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Category: Politics

Tucker Carlson blows up Murdoch’s white supremacy denial on air

Tucker Carlson blows up Murdoch’s white supremacy denial on air

Jonathan Chait writes: Last spring, Fox News host Tucker Carlson used one of his inflammatory monologues to accuse the Biden administration of “​​trying to replace the current electorate” with “more obedient voters from the Third World.” Carlson has spent years edging up to the border of explicit white-supremacist rhetoric, but here he crossed over by echoing the precise theories of neo-Nazis, using their preferred terms. An alarmed Anti-Defamation League wrote to Carlson’s employers demanding they sack him. Lachlan Murdoch wrote…

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U.S. special envoy for Haiti resigns amid deportations

U.S. special envoy for Haiti resigns amid deportations

Reuters reports: The U.S. special envoy for Haiti, Ambassador Daniel Foote, has resigned, a senior State Department official said on Thursday, amid mass deportations of Haitians who fled recent political turmoil and natural disasters at home. The U.S. government has continued to fly hundreds of people, including families, back to Haiti, with conditions deteriorating in migrant camps on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. “I will not be associated with the United States’ inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of…

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America’s billionaires pay an average income tax rate of just 8.2%, Biden administration says

America’s billionaires pay an average income tax rate of just 8.2%, Biden administration says

CBS News reports: The wealthiest 400 families in the United States are paying an average income tax rate of just 8.2%, according to a new analysis from the Biden administration. President Joe Biden and Democrats are pushing to raise taxes on the richest Americans as they look for ways to pay for their ambitious agenda, making its way through Congress as a $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package. The analysis estimated billionaires paid 8.2% of their income between 2010 and 2018,…

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Taliban official: Strict punishment, executions will return

Taliban official: Strict punishment, executions will return

The Associated Press reports: One of the founders of the Taliban and the chief enforcer of its harsh interpretation of Islamic law when they last ruled Afghanistan said the hard-line movement will once again carry out executions and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public. In an interview with The Associated Press, Mullah Nooruddin Turabi dismissed outrage over the Taliban’s executions in the past, which sometimes took place in front of crowds at a stadium, and he warned the…

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President Xi declares end to Chinese support for new coal power abroad

President Xi declares end to Chinese support for new coal power abroad

Climate Change News reports: China will end its support for new coal power projects overseas, president Xi Jinping told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. For years, China has been the biggest public financer of foreign coal, particularly in rapidly-growing Asian economies, but has slowed down recently. President Xi’s speech was translated as: “China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad.” The announcement…

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Pfizer CEO rallies staff to fight Democrats’ drug price negotiation

Pfizer CEO rallies staff to fight Democrats’ drug price negotiation

Politico reports: Pfizer’s CEO sent a video message to company employees urging them to fight proposed government drug price negotiations and expressing frustration with Congress, which is considering using the projected savings to help pay for a $3.5 trillion social spending package. Albert Bourla said he was “particularly disappointed” that a House Democratic leadership-backed drug pricing plan and similar proposals “will have a little positive impact on patients where it really matters at the pharmacy,” according to the three-minute video,…

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How Colorado reformed its police departments

How Colorado reformed its police departments

Russell Berman writes: On the afternoon of July 23, an Army veteran named Kyle Vinson is sitting on a curb in Aurora, Colorado, when two police officers confront him. “Stay down! Roll over on your face,” one of the officers yells. He has his gun drawn. The officer shoves Vinson to the ground and holds him there. “Whoa. What the hell did I do, dude?” Vinson asks. He puts his hands up. The police are responding to a trespassing report…

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In Kabul, a former U.S. citizen keeps running the city under Taliban watch

In Kabul, a former U.S. citizen keeps running the city under Taliban watch

The Wall Street Journal reports: After attending the funeral of a fellow United Airlines pilot who was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Daoud Sultanzoy decided to return to his native Afghanistan and help build its post-Taliban government. These days, the 66-year-old mayor of Kabul is the most prominent official from the fallen Afghan republic to remain in his job after the Taliban returned to power on Aug. 15. Every morning, Mr. Sultanzoy, saluted by the municipality’s uniformed guards,…

