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Category: Politics

Xi warned Biden during summit that Beijing will reunify Taiwan with China

Xi warned Biden during summit that Beijing will reunify Taiwan with China

NBC News reports: Chinese President Xi Jinping bluntly told President Joe Biden during their recent summit in San Francisco that Beijing will reunify Taiwan with mainland China but that the timing has not yet been decided, according to three current and former U.S. officials. Xi told Biden in a group meeting attended by a dozen American and Chinese officials that China’s preference is to take Taiwan peacefully, not by force, the officials said. The Chinese leader also referenced public predictions…

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Colorado Supreme Court kicks Trump off the state’s 2024 primary ballot for violating the U.S. Constitution

Colorado Supreme Court kicks Trump off the state’s 2024 primary ballot for violating the U.S. Constitution

NBC News reports: In a bombshell decision, Colorado’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that former President Donald Trump’s candidacy in the state’s primary next year is prohibited on constitutional grounds. The first-of-its kind ruling stems from a lawsuit that focused a little-known provision in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Similar challenges in other states have proven unsuccessful. “A majority of the court holds that President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of…

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Democratic lawmakers who served in military and CIA urge Biden to push Israel to change course in Gaza

Democratic lawmakers who served in military and CIA urge Biden to push Israel to change course in Gaza

NBC News reports: A number of Democratic lawmakers who served in the military and in the CIA say Israel’s tactics in the Gaza Strip are endangering efforts to defeat Hamas militants and called on President Joe Biden to use “all our leverage” to secure an immediate shift in Israel’s approach. In a letter sent Monday to Biden, the House lawmakers said they were “deeply concerned” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current military strategy in Gaza. “The mounting civilian death…

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Poll finds wide disapproval of Biden on Gaza with sharp generational divide on Israel

Poll finds wide disapproval of Biden on Gaza with sharp generational divide on Israel

The New York Times reports: Voters broadly disapprove of the way President Biden is handling the bloody strife between Israelis and Palestinians, a New York Times/Siena College poll has found, with younger Americans far more critical than older voters of both Israel’s conduct and of the administration’s response to the war in Gaza. Voters are also sending decidedly mixed signals about the direction U.S. policy-making should take as the war in Gaza grinds into its third month, with Israelis still…

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Red Sea attacks on ships pose another threat to an already precarious global economy

Red Sea attacks on ships pose another threat to an already precarious global economy

The New York Times reports: The wave of attacks against merchant ships in the Red Sea is forcing companies to send ships on longer routes and threatens to hurt an already wobbly global economy. The Houthis, an armed group backed by Iran that controls much of northern Yemen, have been using drones and missiles to target ships since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. That has forced some shipping giants and oil companies to avoid the Suez Canal, a development…

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Ukraine finally moves to fortify front line, but could it be too little too late?

Ukraine finally moves to fortify front line, but could it be too little too late?

The Kyiv Independent reports: “If you want to live, dig.” The words, often spoken by Ukrainian troops, are universal advice for trench warfare in general, but especially for both sides in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Normally expressed as advice to the individual soldier, the maxim now applies to the country as a whole. Twenty-one months into the full-scale war, World War I-style tactics, with the high-tech edge brought by drones and other innovations, continue to dominate. Russia and Ukraine are…

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What does it mean to erase a people – a nation, culture, identity? In Gaza, we are beginning to find out

What does it mean to erase a people – a nation, culture, identity? In Gaza, we are beginning to find out

Nesrine Malik writes: I will start this column with a question for you, dear reader. What connects you with your country, and makes you feel it is yours? What gives you a sense of identity and belonging? It’s the physical things, of course – where you live, where you were born, where your family and friends reside. But underlying those practical aspects, I suspect, are all the other things that you don’t think about, that you take for granted. The…

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‘We have to recognize everyone’s safety is intertwined’: Peter Beinart of Jewish Currents on Gaza

‘We have to recognize everyone’s safety is intertwined’: Peter Beinart of Jewish Currents on Gaza

  Katie Couric talks with Peter Beinart, editor-at-large at Jewish Currents, about how his views on the Israel Palestine conflict changed after visiting the West Bank and talking with Palestinians. He also shares his ideas for how the conflict could finally end, using South Africa and Northern Ireland as guides.

