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Category: Politics

If the super-rich want to live for ever our planet is truly doomed

If the super-rich want to live for ever our planet is truly doomed

John Harris writes: Welcome to the era of immortalists: scientists, dreamers and – crucially – billionaires, who want us to think of age as a curable disease, and our final end as something that could be indefinitely postponed. According to one estimate, the revenues of the global anti-ageing industry will increase from about $200bn today to $420bn by 2030. One sure sign of its rosy prospects is the involvement of high-profile people in the US who have made vast fortunes…

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To steer China’s future, Xi is rewriting its past

To steer China’s future, Xi is rewriting its past

The New York Times reports: The glowing image of China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, greets visitors to museum exhibitions celebrating the country’s decades of growth. Communist Party biographers have worshipfully chronicled his rise, though he has given no hint of retiring. The party’s newest official history devotes over a quarter of its 531 pages to his nine years in power. No Chinese leader in recent times has been more fixated than Mr. Xi on history and his place in it,…

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An idea about safety that keeps putting us in danger

An idea about safety that keeps putting us in danger

Tim Requarth writes: Remember March of 2020, before masks? Back then, as we became aware that the coronavirus was circulating around the country at an alarming clip, packed up our offices, and pulled our kids out of in-person school, the nation’s top experts urged us not to bother covering our nose and mouths. Among the complex reasons for the hesitation was a simple one: distrust of the public. “I worry that if people put on masks, then they’ll think, OK,…

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The partisan gap in Covid’s death toll is growing faster

The partisan gap in Covid’s death toll is growing faster

David Leonhardt writes: The gap in Covid’s death toll between red and blue America has grown faster over the past month than at any previous point. In October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of heavily Trump counties died from Covid, more than three times higher than the rate in heavily Biden counties (7.8 per 100,000). October was the fifth consecutive month that the percentage gap between the death rates in Trump counties and Biden counties widened. Some conservative writers…

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Running out of time at the UN climate conference

Running out of time at the UN climate conference

Elizabeth Kolbert writes: For those inclined to see them, there were plenty of bad omens last week as the latest round of international climate negotiations—COP26—got under way in Glasgow. A storm that lashed England with eighty-mile-per-hour winds disrupted train service from London to Scotland, leaving many delegates scrambling to find a way to get to the meeting. Just as the conclave began, Glasgow’s garbage workers went on strike, and rubbish piled up in the streets. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in…

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Voices from across America on what the climate crisis stole

Voices from across America on what the climate crisis stole

The Guardian reports: The jubilation of the Paris climate agreement, where delegates from around the world triumphantly declared the climate crisis would finally be tamed, will have felt very hollow to many in the US in the six years since. Following the landmark 2015 deal to curb dangerous global heating, the US has experienced four of its five hottest years ever recorded. A drought of a severity unprecedented in modern civilization has tightened its grip upon the American west, parching…

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Young women are leading climate protests while old men run global talks

Young women are leading climate protests while old men run global talks

The New York Times reports: The week began with more than 130 presidents and prime ministers posing for a group photo in a century-old Baroque museum crafted from red sandstone. Fewer than 10 were women. Their median age, as their host at the climate summit, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, reminded them, was over 60. The week ended with boisterous protests of thousands on the streets of Glasgow. A march on Friday was led by young climate activists, some barely…

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Foreman says military jury was disgusted by CIA torture

Foreman says military jury was disgusted by CIA torture

The New York Times reports: A Navy captain who as head of a jury in a war-crimes court wrote a damning letter calling the C.I.A.’s torture of a terrorist “a stain on the moral fiber of America” said his views are typical of senior members of the U.S. military. Capt. Scott B. Curtis, the jury foreman, said it is just that he had the opportunity to express his thoughts in a letter proposing clemency for the prisoner Majid Khan, a…

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The $30 billion woman: Megadonor Miriam Adelson leaps back into politics

