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Category: Politics

Trump ought to face the charge of seditious conspiracy just as the Oath Keepers did

Trump ought to face the charge of seditious conspiracy just as the Oath Keepers did

Frank Figliuzzi writes: Tuesday’s convictions of five Oath Keepers — including founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes and top deputy Kelly Meggs who were found guilty of the gravely serious charge of seditious conspiracy — may seem like game-winning goals, but they’re just critical points the Justice Department put on the board right before halftime. The government’s successful prosecution sidelines some strong players, but the captains and coaches we have reason to suspect called the shots on Jan. 6, 2021 (former President…

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Musk brings one of America’s most prominent Nazis back to Twitter

Musk brings one of America’s most prominent Nazis back to Twitter

Rolling Stone reports: Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin has been reinstated to Twitter under Elon Musk’s new policies for the platform. The founder of the white supremacist website The Daily Stormer had been banned from Twitter since 2013. Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, who was booted off Twitter in 2013, has had his account restored. pic.twitter.com/sEv5UDVUw2 — Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) December 2, 2022 Anglin has publicly indicated that the goal of his operation and adherence to white nationalist ideology is to “ethnically cleanse White nations…

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Surging Twitter antisemitism unites fringe, encourages violence, officials say

Surging Twitter antisemitism unites fringe, encourages violence, officials say

The Washington Post reports: Current and former federal officials are warning that a surge in hate speech and disinformation about Jews on Twitter is uniting and popularizing some of the same extremists who have helped push people to engage in violent protests including the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress. The officials are predicting that Twitter will contribute to more violence in the months ahead, citing the proliferation of extreme content, including support for genocidal Nazis by celebrities with wide…

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How Europe lets Iran and Russia get away with murder

How Europe lets Iran and Russia get away with murder

Matthew Karnitschnig reports: On a balmy September evening last year, an Azeri man carrying a Russian passport crossed the border from northern Cyprus into southern Cyprus. He traveled light: a pistol, a handful of bullets and a silencer. It was going to be the perfect hit job. Then, just as the man was about to step into a rental car and carry out his mission — which prosecutors say was to gun down five Jewish businessmen, including an Israeli billionaire…

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Apple makes plans to move production out of China

Apple makes plans to move production out of China

The Wall Street Journal reports: In recent weeks, Apple has accelerated plans to shift some of its production outside China, long the dominant country in the supply chain that built the world’s most valuable company, say people involved in the discussions. It is telling suppliers to plan more actively for assembling Apple products elsewhere in Asia, particularly India and Vietnam, they say, and looking to reduce dependence on Taiwanese assemblers led by Foxconn Technology Group. Turmoil at a place called…

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The GOP can’t hide from extremism

The GOP can’t hide from extremism

Ronald Brownstein writes: The role of extremist white nationalists in the GOP may be approaching an inflection point. The backlash against former President Donald Trump’s meeting with Nick Fuentes, an avowed racist, anti-Semite, and Christian nationalist, has compelled more Republican officeholders than at any point since the Charlottesville riot in 2017 to publicly condemn those extremist views. Yet few GOP officials have criticized the former president personally—much less declared that Trump’s meeting with Fuentes and Ye, the rapper (formerly known…

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No one, including federal judges and former presidents, stands above the law

No one, including federal judges and former presidents, stands above the law

Shan Wu writes: Let’s be clear: Judge Cannon tried to halt a national security investigation by enjoining DOJ from access to documents seized in the search warrant through what’s called “equitable relief’ – the powers judges use to issue injunctions. The 11th Circuit appeals judges explicitly recognized the danger in Judge Cannon’s action, noting that Trump’s arguments for a special master “would allow any subject of a search warrant to invoke a federal court’s equitable jurisdiction”–in other words, every criminal…

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Trump embraces extremism as he seeks to reclaim office

Trump embraces extremism as he seeks to reclaim office

Peter Baker writes: Former President Donald J. Trump once again made clear on Thursday night exactly where he stands in the conflict between the American justice system and the mob that ransacked the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power nearly two years ago. He stands with the mob. Mr. Trump sent a video statement of support to a fund-raiser hosted by a group calling itself the Patriot Freedom Project on behalf of families of those charged with attacking…

