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Christian supremacists in the New Apostolic Reformation pose ‘greatest threat to American democracy you’ve never heard of’

Christian supremacists in the New Apostolic Reformation pose ‘greatest threat to American democracy you’ve never heard of’

HuffPost reports: A growing Christian supremacist movement that labels its perceived enemies as “demonic” and enjoys close ties to major Republican figures is “the greatest threat to American democracy you’ve never heard of,” according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC, a civil rights organization that monitors extremist groups, released its “Year In Hate And Extremism 2023” report on Tuesday. A significant portion of the report, which tracked burgeoning anti-democratic and neo-fascist movements and actors…

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The most downloaded U.S. news app has Chinese roots and ‘writes fiction’ using AI

The most downloaded U.S. news app has Chinese roots and ‘writes fiction’ using AI

Reuters reports: Last Christmas Eve, NewsBreak, opens new tab, a free app with roots in China that is the most downloaded news app in the United States, published an alarming piece about a small town shooting. It was headlined “Christmas Day Tragedy Strikes Bridgeton, New Jersey Amid Rising Gun Violence in Small Towns.” The problem was, no such shooting took place. The Bridgeton, New Jersey police department posted a statement on Facebook on December 27 dismissing the article – produced…

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Biden’s cynical border gambit

Biden’s cynical border gambit

The ACLU: The White House released today a fact sheet announcing details on an impending executive action from the Biden administration that will severely restrict people’s legal right to seek asylum. Among the measures announced, the administration will effectively shut off asylum for the overwhelming majority of people arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border once the average number of border encounters reaches 2,500 between ports of entry, reopening only once the daily number declines to 1,500, according to several reports. “We…

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Columbia Law Review editors refused to censor an article on the Nakba. Board of directors then took down the site

Columbia Law Review editors refused to censor an article on the Nakba. Board of directors then took down the site

The Intercept reports: Last November, the Harvard Law Review made the unprecedented decision to kill a fully edited essay prior to publication. The author, human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah, was to be the first Palestinian legal scholar published in the prestigious journal. As The Intercept reported at the time, Eghbariah’s essay — an argument for establishing “Nakba,” the expulsion, dispossession, and oppression of Palestinians, as a formal legal concept that widens its scope — faced extraordinary editorial scrutiny and eventual…

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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: Alito’s MAGA battle flags

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: Alito’s MAGA battle flags

  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Courts Subcommittee, delivers the 32nd in a series of speeches titled “The Scheme,” exposing the machinations by right-wing donor interests to capture the Supreme Court and achieve through the Court what they cannot through the elected branches of government. Whitehouse discusses the ethics violations related to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s MAGA battle flags that flew at two of his homes, and Chief Justice Roberts’s refusal to take action as…

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The ‘hierarchy of racism’ in Keir Starmer’s Labour Party

The ‘hierarchy of racism’ in Keir Starmer’s Labour Party

Shaista Aziz writes: I spent six years serving as a councillor in my home city of Oxford, where I was born and raised. I was a council cabinet member for close to three years before I resigned from the Labour party, over what I saw as a horrifying endorsement by Keir Starmer of the collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza, in a now infamous LBC interview. I and another British Muslim, the Oxonian councillor Dr Amar Latif, were the first…

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Narendra Modi loses aura of invincibility as predicted landslide fails to materialise for India’s strongman

Narendra Modi loses aura of invincibility as predicted landslide fails to materialise for India’s strongman

Hannah Ellis-Petersen writes: India’s elections may return Narendra Modi to power for a third term but Tuesday’s results did not have the flavour of victory for the strongman prime minister. Indeed, as the early counts of the votes began to roll in, it was clear this was going to be one of the most humbling moments for Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) in over a decade. The BJP went into this election, which began way back in April,…

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Human culture is changing too fast for evolution to catch up – here’s how it may affect you

Human culture is changing too fast for evolution to catch up – here’s how it may affect you

frank60/Shutterstock By Jose Yong, Northumbria University, Newcastle Research is showing that many of our contemporary problems, such as the rising prevalence of mental health issues, are emerging from rapid technological advancement and modernisation. A theory that can help explain why we respond poorly to modern conditions, despite the choices, safety and other benefits they bring, is evolutionary mismatch. Mismatch happens when an evolved adaptation, either physical or psychological, becomes misaligned with the environment. Take moths and some species of nocturnal…

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This is what a Neanderthal conversation would have sounded like

This is what a Neanderthal conversation would have sounded like

Steven Mithen writes: We can only truly understand other people by knowing something about their language. Without that, we remain largely excluded from their lives – unable to fully grasp their concepts, emotions or how they perceive the world. This applies to people of the past as well as those of the present. The languages of some prehistoric humans (such as Bronze Age farmers) can be reconstructed, to a limited extent, by comparing languages that are spoken today. But what…

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Multiple Trump witnesses have received significant financial benefits from his businesses, campaign

Multiple Trump witnesses have received significant financial benefits from his businesses, campaign

By Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski This story was originally published by ProPublica. Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company. The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his…

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The reich stuff – what does Trump really have in common with Hitler?

The reich stuff – what does Trump really have in common with Hitler?

David Smith writes: When Donald Trump shared a video that dreamed of a “unified reich” if he wins the US presidential election, and took nearly a full day to remove it, the most shocking thing was how unshocking it was. Trump has reportedly said before that Adolf Hitler did “some good things”, echoed the Nazi dictator by calling his political opponents “vermin” and saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”, and responded to a white supremacist march in…

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Zelensky: Ukraine recognizes both Israel and Palestine, seeks to end suffering of civilians

Zelensky: Ukraine recognizes both Israel and Palestine, seeks to end suffering of civilians

The Kyiv Independent reports: Ukraine recognizes both Israel and Palestine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in Singapore on June 2, calling for an end to the conflict in Gaza. Kyiv voiced support for Israel after it came under a deadly attack by the Hamas militant organization in October 2023. Tel Aviv’s subsequent shelling and ground invasion of Gaza attracted harsh criticism from much of the international community, with the U.N. estimating the Gaza death toll at over 35,000. When asked by…

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Tiny number of ‘supersharers’ spread the vast majority of fake news

Tiny number of ‘supersharers’ spread the vast majority of fake news

Science reports: Did you see the article claiming Kamala Harris joked about killing Mike Pence and Donald Trump? Or the one about large numbers of Trump votes being secretly switched to Joe Biden? If stories like this, run by fake news sites such as Infowars or Gatewaypundit, popped up in your social media feed about the 2020 U.S. presidential election, they probably came from a tiny group of people with a massive impact. A mere 2000 or so “supersharers” spread…

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Russia co-opts far-right politicians in Europe with cash, officials say

Russia co-opts far-right politicians in Europe with cash, officials say

The Washington Post reports: When an associate of one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies launched a pro-Kremlin media outlet here in May 2023, Czech counterintelligence officers began keeping careful watch. For nearly a year, European intelligence officials said, the Czech authorities secretly recorded hours of meetings between several far-right politicians from across Europe and the associate, Artem Marchevsky, who was running the propaganda website, Voice of Europe, including at its offices on a quiet side street in the…

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