Music: Arve Henriksen — ‘Groundswell’
A genocide against Ukrainians is unfolding right now
Roman Sheremeta posted on X: A genocide against Ukrainians is unfolding right now. It already has a name: “Kholodomor” (exhaustion through cold) This crime is being deliberately committed by russia. In legal terms, it has a clear definition – genocide. Under Article II of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, one of the defining acts of genocide is: “Deliberately inflicting on a group of people conditions of life calculated to bring about its…
Two appeals court judges overrule at least 360 other judges by backing Trump’s mass detention policy
Politico reports: A federal appeals court Friday night backed the Trump administration’s policy to lock up the vast majority of people it is seeking to deport without offering a chance for bond, even if they have no criminal records and have resided in the country for decades. A divided three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the administration’s view — a reversal of every administration’s position for the last 30 years — is the correct interpretation…
The Epstein scandal is taking down Europe’s political class. In the U.S., no one is facing accountability
Politico reports: Across the Atlantic, heads are rolling over the Jeffrey Epstein revelations. In Norway, one prominent diplomat has already been suspended and a police investigation has been opened into a former prime minister. In the U.K., the former ambassador to the U.S. has been fired; on Tuesday, he resigned from the House of Lords. Police are reviewing reports he shared market-sensitive information with Epstein. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, was stripped of his royal titles and residence….
Prosecutors began investigating Renee Good’s killing. Washington told them to stop
The New York Times reports: Hours after an immigration agent fatally shot Renee Good inside her S.U.V. on a Minneapolis street last month, a senior federal prosecutor in Minnesota sought a warrant to search the vehicle for evidence in what he expected would be a standard civil rights investigation into the agent’s use of force. The prosecutor, Joseph H. Thompson, wrote in an email to colleagues that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a state agency that specializes in investigating…
Trump has never hidden his racism
Jamelle Bouie writes: Let’s suppose you’re the spoiled son of a self-made man. Let’s suppose that, despite your flash and bravado, you’ve failed at virtually everything you’ve tried. You’re the laughingstock of polite society, a punchline for the privileged. You think you’re superior enough to be the president of the United States — the highest honor in your country — but the actual president is a man of humble origins, a minority of the kind your family didn’t even rent…
NSA detected phone call between foreign intelligence and a person close to Trump
The Guardian reports: Last spring, the National Security Agency (NSA) detected evidence of an unusual phone call between an individual associated with foreign intelligence and a person close to Donald Trump, according to a whistleblower’s attorney briefed on the existence of the call. The highly sensitive communique, which has roiled Washington over the past week, was brought to the attention of the director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard – but rather than allowing NSA officials to distribute the information…
We cooperate to survive, but if no one’s looking, we compete
Jonathan R Goodman writes: Reading classic works in evolutionary biology is unlikely to make you optimistic about human nature. From Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man (1871) onwards, there is a fundamental understanding among biologists that organisms, especially humans, evolved to maximise self-interest. We act to promote our own success or that of our family. Niceness, by contrast, is just a mirage, and morality more broadly is just an illusion. Sociobiology – the infamous movement of the second half of…
Music: Arve Henriksen — ‘Blue Silk’
Federal judge rules DOJ can ‘no longer’ be trusted in voter roll crusade
Democracy Docket reports: A federal judge in Oregon issued a sweeping rebuke of the Justice Department’s nationwide push to seize state voter rolls, ruling that the department can no longer be presumed to be acting in good faith and warning that its conduct threatens voters and states’ rights. And the judge cited a recent letter sent by Attorney General Pam Bondi linking the voter roll crusade to the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota as one reason…
Federal judge will let Marimar Martinez release text messages sent by Border Patrol agent who shot her
Chicago Sun-Times reports: Federal prosecutors say the public release of text messages sent by the Border Patrol agent who shot Chicago’s Marimar Martinez last fall could only serve one purpose: to “sully” his reputation. But the Trump administration has shown “zero concern about the sullying of Ms. Martinez’s reputation,” a federal judge pointed out Friday. That’s partly why U.S. District Judge Georgia Alexakis said Martinez will be allowed to share the text messages with the public — as long as…
ICE and CBP’s face-recognition app can’t actually verify who people are
Wired reports: The face-recognition app Mobile Fortify, now used by United States immigration agents in towns and cities across the US, is not designed to reliably identify people in the streets and was deployed without the scrutiny that has historically governed the rollout of technologies that impact people’s privacy, according to records reviewed by WIRED. The Department of Homeland Security launched Mobile Fortify in the spring of 2025 to “determine or verify” the identities of individuals stopped or detained by…
GOP’s new fear: Losing the Senate in November
Axios reports: Top Republicans are increasingly worried about private polling that paints a dire picture of the midterms — and it’s not just the House they’re afraid of losing, it’s also the Senate. Why it matters: President Trump has warned Republicans that losing their slim House majority could lead to a third impeachment. But a Democratic takeover of the Senate would be a political earthquake — and neuter his last two years in office. Zoom in: For the first time, GOP strategists are telling Axios that…
Freedom, equality and democracy depend on our work. Journalists must not lie.
Carlos Hernández de Miguel, a Spanish journalist and writer, died on 3 February. He didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye and sharing a few final thoughts: I decided to become a journalist because I truly believed that by reporting rigorously and honestly, we could improve this world. I still believe it now. I know that in my professional career I have made mistakes, I have put up with things (I hope only a few) that I should have rejected,…
George Orwell called for a new way of thinking about science
By Robert Colls, De Montfort University In October 1945, George Orwell responded to a letter from Mr J. Stewart Cook in the leftwing weekly newspaper Tribune calling for more science education. The call can hardly have come as a surprise. War had brought science and engineering to the fore – from the Spitfire fighter plane and radar to Bletchley Park’s codebreakers – and now that war was over, many thought it was time to build a brave new world. Science…
Music: Snarky Puppy & Metropole Orkest — ‘Only Here and Nowhere Else’