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Category: Politics

Gaza and the end of the rules-based order

Gaza and the end of the rules-based order

Agnès Callamard writes: After more than four months of conflict, Israel’s campaign of retaliation against Hamas has been characterized by a pattern of war crimes and violations of international law. Israel’s stated justification for its war in Gaza is the elimination of Hamas, which is responsible for the horrific crimes committed during its October 7 attack on Israel: 1,139 people, mostly Israeli civilians, killed; thousands more wounded; a yet unknown number of women and girls subjected to sexual violence; and…

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Preparing for the next Nakba: A mysterious construction project takes shape in Egypt, near Gaza

Preparing for the next Nakba: A mysterious construction project takes shape in Egypt, near Gaza

The New York Times reports: A wall is going up in the desert of Egypt near the border of the war-torn Gaza Strip, but no one is talking much about it. Satellite imagery, photographs and video analyzed by The New York Times show a large patch of land being bulldozed and the wall being built in the buffer zone between Egypt and Rafah, the southern Gaza city overflowing with over a million displaced Palestinians that Israeli forces are poised to…

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Russian forces getting more access to Starlink satellite internet, threatening Ukraine’s military communications

Russian forces getting more access to Starlink satellite internet, threatening Ukraine’s military communications

RFE/RL reports: Russian troops in Ukraine increasingly have access to Starlink, the private satellite Internet network owned by Elon Musk that Ukraine’s military relies on heavily for battlefield communications. The findings from RFE/RL’s Russian Service corroborate earlier statements from Ukrainian military officials, underscoring how Kyiv’s ability to secure its command communications is potentially threatened. It comes as Ukrainian forces grapple with depleted weaponry and ammunition, and overall exhaustion, with Russian forces pressing localized offensives in several locations along the 1,200-kilometer…

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Judge rules full speed ahead on Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial

Judge rules full speed ahead on Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial

The Daily Beast reports: Donald Trump will face trial next month in New York City for faking documents to cover up his sexual affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, becoming the first American president to face a jury on criminal charges. On Thursday, Justice Juan Merchan refused to dismiss the case and set the trial to start March 25, as previously planned. Trump’s lead defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, immediately called the decision to keep the start of trial on schedule…

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Liberals are not laughing about Jon Stewart’s jabs at Joe Biden

Liberals are not laughing about Jon Stewart’s jabs at Joe Biden

Rolling Stone reports: One-time fans who perhaps remember comedian Jon Stewart only taking satirical swipes at conservatives while host of The Daily Show were shocked and aggrieved when he returned to host the program after almost nine years on Monday to take aim at President Joe Biden. During an “Indecision 2024” segment that anchored the first half of the show, Stewart aired exasperation over Donald Trump and Biden being the oldest-ever candidates for president, breaking a record they themselves set…

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Biden’s new plan for the Middle East is more of the same

Biden’s new plan for the Middle East is more of the same

Matthew Duss writes: In the wake of the horrific Oct. 7 attacks, U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration have stressed that there can be no return to the pre-Oct. 7 status quo. “It also means that when this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next. And in our view, it has to be a two-state solution,” Biden said at an Oct. 25 press conference. Last month, the administration offered a preview of its…

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Ireland, Spain want EU to review Israel’s human rights compliance in Gaza

Ireland, Spain want EU to review Israel’s human rights compliance in Gaza

Reuters reports: The prime ministers of Spain and Ireland asked the European Commission on Wednesday to urgently review whether Israel is complying with its human rights obligations in Gaza. At least 1,200 Israelis were killed and around 250 were taken hostage in a raid by Hamas militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7, prompting Israel to retaliate. At least 28,576 Palestinians have since been killed in Israeli strikes, the health ministry in Gaza said on Wednesday. Palestinians jammed into their…

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Why Biden’s pause on new LNG export terminals is a BFD

Why Biden’s pause on new LNG export terminals is a BFD

Yale Climate Connections reports: Natural gas has long been touted as a “bridge fuel” to a clean energy future that gets all its power from renewable sources like wind, solar, and geothermal power. That’s because natural gas produces about half as much carbon dioxide as coal when burned to generate electricity. But researchers have warned for years that natural gas — whose main ingredient is climate-warming methane — is not the trouble-free substitute for coal that the oil and gas…

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The tangled fates of Fani Willis and her biggest case

