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Category: Politics

How American racism inspired Hitler

How American racism inspired Hitler

In 2018, Alex Ross wrote: Scholars have long been aware that Hitler’s regime expressed admiration for American race law, but they have tended to see this as a public-relations strategy—an “everybody does it” justification for Nazi policies. Whitman, however, points out that if these comparisons had been intended solely for a foreign audience they would not have been buried in hefty tomes in Fraktur type. “Race Law in the United States,” a 1936 study by the German lawyer Heinrich Krieger,…

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Vaccine confers better protection than natural immunity, CDC finds

Vaccine confers better protection than natural immunity, CDC finds

Yahoo News reports: Earlier this month, the conservative radio host Dennis Prager announced he had contracted the coronavirus. This was, as far as he was concerned, good news. The unvaccinated Prager had hoped to protect himself against COVID-19 the old-fashioned way: by getting sick. “It is infinitely preferable to have natural immunity than vaccine immunity,” Prager said, echoing an anti-vaccine argument echoed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other pro-Trump figures who have turned coronavirus vaccination into a culture war…

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Big oil CEOs just lied before Congress. It’s time they’re held accountable

Big oil CEOs just lied before Congress. It’s time they’re held accountable

Jamie Henn writes: For the first time ever, the executives from four major oil companies and two of the industry’s most powerful front groups testified before Congress about their decades-long effort to spread climate disinformation and block legislation that would reduce US dependence on fossil fuels. Republicans vehemently opposed the premise of Thursday’s House oversight hearing. Yet within the first round of GOP questioning, led by one of the industry’s staunchest defenders, ranking committee member James Comer of Kentucky, the…

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Trump lawyer, John Eastman, blamed Pence for violence as rioters stormed Capitol

Trump lawyer, John Eastman, blamed Pence for violence as rioters stormed Capitol

The New York Times reports: As a mob was attacking the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” a lawyer who plotted with President Donald J. Trump and his allies to try to overturn the 2020 election sent a hostile message to the vice president’s top lawyer, blaming Mr. Pence for the violence. The email, reported by The Washington Post and confirmed by a person briefed on its contents, shows the extent to which Mr. Trump and his advisers sought to pressure…

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Trump’s real-estate empire pays the price for poisonous politics

Trump’s real-estate empire pays the price for poisonous politics

Reuters reports: Former U.S. president Donald Trump’s slashing rhetorical style and divisive politics allowed him to essentially take over the Republican Party. His supporters are so devoted that most believe his false claim that he lost the 2020 election because of voter fraud. But the same tactics that have inspired fierce political loyalty have undermined Trump’s business, built around real-estate development and branding deals that have allowed him to make millions by licensing his name. Trump’s business brand was once…

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Detainee ‘was raped at the hands of the U.S. government,’ court is told

Detainee ‘was raped at the hands of the U.S. government,’ court is told

The New York Times reports: A suburban Baltimore high school graduate turned Al Qaeda courier, speaking to a military jury for the first time, gave a detailed account this week of the brutal forced feedings, crude waterboarding and other physical and sexual abuse he endured during his 2003 to 2006 detention in the C.I.A.’s overseas prison network. Appearing in open court, Majid Khan, 41, became the first former prisoner of the black sites to openly describe, anywhere, the violent and…

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How to fix social media

How to fix social media

Nicholas Carr writes: There are several ways to decipher intent in social media communications. Some are straightforward. Certain platforms, like YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and Clubhouse, operate largely as broadcasting channels, while others, like Messenger, Zoom, and Facetime, are used mainly for personal conversation. Many platforms, Snapchat being a prominent example, offer users different modes of communication, some geared to personal speech, others to public speech. On platforms where personal and public speech are intertwined, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram,…

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Facebook’s rebrand ‘does not affect how we use or share data,’ says Zuckerberg

Facebook’s rebrand ‘does not affect how we use or share data,’ says Zuckerberg

The Verge reports: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday at his company’s Connect event that its new name will be Meta. “We are a company that builds technology to connect,” Zuckerberg said. “Together, we can finally put people at the center of our technology. And together, we can unlock a massively bigger creator economy.” “To reflect who we are and what we hope to build,” he added. He said the name Facebook doesn’t fully encompass everything the company does now,…