Pope condemns Israeli attack on Catholic church in Gaza as ‘terrorism’

Pope condemns Israeli attack on Catholic church in Gaza as ‘terrorism’

  BBC News reports: Civilians trapped in a church in Gaza City are living in an “unreal” sense of fear, a relative of one of those confined there has said. Fifi Saba, whose sister is trapped inside the Holy Family Church, said people were scared to move out of fear of being shot. A mother and her daughter were killed inside the church by sniper fire on Saturday, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said. Pope Francis condemned the attack. “A…

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Mehdi Hasan interviews Jewish journalist Masha Gessen on comparing Gaza to a Nazi-era ghetto

Mehdi Hasan interviews Jewish journalist Masha Gessen on comparing Gaza to a Nazi-era ghetto

  Russian-American writer Masha Gessen received backlash in Germany and a scaled-back ceremony for a prominent award after they compared conditions in Gaza to those of Nazi-era Jewish ghettos in Eastern Europe in a recent piece. MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan speaks with Gessen, a staff writer at The New Yorker, about the controversy.

Give Russia’s $300 billion frozen assets to Ukraine now

Give Russia’s $300 billion frozen assets to Ukraine now

Anne Applebaum writes: A majority of Americans and a majority of Congress want to help Ukraine win the war against Russia, and to stop the spread of autocracy into Europe. A majority of people in the European Union and a majority of EU leaders want the same. But small minorities of lawmakers—some inspired by Russian President Vladimir Putin or his money, some bent on bargaining for other things—have managed to block or delay that aid. On both sides of the…

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Clarence Thomas’ money problems and his wealthy benefactors

Clarence Thomas’ money problems and his wealthy benefactors

ProPublica reports: In early January 2000, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy…

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Pressure mounts on Israel to renew cease-fire talks after killing of hostages raises alarm about its conduct in Gaza

Pressure mounts on Israel to renew cease-fire talks after killing of hostages raises alarm about its conduct in Gaza

The Associated Press reports: Israel’s government faced calls for a cease-fire from some of its closest European allies and from protesters at home on Sunday after a series of shootings, including of three hostages who waved a white flag, added to mounting concerns about its conduct in the 10-week-old war in Gaza. The protesters urge the government to renew hostage negotiations with Gaza’s Hamas rulers, whom it has vowed to destroy. Israel could also face pressure to scale back major…

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UN commissioner: ‘Gazans could start dying of hunger’

UN commissioner: ‘Gazans could start dying of hunger’

Bruno Maçães writes: Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), was two days back from the city of Rafah in southern Gaza when we spoke earlier today (15 December). He compared this latest trip with a previous visit he made on the eve of the November truce between Israel and Hamas. Lazzarini had been shocked by the squalid conditions of the shelters at the UNRWA refugee camp,…

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Israel should make Gaza look like Auschwitz, says council head

Israel should make Gaza look like Auschwitz, says council head

The Jerusalem Post reports: Israel should be sending Palestinian Gazans fleeing the fighting to refugee camps in Lebanon, with the entire Gaza Strip being emptied and leveled and turned into a museum like the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, Metula Council head David Azoulai told 103FM. “After October 7, instead of urging people to go south, we should direct them to the beaches. The Navy can transport them to the shores of Lebanon, where there are already sufficient refugee camps….

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Why Samantha Power would resign over Gaza — if she had any integrity

Why Samantha Power would resign over Gaza — if she had any integrity

Jon Schwarz writes: A State Department official resigned on October 14, writing in a letter that the U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza “will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and Palestinian people.” The director of the New York office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights resigned on October 31, stating that “once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organization we serve appears powerless to…

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