Monday, August 27, 2018

Challenge of learning is how to transform information to wisdom: Prof. Worsak Kanok-Nukulchai

An engineer with many interests

Monday, 27 August 2018

The outgoing President of the Thailand-based Asian Institute of Technology or AIT, Professor Worsak Kanok-Nukulchai, is an unconventional academic. He is an engineer by profession. But his intellectual penetrations have not been limited only to engineering. He talks about art, humanities, social sciences and languages with authority. His latest passion has been the involvement in an inquiry into telomere shortening and its connection to ageing. Telomere is the compound structure at the end of a chromosome that decides on the ageing of a person; shorter this compound, the more aged a person has been.

Transformation from digital natives to global citizens

But his real interest and therefore concern has not been searching knowledge for himself. It is about the future, the future of the knowledge based society we have created and how it could be continued without allowing it to collapse on itself. This concern is then linked to the knowledge requirements in the future and how the current educational system could train people – both students and adults – to be its partners. Thus, Worsak lives in all the three time dimensions – past, present and future – simultaneously. He draws lessons from the past, assesses the state of affairs today and makes plans for the future.

I have written on his wisdom on how digital natives – a term he had coined to describe the modern tech-savvy youth – should be converted to global citizens in a previous article in this series (available at: http://www.ft.lk/w-a-wijewardena-columns/How-to-groom-intellectuals-for-the-future--Two-contrasting-views-from-Thailand-and-Sri-Lanka--Part-1/885-648278 ). A global citizen is a person who has moved out of the boundaries of nation states to the world out there and got himself seamlessly integrated to its governance, trade, commerce and above all its technological advances.

Serene environment at AIT

To pick his brain and learn more about his thinking, I met him at his office at AIT late in the evening when all others had left the place after a hard day’s work. The atmosphere within his office and in the surrounding area was that of extreme serenity free from noises or disturbances. It is fertile ground for anyone to cultivate his intellectual prowess. The soft spoken Worsak greeted me in his traditional Thai style and we got into a fruitful conversation.

No retirement age for those seeking wisdom

He is to retire from active administrative work in a few days. I asked him about his future plans. “A person can retire from admin work,” he told me. “But when it comes to satiating one’s intellectual curiosity, there is no retirement date. In this era where things are fast changing at an exponential rate, one has to place oneself on a lifelong learning path. If he doesn’t do so, it is inevitable that he would soon become obsolete.”

An exponential growth is a growth on growth, so that additional change in growth at each level is larger than the change that had been achieved previously even if it grows at the same rate. Hence, in exponential growth things would change too rapidly even before one may notice it. Such a world creates an unknown future. However, mankind, if not driven by rational thinking, will harbour fear about the unknown, the most destructive human emotion. Nations that are successful in training their citizens to overcome this fear will succeed in the world. Others will relegate themselves to the state of failing nations.

Train the youth to face the unknown in the future

Worsak thinks that when the youth are groomed in a particular way, they would be able to face the unknown future without fear. For that, he says, the present educational model which was designed to serve the industrial revolution in the 19th century is ill-suited. In that model, students depended on teachers to impart the whole knowledge.

The responsibility of the students was to memorise this knowledge, demonstrate it at exams and apply it in later working life. But the digital world in which we are living today is characterised by disruptive technologies. They are disruptive because they change the world constantly, at an exponential rate. The innovations that occur have been shorter and shorter in duration. They not only change how we think, but also how we live and work. The challenge of education, says Worsak, is to groom students to be winners in this newly emerging world order.

Artificial intelligence leading to innovative disruption

The process of disruption has been explained by Worsak as follows: “Innovative disruption is not new. In the history of mankind, innovative disruptions used to be of a gradual process so their impacts were not felt so much. The only difference now from the past is that the disruption is abrupt and exponential, in time and magnitude, thus carrying much greater impacts to the human lifestyle.”

“For example,” continues Worsak, “the Industrial Revolution has disrupted a big chunk of agricultural process whichever can be mechanised. Likewise, the Digital Revolution has also disrupted the many industrial processes that can be digitised. Soon, we will see the Artificial Intelligence Revolution or AIR disrupting and embracing our digital world today.”

AIT is into AIR

Artificial intelligence or AI is the main threat that is faced by mankind today. It is considered a threat because once it is fully developed, it would make mankind irrelevant. Worsak feels that machine learning and AI will overtake humans in most of the cognitive skills within another decade or so. Hence, instead of rejecting AI, humans should learn how to cope with it.

At AIT, groundwork has already been laid to develop AI and be a partner of the future AI driven world. Already a dummy policeman who would be placed at roadsides to detect and report on traffic law violators has been created by AIT scientist Dr. Mongkol Ekpanyapong and supplied to Thai Police for use. AIT will also collaborate and partner with other leading researchers on AI to build a sound base for this new technology. Recently, an AI expert team from Japan met the AI experts of AIT to cement these relationships.

Machines to take over humans’ functions

What Worsak has predicted about AI has been corroborated by the results of a survey done on 1634 experts by Katja Grace of the Future of Humanity Institute of the University of Oxford in UK (available at: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607970/experts-predict-when-artificial-intelligence-will-exceed-human-performance/ ). This survey has revealed that intelligent machines will go for training as humans do today in about 12 years’ time. Within the next 40 to 50 years, these machines will begin to write New York Times bestsellers and perform surgeries. In another 125 years’ time, they are predicted to gain capability for handling all human jobs.

