Browsed by
Category: Politics

How America lost control of the bird flu, setting the stage for another pandemic

How America lost control of the bird flu, setting the stage for another pandemic

By Amy Maxmen, December 20, 2024 Keith Poulsen’s jaw dropped when farmers showed him images on their cellphones at the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin in October. A livestock veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin, Poulsen had seen sick cows before, with their noses dripping and udders slack. But the scale of the farmers’ efforts to treat the sick cows stunned him. They showed videos of systems they built to hydrate hundreds of cattle at once. In 14-hour shifts, dairy…

Read More Read More

Trump signals plans to use all levers of power against the media

Trump signals plans to use all levers of power against the media

The Washington Post reports: For many years, Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to sue the press but often didn’t follow through. When he did, he almost always lost. But Trump’s recent settlement with ABC News and a cascade of lawsuits and other complaints against media entities from him and his allies signal a ramped-up campaign from the president-elect. Together, the action has spurred concerns that his efforts could drastically undermine the institutions tasked with reporting on his coming administration, which Trump…

Read More Read More

Optimism survives even in beleaguered Venezuela

Optimism survives even in beleaguered Venezuela

Anne Applebaum writes: Late last year, Venezuela’s democratic opposition set out to choose, jointly, someone who could challenge Nicolás Maduro, the country’s autocratic president, in an election that was sure to be violent and unfair. Hundreds of thousands of participants from different political parties voted in a primary held across Venezuela and in exile communities abroad. Although they risked harassment and arrest, people donated space in private homes and offices to make the vote possible. Others stood in line for…

Read More Read More

The GOP’s Musk problem

The GOP’s Musk problem

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes: For almost a decade, conservatives have insisted that we should take Donald Trump seriously, not literally. But how seriously should we take Elon Musk? Musk, who funnelled more than two hundred and seventy million dollars into Trump’s Presidential campaign, has become somewhat ubiquitous in the weeks since the election: co-chairing a budget-cutting advisory commission called DOGE, touring Congress, and vociferously supporting the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, in Germany. Questioned about that last one—about his support…

Read More Read More

John Amaechi: Elon Musk is a ‘capricious, cruel, deviant man who wants without need’

John Amaechi: Elon Musk is a ‘capricious, cruel, deviant man who wants without need’

  John Amaechi has been outspoken in his criticism for Elon Musk and why he is a dangerous individual. He calls out his founder title of Tesla and journey as a grifter. A year ago, Alex Shephard wrote: Elon Musk is evil. While he has mostly made headlines for his incompetence, he has unleashed and legitimized truly heinous forces on Twitter: He has welcomed back some of the world’s most toxic people—Alex Jones, Donald Trump, innumerable Nazis and bigots—and has…

Read More Read More

Trump and allies are waging campaign against media to stifle dissent, experts warn

Trump and allies are waging campaign against media to stifle dissent, experts warn

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump and his allies have started to wage a campaign against media organisations in the US that are critical of the president-elect by launching lawsuits that media experts warn are designed to stifle dissent and potentially put them out of business. The tactic appears to be to aggressively pursue legal action against news organisations – which Trump has long dubbed “enemies of the people” – by asking for often hefty sums in damages. The cases are…

Read More Read More

Inside Aleppo, the city Assad left to rot as a lesson in the price of rising up

Inside Aleppo, the city Assad left to rot as a lesson in the price of rising up

The Guardian reports: Bashar al-Assad’s face has been ripped away from posters at the abandoned checkpoint that separates Sheikh Maqsoud, a neighbourhood in the north of Aleppo, from the rest of the city. No cars dare use the wide boulevard any more because the road is still watched by Kurdish snipers allied to the regime. The units retreated into the warren of bombed and burnt-out buildings when Islamist rebel groups launched an unprecedented attack on the city at the end…

Read More Read More

IDF shoots at Syrian villagers protesting against being blocked from accessing their own farmland

IDF shoots at Syrian villagers protesting against being blocked from accessing their own farmland

The Times of Israel reports: Israeli troops wounded one person after opening fire Friday on demonstrators in southern Syria, with the military saying the soldiers did so to remove “a threat.” According to the local Daraa 24 outlet, residents of towns in the Yarmouk River basin gathered near a former Syrian army post close to the village of Maariya to protest against the IDF presence in Syria. The outlet said the soldiers opened fire in the air to stop the…

Read More Read More

German Christmas market attacker is Saudi anti-Islamist who shared pro-Israel content, WSJ

