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Category: Politics

How Iran’s security forces use rape to quell protests

How Iran’s security forces use rape to quell protests

CNN reports: A trickle of people passes through a normally busy border crossing in the mountains of northern Iraq. “It’s a big prison over there,” one Iranian woman says, gesturing to the hulking gate that marks the border with Iran’s Islamic Republic, which has been convulsed by protest for over two months. A portrait of the founder of Iran’s clerical regime, Ruhollah Khomeini, looms against a backdrop of rolling hills studded with streetlights. Snatches of travelers’ muted conversations punctuate an…

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How the global rise of border walls is stifling wildlife

How the global rise of border walls is stifling wildlife

Fred Pierce writes: Pity the tiny band of lynx in the Polish half of Europe’s most ancient forest. In June, their home, the Białowieża Forest, was cut in half when the Polish government completed construction of a wall on its border with Belarus. The aim was to repel refugees from the Middle East and elsewhere being channeled to the border by the Belarus government. But the 115-mile wall — which towers 18 feet above the forest floor, stretching almost into…

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Shooting in Colorado Springs follows six brutal years of Republican anti-LGBTQ rhetoric

Shooting in Colorado Springs follows six brutal years of Republican anti-LGBTQ rhetoric

Robin Maril writes: This latest shooting, in which at least five people in Colorado were killed late Saturday night when a gunman once again opened fire inside an LGBTQ nightclub, follows six years in which far-right leaders have led American politics down a fearful blame spiral fueled by homophobia, xenophobia and racism. This past election, Republican candidates ran on a platform that characterized queer and transgender people as “groomers.” They targeted the families that support them as criminals. And many…

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How the Pelosi attack suspect plunged into online hatred

How the Pelosi attack suspect plunged into online hatred

The New York Times reports: Bitter over the end of a long relationship, estranged from his children and working carpentry jobs to keep a roof over his head after a time living on the streets, David DePape retreated into isolation, spending hours each day in the online worlds of gaming and chat rooms. Mr. DePape, the suspect in the brutal attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, had an obsession with video games as a boy, and at some point in…

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Trump snubs Twitter after Musk announces reactivation of ex-president’s account

Trump snubs Twitter after Musk announces reactivation of ex-president’s account

Reuters reports: Donald Trump on Saturday said he had no interest in returning to Twitter even as a slim majority voted in favor of reinstating the former U.S. president, who was banned from the social media service for inciting violence, in a poll organized by new owner Elon Musk. Slightly over 15 million Twitter users voted in the poll with 51.8% voting in favor of reinstatement. “The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk tweeted. Trump’s Twitter account, which…

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Deglobalization is a threat to climate action

Deglobalization is a threat to climate action

Raghuram G. Rajan writes: The deliberations at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) suggest that while policymakers realize the urgency of combating climate change, they are unlikely to reach a comprehensive collective agreement to address it. But there is still a way for the world to improve the chances of more effective action in the future: hit the brakes on deglobalization. Otherwise, the possibilities for climate action will be set back by the shrinkage of cross-border trade and…

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Ukraine confronts tougher fight in push to extend battlefield wins

Ukraine confronts tougher fight in push to extend battlefield wins

The Washington Post reports: Not far from this village on the east bank of the Oskil River, Ukrainian forces have hit a wall of Russian resistance as they try to extend a counteroffensive that just two months ago was sweeping across nearby lands at a stunning clip. Andriy, a soldier with Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade, was not sure what to say on a recent day, when a group of Ukrainian intelligence officers showed up and asked about his unit’s push…

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Iranian protesters attack Khomeini’s childhood home as uprising spreads

Iranian protesters attack Khomeini’s childhood home as uprising spreads

The New York Times reports: Three months into a nationwide uprising, Iranian protesters have turned their fury against the founder of the Islamic revolution and of the country’s theocracy, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Protesters set ablaze the museum of childhood home of Mr. Khomeini, who died in 1989, in his hometown, Khomein, on Thursday night, videos showed. Crowds of men smashed and stomped on a street sign bearing his name in the town of Khash, according to a video posted online….

