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Category: Politics

Conservatives defend a sanitized version of ‘The Great Replacement’

Conservatives defend a sanitized version of ‘The Great Replacement’

Adam Serwer writes: Three years ago, when a white-supremacist fanatic killed dozens of people in El Paso, Texas, the reaction from the right was unreserved condemnation. When another white-supremacist fanatic killed 10 people at a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, last week, the reaction from some figures on the right was to acknowledge that the guy had a point about this whole “replacement” thing. Large sections of the manifesto attributed to the Buffalo shooter were plagiarized…

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How Ukraine’s farmers are dodging bombs to feed the world

How Ukraine’s farmers are dodging bombs to feed the world

Grid reports: It is a slow, silent process — and it unfolds in the dark. Yuriy Russu, who works on a farm near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, describes it this way: After sunset, he and his fellow farmers shut off the lights around their fields. Buildings, streetlights — everything goes dark. Then they wait for the skies to fall silent — the threat of airstrikes is ever present, Russu told Grid. “We wait for the fighter jets to fly away,”…

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Why Finland joining NATO is more shocking than anyone realizes

Why Finland joining NATO is more shocking than anyone realizes

Fred Kaplan writes: The fact that Finland and Sweden are about to join NATO is even more remarkable than many media accounts portray. Not only have both countries maintained a studied neutrality for many decades, they—especially Finland—have done so under the thumb of pressure from Moscow. During the Cold War, the term Finlandization was coined to describe a nominally independent country whose foreign (and, to some extent, domestic) policies were dictated by a neighboring great power. In the 1970s, when…

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To Russia’s detriment, much of the military culture and learned behavior from the Soviet era still endures

To Russia’s detriment, much of the military culture and learned behavior from the Soviet era still endures

The New York Times reports: Army vehicles were so decrepit that repair crews were stationed roughly every 15 miles. Some officers were so out of shape that the military budgeted $1.5 million to re-size standard uniforms. That was the Russian military more than a decade ago when the country invaded Georgia, according to the defense minister at the time. The shortcomings, big and small, were glaring enough that the Kremlin announced a complete overhaul of the military to build a…

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Ukraine aid splinters the GOP

Ukraine aid splinters the GOP

Politico reports: The Republican establishment is striking back against a right flank attempt to turn its opposition to Ukraine aid into an “America First” talking point. Congress’ nearly $40 billion package of help for the war-torn nation is taking heat from a growing number of conservative lawmakers, candidates, activists and even former President Donald Trump. Their case against spending on Ukraine’s battle against Russia is all about redirecting taxpayer money to domestic problems — but it’s alarming fellow Republicans who…

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We must recognise the evil of Putin’s war in Ukraine and be more courageous in our response

We must recognise the evil of Putin’s war in Ukraine and be more courageous in our response

Alar Karis, President of Estonia, writes: The peace that had reigned in Europe since the end of the Balkan wars seemed to many to be permanent. The prevailing mindset was that conflict between nations which in the 20th century would have culminated in war could now be resolved diplomatically. Russia’s attack on Georgia in 2008, its annexation of Crimea in 2014, and its overt support for separatists in Donbas were not enough to shake this faith in peace. Russia’s aggressive…

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How long can Erdogan sustain threat to veto Finnish, Swedish NATO bids?

How long can Erdogan sustain threat to veto Finnish, Swedish NATO bids?

Semih Idiz reports: The crisis Erdogan has precipitated within NATO has raised eyebrows not just in Europe but also in Turkey. Many former Turkish diplomats and veteran foreign policy analysts have criticized Erdogan’s move for its timing and the manner in which it was brought up. They believe Erdogan is attempting to cash in on Turkey’s renewed strategic importance for the West after the invasion of Ukraine and force Finland and Sweden to comply with his demands. All decisions within…

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Information leaking out about losses in Ukraine tests Russians’ faith

Information leaking out about losses in Ukraine tests Russians’ faith

The Guardian reports: The satellite and drone imagery from above Bilohorivka tells a tale of folly and destruction. Dozens of Russian tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and trucks lay destroyed, some sinking into the waters of the Donets River by a broken pontoon bridge, pointing to the latest disaster in Russia’s three-month war in Ukraine. The toll of Russia’s attempts to cross the river, part of its costly offensive in the east, are staggering: more than 485 killed and as many…