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Gain of function research

Gain of function research

Derek Lowe writes: The NIH has not been doing itself any favors recently when it comes to questions about coronavirus research. Ever since the advent of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, there have been questions about coronavirus work conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. My own view hasn’t really changed since the last time I wrote about that particular issue: I think a natural origin for the current virus is very much more likely than it being some sort of engineering…

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World’s ‘greenest city’ will be totally unaffordable because of climate change

World’s ‘greenest city’ will be totally unaffordable because of climate change

Vice News reports: Five winters ago, one of the biggest local storm surges in 50 years hit Vancouver, a city on the front lines of climate change that’s also among the world’s most expensive places to own a home. “I got scared: ‘Oh, my God, we’re gonna flood,’” recalled Ricky Point, a member of Musqueam First Nation and part of the public works department. Point had good reason to be frightened. The Musqueam reserve is located in southeast Vancouver on…

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An open letter in defense of democracy

An open letter in defense of democracy

In a letter co-signed by luminaries across the political spectrum from Noam Chomsky to Francis Fukuyama, Todd Gitlin, Jeffrey C. Isaac, William Kristol write: We are writers, academics, and political activists who have long disagreed about many things. Some of us are Democrats and others Republicans. Some identify with the left, some with the right, and some with neither. We have disagreed in the past, and we hope to be able to disagree, productively, for years to come. Because we…

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Trump-backed QAnon candidates launch group to ‘control the election system’

Trump-backed QAnon candidates launch group to ‘control the election system’

Vice News reports: A coalition of right-wing MAGA candidates, including multiple Trump-backed candidates, are seeking to take control of elections in states across the U.S.—and one says they’re formally working with a group of conspiracy theorists, as well as with a QAnon influencer who some in the conspiracy movement believe is John F. Kennedy Jr. in disguise. The group consists of five GOP candidates running for the key election position of secretary of state in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Georgia, and…

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Biden closes in on deal with Manchin, Sinema as liberals wince

Biden closes in on deal with Manchin, Sinema as liberals wince

Politico reports: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema left a two-hour meeting with White House officials seemingly on the verge of an agreement to advance President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda — depending on whether their fellow Democrats sign on. And, in a sign of Biden’s entreaties to progressives, the president hosted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for an afternoon meeting, according to a Democratic source. Sanders has objected to the possible exclusion of his Medicare expansion proposal from a deal, as Manchin…

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Kyrsten Sinema’s commitment to personal ambition over party loyalty

Kyrsten Sinema’s commitment to personal ambition over party loyalty

Hank Stephenson writes: Walk the streets of Kyrsten Sinema’s old stomping grounds, Phoenix’s artsy Roosevelt Row, on a busy Friday night and you might see a dozen or so Kyrsten Sinemas, none of them flattering. A local dance crew calling itself the Moderate Pixie Dream Girls, whose members dress in pink tutus and purple party wigs, perform on local street corners to protest the Arizona senator’s opposition to increasing the minimum wage or her resistance to immigration reform. Stickers at…

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Facebook tells employees to preserve all communications for legal reasons

Facebook tells employees to preserve all communications for legal reasons

The New York Times reports: Facebook has told employees to “preserve internal documents and communications since 2016” that pertain to its businesses because governments and legislative bodies have started inquiries into its operations, according to a company email sent on Tuesday night. The move, known as a “legal hold,” follows intense media, legal and regulatory scrutiny over the social network’s harms. Lawmakers and the public are up in arms after Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee turned whistle-blower, provided thousands…

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Top U.S. general confirms ‘very concerning’ Chinese hypersonic weapons test

Top U.S. general confirms ‘very concerning’ Chinese hypersonic weapons test

Reuters reports: The top U.S. military officer, General Mark Milley, has provided the first official U.S. confirmation of a Chinese hypersonic weapons test that military experts say appears to show Beijing’s pursuit of an Earth-orbiting system designed to evade American missile defenses. The Pentagon has been at pains to avoid direct confirmation of the Chinese test this summer, first reported by the Financial Times, even as President Joe Biden and other officials have expressed general concerns about Chinese hypersonic weapons…

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