This is frightening but unavoidable. According to Worsak, what is at issue today is concerned with ethical and moral side of creating AI, capable of handling the full range of what the humans can do. What will happen if AI machines could become monsters? Or, a species that is hostile to humans? At present, AI is inorganic and artificial. But, as Yuval Noah Harari has documented in his Homo Deus humans have created organic AIs when they built computer viruses. These computer viruses can reproduce themselves and work exactly like organic humans. In this world, humans have no choice. They should gain capability to out-beat machines and show that they are the masters and not servants.

Task of converting information to wisdom

According to Worsak, that is a process involving mankind to gain wisdom eventually by converting information to knowledge and knowledge to wisdom. Information which is available everywhere constitutes combined bits and pieces of data. Mastering those data will help a person to gain knowledge by understanding the related information. Wisdom is nothing but personal mastery of applying knowledge. Worsak says humans will not be able to transform information to knowledge and knowledge to wisdom unless they acquire some basic competencies called ‘universal basic competencies’. They include knowledge of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, known as STEM plus humanity and skills needed to go through a lifelong long learning program. It is the duty of education to equip everyone with these basic competencies.

Sri Lanka has an excess demand for university education

If education is to perform this job, it should have capacity at the university level to accommodate all those who seek wisdom. In the case of Sri Lanka, the number of places at universities is far short of the demand for university education. For instance, about 100,000 students qualify to enter a university each year. But the state university system can accommodate only less than 30,000. Hence, any plan to provide universal basic competencies to all Sri Lankans through universities will be a non-event.

There is excess capacity in Thai higher education system

But the situation in Thailand is the opposite of what Sri Lanka has been experiencing. There, the number of places at universities is pretty much higher than the number demanded in each year (visit: http://monitor.icef.com/2017/10/thailands-growing-supply-demand-gap-higher-education/).

According to Worsak, this is mainly due to a decline in the eligible youth population that seeks university education after the East Asia Financial Crisis of 1997-8. In addition to this demographic change, the number of vacancies at Thai higher learning institutions also has expanded tremendously in the recent past. There are 170 universities and higher learning institutions in Thailand today. Out of them 71 are private universities. At the same time, the number of students who have enrolled themselves at universities has declined from 2.5 million a few years ago to 2.2 million recently. Since universities do not operate at the full installed capacity, according to Worsak, there is a breakneck competition among universities to attract as many students as possible.

Thai universities are facing the threat of closure or downsizing

But the market they operate is shrinking every year making it difficult for universities to fill all the vacancies. At the same time, a large number of students are proceeding to countries like Australia, UK, USA and Canada for higher education. This also has reduced the operational market for universities. As a result, many universities in Thailand are faced with the problem of closure unless they could go through a downsizing program. Hence, Worsak says that Thailand will have to attract foreign students or use universities as a lifelong competency acquisition outfits or both.

The path to lifelong learning

Lifelong learning is a must in today’s context since the wisdom which a person has today will become obsolete pretty fast due to rapid changes in technology. Take for example a surgeon. With the advancement of machine learning surgery methods, surgeons will become irrelevant in the curative healthcare systems in the future. These surgeons then have to place them on a continuous learning path and that learning has to be continued throughout his life. Worsak says that in a world of volatility, complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity, everyone should have right to acquire universal basic competencies. To meet this demand, three to four year undergraduate degrees should equip students with universal basic competencies by providing a holistic education to them. Then, students should be provided with further one to three year study programs to enable them to acquire professional credentials. The balance 40 to 50 years of life should then be devoted to lifetime learning at universities.

If this is not done, the modern knowledge based society runs the risk of collapsing on itself. The failure to undertake lifelong learning will also obstructs the move to produce the global citizen of the 21st century. In the Worsak model, the future university will groom students in basic universal competencies, on the one hand, and provide opportunities for all to undertake lifelong learning, on the other. Quite independent of universities, there stand the professional bodies. This defines the model of higher education as presented by Worsak. It has information delivery to students in a combined work of teaching and learning within a given time period. Students are traditional, professional or lifelong learners. Worsak says that future universities will serve students of all age groups to access learning in real time or on demand, from anywhere, in multiple modes, to suit their lifestyle or their work and other activities.

Learn science plus

The important message which Worsak has delivered is that society should not consider technological advancements as bogeys. They are the products of creative human minds and instead of condemning them, society should begin, as the Russian born American writer Ayn Rand has said, to appreciate it. But to do that, people should be global citizens equipped with universal basic competencies. Those competencies are made up of not only science subjects like technology, engineering and mathematics but also humanities and social sciences.

(W.A. Wijewardena, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, can be reached at waw1949@gmail.com).

Asma: One Strong Story – Well Said

Featured image by AFP/DNA India

DILRUKSHI HANDUNNETTI- 08/27/2018

Many knew Asma Jahangir for her brilliance, and for the celebration of diversity that she always was. She was a beacon of hope as a dogged defender of human rights and a woman who wanted the world to ‘reform and reset.’ Adversity only inspired her and made her stronger.

Asma was many things to many people and a single source of inspiration to those who wished for more humanity and understanding in the world.