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Living with the far-right insurgency in Idaho

Living with the far-right insurgency in Idaho

Christopher Mathias reports: White nationalist Vincent James Foxx had a new video for his nearly 70,000 subscribers on BitChute, one of the few tech platforms that hasn’t banned him. On Feb. 16, he appeared wearing a baseball hat emblazoned with the state’s outline tilted on its side so that it resembled a pistol. “We are going to take over this state,” Foxx declared. “We have a great large group of people and that group is growing. A true, actual right-wing…

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Biden starts conceding that the bygone era of D.C. may, indeed, be gone

Biden starts conceding that the bygone era of D.C. may, indeed, be gone

Politico reports: The fever didn’t break. And for the Biden White House, efforts at bipartisanship have finally taken a backseat. To the frustration of many Democrats and some of his closest advisers, President Joe Biden has steadfastly spent more than a year in office insisting on trying to work across the aisle with Republicans. It’s produced some notable legislative successes. But it’s also been colored by a fair dose of in-your-face GOP obstructionism. Now, more than a year later, Biden…

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Putin involved in Ukraine war ‘at level of colonel or brigadier’, say Western sources

Putin involved in Ukraine war ‘at level of colonel or brigadier’, say Western sources

The Guardian reports: Vladimir Putin has become so personally involved in the Ukraine war that he is making operational and tactical decisions “at the level of a colonel or brigadier”, according to western military sources. The Russian president is helping determine the movement of forces in the Donbas, they added, where last week the invaders suffered a bloody defeat as they tried on multiple occasions to cross a strategic river in the east of Ukraine. The sources added that Putin…

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Russian state TV: Defense columnist Ret. Col. Mikhail Khodaryonok gives damning assessment of Russia’s war in Ukraine

Russian state TV: Defense columnist Ret. Col. Mikhail Khodaryonok gives damning assessment of Russia’s war in Ukraine

  The BBC’s Francis Scarr: “In an extremely rare moment of candour on Russian state TV today, defence columnist Mikhail Khodaryonok gave a damning assessment of Russia’s war in Ukraine and his country’s international isolation. It’s fairly long but worth your time so I’ve added subtitles.”

How the Russian occupation transformed life in Melitopol

How the Russian occupation transformed life in Melitopol

Joshua Yaffa writes: It was still dark on the morning of February 24th when Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of Melitopol, a midsize city in southern Ukraine, awoke to the sound of explosions. He thought it was a thunderstorm and went back to sleep. “I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that in the twenty-first century some sick mind would think to start firing missiles in the center of Europe,” he said. A duty officer called, waking him again, and…

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The Balkan roots of the far right’s ‘Great Replacement’ theory

The Balkan roots of the far right’s ‘Great Replacement’ theory

Jasmin Mujanović wrote last year: When Ratko Mladic’s Serb nationalist forces entered the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina on July 11, 1995, the general of the self-styled “Army of the Republika Srpska” took a moment to speak to an accompanying camera crew. “Here we are,” he says solemnly, “on July 11, 1995, in Serbian Srebrenica.” What followed was Mladic’s rationale for the extermination campaign that was unfolding in the city, the culmination of the nearly four-year-long Bosnian Genocide…

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Uyghur county in China has the highest prison rate in the world

Uyghur county in China has the highest prison rate in the world

The Associated Press reports: Nearly one in 25 people in a county in the Uyghur heartland of China has been sentenced to prison on terrorism-related charges, in what is the highest known imprisonment rate in the world, an Associated Press review of leaked data shows. A list obtained and partially verified by the AP cites the names of more than 10,000 Uyghurs sent to prison in just Konasheher county alone, one of dozens in southern Xinjiang. In recent years, China…

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Google is sharing our data at a staggering scale

Google is sharing our data at a staggering scale

Parmy Olson writes: Along with the Pixel phones, watches and earbuds at Google’s annual showcase of software and devices last week came a pair of nifty-looking translation glasses. Put them on and real-time “subtitles” appear on the lenses as you watch a person speaking in a different language. Very cool. But the glasses aren’t commercially available. It’s also unlikely they will make anywhere near as much money as advertising does for Google’s parent, Alphabet Inc. Of the company’s $68 billion…

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