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Category: Politics

Bernie Sanders calls on Congress to block funding for Israel’s ‘immoral’ war

Bernie Sanders calls on Congress to block funding for Israel’s ‘immoral’ war

The Guardian reports: Bernie Sanders, the progressive senator of Vermont, issued a statement Tuesday calling on Congress to block additional funding to Israel amid the war in Gaza, where more than 22,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks after Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel on 7 October. “While we recognize that Hamas’ barbaric terrorist attack began this war, we must also recognize that Israel’s military response has been grossly disproportionate, immoral and in violation of international law,” Sanders…

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Israel assassinates Hamas leader who has been ‘indispensable’ in hostage release negotiations

Israel assassinates Hamas leader who has been ‘indispensable’ in hostage release negotiations

Jason Burke writes: The killing of Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut is the first strike in a campaign of assassinations overseas promised by Israeli officials for several months. The target was carefully chosen – one of the most senior Hamas leaders and the organisation’s main link to Iran and the Lebanon-based militia Hezbollah. Arouri was also influential in the occupied West Bank, where he was born and where violence has soared in recent months. Some Israeli officials also believe that the…

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How death threats get Republicans to fall in line behind Trump

How death threats get Republicans to fall in line behind Trump

Zack Beauchamp reports: Stephen Richer should have been safe. In early 2021, Richer was an Arizona Republican official who regularly attended local party events. At the time, he was the newly elected county recorder of Maricopa County. The job was a new level of prominence — he was now the most important election supervisory official in the state’s largest county — but going to Arizona Republican events was routine: the kind of thing that Richer, like any state politician, had…

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How the Biden campaign wants voters to focus on who they’re voting against, not who they’re voting for

How the Biden campaign wants voters to focus on who they’re voting against, not who they’re voting for

CNN reports: The 2024 campaign year for President Joe Biden’s inner circle will largely be about carefully ratcheting up the intensity against Donald Trump, wary of voters becoming dulled to what they expect to be the former president’s ever wilder rhetoric and promises about what he would do if back in power. Or, as some of the younger aides on Biden’s reelection campaign have been grimly joking, it’s about when to go “full Hitler” – when the leading Republican candidate’s…

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Trump plot to turn his Jan. 6 trial into a ‘MAGA freak show’

Trump plot to turn his Jan. 6 trial into a ‘MAGA freak show’

Rolling Stone reports: Attempts to drag Nancy Pelosi into court to berate her on the stand and, hopefully, on live TV. Claims that the Jan. 6 Capitol attack was an FBI frame job, with an assist from Antifa. Conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was indeed “stolen,” supposedly backed up by still-classified documents. Unhinged assertions that President Joe Biden is now secretly, personally orchestrating an unprecedented act of political persecution. Calls to publicly unmask the federal officials and lawyers investigating…

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Dying in the fields as temperatures soar

Dying in the fields as temperatures soar

Liza Gross and Peter Aldhous report: For most of July 2019, stifling heat hung over the agricultural fields of California’s Central Valley, as farmworkers like William Salas Jiminez labored under the sun’s searing rays. Temperatures had dipped from 99 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit the last day of the month, when the 56-year-old Puerto Rico native was installing irrigation tubing in an almond orchard near Arvin, at the valley’s southern edge. Around 1:30 that afternoon Salas sat down to rest. When…

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Brexit has completely failed for UK, say clear majority of Britons polled

Brexit has completely failed for UK, say clear majority of Britons polled

The Observer reports: A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union. The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the…

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International Court of Justice could charge Israel with genocide in Gaza, state officials fear

International Court of Justice could charge Israel with genocide in Gaza, state officials fear

  Haaretz reports: The security establishment and the State Attorney’s Office are concerned that the International Court of Justice at the Hague will charge Israel with genocide in the Gaza Strip – this at the request of South Africa, which petitioned the court over the weekend. Haaretz has learned that a senior legal expert dealing with the matter has in recent days warned IDF brass, including Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi, that there is real danger that the court will…

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The quest to make Big Oil pay for climate change

