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Category: Politics

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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Just wait until you get to know Ron DeSantis

Just wait until you get to know Ron DeSantis

Mark Leibovich writes: Governor Ron DeSantis has a growing store of admirers. This includes many who have watched the cantankerous Floridian only from afar. They have heard glowing things. He was the biggest winner of an otherwise dark election cycle for Republicans. He has impeccable bona fides as a Donald Trump disciple—without being Trump himself, whom many see as the biggest loser of said dark election cycle. This has made DeSantis the GOP’s hottest molecule. He is full MAGA without…

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Why America’s railroad operators refuse to give their workers paid leave

Why America’s railroad operators refuse to give their workers paid leave

Eric Levitz writes: For months, the world’s largest economy has been teetering on the brink of collapse because America’s latter-day robber barons can’t comprehend that workers sometimes get sick. Or so the behavior of major U.S. rail companies seems to suggest. Since last winter, railroad unions and the managers of America’s seven dominant freight-rail carriers have been struggling to come to an agreement on a new contract. The key points of contention in those talks have been scheduling in general…

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Left-wing voices are silenced on Twitter as far-right trolls advise Elon Musk

Left-wing voices are silenced on Twitter as far-right trolls advise Elon Musk

The Intercept reports: Elon Musk claims to be “fighting for free speech in America” but the social network’s new owner appears to be overseeing a purge of left-wing activists from the platform. Several prominent antifascist organizers and journalists have had their accounts suspended in the past week, after right-wing operatives appealed directly to Musk to ban them and far-right internet trolls flooded Twitter’s complaints system with false reports about terms of service violations. As the Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike…

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U.S. considers dramatically expanding training of Ukrainian forces, officials say

U.S. considers dramatically expanding training of Ukrainian forces, officials say

CNN reports: The Biden administration is considering a dramatic expansion in the training the US military provides to Ukrainian forces, including instructing as many as 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers a month at a US base in Germany, according to multiple US officials. If adopted, the proposal would mark a significant increase not just in the number of Ukrainians the US trains but also in the type of training they receive. Since the start of the conflict in February, the US has…

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Protests stretch China’s censorship to its limits

Protests stretch China’s censorship to its limits

The New York Times reports: In one video, a man sarcastically sings a patriotic song. In another, a group of protesters hold up blank pieces of paper and chant in unison. In a third clip, a group of mourners light candles around a vigil to those who died in a fire while in lockdown in western China. Signs of organized dissent are relatively rare in China; so is their survival in the country’s digital space. China’s censorship apparatus — the…

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Jury convicts Oath Keepers leader, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, of seditious conspiracy

Jury convicts Oath Keepers leader, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, of seditious conspiracy

Politico reports: A jury has convicted Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes of masterminding a plot to violently subvert the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, finding that he entered into a seditious conspiracy against the U.S. government. The jury also convicted Rhodes ally Kelly Meggs, leader of the Florida Oath Keepers, of seditious conspiracy. But the jury acquitted three co-defendants — Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson and Thomas Caldwell — of joining Rhodes in that conspiracy. All five,…

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Jewish Texans see surge in antisemitism as a precursor to fascism

Jewish Texans see surge in antisemitism as a precursor to fascism

The Texas Tribune reports: As other kids in Austin recovered from trick-or-treating on Halloween last year, Sarah Adelman worried about white supremacists, her mom and their synagogue. After a series of antisemitic incidents around Central Texas, someone set fire to Congregation Beth Israel, where Sarah’s mother, Lori, is a leader. “It made me sad and really scared,” 10-year-old Sarah said last week. “It made me nervous for my mom.” The arson was part of an ongoing wave of antisemitic incidents…

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