While there is much to celebrate in Asma’s well-lived life, it is her deep insights that I am most likely to miss in her absence.

Here was someone who could effortlessly separate the wheat from the chaff, in seconds – and present you with bare facts, possibilities and potential dangers. That quick sifting of facts and her layered analysis always came from a deep chamber of wisdom founded on reality and experience.

Asma was also about amazing connectivity. She effortlessly linked people, interests –sometimes entire regions. Transcending borders of the human mind and geographical territories came effortlessly to her. A global citizen with a South Asian soul, she identified the common threads that might bind us (as well as separate) and the key concerns of transparency, democracy and human rights we all sought answers to, from our various standpoints and corners of the world.

In the many human chains she created, women formed a core constituency. Asma worked with women across the world and within the region – with tremendous passion and commitment. She was the ultimate deep-rooted South Asian feminist who would embrace feminism as a form of motherhood – one of nurturing and defending of positions.

Among the many things that amazed me about this zealous defender of rights was her ability to take stances and defend them, despite great adversity with that trademark ‘never say die’ attitude. She deeply believed that while men may take turns in brutalising the world, women had the capacity to charter a different path, if only they knew how to tap into their inner resourcefulness and believed in ‘community.’

Feisty Asma defied boundaries and strove to be a bridge between India and Pakistan. She packaged her rejection of dividing people in many ways, and in this picture, shows her protest by leading a group of women activists across the Wagah border, straddling the line between Pakistan and India –South Asian Women in Media

I came to gain a better understanding of many things by associating with her, and with time, came to realise what a woman can do and can indeed become. And that feminism is best not embraced as a theory but as a lived in truth with the fullness of life as an Asian woman. “If they call you a bitch, then you are doing something essentially right,” she would say with a chuckle.

Among the many memories I cherish of Asma Jahangir is a hurried little conversation that dates back to late 2009. Her crisp, deep words of wisdom still ring in my ears.

A few months after the brutal slaying of my then editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, we were attending a human rights gathering where the topic of journalists being targeted came up for discussion. Seeing my distress and recalling the situation at home, Asma looked me squarely in the eye and said in the softest of voices: “So it’s hurting. We all are hurting. There’s only one thing we all can do. Give those tears some value. Make those tears your power. Fight. Fight it to the very end.”

Then, she took a moment to reflect on the kind of work she herself dabbled in, as a human rights lawyer.

“Sometimes we talk of policies, processes and reform. Months and years go by with little change taking place. But look at you all (journalists). Sometimes all it takes is, ‘one strong story, well said.’”

Sunday, August 26, 2018

Israel plans to reopen Erez crossing with Gaza on Monday

Israel's Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman cites 'calm' and 'decline in security events'

Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel (AFP/file photo)

Sunday 26 August 2018

Israel will reopen the Erez crossing with the Gaza Strip on Monday, Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said, a week after closing it amid clashes.

"Due to the calm that has been maintained over the past week and the significant decline in security events," Lieberman said in a statement on Sunday, he had decided to open the crossing after consulting the army, the Shin Bet, the National Security Council and the coordinator of government activities in the territories, according to Haaretz.

Israel closed the crossing on 19 August in response to what Lieberman then called "violent incidents", tightening its blockade of the territory run by the Islamist movement Hamas.

The Erez crossing is the only one for the movement of people between Israel and Gaza, which has been under an Israeli blockade for a decade.

Israel also recently reopened the commercial crossing through which fuel, gas and other provisions are passed into the coastal enclave, Haaretz said.

Gaza's sole crossing with Egypt has remained largely closed in recent years.

The closure and border incidents occurred in spite of attempts by Egypt and United Nations officials to reach a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas, the movement that runs the blockaded Gaza Strip.

READ MORE ►

Israel closes Gaza crossing ahead of Eid holiday

Middle East Eye reported earlier this month that, according to a Hamas official, the talks involve Israel allowing a sea passage between Gaza and Cyprus as well as the opening of all crossings into the enclave.

Palestinians in Gaza have gathered at the separation fence since 30 March calling for Palestinian refugees to be allowed to return to their former lands now inside Israel.

During this time, at least 172 Gazans have been killed by Israeli fire. One Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper in July.

There have also been several severe military flare-ups, including three since July.

Palestinian militants in Gaza and Israel have fought three wars since 2008.

Anti-Semitism vs. anti-colonialism

Joseph Massad-24 August 2018

It is Israel and its supporters who conflate Israel with all Jews, and then claim that condemning Israel, its laws, policies, actions and ideology amounts to condemning the Jewish people. See LiCrowdSpark
Much of the ongoing acrimonious and toxic debate in Britain about allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party centers on expressions of opposition to Israeli laws, policies, ideologies, actions and declarations.

No thinking person, for example, is expected to believe that descriptions of Jews as engaging in a “worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization,” as Winston Churchill accused “international Jews” of doing in the Sunday Herald in 1920, are not anti-Semitic.

Similarly no thinking person is expected to believe that statements describing the immigration of East European Jews to Britain as causing “undoubted evils,” as Lord Arthur Balfour warned in 1905, are not anti-Semitic (both Churchill and Balfour were key and powerful supporters of the Zionist movement).

