Globe Trot: Trump calls Syria chemical attack ‘an affront to humanity’

SYRIA: Russia is standing by Syria and President Bashar al-Assad even as the death toll in a suspected chemical weapons attack rises to at least 74. Today, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley confronted Moscow, with veto power at the UN Security Council, but it called a draft resolution to condemn the attack “categorically unacceptable.”

President Donald Trump, in a news conference with Jordan’s King Abdullah, blamed Syria for the chemical weapons attack, calling it “an affront to humanity” that would “not be tolerated.”

The World Health Organization says some victims showed symptoms “consistent with exposure to organophosphorus chemicals, a category of chemicals that includes nerve agents.” From its statement today:

“‘The images and reports coming from Idleb today leave me shocked, saddened and outraged. These types of weapons are banned by international law because they represent an intolerable barbarism,’ said Dr Peter Salama, Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme.

“Reports first emerged of the use of chemical weapons agents in Syria in 2012 and have since occurred with disturbing frequency, including repeated allegations of chlorine use in and around Aleppo last year, especially from September to December 2016. This latest reported incident is the most horrific since Ghouta in August 2013.”

Meanwhile, U.S.-backed forces are pressing toward Raqqa in northern Syria, the headquarters for ISIS, while increased fighting near Damascus threatens Syrian Christians.

RUSSIA: Former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice is shifting to denying more leaking than actual unmasking identities of Trump campaign or transition officials contained in intelligence reports. Unmasking identities in such reports is the prerogative of officials with top security clearance, but the repeated requests by Rice suggest her queries may have been for political purposes—an abuse of power and possibly a crime. At the time, reports continue to proliferate of the Trump team making back-channel liaisons with Russian officials. Honestly, there’s a lot of smoke in all this, and I’m more with Charles Krauthammer at this point: “The world is on fire and we’re chasing rabbit holes.”

CHINA: As President Trump readies for tomorrow’s state visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, here’s a breathtaking statistic: More than 336 million abortions have been performed in China since 1971 under its one-child policy. That’s more than the entire population of the world at the time of the Crusades, and likely an underreported number, given past practice of China’s Health Ministry.

When a now-grown China-born orphan went looking for her birth parents, she got responses from 50 families who said they abandoned a baby girl on the same street in Wuhan during the month of March 1993.

CONGO: Violence in the central Kasai region has led to a reported 400 or more civilian casualties, but we’re getting further disturbing reports of mutilating deaths in an attack on Luebo, a town in the province. A priest in Luebo told RFI Africa:

“They went to sack the offices of the Ceni [a Roman Catholic mission], where there was material for enlistment. They burned and ransacked the floor and offices of the territory. They then went to the convent and set fire to it. They went to the bishopric—a beautiful building that is the pride of the country, because it is one of the best bishoprics in the Congo—and they burned it. The situation is really dramatic. People live in psychosis.”

WELTSCMERZ is the German term for “world pain,” and describes “a world weariness felt from a perceived mismatch between the ideal image of how the world should be with how it really is.”