The $30 billion woman: Megadonor Miriam Adelson leaps back into politics

Politico reports: Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson — the widow of casino mogul and longtime GOP kingmaker Sheldon Adelson — is staging a return to politics, positioning herself to be a force in the 2022 midterms and beyond. Adelson, who with her husband formed the Republican Party’s most powerful donor couple for the last decade, quietly held meetings in her Las Vegas home with a select group of GOP leaders and potential 2024 presidential candidates in the last few days. It…

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UK’s Brexit losses more than 178 times bigger than trade deal gains

UK’s Brexit losses more than 178 times bigger than trade deal gains

The Independent reports: All of Boris Johnson’s new post-Brexit trade deals put together will have an economic benefit of just £3 to £7 per person over the next 15 years, according to the government’s own figures. The tiny economic boost – amounting to just 0.01 to 0.02 per cent of GDP, and less than 50p per person a year – is dwarfed by the economic hit from leaving the EU, which the government estimates at 4 per cent of GDP…

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What collective narcissism does to society

What collective narcissism does to society

Scott Barry Kaufman writes: In 2005, the psychologist Agnieszka Golec de Zavala was researching extremist groups, trying to understand what leads people to commit acts of terrorist violence. She began to notice something that looked a lot like what the 20th-century scholars Theodor Adorno and Erich Fromm had referred to as “group narcissism”: Golec de Zavala defined it to me as “a belief that the exaggerated greatness of one’s group is not sufficiently recognized by others,” in which that thirst…

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Landmark agreements at COP26 put nails in coal’s coffin

Landmark agreements at COP26 put nails in coal’s coffin

Tina Gerhardt writes: Global emissions from fossil fuels have now rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. So it’s particularly significant that on Wednesday, at the UN climate conference COP26 in Glasgow, at least 25 countries agreed to end public subsidies for overseas oil and gas development and extraction starting at the end of 2022. China, Japan and South Korea, all heavily involved in funding fossil fuels abroad, have all signed on. In addition, more than 23 countries have committed to ending coal…

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Demonstrators around the world demand action on climate crisis

Demonstrators around the world demand action on climate crisis

The Guardian reports: People on almost every continent were gathering for marches and rallies on Saturday to mark a Global Day for Climate Justice, halfway through the Glasgow climate change summit. Activists in the Philippines, eight hours ahead of the UK, had already finished their rally as protesters gathered in Scotland. There were also rallies in South Korea, Indonesia, the Netherlands and France. The Belgian arm of Extinction Rebellion occupied a street in Brussels. The Scottish morning saw heavy rain,…

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U.S. federal appeals court freezes Biden’s vaccine rule for companies

U.S. federal appeals court freezes Biden’s vaccine rule for companies

Reuters reports: A U.S. federal appeals court issued a stay Saturday freezing the Biden administration’s efforts to require workers at U.S. companies with at least 100 employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 or be tested weekly, citing “grave statutory and constitutional” issues with the rule. The ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit comes after numerous Republican-led states filed legal challenges against the new rule, which is set to take effect on Jan 4. In a…

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Sinema’s raking in cash from MLMs. They want to kill her party’s labor bill

Sinema’s raking in cash from MLMs. They want to kill her party’s labor bill

Politico reports: They’ve been derided as spruced up pyramid schemes: Companies that incentivize their own customers to become salespeople for products. Now, these so-called multilevel marketing businesses are flexing their political muscle. And they’re turning to one lawmaker in particular to protect their agenda: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. The political action committee associated with Alticor, the parent entity of the health, home and beauty company Amway, gave $2,500 to the Arizona Democrat in late June, as did the PAC for Isagenix,…

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The dark secrets behind big oil’s climate pledges

The dark secrets behind big oil’s climate pledges

The Guardian reports: JPMorgan Chase won glowing headlines last year when the global investment bank unveiled a commitment to counter the climate crisis. The press amplified JPMorgan’s message – sometimes in JPMorgan’s own words. Fortune published a commentary article trumpeting the bank’s plans to “tackle climate change”. Six paragraphs into the piece, the writers noted they worked for the investment firm. (They were actually its top executives.) The bank waited months to detail its plans. In May, it finally outlined…

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