The ongoing fight in Britain is fundamentally not over those few marginal racists who still believe in some Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, but over whether labeling Israel as a colonial-settler state is anti-Semitic, or whether anti-colonial resistance to Israeli settler-colonialism and racist laws constitutes anti-Semitism, or whether questioning the legal and institutional religious, racial and colonial privileges accorded to Israeli Jews over the indigenous Palestinians constitutes anti-Semitism.

This is a most perplexing debate for any political observer, as it is Israel that claims to be “the Jewish state,” and that it represents the Jews of the world, even though a majority of them are not Israeli citizens.

Having it both ways

The contradiction that informs this British debate (or its French, German or US equivalents) is that the pro-Israel side is the side that invites people to believe, alongside Israel’s leaders and ideologues, that Israeli actions are in fact Jewish actions, and that Israel represents the Jewish people.

Note that the Zionist movement chose to name its state “Israel,” which is the name accorded by the Torah to Jacob, wherein the children of Israel, or Bnei Yisrael, become the Jewish people. Thus “Israel” in fact meant and means “the Jewish people.”

In naming its state “the Jewish people,” the Zionist movement conflated and conflates its colonial project with all Jews, even when the majority of world Jewry did not support the movement and continues to refuse to live in, and become citizens of, Israel.

Therefore, it is imperative to emphasize that it is Israel and its supporters who conflate Israel with all Jews, and then claim that condemning Israel, its laws, policies, actions and ideology amounts to condemning the Jewish people. What is elided is that the most anti-Semitic of claims in this debate are in fact those precise claims advanced by the Israeli government and its British supporters.

The majority of those in Britain and outside it who condemn Israeli laws, policies and actions, condemn Israel’s colonial-settler policies and actions and its dozens of racist discriminatory laws – including the Jewish “nation-state” law passed only last month – and not its Jewishness.

However, the nation-state law reaffirms yet again that Israel is “the national home of the Jewish people” and not of Israeli citizens of all ethnicities and religions, and that “The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.”

Supporters of Israel cannot have it both ways: They cannot claim that the Zionist movement has a right to colonize the land of the Palestinians in the name of Jews, and that the movement has the right to privilege Jews and to oppress and discriminate against the Palestinian people in the name of Jewish people, and that it has the right to pass racist laws in the name of Jews, and that it has a right to name its state “the Jewish people” for whom it speaks, and then after all that advance the claim that those who condemn Israel are condemning Jews.

A proper definition

Ironically, it is the majority of Israel’s critics, in contrast to the majority of its supporters, who reject Israeli claims that Israel represents all Jews and insist that Israeli racist laws and colonial policies represent the Israeli government and not the Jewish people. When Palestinians resist Israeli colonialism and racism, they are not resisting the “Jewish” character of Israel but its racist and colonial nature.

Critics of Israel in Britain and elsewhere must assiduously and vociferously condemn Israel’s leadership and its supporters in Britain and elsewhere for pushing this anti-Semitic line, at the same time as these critics condemn Israeli settler-colonialism and racist laws and practices.

If there should be a definition of anti-Semitism to be adopted by the Labour Party (or any other political party or institution) in Britain today, it should include the condemnation of anti-Semitic and colonial expressions such as: “Israel is the Jewish state,” or “Israel is the state of the Jewish people” or Israel “speaks for Jews,” or colonizing the land of the Palestinians is a “Jewish value.”

It is these anti-Semitic claims that tarnish Jewish communities around the world, and not opposition to Israeli colonialism and racism.

Joseph Massad is professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York. His most recent book is Islam in Liberalism (University of Chicago Press, 2015).

‘He can’t get rid of any of this’: Trump’s wall of secrecy erodes amid growing legal challenges

After Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen's convictions, The Post's Carol D. Leonnig unpacks the fallout and path forward for President Trump and the Russia probe. (Jenny Starrs /The Washington Post)

By David A. Fahrenthold

, Reporter

Josh Dawsey

, White House reporter

Rosalind S. Helderman

, Reporter

August 25 at 6:59 PM

President Trump’s wall of secrecy — the work of a lifetime — is starting to crack.

His longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty last week to breaking campaign-finance laws and said he had arranged hush-money payments to two women at Trump’s direction. A tabloid executive — who had served Trump by snuffing out damaging tales before they went public — and Trump’s chief financial officer gave testimony in the case.

All three had been part of the small circle of family, longtime aides and trusted associates who have long played crucial roles in Trump’s strategy to shield the details of his personal life and business dealings from prying outsiders.

But, as their cooperation with prosecutors shows, a growing number of legal challenges — including the Russia investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and a raft of lawsuits and state-level probes in New York — is eroding that barrier.

The result has been a moment in which Trump seems politically wounded, as friends turn and embarrassing revelations about alleged affairs and his charity trickle out, uncontained. In coming months, certain cases could force Trump’s company to open its books about foreign government customers or compel the president to testify about his relationships with women.

“The myth of Trump is now unraveling,” said Barbara Res, a Trump Organization executive from 1978 to 1996. “He’s becoming more obvious, and people are starting to know what he’s like and what he’s doing.”

Whether the president faces legal peril is not clear, but his presidency is at a precarious point. Recent polls suggest his repeated attacks on Mueller for leading a “witch hunt” have lost their effectiveness. And if the Democrats win a majority in at least one house of Congress in the midterm elections, now less than 10 weeks away, they would gain the power to investigate or even impeach.

