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Category: Politics

Journalists and activists ‘laundering’ genocidal regimes

Journalists and activists ‘laundering’ genocidal regimes

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: A week after Damascus feted a delegation of the European far right, Bashar al-Assad’s regime ushered in a new set of suitors. On Sunday, the American blogger and Sputnik contributor Max Blumenthal announced his arrival in Syria with a selfie. The caption read: “Here I am near the border of Jobar, a neighborhood east of Damascus occupied by the Saudi-backed Jaish al-Islam until early last year. Militia control extended close to the tall building behind me….

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Working Families Party endorses Elizabeth Warren

Working Families Party endorses Elizabeth Warren

The New York Times reports: The Working Families Party, the labor-aligned progressive group whose electoral influence has grown since the 2016 election, has endorsed Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts for the Democratic presidential nomination, a boon to her candidacy as she attempts to position herself as the main challenger to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. The party endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont during the last presidential cycle, at which time he described Working Families as “the closest…

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Lifestyle changes aren’t enough to save the planet. Here’s what could

Lifestyle changes aren’t enough to save the planet. Here’s what could

Michael E Mann writes: Everyone faces choices every day that carry a climate cost. Do we turn the lights on in the morning, or is the light of daybreak sufficient for finding matching socks? Do we feast on bacon and eggs for breakfast, or will a bowl of oatmeal suffice? There is a lot of talk these days about the need to lead lower-carbon lifestyles. There is also a lot of finger-pointing going on and, some argue, virtue signaling. But…

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Trump is seriously, frighteningly unstable – the world is in danger

Trump is seriously, frighteningly unstable – the world is in danger

Robert Reich writes: In retrospect, what’s most disturbing about “Sharpiegate” isn’t Trump’s clumsy effort to doctor a National Weather Service map or even his brazen move to get the same agency to lie on his behalf. It’s how utterly petty his motive was. We’ve had presidents trying to cover up a sexual liaison with an intern and a botched burglary, but never have we had one who went to such lengths to cover up an inaccurate weather forecast. Alabama being…

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Attack on Saudi oil sites raises risks amid U.S.-Iran tension

Attack on Saudi oil sites raises risks amid U.S.-Iran tension

The Associated Press reports: A weekend drone attack on Saudi Arabia that cut into global energy supplies and halved the kingdom’s oil production threatened Sunday to fuel a regional crisis, as Iran denied U.S. allegations it launched the assault and tensions remained high over Tehran’s collapsing nuclear deal. Iran called the U.S. claims “maximum lies,” while a commander in its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard reiterated its forces could strike U.S. military bases across the Mideast with its arsenal of ballistic missiles….

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A ‘culture of cruelty’ in the Border Patrol

A ‘culture of cruelty’ in the Border Patrol

The New York Times reports: The Border Patrol, whose agents have gone from having one of the most obscure jobs in law enforcement to one of the most hated, is suffering a crisis in both mission and morale. Earlier this year, the disclosure of a private Facebook group where agents posted sexist and callous references to migrants and the politicians who support them reinforced the perception that agents often view the vulnerable people in their care with frustration and contempt….

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The miseducation of Brett Kavanaugh

The miseducation of Brett Kavanaugh

Hanna Rosin writes: Nearly a year after the fateful Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh have become martyrs in separate and hostile galaxies — one for #believeallwomen and the other for those who believe Democrats will use any means necessary to take down good and honorable men. So there is a weird satisfaction in rewinding the story more than 30 years, back to the moment when the two lived in suburban Maryland and coexisted as part…

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What happens if Trump won’t step down?

What happens if Trump won’t step down?

