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Month: February 2019

Putin has restored the role its intelligence agencies had in the Soviet era — keep citizens in check and destabilize foreign adversaries

Putin has restored the role its intelligence agencies had in the Soviet era — keep citizens in check and destabilize foreign adversaries

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John Sipher writes: According to this year’s National Intelligence Worldwide Threat Assessment and Senate testimony by top-ranked intelligence officials, Americans can expect Vladimir Putin’s Russia to continue its efforts to aggravate social, political and racial tensions in the United States and among its allies. So, to best prepare for future Russian assaults, we should look to the past and study the mind-set of the Cold War K.G.B. — the intelligence service in which President Putin spent his formative years. The…

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Calls grow for Labor Secretary Acosta to resign as Epstein’s sex abuse victims demand justice

Calls grow for Labor Secretary Acosta to resign as Epstein’s sex abuse victims demand justice

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The Miami Herald reports: Lawyers for victims who were sexually abused as minors by multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein have formally demanded that the government vacate Epstein’s plea deal, void his federal immunity and reopen his sex trafficking investigation, the Miami Herald has learned. Lawyers Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell, who represent two of Epstein’s victims, sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida making the request in the wake of a federal judge’s ruling last…

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U.S. Cyber Command operation disrupted Internet access of Russian troll factory on day of 2018 midterms

U.S. Cyber Command operation disrupted Internet access of Russian troll factory on day of 2018 midterms

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The Washington Post reports: The U.S. military blocked Internet access to an infamous Russian entity seeking to sow discord among Americans during the 2018 midterms, several U.S. officials said, a warning that the Kremlin’s operations against the United States are not cost-free. The strike on the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, a company underwritten by an oligarch close to President Vladi­mir Putin, was part of the first offensive cyber campaign against Russia designed to thwart attempts to interfere with…

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A world that neglects to save its children can’t hope to be saved by its children

A world that neglects to save its children can’t hope to be saved by its children

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  The New York Times reports: It’s complicated being Greta. Small, shy, survivor of crippling depression, Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish girl skipping school to shame the world into addressing climate change, drew a parade of fans one Friday in February on a frozen square in Stockholm. Six Swiss students had traveled 26 hours by train to seek her support for their petition for a tougher Swiss carbon emissions law. An Italian scientist told her she reminded him of his…

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Feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss may push Earth’s climate past a disastrous tipping point

Feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss may push Earth’s climate past a disastrous tipping point

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Natalie Wolchover writes: Clouds currently cover about two-thirds of the planet at any moment. But computer simulations of clouds have begun to suggest that as the Earth warms, clouds become scarcer. With fewer white surfaces reflecting sunlight back to space, the Earth gets even warmer, leading to more cloud loss. This feedback loop causes warming to spiral out of control. For decades, rough calculations have suggested that cloud loss could significantly impact climate, but this concern remained speculative until the…

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Is a more generous society possible?

Is a more generous society possible?

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By Leah Shaffer In January 2016, Cathryn Townsend set out to live among “the loveless people.” So named by anthropologist Colin Turnbull, the Ik are a tribe of some 11,600 hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers living in an arid and harsh mountainous region of Uganda. Turnbull studied the Ik in the 1960s and famously characterized them as “inhospitable and generally mean” in his book The Mountain People. He documented how young children were abandoned to starve and how people would snatch…

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Costa Rica lays out ground-breaking decarbonisation plan

Costa Rica lays out ground-breaking decarbonisation plan

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Renew Economy reports: The Central American nation of Costa Rica has laid out its long-term decarbonisation plans to become one of the world’s first, if not the first, zero-emissions nations. Costa Rica’s Decarbonization Plan includes both short-term goals out to 2022 which are intended to support the country’s longer-term 2050 goals and also serves as the basis for Costa Rica’s plans to update its Nationally Determined Contributions in line with the Paris Agreement in 2020. With a population of nearly…

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Pay attention to the growing wave of climate change lawsuits

Pay attention to the growing wave of climate change lawsuits

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Vox reports: In 1998, 46 states and the District of Columbia signed on to the largest civil litigation settlement in US history, the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. Stunning in its scope and scale, the agreement forced the four largest tobacco companies to stop advertising to youth, limit lobbying, restrict product placement in media, and fund anti-smoking campaigns. It also required them to pay out more than $206 billion over 25 years. Tobacco companies had in previous decades successfully swatted down…

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Labour will back a second referendum to stop Tory no-deal Brexit

Labour will back a second referendum to stop Tory no-deal Brexit

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  The Guardian reports: Jeremy Corbyn has finally thrown his party’s weight behind a second EU referendum, backing moves for a fresh poll with remain on the ballot paper if Labour should fail to get its own version of a Brexit deal passed this week. The decision to give the party’s backing to a second referendum comes after a concerted push by shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer and deputy leader Tom Watson, who fear any further delay could have led…

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Grassroots antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party

Grassroots antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party

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Jeremy Corbyn’s stated preference is that the media should pay more attention to those Jews who claim that there isn’t a serious problem of antisemitism in the Labour Party than to those who say the opposite: If I were in CCHQ, my next PPB (and every other PPB) would just be this video pic.twitter.com/y2RN90BmGo — Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) February 23, 2019 The letter signed by 200 Jewish Labour Party members to which Corbyn referred in this Sky News interview, states:…

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A dividing line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, once clear becomes increasingly blurred

A dividing line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, once clear becomes increasingly blurred

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Kenan Malik writes: For anti-Zionists like [the late historian Tony] Judt, “self-determination” in that piece of contested land that is Israel/Palestine should adhere to principles of civic, not ethnic, nationalism; that is, be the self-determination of the people, and only the people, who live there, whether Jews or Palestinians. This kind of anti-Zionism is very different from that which calls for the “destruction of the state of Israel”, usually (a not very veiled) code for the destruction of Jews. The…

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This is how AIPAC really works

This is how AIPAC really works

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M.J. Rosenberg writes: One thing that should be said about Representative Ilhan Omar’s tweet about the power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (more commonly known as AIPAC, or the “Israel lobby”) is that the hysterical reaction to it proved her main point: The power of AIPAC over members of Congress is literally awesome, although not in a good way. Has anyone ever seen so many members of Congress, of both parties, running to the microphones and sending out…

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White House plans to set up panel whose mission is to disrupt climate science and promote fossil fuel use

White House plans to set up panel whose mission is to disrupt climate science and promote fossil fuel use

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The Washington Post reports: The White House plans to create an ad hoc group of select federal scientists to reassess the government’s analysis of climate science and counter conclusions that the continued burning of fossil fuels is harming the planet, according to three administration officials. The National Security Council initiative would include scientists who question the severity of climate impacts and the extent to which humans contribute to the problem, according to these individuals, who asked for anonymity to discuss…

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The grave threats of white supremacy and far-right extremism

The grave threats of white supremacy and far-right extremism

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Thomas T. Cullen writes: Last week, federal agents in Maryland arrested a United States Coast Guard officer and said he was plotting to assassinate Democratic members of Congress, prominent television journalists and others. The officer, Lt. Christopher Hasson, apparently was inspired by a right-wing Norwegian terrorist who slaughtered 77 people in 2011, stockpiled firearms and ammunition and researched locations around Washington to launch his attacks, according to investigators. Fortunately, the F.B.I. arrested him before he could act. This frightening case…

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