in 2005, the extraordinary refusal to confirm his nomination to be President George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations by a Republican-controlled committee is worth revisiting for what it revealed about Mr. Bolton and what it may portend for our national security.
.. Testifying before the usually staid Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 2005, Carl W. Ford Jr. — the former assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research — called Mr. Bolton a “kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy” and a “serial abuser” of people beneath him in the chain of command. Mr. Ford — a self-described conservative Republican and Bush supporter — made vivid an emerging portrait of Mr. Bolton as a bully who repeatedly sought retribution against career intelligence analysts with the temerity to contradict him.
.. As under secretary of state, Mr. Bolton insisted that Cuba was attempting to build a biological weapons program. The national intelligence officer for Latin America and the State Department’s top biological weapons expert disagreed. In a fit of rage, Mr. Bolton tried to have both reassigned.
.. Mr. Bolton also was accused of attempting to inflate the dangers of Syria’s biological and nuclear weapons programs, by trying to sneak exaggerated assertions into speeches and congressional testimony before being called on it by intelligence officials. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reportedly issued an extraordinary decree that required Mr. Bolton to clear all of his public utterances with Mr. Armitage himself.
.. Mr. Bolton also accused a State Department subordinate of not sharing with him a cable about weapons inspections in Iraq. The same official had managed to delete some of the more extreme claims about Iraq’s weapons programs from Mr. Powell’s infamous presentation to the United Nations. Mr. Bolton ordered him removed from his duties, which State Department officials reportedly saw as an another instance of Mr. Bolton trying to marginalize dissent.Mr. Bolton made it something of a habit to request the identity of American officials whose names had been blacked out of sensitive intelligence intercepts. Some members of the Foreign Relations Committee were concerned that he was seeking information to use against those who disagreed with him — the very kind of improper “unmasking” that President Trump has falsely accused some members of the Obama administration of pursuing.
Other witnesses came forward to allege abusive behavior by Mr. Bolton during his time as a lawyer in the private sector — screaming, threatening, throwing documents and, in the words of one woman, “genuinely behaving like a madman.”
All of this ultimately proved too much for Senator Voinovich. In a remarkable speech to his colleagues on the committee, a visibly pained Mr. Voinovich explained his decision to vote against Mr. Bolton, effectively killing the nomination. We’ve heard, he said, that Mr. Bolton is “an ideologue and fosters an atmosphere of intimidation. He does not tolerate disagreement. He does not tolerate dissent.”
.. Though he has advocated tough policies on Russia, he has also reportedly suggested that Vladimir Putin’s effort to undermine the 2016 election was a false-flag operation orchestrated by the Obama administration.
The nerve agent poisoning in England was a message to the rest of the world
‘You won’t be safe anywhere, even if you’re in Britain’
The nerve agent attack on former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter sends a powerful message to the rest of the world: the assassins aren’t playing by the rules.
.. Still, if the Russian government really was responsible, why use a nerve agent that could so easily be traced back to them? “They’ve had plenty of opportunities to kill Skripal,” says Michael Kofman, an expert on Russian military affairs at the nonprofit research organization CNA. “And there are, frankly, a myriad of much simpler and more practical ways of doing it.”
But using chemical weapons is about more than just killing. These taboo weapons are instruments of terror, and their use is designed to send a message to the world: that the power behind the attack — Russia, according to the UK — doesn’t think anyone else is ruthless enough to retaliate effectively. And to others who might consider betraying Russia to foreign powers, it’s that snitches get more than stitches — they get murdered.
.. Using Novichok as a calling card could be a way of saying that Russia doesn’t care about looking guilty because whatever retaliation the UK and the West might muster isn’t frightening enough. After all, an in-kind response is off the table
.. If only one side is willing to be ruthless, it changes the rules of the game. This “etiquette of espionage,” for example, held that former spies were off limits for assassination attempts
.. And there’s an international treaty against using chemical weapons, so using them for assassination attempts on foreign soil are beyond the pale. “They do things like this intentionally to show that they in no way will be limited by what are considered to be established rules and norms of behavior,”
.. That message is also aimed at anyone considering telling Russia’s secrets to foreign powers, Kimmage says. “One very clear message is ‘If you betray us, we will kill you’ to put it into blunt, mafia-like terms,” he says. “‘You won’t be safe anywhere, even if you’re in Britain.’” The attempted murder of Sergei Skripal made an example out of him, and the theatrical method ensured that the press picked up the message and distributed it around the globe.
.. “The threat of chemical weapons not only endures in the 21st century, but is spreading.” In the last few years, the Assad regime unleashed chemical weapons on civilians in Syria; ISIS used mustard gas in Syria and Iraq; state-sponsored assassins used the nerve agent VX to kill Kim Jong-nam, Kim Jong-un’s half-brother. And now, a chemical weapon made for the battlefield was used in a UK cathedral town, in the attempted murder of a UK citizen.
