Conservative: UK’s Russia Chickens Come Home to Roost “Never ignore the warnings of refugees and defectors from revanchist authoritarian regimes,”…
Conservative: UK’s Russia Chickens Come Home to Roost
“Never ignore the warnings of refugees and defectors from revanchist authoritarian regimes,” cautions Commentary’s Sohrab Ahmari. It’s a lesson Britain’s security establishment is now learning in the wake of the poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter on UK soil. But Prime Minister Theresa May might ask herself “how it was that Russian operators came to conclude that they could get away with so brazen a violation of UK sovereignty.” The simple answer: It’s worked for them before. After the 2006 polonium poisoning of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, Britain’s political class, “keen to appease Moscow,” went to great lengths “to avoid airing the facts.” The senior official in charge of that case: Then-Home Secretary Theresa May.
Political scribe: Uber Poised To Repeat a Bad Mistake
Erik Engquist at Crain’s New York asks: “Remember when Uber waged a successful advocacy campaign in 2015 to defeat Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to cap its growth?” Three years later, “little did they realize how much they needed a cap.” Nowadays, veteran Uber drivers’ chief complaint is that they’re struggling because the company “keeps recruiting more drivers, perhaps 2,000 or 3,000 per month.” And they say their newer competitors are given priority “to deliver on promises made to recruits.” But if de Blasio revives his proposed cap, as he’s hinted, this time it will be the newer drivers who object, likely saying “the cap would have prevented them from joining.” For its part, Uber says the company’s growing customer base “justifies adding more drivers.”
Obituary: The Power of an Unconstrained Mind
The scientific achievements of physicist Stephen Hawking, who died Wednesday after decades with ALS, “are too obscure for most people, even though he was outstanding at popularizing his work,” observes Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky. But his real value was in proving “that a powerful brain doesn’t really need a functioning body to survive, thrive and even have fun.” Silicon Valley’s space entrepreneurs particularly are mourning Hawking’s death because they followed his most famous advice: “Look up at the stars and not at your feet.” Hawking, though profoundly disabled physically, was “uninterested in posing as a tragic figure,” remaining “both cheerful and pragmatic.” In everything he did, Hawking “wasn’t weighted down by the present, just as he was minimally constrained by his paralyzed physical shell.”
Foreign desk: Feminists Won’t Back Anti-Hijab Activist
An unidentified Iranian woman was sentenced to two years in prison this week for what Shappi Khorsandi at The Independent calls “the simple, powerful act of taking off her hijab and waving it at the end of a stick in protest at being forced to wear the thing.” But Khorsandi, whose family fled Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, bemoans the “eerie silence from the vast swaths of the left, including feminists, when women in Iran risk life and freedom by publicly defying the enforced hijab law.” Standing with and speaking up for her, says Khorsandi, “doesn’t make us anti-Islam or imperialistic, but pro-human rights and feminist, and shuts out the nonsense” from those who attack Muslims.
Urban wonk: Why Is Mayor a Dead-End Job?
Mayors regularly are touted as “pragmatic problem solvers who are taking on the challenges politicians at other levels of government are afraid to face,” observes Aaron Renn at New Geography. But if that’s so, he asks, why isn’t being mayor a “great stepping-stone” to higher office? Fact is, only three presidents — Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland and Calvin Coolidge — ever served as mayor. And only Cleveland headed a major city. You see similar figures for senators and governors. But the reason why isn’t apparent: “Maybe local politics is seen as small ball,” he suggests, or maybe political skills that work at the local level don’t scale upward. Either way, being mayor is not so much a step on the political ladder as “a terminal position.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann
