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Category: Politics

The grim stakes of climate crisis for my generation are undeniable

The grim stakes of climate crisis for my generation are undeniable

Maya Ozbayoglu writes :Young people know that our generation already disproportionately feels the effects of the climate crisis. Almost all of the intense heatwaves that have hit Europe since 1950 occurred during my lifetime. It’s likely they will only get worse. Unfortunately, Poland, where I live, has clung to an energy model driven by burning fossil fuels for too long. This irreversible destruction violates our right to life, health, property and values ​​of the natural world. That is why at…

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Trump fever may be breaking

Trump fever may be breaking

Zachary B. Wolf writes: In Tuesday’s elections, Republican candidates surged in blue states, cities rejected major police reform and suburban voters showed their independence. The major takeaways? This is a more moderate and centrist country than activists on either the right or left let on, and Donald Trump fever may be breaking. The system is working. Here’s one thing everybody can be happy about: The election results, for the most part, are not being questioned. That may have a lot…

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Justice Dept. sues Texas over voting restrictions

Justice Dept. sues Texas over voting restrictions

The New York Times reports: The Justice Department on Thursday sued Texas over the state’s new voting law, arguing that the Republican-passed measure would disenfranchise Texans who do not speak English, who have disabilities, who are older or who live outside the United States. The Texas voting restrictions, signed into law in September, include measures barring election officials from sending voters unsolicited absentee ballot applications and from promoting the use of vote by mail, as well as further limiting the…

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Secret Israeli dossier provides no proof for declaring Palestinian NGOs ‘terrorists’

Secret Israeli dossier provides no proof for declaring Palestinian NGOs ‘terrorists’

+972 reports: On Oct. 22, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz designated six prominent Palestinian human rights groups as “terrorist organizations,” citing alleged links with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a left-wing Palestinian party and militant movement. Despite the severity of the declaration, which was reportedly based on intelligence gathered by the Shin Bet, Israel has failed to present any documents directly or indirectly linking the six organizations to the PFLP or to any violent activity. So…

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The ‘echo chamber’ of Syrian chemical weapons conspiracy theorists

The ‘echo chamber’ of Syrian chemical weapons conspiracy theorists

Brian Whitaker writes: Hundreds of people died — many of them in their sleep — when rockets laden with the nerve agent sarin struck Ghouta, a rebel-held area on the outskirts of the Syrian capital early one morning in August 2013. It was the deadliest chemical attack anywhere in the world since the 1980s. Considering that Ghouta was under fire from the Assad regime’s forces at the time, that the casualties were on the rebels’ side and that the regime…

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Are financiers greenwashing COP26?

Are financiers greenwashing COP26?

Quartz reports: COP26 is nominally about reducing carbon emissions, but in practice it’s largely about capital—namely moving more of it into clean energy and climate adaptation and away from fossil fuels. In the first two days of the UN’s COP26 climate summit, several rich countries promised to do this, pledging more climate finance to poorer countries: $10 billion from Japan, $7 billion from Italy, $260 million from Ireland. Scotland became the first country to officially take responsibility for “loss and…

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Why past international climate talks have proved ineffective

Why past international climate talks have proved ineffective

Bob Berwyn writes: It’s been more than 30 years since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change first warned the world that greenhouse gases were dangerously warming the global climate. Decades of United Nations climate negotiations followed, culminating in the 2015 Paris agreement. Yet, in that time, humans have pumped more carbon dioxide into the air than in the preceding 240 years. Since that first IPCC report in 1990, emissions have increased 60 percent and the average global temperature has climbed…

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The hatred of America and of American institutions is going to grow

The hatred of America and of American institutions is going to grow

Anne Applebaum writes: All around you are swirling scenes of violence—explosions in Baghdad, ISIS operatives slitting the throat of an infidel, the chaos around the U.S. Capitol on January 6. You see jarring images of blood and brutality; you hear the grating sound of screaming; you feel the rush of fear and rage. But then a calm, sympathetic man steps forward, dressed in a button-down shirt. He explains all of it. He connects the disconnected images; he makes sense of…