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How to pay for climate justice when polluters have all the money

How to pay for climate justice when polluters have all the money

Bill McKibben writes: The climate summit just concluding in Egypt ran hard into one of the world’s greatest structural problems: most of the money is in the Global North, but most of the need is in the Global South. Nearly three hundred years of burning fossil fuels have produced much of that northern wealth, and now the resulting greenhouse gases are heating the planet and producing much of that southern need. So is there some way to mobilize that money…

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Iran will help Russia build drones for Ukraine war, Western officials say

Iran will help Russia build drones for Ukraine war, Western officials say

The Washington Post reports: After weeks of savaging Ukrainian cities with Iranian-made drones, Moscow has quietly reached an agreement with Tehran to begin manufacturing hundreds of unmanned weaponized aircraft on Russian soil, according to new intelligence seen by U.S. and other Western security agencies. Russian and Iranian officials finalized the deal during a meeting in Iran in early November, and the two countries are moving rapidly to transfer designs and key components that could allow production to begin within months,…

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Kherson’s resistance fighters undermined Russian occupying forces

Kherson’s resistance fighters undermined Russian occupying forces

The Washington Post reports: Ihor didn’t even know the first name of the person who contacted him. The man said he was a member of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces and wanted to know if Ihor was interested in helping fight the Russians occupying his city of Kherson. “Sign me up,” Ihor responded. For months, the two kept up a coded communication over the Telegram messaging app. Sometimes Ihor would be asked to help pinpoint locations from which the Russians were…

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This week, billionaires made a strong case for abolishing themselves

This week, billionaires made a strong case for abolishing themselves

Anand Giridharadas writes: In recent years, a swelling chorus of Americans has grown critical of the nation’s bajillionaires. But in the extraordinary week gone by, that chorus was drowned out by a far louder and more urgent case against them. It was made by the bajillionaires themselves. One after another, four of our best-known billionaires laid waste to the image of benevolent saviors carefully cultivated by their class. It is a commendable sacrifice on their part, because billionaires, remember, exist…

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Ex-Russian spy flees to the NATO country that captured him, delivering another embarrassing blow to Moscow

Ex-Russian spy flees to the NATO country that captured him, delivering another embarrassing blow to Moscow

Michael Weiss reports: “The Russians have no idea,” Alexander Toots, the head of Estonian counterintelligence, tells me, laughing. “They have absolutely no idea he is here. You can be the one to tell them.” Toots was referring to the defection of a Russian spy to Estonia. But Artem Zinchenko isn’t just any spy. He was the first agent of Russia’s military intelligence arrested by Estonia, in 2017, then traded back to Moscow a year later for an Estonian citizen in…

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Jack Smith named special counsel to lead DOJ probes of Donald Trump

Jack Smith named special counsel to lead DOJ probes of Donald Trump

The Wall Street Journal reports: Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a former federal and international war-crimes prosecutor as special counsel on Friday to oversee Justice Department investigations into former President Donald Trump. Jack Smith, who once led the Justice Department unit that investigates public corruption and since 2018 was the chief prosecutor at The Hague investigating war crimes in Kosovo, will be the third special counsel in five years to examine issues involving Mr. Trump. He will lead both the…

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New York Post takes aim at Trump, and hits a nerve

New York Post takes aim at Trump, and hits a nerve

The New York Times reports: Since Election Day last week, The New York Post’s front pages have been merciless to former President Donald J. Trump. First, the paper heralded his political rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, as “DeFUTURE.” A day later, it illustrated Mr. Trump as Humpty Dumpty about to have a great fall. Then, on Wednesday, the paper relegated Mr. Trump’s announcement about his latest run for president to a small headline at the bottom of the page:…

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GOP megadonor Mercer family has no plans to boost Trump’s 2024 campaign as former president loses more allies

GOP megadonor Mercer family has no plans to boost Trump’s 2024 campaign as former president loses more allies

CNBC reports: GOP megadonors Robert Mercer and Rebekah Mercer have no current plans to help former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign for the White House, according to people familiar with the matter. The Mercers, a father and daughter who were among Trump’s major benefactors during his first run for president in 2016, are distancing themselves from the ex-president’s third White House bid and cutting back their overall campaign fundraising, these people said. The people who spoke to CNBC did so…

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