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Category: Politics

Intelligence officials say U.S. has retrieved craft of non-human origin

Intelligence officials say U.S. has retrieved craft of non-human origin

Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal write: A former intelligence official turned whistleblower has given Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin. The information, he says, has been illegally withheld from Congress, and he filed a complaint alleging that he suffered illegal retaliation for his confidential disclosures, reported here for the first time. Other intelligence officials, both active and retired, with…

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The Arab Spring is in its death spiral. Does the West still care?

The Arab Spring is in its death spiral. Does the West still care?

Kim Ghattas writes: The past few months have brought despair to millions of Arabs as they’ve watched the rapid and seemingly definitive restoration of an old, dictatorial order throughout a region that was not long ago full of promise. The end of the Arab Spring has been forecast many times already. Now the last stubborn buds have been crushed. Tunisia, the country that started the wave of democratic uprisings in December 2010, served for more than a decade as a…

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Europe’s energy crisis is Putin’s problem now

Europe’s energy crisis is Putin’s problem now

Poltico reports: Barely six months ago, Russian media released a propaganda film showing freezing Europeans huddling together for warmth and cooking their pets, in a dystopian future without fossil fuels supplied by Russia. More than a year on since the start of the war in Ukraine, the Continent has more or less kicked its addiction to Moscow’s gas — and nobody’s had to eat a hamster. European wholesale natural gas prices have reached a two-year low, ending last week at…

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NATO-trained units will serve as tip of spear in Ukraine’s counteroffensive

NATO-trained units will serve as tip of spear in Ukraine’s counteroffensive

The Washington Post reports: When Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive finally begins, the fight will be led by brigades armed not only with Western weapons but also Western know-how, gleaned from months of training aimed at transforming Ukraine’s military into a modern force skilled in NATO’s most advanced warfare tactics. As other Ukrainian units were fighting to expel the Russian occupiers from the country’s east and south, the brand-new 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade was preparing for the next phase of war from…

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Use of NATO arms for attack in Russia raises doubts about Kyiv’s controls

Use of NATO arms for attack in Russia raises doubts about Kyiv’s controls

The Washington Post reports: The Russian fighters aligned against Moscow who launched a cross-border raid from Ukraine into the Belgorod region of Russia last week used at least four tactical vehicles originally given to Ukraine by the United States and Poland, U.S. officials said, raising questions about the unintended use of NATO-provided equipment and Kyiv’s commitments to secure materiel supplied by its supporters. Three of the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, also known as MRAPs, taken into Russia by the fighters…

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Le Pen’s far right served as mouthpiece for the Kremlin, says French parliamentary report

Le Pen’s far right served as mouthpiece for the Kremlin, says French parliamentary report

France 24 reports: After a six-month inquiry and more than 50 hearings, the cross-party parliamentary inquiry found that the National Rally (Rassemblement national or RN) party had served as a “communication channel” for Russian power, notably supporting Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea, according to the leaked report. The text, due to be published next week, was adopted on Thursday by eleven votes to five – to the dismay of the inquiry’s chair and instigator, RN lawmaker Jean-Philippe Tanguy, who promptly…

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Biden has a theory of MAGA that just might be working

Biden has a theory of MAGA that just might be working

Greg Sargent writes: Now that Congress has passed the debt limit deal, explanations for President Biden’s success in negotiating the outcome are abounding. Among them: Biden drew on his long experience in Washington to achieve bipartisan compromise; he avoided claiming a win so Republicans could support it; he didn’t get distracted by the media’s second-guessing. Here’s another way to understand this unexpected outcome: Biden is operating from a largely unappreciated theory of MAGA, and in some ways, it’s working. Passage of the deal, which averts default and economic…

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Inside the complicated reality of being America’s oldest president

Inside the complicated reality of being America’s oldest president

The New York Times reports: There was the time last winter when President Biden was awakened at 3 a.m. while on a trip to Asia and told that a missile had struck Poland, touching off a panic that Russia might have expanded the war in Ukraine to a NATO ally. Within hours in the middle of the night, Mr. Biden consulted his top advisers, called the president of Poland and the NATO secretary general, and gathered fellow world leaders to…

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Trump lawyer’s notes could become key evidence in the classified documents inquiry

Trump lawyer’s notes could become key evidence in the classified documents inquiry

The New York Times reports: Turning on his iPhone one day last year, the lawyer M. Evan Corcoran recorded his reflections about a high-profile new job: representing former President Donald J. Trump in an investigation into his handling of classified documents. In complete sentences and a narrative tone that sounded as if it had been ripped from a novel, Mr. Corcoran recounted in detail a nearly monthlong period of the documents investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter….

