Politics Archives - Page 592 of 1019 - Attention to the Unseen

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

April 9, 2022 From elsewhere

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

April 9, 2022 From elsewhere

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

April 9, 2022 From elsewhere

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

April 8, 2022 From elsewhere

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

April 8, 2022 From elsewhere

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

April 8, 2022 From elsewhere

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

April 8, 2022 From elsewhere

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

April 8, 2022 From elsewhere

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

April 7, 2022 From elsewhere

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’

April 7, 2022 From elsewhere

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

April 7, 2022 From elsewhere

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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Why the World Health Organization took two years to say Covid is airborne

April 7, 2022 From elsewhere

Nature reports: As 2021 drew to a close, the highly contagious Omicron variant of the pandemic virus was racing around the globe, forcing governments to take drastic actions once again. The Netherlands ordered most businesses to close on 19 December, Ireland set curfews and many countries imposed travel bans in the hope of taming the tsunami of COVID-19 cases filling hospitals. Amid the wave of desperate news around the year-end holidays, one group of researchers hailed a development that had…

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How many billionaires are there, anyway?

April 7, 2022 From elsewhere

Willy Staley writes: In 1981, Malcolm Forbes, the eccentric and fabulously wealthy magazine publisher, came to his editors with a request: Could they pull together a special issue about the 400 richest Americans? The idea was inspired by Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, the doyenne of Gilded Age New York, who regularly hosted the city’s high society in her Fifth Avenue ballroom, which was said to fit about 400 people. It’s quite possible Forbes saw something of himself in Astor. This was…

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Execution of a village mayor becomes a symbol of Russian brutality in Ukraine

April 6, 2022 From elsewhere

The Wall Street Journal reports: Mayor Olha Sukhenko took care of her village like a family for more than a decade, locals say, sprucing up public buildings, organizing concerts and settling disputes. When the Russian army withdrew last week after a monthlong occupation, her neighbors found Ms. Sukhenko’s lifeless body in a shallow grave, her hands bound. Her husband and son lay next to her, dead. Olha, Ihor and Oleksandr Sukhenko are but three of the faces of the brutal…

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