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Category: Politics

Mass graves in Gaza show victims’ hands were tied, says UN rights office

Mass graves in Gaza show victims’ hands were tied, says UN rights office

UN News reports: Disturbing reports continue to emerge about mass graves in Gaza in which Palestinian victims were reportedly found stripped naked with their hands tied, prompting renewed concerns about possible war crimes amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Tuesday. The development follows the recovery of hundreds of bodies “buried deep in the ground and covered with waste” over the weekend at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, central Gaza, and at Al-Shifa Hospital in…

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Gaza is Biden’s war

Gaza is Biden’s war

Nicholas Kristof writes: Gaza has become the albatross around Biden’s neck. It is his war, not just Benjamin Netanyahu’s. It will be part of his legacy, an element of his obituary, a blot on his campaign — and it could get worse if Gaza cascades into a full-blown famine or violent anarchy, or if a wider war breaks out involving Iran or Lebanon. An Israeli strike on a military base in central Iran early Friday underscored the danger of a…

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‘Israelism’: How deep do indoctrination and Israeli army glorification go?

‘Israelism’: How deep do indoctrination and Israeli army glorification go?

  The documentary Israelism examines the rift among Jews regarding Palestine, highlighting young people’s increasing criticism of Israel and Zionism. This divide is driven by firsthand accounts of Israel’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. As the film faces opposition from groups trying to cancel its screenings, its main protagonist, Simone Zimmerman, and its co-director and producer, Erin Axelman, talk to Al Jazeera.

The Republicans who want American carnage

The Republicans who want American carnage

Adam Serwer writes: Tom Cotton has never seen a left-wing protest he didn’t want crushed at gunpoint. On Monday, the Arkansas senator demanded that President Joe Biden send in the National Guard to clear out the student protests at Columbia University against the Israel-Hamas war, which he described as “the nascent pogroms at Columbia.” Last week, Cotton posted on X, “I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands. It’s time…

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Team Trump is ready to lose the Supreme Court immunity case. They’re celebrating

Team Trump is ready to lose the Supreme Court immunity case. They’re celebrating

Rolling Stone reports: Donald Trump‘s inner circle doesn’t expect the Supreme Court to go along with his extreme arguments about executive power in the immunity case before the justices. But what the high court does now is almost beside the point: Trump already won. Three people with direct knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone that many of the former president’s lawyers and political advisers have already accepted that the justices will likely rule against him, and reject his claims…

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My dinner with Andreessen

My dinner with Andreessen

Rick Perlstein writes: Recently, I read about venture capitalist Marc Andreessen putting his 12,000-square-foot mansion in Atherton, California, which has seven fireplaces, up for sale for $33.75 million. This was done to spend more time, one supposes, at the $177 million home he owns in Paradise Cove, California; or the $34 million one he bought beside it; or the $44.5 million one in a place called Escondido Beach. Upon reading this, I realized it was time to stop procrastinating and…

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The media should be celebrating college protesters instead of demonizing them

The media should be celebrating college protesters instead of demonizing them

Dan Froomkin writes: Mainstream-media reporters covering the growing wave of college protests against Israel’s war in Gaza have adopted an overwhelmingly negative tone about something they should be celebrating: the peaceful free expression of college students understandably devastated by the pulverizing of Gaza and the slaughter of over 34,000 Palestinians by the Israeli military. The root cause of this journalistic dysfunction is that too many reporters have embraced the toxic presumption that any anti-Gaza-war protest is inherently antisemitic, and that…

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We visited the solidarity encampment at Columbia University. Here’s what it’s really like

We visited the solidarity encampment at Columbia University. Here’s what it’s really like

New York City Council Members Tiffany Cabán, Alexa Avilés, Shahana Hanif, and Sandy Nurse write: If you only go by the recent statements from Mayor Eric Adams, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and President Joe Biden, you might conclude that a student protest against the mass killing in Gaza is worse than the killing itself. These official statements, and so many posts on social media, depict the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the Columbia University campus as a cesspit of antisemitic hatred and…

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Pro-Palestinian encampments and protests spread on college campuses across the U.S.

Pro-Palestinian encampments and protests spread on college campuses across the U.S.

