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Flawed reports paint erstwhile Iran negotiator Rob Malley and his colleagues as patsies of Tehran

Flawed reports paint erstwhile Iran negotiator Rob Malley and his colleagues as patsies of Tehran

Jonathan Broder writes for SpyTalk: The leak of the email exchanges [reported by Semafor and Iran International earlier this week] appears to be a third shot at Malley by [Iranian] hardliners who want him removed from any further Iran diplomacy. The first shot was fired in July, when the Iranian regime-affiliated Tehran Times mischievously asserted that “Malley’s overly close proximity to his non-official Iranian assistants and advisers created the ground for the fall of this experienced diplomat.” In August the…

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Cornel West is hobnobbing with China apologists and partners of Russia propaganda outlets

Cornel West is hobnobbing with China apologists and partners of Russia propaganda outlets

David Corn reports: Cornel West, the celebrity academic (formerly of Harvard and Princeton), fiery antiracism campaigner, and current Green Party presidential candidate, has a long association with the Democratic Socialists of America, having served as the group’s honorary chairman. But as he campaigns for president, West is moving beyond the DSA and forging bonds with far-left activists who call for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, who support the Chinese and North Korean regimes, and who are associated with communist organizations and…

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The value of wild ideas

The value of wild ideas

Anil Seth writes: Earlier this month, the consciousness science community erupted into chaos. An open letter, signed by 124 researchers—some specializing in consciousness and others not—made the provocative claim that one of the most widely discussed theories in the field, Integrated Information Theory (IIT), should be considered “pseudoscience.” The uproar that followed sent consciousness social media into a doom spiral of accusation and recrimination, with the fallout covered in Nature, New Scientist, and elsewhere. Calling something pseudoscience is pretty much…

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‘We’re going to take their money. We’re going to take their factories,’ Trump tells supporters in Michigan

‘We’re going to take their money. We’re going to take their factories,’ Trump tells supporters in Michigan

Detroit Free Press reports: The UAW’s lead negotiator in contract talks with General Motors on Wednesday issued a scathing assessment of former President Donald Trump hours before Trump was due to speak in Detroit. UAW Vice President for General Motors Mike Booth sent the Detroit Free Press a profanity-laden email about his thoughts on Trump’s trip to Michigan. “Let me be blunt. Donald Trump is coming off as a pompous (expletive),” Booth said in an email. “Coming to Michigan to…

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New data on ultra-rich tax cheats wrecks the ‘working-class GOP’ ruse

New data on ultra-rich tax cheats wrecks the ‘working-class GOP’ ruse

Greg Sargent writes: Republicans have been amplifying the claim lately that their party has undergone a “populist” makeover, rendering it both anti-elite and pro-working class. One way Republicans purport to illustrate this is by attacking President Biden’s expanded funding for the Internal Revenue Service, insisting that it empowers a strike force of bureaucrats to prey on ordinary Americans. But new data on tax avoidance by the ultrarich badly undermines GOP claims to being an anti-elite, pro-worker party. It shows that…

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First impeachment hearing yields no new information on Biden

First impeachment hearing yields no new information on Biden

The New York Times reports: The first hearing in House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Biden featured their star witnesses testifying that they lacked proof that he committed impeachable offenses, multiple procedural skirmishes the G.O.P. majority nearly lost and, at times, nearly a dozen empty Republican seats. What it did not include was any new information about Mr. Biden’s conduct — or any support for Republicans’ accusations that he had entered into corrupt overseas business deals. “If the Republicans had…

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Merck’s COVID treatment drug may be creating transmissible mutated viruses

Merck’s COVID treatment drug may be creating transmissible mutated viruses

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports: A drug used to treat patients at risk of severe COVID-19 infection may have led to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 viruses bearing a distinct pattern of mutations, researchers reported Monday in Nature. The new paper raises the stakes over concerns about whether molnupiravir use could lead to the emergence of new dangerous variants and extend the pandemic. Molnupiravir, which is sold as Lagevrio, works by mutating SARS-CoV-2 and causing changes that should knock out…

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Climate change made Libya flooding up to 50 times more likely, 50% more intense

Climate change made Libya flooding up to 50 times more likely, 50% more intense

Jessica Corbett writes: International scientists announced Tuesday, September 19, that an event like the extreme rain that led to deadly flooding in Libya earlier this month “has become up to 50 times more likely and up to 50% more intense compared to a 1.2°C cooler climate,” or the preindustrial world. Those were among the findings of a World Weather Attribution analysis of torrential rainfall in several countries across the Mediterranean during the first two weeks of September, conducted by researchers…

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Thinking long-term: Why we should bring back redwood forests

Thinking long-term: Why we should bring back redwood forests

John Reid writes: Lyndon Johnson signed the bill that established the Redwood National Park in California 55 years ago. It was a long time coming, with proposals blocked in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s by an industry that was beavering through the most valuable timberlands on the planet. When the National Park Service recommended a park again in 1964, bipartisan support in the Senate, a nod from President Johnson and, I believe, the trees’ own power to inspire eventually got…

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Our galaxy’s stars keep a record of its past

Our galaxy’s stars keep a record of its past

Rebecca Boyle writes: Late in the evening of October 5, 1923, Edwin Hubble sat at the eyepiece of the Hooker telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory, atop the mountains overlooking the Los Angeles basin. He was observing an object in the northern sky. To the unaided eye, it was visible as a faint smudge. But through a telescope it sharpened into a brilliant ellipse called the Andromeda Nebula. To settle a debate about the size of the Milky Way —…

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Judge gives Trump Organization the corporate death penalty

Judge gives Trump Organization the corporate death penalty

David Cay Johnston writes: Donald Trump is no longer in business. Worse, the self-proclaimed multibillionaire may soon be personally bankrupt as a result, stripped of just about everything because for years he engaged in calculated bank fraud and insurance fraud by inflating the value of his properties, a judge ruled Tuesday. His gaudy Trump Tower apartment, his golf courses, his Boeing 757 jet and even Mar-a-Lago could all be disposed of by a court-appointed monitor, leaving Trump with not much…

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Amazon is the apex predator of our platform era

Amazon is the apex predator of our platform era

Cory Doctorow writes: The Federal Trade Commission’s chair, Lina Khan, has brought her long-awaited, audacious case against Amazon, signaling the Biden administration’s determination to restore an approach to competition law that has been in decline since the Carter administration. This will doubtless draw fresh criticism about her supposed overreach. But Amazon is precisely the kind of company that Congress had in mind in enacting America’s many antitrust laws. Only more so: The Congress of 1890, which passed the first of…

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Trump ‘serves the billionaire class,’ says United Auto Workers president

Trump ‘serves the billionaire class,’ says United Auto Workers president

The Daily Beast reports: The United Auto Workers union’s president derided GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump as being out of touch with the striking workers, claiming in a CNN interview Tuesday that the former president “serves the billionaire class and that’s what’s wrong with this country.” On the same day that Joe Biden became the first sitting president to join a picket line on behalf of the United Auto Workers, Shawn Fain, who has not yet given an endorsement in…

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The FBI is probing whether Egyptian intelligence played a role in Bob Menendez’s alleged bribery scheme

The FBI is probing whether Egyptian intelligence played a role in Bob Menendez’s alleged bribery scheme

NBC News reports: The FBI is investigating whether Egypt’s intelligence services might have been involved in the alleged bribery scheme described in the indictment of Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife, sources familiar with the matter told NBC News. The counterintelligence investigation is in addition to the federal corruption case that accuses Menendez, D-N.J., of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, the sources said. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez helped oversee billions of dollars…

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