đ A very bad week for Trump aides
Talking points
- A dearth of emergency shelters has Hawaiians bunkering down at home in the face of Hurricane Lane; the Category 4 storm is expected to send 7m waves crashing into the islands
- A new recording revealed that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is alive (despite countless assurances otherwise)
- Japanese swimming sensation Rikako Ikee dominated the pool at the 2018 Asian Games; the 18-year-old has claimed five gold medals and is eyeing a sixth
- Riyadhâs charm campaign came unstuck when it was reported that the kingdom is preparing to behead a well-known female activist
- Prisoners in America began a 19-day protest against sub-standard (and declining) conditions at federal penitentiaries
- Trade âpeace talksâ between the US and China unsurprisingly failed to gather momentum as the countries imposed new tariffs this week
- World leaders paid respects to Kofi Annan, the late UN Secretary General and Nobel Peace Prize winner
- A Ugandan court charged popular musician-cum-activist Bobi Wine with treason as the President responds to criticism with increasingly heavy-handed measures
- Facebookâs recently-departed Chief Security Officer raised eyebrows by claiming that Americaâs 2018 midterms have already been ruined by foreign influence
- Authorities in Brazil released striking aerial images of an isolated and endangered pre-contact tribe in the dense jungles of the Amazonas state.
Deep Dive
OmertĂ is the Sicilian mafiaâs code of silence: the insistence on death or detention before divulgence. It exists because Mafiosi know that convictions tend to lead to more convictions.
Manafort convicted
Paul Manafort made a living close to the outer extremities of the law. He consulted autocrats and lobbied for such illustrious figures as Ferdinand Marcos and Mobutu Sese Seko. His friends cautioned him against joining Trumpâs campaign team: who knows, they said, what might be revealed under the scrutiny his involvement would elicit.
This week we got our answer: tax fraud (5x counts), bank fraud (2x counts) and hiding foreign bank accounts (1x count).
On Tuesday Manafort was found guilty of the above eight charges. The judge declared a mistrial in another 10 (a single juror held out on each count). Manafort now faces a maximum sentence of 80 years in jail. An imminent second trial carries even greater stakes: the charges are money-laundering and failure to register as a foreign agent. However, itâs believed that Trump plans to issue a pardon for his embattled friend.
Cohen flips
If Manafortâs conviction is a clear victory for special counsel Robert Mueller then Michael Cohen presents an ongoing clear and present danger to the president. The same day that Manafort was convicted, Trumpâs longtime lawyer and confidante plead guilty to eight charges; the most serious of which is campaign finance violation. He did so as part of a plea bargain with prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.
Cohenâs transgression is not the typical run-of-the-mill fudged book-keeping that occurs in every election (and which most courts decline to punish to the full extent of the law). Cohen admitted to paying hush-money âat the direction of a candidate for federal officeâ. No prizes for guessing which one. He is of course referring to the secret payments he made to buy the silence of two women the presidential challenger had affairs with.
This is new ground: it is a formal accusation that Trump broke the law and lied to cover it up. Cohen (through his attorney) has also ominously suggested that he has further information to offer Mueller. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in a subsequent interview Trump suggested that âflippingâ (for plea bargains) should be outlawed.
Bleak (White) House
To make matters worse Trump lost another two allies late in the week. David Pecker received immunity from prosecution in the Cohen case in exchange for testimony. The National Enquirer boss clearly has no sense of omertĂ .
Itâs believed that Pecker and Cohen worked side-by-side in a âcatch-and-killâ operation to silence potentially embarrassing stories about Trump. The pair would scout amongst his former sexual liaisons and use the magazine as a vehicle to buy the rights to (and shelve) their stories.
And then on Friday it emerged that Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organisation CFO, was also granted immunity to testify against Cohen. Weisselberg has worked with the Trump Organisation for decades and is one of the people Trump âleft in chargeâ of the company when he became president.
Trump is facing serious accusations and is in jeopardy of any wrongdoings being revealed by his former aides. But it is also an unwritten rule in the Justice Department to not indict sitting presidents. That said, this president is an iconoclast, and so itâs yet to be seen whether this tradition goes out the window with him.
Worldlywise
Greek tragedies
On Wednesday Greek Prime Minister Alex Tsipras announced a âday of liberationâ as his country emerged from under the yolk of European debt controls. This was the last of three bailout programs handed to Greece by the troika (the EU, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank). It is startling that Greece has emerged from eight years of crippling austerity â conditions imposed by the troika â as a complete country and one with a membership in the EU.
