"The border is seen by the government as a civil rights-free zone where U.S. citizens are being increasingly treated like criminals and subject to the exact same sort of degrading abuse as my brother’s girlfriend. This is something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while, and this recent experience inspired me to do so today. Many of you have no idea how bad things already are."
"Trump hasn’t forfeited America’s global leadership. On the world stage, his is a new flavor of the same dish. America is still playing the futile role of global cop, still reigns as the only superpower with a globe-straddling military presence and is still picking fights in distant regions remote to US national-security interests. The fact that it is Donald Trump at the helm of all this is fooling observers into thinking more has changed than actually has."
"Barack Obama left office as the first two-termer in American history to have been at war every single day of his presidency. In his last year alone, U.S. forces dropped over 26,000 bombs on seven different countries. Trump blew past that tally nine months into his tenure. Indeed, this putatively 'isolationist' president has deepened entanglements on every battlefield Obama left him, ramping up airstrikes, kill-or-capture missions, and civilian casualties."
"From the United States’ point of view, the National Security Strategy document highlighted how China and Russia are trying to shape a new geopolitical environment in the region, which contrasts sharply from Washington’s aims and interests. It pointed out that while Russia is trying to advance its position as the leading political and military power broker, China is pushing ahead with a 'win, win' economic policy."
"Recent reports suggest the US is considering a 'bloody nose' strike — highly visible but materially limited — on North Korea to make a statement, and that President Donald Trump's secretaries of state and defense are the key figures holding him back. Experts have panned the idea of a strike on North Korea with near unanimity, but the Trump administration has consistently touted the use of force as a potential tool."
"The worsitude comes in the flimsiest but all too familiar of forms: a yellow sticky note, spotted in an Associated Press photo from July, at the agency’s headquarters at Diamond Head, bearing a password and stuck to a computer screen. While there’s a press photographer in the room, obviously. Richard Rapoza, a spokesman for HI-EMA, told Hawaii News Now that the password is authentic and was actually used for an 'internal application.'"
"Governor David Ige was told two minutes after a text message was issued by the Emergency Management Agency (EMA) that the threat warning was a false alarm. But his office did not share the information via social media until about 17 minutes later. On Monday, Mr Ige acknowledged he had failed to recall his social media ID. The governor added that he now stored the details on his smartphone to avoid a repeat blunder."
"The strategy, the first such document to be issued by the Pentagon in roughly a decade, represented an historic shift from the ostensible justification for US global militarism for nearly two decades: the so-called war on terrorism. 'Great power competition—not terrorism—is now the primary focus of US national security,' Mattis said in his speech, which accompanied the release of an 11-page declassified document outlining the National Defense Strategy in broad terms. A lengthier classified version was submitted to the US Congress, which includes the Pentagon’s detailed proposals for a massive increase in military spending."
"Secretary of State Rex Tillerson blamed both Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and Russia for carrying out a purported new chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta. In the same sentence Tillerson leveled the accusation against Russia, while simultaneously pointing the finger at Assad, [thus admitting] that he really doesn't know much at all about 'whoever conducted the attacks'."
"U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis raised the matter in an exchange with reporters after unrelated meetings in the Indonesia capital with senior government officials. He made clear that while the U.S. sympathizes with Turkey's concerns about border security, Washington wants the Turks to minimize their military action inside Syria."