German Christmas market attacker is Saudi anti-Islamist who shared pro-Israel content, WSJ

The Times of Israel reports: The suspect in the deadly ramming at a Christmas market in Germany on Friday was an anti-Islam activist who shared pro-Israel content on social media in the wake of the October 7 attacks, The Wall Street Journal reported. Five people were killed and some 200 injured when an SUV plowed through the festive crowd in Magdeburg. One of the victims was a young child. Regional premier Reiner Haselhoff said that the suspect is a 50-year-old…

Read More Read More

Elon Musk endorses Germany’s neo-Nazi AfD party

Elon Musk endorses Germany’s neo-Nazi AfD party

CNN reports: Elon Musk is wading into more than just American politics, throwing his support behind a far-right German political party. Musk, the billionaire Trump ally who is playing a public role in the incoming administration, posted in support Friday of Alternative for Germany, or AfD, after the German government collapsed this week. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk wrote Friday while re-posting a video from far-right political activist Naomi Seibt. The AfD, which has recently seen its popularity…

Read More Read More

AfD: Germans float ban on elected far-right party after scandal

AfD: Germans float ban on elected far-right party after scandal

BBC News reports: Germany is wrestling with a potentially explosive debate over whether to ban the far-right party Alternative for Germany, or AfD. Germans have been shocked by revelations that senior figures attended a meeting where mass deportations were allegedly discussed. A growing backlash has sparked large protests and public condemnation. The AfD, which continues to poll second nationally, says it’s being scandalously smeared by opponents. “Panic is spreading. We can smell your fear,” AfD MP Bernd Baumann declared this…

Read More Read More

Elon Musk is becoming a one-man rogue state – it’s time we reined him in

Elon Musk is becoming a one-man rogue state – it’s time we reined him in

Alexander Hurst writes: Musk’s new obsessions (beyond the validation and human affection that he mistakenly believes he will find on social media) are attacking public servants, slashing social spending and going after the most vulnerable. “In most cases, the word ‘homeless’ is a lie,” Musk tweeted recently. “It’s usually a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness.” The most charitable interpretation is that Musk exists at various points along the Dunning Kruger scale. He’s a fantastic venture…

Read More Read More

Kurds in Syria fear a new war after fall of Assad

Kurds in Syria fear a new war after fall of Assad

Murtaza Hussain writes: The fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has been a cause of celebration for opponents of his regime, including many of the country’s Kurds. During Syria’s chaotic civil war, political groups representing the historically oppressed ethnic group, whose population spans across multiple countries in the region, managed to carve out autonomous zones in Syria’s north while working closely with U.S. forces in the war against the Islamic State. But since Assad’s fall, the future has become increasingly…

Read More Read More

Journalist arrests surge in 2024 amid Israel-Gaza war protests

Journalist arrests surge in 2024 amid Israel-Gaza war protests

U.S. Press Freedom Tracker reports: While revelers and protesters alike gathered near New York City’s Times Square on Dec. 31, 2023, a freelance reporter rang in the new year from a holding cell 10 blocks away. Roni Jacobson was attempting to cover a pro-Palestinian demonstration for the New York Daily News when she said she bumped into a rookie officer and was quickly arrested. She was released after nearly 24 hours in custody when the charges against her for obstruction…

Read More Read More

Human Rights Watch: Israel is guilty of extermination and acts of genocide in Gaza

Human Rights Watch: Israel is guilty of extermination and acts of genocide in Gaza

Middle East Eye reports: Israel is guilty of the crime of extermination and acts of genocide in Gaza, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has concluded in a new report published on Thursday. The US-based human rights organisation found that Israel has inflicted conditions of life in Gaza calculated to destroy the enclave’s Palestinian population. This amounts to extermination, which is a crime against humanity, and acts of genocide. Coming two weeks after fellow rights group Amnesty International similarly concluded that Israel…

Read More Read More

‘My hands are paralyzed from torture’: Gazans reveal horrors of Ofer Camp

‘My hands are paralyzed from torture’: Gazans reveal horrors of Ofer Camp

+972 and Local Call report: In February, Rami was arrested by the Israeli army at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital. The 42-year-old Palestinian was taken to the notorious Sde Teiman detention center, where, like thousands of Gazans detained there, he endured severe abuse at the hands of the guards. But he was soon transferred out. “I thought I was being returned to Gaza, but I found myself in another prison,” he told +972 and Local Call. That prison was Ofer Camp —…

Read More Read More