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Month: December 2018

The government implicates Trump and the Trump campaign in federal campaign finance violations

The government implicates Trump and the Trump campaign in federal campaign finance violations

The Washington Post reports: Late Friday, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York filed a document arguing that Michael Cohen, until last year President Trump’s personal attorney, should receive a substantial prison sentence for violations of federal law to which Cohen admitted guilt in August. The document went further than simply articulating the punishment the government believes Cohen should receive. It also fleshed out two of those charges in particular, related to violations of campaign finance laws…

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White Party can’t figure out how to get non-white votes

White Party can’t figure out how to get non-white votes

Politico reports: The outgoing chair of the California GOP — the nation’s largest state Republican Party — has issued a dire warning that his state represents “the canary in the coal mine” for the party‘s national fortunes unless it confronts demographic shifts that have already turned California into a majority-minority state. “We have not yet been able to figure out how to effectively communicate and get significant numbers of votes from non-whites,’’ said former state Sen. Jim Brulte, who’s held…

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A generational loss of caution promotes extremism

A generational loss of caution promotes extremism

Janan Ganesh writes: Experience of trauma does not instil risk aversion as a matter of course. But having lived through the near ruin of civilisation, that cohort of westerners [the “greatest generation”] did not trifle with dangerous ideas after 1945. Obituaries that attribute [George H.W.] Bush’s caution to high-born Waspery or the Episcopalian Church miss the formative effect of war. To see what happens when societies become incautious, look around. What unites Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon with France’s…

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The hidden global network behind British far-right activist Tommy Robinson

The hidden global network behind British far-right activist Tommy Robinson

The Guardian reports: The investigation has established that: A Philadelphia-based thinktank, the Middle East Forum (MEF), acknowledges it has spent about $60,000 (£47,000) on Robinson’s legal fees and demonstrations staged in London earlier this year. A senior MEF executive has been closely involved in preparations for this weekend’s march, though the thinktank said she was there in a personal capacity. A US tech billionaire, Robert Shillman, financed a fellowship that helped pay for Robinson to be employed in 2017 by…

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Anti-Zionism isn’t the same as anti-Semitism

Anti-Zionism isn’t the same as anti-Semitism

Michelle Goldberg writes: On Monday, in an interview with The Intercept, Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat who in November became the first Palestinian-American elected to Congress, went public with her support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which seeks to use economic pressure on Israel to secure Palestinian rights. That made her the second incoming member of Congress to publicly back B.D.S., after Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar, who revealed her support last month. No current member of Congress supports…

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Greenland’s ice sheet melt has ‘gone into overdrive’ and is now ‘off the charts’

Greenland’s ice sheet melt has ‘gone into overdrive’ and is now ‘off the charts’

USA Today reports: The melting of Greenland’s massive ice sheet has now accelerated, scientists announced Wednesday, and shows no signs of slowing down, according to a new study. “Melting of the Greenland ice sheet has gone into overdrive,” said Luke Trusel, a glaciologist at Rowan University and lead author of the study. “Greenland melt is adding to sea level more than any time during the last three and a half centuries, if not thousands of years,” he said. Ice loss…

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Rapid warming caused largest extinction event ever on Earth, report says

Rapid warming caused largest extinction event ever on Earth, report says

The Guardian reports: Rapid global warming caused the largest extinction event in the Earth’s history, which wiped out the vast majority of marine and terrestrial animals on the planet, scientists have found. The mass extinction, known as the “great dying”, occurred around 252m years ago and marked the end of the Permian geologic period. The study of sediments and fossilized creatures show the event was the single greatest calamity ever to befall life on Earth, eclipsing even the extinction of…

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China holds at least 800,000 and possibly more than 2 million Muslim minorities in detention, mostly without charge

China holds at least 800,000 and possibly more than 2 million Muslim minorities in detention, mostly without charge

The Hill reports: State Department official Scott Busby told senators this week that China has detained at least 800,000 Muslim minorities in internment camps. “The U.S. government assesses that since April 2017, Chinese authorities have indefinitely detained at least 800,000 and possibly more than 2 million Uighurs, ethnic Khazakhs, and other members of Muslim minorities in internment camps,” Busby, the deputy assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Tuesday. “Reports…

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I drafted article 50. We can and must delay Brexit for a referendum

I drafted article 50. We can and must delay Brexit for a referendum

John Kerr writes: The real debate now is between leaving under the humiliating terms of the proposed withdrawal agreement, with no certainty about the eventual permanent relationship, or staying with our current rights as full members, with a voice, a vote and veto. So the choice is between a bad Brexit deal and sticking with the deal we have in the EU. And it’s a choice for the people. I don’t think it would be right for parliament to just…

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Putin threatens arms race if U.S. dumps nuclear treaty

Putin threatens arms race if U.S. dumps nuclear treaty

Mikhail Gorbachev and George P. Shultz write: More than 30 years have passed since the day the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union, meeting in Geneva, adopted a joint statement declaring that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” It was more than just rhetoric. Less than a year later, in Reykjavik, Iceland, they agreed on the parameters of future treaties on the elimination of intermediate-range nuclear forces, or INF, and the radical…

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In the Middle East, Russia is back

In the Middle East, Russia is back

The Washington Post reports: Among the presidents, prime ministers, kings and princes who have visited Moscow over the past year to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin are some of the United States’ closest allies, who once might have been expected to devote their travel time to Washington. There’s a new power rising in the Middle East, and it needs to be wooed. Three decades after the Soviet Union collapsed and the United States emerged as the undisputed superpower in…

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Facebook’s very bad month just got worse

Facebook’s very bad month just got worse

Sue Halpern reports: Who could have imagined that a creepy little app that scoured Facebook for pictures of women in bikinis might be the instrument that skewers the behemoth social network? Who, that is, besides Facebook executives and their lawyers? Until a little over a week ago, the company had successfully sequestered internal e-mails, which were obtained by the legal team of Ted Kramer, the founder of the app company Six4Three, during the discovery process in a 2015 lawsuit. At…

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‘We are in trouble.’ Global carbon emissions reached a record high in 2018

‘We are in trouble.’ Global carbon emissions reached a record high in 2018

The Washington Post reports: Global emissions of carbon dioxide are reaching the highest levels on record, scientists projected Wednesday, in the latest evidence of the chasm between international goals for combating climate change and what countries are doing. Between 2014 and 2016, emissions remained largely flat, leading to hopes that the world was beginning to turn a corner. Those hopes appear to have been dashed. In 2017, global emissions grew 1.6 percent. The rise in 2018 is projected to be…

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With a Green New Deal, here’s what the world could look like for the next generation

With a Green New Deal, here’s what the world could look like for the next generation

Kate Aronoff reports: What, exactly, would a Green New Deal entail? Like its 1930s counterpart, the “Green New Deal” isn’t a specific set of programs so much as an umbrella under which various policies might fit, ranging from technocratic to transformative. The sheer scale of change needed to deal effectively with climate change is massive, as the scientific consensus is making increasingly clear, requiring an economy-wide mobilization of the sort that the United States hasn’t really undertaken since World War…

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