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Category: Politics

Threats couldn’t save Jim Jordan. But Trump-era intimidation has had an impact

Threats couldn’t save Jim Jordan. But Trump-era intimidation has had an impact

Aaron Blake writes: CNN on Thursday aired harrowing audio of the kind of intimidation and threats that an increasing number of Republican lawmakers says they’ve faced over their opposition to the speakership bid of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). And it’s ugly. The caller leaves a message for an unnamed lawmaker’s wife and, while repeatedly qualifying that they aren’t talking about violence, they do threaten to harass the woman endlessly in public. The caller says the woman’s husband must vote “Jim…

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Humanitarian aid cannot be weaponized. Gazans are depending on it

Humanitarian aid cannot be weaponized. Gazans are depending on it

Lisandra Novo writes: On October 13, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)—an impartial, neutral humanitarian organization key to the origin story of the Geneva Conventions—issued a rare and exceptional public statement reminding parties to the escalating Israel-Hamas conflict of their obligations under international humanitarian law. After first condemning Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on October 7, ICRC stated that “[t]he instructions issued by the Israeli authorities for the population of Gaza City to immediately leave their homes, coupled with the complete siege…

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U.S.-approved aid faces several hurdles to reach desperate Gazans

U.S.-approved aid faces several hurdles to reach desperate Gazans

The Washington Post reports: The announcement Wednesday that President Biden had secured a deal to allow aid into the besieged and bombarded Gaza Strip was hailed as a humanitarian breakthrough, but it was a limited and incomplete agreement, and there are some steep diplomatic hurdles to clear before aid can reach Palestinians in need. Wrapping up a trip to Israel on Wednesday, Biden told reporters that up to 20 trucks of aid from Egypt would be allowed into the enclave…

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Survivors of kibbutz attack turn their ire on Netanyahu

Survivors of kibbutz attack turn their ire on Netanyahu

Politico reports: Tomer Eliaz, a 17-year-old boy in the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, was forced to go door-to-door by Hamas and tell neighbors to come out, saying he would be killed if they didn’t. Several opened up and were murdered, while others were hauled off as hostages to Gaza — with several children cooped up in chicken pens. After using the teenage boy as bait, the Islamist militants shot him dead too. Just 800 meters from the Gaza border, Nahal…

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Drones target U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria

Drones target U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria

Reuters reports: U.S. military forces in Iraq were targeted on Wednesday in two separate drone attacks, with one causing minor injuries to a small number of troops even though the U.S. military managed to intercept the armed drone, a U.S. official said. The official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, did not say who was suspected of the attacks on the al-Asad air base and the al-Harir air base. But Washington is on heightened alert for activity by…

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U.S. right heats up inflammatory rhetoric on Palestine as Muslim groups worry

U.S. right heats up inflammatory rhetoric on Palestine as Muslim groups worry

The Guardian reports: Senator Lindsey Graham wants to see Gaza flattened. Congressman Max Miller said the laws of war should be swept aside. A former US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, suggested that Palestinians as a whole were responsible for Hamas’s crimes. American politicians have rushed to plant their flags firmly with Israel after Hamas killed more than 1,400 people, and abducted about 200 others, in its unprecedented attack from the Gaza Strip. Some have echoed the demand by the…

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MAGA Republicans are normalizing violent threats

MAGA Republicans are normalizing violent threats

Bradley Klein and Scott Nelson write: It scarcely drew the attention of the media last month when Mitt Romney revealed in an Atlantic article — based on a forthcoming book about the senator — that a number of his fellow Republicans would have voted for Donald Trump’s second impeachment had it not been for fear of physical attack to themselves and their families. Some of the reluctance to hold Trump accountable was a function of the same old perverse political…

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Sidney Powell’s plea deal is terrible news for Trump

Sidney Powell’s plea deal is terrible news for Trump

The Daily Beast reports: As the deranged attorney who once had Donald Trump’s ear and led the litigation front of his 2020 coup attempt, Sidney Powell is sitting on a mountain of secrets. Now that she’s flipped, she might be the most dangerous witness yet against the former president. On Thursday, just one day before the start of her Atlanta trial, Powell surprised the nation with a guilty plea. She cut a sweetheart deal, avoiding years behind bars for her…