Back in 2010 the troika moved aggressively to safeguard the Euro (and keep Athens at the table). The bailout packages dictated austerity not seen in post-War Europe: the GDP shrank by 25% and unemployment rose as high as 28%. Taxes rose, wages fell, pensions disappeared and Greeks emigrated by the hundreds of thousands. Austerity also shredded the notion of centrist politics in Greece: at one point the two most popular parties were radical leftists (Syriza) and actual fascists (Golden Dawn).
The Greek economy is only just beginning to grow: its stock market remains 60% lower than it was prior to the initial bailout. And many of the underlying weaknesses still remain, not to mention the enormous debt-loading that still hangs over it. Athens wonât begin to pay back the majority of its debt until 2032, but some economists believe that the country will have returned to crisis well before then.
Antipodean antipathies
After a week of Sophoclean drama and no small measure of farce Australia has a new Prime Minister-designate. Yesterday Scott Morrison emerged from the fray as leader of the Liberal Party and head of the ruling Coalition. He replaces Malcolm Turnbull after a spill-motion called by the divisive right-wing Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton.
It was a week of frantic vote-counting, backroom deals and venom. Duttonâs open challenge to the PM revealed the deep divisions between the liberal and conservative wings of the party. He was ably supported in fomenting revolt by another backbencher (and former PM), Tony Abbott. But in the end the sustained insurrection by the Dutton camp merely opened the door for Morrison. The numbers got the better of them.
Australiaâs major parties have endured a painful decade as the country moves from a duopoly to a multi-party system. Internal ructions and historic trends aside, itâs widely expected that the Australian Labor Party will romp home in next yearâs federal election.
The Best of TimesâŚ
The shocking imperial violence of the Korean War bisected the peninsula and families alike. The hostility between North and South has been deleterious but not enough to break the kinship felt by people like Lee Su-nam. This week the 76-year-old travelled north to Pyonyang to visit his older brother Lee Jeong-song. It had been 65 years since they last clasped eyes. Lee was one of 89 South Koreans who were allowed to visit family this week; another small but hopeful step forward.
There are numerous factors that contributed to Napoleonâs famous defeat at Waterloo: from the manâs own hubris to the idleness of the French Imperial Guard until late in the day. And to this list we can now add an Indonesian volcano. New research shows that a huge eruption of Mount Tambora in early 1815 sent particles as high up as the ionosphere. The presence of such material âshort-circuitedâ the upper atmosphere and caused unseasonal weather events across Europe. Heavy rains turned Napoleonâs last battleground to mud; thus denying him the quick movement and deft manoeuvres that his plans called for.
The Worst of TimesâŚ
This week the embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced a radical plan to devalue the bolivar by 95%. Hyperinflation has locked the economy into a death spiral and produced scenes similar to those during the Great Depression. Prices are rising at an annualised rate of 100,000%. To combat this Maduro has introduced a new âsovereignâ currency and cut five zeroes from the end of the near-useless bolivar. Desperate times. Drastic measures.
Two weeks ago Saudi-UAE jets snuffed out the lives of 40 Yemeni children. This weekâs atrocity came in the form of a Gulf airstrike that killed 22 children and four women in a refugee camp south of Hodeidah. The word indiscriminate has been used to describe the actions of the Saudi and Emirati air forces; yet âindiscriminateâ fails to account for the frequency with which schools, hospitals and busloads of children are vaporised. Itâs difficult to see how militaries trained, backed and armed by the West are capable of so many âmistakesâ.
Weekend Reading
Featured long-reads from inkl publishers:
- Foreign Policy reveals how Turkey dumbed itself down
- L.A. Times probes Verizonâs data-throttling controversy
- Businessweek asks whatâs holding back American wages
Tom Wharton
@trwinwriting
P.S.
Quote of the weekâŚ
âThe cool thing about this is, this is extremely direct evidence. Weâve almost caught them in the act, so to speak.â â Molecular geneticist Svante Pääbo canât contain his excitement over the discovery of a half-Neanderthal, half-Denisovan hybridâs skeletal remains.
What to watch next week
Anything but Australian or American politics.
And one last thing
You can get the worldâs best news coverage for just 3 cents per day. Thatâs essential news, without ads, clickbait or paywalls. So do it now if you havenât already.