Vestergaard writes: “It seems the chemical peace is not just broken; it is shattered.”
Budgets, Bad Faith and ‘Balance’
Over the past couple of months Republicans have passed or proposed three big budget initiatives.
- First, they enacted a springtime-for-plutocrats tax cut that will shower huge benefits on the wealthy while offering a few crumbs for ordinary families — crumbs that will be snatched away after a few years, so that it ends up becoming a middle-class tax hike.
- Then they signed on to a what-me-worry budget deal that will blow up the budget deficit to levels never before seen except during wars or severe recessions.
- Finally, the Trump administration released a surpassingly vicious budget proposal that would punish not just the vulnerable but also most working families.
.. Washington is full of professional centrists, whose public personas are built around a carefully cultivated image of standing above the partisan fray, which means that they can’t admit that while there are dishonest politicians everywhere, one party basically lies about everything.
News organizations are intimidated by accusations of liberal bias, which means that they try desperately to show “balance” by blaming both parties equally for all problems.
Dozens of People Recount Pattern of Sexual Misconduct by Las Vegas Mogul Steve Wynn
Wynn Resorts employees and others described a CEO who sexualized his workplace and pressured workers to perform sex acts. Mr. Wynn responded: ‘The idea that I ever assaulted any woman is preposterous.’
.. Mr. Wynn, turning 76 on Saturday, is a towering figure in Las Vegas and the wider gambling industry. As builder of the Mirage, Treasure Island, Bellagio, Wynn and Encore casinos in Las Vegas—lavish, multiuse resorts with features such as artificial volcanoes, dancing fountains and French chefs—he brought a new level of sophistication and scale to the Strip.
.. Mr. Wynn no longer owns the Mirage, Treasure Island or Bellagio, but his empire now includes two casinos bearing his name in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau, and he is building a $2.4 billion Wynn casino in the Boston area. He is the chairman and chief executive of Wynn Resorts.
.. Mr. Wynn owns nearly 12% of Wynn Resorts, a stake worth $2.4 billion, and is considered integral to its success. His signature is the company logo. In a recent securities filing citing possible risks to the business, the company said, “If we lose the services of Mr. Wynn, or if he is unable to devote sufficient attention to our operations for any other reason, our business may be significantly impaired.”
.. Mr. Wynn is a regular on his casino floors, known for a keen attention to details and what employees say is a temper that can flare when they fall short. He has frequently had services such as manicures, massages and makeup application performed in his on-site office at the Wynn Las Vegas.
.. Former employees said their awareness of Mr. Wynn’s power in Las Vegas, combined with the knowledge that the jobs they held were among the best-paying available there, added up to a feeling of dependence and intimidation when Mr. Wynn made requests of them.
Some said that feeling was heightened at times by the presence in a confined office space of one or more of his German shepherds, trained to respond to commands in German.
.. Former employees said they sometimes entered fake appointments in the books to help other female workers get around a request for services in Mr. Wynn’s office or arranged for others to pose as assistants so they wouldn’t be alone with him. They told of female employees hiding in the bathroom or back rooms when they learned he was on the way to the salon.
.. he would continually adjust a towel to expose himself. Then at one session, she said, he threw it off and said, “Just get this thing off of me.”
.. She said he wouldn’t let her use a towel to cover his genitals after that, contrary to state licensing regulations, and he also began rubbing her leg while she massaged him.
.. After a few weeks, the former employee said, Mr. Wynn instructed her to massage his penis to climax. The woman said that because he was her boss, she felt she had no choice but to agree to some of Mr. Wynn’s requests, including that one. She said masturbating him became a frequent part of the massage sessions for several months.
.. In subsequent sessions, the woman said, Mr. Wynn asked her to perform oral sex on him and described in detail how he wanted it done. This request she refused, she said.
.. Dennis Gomes, who was an executive at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas when Mr. Wynn was running that casino decades ago, said in a deposition in an early-1990s lawsuit that Mr. Gomes “routinely received complaints from various department heads regarding Wynn’s chronic sexual harassment of female employees,” according to a court filing that summarized his testimony.
.. Mr. Gomes described what he called a “disgraceful pattern of personal and professional conduct” that he said included Mr. Wynn’s directing him to get the home phone numbers of casino cocktail waitresses.
.. The employee and the supervisor said they sought to manage the situation rather than report it because they believed there would be repercussions if they did.
.. a woman who was a salon manager at the time said she filed a written report to human resources. She said she got a call from an executive, Doreen Whennen, castigating her for filing to HR and saying she should have taken the matter directly to Ms. Whennen.
.. Ms. Wynn, who is a co-founder and former board member of Wynn Resorts, is seeking to free herself from restrictions on the control of her estimated $1.9 billion of stock that were imposed by a 2010 agreement with Mr. Wynn.