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Category: Politics

Daily on-the-ground evidence makes it more straightforward to indict Vladimir Putin with war crimes

Daily on-the-ground evidence makes it more straightforward to indict Vladimir Putin with war crimes

The Guardian reports: No war crimes case is easy, but the task of indicting Vladimir Putin at the International Criminal Court (ICC) appears to be straightforward. There are two key elements necessary to charge a commander-in-chief with war crimes. First are the crimes themselves. Second, the chain-of-command to the top. In the case of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, both seem clear. The horrors of Bucha and a slew of towns north of Kyiv are gruesome and widespread. They are also, crucially,…

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War in Ukraine is testing some American evangelicals’ support for Putin as a leader of conservative values

War in Ukraine is testing some American evangelicals’ support for Putin as a leader of conservative values

Vladimir Putin lights a candle as he attends an Orthodox Church service in 2011. AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, pool By Melani McAlister, George Washington University In February 2022, evangelical leader Franklin Graham called on his followers to pray for Vladimir Putin. His tweet acknowledged that it might seem a “strange request” given that Russia was clearly about to invade Ukraine. But Graham asked that believers “pray that God would work in his heart so that war could be avoided at all…

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The Democratic Party has rarely, if ever, been on such shaky ground with young voters

The Democratic Party has rarely, if ever, been on such shaky ground with young voters

Politico reports: Democratic senators had two charts waiting at their chairs when they arrived at a caucus luncheon in February. They showed youth participation in national elections since the 1980s, with two impossible-to-miss spikes: 2018 and 2020, when huge turnout among 18- to 30-year-olds propelled Democrats into power in Washington. Those graphs led off pollster John Della Volpe’s myth-busting tour on young people and politics across the top levels of the Democratic Party. Young people do vote, he told the…

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Spurred by Putin, Russians turn on one another over the war on Ukraine

Spurred by Putin, Russians turn on one another over the war on Ukraine

The New York Times reports: Marina Dubrova, an English teacher on the Russian island of Sakhalin in the Pacific, showed an uplifting YouTube video to her eighth-grade class last month in which children, in Russian and Ukrainian, sing about a “world without war.” After she played it, a group of girls stayed behind during recess and quizzed her on her views. “Ukraine is a separate country, a separate one,” Ms. Dubrova, 57, told them. “No longer,” one of the girls…

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Are the sanctions against Russia working or not?

Are the sanctions against Russia working or not?

Kevin T. Dugan writes: Six weeks after the U.S. and the G7 countries weaponized the global financial system to impose their harshest-ever sanctions on Russia, the fissures are becoming apparent. The ruble strengthened to its prewar value against the dollar by Thursday, a sign that the capital controls set by the country’s central bank were working. As the currency continued its rise on Friday, the Central Bank of Russia surprised the world by cutting its interest rates 3 percentage points…

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In Sweden and Finland, even the skeptics are coming round to NATO bids

In Sweden and Finland, even the skeptics are coming round to NATO bids

Politico reports: The prospects of Sweden and Finland joining NATO will ultimately be decided by how many people feel the same way as Peter Gustavsson. A long-time Social Democrat lawmaker in the Swedish city of Uppsala who now edits a party newsletter in Stockholm, Gustavsson says Moscow’s decision to attack Ukraine has scrambled the security picture facing Russia’s neighbors and it is now time for Sweden to join the defense alliance. “It is a whole new chapter,” Gustavsson said. “We…

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Russia’s grotesque intervention in Syria

Russia’s grotesque intervention in Syria

Kareem Shaheen writes: One of the most fascinating and deplorable subplots of the Syrian war (which entered its 12th year last month) has been the proclivity of the anti-imperialist left to justify Russia’s intervention in the war on the side of Bashar al-Assad and to excuse the myriad war crimes that Moscow engaged in or abetted, such as bombing hospitals and civilians, carrying out starvation sieges or protecting a regime that deployed chemical weapons on its own people. The central…

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‘Unparalleled’ book banning across 26 U.S. states

‘Unparalleled’ book banning across 26 U.S. states

CNN reports: More than a 1,000 books have been banned in 86 school districts in 26 states across the United States, a new PEN America analysis shows. PEN America, a literary and free expression advocacy organization, released a detailed analysis on Thursday of challenges to and bans on school library books and class curriculums. The group said it documented media reports, consulted school district websites, and spoke with librarians, authors and teachers from July 31, 2021, to March 31, 2022….

