Xi Jinping has backed out of the spotlight as China faces its worst crisis in years

Xi Jinping has backed out of the spotlight as China faces its worst crisis in years

The New York Times reports: President Xi Jinping strode onstage before an adoring audience in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing less than three weeks ago, trumpeting his successes in steering China through a tumultuous year and promising “landmark” progress in 2020. “Every single Chinese person, every member of the Chinese nation, should feel proud to live in this great era,” he declared to applause on the day before the Lunar New Year holiday. “Our progress will not…

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The people Trump targets for telling the truth

The people Trump targets for telling the truth

Benjamin Wittes writes: [Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman] is an active military officer, rotating through the NSC on assignment. The president can put quotation marks around lieutenant colonel, as he did in today’s tweets, in an effort to demean Vindman’s service, but there is nothing to demean about his service, which has been in all respects honorable. The conduct for which his career has been attacked, what the president calls Vindman’s “insubordination,” was exceptionally brave truth-telling—both in real time and later…

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Col. Vindman and the Trumpification of the National Security Council

Col. Vindman and the Trumpification of the National Security Council

John Gans writes: On Friday, the White House announced that it was transferring Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified during the House impeachment hearings, out of the National Security Council. The move is unsettling, petty and vindictive. But it’s not a surprise: The dismissal is just one part of a campaign by the national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, to trumpify one of the most powerful and important institutions in government. Over the last six months, while impeachment dominated the news,…

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‘We are left to face death alone’

‘We are left to face death alone’

Waad al Kateab writes: When the forces of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria destroyed and took control of my city of Aleppo, its residents, including my family, were forced to flee to the northwestern Idlib province. The pattern repeated after every military assault by the Syrian regime on cities and towns outside its control. Idlib became the sanctuary for about four million people. Relentless aerial bombardment by the Assad regime and its Russian allies and a devastating ground offensive have…

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Insurers should support people, not the fossil fuel industry

Insurers should support people, not the fossil fuel industry

Tony Dunn writes: On November 8, 2018, I was trapped in my car as embers fell all around me in Paradise, California, and the thought that kept going through my head was, “This can’t be the same fire [that had been reported 10 miles away only two hours before]. Fires can’t move like that.” I should know: I spent nearly a decade studying wildland fire history, fire ecology and fire behavior in southern California for the U.S. Forest Service and…

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Why language might be the optimal self regulating system

Why language might be the optimal self regulating system

Lane Greene writes: Decades before the rise of social media, polarisation plagued discussions about language. By and large, it still does. Everyone who cares about the topic is officially required to take one of two stances. Either you smugly preen about the mistakes you find abhorrent – this makes you a so-called prescriptivist – or you show off your knowledge of language change, and poke holes in the prescriptivists’ facts – this makes you a descriptivist. Group membership is mandatory,…

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The purge: Truth-teller expelled from the White House

The purge: Truth-teller expelled from the White House

Bloomberg reports: Alexander Vindman, who testified in Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry, was escorted out of the White House on Friday, two days after the president’s acquittal in his Senate trial. “Vindman was asked to leave for telling the truth,” said his lawyer, David Pressman. “His honor, his commitment to right, frightened the powerful.” The ouster of Vindman, who worked on the National Security Council, came after the Senate acquitted Trump of two articles of impeachment in a near party-line vote….

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Doctor’s death from coronavirus sparks a digital uprising, rattling China’s leaders

Doctor’s death from coronavirus sparks a digital uprising, rattling China’s leaders

The Washington Post reports: China’s streets were quiet and its neighborhoods sealed, but grief and rage against the government poured onto social media on Friday as the country confronted the death of the “whistleblower doctor” whose story was seen as a parable for the Communist Party’s failings. Within hours of Li Wenliang’s death, millions of Chinese, homebound in the coronavirus crisis, tried to bypass censors to post the hashtag “We demand freedom of speech” in a remarkable but short-lived digital…

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Response to coronavirus exposes history of racism and ‘cleanliness’

Response to coronavirus exposes history of racism and ‘cleanliness’

Vox reports: The coronavirus outbreak has created global anxiety since the first cases were reported in Wuhan, China, late last year. So far, over 30,000 illnesses and 635 deaths have been reported in mainland China, with cases in the double digits found throughout Asia, parts of Europe, Australia, and beyond; in the US, 12 people have been found to have the pneumonia-like virus. In response, Chinese cities have been quarantined, borders have been sealed, and travel has been banned. The…

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Journalism under attack

Journalism under attack

Mathew Ingram writes: The United States is not the only country where journalists work in a toxic political environment, in which the leader of the nation routinely attacks and demonizes them. A recently published report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University in the UK describes how similar patterns can be seen in a number of other countries in central and eastern Europe, including Hungary—where leader Viktor Orbán has centralized control of the press—and Turkey,…

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In the U.S. embargo on Venezuelan oil, Russia is a clear winner

In the U.S. embargo on Venezuelan oil, Russia is a clear winner

The Washington Post reports: In the year since the Trump administration declared what amounted to economic war against the Venezuelan government of President Nicolás Maduro — an oil embargo that cut it off from its biggest petroleum buyer, the United States — the move has yielded some clear losers, including U.S. investors now shut out of the market. It has also produced one clear winner: Vladimir Putin’s Russia. U.S. officials, oil industry insiders and analysts say secret deals between Moscow…

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Bumblebees’ decline points to mass extinction, scientists say

Bumblebees’ decline points to mass extinction, scientists say

PA Media reports: Bumblebees are in drastic decline across Europe and North America owing to hotter and more frequent extremes in temperatures, scientists say. A study suggests the likelihood of a bumblebee population surviving in any given place has declined by 30% in the course of a single human generation. The researchers say the rates of decline appear to be “consistent with a mass extinction”. Peter Soroye, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa and the study’s lead author,…

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Brazilian judge declines — ‘for now’ — to move forward with charges against Glenn Greenwald

Brazilian judge declines — ‘for now’ — to move forward with charges against Glenn Greenwald

The Intercept reports: A judge today declined to proceed with cybercrime charges lodged against Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald for his reporting on prosecutorial and judicial misconduct in Brazil. In a decision announced Thursday, Judge Ricardo Augusto Soares Leite ruled that Greenwald’s prosecution would not go forward, but only on account of a previous finding by the Brazilian Supreme Court that The Intercept’s reporting on Operation Car Wash had not transgressed any legal boundaries. In the absence of the injunction issued…

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The billion-dollar disinformation campaign to reelect Trump

The billion-dollar disinformation campaign to reelect Trump

McKay Coppins writes: One day last fall, I sat down to create a new Facebook account. I picked a forgettable name, snapped a profile pic with my face obscured, and clicked “Like” on the official pages of Donald Trump and his reelection campaign. Facebook’s algorithm prodded me to follow Ann Coulter, Fox Business, and a variety of fan pages with names like “In Trump We Trust.” I complied. I also gave my cellphone number to the Trump campaign, and joined…

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