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Timothy Snyder: ‘The moment you believe freedom is given, it is gone.’

Timothy Snyder: ‘The moment you believe freedom is given, it is gone.’

Seven years ago, Timothy Snyder wrote the best-selling book “On Tyranny.” His new book “On Freedom” is a rumination of what it truly means to be free, especially during a time when authoritarianism has been making strides around the world. “Being against things is just the beginning; you have to know what you’re for,” Snyder tells Ali Velshi. “Being angry is not the right first step. Being joyous is the right first step.” He adds, “We have to be rebels…

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The Republican freak show

The Republican freak show

Peter Wehner writes: The GOP is a moral freak show, and freak shows attract freaks. Which is why Mark Robinson fits in so well in today’s Republican Party. Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, has described himself as a “devout Christian.” But a recent CNN story reported that several years ago, he was a porn-site user who enjoyed watching transgender pornography (despite a history of an anti-transgender rhetoric), referred to himself as a “Black Nazi,” and supported the return…

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A fake government letter in PA appears to be part of anti-immigrant dirty tricks campaign

A fake government letter in PA appears to be part of anti-immigrant dirty tricks campaign

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports: A Bala Cynwyd voter got a detailed letter this week from the made-up Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs notifying her that her household had been selected to house five migrant refugees. No office exists, nor does such a government-mandated housing program, but the letter, doctored to look like an official government document, provided specific details designed to mislead someone less attuned to a scam — and laid the blame for the fake program at the…

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Is Israel dragging the U.S. into a Mideast quagmire?

Is Israel dragging the U.S. into a Mideast quagmire?

  As long as the US extends “total impunity” to Israel, there’s no way to prevent further genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and further bloodshed in Lebanon, argues Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. One of the biggest factors preventing all-out war in the region is Iran’s desire to pursue its own interests and reconcile with the US, according to Iran expert Roxane Farmanfarmanian of Cambridge University. Join Friedman and Farmanfarmanian in their conversation with…

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Why Israelis do and don’t want war with Hezbollah

Why Israelis do and don’t want war with Hezbollah

Ori Goldberg writes: What is Israel doing in Lebanon? Before we delve into the byzantine brew that sustains Israel’s Lebanese “operation,” we must give the one answer we know to be true. Israel is killing Lebanese, nearly a thousand so far this month alone, in a combination of sabotage — the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies on Sept. 17 and 18 — and sustained, unchecked bombing. The indifference with which Israel kills, with explanations ranging from “they shouldn’t have had a…

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Report from Beirut: Israel is ‘targeting everyone’ in bombing campaign, killing 700+ in just days

Report from Beirut: Israel is ‘targeting everyone’ in bombing campaign, killing 700+ in just days

  We get an update from Lebanon, where the death toll from Israeli airstrikes has risen to over 700 since Monday, following a series of explosions involving pagers and walkie-talkies in Beirut and southern Lebanon last week. The Israeli military reiterated its troops were preparing for a ground invasion of Lebanon if tensions continue to escalate. Multiple Israeli tanks and armored vehicles have appeared across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. As the Biden administration claims it’s working toward a ceasefire…

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Netanyahu’s UNGA speech ‘one of the lowest points of Israeli propaganda’ says former PM advisor

Netanyahu’s UNGA speech ‘one of the lowest points of Israeli propaganda’ says former PM advisor

  A large number of diplomats left the GA Hall once #Netanyahu came to the podium. The people you hear cheering the PM during the speech are in the gallery who he brought for that purpose. #UNGA79 #Walkout pic.twitter.com/bAgiOzztWA — Rami Ayari (@Raminho) September 27, 2024

60 years after the day college students won free speech, their rights are vanishing

60 years after the day college students won free speech, their rights are vanishing

Will Bunch writes: Years later, somebody would dub them “the Silent Generation.” But on Oct. 1, 1964 — 60 years ago this Tuesday — a cohort of young people born mostly during World War II, raised in consumer affluence and under the threat of nuclear annihilation, could not keep it bottled up any longer. The place was the University of California, Berkeley, and the trigger was school administrators telling students that the strip where students passed out political literature —…

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Cornell unjustly punished a pro-Palestinian activist

Cornell unjustly punished a pro-Palestinian activist

An editorial in The Cornell Daily Sun says: Momodou Taal, an international student from the United Kingdom and outspoken pro-Palestinian activist, received a startling email from the University Monday morning informing him that he had been suspended. The email directed Taal to a same-day noon meeting at Day Hall, where he would be handed a no-trespass order barring him from campus. The reason for Taal’s suspension? Cornell University Police Department Lieutenant Scott Grantz ’99 picked Taal out of a crowd…

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The far right is using AI to sell Hitler to a new generation

The far right is using AI to sell Hitler to a new generation

The Washington Post reports: Extremists are using artificial intelligence to reanimate Adolf Hitler online for a new generation, recasting the Nazi German leader who orchestrated the Holocaust as a “misunderstood” figure whose antisemitic and anti-immigrant messages are freshly resonant in politics today. In audio and video clips that have reached millions of viewers over the past month on TikTok, X, Instagram and YouTube, the führer’s AI-cloned voice quavers and crescendos as he delivers English-language versions of some of his most…

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Public mistrust of Gaza coverage is opening space for Russia-linked media on the left

Public mistrust of Gaza coverage is opening space for Russia-linked media on the left

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: Bashar al-Assad’s Syria is not a friendly place for journalists. Since the onset of the uprising in 2011, the regime has issued few visas. In 2012, when the American journalist Marie Colvin and the French photojournalist Rémi Ochlik entered Syria unauthorized, they were targeted and killed. But in 2021, a Canadian podcaster was given unusual access to regime-controlled Syria, and among his various dispatches, one in particular stood out. Standing in front of the ruins of…

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U.S. gov’t agencies found Israel was blocking Gaza aid. Blinken ignored them to keep weapons flowing

U.S. gov’t agencies found Israel was blocking Gaza aid. Blinken ignored them to keep weapons flowing

  We speak with Brett Murphy, the ProPublica reporter behind a blockbuster exposé that revealed the Biden administration ignored warnings from its own experts about Israel blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza in order to keep supplying the country with weapons. USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the State Department’s refugees bureau both concluded earlier this year that Israeli authorities routinely impeded delivery of food and medicine into the devastated Palestinian territory, where hunger, disease and displacement have wreaked…

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‘It’s time to be a man and vote for a woman’

‘It’s time to be a man and vote for a woman’

The Guardian reports: A man in a baseball cap strides through a field of corn. A woman in flannel turns and smiles, a line of trucks visible behind her. As piano music swells, an American flag ripples in a gentle breeze. This video is pure, uncut Americana. Naturally, it’s a political ad. Specifically, it’s an ad made by the Lincoln Project, a group of moderates and former Republicans united by a desire to topple Donald Trump and support Kamala Harris….

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