Dahlia Lithwick writes: In February, Georgetown Law professor Josh Geltzer began to ponder aloud what would happen if President Donald Trump refused to leave office were he to be defeated in 2020. It sounded far-fetched, but Geltzer isn’t a conspiracy theorist. Actually, he served as senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council and, prior to that, as deputy legal adviser to the NSC and counsel to the assistant attorney general for national security. When he wrote his essay…

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Schiff accuses top intel official of illegally withholding ‘urgent’ whistleblower complaint

Schiff accuses top intel official of illegally withholding ‘urgent’ whistleblower complaint

Politico reports: The nation’s top intelligence official is illegally withholding a whistleblower complaint, possibly to protect President Donald Trump or senior White House officials, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff alleged Friday. Schiff issued a subpoena for the complaint, accusing acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire of taking extraordinary steps to withhold the complaint from Congress, even after the intel community’s inspector general characterized the complaint as credible and of “urgent concern.” “A Director of National Intelligence has never…

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I left Russia to escape Putin’s assault on reason. Now I fear the UK is on the same path

I left Russia to escape Putin’s assault on reason. Now I fear the UK is on the same path

Peter Pomerantsev writes: Nothing is true and everything is possible. That was my one-line attempt to sum up the politics and propaganda that enveloped Russia at the start of the 21st century. It was a world where politicians no longer cared whether they were caught lying; where old ideologies were dead and conspiracy thinking had become the new way to explain the world; where all the old political categories (socialist and liberal, conservative and communist) seemed utterly meaningless and it…

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Freedom (that others lack), American fast food, and internet access — Russia offers everything Edward Snowden wants

Freedom (that others lack), American fast food, and internet access — Russia offers everything Edward Snowden wants

In an interview with The Guardian: Snowden said it helped that Russia viewed him as useful publicity. “A country whose political troubles are legendary, whose problems with human rights we hear about every single day has finally, somehow, managed to have one bright spot on their human rights record … Why would they give that up?” He toyed with calling his memoirs The New Forever or Welcome to Forever before settling on Permanent Record, which reflects his concerns about the…

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Hello from the year 2050. We avoided a climate catastrophe — but everything is different

Hello from the year 2050. We avoided a climate catastrophe — but everything is different

Bill McKibben writes: Let’s imagine for a moment that we’ve reached the middle of the century. It’s 2050, and we have a moment to reflect—the climate fight remains the consuming battle of our age, but its most intense phase may be in our rearview mirror. And so we can look back to see how we might have managed to dramatically change our society and economy. We had no other choice. There was a point after 2020 when we began to…

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China is positioned to lead on climate change as the U.S. rolls back its policies

China is positioned to lead on climate change as the U.S. rolls back its policies

Smoke from a coal-fired Beijing power plant that closed in 2017 as part of China’s transition to cleaner energy. AP Photo/Andy Wong By Kelly Sims Gallagher, Tufts University and Fang Zhang, Tufts University As the effects of climate change become more widespread and alarming, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called on nations to step up their plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Every country has a part to play, but if the world’s largest emitters fail to meet their commitments,…

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Deforestation gets worse, five years after countries and companies pledged to stop it

Deforestation gets worse, five years after countries and companies pledged to stop it

Georgina Gustin writes: Five years after joining in a historic commitment to stop cutting the world’s forests, governments and companies are not only failing to slow deforestation, they are rapidly driving the disappearance of more trees. As fires consume Amazonian forests, stoking global concern about the loss of a vital ecosystem and climate regulator, a new report published Thursday finds that forests continue to be cleared at an alarming rate, driven mostly by agricultural expansion and demand for beef, palm…

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With Trump in office, major newspapers increasingly quoted anti-immigrant groups without explaining who they were

With Trump in office, major newspapers increasingly quoted anti-immigrant groups without explaining who they were

The Intercept reports: The Center for Immigration Studies, a far-right, anti-immigrant group, was frequently cited by major U.S. newspapers in the first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency — without mention of the group’s deep ties to the Trump administration, according to a report released Thursday. Ninety percent of news articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today that cited the Center for Immigration Studies from 2014 to 2017 did not mention “the extremist…

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Wendell Berry’s lifelong dissent

Wendell Berry’s lifelong dissent

Jedediah Britton-Purdy writes: At a time when political conflict runs deep and erects high walls, the Kentucky essayist, novelist, and poet Wendell Berry maintains an arresting mix of admirers. Barack Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal in 2011. The following year, the socialist-feminist writer and editor Sarah Leonard published a friendly interview with him in Dissent. Yet he also gets respectful attention in the pages of The American Conservative and First Things, a right-leaning, traditionalist Christian journal. More recently,…

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