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Flood of false information and partisan narratives obscures efforts to find out who’s responsible for explosion at Gaza hospital

Flood of false information and partisan narratives obscures efforts to find out who’s responsible for explosion at Gaza hospital

Wired reports: Yesterday evening around 7 pm local time, an explosion rocked the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City. Within minutes, information about what had happened was distorted by partisan narratives, disinformation, and a rush to be first to post about the blast. Add in mainstream media outlets parroting official statements without verifying their veracity, and the result was a chaotic information environment in which no one was sure what had happened or how. “There’s just been this massive sort…

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Piecing together what happened at Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City

Piecing together what happened at Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City

The Guardian reports: The first local reports of the blast started to come in between 7pm and 7.20pm. Throughout the day the Telegram channels of Hamas’s armed wing, al-Qassam brigades, had been posting updates of attempted strikes into Israel. Updates at 7pm described “bombardment by rockets” on Ashdod. Another, three minutes later, described an attack on Tel Aviv. At 8.14pm, Hamas gave a further update, describing how al-Qassam brigades had targeted the northern Israeli city of Haifa with a R160…

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Putin touts solidarity with China in Xi’s pitch for new world order as crisis grips Middle East

Putin touts solidarity with China in Xi’s pitch for new world order as crisis grips Middle East

CNN reports: Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping discussed the conflict in the Middle East during a meeting on the sidelines of the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing Wednesday, according to the Russian leader – who said “common threats” brought the two countries closer. The international gathering, which saw leaders and representatives from countries mostly in the Global South congregate in the Chinese capital, took place under the shadow of war between Israel and militant group Hamas that…

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Senior State Department official resigns over Biden’s Gaza policy

Senior State Department official resigns over Biden’s Gaza policy

HuffPost reports: Veteran State Department official Josh Paul resigned from the agency on Tuesday over President Joe Biden’s approach to Israel-Palestine, telling HuffPost he felt he had to do so because he knew he could not push for a more humane policy within the U.S. government. “I have had my fair share of debates and discussions and efforts to shift policy on controversial arms sales,” said Paul, who spent more than 11 years at State’s bureau of political-military affairs, which…

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Why is Britain retreating from global leadership on climate action?

Why is Britain retreating from global leadership on climate action?

Fred Pearce writes: In 1988, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher became the first world leader to take a stand on fighting climate change. Last month, exactly a quarter-century later, her successor Rishi Sunak tore up a cross-party consensus on the issue that had survived the intervening eight general elections and replaced it with a populist assault on what had been his own government’s environmental policies. Thatcher, who trained as a chemist before entering politics, took her stand at a packed…

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is destroying Donald Trump’s election chances, poll says

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is destroying Donald Trump’s election chances, poll says

HuffPost reports: Third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy is on track to push President Joe Biden to an easy victory over Donald Trump in a potential 2024 showdown, according to a new poll. Since Kennedy announced he was leaving the Democratic race to run as an independent earlier this month, the debate has swirled over whom he would hurt more, the four-times-indicted ex-president or the incumbent. But an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll released Tuesday offered an early prediction: Biden would beat…

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Man who spread misinformation on Trump’s behalf sentenced to seven months in prison

Man who spread misinformation on Trump’s behalf sentenced to seven months in prison

The New York Times reports: A digital-age dirty-trickster who used Twitter posts that looked like Hillary Clinton ads to spread false information before the 2016 presidential election was sentenced on Tuesday to seven months in prison. During a trial last spring, prosecutors presented evidence that the man, Douglass Mackey, had joined private Twitter groups where participants reveled in using lies and deceit on behalf of Donald J. Trump, carrying out what one participant termed “the deep psyops of meme war.”…

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MSNBC: Death toll at Gaza hospital indicative of Israeli bombing, not misfired Palestinian rocket

MSNBC: Death toll at Gaza hospital indicative of Israeli bombing, not misfired Palestinian rocket

  MSNBC’s Raf Sanchez: We should also say that this kind of death toll is not what you normally associate with Palestinian rockets. These rockets are dangerous, they are deadly — they do not tend to kill hundreds of people in a single strike in the way that Israeli high explosives, especially these [U.S. made] bunker buster bombs that are used to target these Hamas tunnels under Gaza City, do have the potential to kill hundreds of people. And we…

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