Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
“It will be very difficult for us to fight alone with such a huge monster. But the civilized world has two options: to help us restore our 1991 borders, or to throw away all claims of shared values and just watch us bleed,” Serhiy Prytula says.
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The New York Times unraveled a financial network that stretches from Chicago to Shanghai and uses American nonprofits to push Chinese talking points worldwide.
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“After spending years cultivating public apathy, the Russian president found his people indifferent to his fate,” Anne Applebaum writes.
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“The Coast Guard is the first line of defense against a massive tsunami. Will it also be an early victim?” Freelance writer Eric Scigliano attempted to answer that question for Politico.
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“The Russian leader may have thought NATO was in disarray and the U.S. in retreat, but we’ve already seen it’s quite the opposite,” David Rothkopf writes in a piece for The Daily Beast.
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A year after the January 6 insurrection, how does America’s crisis end? Vox’s Zack Beauchamp says he has spent the past few months digging into
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Via CBS: “There were about eighty active large fires and complexes of multiple blazes in the U.S., the National Interagency Fire Center tweeted late Sunday. The U.S. Forest Service said at least sixteen major fires were burning in the Pacific Northwest alone.”
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In this almost seven minute segment, The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper gets up close and personal with the American fascist cult that worships Donald Trump.
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“The need for a Green New Deal can rendezvous with the imperative of anti-depression public investment. Much of this sweeping proposal is on the drawing boards and has not been done for lack of funding. Some of it will take some advance planning. The time to start is now.”
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“What better platform is there going to be than the Olympic Games when the world has pulled through the virus… You’ve got a dynamic that will be even more powerful for Japan and the rest of the world. But you are going to have a tough road getting there.”
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Unlike several years ago, when President Barack Obama ordered the Department of Defense to mobilize to respond to the ebola outbreak, Donald Trump has failed to involve the military in the United States’ response to the rapidly worsening coronavirus pandemic.
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“Trump gambled very early and very often on the idea that the coronavirus wouldn’t turn out to be nearly as severe as some health officials have warned it could get,” Aaron Blake writes.
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Another rat flees the sinking ship.
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Watch a tsunami wave simulation for Washington State from a hypothetical magnitude 9.0 earthquake (L1) scenario on the Cascadia subduction zone.
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Via Politico: “Trump’s willingness to accept foreign assistance has essentially invited overseas spies to meddle with 2020 presidential campaigns, undoing months of work, said law enforcement veterans.”
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Schematic shows where Amtrak Cascades 501’s rolling stock ended up after derailment
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Michigan State University economist Mark Skidmore, discussing his team’s startling finding about the Pentagon’s expenditures (MSU scholars find $21 trillion in unauthorized military spending; Defense Department to conduct first-ever audit).
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There will be no food in Puerto Rico… There is no more agriculture in Puerto Rico. And there won’t be any for a year or
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Via PTZtv: Live footage of Hurricane Irma destroying the MahoBeachCam.com camera located at AAA Rent-A-Car in St Maarten. We will rebuild!
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This is arguably the first real “deal” Donald Trump has made as President. It comes more than seven months after his regime came into power.
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Astonishing overnight time lapse video shows the devastating Eagle Creek fire wreaking havoc on the scenic Columbia River Gorge
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