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Lies on social media inflame Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Lies on social media inflame Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The New York Times reports: In a 28-second video, which was posted to Twitter this week by a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip appeared to launch rocket attacks at Israelis from densely populated civilian areas. At least that is what Mr. Netanyahu’s spokesman, Ofir Gendelman, said the video portrayed. But his tweet with the footage, which was shared hundreds of times as the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis escalated, was not…

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Hundreds of epidemiologists expected mask-wearing in public for at least a year

Hundreds of epidemiologists expected mask-wearing in public for at least a year

The New York Times reports: When federal health officials said on Thursday that fully vaccinated Americans no longer needed to wear masks in most places, it came as a surprise to many people in public health. It also was a stark contrast with the views of a large majority of epidemiologists surveyed in the last two weeks by The New York Times. In the informal survey, 80 percent said they thought Americans would need to wear masks in public indoor…

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Just 12 people are behind most vaccine hoaxes on social media, research shows

Just 12 people are behind most vaccine hoaxes on social media, research shows

NPR reports: Researchers have found just 12 people are responsible for the bulk of the misleading claims and outright lies about COVID-19 vaccines that proliferate on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. “The ‘Disinformation Dozen’ produce 65% of the shares of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” said Imran Ahmed, chief executive officer of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which identified the accounts. Now the vaccine rollout is reaching a critical stage in which most adults who want the vaccine have…

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Colonial Pipeline hacker DarkSide says it will shut operations, security firms say

Colonial Pipeline hacker DarkSide says it will shut operations, security firms say

The Wall Street Journal reports: The criminal group linked to a cyberattack that disrupted gasoline delivery across parts of the southeastern U.S. this week has told hacking associates that it is shutting down, according to security research firms. A website operated by ransomware group DarkSide, which U.S. officials have said they believe originates in Eastern Europe, has been down since Thursday. DarkSide has told associates it has lost access to the infrastructure it uses to run its operation and would…

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Dark money group brags in leaked video about writing GOP voter suppression bills across the country

Dark money group brags in leaked video about writing GOP voter suppression bills across the country

Mother Jones reports: In a private meeting last month with big-money donors, the head of a top conservative group boasted that her outfit had crafted the new voter suppression law in Georgia and was doing the same with similar bills for Republican state legislators across the country. “In some cases, we actually draft them for them,” she said, “or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.”…

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Trump ‘wants cash money up front’ from an ‘indestructible’ social media platform

Trump ‘wants cash money up front’ from an ‘indestructible’ social media platform

The Wall Street Journal reports: Donald Trump, sidelined by Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc., has been talking with numerous platforms as he seeks a new online megaphone. Jeff Brain, the chief executive of CloutHub, a fledgling social media network that has become popular with conservatives, thinks his company fits the bill. He took a trip to Mar-a-Lago last month and chatted with the former president, and has been talking to Mr. Trump’s advisers as they consider what his new social-media…

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The old Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dead — long live the emerging Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The old Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dead — long live the emerging Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Nathan J Brown writes: It is time to admit what most observers already know: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that diplomats have been dealing with for half a century is over. It is not that a solution has been found. Just the opposite: all the injustices and insecurities that afflict inhabitants of the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea are now so deeply ingrained in daily life that no diplomatic framework can address them now. This leaves some people…

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As rival gangs of Jews and Arabs clash on streets, fears mount of irreparable damage to Israeli society

As rival gangs of Jews and Arabs clash on streets, fears mount of irreparable damage to Israeli society

The Washington Post reports: As bands of Jewish and Arab citizens fought one another and police in towns across Israel for a third night early Thursday, Israelis worried that the battle inside the country may be harder to stop than the air war still being waged with Gaza. Chaos erupted in Israeli cities with mixed Jewish-Arab populations on Wednesday night, marking an escalation in the country’s worst communal violence in two decades. The Israeli media and local residents alike have…

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Why Biden can’t look away from the Israeli-Palestinian crisis

Why Biden can’t look away from the Israeli-Palestinian crisis

The New York Times reports: The United States deployed a top diplomat to Israel on Wednesday, in hopes of calming hostilities that have broken out between Israelis and Palestinians. After throngs of Palestinian demonstrators took to the streets of East Jerusalem in recent days to protest Israeli settlements and the evictions of Palestinians there, particularly in the heavily Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, a crackdown by security forces gave way to escalating violence. Hamas militants have launched rockets into Israel,…

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From denial to ambiguity: A new study charts the trajectory of ExxonMobil’s climate messaging

From denial to ambiguity: A new study charts the trajectory of ExxonMobil’s climate messaging

Inside Climate News reports: Fossil fuel companies’ messaging on climate change has revolved around some common refrains: Energy demand must grow to alleviate global poverty, so fossil fuels are critical to economic growth. Technological innovation is key to limiting emissions, and consumers can do their part by using energy efficiently. New research shows that these arguments were carefully cultivated over the course of decades by ExxonMobil, which beginning in the early 2000s shifted away from outright obfuscation of climate science…

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Vaccines seem to work well against coronavirus variants. It’s also complicated

Vaccines seem to work well against coronavirus variants. It’s also complicated

STAT reports: The question about how Covid-19 vaccines stand up to coronavirus variants often gets distilled to: Do they work? The simplest answer is yes. People who’ve received one of the highly powerful vaccines don’t need to be too worried about the variants for now, experts say. But the complete answer is more complicated. The real question isn’t whether the vaccines work, but how well they do. Even the best vaccines allow some “breakthrough infections” — infections in people who’ve…

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Right-wing activists and British former spy said to have plotted to discredit Trump ‘enemies’ in government

Right-wing activists and British former spy said to have plotted to discredit Trump ‘enemies’ in government

The New York Times reports: A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enemies of President Trump inside the government, according to documents and people involved in the operations. The campaign included a planned sting operation against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and secret surveillance operations against F.B.I. employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau’s ranks. The operations against the…

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What our use of animal-based slurs and endearments says about us

What our use of animal-based slurs and endearments says about us

David Egan writes: Human hatreds take on a depressing variety of forms: in addition to individual hatreds, the world roils with xenophobia, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and on and on and on. Less remarked upon is an underlying zoophobia – a fear of, or antipathy towards, animals – that’s manifest in many of the slurs and insults directed at other human beings. Calling a person an animal is usually a comment on their unrestrained appetites, especially for food (‘like a…

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Palestinian refugees deserve to return home. Jews should understand

Palestinian refugees deserve to return home. Jews should understand

Peter Beinart writes: Why has the impending eviction of six Palestinian families in East Jerusalem drawn Israelis and Palestinians into a conflict that appears to be spiraling toward yet another war? Because of a word that in the American Jewish community remains largely taboo: the Nakba. The Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic, need not refer only to the more than 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled or fled in terror during Israel’s founding. It can also evoke the many expulsions that…

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