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How the West’s desire for agreement at any cost has created chaos

How the West’s desire for agreement at any cost has created chaos

Jasmin Mujanović writes: In the months leading up to the resumption of open Russian aggression in Ukraine, another European country consistently made international headlines concerning renewed threats of conflict: Bosnia and Herzegovina. Beginning last summer, Serb nationalist authorities in the country’s Republika Srpska entity (RS) — one of the two administrative regions within Bosnia created after the conclusion of the Bosnian War (1992-95) — launched a renewed secessionist bid following the imposition of an anti-genocide denial law. By January, the…

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Fears genocidal language in Russian media may prompt more war crimes

Fears genocidal language in Russian media may prompt more war crimes

The Guardian reports: Two days after Russia began its war in Ukraine, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency accidentally published an article celebrating the country’s lightning-quick victory over Kyiv, crowing that the “period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end”. After a bloody month of war, after the discovery of evidence of war crimes in cities like Bucha and Borodyanka, the language in that same publication has grown even more extreme, containing calls for societal…

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The White House fears Putin’s next big win could be in Paris

The White House fears Putin’s next big win could be in Paris

Politico reports: The White House has begun to harbor fears that Vladimir Putin could soon notch his biggest victory of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — in Paris. There is growing concern within President Joe Biden’s administration about the narrowing polls in the French presidential election that show a tight race between incumbent Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. A possible victory by Le Pen, a Putin sympathizer, could destabilize the Western coalition against Moscow, upending France’s role as…

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Le Pen vows ban on public hijab if elected

Le Pen vows ban on public hijab if elected

The New Arab reports: French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said on Thursday that she would ban the wearing of the hijab in public. She said fines would be imposed on women wearing the Islamic headscarf if she wins France’s upcoming presidential elections. Le Pen made the announcement during an interview with radio station RTL, where she said that a majority of the French population “supports a ban on the hijab in public”, and compared the introduction of a…

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Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmed as Supreme Court justice: 4 essential reads

Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmed as Supreme Court justice: 4 essential reads

The votes are there. Ketanji Brown Jackson will become the first Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court. AP Photo/Susan Walsh By Matt Williams, The Conversation The phrase “in a historic vote” gets thrown around a lot in journalism – and it isn’t always warranted. But shortly after 2 p.m. EDT on April 7, 2022, a Senate roll call confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson as the next U.S. Supreme Court justice – the first Black woman to sit on the…

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German intelligence intercepted Russian military radio traffic from suspected perpetrators of Bucha atrocities

German intelligence intercepted Russian military radio traffic from suspected perpetrators of Bucha atrocities

Der Spiegel reports: The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence service, has acquired gruesome new insights into the atrocities committed by Russian military forces. DER SPIEGEL has learned that the BND has new satellite images and has intercepted incriminating radio traffic from Russian military personnel in the region north of Kyiv, where Bucha is located. Some of the intercepted radio traffic might be linked to dead bodies that have been photographed in Bucha. Following the withdrawal of the Russian military from…

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Russia suspended from UN Human Rights Council for ‘systematic abuses’

Russia suspended from UN Human Rights Council for ‘systematic abuses’

RFE/RL reports: The UN General Assembly has voted to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council over reports of “gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights” by invading Russian troops in Ukraine. The resolution received 93 votes in favor, 24 against, and 58 abstentions. The U.S.-initiated resolution adopted by the 193-member General Assembly expressed “grave concern at the ongoing human rights and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.” [Continue reading…]

Fugitive Chinese tycoon and Steve Bannon ally Guo Wengui pushed out Hunter Biden smear

Fugitive Chinese tycoon and Steve Bannon ally Guo Wengui pushed out Hunter Biden smear

Mother Jones reports: Late in the 2020 presidential campaign, trailing in the polls, Donald Trump and his allies worked to make a campaign issue out of a trove of files on a laptop that his opponent’s son, Hunter Biden, had apparently abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. The effort to publicize compromising emails, images, and videos from the device involved prominent Trump confidants including Rudy Giuliani and Steven Bannon. But it also featured an unexpected player: Guo Wengui, a fugitive…

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