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Pentagon: No sign Putin is planning to use nukes after Biden’s ‘Armageddon’ comment

Pentagon: No sign Putin is planning to use nukes after Biden’s ‘Armageddon’ comment

Politico reports: The Pentagon said Friday that it still has seen no indications that Vladimir Putin is planning to launch nuclear weapons after President Joe Biden warned of the risk of a nuclear “Armageddon.” Biden’s comments show how seriously the U.S. is taking Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons, Defense Department spokesperson J. Todd Breasseale said in a statement to POLITICO. “However — and to be clear: we have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture…

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‘It’s like a war out there.’ Iran’s women haven’t been this angry in a generation

‘It’s like a war out there.’ Iran’s women haven’t been this angry in a generation

Azadeh Moaveni writes: On Monday, the 18th day of Iran’s intense protests against oppressive clerical rule and its numerous failures, schoolgirls with backpacks and black Converse sneakers joined the revolt. They marched down a street in a suburb of Tehran, the capital, waving their school uniform veils in the air. They jeered a male education official off school grounds in the same suburb, chanting the Persian word for lacking honor: “Bisharaf! Bisharaf!” They blocked traffic in the southern city of…

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OPEC was always going to mess with oil prices. Was Biden’s team naive?

OPEC was always going to mess with oil prices. Was Biden’s team naive?

Jonathan Guyer writes: On Wednesday, the energy price-fixing cartel OPEC+ announced that it was making a major reduction in oil production. That will end up meaning less oil on the market, and an increase in the price of gasoline for consumers worldwide, at a time of high inflation and recession fears. It is a net positive, though, for the two countries that produce the most oil in OPEC+ — Russia and Saudi Arabia. President Joe Biden has called the move…

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How does the Russo-Ukrainian War end?

How does the Russo-Ukrainian War end?

Timothy Snyder writes: At first, no one could imagine that the Russo-Ukrainian war could begin. And yet it began. And now, no one can imagine how it will end. And yet end it will. War is ultimately about politics. That Ukraine is winning on the battlefield matters because Ukraine is exerting pressure on Russian politics. Tyrants such as Putin exert a certain fascination, because they give the impression that they can do what they like. This is not true, of…

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Fears in West as Russian and Saudi rulers deepen ties

Fears in West as Russian and Saudi rulers deepen ties

Martin Chulov reports: After four years of global fallout from the assassination of the Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Prince Mohammed’s security aides in Istanbul, the heir to the Saudi throne is in the midst of a global comeback. His attempts to position the kingdom as a regional power and global mover are among the 37-year-old’s core goals. Saudi officials have not condemned Putin’s invasion, and nor has Moscow weighed into Saudi Arabia’s invasion of Yemen over the…

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The Saudi-Russian oil axis snubs Biden with production cuts

The Saudi-Russian oil axis snubs Biden with production cuts

Javier Blas writes: Coming four weeks before the US midterm elections, many in Washington took the unexpectedly large output cut as a personal attack on President Joseph Biden. The fact that OPEC+ hastily gathered in person in Vienna, rather than via video-conference as scheduled, reinforced that perception. The form of the meeting mattered as much as the substance. As Roger Diwan, a veteran OPEC watcher noted, it was “eerie” to observe the cartel jumping into major action on Yom Kippur,…

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What’s driving Russia’s opportunistic inroads with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf autocrats

What’s driving Russia’s opportunistic inroads with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf autocrats

Andrew S. Weiss and Jasmine Alexander-Greene write: The spotlight is back on the burgeoning Saudi-Russia relationship, thanks to their renewed efforts to prop up oil prices and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s role in brokering a surprise deal in September to release foreign prisoners of war seized on the battlefield in Ukraine, including several U.S. and UK military veterans. The Kremlin’s ties with Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have expanded steadily following the…

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There is absolutely nothing to support the ‘independent state legislature’ theory

There is absolutely nothing to support the ‘independent state legislature’ theory

J. Michael Luttig writes: The Supreme Court will decide before next summer the most important case for American democracy in the almost two and a half centuries since America’s founding. In Moore v. Harper, the Court will finally resolve whether there is a doctrine of constitutional interpretation known as the “independent state legislature.” If the Court concludes that there is such a doctrine, it would confer on state legislatures plenary, exclusive, and judicially unreviewable power both to redraw congressional districts…

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A majority of GOP nominees — 299 in all — deny the 2020 election results

A majority of GOP nominees — 299 in all — deny the 2020 election results

The Washington Post reports: A majority of Republican nominees on the ballot this November for the House, Senate and key statewide offices — 299 in all — have denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election, according to a Washington Post analysis. Candidates who have challenged or refused to accept Joe Biden’s victory are running in every region of the country and in nearly every state. Republican voters in four states nominated election deniers in all federal and…

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The capitalist transformations of the countryside

The capitalist transformations of the countryside

Sven Beckert and Ulbe Bosma write: Sometimes, what is most common is most remarkable. For those of us living in a city or suburb, a typical day starts with rising from (cotton) sheets, hopping under the shower for a quick wash with (palm oil-based) soaps, dressing in (cotton) shirts and pants, drinking a hot beverage (coffee or tea) and then eating a (sugary) cereal or jam, perhaps followed by a (soy-fed) processed meat sandwich, wrapped in (fossil-fuel-based) plastic. What describes…

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Putin is losing the war in all four Ukrainian regions he claims to have ‘annexed’

Putin is losing the war in all four Ukrainian regions he claims to have ‘annexed’

Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: To hear pro-Russian military analysts tell it, in the last 72 hours Ukraine has managed to simultaneously recapture about 1,000 square kilometers of terrain in the northeast of the country and 2,200 square kilometers in the south. Although it is difficult to independently confirm these figures, the very fact that they’re coming from cheerleaders of Vladimir Putin’s war highlights just how disastrously things have gone for the Russian president in a month that has…

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In Ukraine, Europeans will have to put their money where their mouth is

In Ukraine, Europeans will have to put their money where their mouth is

Jeremy Shapiro writes: Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas enthusiastically joined the general outrage when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. He took to Twitter immediately to condemn the attack as “the greatest breach of peace in Europe in nearly 80 years”. He went on a trip to Germany and the Polish-Ukrainian border in March to visit US troops and observe the humanitarian operations there. On his return, the Republican senator implored President Joe Biden to “get them the damn weapons”,…

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Fox News has become a platform for Russian propaganda

Fox News has become a platform for Russian propaganda

William Saletan writes: For seven months, Russia has waged a vicious war of aggression in Ukraine, killing thousands of civilians. To make matters worse, in the past two weeks, Vladimir Putin has illegally annexed parts of Ukraine and has once again threatened to use nuclear weapons. A principled American conservative TV network might advocate a muscular response to this behavior. At a minimum, it would tell the truth. But Fox News is unconstrained by such principles. In primetime hours, it…

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Trump says GSA packed top-secret documents. These emails suggest otherwise

Trump says GSA packed top-secret documents. These emails suggest otherwise

Bloomberg reports: Former President Donald Trump publicly said that one reason that the FBI found boxes of classified documents improperly stored at his Florida estate was that federal workers had packed up the White House after his 2020 defeat. But documents obtained by Bloomberg News under a Freedom of Information Act request suggest a different story. More than 100 pages of emails and shipping lists between White House and transition staff and the US General Services Administration describe the minutiae…

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