Music: Arooj Aftab — ‘Aey Nehin’
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Why the pandemic probably started in the Wuhan research lab, in five key points
Alina Chan writes: On Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci will return to the halls of Congress to testify before the House subcommittee investigating the Covid-19 pandemic. He will most likely be questioned about how the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he directed until retiring in 2022, supported risky virus work at a Chinese institute whose research may have caused the pandemic. For more than four years, reflexive partisan politics have derailed the search for the truth about a…
Claudia Sheinbaum claims sweeping mandate to become Mexico’s first female president
Claudia Sheinbaum is Mexico’s 1st female PresidentClimate scientist, feminist, leftist & pro-Palestinian JewShe has a PHD & shared a Nobel prize Her Republican US neighbours will not attend her inauguration – who cares? Congratulations MexicoCongratulations President Claudia pic.twitter.com/MVT62XkleA — nazir afzal (@nazirafzal) June 2, 2024 Reuters reports: Claudia Sheinbaum, a Nobel Prize-winning climate scientist, will become Mexico’s first female president after winning a landslide election victory and promising to continue the work of her mentor and outgoing leader Andres Manuel…
Music: Bugge & Friends — ‘Saisir’
Gideon Levy: Israel has achieved nothing with war on Gaza
Given a choice between war and getting all its hostages back, Israel has opted for more war, argues Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. Levy tells host Steve Clemons that Israeli politicians may abandon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but even if he was replaced, Israel would continue its war on Gaza and occupation of the Palestinian people as a whole. “Radical change” in Israeli attitude and U.S. support is needed for any improvement in the situation, says Levy. After Oct. 7,…
Bernie Sanders says will boycott ‘war criminal’ Netanyahu’s Congress speech
The New Arab reports: US Senator Bernie Sanders has said he will not attend a congressional speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was sent an official invite by the body on Friday. In a statement published to X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday, Sanders said that the congressional invitation was “a sad day for our country”. Sanders’ statement also included a list of things that Israel has no right to do in its war on Gaza following Hamas‘ 7…
‘No way out without bloodshed’: The right believe the U.S. is under threat and are mobilizing
The Observer reports: The posts are ominous. “Pick a side, or YOU are next,” wrote conservative talkshow host Dan Bongino on the Truth Social media platform in the aftermath of former president Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions. The replies were even more so. “Dan, seriously now,” one user wrote in response to Bongino. “I see no way out of all this mess without bloodshed. When you can rig an election, then weaponize the government and the courts against a former…
Exposed: Max Blumenthal’s Grayzone appears to have financial ties to the Russian and Iranian governments
The Washington Post reports: Recently unearthed documents reveal that leaders of an online news site aimed at Americans have received money from both Russian and Iranian government media outlets, showing how widening geopolitical alliances are making it harder to identify and trace foreign influence operations. Hacked emails and other documents from the Iranian government-funded Press TV show payments of thousands of dollars to a writer who is now a Washington-based editor for Grayzone, whose founder regularly appears on Russian television…
Russian legal foundation linked to Kremlin activities in Europe
The Guardian reports: Leaked internal documents have exposed the activities of a Russian state-backed legal defence foundation that European intelligence agencies and analysts say is in fact a Kremlin influence operation active in 48 countries across Europe and around the world. Internal documents from the Fund for Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad (Pravfond) indicate that the foundation finances propaganda websites targeted at Europeans, helped pay for the legal defence of the convicted arms trafficker Viktor…
Can mathematicians help to solve social-justice problems?
Rachel Crowell writes: When Carrie Diaz Eaton trained as a mathematician, they didn’t expect their career to involve social-justice research. Growing up in Providence, Rhode Island, Diaz Eaton first saw social justice in action when their father, who’s from Peru, helped other Spanish-speaking immigrants to settle in the United States. But it would be decades before Diaz Eaton would forge a professional path to use their mathematical expertise to study social-justice issues. Eventually, after years of moving around for education…
Babies in the womb exposed to two languages hear speech differently when born
PsyPost reports: Researchers have shown for the first time that newborns of monolingual mothers respond differently to playback of a carefully selected sound stimulus than newborns of bilingual mothers. The findings suggest that bilingual newborns are sensitive to a wider range of acoustic variation of speech, at the cost of being less selectively tuned in to any single language. These results underscore the importance of prenatal exposure for learning about speech. It’s well established that babies in the womb hear…