Attention to the Unseen

Jelani Cobb writes: The calcified cruelty, malignant politics, and questionable legality of the decisions by Governors Greg Abbott, of Texas, and Ron DeSantis, of Florida, to transport dozens of migrants in Texas to unsuspecting locales in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., reiterate the point—often made in recent years—that the only check on the behavior of the current Republican Party is the limits of its own imagination. Most of the migrants reportedly came from Venezuela, a country so racked with discord that…

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Trita Parsi writes: Unprecedented protest and resistance has emerged in Iran this week after Mahsa Amini’s death in the custody of Iran’s “morality” police. The level of anger and frustration in Iran today — on display in dozens of videos across social media — appears far greater than in 2009, when Iranians took to the streets to protest a stolen election and push for reform. For two decades now, attempts at reforming the system have been stymied; the regime has…

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The Washington Post reports: The protests started small, outside the Tehran hospital where a 22-year old Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini died last week after being detained by the “morality police” for an untold violation of the country’s harsh strictures on women’s dress. By Tuesday, the protests were racing across the country, in a burst of grief, anger and defiance. Many were led by women, who burned their headscarves, cut their hair and chanted, “Death to the dictator.” The ferocity…

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Joyce Karam tweeted on September 16: Today, a 22-yr-old woman died in #Iran after being beaten on head by the regime’s “morality police” for not “properly” wearing her Hijab. Her name was Masha Amini. Her crime was showing some hair. Let that sink in… pic.twitter.com/y7KpmJ7Z1X — Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) September 16, 2022 The Guardian reports: Iran has sent police to the streets in a scramble to end protests that have spread to at least 15 cities, as rights groups and…

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Peter Beinart writes: Over the past 18 months, America’s most prominent Jewish organizations have done something extraordinary. They have accused the world’s leading human rights organizations of promoting hatred of Jews. Last April, after Human Rights Watch issued a report accusing Israel of “the crimes of apartheid and persecution,” the American Jewish Committee claimed that the report’s arguments “sometimes border on antisemitism.” In January, after Amnesty International issued its own study alleging that Israel practiced apartheid, the Anti-Defamation League predicted…

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In an editorial, the Washington Post says: Salma al-Shehab, the mother of two young children, was studying for a PhD at the University of Leeds and took time off to go home to Saudi Arabia for a vacation. Ms. Shehab is a Shiite Muslim, a persecuted minority in the kingdom, and a women’s rights activist who spoke out on social media for the right of women to drive. Her vacation ended in prison. Saudi authorities detained Ms. Shehab in January…

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Caitlin Dickerson writes: During the year and a half in which the U.S. government separated thousands of children from their parents, the Trump administration’s explanations for what was happening were deeply confusing, and on many occasions—it was clear even then—patently untrue. I’m one of the many reporters who covered this story in real time. Despite the flurry of work that we produced to fill the void of information, we knew that the full truth about how our government had reached…

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