OK. India's External Affairs Minister @DrSJaishankar is about to speak to @mfullilove at @LowyInstitute and I'm going to live tweet. Please mute if you don't care about India's foreign policy (you should though you numpties, it's stupendously interesting) 1/

Jaishankar was previously the head of MEA (comparable to @dfat Secretary) before becoming Minister. Fullilove asks which job is more satisfying. Jaishankar doesn't quite answer but says the ministerial role gave him a "broader" view of both domestic and international politics 2/
Now to Jaishankar's new book "The India Way." He says the core ideas he's exploring in the book are "multi-polarity and re-balancing." A "new architecture" is being built as power shifts. But countries are now far more interdependent. This creates "constrained competition" 3/
Jaishankar also says a new "more expanded" view of national security is emerging, which includes things like "health, food, trade, data and energy" 4/
The Minister says he also "indirectly" broaches the argument over US decline in his book. He says he's "not a great believer" in US declinism, but adds that as relative power shifts "it creates an argument for a different relationship between the West and India" 5/
India has been battered by #COVID19 . Jaishankar recognises the scale of the challenge. He says the pandemic "took us completely by surprise." And he acknowledges that in some ways India was "completely unprepared" to deal with the crisis 6/
But he is cautiously optimistic about India's recovery. He says daily cases are down to one third of what they were at the peak. And he also believes the economy is on a path to recovery and growth 7/
Fullilove asks about Jaishankar's views on Xi Jinping and China in 2020. Jaishankar says these days "you have a very much more nationalistic China, and that is expressed down the line in a variety of ways. Often in policies as well." 8/
Now to India's conflict with China and the border standoff in Ladakh. Jaishankar says Chinese incursions are at the heart of the problem- "they have brought tens of thousands of soldiers to the LAC" (Line of Actual Control) 9/
Frank stuff here. Jaishankar says in these circumstances it is "not entirely surprising that something went horribly wrong" with clashes and combat deaths on the border. He says the conflict has "completely changed national sentiment (towards China) in India" 10/
Jaishankar: "peace on border is the basis for the (India China) relationship to progress." He says it's "not realistic" to separate the conflict from other elements of bilateral ties: "frankly the relationship has been significantly damaged" 11/
Jaishankar is downright gushing about how the India-Australia relationship has grown. Recites cliches about cricket, but more important: "if there's one relationship I take satisfaction in it is the Australia-India relationship." He calls it "a partnership waiting to happen" 12/
Now Fullilove asks about democracy in India. He quotes an Economist piece which argued civil liberties and the rule of law are being degraded under Modi. He asks "are you concerned by perceptions in the West that India is moving in an illiberal direction" 13/
Jaishankar is quite dismissive. He argues some Western liberals are uncomfortable with contemporary India simply because they have not grappled with the way it has democratised. Its political leaders are no long English-speaking elites with familiar attitudes 14/
The full answer here really is quite interesting, so I'm reproducing it below 15/
Now Jaishankar is asked if Australia and India will ever sign a formal trade or defence pact. Jaishankar acknowledges the long running FTA negotiations (editor: don't hold your breath) and emphasises defence cooperation. But adds he doesn't know how formal those links will be 16/
The conversation ends with another somewhat painful cricket analogy (I LOVE CRICKET BUT WHY DO WE ALWAYS RESORT TO CRICKET CLICHES WHEN WE TALK ABOUT AUSTRALIA-INDIA TIES ARGGHHH) but overall it was both illuminating and interesting 17/

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THREAD:
Good afternoon, followers of frivolous election litigation. There's a last-minute entry in the competition for dumbest pre-inauguration lawsuit - a totally loony effort to apparently leave the entire USA without a government.

We'll start with the complaint in a minute.

But first, I want to give you a quick explanation for why I'm going to keep talking about these cases even after the inauguration.

They're part of an ongoing effort - one that's not well-coordinated but is widespread - to discredit our fundamental system of government.

It's a direct descendent, in more ways than one, of birtherism. And here's the thing about birtherism. It might have been a joke to a lot of people, but it was extremely pernicious. It obviously validated the racist "not good enough to be President" crowd. But that wasn't all.

Don't get me wrong, that was bad enough. Validating racism helped put the kind of shitbird who would tweet this from an official government account into power. But it didn't stop


(Also, if you agree with Pompeo about multiculturalism - the legendary melting pot - not being what this country is all about, you need to stop following me now. And maybe go somewhere and think about your life choices and what made you such a tool.)
We’ve been getting calls and outreach from Queens residents all day about this.

The community’s response? Outrage.


Amazon is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here.

When we talk about bringing jobs to the community, we need to dig deep:
- Has the company promised to hire in the existing community?
- What’s the quality of jobs + how many are promised? Are these jobs low-wage or high wage? Are there benefits? Can people collectively bargain?

Displacement is not community development. Investing in luxury condos is not the same thing as investing in people and families.

Shuffling working class people out of a community does not improve their quality of life.

We need to focus on good healthcare, living wages, affordable rent. Corporations that offer none of those things should be met w/ skepticism.

It’s possible to establish economic partnerships w/ real opportunities for working families, instead of a race-to-the-bottom competition.

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The entire discussion around Facebook’s disclosures of what happened in 2016 is very frustrating. No exec stopped any investigations, but there were a lot of heated discussions about what to publish and when.


In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.

In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.

This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.

In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.