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‘Real leaders do exist’: Jacinda Ardern uses solace and steel to guide a broken nation

‘Real leaders do exist’: Jacinda Ardern uses solace and steel to guide a broken nation

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The Guardian reports: In the hours after a gunman killed 50 people at two mosques in central Christchurch, prime minister Jacinda Ardern called a press conference that set the tone for a grief-stricken country. It has become a seminal moment of her leadership story. The 38-year-old prime minister has been tested like few New Zealand leaders before, leading the country as it deals with the worst terrorism attack in the nation’s modern history. Fifty people killed while at Friday prayers….

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The New Zealand massacre grew from Australian roots

The New Zealand massacre grew from Australian roots

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Pankaj Mishra writes: The Australian-born gunman who killed 50 people at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, last week cited U.S. President Donald Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose” with his murderous white-supremacist cause. Trump condemned the massacre and said he was being unfairly blamed for it, setting off a familiar argument over the impact of his fondness for stoking existential fears among many white people around the world. He has indeed spoken, like the…

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The real reason the Trump administration is constantly losing in court

The real reason the Trump administration is constantly losing in court

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The Washington Post reports: Federal judges have ruled against the Trump administration at least 63 times over the past two years, an extraordinary record of legal defeat that has stymied large parts of the president’s agenda on the environment, immigration and other matters. In case after case, judges have rebuked Trump officials for failing to follow the most basic rules of governance for shifting policy, including providing legitimate explanations supported by facts and, where required, public input. Many of the…

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Mitochondria are much more than the powerhouses inside cells

Mitochondria are much more than the powerhouses inside cells

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Diana Kwon writes: Of all the organelles to be found inside eukaryotic cells, the DNA-sheltering nuclei might be the best-known, but the mitochondria are surely not far behind. Mitochondria are familiar as bean-shaped structures floating in the cytoplasm, and they are almost inevitably referred to as “powerhouses” of the cell because they generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the fuel for most metabolic processes. For more than a century, biologists believed that energy production was their only role. But that simple picture…

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Speaker Bercow’s ruling has breathed new life into the people’s vote on Brexit

Speaker Bercow’s ruling has breathed new life into the people’s vote on Brexit

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Polly Toynbee writes: Brexit fatigue and Brexit bullying are Theresa May’s instruments of torture to grind recalcitrant MPs into passing her destructive deal. No more, says the Speaker: this war of attrition must stop. Her deal must change and if she brings one back, it must be “fundamentally different”. How different? He can’t say until he sees what plan, if any, she will present. Rightly John Bercow complains of time wasted, of running down the clock as she tries to…

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Republicans are denying the undeniable truth of Trump’s bigotry against Muslims

Republicans are denying the undeniable truth of Trump’s bigotry against Muslims

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Jonathan Chait writes: The man who murdered 50 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, has hailed President Trump as a “symbol of renewed white identity.” But Trump’s supporters piously deny he is any such thing. “If you find yourself using the tragedy in New Zealand to take backhanded swipes at conservatives in America — many of my colleagues already have — then you really have no shame and you are part of the problem,” complains Texas representative Dan Crenshaw. Acting White…

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Why do white supremacists love Tucker Carlson so much?

Why do white supremacists love Tucker Carlson so much?

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Aiden Pink writes: Here’s what white supremacists said about Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson when they thought no one else was looking: “Tucker is really doing divine work.” “A lone voice of reason in the media.” “Tucker is a blessing, def[initely] our guy.” The uproar this past week over numerous recently-uncovered insensitive comments Carlson made on a radio show overshadowed news that could have been even worse for him: A massive leak of internal chat logs from Identity Evropa,…

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House Judiciary Committee planning hearing on the rise of white nationalism

House Judiciary Committee planning hearing on the rise of white nationalism

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The Daily Beast reports: The House Judiciary Committee is planning on hosting a hearing in the coming weeks addressing the rise of white nationalism in the U.S. and the hate crime and hate speech surrounding the movement, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the committee’s schedule. The hearing comes on the heels of two mass shootings at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand that killed 50 people. According to local law enforcement, the man charged with those attacks wrote…

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It wasn’t just Khashoggi: A Saudi prince’s brutal drive to crush dissent

It wasn’t just Khashoggi: A Saudi prince’s brutal drive to crush dissent

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The New York Times reports: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia authorized a secret campaign to silence dissenters — which included the surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudi citizens — more than a year before the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, according to American officials who have read classified intelligence reports about the campaign. At least some of the clandestine missions were carried out by members of the same team that killed and dismembered Mr. Khashoggi in Istanbul…

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Five ways the Syrian revolution continues

Five ways the Syrian revolution continues

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A Syrian refugee child sits on the window of his family’s trailer home painted by refugee artists in a camp near Mafraq, Jordan. AP/Raad Adayleh By Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University Bashar al-Assad has “won” the war in Syria – or so many analysts tell us. His regime has reconquered swaths of territory from rebel forces with starvation-and-surrender sieges, barrel bombs, chemical weapons and what one human rights investigator called “industrial scale” torture and killing of detainees. Still, the regime might…

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Israel’s justice minister promotes ‘fascism’ in election campaign ad

Israel’s justice minister promotes ‘fascism’ in election campaign ad

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Haaretz reports: A new election ad for the far-right Hayamin Hehadash party featuring Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked in sultry poses, spraying herself with a perfume labeled “Fascism,” has the look and feel of a satiric sketch, echoing the 2017 “Saturday Night Live” send-up of Ivanka Trump in a mock commercial for the scent “Complicit.” Right-wing Israeli party's election ad spoofs a perfume commercial. The perfume is called Fascism. It's supposed to be ironic + ends with @Ayelet__Shaked saying "smells like…

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I am an immigrant. Someday you might be one, too

I am an immigrant. Someday you might be one, too

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Laila Lalami writes: Like other species on this planet, human beings are a migratory type. When they suddenly find themselves in desperate need of physical safety or economic opportunity, they leave home and start over somewhere new. It has always been this way. The earliest stories we tell ourselves are stories of displacement: Adam’s fall from Eden, Moses’ flight from Egypt, Muhammad’s hegira to Medina. Trying to stop this process through the building of walls strikes me as both ineffective…

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It’s time to fight white nationalist terrorism and its apologists

It’s time to fight white nationalist terrorism and its apologists

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Christopher Dickey writes: Donald Trump was right. The special pleading around the question of whether to call terrorism by radical Muslims “radical Islamic terrorism” clouded a critical issue. The fight against extremism must start with ideas, and with language that is clear and unequivocal. Which is why we should be perfectly blunt about what Brenton Tarrant, the 28-year-old monster of Christchurch, claimed to represent, and did and does represent, which is white nationalist terrorism. Tarrant may have been a lone…

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Australians are asking how did we get here? Well, Islamophobia is practically enshrined as public policy

Australians are asking how did we get here? Well, Islamophobia is practically enshrined as public policy

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Jason Wilson writes: In the period of the country’s enthusiastic participation in the War on Terror, Islam and Muslims have frequently been treated as public enemies, and hate speech against them has inexorably been normalised. Australian racism did not of course begin in 2001. The country was settled by means of a genocidal frontier war, and commenced its independent existence with the exclusion of non-white migrants. White nationalism was practically Australia’s founding doctrine. But a succession of events in the…

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