The tangled fates of Fani Willis and her biggest case

Charles Bethea writes: This past August, Manny Arora, a lawyer in Atlanta, considered an unusual challenge to the charges brought against his client Kenneth Chesebro. Arora, who is in his fifties, is an unflappable retired Air Force prosecutor. He has argued cases on behalf of the former N.F.L. star Adam (Pacman) Jones and Gucci Mane, the Atlanta rapper. Chesebro was a big client, too: a Harvard-trained lawyer and one of the alleged architects of Donald Trump’s scheme to have several…

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U.S. has new intelligence about Russia’s nuclear capabilities

U.S. has new intelligence about Russia’s nuclear capabilities

The New York Times reports: The United States has informed Congress and its allies in Europe of new intelligence about Russian nuclear capabilities that could pose an international threat, according to officials briefed on the matter. Officials said that the new intelligence was serious — but that the capability was still under development, and Russia had not deployed it. Consequently, it did not pose an urgent threat to the United States, Ukraine or America’s European allies, they said. The information…

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Biden administration investigating Israel’s possible war crimes — despite public claims to the contrary

Biden administration investigating Israel’s possible war crimes — despite public claims to the contrary

HuffPost reports: A month ago, White House spokesperson John Kirby declared Washington was so confident in Israel’s U.S.-backed offensive in Gaza that the U.S. did not need to investigate its actions. “I’m not aware of any kind of formal assessment being done by the United States government to analyze the compliance with international law by our partner Israel,” Kirby told reporters on Jan. 4, as the Biden administration rallied to defend Israel against an International Court of Justice case arguing…

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Young Israelis block aid to Gaza while IDF soldiers stand and watch

Young Israelis block aid to Gaza while IDF soldiers stand and watch

The Washington Post reports: In Gaza, families are eating animal feed to survive. Ninety-three percent of the population of over 2 million faces “crisis levels of hunger,” a U.N.-backed consortium reported in late December. Hadas Kremer, a 17-year-old with curly blond hair from the Orthodox settlement of Otniel near Hebron, explains that Palestinians who are unhappy and hungry in Gaza should leave. Israel pays for them to exit, she says. In reality, the vast majority of Gazans have no way…

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Democrats should pick a new presidential candidate now

Democrats should pick a new presidential candidate now

Damon Linker writes: The Democratic Party is heading into the 2024 election with a presumptive nominee who may well be incapable of defeating former President Donald Trump. The incumbent on whom the party is relying to run against Trump’s dangerous threat to the country and the world currently rates at an anemic and steady 39 percent approval. Worse, no less than three-quarters of Americans and half of Democrats worry that President Joe Biden lacks “the necessary mental and physical health to be president for a…

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Trump and the GOP’s fascist rhetoric has broad appeal, poll finds

Trump and the GOP’s fascist rhetoric has broad appeal, poll finds

Rolling Stone reports: Donald Trump’s fascistic rhetoric about how immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country, as well as the GOP’s embrace of the “great replacement theory,” are repellent to many Americans. But for a startling number of people, new survey results exclusively provided to Rolling Stone reveal, the message that immigrants pose a dark threat to the nation is being met with enthusiasm — or a dangerous shrug of indifference. More than a third of Trump’s 2020 voters…

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EU climate policy is dangerously reliant on untested carbon-capture technology

EU climate policy is dangerously reliant on untested carbon-capture technology

An editorial in Nature says: Last week, the European Commission published its long-awaited recommendations for climate targets for 2040. The commission, which is the executive arm of the European Union, is recommending that EU member states cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 90% by 2040, compared with 1990 levels. If countries agree, this would be an interim milestone, ahead of the European Climate Law, which sets out a legally binding target for net-zero emissions by 2050. A target cut of 90% is…

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Expressive responding: Political partisanship can lead to willful disregard for facts, study suggests

Expressive responding: Political partisanship can lead to willful disregard for facts, study suggests

PsyPost reports: Have you ever wondered if people really believe the controversial statements they make, especially in today’s politically charged environment? A recent study sheds light on this question, revealing that political affiliation may influence how people respond to factual questions, not necessarily reflecting their true beliefs but rather their allegiance to a political group. This phenomenon, known as “expressive responding,” was the focus of a recent replication study aimed at understanding how partisanship affects perceptions of truth in the…

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