Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: White House officials have tried to pressure U.S. immigration authorities to release detainees onto the streets of “sanctuary cities” to retaliate against President Trump’s political adversaries, according to Department of Homeland Security officials and email messages reviewed by The Washington Post. Trump administration officials have proposed transporting detained immigrants to sanctuary cities at least twice in the past six months — once in November, as a migrant caravan approached the U.S. southern border, and again in…

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The Washington Post reports: After Bernie Sanders lost his primary campaign for president against Hillary Clinton in 2016, a Twitter account called Red Louisiana News reached out to his supporters to help sway the general election. “Conscious Bernie Sanders supporters already moving towards the best candidate Trump! #Feel the Bern #Vote Trump 2016,” the account tweeted. The tweet was not actually from Louisiana, according to an analysis by Clemson University researchers. Instead, it was one of thousands of accounts identified…

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Michael Weiss writes: In the end, the man who reportedly smeared feces on the walls of his lodgings, mistreated his kitten, and variously blamed the ills of the world on feminists and bespectacled Jewish writers was pulled from the Ecuadorian embassy looking every inch like a powdered-sugar Saddam plucked straight from his spider-hole. The only camera crew to record this pivotal event belonged to Ruptly, a Berlin-based streaming online video streamer, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of RT, the…

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Nick Cohen writes: Brexit is being defined by the inability of political leaders and much of the media to be honest with themselves – and indeed anyone else. The result is the greatest outbreak of political lying of my lifetime. You can compare it with Suez, but at least in 1956, Hugh Gaitskell and the Labour opposition clearly stated that Eden’s pretext for invading Egypt was false. Now government and opposition compete to see who can tell the greater lies….

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Peter Oborne writes: It’s nearly three years since I, along with 17.4 million other Britons, voted for Brexit. Today I have to admit that the Brexit project has gone sour. Brexit has paralysed the system. It has turned Britain into a laughing stock. And it is certain to make us poorer and to lead to lower incomes and lost jobs. We Brexiteers would be wise to acknowledge all this. It’s past time we did. We need to acknowledge, too, that…

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WOW. WOW. President of the BJP vowing to cleanse the country of….Christians and Muslims? And presumably anyone else who is not Buddha (sic), Sikh or Hindu? https://t.co/6JSVdhdZ7Z — Priyamvada Gopal (@PriyamvadaGopal) April 11, 2019 Betwa Sharma writes: Nine hundred million people, just shy of the combined populations of Europe and America, will have the chance to vote as Indians line up to decide who will lead the country for the next five years. The phased polls begin on April 11…

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President Trump, who often expressed his love of WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential campaign, says following the arrest of Julian Assange on Thursday: "I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing." pic.twitter.com/smT8o7La95 — NBC News (@NBCNews) April 11, 2019 Trump today in the Oval Office: "I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing." Flashback to the campaign. Trump: "WikiLeaks. I love WikiLeaks." pic.twitter.com/eYfg5zeySI — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) April 11, 2019 The Guardian reports: Trump celebrated WikiLeaks on the…

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Tom Kibasi writes: Britain will remain in the EU until the end of October this year, but diminished in power and status, with a review of its conduct set for the end of June. It is the marital equivalent of being sent to sleep in the spare bedroom, if not quite the garden shed. Wednesday night’s humiliation, when 27 other nations decided our fate – a taster of Norway-plus or “common market 2.0”, where decisions are made about the UK…

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Ars Technica reports: A joint intelligence bulletin (JIB) has been issued by the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation to state and local authorities regarding Russian hacking activities during the 2016 presidential election. While the bulletin contains no new technical information, it is the first official report to confirm that the Russian reconnaissance and hacking efforts in advance of the election went well beyond the 21 states confirmed in previous reports. As reported by the intelligence newsletter…

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Vox reports: Israel’s 2019 election results are in, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is all but certain to stay in office for a record fifth term. The consequences of his victory for both Israelis and Palestinians could very well be catastrophic. The past several years of Netanyahu’s time in office have been characterized by drift in two illiberal, anti-democratic directions. The prime minister has tried to buy off the independent media, further marginalized Israel’s Arab minority, and gone after civil…

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Haaretz reports: An Israeli public relations company headed by a settler leader boasted Wednesday that it was behind the Likud initiative to place 1,200 hidden cameras in Arab polling stations on Election Day. The firm added that it was to thank for the historically low turnout among Arab voters. “Thanks to us placing observers in every polling station we managed to lower the voter turnout to under 50 percent, the lowest in recent years!” the PR company, Kaizler Inbar, posted…

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