monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

This week's extraordinary session in the Cabinet Room with a bicameral, bipartisan group of lawmakers, and an impulsive decision by Trump to let journalists film 55 minutes of his meeting, gave the world a glimpse of Trump's agree-with-the-last-speaker tendency we've heard described.

Or what does Trump want to infer from this?

Well, at least Trump might have a strong look at English libel laws and how Her Majesty uses them - birds of a feather flock together.

Bad news for alleged scumbags around the world. Following a pair of rulings in the high court, it looks like journalists can return to calling them plain scumbags again. Some of the time, at least.

In one case, Pavel Karpov, a retired Russian policeman, had been suing Bill Browder, a naturalised British businessman, for claiming that Karpov had a role in the death of the anti-corruption campaigner Sergei Magnitsky. In the other, a Serbian entrepreneur called Stanko Subotic was pursuing several Balkan publications over allegations that he was involved in organised crime. Both cases have now been dismissed, however, on the grounds that the plaintiffs have no real reputation in England to defend.

This may seem like common sense, but since the early years of the internet it has been a quirk of English law that foreigners can sue other foreigners under our tough libel laws, even if the offending comments were barely noticed in this country. "Libel tourism" was the catchy name. The late Boris Berezovsky used it in 2000, when he and an associate took exception to being called "criminals on an outrageous scale" by Forbes magazine, despite that edition having fewer than 1% of its readers in Britain. Berezovsky settled for a correction in the end, but a precedent was set.

In 2004, the Saudi businessman Khalid bin Mahfouz successfully sued an American author, Rachel Ehrenfeld, for alleging that his family gave money to terrorists. Dr Ehrenfeld's book Funding Evil had no British publisher, but 23 copies had been bought through UK-registered websites, and an extract published online. She refused to contest the case, and lost.

These days are not definitely over, but in London at least, the end of libel tourism seems to be nigh. "Judges are becoming more astute at asking themselves, in these defamation cases, what is really going on," says Gavin Millar QC, a specialist in the field. "The old days of reputation being all-important at the expense of free speech rights are drifting away."

That drift will accelerate next spring when the Defamation Act comes into force. Under the new law, claimants who don't live in Europe will have to show that England is the most appropriate place for their action. Interestingly, the law will not apply in Northern Ireland. Belfast, a small boost to your economy may be coming soon.

The swing to Republicans between 2008 and 2016 is quite a bit stronger in commuting zones most affected by industrial robots. You don’t see much of the impact of robots in prior presidential elections. So it’s really a post 2008 phenomenon.

Donald J. Trump
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@realDonaldTrump
7h
7 hours ago

“House votes on controversial FISA ACT today.” This is the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others?

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@realDonaldTrump
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5 hours ago


With that being said, I have personally directed the fix to the unmasking process since taking office and today’s vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land. We need it! Get smart!

Quote:

Donald J. Trump
‏
Verified account

@realDonaldTrump
7h
7 hours ago

“House votes on controversial FISA ACT today.” This is the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others?

Quote:

Verified account

@realDonaldTrump
5h
5 hours ago


With that being said, I have personally directed the fix to the unmasking process since taking office and today’s vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land. We need it! Get smart!

Twitter

WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has reached a deal on protecting young immigrant "Dreamers" from deportation as part of a broader immigration plan, a spokesman for Republican Senator Jeff Flake said on Thursday.

The spokesman, Jason Samuels, would not provide details of the plan, but said "the next step is taking it to the White House" for President Donald Trump to weigh.

Some other lawmakers who have been engaged in the negotiations were also optimistic; others said no deal had yet been reached.

In the report, he says the Democratic Party is “lazy,” “out of touch with mainstream America,” relying on “too much identity politics” where “winners and losers are picked by their labels.” The Democrats in his district, he laments, “feel abandoned.” “The Democratic Party is a party of elites,” Michigan state Rep. Donna Lasinski told Johnson.

The Democratic brand,” said Illinois state Rep. Jerry Costello Jr., “is hugely damaged, and it’s going to take a while to bring it back. Democrats in southern Illinois have been more identified by bathrooms”—transgender bathrooms, that is—“than by putting people back to work.”

“The ‘metro-centrics’ in our party don’t know the difference between majority and minority,” Minnesota state Rep. Gene Pelowski added. “They just play to the base. They don’t care about winning elections.”

“We say we’re diverse and tolerant,” former Indiana state Rep. Dennie Oxley said, “but we’re really not tolerant of certain groups.”

“Some in the party, especially from metro areas, are not tolerant of other opinions, especially on guns and abortion,” Minnesota state Rep. Jeanne Poppe said. “It’s OK, if you’re liberal, to be intolerant."

European powers have urged the US not to abandon the 2015 agreement with Iran that limits its nuclear programme, saying it is making the world safer.

After meeting his Iranian, French, German and EU counterparts in Brussels, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson insisted the deal was preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

He also challenged Washington to come up with a better alternative.

US President Donald Trump wants to amend the deal or withdraw from it.

In October, he refused to recertify for Congress that Iran was complying, accusing it of "not living up to the spirit" of the agreement.

At a news conference after meeting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Thursday, representatives of the EU, the UK, France and Germany reiterated their support for the nuclear deal they helped negotiate.

"The deal is working; it is delivering on its main goal, which means keeping the Iranian nuclear programme in check and under close surveillance," EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said.

"The unity of the international community is essential to preserve a deal that is working, that is making the world safer and that is preventing a potential nuclear arms race in the region. And we expect all parties to continue to fully implement this agreement."

We voted him OUT in 2016. Didn't.work so well. We still got the bastard.