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Category: Politics

A ceasefire won’t stop Israel’s genocidal agenda

A ceasefire won’t stop Israel’s genocidal agenda

Tariq Kenney-Shawa writes: Steven Witkoff, Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, reportedly didn’t bother with pleasantries when he informed the Israelis that he would be arriving to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Saturday. When told his visit coincided with Shabbat, meaning the prime minister would be unavailable until the evening, Witkoff made it clear that the Jewish holiday would not interfere with his schedule. Netanyahu, understanding the stakes, went to his office that afternoon to meet the envoy,…

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Israel has declared war on the promise of a strong, democratic Syria

Israel has declared war on the promise of a strong, democratic Syria

Omar Sabbour writes: The end of 2024 delivered a surprising turn of events in the 13-year-long war in Syria. Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed spectacularly when faced with a limited operation by rebel forces. Amid the turmoil, Israel expanded its occupation of Syrian land in the south of the country, expelling hundreds of Syrians from their homes. It also launched a devastating campaign of aerial bombardment, wiping out the Syrian air force and military capabilities. Some of the bombardment was so…

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Ceasefire: Trump envoy swayed Netanyahu more in one meeting than Biden did all year, say Arab officials

Ceasefire: Trump envoy swayed Netanyahu more in one meeting than Biden did all year, say Arab officials

  The Times of Israel reports: A “tense” weekend meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and incoming Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff led to a breakthrough in the hostage negotiations, with the top aide to US President-elect Donald Trump doing more to sway the premier in a single sit-down than outgoing President Joe Biden did all year, two Arab officials told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. Witkoff has been in Doha for the past week to take part in the…

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No child should ever see the horrors of Gaza

No child should ever see the horrors of Gaza

Hadeel Awad writes: For 15 months now, Gaza’s children have been reduced to a statistic. The death toll reported gives a specific count for children. Malnourishment and starvation are reported in terms of numbers of children they have affected and killed. Even the cold weather is measured in terms of how many babies it has killed in makeshift tents. But behind these numbers lie heartbreaking stories of Palestinian children whose childhood has been cut short. As a nurse working at…

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The Assads’ houses of death

The Assads’ houses of death

Yezid Sayigh interviews Anne-Marie McManus: Yezid Sayigh: It’s been over a month since a coalition of groups led by the Islamist militia, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, overthrew Bashar al-Assad’s regime, ending a 50-year family dictatorship. Can you give some context to the images that came out of Syrian prisons during and after those events? Anne-Marie McManus: The liberation of the prisons and intelligence branches was not marginal to the fall of the regime. In ways that are really unparalleled in modern…

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Trump’s half billion dollar post-election windfall

Trump’s half billion dollar post-election windfall

Axios reports: President-elect Trump is being inundated with so much money from corporations and wealthy donors that his team expects to raise about $500 million by summer — even though he can’t run again, sources in his operation tell Axios. Why it matters: By stockpiling so much cash, Trump is signaling he doesn’t want to be seen as a lame duck in his second term, and is ready to help political allies, punish opponents and help Republicans keep full control of Congress…

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The one Trump pick Democrats actually like: Lori Chavez-DeRemer

The one Trump pick Democrats actually like: Lori Chavez-DeRemer

Russell Berman writes: Democrats spent more than $20 million last year to end then-Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s congressional career. Now, however, the Republican they worked so hard to defeat is their favorite nominee for President-Elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Trump’s selection of Chavez-DeRemer for labor secretary came as a pleasant surprise to many Democrats and union leaders, who expected him to follow past Republican presidents and name a conservative hostile to organized labor. But Chavez-DeRemer endeared herself to unions during her two…

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Trump transition plan to install conservative policymakers around RFK Jr

Trump transition plan to install conservative policymakers around RFK Jr

Politico reports: Just months after Donald Trump promised to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild” on health care as a member of his Cabinet, some of the president-elect’s advisers are quietly trying to box him in. Transition officials plan to install several longtime GOP allies in senior roles across the health department, filling out key parts of Kennedy’s leadership team well before he could be confirmed as Health and Human Services secretary. The push aims to surround Kennedy with…

