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How Assad made truth a casualty of war

How Assad made truth a casualty of war

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Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: On February 22, 2012, when the British photojournalist Paul Conroy survived the artillery barrage that killed Marie Colvin, he was rushed to a place of greater danger. Bashar al-Assad’s war of repression has killed civilians indiscriminately, but its targeting of medical facilities has been systematic. Hospitals are the most endangered spaces in opposition-held areas. Of the 492 medical facilities destroyed in the war, Physicians for Human Rights attributes the destruction of 446 to Assad and his…

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Wisdom on free speech from Justice Brandeis and William F. Buckley

Wisdom on free speech from Justice Brandeis and William F. Buckley

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Cass R. Sunstein writes: Which ideas, if any, are beyond the pale? Is it a mistake to “normalize” some speakers? When? To get some guidance, we would do well to look to the example of William F. Buckley Jr., one of the most influential conservatives of the last 60 years. For decades, Buckley was the host of a television show called “Firing Line.” Buckley hosted plenty of conservatives. But he was more than willing to provide a forum for people…

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Zinke attends Pacific Islands Forum, ignores their biggest concern

Zinke attends Pacific Islands Forum, ignores their biggest concern

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Joel Clement writes: This week, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke heads the United States delegation to the Pacific Islands Forum Leader’s Session on the Island of Nauru on September 4, 2018, an annual gathering of dozens of Pacific Island leaders and partners. In the Interior Department press release, Zinke noted that the Pacific Islands are strategically important and he wants to discuss trade and the rule of law. He did not indicate any interest in discussing the impacts of climate change…

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Poll of members of Britain’s three largest trade unions show large majority support remaining in the EU

Poll of members of Britain’s three largest trade unions show large majority support remaining in the EU

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The Guardian reports: Members of Britain’s three biggest trade unions now support a new referendum on Brexit by a margin of more than two to one, according to a bombshell poll that will cause political shockwaves on the eve of the party conference season. The survey of more than 2,700 members of Unite, Unison and the GMB by YouGov, for the People’s Vote campaign, also finds that a clear majority of members of the three unions now back staying in…

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New York Times op-ed’s prose points to one person in particular: Jon Huntsman

New York Times op-ed’s prose points to one person in particular: Jon Huntsman

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William Saletan writes: Who wrote the anonymous op-ed against President Trump in Wednesday’s New York Times? All we know for certain is what the Times disclosed: that it’s a “senior official in the Trump administration.” But the most likely author, based on the op-ed’s content and style, is the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman. Huntsman is an obvious suspect for several reasons. The article’s themes are classic Huntsman: effusive about conservative policies, blunt about low character. In 2016, he…

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Obama delivers full-throated rebuke of Trump’s presidency

Obama delivers full-throated rebuke of Trump’s presidency

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Politico reports: The night before the 2016 election, Barack Obama said Donald Trump was “uniquely unqualified” on the economy, “temperamentally unfit” on foreign policy, couldn’t be trusted with the nuclear codes and had “utter contempt for the values that make this nation great.” Friday, the former president took the stage here in a University of Illinois auditorium and said it had been all that and worse. For all the unprecedented moments Trump’s presidency has brought, Obama’s speech, which kicked off…

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Trump cannot simply erase the Palestinian right of return

Trump cannot simply erase the Palestinian right of return

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James Zogby writes: First, the Trump Administration “took Jerusalem off the table.” Now, in an especially dangerous display of recklessness, it has announced its intention to do the same for the Palestinian “right of return.” The first indication that this was in the works came with the administration’s announcement that it would be suspending all U.S. assistance to UNWRA, the UN agency created to address the humanitarian needs of the Palestinians who were forced to flee from their homes in…

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The Oslo Accords served only to advance, entrench and protect Israel’s occupation

The Oslo Accords served only to advance, entrench and protect Israel’s occupation

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Joseph Dana writes: Next week marks the 25th anniversary of the Oslo Accords, when then Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed an agreement outlining a timeframe for a lasting Middle Eastern peace process. In a now infamous photo, Arafat and then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands on September 13, 1993, on the lawns of the White House, overlooked by a congratulatory Bill Clinton. The accords saw Arafat, Rabin and Peres awarded the Nobel…

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Wildlife preservation depends on saving animals, their habitats, and their cultures

Wildlife preservation depends on saving animals, their habitats, and their cultures

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Ed Yong writes: In the 1800s, there were so many bighorn sheep in Wyoming that when one trapper passed through Jackson Hole, he described “over a thousand sheep in the cliffs above our campsite.” No such sights exist today. The bighorns slowly fell to hunters’ rifles, and to diseases spread from domestic sheep. Most herds were wiped out, and by 1900, a species that once numbered in the millions stood instead in the low thousands. In the 1940s, the Wyoming…

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Is it time to use 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office?

Is it time to use 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office?

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CNN reports: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, seizing on an explosive op-ed from an anonymous administration official, said Thursday that it’s time to use constitutional powers to remove President Donald Trump office if top officials don’t think he can do the job. “If senior administration officials think the President of the United States is not able to do his job, then they should invoke the 25th Amendment,” Warren told CNN. “The Constitution provides for a procedure whenever the Vice President and…

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Justice Dept. demands millions of North Carolina voter records, confounding elections officials

Justice Dept. demands millions of North Carolina voter records, confounding elections officials

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The New York Times reports: Federal prosecutors have issued sweeping subpoenas demanding that millions of North Carolina voter records be turned over to immigration authorities by Sept. 25. With just two months to go before the midterms, the subpoenas threatened to sow chaos in the state’s election machinery, while renewing the Trump administration’s repeatedly discredited claims of widespread voting by illegal immigrants. The unsealed grand jury subpoenas were sent to the state elections board and to 44 county elections boards…

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Germans are more afraid of Trump than terrorism

Germans are more afraid of Trump than terrorism

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AFP reports: The policies of Donald Trump are now the greatest source of German angst, according to an insurance company’s survey of the deepest fears plaguing the country’s people. The US president’s policies were named as the top fear factor by 69 per cent of respondents in the annual survey, in which last year’s number one issue, terrorism, was bumped down to fifth place. “More than two-thirds of Germans have a great fear that the politics of Donald Trump are…

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The attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal was designed to send a message

The attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal was designed to send a message

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Mark Galeotti writes: Six months after the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent in the United Kingdom, details about the suspected killers are finally coming out. According to British prosecutors, the two men named as suspects belonged to the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, which is the very agency Skripal worked for when he was a British spy. On the one hand, these alleged ties attest to the GRU’s aggressive agenda—something of which governments in the…

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As temperatures rise, so do insects’ appetites for corn, rice and wheat

As temperatures rise, so do insects’ appetites for corn, rice and wheat

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Science News reports: With temperatures creeping up as the climate warms, those very hungry caterpillars could get even hungrier, and more abundant. Crop losses to pests may grow. Insects will be “eating more of our lunch,” says Curtis Deutsch of the University of Washington in Seattle. Based on how heat revs up insect metabolism and reproduction, he and his colleagues estimate that each degree Celsius of warming temperatures means an extra 10 to 25 percent of damage to wheat, maize…

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The resistance inside the Trump administration

The resistance inside the Trump administration

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In an op-ed published anonymously at the New York Times, a senior Trump administration official says: Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over. The bigger concern is…

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