“The whole reason he is freaking out is, he can’t get rid of any of this,” said a longtime adviser to Trump, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House dynamics.

The president’s sense of betrayal came through last week when he derided cooperating witnesses as “flippers.” “Everything’s wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they — they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go,” he told Fox News. In contrast, he tweeted that his “brave” former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who was convicted last week of bank fraud and tax fraud, had “refused to ‘break.’ ”

Trump has also focused his ire on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom he has repeatedly and publicly attacked for his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. White House aides have explained to him that firing Sessions would not end the probe, but he remains livid, officials said, particularly after Sessions responded last week with a statement declaring that “the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”

The Trump Organization declined to comment for this story. The White House referred questions to Trump’s outside lawyers, who also declined to comment for this story.

Before this year, any explanation of Trump’s secrecy would have begun with Cohen, a lawyer who threatened reporters with lawsuits for writing about Trump.

Before last week, it would have begun with Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer.

If Cohen was the outside man, Weisselberg has been the insider: a functionary whom Trump trusted to handle his company’s bills and his charity’s donations. Weisselberg started out working for Trump’s father, decades before.

“They are the same family,” Weisselberg and the Trumps, said one person close to the Trump Organization. “I think Allen has earned that. He’s been around a long time, and he’s part of the family.”

They helped build a world where Trump was the only reliable source of information about his finances. Although Trump bragged often about his wealth and business success, he avoided releasing hard evidence when he could.

In one case, he seemed to reject the idea of evidence itself. What was Trump’s net worth? It was whatever he said it was.

“My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings,” Trump said in a 2007 deposition, after he had sued reporter Tim O’Brien for publishing an independent estimate of Trump’s value. The suit was dismissed.

When Trump entered politics, he encountered a new level of scrutiny.

While much attention focused on his refusal to release his tax returns, a break from modern-day presidential practice, last week’s court proceedings revealed more details about other ways Trump the candidate sought to control his image.

Charging documents in the Cohen case said the Trump Organization had authorized payments to Cohen totaling $420,000 after Cohen paid for the silence of a woman who alleged an affair with Trump.

Weisselberg approved the payments as a fee for a “legal retainer,” according to one person familiar with his role. It was not clear, from court documents, whether he knew that explanation was a sham. A person familiar with the situation said Weisselberg did not know the nature of the settlement and approved the reimbursement because of Cohen’s long-standing role as counsel to Trump.

In pleading guilty, Cohen said in court that he had made these decisions “in coordination with” Trump and at his direction. That included paying the woman, which was an illegal campaign contribution.

Prosecutors also said in their court filings that Trump relied during his campaign on an ally: David Pecker, the chief executive of American Media Inc., which owns the National Enquirer.

Pecker turned his company from a spiller of secrets to a keeper of them, prosecutors said. In at least one case, the company paid a woman who alleged she had an extramarital relationship with Trump. Then it didn’t publish a thing.

Weisselberg and Pecker, who in addition to Cohen had been bulwarks of Trump’s secrecy, received immunity to testify about Cohen’s actions. It is unclear whether that was the limit of their cooperation, to testify about Cohen, or whether prosectors have asked broader questions about Trump or his company.

An AMI lawyer did not respond to requests for comment from Pecker. Neither Weisselberg nor company representatives responded to requests for comment on his behalf.

For his years as a businessman and as a candidate, Trump’s system was effective — though not perfect — at repelling inquiries from reporters. But once he became president, Trump began to face a new kind of inquiry, from people with lawsuits and subpoenas.

Now, there are at least seven of those inquiries, all asking for some kind of information about Trump or his company.

On the investigative front, Mueller has delved deeply into Trump’s campaign and White House, asking whether the campaign coordinated with Russian efforts to influence the election and whether Trump obstructed justice to stop or slow the probe.

Already, four associates of Trump’s 2016 campaign have pleaded guilty or been convicted as a result of Mueller’s work, which is ongoing. Mueller has also probed some aspects of Trump’s business specifically related to Russia, notably efforts undertaken by Cohen to launch a Trump Tower Moscow project during the campaign.

The Cohen case, meanwhile, led by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, has pointed to potential legal liability for Trump and his company, experts have said — though Trump and his lawyers have attacked Cohen in recent days as an unreliable witness.

If prosecutors conclude that Trump himself did something illegal, it’s unclear what they would do.

The Justice Department has official guidance saying that a president cannot be indicted while in office because that would impermissibly interfere with the executive’s ability to carry out duties under the Constitution. But a president might be named as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a grand jury report, or investigators could compile evidence that Congress might use in an impeachment case.

In addition to those federal investigations, the New York attorney general has already filed suit against Trump, alleging “persistently illegal conduct” at his charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation.

That case relied on internal documents provided by Trump’s company and testimony from Weisselberg, who handled the foundation’s books.

Now, the state is investigating whether to file criminal charges in that case.

And beyond that, Trump is facing several lawsuits that could pry further into his business and his personal life.

The attorneys general of Maryland and the District sued him, saying he violated the Constitution’s “emoluments clauses,” which bar presidents from taking payments from foreign governments or U.S. states.