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Hate speech’s rise on Twitter is unprecedented, researchers find

Hate speech’s rise on Twitter is unprecedented, researchers find

The New York Times reports: Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, slurs against Black Americans showed up on the social media service an average of 1,282 times a day. After the billionaire became Twitter’s owner, they jumped to 3,876 times a day. Slurs against gay men appeared on Twitter 2,506 times a day on average before Mr. Musk took over. Afterward, their use rose to 3,964 times a day. And antisemitic posts referring to Jews or Judaism soared more than 61…

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Edward Snowden formally swears his allegiance to a state sponsor of terrorism

Edward Snowden formally swears his allegiance to a state sponsor of terrorism

The Washington Post reports: Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked information about U.S. surveillance programs, swore an oath of allegiance to Russia and has collected his Russian passport, his lawyer told state media on Friday. “Edward received a Russian passport yesterday and took the oath in accordance with the law,” lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said, according to Russia’s Interfax news agency. “He is, of course, happy, thanking the Russian Federation for the fact that he received citizenship,”…

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Protecting 30% of Earth’s surface for nature means thinking about connections near and far

Protecting 30% of Earth’s surface for nature means thinking about connections near and far

Red knots stop to feed along the Delaware shore as they migrate from the high Arctic to South America. Gregory Breese, USFWS/Flickr By Veronica Frans, Michigan State University and Jianguo “Jack” Liu, Michigan State University A biodiversity crisis is reducing the variety of life on Earth. Under pressure from land and water pollution, development, overhunting, poaching, climate change and species invasions, approximately 1 million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction. One ambitious proposal for stemming these losses…

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After 30 years of violence, rediscovering India’s capacity for harmonious coexistence

After 30 years of violence, rediscovering India’s capacity for harmonious coexistence

Seema Chishti writes: Much of the dominance of the Hindu right in India’s politics today can be traced back to the movement to destroy the Babri Masjid [in the northeastern Indian town of Ayodhya] and build a temple for Lord Rama, a key Hindu deity, where it once stood. Many Hindu nationalists maintain that the mosque stood at the exact spot where Lord Rama had been born. This belief had been popular in the area for decades, starting in the…

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Rise in Iranian assassination, kidnapping plots alarms Western officials

Rise in Iranian assassination, kidnapping plots alarms Western officials

The Washington Post reports: In the summer of 2021, officers from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service showed up at the Vancouver home of Ramin Seyed Emami, an Iranian Canadian musician and performer who hosts a popular Persian-language podcast. Seyed Emami often features guests from inside Iran and delves into topics that are taboo in conservative Iranian culture, such as sex, mental health and losing religious faith. One of the officers explained that the government of Iran had developed a list…

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Trump’s dinner with antisemites provides test of GOP response to extremism

Trump’s dinner with antisemites provides test of GOP response to extremism

The Washington Post reports: Former president Donald Trump’s refusal to apologize for or disavow the outspoken antisemites he dined with last week is setting him increasingly at odds with leaders of his own party, providing the first test of his political endurance since launching his third run for the White House. The fracas is also testing how Republicans will handle the party’s extreme fringe in the months ahead after years of racist, misogynist and antisemitic speech flooding into the political…

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EU asks all members to set Russia oil-price cap at $60

EU asks all members to set Russia oil-price cap at $60

The Wall Street Journal reports: The European Commission has asked the bloc’s 27 member states to approve a price cap on Russian oil of $60 a barrel, according to people familiar with the matter. The cap by the European Union’s executive body would set Russian crude prices significantly below the international benchmark, called Brent, which traded at about $88 a barrel Thursday. If the EU agrees on the level, the Group of Seven nations need to sign off on it….

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Where Mearsheimer’s Realpolitik went wrong

Where Mearsheimer’s Realpolitik went wrong

Fred Kaplan writes: It may be a sign of decline in John Mearsheimer’s mental acuity that, nine months after coming off quite badly in one Q&A by the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, he agreed to strap himself in for another round of grilling and emerged more battered still. Professors of political science don’t generally cause a stir, but intellectual self-immolation is a rare spectacle. And Chotiner’s one-two torching of Mearsheimer is a barn-burner. In the past year, to a degree…

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