Pro Patria Mori

There will not be a Daily Pnut edition on Monday, Memorial Day.

Please click here for the Daily Pnut Week in Review. The highest scoring winner will be congratulated in next week’s Daily Pnut (unless they prefer anonymity) and mailed a book of their choosing from our book list. If there are multiple people who have perfect scores, then we’ll use a random generator to pick the winner. This online quiz is 10 short questions, and submissions must be made by 12pm EST Monday, 5/28. Everything in the quiz has been covered in this week’s Daily Pnut. Good luck!

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” – George Washington

“Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” – Ibid.

“There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.” – Ibid.

The US Military Battles and Annihilates Russian Mercenaries: Evidence just obtained by The New York Times is providing the Pentagon’s first public accounting of one of the bloodiest battles faced by the American military in its fight against the Islamic State in Syria. On February 7, some 40 Americans were attacked by around 500 pro-Syrian government forces, including Russian mercenaries, at an outpost in eastern Syria. By the end of the four hour assault, 200-300 of the attacking fighters were killed. The rest retreated under merciless US airstrikes.

In the days before the attack, Russian and US forces were on opposite sides of the Euphrates River, each backing separate offensives against the Islamic State in Syria’s oil-rich Deir al-Zour Province, which borders Iraq. American military officials repeatedly warned about the growing mass of troops, but Russian military officials said they had no control over the fighters assembling near the river. In Congressional testimony last month, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said: “The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people.” As it turns out, the majority were private Russian paramilitary mercenaries, likely a part of the Wagner Group, a company the Kremlin often used to carry out objectives that officials didn’t want seen as connected to the Russian government.

The day of the attack started out as any other. A team of American soldiers and Rangers were working alongside Kurdish and Arab forces at a small outpost next to a Conoco gas plant. Throughout the day, Syrian fighters were amassing. By 8:30 pm there were more than 500 troops, with tanks and armored personnel carriers, and they had edged closer to the Conoco plant. Around 10 pm, American soldiers at the outpost watched a column of tanks and other armored vehicles emerge from a neighborhood of houses and drive toward them. At 10:30 pm, the Russian mercenaries and Syrian forces struck. Long story short, since Mattis had been assured by the Russian high command that the attacking forces weren’t Russian, he gave direction to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the enemy force was to “be annihilated.” And, as Mattis testified, “it was.”

– Experts investigating the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in July 2014 announced Thursday that the Russian missile that hit the planeoriginated from a Russian military unit. All 298 passengers onboard were killed. Moscow has denied responsibility. (NPR)

– There is growing investor alarm regarding Turkey’s economy. Its currency took another fall Wednesday, a 20% drop so far this year. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had called early elections for June 24, more than a year earlier than scheduled, in hopes of getting re-elected before the bottom dropped out. His campaign officially opened Thursday, with the emphasis expected to be on Erdogan’s economic achievements and impressive year-on-year growth over his 15 years at the head of government. (NYT)

– Amnesty International accused Nigerian soldiers of raping women and girls who fled from the militant Islamic group Boko Haram. And thousands have starved to death in camps in northeastern Nigeria since 2015. Former president Barack Obama refused to sell weapons to Nigeria over concerns about the military’s human rights record, but the Trump administration is moving ahead with the sale of military aircraft and weapons. (BBC)

– Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen is accusing China of using “dollar diplomacy” to lure away the island’s allies. The West African country of Burkina Faso is the second country this month to break diplomatic ties with Taiwan. The Dominican Republic switched recognition to Beijing earlier in May. Tsai said no longer would “China’s crude behaviors to undermine our sovereignty” be tolerated, but she didn’t elaborate on what that meant exactly. (The Guardian)

More News Reads:

• Lebanon’s Hariri wins third term as Prime Minister (CNN)
• EU privacy law heralds new era in online data protection (Reuters)
• Ireland Abortion Vote Divides Families, and Gender Lines (NYT)

Trump’s North Korea Non-Meeting Sends Shockwaves Across the Pacific: President Trump announced Thursday he was cancelling the June 12 summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Trump vowed that “our very strong sanctions, by far the strongest in history, and maximum pressure campaign will continue.” The news of withdrawal disappointed some allies and pleased others. South Korean President Moon Jae-in had worked tirelessly to bring the US and North Korea to the table, and the cancellation, which he called “very regrettable,” could damage him politically. As a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul observed: “Moon Jae-in’s people must be panic-stricken by now because they have invested so much in the Trump-Kim summit…they will face a gleeful political opposition who will ridicule them for being so naïve.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is probably relieved; officials in Tokyo thought the talks were moving too quickly. Without more involvement, Japan worried that the US could come out with a deal that would benefit it but leave Japan vulnerable. And China’s President Xi Jinping also seemed nervous about the pace of the talks and the prospect of Kim getting too close to the Americans. Cancelling the meeting allows Xi to use his influence with North Korea, and his ability to manipulate enforcement of economic sanctions against it gives him leverage in trade talks with the US.

It is unclear what Kim will do going forward. In anticipation of some sort of peace talks with Washington, Kim had suspended weapons testing, released three American prisoners, and destroyed his nuclear test site. On the other hand, as a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington said: “Trump walking away from the summit lets North Korea meet all its objectives: public recognition, lighter sanctions, damage to U.S. alliances and continued nuclear advancement.”

– President Trump’s playbook to keep Republicans in power in the midterm elections this fall is open and in full use. He is in campaign mode, holding big rallies, raising lots of money, and bashing Democrats. (NPR)

– US Customs and Border Protection employees are doing their best to inspect as many packages arriving from overseas as possible in an effort to stem the flow of opioids bought on the dark web. But legislation attempting to force the US Postal Service to make it harder to send narcotics through the mail is languishing in Congress. (NPR)

• Trump: NFL kneelers ‘maybe shouldn’t be in country’ (BBC)
• Air Force Uncovered LSD Use Among Airmen Guarding Nuclear Missiles(NPR)
• Whites’ Unease Shadows the Politics of a More Diverse America (NYT)
• There’s a Sinkhole at the White House. Blame the Swamp. (Really.) (NYT)
• Most Americans don’t realize Robert Mueller’s investigation has uncovered crimes (Vox)
• “That Psychopath Is Going Down”: Inside Trumpworld, A Bizarre Counter-Narrative Takes Hold (Vanity Fair)
• North Carolina’s Teacher Revolt Was Decades in the Making (Splinter)
• Collusion Happened. Despite what the president says, the question is answered. (The Atlantic)
• Movie producer Weinstein to surrender on sex assault charges (Reuters)

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Weekend Reads:

• The trouble with charitable billionaires. More and more wealthy CEOs are pledging to give away parts of their fortunes – often to help fix problems their companies caused. Some call this ‘philanthrocapitalism’, but is it just corporate hypocrisy? (The Guardian)
• The Velocity of Skill Development: How Brazil Develops Football Players(Farnam Street)
• Feeling Anxious? This Simple Navy SEAL Trick Calms Your Nervous System in 5 Minutes Flat (Inc.)
• Humans Are Dumb At Figuring Out How Smart Animals Are. And that has major implications for what rights we think they’re owed (FiveThirtyEight)
• Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins (Bloomberg)
• From Taylor Swift to the world’s largest T-shirt cannon: An internet reader(CJR)
• The Weird, Dangerous, Isolated Life of the Saturation Diver (Atlas Obscura)
• Weekend lie-ins could help you avoid an early death, study says (The Guardian)

“There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.” – George Washington

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