The plaintiffs say those clauses should prevent Trump’s company — which he still owns — from doing business with foreign officials. They’ve already won some preliminary victories in court. And they want to soon begin searching Trump Organization records, including those of his luxury D.C. hotel that has become a popular destination for Trump allies and political groups.

In addition, a group of Democratic members of Congress has filed an emoluments lawsuit, while the New York attorney general is considering one of her own, focused on Trump’s businesses there.

Meanwhile, Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” Trump’s reality TV show, has sued him for defamation. Zervos alleges that Trump aggressively kissed her and groped her when she was seeking a job at his company and that he defamed her by later denying that account and calling her a liar.

More legal challenges could follow.

One candidate for New York attorney general, Zephyr Teachout (D), is running this year on promises to investigate the Trump Organization aggressively if she’s elected.

“The line between [the company and the Trump campaign], which should be absolute looks deeply blurred and raises all kinds of questions about civil and criminal violations,” Teachout said after Cohen’s guilty plea.

At the Trump Organization, people close to the company said, the impact of these investigations has been to overburden the legal staff. Company attorneys are also dealing with more mundane challenges, such as a new lawsuit in Illinois alleging that Trump Tower in Chicago is violating environmental laws meant to protect the Chicago River.

Inside the White House, the impact of these inquiries and the intense media coverage has been to set Trump fuming about disloyalty.

The revelations about his aides’ cooperation with prosecutors, after all, had emerged in the immediate aftermath of the publication of a tell-all book by one of his former White House aides. Omarosa Manigault Newman, a Trump ally from her days as a star on “The Apprentice,” had flipped in her own way — declaring Trump unfit for the presidency and using her frequent national television appearances to roll out her collection of secret recordings from inside the West Wing.

Trump has complained to advisers about Cohen, saying he could not trust anyone. He has been distracted in meetings, polling staff about developments in legal cases, several aides said.

He grew concerned that White House counsel Donald McGahn had turned on him, advisers said, after the New York Times reported he had sat for 30 hours of questions. He complained about Sessions, his attorney general, on Twitter and on television.

Trump has long seen any investigative interest in his business as a step too far, West Wing advisers say, and allies said he was frustrated by the intrusions into his life before the presidency.

“If they did it to anybody in business in our country, they’d find some jaywalking on technicalities,” said John Catsimatidis, a Trump friend and New York billionaire who is critical of the investigation.

In one possible sign of the strain this week placed on Trump, the president fired off an all-caps tweet that denounced the investigations against him. “NO COLLUSION - RIGGED WITCH HUNT!” Trump wrote, on the second day after Cohen’s guilty plea.

The time of that tweet: 1:10 a.m.

josh.dawsey@washpost.com

rosalind.helderman@washpost.com

Carol D. Leonnig, Jonathan O’Connell, Devlin Barrett and Sarah Ellison contributed to this report.

Trump Angers South Africa With Missive on Land Redistribution

The president’s tweet followed a misleading segment on Fox News.

Vincent Smith, the chair of South Africa's parliamentary committee on proposed constitutional amendments regulating land expropriation, speaks at a hearing in Cape Town on Aug. 4. (Rodger Bosch/AFP/Getty Images)

BY ROBBIE GRAMER-

AUGUST 23, 2018, 7:05 PM
President Donald Trump barreled into one of South Africa’s most racially charged political debates with a tweet late Wednesday, drawing a rebuke from the government there and leaving the U.S. State Department to deal with the consequences.

After watching a segment on Fox News on land reform issues in South Africa, Trump announced on Twitter that he asked his chief diplomat to look into “large scale killings” of white South African farmers.

“I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. “South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.” @TuckerCarlson @FoxNews,” Trump tweeted.

Trump was referring to an announcement by South Africa’s ruling African National Congress that it sought to change the constitution in order to redistribute land and bridge deep inequalities stemming from decades of white minority rule.

It was one of Trump’s first tweets on Africa since he took office. It quickly posed a challenge for the State Department’s new top diplomat on Africa, Tibor Nagy, who took up the position of assistant secretary of state for African affairs several weeks ago after it had sat empty since Trump entered the White House. Trump also has yet to nominate an ambassador to South Africa.

On Thursday, the South African government criticized Trump’s tweet, saying in a statement that it “totally rejects this narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past.”

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had discussed the issue with the president, but she offered no additional details on what action Pompeo would take next.

“We continue to encourage a peaceful and transparent public debate about what we could consider to be a very important issue in South Africa,” Nauert added.

One of the legacies of the Apartheid system is a profound inequality in land ownership. White South Africans comprise less than 10 percent of the country’s population but own some 72 percent of its agricultural land, according to data from the farm research group Agri SA.

The prospect of land redistribution and the specter of violence against white farmers have become rallying cries for far-right political groups and white nationalists in South Africa and the United States. Multiple studies have ruled out the suggestion that white farmers in South Africa would face mass violence in the process.

The State Department’s 2017 annual human rights report makes no mention of land seizures but does highlight racially motivated violence as an issue in the country.

Nauert, the State Department spokeswoman, said expropriation without compensation “would risk sending South Africa down the wrong path.”

The South African government insists that its land redistribution measures are not about invading and seizing land but about expanding opportunities for black South Africans to take over agricultural land that is currently lying fallow.

