United States still has an abundant toolkit at Tillerson’s disposal. Effective measures can include meeting with dissidents, publicizing human rights abuses in speeches and public diplomacy efforts, restoring and increasing funding to freedom activists, providing overt and covert support for access to freedom of information, conducting training programs for democratic reformers, pursuing actions in multilateral fora, and targeted economic sanctions. Secretary Tillerson would need only to signal his support for a reinvigorated human rights policy, and creative policy ideas would flow his way from the NGOs, scholars, and the State Department’s own DRL staff.

Tillerson should pay special attention to the State Department’s process and structure on these matters. The DRL bureau will of necessity be at the forefront of any effective human rights strategy. Yet if those policies are to have any staying power, the support and ownership of the relevant regional bureaus will be essential. Rather than allowing them to drift into their customary bureaucratic roles of internal opposition to DRL initiatives, Secretary Tillerson should select regional Assistant Secretaries who will be committed to a prudent and effective human rights agenda, and instruct them to work closely with DRL in crafting strategies for countries within their area of responsibility. The ultimate effectiveness of any policy depends on the support of the relevant regional bureau and associated embassies and country teams.

Returning freedom promotion to a priority in American diplomacy would also help restore some of our nation’s damaged alliances. Some of our most reliable partners in human rights advocacy have been our closest allies on broader military and diplomatic policy. Japan has helped in pressing the North Korea regime; Australia assists with our human rights efforts on China, and the United Kingdom in supporting dissidents in Russia and Iran. Many of America’s alliances in recent years have suffered the dual blows of neglect from the Obama Administration and disdain from the Trump campaign. For good reason Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis have placed repairing America’s alliances at the top of their respective priority lists; partnering on shared values is a tangible way to start.

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