Trump’s choice for national security adviser, Michael Flynn, met with the head of an Austrian anti-immigrant party that was founded by Nazis.

The leader of the Austrian far-right Freedom Party has signed what he called a cooperation agreement with Russia’s ruling party and recently met with Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the designated national security adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump of the United States.

Word of the agreement with Russia was the latest sign that the Kremlin is forging bonds with political parties across Europe in what some European leaders suspect is a coordinated attempt to meddle in their affairs and potentially weaken Western democracies. Many of these efforts are murky and involve obscure groups, and it is

I’m still wondering why the official reaction to Putin’s role in the recent US election is so…mellow. The Guardian reports that so is former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The former CIA director and defense secretary Robert Gates has criticised the Obama administration and congressional leaders of both parties for a “somewhat laid-back” response to the discovery of Russian interference in the US presidential election.

Not a thing to be laid-back about, wouldn’t you think?

Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Gates said a “thinly disguised” operation by Russia had aimed to undermine the credibility of the American election and was to weaken Hillary Clinton.

“Given the unprecedented nature of it and the magnitude of the

Ari Berman makes clear what an outrage the North Carolina coup is.

What began as a special legislative session to help victims of Hurricane Matthew quickly turned into something very different when the GOP-controlled legislature hastily passed a series of bills stripping incoming Democratic Governor Roy Cooper of his constitutional powers. Most noteworthy, Cooper will no longer get to appoint a majority of members to the state board of elections or 100 county boards of elections, and the state board will be chaired by a Republican in all even-numbered years—i.e., any time there’s a major congressional, statewide, or presidential election. With Republicans holding a super-majority in the legislature, this is a guaranteed prelude to future voter-suppression efforts. The bill

Update: it’s now 12 people killed.

And Berlin.

An articulated lorry has ploughed into a busy Christmas market in the heart of Berlin, killing nine people and injuring many more, police say.

Police say they suspect it was deliberate. Video shows stalls knocked over and people lying injured.

A suspicious person was arrested nearby, while what police describe as a passenger was found dead, police say.

The market is at Breitscheidplatz, close to the Kurfuerstendamm, the main shopping street in the city’s west.

It’s also right near the Berlin zoo. I once knew some elephant keepers at the Berlin Zoo.

Here’s the Facebook safety check page, in case you have friends there. I’ve heard from a couple of … Read the rest

Richard Rothstein points out that social engineering is not just when people try to undo housing segregation – it’s also when people segregate housing in the first place.

President-elect Donald Trump proposes to nominate Ben Carson to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Mr. Carson has expressed opposition to the Obama administration’s new HUD requirement that cities and suburbs develop plans to end their segregation or face possible loss of federal funds. He calls this “social engineering,” and says that such well-intentioned programs have unintended consequences that their proponents later come to regret. Instead, he says, emphasis should be placed on revitalizing distressed minority neighborhoods in central cities.

What Mr. Carson’s view ignores is that the racial

The Russian ambassador in Turkey was killed in Ankara today.

A gunman in Turkey wearing a business suit and tie opened fire Monday on Russia’s ambassador, killing the diplomat and wounding several others at photo exhibit in the Turkish capital, officials said. The gunman was killed as panicked people scattered for cover in the gallery.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. But video posted on social media purported to show a Turkish-speaking attacker decrying violence in Syria, where Russia is a key backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

…

Russia and Turkey, a foe of Assad, recently joined to broker a deal to evacuate civilians and rebel fighters from the last opposition enclaves in Aleppo,

Larry Colburn died a week ago. He was the last survivor of the crew that intervened to stop the massacre at My Lai.

Mr. Colburn was the last surviving member of a three-man helicopter crew that was assigned to hover over My Lai on Saturday morning, March 16, 1968, to identify enemy positions by drawing Vietcong fire.

Instead, the men encountered an eerie quiet and a macabre landscape of dead, wounded and weaponless women and children as a platoon of American soldiers, ostensibly hunting elusive Vietcong guerrillas, marauded among defenseless noncombatants.

They dropped smoke flares to mark the wounded so that the soldiers on the ground could find and help them; when they came back around they found all … Read the rest

Have the cats of Istanbul.

Hundreds of thousands of Turkish cats roam the metropolis of Istanbul freely. For thousands of years they’ve wandered in and out of people’s lives, becoming an essential part of the communities that make the city so rich. Claiming no owners, the cats of Istanbul live between two worlds, neither wild nor tame –and they bring joy and purpose to those people they choose to adopt. In Istanbul, cats are the mirrors to the people, allowing them to reflect on their lives in ways nothing else could.

Critics and internet cats agree – this cat documentary will charm its way into your heart and home as you fall in love with the cats in Istanbul.

William Easterly also (i.e. like me) has disdain for this habit of making stupid generalizations about massive geographical “groups” – groups in scare quotes because they’re not the groups the generalizers say they are. “Coastal elites” versus “flyover country” – how meaningless can you get?

I was born in West Virginia and spent all of 10 days there as an infant before my family moved to Ohio.  Perhaps that’s a license for me to say why Appalachians are poor, drink too much, and voted for Donald Trump. The best-selling and widely praised “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” by J.D. Vance, proceeds along those lines. But I shouldn’t single out that book: Sloppy