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Category: Politics

What happened to the ideal of multi-religious Arab modernity?

What happened to the ideal of multi-religious Arab modernity?

Ussama Makdisi writes: By the time I was born in 1968, my grandfather was an emeritus professor and a pillar of Ras Beirut’s small and highly educated Protestant community. But by then, as well, the optimism of the first half of the 20th century had receded dramatically. European empires had long since cynically partitioned the Ottoman Empire and created several new states including Lebanon. The Arab East, of which the small Mediterranean country was an inseparable part, witnessed the vibrant…

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U.S. intelligence sees Russian plan for possible Ukraine invasion

U.S. intelligence sees Russian plan for possible Ukraine invasion

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration’s growing alarm about a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine is based in part on U.S. intelligence that Moscow has drawn up plans for a military offensive involving an estimated 175,000 troops as soon as early next year. An unclassified U.S. intelligence document details some of the intelligence findings, including the positioning of what officials say could eventually be 100 battalion tactical groups, as well as heavy armor, artillery and other equipment. The…

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Meet the Trump fanatics who have taken over elections in a critical swing state

Meet the Trump fanatics who have taken over elections in a critical swing state

Roger Kerson writes: When Donald Trump was scrambling in November of 2020 to overturn an election he clearly lost, my home state of Michigan was directly in his crosshairs. Nancy Tiseo, a Republican activist from Macomb County—home to the legendary “Reagan Democrats”—was ready to join him on the ramparts. Tiseo’s prescription: The president should declare martial law, call off the December meeting of the Electoral College, and cancel January Senate runoffs in Georgia. “Military tribunals” are needed, Tiseo wrote on…

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Hamas terror listing is yet another UK betrayal of the Palestinians

Hamas terror listing is yet another UK betrayal of the Palestinians

Avi Shlaim writes: British Home Secretary Priti Patel has declared her intention to proscribe the whole of Hamas – the Islamic resistance movement that rules the Gaza Strip – as a terrorist organisation. The military wing of the group was proscribed in the UK back in March 2001. Twenty years on, the home secretary proposes to extend this ban to the political wing by arguing that the distinction between the two wings is no longer tenable. The truth of the…

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The Supreme Court will gaslight us until the end

The Supreme Court will gaslight us until the end

Dahlia Lithwick writes: Perhaps it would be refreshing if the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court no longer felt the need to lie to us. The lying, after all, is becoming nearly untenable—especially for an institution that relies on public confidence. After confirmation hearings in which they promised that stare decisis was a deeply felt value and that Roe v. Wade was a clear “precedent of the court” and “the law of the land.” there’s something sort of soothing about…

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Trump voters mirror Germany’s right-wing extremists

Trump voters mirror Germany’s right-wing extremists

Jonathan Chait writes: A recent international YouGov/Global Progress survey, which came to my attention via the Liberal Patriot, framed the political choice facing the public in an interesting way. It asked which position comes closest to the poll taker’s own belief: “We need to be vigilant against groups trying to impose new cultural values and views about religion, gender, immigration, or race that don’t reflect our society’s traditional values” or “We need to be vigilant against groups that undermine democracy…

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Steve Bannon’s Jan. 6 legal strategy: ‘Blowing up the whole system’

Steve Bannon’s Jan. 6 legal strategy: ‘Blowing up the whole system’

The Daily Beast reports: Steve Bannon—the right-wing media personality turned adviser to Donald Trump turned right-wing media personality again—became the first person in nearly 40 years to be indicted on a charge of criminal contempt of Congress last month after he refused to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Now, Bannon appears to be using his criminal case to go after the committee that went after him. Bannon is attempting to force investigators to potentially expose…

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The mantra of white supremacy

The mantra of white supremacy

Ibram X. Kendi writes: Below a Democratic donkey, the Fox News graphic read ANTI-WHITE MANIA. It flanked Tucker Carlson’s face and overtook it in size. It was unmistakable. Which was the point. The segment aired on June 25—the height of the manic attack on, and redefinition of, critical race theory, which Carlson has repeatedly cast as “anti-white.” It was one of his most incendiary segments of the year. “The question is, and this is the question we should be meditating…

