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Category: Politics

Abusive Israeli policies constitute crimes of apartheid, persecution

Abusive Israeli policies constitute crimes of apartheid, persecution

Human Rights Watch reports: Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The finding is based on an overarching Israeli government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians and grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem. The 213-page report, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” examines Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. It presents…

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The GOP is a grave threat to American democracy

The GOP is a grave threat to American democracy

Peter Wehner writes: The hope of many conservative critics of Donald Trump was that soon after his defeat, and especially in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, the Republican Party would snap back into its former shape. The Trump presidency would end up being no more than an ugly parenthesis. The GOP would distance itself from Trump and Trumpism, and become a normal party once again. But that dream soon died. The Trump presidency might have been the first…

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America’s ultra-rich fear Biden will close their favorite tax loopholes

America’s ultra-rich fear Biden will close their favorite tax loopholes

Bloomberg reports: The rich shouldn’t be too afraid of Joe Biden’s tax plans. It’s the really rich who should be getting nervous. The U.S. president is set to unveil a tax package on Wednesday that promises to raise revenues from those earning $400,000 or more a year. But executives and professionals making over $500,000 annually already pay relatively high tax rates. What has potentially far greater ramifications is that Biden and Democrats in Congress are threatening to target a much…

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A radical right-wing dream to rewrite the Constitution is close to coming true

A radical right-wing dream to rewrite the Constitution is close to coming true

HuffPost reports: Six weeks before Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, more than 100 state lawmakers gathered in Williamsburg, Virginia, for a week of Founding Fathers cosplay. Their task, over three days in the town that bills itself as a living museum to America’s colonial period, was to approve a dramatic overhaul of the United States’ foundational text. The lawmakers, nearly all Republicans, ratified six new Constitutional amendments: They imposed term limits on members of Congress, abolished the federal…

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India’s Covid crisis is the world’s crisis

India’s Covid crisis is the world’s crisis

Yasmeen Serhan writes: India considered itself to be “in the endgame” of the pandemic just a few weeks ago. Now it is the global epicenter. The country recently surpassed the devastating milestone of more than 345,000 new COVID-19 cases in a single day, the biggest total recorded globally since the pandemic began. What is taking place in India isn’t so much a wave as it is a wall: Charts showing the country’s infection rate and death toll, which has also…

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Joe Biden’s first 100 days reshaped America

Joe Biden’s first 100 days reshaped America

Jonathan Chait writes: During the first hundred days of Joe Biden’s presidency, it has dawned on Republicans that the man their standard-bearer once mocked as “Sleepy Joe” is a formidable adversary. And the quality that has made him so effective up to this point is, well, his sleepiness. “I think Biden is a disaster for the country, and his ideas are an atrocity. But he’s boring. He’s just boring,” complained alt-media personality Dan Bongino. This frustration is not confined to…

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The false and misleading claims President Biden made during his first 100 days in office

The false and misleading claims President Biden made during his first 100 days in office

The Washington Post reports: After four years of a presidency that swamped Americans with a gusher of false and misleading claims, the Joe Biden era has offered a return to a more typical pattern when it comes to a commander in chief and his relationship with the facts — one that features frequent spin and obfuscation or exaggeration, with the occasional canard. Among the most notable falsehoods of President Biden’s first 100 days in office was his claim — which…

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Facebook stopped employees from reading an internal report about its role in the U.S. Capitol insurrection

Facebook stopped employees from reading an internal report about its role in the U.S. Capitol insurrection

BuzzFeed News reports: Last Thursday, BuzzFeed News revealed that an internal Facebook report concluded that the company had failed to prevent the “Stop the Steal” movement from using its platform to subvert the election, encourage violence, and help incite the Jan. 6 attempted coup on the US Capitol. Titled “Stop the Steal and Patriot Party: The Growth and Mitigation of an Adversarial Harmful Movement,” the report is one of the most important analyses of how the insurrectionist effort to overturn…

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Republican lawyer is key player in voter suppression drive across U.S.

Republican lawyer is key player in voter suppression drive across U.S.