But critics of the policy look warily toward the example of neighboring Zimbabwe. In 2000, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe sent the national economy into a tailspin when he forcibly expropriated land from white Zimbabwean farmers and handed it to his political allies, sparking food shortages, long-term economic strife, and historic levels of hyperinflation.

“This is a super complex and evocative and difficult issue … for South Africa,” said Joshua Meservey, an Africa expert at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. “There clearly needs to be land reform in South Africa, but it needs to be done in a responsible and fair manner.”

Jennifer Cooke, the director of George Washington University’s Institute for African Studies, said Trump’s tweet will only exacerbate racial and political tensions in South Africa. “It will fuel the populist elements that are looking for much faster redistribution of land, and it will fuel the white extremists” energized by attention from the U.S. president, she said.

This is the second Africa-related controversy Trump has stirred up. In January, he reportedly referred to African nations as “shithole countries” in an Oval Office outburst. African leaders widely condemned Trump for the remark.

The tweet added to a growing perception in Washington that Trump gives little thought or attention to the continent.

But Meservey said that would be nothing new.

“Africa is never really a priority for any administration. That’s just a reality of American foreign policy,” he said.

Meservey pointed out that top Trump administration officials had made visits to the continent, including Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; top Treasury department officials; and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, just before he was fired this year.

First lady Melania Trump announced this week that she would travel to Africa in October.

Trump-McCain rift clear as president sends brief tweet and heads to play golf

No White House statement issued in hours after McCain’s death
Trump tweets familiar complaints and boasts about economy

John McCain in 2017. McCain’s wish that Trump not receive an invitation to the funeral remains unchanged. Photograph: Rok Rakun/Pacific Press via ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

Joanna Walters in New York- @Joannawalters13-Sun 26 Aug 2018 21.17 BST

The rift between Donald Trump and John McCain remained painfully evident on Sunday, as tributes for the late senator poured in from world leaders and past presidents.

The White House issued no statement and Trump followed up a brief Twitter condolence to McCain’s family – sent amid the first rush of tributes on Saturday – with complaints about the Russia investigation and boasts about the economy. Then he headed for the golf course.

McCain’s wish that Trump not receive an invitation to his funeral, made public some months ago, remained unchanged upon his death from brain cancer on Saturday, at his home in Arizona and with his family by his side.

Instead, George W Bush, who beat McCain for the Republican nomination in 2000, and Barack Obama, who beat him soundly for the White House in 2008, have been asked to speak at the event, which will take place at the United States Naval Academy in Maryland on a day as yet unannounced.
In a statement on Saturday, Obama saluted McCain’s “fidelity to something higher – the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched, and sacrificed”.
Bush praised a “man of deep conviction” and a “public servant in the finest traditions of our country”.

In emotional appearances across the Sunday talk shows, Jeff Flake, Arizona’s other senator and a critic of Trump, called for McCain’s legacy of “putting the good of the country above your own self-interest” to be carried forward in a deeply divided Congress, at a time that was “never more important”.

“He expressed optimism that leaders would rise to the fore in the future who would put the good of the country above themselves,” Flake told CNN’s State of the Union, “and I think we ought to take that forward.”Flake, who will retire from the Senate this year and is widely seen as an outside bet to challenge Trump from within the Republican party in 2020, was circumspect in answer to questions about the president. He also discussed his last conversation with McCain.

He expressed optimism that leaders would rise who would put the good of the country above themselves

Senator Jeff Flake

“He expressed optimism that leaders would rise to the fore in the future who would put the good of the country above themselves,” Flake told CNN’s State of the Union, “and I think we ought to take that forward.”

“In these days,” Flake said, it was a lesson all could learn.

The American flag was flying at half mast at the White House on Sunday, while plans were made for McCain’s body, which was first taken to the Arizona state capital, Phoenix, to lie in state in the Capitol.

The dispute between McCain and Trump was stark. The senator fought in the Vietnam war as a navy pilot and in 1967 was shot down and badly injured. He spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi and was tortured and beaten. He declined an offer of early release, out of solidarity with his fellow PoWs and as a matter of honor.

Trump, who had five deferments from service in Vietnam including one citing “bone spurs” in his foot, mocked McCain during the 2016 election, telling a conference in Iowa: “He’s not a war hero.” Trump added: “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”

The Washington Post reported on Friday that Trump has told aides he does not regret the comment.
McCain’s most powerful rejoinder was his decisive no vote, with a dramatic thumbs-down signal on the Senate floor, against Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s flagship legislation that made health insurance affordable for millions of Americans. In public remarks, Trump has repeatedly complained about McCain’s no vote – without mentioning the senator by name.

Vice-president Mike Pence posted a message on Twitter from himself and his wife, Karen, that unlike that from his boss, referred to the man himself.

“Karen and I send our deepest condolences to Cindy and the entire McCain family on the passing of Senator John McCain,” Pence wrote. “We honor his lifetime of service to this nation in our military and in public life. His family and friends will be in our prayers. God bless John McCain.”

McCain strongly opposed Trump’s isolationist world stance that saw the president rail against individual allies and key alliances such as Nato and the G7.

On Sunday the Republican senator Susan Collins, of Maine, also known as a moderate and independent conservative who voted no in the healthcare debate, told CNN: “John McCain was a true patriot.”