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What Youngkin’s win in Virginia means for the rest of America

What Youngkin’s win in Virginia means for the rest of America

Zachary D. Carter writes: Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Tuesday’s Virginia gubernatorial election was about schools. It wasn’t about Donald Trump, or inflation, or defunding the police, or Medicare for All, or President Joe Biden’s infrastructure agenda. It wasn’t really about critical race theory or transgender rights—though those issues shaded the situation a bit by highlighting anxieties surrounding the education system. Fundamentally, the contest was about schools—specifically, how many parents remain frustrated by the way public schools have handled the…

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Biden administration moves to limit methane, a potent greenhouse gas

Biden administration moves to limit methane, a potent greenhouse gas

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration said Tuesday that it would heavily regulate methane, a potent greenhouse gas that spews from oil and natural gas operations and can warm the atmosphere 80 times as fast as carbon dioxide in the short term. For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency intends to limit the methane coming from roughly one million existing oil and gas rigs across the United States. The federal government previously had rules that aimed to…

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Even as Biden pushes clean energy, he seeks more oil production

Even as Biden pushes clean energy, he seeks more oil production

The New York Times reports: President Biden told a global climate summit on Monday that “we only have a brief window before us” to reduce the emissions from burning oil, gas and coal that pose an “existential threat” to humanity. But only days earlier, he was urging the world’s largest oil producers to pump more of the fossil fuels that are warming the planet. The incongruity was on center stage both at the global climate summit currently taking place in…

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NBC News Poll: 50 percent of Republicans doubt their vote will be counted accurately

NBC News Poll: 50 percent of Republicans doubt their vote will be counted accurately

NBC News reports: There’s been a significant decline over the past year in voters who think their vote will be counted accurately, a trend driven mainly by Republicans — most of whom still believe false claims that President Joe Biden didn’t legitimately win the 2020 election, according to a new NBC News poll. Two-thirds of all registered voters, 66 percent, say they are confident their vote will be counted accurately, down from 85 percent in October 2020. And 29 percent…

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Shutting down historical debate, China makes it a crime to mock heroes

Shutting down historical debate, China makes it a crime to mock heroes

The New York Times reports: The young woman in Beijing began her post complaining about mobs gathering online, where recluses vent misogynistic insecurities from the safety of desk chairs. As provocative as it was, it might have passed unnoticed except that she added another beat. She mocked the toxic masculinity of users imagining themselves as Dong Cunrui, a textbook war hero who, according to Chinese Communist Party lore, died valiantly during the civil war that brought the party to power…

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Bosnia is in danger of breaking up, warns top international official

Bosnia is in danger of breaking up, warns top international official

The Guardian reports: The international community’s chief representative in Bosnia has warned that the country is in imminent danger of breaking apart, and there is a “very real” prospect of a return to conflict. In a report to the UN seen by the Guardian, Christian Schmidt, the high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that if Serb separatists carry out their threat to recreate their own army, splitting the national armed forces in two, more international peacekeepers would have to…

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At COP 26, countries must get serious about detailing their plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions

At COP 26, countries must get serious about detailing their plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions

Tina Gerhardt writes: As the sun rose in Glasgow, over 20,000 people—delegates from individual nations, representatives of nongovernmental organizations, and activists—gathered in Scotland for the start of the United Nations’ two-week climate conference. Known as the Conference of the Parties or COP 26, it runs from Monday, November 1 to Friday, November 12, 2021. The COP 26 will mainly focus on two things: (1) commitments on greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions reductions; and (2) funding and technology transfers from developed countries…

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This is where the first climate wars will break out

This is where the first climate wars will break out

The Daily Beast reports: Climate-related warfare is a near-term reality—not some far-off boogeyman—according to leading defense thinkers and military strategists. They are still talking about the importance of fighting climate change, but they’re also making plans to fight other human beings because of climate change. So, where will these climate-related battles take place? Some people argue they already have, with controversial academic reports claiming recent conflicts were directly spurred by the effects of climate change. Other military advisers and strategists…

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