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A history of disruption: From fringe ideas to social change

A history of disruption: From fringe ideas to social change

David Potter writes: On 3 April 1917, a crowd gathered to meet a train arriving from Helsinki at Petrograd’s Finland Station. The train carried Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He greeted his audience with a speech calling for the overthrow of Russia’s government – and, six months later, he made this happen. The world changed. Lenin, who had been living outside of Russia for more than a decade, was known as a theorist on the fringe of Russian political society, shaping Marxist…

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Desmond Tutu 1931-2021

Desmond Tutu 1931-2021

On June 24, 2021, His Holiness the Dalai Lama reunited online with Archbishop Desmond Tutu from his residence in Dharamsala, HP, India, on the occasion of the release of their new movie “Mission: Joy – Finding Happiness in Troubled Times.”   The New York Times reports: As leader of the South African Council of Churches and later as Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, Archbishop Tutu led the church to the forefront of Black South Africans’ decades-long struggle for freedom. His…

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Omicron is pushing America into soft lockdown

Omicron is pushing America into soft lockdown

Sarah Zhang writes: “I do not see a scenario for any kind of shutdown,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio declared this week, as parts of New York were in fact shutting down all around him. Broadway canceled show after show. Restaurants closed their kitchens. De Blasio’s successor, Eric Adams, who will take office January 1, nixed his inauguration gala. There has been no March 2020–style universal shutdown, but New York is not back anymore, baby. For Brent Young,…

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In New York, the Omicron variant is getting weird

In New York, the Omicron variant is getting weird

Donald G. McNeil Jr. writes: In Gauteng, the urbanized Johannesburg-Pretoria region of South Africa where Omicron was first isolated, new cases are plummeting so fast that there are already only half as many as there were at the peak. It’s not a curve, it’s an icepick, and it lasted barely a month. That suggests that, as the former F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, said on Sunday, it’s “going to blow its way through the population, probably very quickly.” If that’s…

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The Republican axis reversing the rights revolution

The Republican axis reversing the rights revolution

Ronald Brownstein writes: The great divergence is rapidly expanding—and President Joe Biden’s window to reverse it is narrowing. Since the 1960s, Congress and federal courts have acted mostly to strengthen the floor of basic civil rights available to citizens in all 50 states, a pattern visible on issues from the dismantling of Jim Crow racial segregation to the right to abortion to the authorization of same-sex marriage. But now, offensives by red-state governments and GOP-appointed federal judges are poised to…

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‘The Trump paradox is that he was a blessing for Israel and a curse for American Jewry’

‘The Trump paradox is that he was a blessing for Israel and a curse for American Jewry’

David Remnick writes: [Barak] Ravid told me that he did not emerge from his interview [for his just published book in Hebrew, “Trump’s Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East”], or his over-all analysis of Trump, believing that the former President is an anti-Semite: “I think his state of mind is similar to the state of mind of many people here in Israel.” He pointed out that Trump’s comments about American Jews, Christian evangelicals, and the…

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Mass migration into Britain began over 3,000 years ago

Mass migration into Britain began over 3,000 years ago

BBC News reports: Scientists have uncovered evidence for a large-scale, prehistoric migration into Britain that may be linked to the spread of Celtic languages. The mass-movement of people originated in continental Europe and occurred between 1,400 BC and 870 BC. The discovery helps to explain the genetic make-up of many present-day people in Britain. Around half the ancestry of later populations in England and Wales comes from these migrants. It’s unclear what caused the influx of people during the Middle…

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Uncounted: Inaccurate death certificates across the country hide the true toll of COVID-19

Uncounted: Inaccurate death certificates across the country hide the true toll of COVID-19

Missouri Independent reports: In Cape Girardeau County, the coroner hasn’t pronounced a single person dead of COVID-19 in 2021. Wavis Jordan, a Republican who was elected last year to serve as coroner of the 80,000-person county, says his office “doesn’t do COVID deaths.” He does not investigate deaths himself, and requires families to provide proof of a positive COVID-19 test before including it on a death certificate. Meanwhile, deaths at home attributed to conditions with symptoms that look a lot…

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Report shows the extent of Republican efforts to sabotage democracy

Report shows the extent of Republican efforts to sabotage democracy

The Guardian reports: The Republican assault on free and fair elections instigated by Donald Trump is gathering pace, with efforts to sabotage the normal workings of American democracy sweeping state legislatures across the US. A year that began with the violent insurrection at the US Capitol is ending with an unprecedented push to politicize, criminalize or in other ways subvert the nonpartisan administration of elections. A year-end report from pro-democracy groups identifies no fewer than 262 bills introduced in 41…

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Hopes grow that nuclear fusion is finally for real and could help address climate change

Hopes grow that nuclear fusion is finally for real and could help address climate change

The Boston Globe reports: It’s been compared to everything from a holy grail to fool’s gold: the ultimate solution to clean, readily available energy or an expensive delusion diverting scarce money and brainpower from the urgent needs of rapidly addressing climate change. For decades, scientists have been trying to harness the energy that powers stars, a complex, atomic-level process known as nuclear fusion, which requires heating a plasma fuel to more than 100 million degrees Celsius and finding a way…

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Myanmar’s military is committing crimes against humanity and war crimes, say legal experts

Myanmar’s military is committing crimes against humanity and war crimes, say legal experts

The Washington Post reports: Facing armed resistance after it seized power [in February], the military, known as the Tatmadaw, has escalated its use of force against civilians using tactics honed during past atrocities. A Washington Post analysis of more than 300 videos and photos, some not previously made public, as well as satellite imagery, eyewitness accounts and military planning documents, reveals a premeditated campaign of arson and killing targeting civilians in Chin state beginning in September. Military planning documents shared…

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How zinc helps you fight off infections

How zinc helps you fight off infections

Diana Kwon writes: Walk down the cold-remedy aisle of almost any pharmacy and you’ll see a shelf full of zinc supplements. Clearly, people must be worried that they’re not getting enough zinc, a nutrient often touted for its ability to quash the common cold and other respiratory illnesses. But do many of us really need more zinc? And if so, what good does it do? As researchers learn more about how our bodies use zinc, they’re finding that the element…

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Will Trump get away with inciting an insurrection?

Will Trump get away with inciting an insurrection?

Laurence H. Tribe, Donald Ayer and Dennis Aftergut write: In his nine months in office, Attorney General Merrick Garland has done a great deal to restore integrity and evenhanded enforcement of the law to an agency that was badly misused for political reasons under his predecessor. But his place in history will be assessed against the challenges that confronted him. And the overriding test that he and the rest of the government face is the threat to our democracy from…

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