Flags fly at half-staff around the Washington Monument, with the Capitol dome in the background. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

She added: “He made it very clear that he disagreed with the direction of this administration. He went a long way to reaffirm our country’s commitment to Nato and other alliances and he encouraged others of us to speak out.”

World leaders with whom Trump has clashed spoke up. Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, called McCain “a tireless fighter for a strong transatlantic alliance” and said: “His significance went well beyond his own country.”

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, who was attacked by Trump after the last G7 meeting, issued a statement on Saturday evening.

“Senator John McCain was an American patriot and hero,” he said, “whose sacrifices for his country and lifetime of public service were an inspiration to millions. Canadians join Americans tonight in celebrating his life and mourning his passing.”

French president Emmanuel Macron tweeted in English that McCain “was a true American hero”.
“He devoted his entire life to his country,” he said.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, told NBC’s Meet the Press McCain “understood in the marrow of his bones what it meant to be an American”.

She warned: “Our institutions are being severely tested right now, including his beloved Senate. He was trying, in every way he knew how, to sound the alarm.”

The governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, will decide on a Republican replacement for McCain, to serve until 2020. Speculation has linked Cindy McCain to her husband’s set but Ducey has said he will not make an announcement until after McCain is laid to rest.

Is North Korea playing Trump?

2018-06-13T022355Z_2138392920_RC13D0973390_RTRMADP_3_NORTHKOREA-USA-940x580 — North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un listens to U.S. President Donald Trump as they meet in a one-on-one bilateral session at the start of their summit at the Capella Hotel on the resort island of Sentosa, Singapore June 12, 2018. Source: Reuters/ Jonathan Ernst

By Emma Richards | 22nd August 2018

ON the same day the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency claimed North Korea is continuing to develop its nuclear weapons programme, a state-owned newspaper lavished praise on US President Donald Trump and called such accusations nothing but “fiction.”

The opinion piece published in Rodong Sinmun used language similar to that used by Trump himself to describe his efforts of reconciliation with the isolated regime.

The article called the handshake between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at a landmark summit back in June, the “greatest event in the present century.” It also claimed the president “acted with his own decision and will” by going ahead with the meeting and praised him for “not wavering by the opposition’s offensive nor blindly following his aides’ view.”

The piece also said Trump was working towards “world peace” but was being hindered by having “too many rivals” back home in America.

SEE ALSO: Will they end the Korean War at the next inter-Korea summit?

Experts told The Independent the editorial appeared designed to manipulate Trump while drawing focus away from North Korea’s own unwillingness to work towards denuclearisation.

While acknowledging the current stalemate in negotiations, saying the “expectation and hopes of the world people into impatience and disappointment,” North Korea assigned blame for the deadlock to the “political scramble in the US” rather than its own failings.

Naoko Aoki, a research associate at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, told The Independentthe North Korean regime has been “taking advantage” of clashes in US domestic politics since the 1990s, when Congress opposed a deal between American and North Korean officials.

The editorial “is trying to steer the process so that it is advantageous to North Korea, by appealing to President Trump,” she said.

Bilateral meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Singapore Summit, June 12, 2018. Source: Kevin Lim/The Straits Times

Dr Hoo Chiew-Ping, a senior lecturer in Strategic Studies and International Relations at the National University of Malaysia, believes the article demonstrates the regime’s knowledge of US domestic politics and its ability to use this to their advantage in gaining leverage or squeezing concessions during negotiations.

“Trump can be easily manipulated because he enjoys having lavish praise bestowed on him, which in turn causes US foreign policy to divert away from many of the norms and principles that the West generally treasures: democracy, morality, humanitarian, and human rights,” she said.

But despite the Pyongyang’s protestations and attempts to divert attention, both US intelligence agencies and the United Nations have collected evidence to suggest Kim is continuing with his weapons programme regardless.

A report Monday from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) highlighted this failure to progress on promises made at the Singapore summit.

The report includes a detailed list of nuclear-related activities the agency believes are underway mainly at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Centre, one of the country’s major nuclear sites.

Detailed accounts of the evidence include, operations of a steam plant that served a radiochemical laboratory associated with nuclear fuel processing; ongoing mining, milling and other fuel activities at a site previously declared as a uranium mine and an associated plant; the use of centrifuge enrichment technology; and operation of the 5-megawatt experimental nuclear power plant including discharges of steam and cooling water.

SEE ALSO: Trump receives ‘nice letter’ from Kim Jong Un despite growing rift

North Korea called the accusations of continued nuclear development “fiction” designed at “derailing dialogue” between the two countries. It also claimed Pyongyang was “courageously fulfilling their promises.”

Trump himself seems inclined to believe the North Koreans, saying in an interview with Reuters on Monday that he believed Kim had done a lot to work towards denuclearisation since the June summit, but he failed to give any details.

The president also maintained his dealings with the regime had been a great victory, pointing to the absence of missile or nuclear tests from Pyongyang as a measure of the success.

“I stopped (North Korea’s) nuclear testing. I stopped (North Korea’s) missile testing. Japan is thrilled,” Trump said.

In the same interview, Trump suggested another meeting between the two leaders was likely to happen again but even he appears uncertain as to what the future holds, telling Reuters: “What’s going to happen? Who knows? We’re going to see.”