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Category: Politics

Inside the Russian airbase in Syria where troops form fragile truce with rebels it once bombed

Inside the Russian airbase in Syria where troops form fragile truce with rebels it once bombed

The Guardian reports: Standing at the gates of the Khmeimim airbase, a fighter from the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) eyed a pink vape being puffed on by a Russian soldier. Catching his gaze, the soldier offered it to him. The bearded fighter took a drag and shrugged, giving a thumbs up to the Russian soldier, who let him keep it. Just over a week ago, Russian jets taking off from Khmeimim airbase were heading to northern Syria…

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Fears that Israel is engaging in an open-ended new occupation of Syrian territory

Fears that Israel is engaging in an open-ended new occupation of Syrian territory

The Guardian reports: Israel struck dozens of sites in Syria overnight with airstrikes, despite the Syrian rebel leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, saying his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group was not interested in conflict with Israel. The latest airstrikes follow a statement by Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, that Israeli troops, who seized the Golan Heights buffer zone with Syria last week, would remain for the winter on Mount Hermon in positions they occupied last week. Katz’s office said in a…

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Congress keeps trying to hide the true Gaza death toll

Congress keeps trying to hide the true Gaza death toll

The Intercept reports: Tucked into a $895 billion Pentagon bill making its way through Congress is a little-noticed provision to further conceal the death toll in Gaza — the latest effort by U.S. policymakers to cast doubt on casualty figures reported by Palestinian health officials. The House approved this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, on Wednesday and sent it to the Senate for a vote, despite Democratic objections over a GOP proposal to prohibit transgender children on military…

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Israel to close Dublin embassy after Ireland supports ICJ genocide petition

Israel to close Dublin embassy after Ireland supports ICJ genocide petition

The Guardian reports: Israel has announced it will close its embassy in Ireland, citing Dublin’s decision last week to support a petition at the international court of justice accusing Israel of genocide. The move was announced by the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, who said it was prompted by the Irish government’s “extreme anti-Israeli policies”, noting its decision to join the ICJ petition last week. The Irish taoiseach, Simon Harris, said on X: “This is a deeply regrettable decision from…

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Elon Musk spent $277 million on the election. His net worth has since increased more than $170 billion

Elon Musk spent $277 million on the election. His net worth has since increased more than $170 billion

The Washington Post reports: Elon Musk’s net worth has climbed by more than $200 billion in 2024, a massive increase in the same year that the world’s richest person spent at least $277 million backing Donald Trump and other Republican candidates. The bulk of the increase, more than $170 billion, has come since Election Day. Trump’s election sent stock in electric automaker Tesla, a company central to Musk’s wealth and where he is CEO, soaring. Shares were trading at prices…

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A new risk for employers: Losing millions of migrants with temporary work permits

A new risk for employers: Losing millions of migrants with temporary work permits

The Wall Street Journal reports: Nate Koetje, chief executive of an electrical contractor based in Grand Rapids, Mich., would like to hire as many as 200 workers next year. Despite a somewhat cooling labor market, he said he would be lucky to find 150. So if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his pledge to eliminate programs that provide temporary work permits to immigrants with no permanent legal status, Koetje’s growing company would face even more staffing challenges. The company,…

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Turkey exploits post-9/11 counterterrorism model to target critics in exile

Turkey exploits post-9/11 counterterrorism model to target critics in exile

The Washington Post reports: As abduction teams fanned out across neighborhoods in Nairobi in October, their targets — members of a Turkish religious movement — seemed to have few worries beyond the hassles of a hectic weekday. One was returning from a visa appointment with his family; a second was at the motor vehicle office for a driving test; still others were trying to beat traffic during the early Friday commute. By morning’s end, seven Turkish nationals had been abducted…

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The U.S. military is now talking openly about offensive space warfare

The U.S. military is now talking openly about offensive space warfare

Ars Technica reports: Earlier this year, officials at US Space Command released a list of priorities and needs, and among the routine recitation of things like cyber defense, communications, and surveillance was a relatively new term: “integrated space fires.” This is a new phrase in the esoteric terminology the military uses to describe its activities. Essentially, “fires” are offensive or defensive actions against an adversary. The Army defines fires as “the use of weapon systems to create specific lethal and…