NPR reports: Tensions are growing on U.S. college campuses, as the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have rocked New York-area schools in recent days — and the ensuing arrests of participants — spread from coast to coast. Students have launched protests and encampments at more than a dozen schools across the country, from Massachusetts to Michigan to California. They are calling for an end both to the Israel-Hamas war and their universities’ investment in companies that profit from it or, more broadly,…

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Ukraine to EU: Don’t let U.S. aid package make you complacent

Ukraine to EU: Don’t let U.S. aid package make you complacent

Politico reports: Washington has agreed to send billions more in aid to Ukraine, but Kyiv’s message to Europe is clear: You guys are not off the hook. “We all welcome the decision of the U.S. House of Representatives … But we in Europe cannot and should not relax,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said during a video call with EU foreign ministers on Monday. “The defense of Europe is first and foremost a matter for us, Europeans.” European heads of…

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Opening statements are the most important part of a trial – as lawyers in Trump’s hush money case know well

Opening statements are the most important part of a trial – as lawyers in Trump’s hush money case know well

Former U.S. President Donald Trump enters Manhattan Criminal Court on April 22, 2024. Victor J. Blue – Pool/Getty Images By Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., Harvard University Though Hollywood movies about courtroom dramas often glamorize the closing arguments given by lawyers, in reality the opening statement is likely the most important single event of a trial. Such was the case in the hush money trial involving former President Donald Trump and alleged payments to porn star Stormy Daniels when lawyers for…

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The MAGA circus Trump wanted outside his trial hasn’t arrived

The MAGA circus Trump wanted outside his trial hasn’t arrived

The New York Times reports: Donald J. Trump was evidently not happy with what he saw out the window of his chauffeured S.U.V. as he rode through Lower Manhattan on Monday morning for the beginning of opening arguments in his first criminal trial. The scene that confronted him as he approached the dingy courthouse at 100 Centre Street was underwhelming. Across the street, at Collect Pond Park, the designated site for protesters during the trial, only a handful of Trump…

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Protests at Columbia, Yale, and many other campuses across the U.S.

Protests at Columbia, Yale, and many other campuses across the U.S.

Bruce Robbins, the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia, writes: When Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia University, testified before the House of Representatives on 17 April, she didn’t fall into the traps set a few months earlier for the presidents of Penn, MIT and Harvard, two of whom are now gone. They had been asked whether they would permit genocidal talk against the Jews on their campuses – a dark discourse that lurked, according to the…

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How the Democratic party is hurting itself by betraying young voters and failing to defend free speech

How the Democratic party is hurting itself by betraying young voters and failing to defend free speech

The New York Times reports: It’s a nightmare scenario for Democrats: Protesters disrupt their convention this summer; they clash with the police; chaos seems to take hold. It may not be imaginary. As protests over Israel’s war in Gaza continue to intensify, especially on college campuses, activists are preparing to be in Chicago this summer for the Democratic National Convention. The very idea sends some Democrats right back to 1968, when their convention, also in Chicago, was overshadowed by infighting…

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Columbia University protests and the lessons of ‘Gym Crow’

Columbia University protests and the lessons of ‘Gym Crow’

Judd Legum writes: In the early morning hours of April 30, 1968, then-Columbia University President Grayson Kirk summoned the NYPD to arrest hundreds of student protestors. About 1,000 police officers arrived on campus and, wielding nightsticks, violently arrested about 700 students. Almost 150 protesters ended up in the hospital with lacerations, a few broken bones, and other injuries. The student protesters had occupied several university buildings, forcing the school to suspend classes, in protest of Columbia’s plans to build a…

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Israel has yet to provide evidence of alleged UNRWA staff terrorist links, Colonna report says

Israel has yet to provide evidence of alleged UNRWA staff terrorist links, Colonna report says

The Guardian reports: Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of its claims that employees of the UN relief agency Unrwa are members of terrorist organisations, an independent review led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna has said. The Colonna report, which was commissioned by the UN in the wake of Israeli allegations, found that Unrwa had regularly supplied Israel with lists of its employees for vetting, and that “the Israeli government has not informed Unrwa of any…

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