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Democrats fear Biden’s domestic agenda could implode

Democrats fear Biden’s domestic agenda could implode

Politico reports: Internal Democratic discord has wounded President Joe Biden’s massive social spending plan, raising the prospect that the package could stall out, shrink dramatically — or even fail altogether. Myriad problems have arisen. Moderate Senate Democrats Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) continue to be a major headache for party leadership’s $3.5 trillion target. The Senate parliamentarian just nixed the party’s yearslong push to enact broad immigration reform. House members may tank the prescription drugs overhaul the party…

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We’re finally catching a break in the climate fight

We’re finally catching a break in the climate fight

Bill McKibben writes: So far in the global warming era, we’ve caught precious few breaks. Certainly not from physics: the temperature has increased at the alarming pace that scientists predicted thirty years ago, and the effects of that warming have increased even faster than expected. (“Faster Than Expected” is probably the right title for a history of climate change so far; if you’re a connoisseur of disaster, there is already a blog by that name). The Arctic is melting decades…

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Trump campaign knew lawyers’ voting machine claims were baseless, memo shows

Trump campaign knew lawyers’ voting machine claims were baseless, memo shows

The New York Times reports: Two weeks after the 2020 election, a team of lawyers closely allied with Donald J. Trump held a widely watched news conference at the Republican Party’s headquarters in Washington. At the event, they laid out a bizarre conspiracy theory claiming that a voting machine company had worked with an election software firm, the financier George Soros and Venezuela to steal the presidential contest from Mr. Trump. But there was a problem for the Trump team,…

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U.S. treatment of Haitian migrants discriminatory

U.S. treatment of Haitian migrants discriminatory

Human Rights Watch: The US deployment of border agents on horseback against Haitian migrants on September 19, 2021, stems from abusive and racially discriminatory immigration policies by the administration of President Joe Biden, Human Rights Watch said today. The previous day, the Department of Homeland Security announced a six-step “strategy to address the increase of migrants in [the Texas border city of] Del Rio” that included a “surge” of agents to “improve control of the area” and new expulsion flights…

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The idea of the West has always been in motion and in crisis

The idea of the West has always been in motion and in crisis

Faisal Devji writes: When asked what he thought of Western civilisation, Gandhi apparently responded that he thought it would be a good idea. While this celebrated statement is taken to be an ironic dismissal, Gandhi had in fact given the matter of Western civilisation much thought. In his manifesto of 1909 called Hind Swaraj or ‘Indian Home Rule’, the future Mahatma had described imperial Britain’s desire to spread Western civilisation not as hypocritical so much as suicidal. For he thought…

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How accounting giants infiltrate government to provide their clients with favorable tax rules

How accounting giants infiltrate government to provide their clients with favorable tax rules

The New York Times reports: For six years, Audrey Ellis and Adam Feuerstein worked together at PwC, the giant accounting firm, helping the world’s biggest companies avoid taxes. In mid-2018, one of Mr. Feuerstein’s clients, an influential association of real estate companies, was trying to persuade government officials that its members should qualify for a new federal tax break. Mr. Feuerstein knew just the person to turn to for help. Ms. Ellis had recently joined the Treasury Department, and she…

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U.S. and EU pledge 30% cut in methane emissions to limit global heating

U.S. and EU pledge 30% cut in methane emissions to limit global heating

The Guardian reports: The US and the EU made a joint pledge on Friday to cut global methane emissions by almost a third in the next decade, in what climate experts hailed as one of the most significant steps yet towards fulfilling the Paris climate agreement. The pledge came as the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, warned of a “high risk of failure” at the vital UN climate talks, Cop26, set for Glasgow this November. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas,…

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Peter Thiel’s ideology dominates Silicon Valley

Peter Thiel’s ideology dominates Silicon Valley

Max Chafkin writes: Other Silicon Valley personas may be better known to the general public, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and even a few who don’t regularly launch rockets into space. But [Peter] Thiel is the Valley’s true idol — the single person whom tech’s young aspirants and millennial moguls most seek to flatter and to emulate, the cult leader of the cult of disruption. The blitzscaling strategy he and his employees pioneered at PayPal created the growth playbook for…

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