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Why Israel captured Syria’s tallest mountain just hours after Assad fell

Why Israel captured Syria’s tallest mountain just hours after Assad fell

CNN reports: Mount Hermon’s summit is a tremendous asset under Israel’s control. At 9,232 feet (2,814 meters), it is higher than any point in Syria or Israel, and second to only one peak in Lebanon. “People sometimes say in the age of missiles, land is not important – it’s simply untrue,” Inbar said. In an academic paper published in 2011, he wrote of the many advantages presented by Mount Hermon. “It enables the use of electronic surveillance deep into Syrian…

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Kash Patel’s warm Senate welcome reflects the GOP’s turn against the FBI

Kash Patel’s warm Senate welcome reflects the GOP’s turn against the FBI

The New York Times reports: Kash Patel, President-elect Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has called the top ranks of the bureau “a threat to the people” and published a list of enemies, vowing retribution for investigations of top Republicans. He appears — at least for now — to be on a glide path for confirmation, with Republican senators lining up enthusiastically behind him. As Mr. Patel made the rounds on Capitol Hill this week ahead of…

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You should worry about Kash Patel running the FBI

You should worry about Kash Patel running the FBI

Ankush Khardori writes: Some key pieces appear to be snapping neatly into place for Donald Trump’s much-feared prosecutorial revenge tour as the year draws to a close. Trump’s new nominee to lead the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, is a staunch loyalist who predicted last year that after Trump’s reelection, “the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones.” Trump told NBC News that the members of the Jan. 6 committee should “go to jail” (even as he claimed that he…

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No women will lead House committees for first time in two decades

No women will lead House committees for first time in two decades

ABC News reports: No women will lead a House committee for the first time in two decades after House Republicans revealed their list of committee leaders for the 119th Congress on Thursday. The 17 standing committees, whose leaders were selected by the House Republican Steering Committee, will be dominated by white men when the new Congress is seated on Jan. 3. No people of color were selected, either. The last time there was not at least one woman leading a…

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With donations and praise, tech titans ingratiate themselves with Trump

With donations and praise, tech titans ingratiate themselves with Trump

The New York Times reports: The $1 million donations came gradually — and then all at once. Meta. Amazon. OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Each of these Silicon Valley companies or their leaders promised to support President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inaugural committee with seven-figure checks over the past week, often accompanied by a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to bend the knee. The procession of tech leaders who traveled to hobnob with Mr. Trump face-to-face included Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, and Sergey Brin,…

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Syrian rebels reveal year-long plot that brought down Assad regime

Syrian rebels reveal year-long plot that brought down Assad regime

The Guardian reports: Syrian rebels began planning the military assault that toppled the Assad regime a year ago, in a highly disciplined operation in which a new drone unit was deployed and where there was close coordination between opposition groups around the country, the top military commander of the main rebel group has revealed. In his first interview with foreign media since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s 54-year-rule, Abu Hassan al-Hamwi, the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) military wing,…

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Hope and despair at Assad’s ‘human slaughterhouse’

Hope and despair at Assad’s ‘human slaughterhouse’

Aubin Eymard and Cian Ward write: Crowning the top of a small hill, surrounded by the rocky outcroppings of the Anti-Lebanon mountain range about 20 miles north of Damascus, Sednaya Prison has attracted thousands of Syrians since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime on Dec. 8. For more than half a century, many of the secrets of the regime’s inner workings remained impenetrable. Sednaya was one of the best kept. “Until last Sunday, people could drive by the prison, but…

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The Syrian upheaval has Iranian leaders reeling, too

The Syrian upheaval has Iranian leaders reeling, too

The New York Times reports: In the days since the abrupt and unexpected obliteration of Iran as a dominant presence in Syria, the government has faced a fierce public backlash over the billions of dollars spent and the Iranian blood shed to back the Assad regime. The criticism has come from unexpected corners, including conservatives, and is flowing freely on television channels and talk shows, and in social media posts and virtual town halls attended by thousands of Iranians. It…

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