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Trump’s actions raise ‘urgent concern’ inside the intelligence community

Trump’s actions raise ‘urgent concern’ inside the intelligence community

In an editorial, the New York Times says: It’s not every day that a whistle-blower in the intelligence community files a complaint about the president of the United States. But it seems to have happened last month, when an unidentified intelligence employee alerted the inspector general of the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, to multiple acts by President Trump, including a promise he is said to have made to a foreign leader during a phone call. The complaint alarmed Mr. Atkinson…

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The West’s self-proclaimed custodians of democracy wrongly imagined its only enemies lurked abroad

The West’s self-proclaimed custodians of democracy wrongly imagined its only enemies lurked abroad

Pankaj Mishra writes: Anglo-American lamentations about the state of democracy have been especially loud ever since Boris Johnson joined Donald Trump in the leadership of the free world. For a very long time, Britain and the United States styled themselves as the custodians and promoters of democracy globally, fighting a great moral battle against its foreign enemies. From the cold war through to the “war on terror”, the Caesarism that afflicted other nations was seen as peculiar to Asian and…

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Why the Republican Party poses a threat to democracy

Why the Republican Party poses a threat to democracy

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write: The greatest threat to our democracy today is a Republican Party that plays dirty to win. The party’s abandonment of fair play was showcased spectacularly in 2016, when the United States Senate refused to allow President Barack Obama to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February. While technically constitutional, the act — in effect, stealing a Court seat — hadn’t been tried since the 19th century. It would…

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Brazil’s army wants to ‘occupy’ the Amazon

Brazil’s army wants to ‘occupy’ the Amazon

The Intercept reports: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is planning to push industrialization and development in the interior of the country’s Amazon basin. It is far from a new project. For more than a century, a series of Brazilian governments have sought to move into the country’s interior, developing — or, to be more precise, colonizing — the Amazon. From the populist president-turned-dictator who made one of the early industrial pushes into the forest in the 1930s to the military dictatorship…

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Mass migration begins as Florida faces the biggest threat from climate-driven flooding

Mass migration begins as Florida faces the biggest threat from climate-driven flooding

Bloomberg reports: Lori Rittel is stuck in her Florida Keys home, living in the wreckage left by Hurricane Irma two years ago, unable to rebuild or repair. Now her best hope for escape is to sell the little white bungalow to the government to knock down. Her bedroom is still a no-go zone so she sleeps in the living room with her cat and three dogs. She just installed a sink in the bathroom, which is missing a wall, so…

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Whistle-blower’s complaint said to involve multiple actions by Trump

Whistle-blower’s complaint said to involve multiple actions by Trump

The New York Times reports: A potentially explosive complaint by a whistle-blower in the intelligence community said to involve President Trump was related to a series of actions that goes beyond any single discussion with a foreign leader, according to interviews on Thursday. The complaint was related to multiple acts, Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for American spy agencies, told lawmakers during a private briefing, two officials familiar with it said. But he declined to discuss specifics, including whether the…

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The United States doesn’t want to go to war with Iran to protect its Arab allies

The United States doesn’t want to go to war with Iran to protect its Arab allies

Robert F. Worth writes: Gulf leaders have become uneasy about the mismatch between Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and his actions. In June, he threatened Iran with “obliteration” after it shot down an unmanned American drone, and then backed away from a planned retaliation at the last minute. His decision to fire John Bolton, his hawkish national security adviser, has strengthened a belief that Mr. Trump does not want war. But many feared he would stumble into one. The Emiratis now appear…

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I researched Uighur society in China for 8 years and watched how technology opened new opportunities – then became a trap

I researched Uighur society in China for 8 years and watched how technology opened new opportunities – then became a trap

Uighurs wait in line at a face scan checkpoint in Turpan, Xinjiang in northwest China on April 11, 2018. Darren Byler, CC BY By Darren Byler, University of Washington The Uighurs, a Muslim minority ethnic group of around 12 million in northwest China, are required by the police to carry their smartphones and IDs listing their ethnicity. As they pass through one of the thousands of newly built digital media and face surveillance checkpoints located at jurisdictional boundaries, entrances to…

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Trump’s Education Dept. threatens academic freedom through witch-hunt against ‘anti-Israel’ bias

Trump’s Education Dept. threatens academic freedom through witch-hunt against ‘anti-Israel’ bias

The New York Times reports: The Education Department has ordered Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to remake the Middle East studies program run jointly by the two schools after concluding that it was offering students a biased curriculum that, among other complaints, did not present enough “positive” imagery of Judaism and Christianity in the region. In a rare instance of federal intervention in the details of higher education academic content, the department asserted that…

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Israel’s Arab politicians emerge from election with new political heft

Israel’s Arab politicians emerge from election with new political heft

The New York Times reports: The right to speak directly after the prime minister? Meetings with all visiting heads of state? Monthly briefings from the Mossad? For the first time, the perks of being the opposition leader in the Israeli Parliament could go to an Arab lawmaker. That tantalizing prospect stems from an upsurge in voter turnout among the country’s Arab population in this week’s election, which has translated into increased political heft. At least 60 percent of the Arab…

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Science is deeply imaginative. Why is this treated as a secret?

Science is deeply imaginative. Why is this treated as a secret?

By Tom McLeish My latest book, The Poetry and Music of Science (2019), starts with my experiences of visiting schools and working with sixth-form pupils in general-studies classes. These students, aged 17-18, would tell me that they just didn’t see in science any room for their own imagination or creativity. Not just on one occasion but repeatedly I heard this from young people bright enough to have succeeded at any subject to which they set their minds.  Yet it doesn’t…

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Greta Thunberg to Congress: ‘We don’t want to be heard. We want the science to be heard’

Greta Thunberg to Congress: ‘We don’t want to be heard. We want the science to be heard’

The Guardian reports: At a meeting of the Senate climate crisis task force on Tuesday, lawmakers praised a group of young activists for their leadership, their gumption and their display of wisdom far beyond their years. They then asked the teens for advice on how Congress might combat one of the most urgent and politically contentious threats confronting world leaders: climate change. Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish activist who has galvanized young people across the world to strike for more…

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Trump administration not so interested in states’ rights when it comes to California

Trump administration not so interested in states’ rights when it comes to California

Dino Grandoni writes: President Trump likes to cast himself as a champion of states’ rights. But he stops short when it comes to California and other liberal states. The latest example comes from Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency, which is on the cusp of revoking California’s authority to regulate heat-trapping emissions from automobiles inside the state. The decision to spurn California was long expected, and is one in a series of salvos between Trump and one of the nation’s bluest states….

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Only a Green New Deal can douse the fires of eco-fascism

Only a Green New Deal can douse the fires of eco-fascism

Naomi Klein writes: When intense events happen in close proximity to one another, the human mind often tries to draw connections that are not there, a phenomenon known as apophenia. But in this case, there were connections. In fact, the strike [the March 15 School Strike for Climate] and the massacre [in Christchurch, New Zealand] can be understood as mirror opposite reactions to some of the same historical forces. And this relates to the other way that the Christchurch killer…

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