The Guardian reports: It was an abrupt end to two decades as a partner at legal giant Foley & Lardner for the influential and conservative election lawyer Cleta Mitchell. Days after Mitchell participated in Donald Trump’s controversial 2 January phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state where the then president pressured him to “find” him more votes to reverse Joe Biden’s win, Mitchell resigned her post in the midst of an internal firm review and mounting criticism. But Mitchell, a…

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Iran’s foreign minister, in leaked tape, says Revolutionary Guards set policies

Iran’s foreign minister, in leaked tape, says Revolutionary Guards set policies

The New York Times reports: In a leaked audiotape that offers a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes power struggles of Iranian leaders, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the Revolutionary Guards Corps call the shots, overruling many government decisions and ignoring advice. In one extraordinary moment on the tape that surfaced Sunday, Mr. Zarif departed from the reverential official line on Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of the Guards’ elite Quds Force, the foreign-facing arm of Iran’s security apparatus, who…

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More action, less talk, distinguish Biden’s 100-day sprint

More action, less talk, distinguish Biden’s 100-day sprint

The Associated Press reports: The card tucked in President Joe Biden’s right jacket pocket must weigh a ton. You can see the weight of it on his face when he digs it out, squints and ever-so-slowly reads aloud the latest tally of COVID-19 dead. Sometimes he’ll stumble on a digit — after all, flubs come with the man. But the message is always clear: The toll of the virus weighs on him constantly, a millstone that helps explain why the…

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Young adults’ relocations are reshaping political geography

Young adults’ relocations are reshaping political geography

The Associated Press reports: The choices by … members of the millennial generation of where to live have reshaped the country’s political geography over the past decade. They’ve left New York and California and settled in places less likely to be settings for TV sitcoms about 20-something urbanites, including Denver, Houston and Orlando, Florida. Drawn by jobs and overlooked cultural amenities, they’ve helped add new craft breweries, condominiums and liberal voters to these once more-conservative places. The U.S. Census Bureau…

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Halting the vast release of methane is critical for climate, UN says

Halting the vast release of methane is critical for climate, UN says

The New York Times reports: A landmark United Nations report is expected to declare that reducing emissions of methane, the main component of natural gas, will need to play a far more vital role in warding off the worst effects of climate change. The global methane assessment, compiled by an international team of scientists, reflects a growing recognition that the world needs to start reining in planet-warming emissions more rapidly, and that abating methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas, will…

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CEO pay remains stratospheric, even at companies battered by pandemic

CEO pay remains stratospheric, even at companies battered by pandemic

The New York Times reports: Boeing had a historically bad 2020. Its 737 Max was grounded for most of the year after two deadly crashes, the pandemic decimated its business, and the company announced plans to lay off 30,000 workers and reported a $12 billion loss. Nonetheless, its chief executive, David Calhoun, was rewarded with some $21.1 million in compensation. Norwegian Cruise Line barely survived the year. With the cruise industry at a standstill, the company lost $4 billion and…

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Ottoman cosmopolitanism and the myth of the sectarian Middle East

Ottoman cosmopolitanism and the myth of the sectarian Middle East

Ussama Makdisi writes: The Arab East was among the last regions in the world to be colonised by Western powers. It was also the first to be colonised in the name of self-determination. An iconic photograph from September 1920 of the French colonial general Henri Gouraud dressed in a splendid white uniform and flanked by two ‘native’ religious figures captures this moment. Seated to one side is the Patriarch of the Maronite Church, an Eastern Christian Catholic sect. On the…

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One billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, but mostly in wealthy countries

One billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, but mostly in wealthy countries

Forbes reports: The Associated Press reported last week that 87% of doses had been administered in rich countries, with 1 in 4 people in wealthy nations having received a jab, versus 1 in more than 500 in impoverished countries. According to the New York Times‘ vaccination tracker, only 0.2% of doses have been dispensed in low-income countries. Up to 60 of those nations might not receive any additional supply of the vaccine until June. Conversely, the supply of available shots…

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