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We can still get out of the climate Hellocene and into the clear

We can still get out of the climate Hellocene and into the clear

Rob Jackson writes: The NASA scientist James Hansen gave landmark testimony to a US Senate committee in 1988 that brimmed with evidence of climate change. More than 35 years ago, he concluded: ‘The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.’ Viewing the climate carnage of 2023 and the lack of action since 1988, Hansen was even stronger: ‘We are damned fools.’ But who is the ‘we’? The top 1 per cent of the world’s population…

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The January 6 crime paid off for Trump

The January 6 crime paid off for Trump

David Frum writes: Early this morning, the Department of Justice released the report of Special Counsel Jack Smith on his investigation of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. The saga of the U.S. criminal-justice system’s effort to hold the coup instigator accountable is thus closed. No prosecution will take place. Compared with the present outcome, it would have been better if President Joe Biden had pardoned Trump for the January 6 coup attempt. A…

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Pete Hegseth declines to answer

Pete Hegseth declines to answer

Jonathan Chait writes: Pete Hegseth, President-Elect Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, was initially considered one of his most endangered nominees. But after the MAGA movement organized a campaign to threaten Republicans who expressed reservations about Hegseth’s fitness, criticism dried up quickly. “We gave the Senate an attitude adjustment,” Mike Davis, a Republican operative known for his florid threats to lock up Trump’s political targets, told Politico. That attitude adjustment was on vivid display in Hegseth’s confirmation hearing today before the…

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Israeli officials struggle to conceal frustrations as Gaza truce nears

Israeli officials struggle to conceal frustrations as Gaza truce nears

Middle East Eye reports: A ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is at its closest point, according to officials involved in negotiations in Doha. With expectations that an announcement is immininent, Majed al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said that final details were being discussed on Tuesday. “Negotiations are taking place on final details but we have ironed out the main obstacles,” he told a news conference. “Today we are closest to any time in the past to a deal. The…

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Could other countries prosecute soldiers in Gaza?

Could other countries prosecute soldiers in Gaza?

Annie Hylton writes: Last spring, a video spread across social media. Filmed at night, it shows several soldiers in olive-green army fatigues transporting a group of prisoners. The captured men wear white jumpsuits and blindfolds, and they have their hands tied behind their backs. The person holding the camera begins to narrate, in French, “Did you see those motherfuckers?” Referring to a prisoner whose jumpsuit has fallen to his waist, he says, “Look, he’s pissed himself. . . . I…

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The CIA’s use of Sednaya and other prisons for outsourcing torture

The CIA’s use of Sednaya and other prisons for outsourcing torture

Barbara Koeppel reports: As rebel forces poured into Syria’s capital and President Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia, Syrians surged to the streets to celebrate. Some rushed to Sednaya, the military prison they tagged “the human slaughterhouse” to search for missing family. Sadly, few were found. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, more than 30,000 people died there from 2011 to 2013 “either by execution, torture or starvation” and “at least 500 more died from 2018 to 2021.” Other…

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The New Apostolic Reformation seeks to destroy the secular state

The New Apostolic Reformation seeks to destroy the secular state

Stephanie McCrummen writes: On the Thursday night after Donald Trump won the presidential election, an obscure but telling celebration unfolded inside a converted barn off a highway stretching through the cornfields of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The place was called Gateway House of Prayer, and it was not exactly a church, and did not exactly fit into the paradigms of what American Christianity has typically been. Inside, there were no hymnals, no images of Jesus Christ, no parables fixed in stained…

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The U.S. military wrestles with possible deployment on U.S. soil under Trump

The U.S. military wrestles with possible deployment on U.S. soil under Trump

Michael Hirsh writes: The last time an American president deployed the U.S. military domestically under the Insurrection Act — during the deadly Los Angeles riots in 1992 — Douglas Ollivant was there. Ollivant, then a young Army first lieutenant, says things went fairly smoothly because it was somebody else — the cops — doing the head-cracking to restore order, not his 7th Infantry Division. He and his troops didn’t have to detain or shoot at anyone. “There was real sensitivity…

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