The quest to make Big Oil pay for climate change

Jake Bolster writes: Eight days after the Marshall Fire [in Colorado in 2021], U.S. President Joe Biden toured the wreckage and gave a speech to the community, saying, “We can’t ignore the reality that these fires are being supercharged. They’re being supercharged by a change in the weather.” Three years before the Marshall Fire, Boulder and San Miguel counties had filed a lawsuit seeking damages from the oil companies Exxon and Suncor by claiming much the same thing. Changes in…

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Biden’s flip-flopping on fossil fuels is bad policy and bad politics

Biden’s flip-flopping on fossil fuels is bad policy and bad politics

The Washington Post reports: As U.S. oil production was soaring to record levels in December, Biden administration officials were at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai assuring world leaders that the United States would help lead the global transition away from fossil fuels. That dichotomy stood out to Amara Enyia, an activist and policy director for the Movement for Black Lives, who attended the conference, known as COP28. “There’s this dissonance between the commitments that are being made versus…

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Black, Hispanic, young voters abandon Biden as election year begins

Black, Hispanic, young voters abandon Biden as election year begins

USA Today reports: President Joe Biden heads into the election year showing alarming weakness among stalwarts of the Democratic base, with Donald Trump leading among Hispanic voters and young people. One in 5 Black voters now say they’ll support a third-party candidate in November. In a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, Biden’s failure to consolidate support in key parts of the coalition that elected him in 2020 has left him narrowly trailing Trump, the likely Republican nominee, 39%-37%; 17% support…

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Israel plans to continue war on Gaza for the ‘entire coming year’

Israel plans to continue war on Gaza for the ‘entire coming year’

The Times of Israel reports: IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari says the military is making adjustments to its deployment in the Gaza Strip, as it anticipates a long war against the Hamas terror group, stretching throughout the entire coming year. “We are adjusting the fighting methods to each area in Gaza, as well as the necessary forces to carry out the mission in the best way possible. Each area has different characteristics and different operational needs,” he says. “Tonight,…

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Netanyahu says Israel must control Egypt-Gaza border zone

Netanyahu says Israel must control Egypt-Gaza border zone

Middle East Eye reports: Israel’s prime minister has said a narrow strip of land between Egypt and Gaza must be retaken by Israel. “The Philadelphi Corridor – or to put it more correctly, the southern stoppage point [of Gaza] – must be in our hands,” Benjamin Netanyahu said in a press conference on Saturday. “It must be shut. It is clear that any other arrangement would not ensure the demilitarisation that we seek,” he added. The Philadelphi Corridor is a…

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The greatest challenge for journalists in Gaza is staying alive

The greatest challenge for journalists in Gaza is staying alive

Afnan Abu Yahia and Lila Hassan write: Samer Abu Daqqa loved being a journalist. A cameraman for over 20 years with Al Jazeera, Abu Daqqa, 45, had covered at least seven wars. Israel’s war on Gaza, however, would turn out to be his last. While covering an air strike at a United Nations–run school on December 15, Israeli forces shot Abu Daqqa. Intense shelling prevented an ambulance from reaching him—three paramedics were killed trying to get to the area—and he…

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For the safety of Jews and Palestinians, stop weaponizing antisemitism

For the safety of Jews and Palestinians, stop weaponizing antisemitism

Bernie Steinberg writes: For eighteen years I had the great privilege of working as Executive Director of Harvard Hillel. As a leader of Jewish communities on campus, in New England, and around the nation, I have helped cultivate a new generation of Jewish leaders and citizens. I navigated moments of tension and war: the tumultuous 1990s, as the Oslo Accords began to crumble; the Second Intifada; 9/11 and its fallout; the Iraq War; Israel’s Second Lebanon War and its war…

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The EU should support Ireland’s bold move to regulate social media

The EU should support Ireland’s bold move to regulate social media

Zephyr Teachout and Roger McNamee write: Dublin, Ireland, was stunned a month ago by riots that transformed its downtown into chaos, the worst rioting in decades, stemming from far-right online rumors about an attack on children.  The riots, like Jan. 6, appear to be a direct outgrowth of the amplification ecosystem supported by social media networks such as TikTok, Google’s YouTube and Meta’s Instagram, which likely keep their European headquarters in Dublin for tax reasons.  Ireland, long ridiculed for bowing…

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