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Former gun company executive explains roots of America’s gun violence epidemic

Former gun company executive explains roots of America’s gun violence epidemic

By Corey G. Johnson This story was originally published by ProPublica. From the movie theater to the shopping mall, inside a church and a synagogue, through the grocery aisle and into the classroom, gun violence has invaded every corner of American life. It is a social epidemic no vaccine can stem, a crisis with no apparent end. Visual evidence of the carnage spills with numbing frequency onto TV shows and floods the internet. Each new shooting brings the lists of…

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Ukraine’s Zelensky: We are ready for counteroffensive

Ukraine’s Zelensky: We are ready for counteroffensive

The Wall Street Journal reports: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was now ready to launch a long-awaited counteroffensive but tempered a forecast of success with a warning: It could take some time and come at a heavy cost. “We strongly believe that we will succeed,” Zelensky said in an interview in this southern port city as his country’s military girded for what could be one of the war’s most consequential phases as it aims to retake territory occupied by Russia. “I don’t know how…

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White resistance to federal power

White resistance to federal power

Eric Foner writes: Earlier this year, Randy McNally, the speaker of the Tennessee Senate, issued a proclamation declaring April 2023 Confederate History Month. He urged ‘citizens from across this state’ to remember their ancestors’ ‘heroic struggle’ for ‘individual freedom’. Observers outside Tennessee may find it incongruous to identify a war fought to preserve slavery with the ideal of freedom, but Jefferson Cowie, who teaches history at Vanderbilt University, in the heart of the state, wouldn’t be surprised. His new book…

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Weapons expert cut from UK government event due to tweets critical of government

Weapons expert cut from UK government event due to tweets critical of government

BBC News reports: A global expert on nerve agents, stood down from speaking at a government-backed conference, says he believes it is because he is outspoken on a range of issues including asylum policy. Dan Kaszeta was disinvited from Tuesday’s conference after his social media content was vetted. The Ministry of Defence said checks on people speaking at government-organised events ensured a balanced discussion. But Mr Kaszeta insisted he would have only spoken on his area of expertise. That is…

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America is headed toward collapse. History shows how to stave it off

America is headed toward collapse. History shows how to stave it off

Peter Turchin writes: How has America slid into its current age of discord? Why has our trust in institutions collapsed, and why have our democratic norms unraveled? All human societies experience recurrent waves of political crisis, such as the one we face today. My research team built a database of hundreds of societies across 10,000 years to try to find out what causes them. We examined dozens of variables, including population numbers, measures of well-being, forms of governance, and the…

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Model prosecution memo for Trump classified documents

Model prosecution memo for Trump classified documents

Andrew Weissmann, Ryan Goodman, Joyce Vance, Norman L. Eisen, Fred Wertheimer, Siven Watt, E. Danya Perry, Joshua Stanton and Joshua Kolb write: This model prosecution memorandum assesses potential charges federal prosecutors may bring against former President Donald Trump. It focuses on those emanating from his handling of classified documents and other government records since leaving office on January 20, 2021. It includes crimes related to the removal and retention of national security information and obstruction of the investigation into his…

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Antisemitism is far more prevalent on the far right than the far left

Antisemitism is far more prevalent on the far right than the far left

The Forward reports: A new study is casting doubt on the idea, held by some but not most American Jews, that antisemitism is just as prevalent on the far left as it is on the far right. Though far more American Jews consider the far right as the greater antisemitic threat, some academics and Jewish leaders have embraced horseshoe theory — the idea the opposite ends of an ideological spectrum are similar — and applied it to antisemitism. Though the…

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