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Raid the Republican Party to save the party

Raid the Republican Party to save the party

Martin Skladany wrote in March (and his argument is just as strong now): Democrats’ instinct after winning the White House and Congress in 2020 might be to stand back and let the Republican Party slowly self-destruct. Such inaction would not necessarily preserve democracy. A Trumpist GOP would continue to win elections, maintain power over certain states, and could regain control of the Senate or House in 2022. The responsibility of saving the Republican Party — and the rule of law…

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Why the discredited dossier does not undercut the Russia investigation

Why the discredited dossier does not undercut the Russia investigation

Charlie Savage writes: Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies have stepped up an effort to conflate the so-called Steele dossier with the Russia investigation following the indictment of a researcher for the document on charges that he lied to the F.B.I. about some of its sources. Mr. Trump and his supporters have long sought to use the flaws of the dossier to discredit the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election — and the nature of…

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Trump’s Iran policy has become a disaster for the U.S. and Israel

Trump’s Iran policy has become a disaster for the U.S. and Israel

Tom Friedman writes: The judges have voted and the results are in: President Donald Trump’s decision to tear up the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 — a decision urged on by his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu — was one of the dumbest, most poorly thought out and counterproductive U.S. national security decisions of the post-Cold War era. But don’t just take my word for it. Moshe Ya’alon was the Israeli defense minister when…

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What shape society must take in a post-pandemic world

What shape society must take in a post-pandemic world

Jill Lepore writes: In March 2020, Boris Johnson, pale and exhausted, self-isolating in his flat on Downing Street, released a video of himself – that he had taken himself – reassuring Britons that they would get through the pandemic, together. “One thing I think the coronavirus crisis has already proved is that there really is such a thing as society,” the prime minister announced, confirming the existence of society while talking to his phone, alone in a room. All this…

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At COP26, a consensus that developing nations need far more help countering climate change

At COP26, a consensus that developing nations need far more help countering climate change

Inside Climate News reports: When the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference ended in overtime two weeks ago, there was recognition that developing nations—which have contributed least but suffer most from climate change—need far greater funding to adapt. At COP15, held in 2009 in Copenhagen, the world’s wealthiest countries pledged to give poorer nations yearly climate funding, to reach an amount of at least $100 billion a year from 2020 through 2025. The $100 billion figure was a nice, round…

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How the Omicron variant rattled the world in one week

How the Omicron variant rattled the world in one week

The Wall Street Journal reports: Over coffee at his office on Tuesday, Tulio de Oliveira, director of South Africa’s Center for Epidemic Response and Innovation, let a colleague in on a secret. “There’s something going on,” he told Alex Sigal, a virologist growing coronaviruses at a South African laboratory. “They’ve found a variant they’ve never seen before.” For days, case numbers in the nation had been rising rapidly. Puzzled lab technicians had been getting back Covid-19 tests that were positive,…

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WHO chief: Omicron backlash against Africa shows why world needs pandemic treaty

WHO chief: Omicron backlash against Africa shows why world needs pandemic treaty

Politico reports: It’s time for a new pandemic treaty, the chief of the World Health Organization said on Monday. The emergence of the new Omicron coronavirus variant amid vaccine inequity and the rapid imposition of travel bans on southern African nations “demonstrates just why the world needs a new accord on pandemics,” said WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at a special session of the World Health Assembly. Countries are gathering at the session where they will agree to start negotiations…

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Trump allies work to place supporters in key election posts, spurring fears about future vote challenges

Trump allies work to place supporters in key election posts, spurring fears about future vote challenges

The Washington Post reports: In Michigan, local GOP leaders have sought to reshape election canvassing boards by appointing members who expressed sympathy for former president Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 vote was rigged. In two Pennsylvania communities, candidates who embraced election fraud allegations won races this month to become local voting judges and inspectors. And in Colorado, 2020 doubters are urging their followers on conservative social media platforms to apply for jobs in election offices. A year after…

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