Leaked emails highlight Stephen Miller’s affinity for white nationalism

Leaked emails highlight Stephen Miller’s affinity for white nationalism

The Southern Poverty Law Center reports: In the run-up to the 2016 election, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories and obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols after Dylann Roof’s murderous rampage, according to leaked emails reviewed by Hatewatch. The emails, which Miller sent to the conservative website Breitbart News in 2015 and 2016, showcase the extremist, anti-immigrant ideology that undergirds the policies he has helped create as an architect of…

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Stone previewed WikiLeaks bounty to Trump campaign in April 2016

Stone previewed WikiLeaks bounty to Trump campaign in April 2016

Politico reports: Roger Stone first told one of Donald Trump’s top aides in April 2016 that WikiLeaks had plans to dump information in the heat of the presidential race, kickstarting a scramble inside the campaign to take advantage of the expected releases. And that plotting included at least one summertime call involving Trump himself, according to Rick Gates, the former Trump deputy campaign chairman, who was testifying Tuesday morning at Stone’s trial over lying to Congress about his efforts to…

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A mathematician on how to get a stuck mind moving

A mathematician on how to get a stuck mind moving

Dan Rockmore writes: My job is to come up with ideas. Sometimes we mathematicians call the things we think about and work with “objects,” which doesn’t mean triangles, spheres, or other shapes. Mathematical objects are big ideas about algebra, geometry, and logic, about the properties and definitions of numbers. It’s not at all obvious how to go about thinking up some new twist on these things—the transformation from test-taker to theorem poser and then theorem prover is difficult to articulate….

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How Russia meddles abroad, offering bribes, spreading disinformation and recruiting an apocalyptic cult leader

How Russia meddles abroad, offering bribes, spreading disinformation and recruiting an apocalyptic cult leader

The New York Times reports: The Russians were hard to miss. They appeared suddenly last year in Madagascar’s traffic-snarled capital, carrying backpacks stuffed with cash and campaign swag decorated with the name of Madagascar’s president. It was one of Russia’s most overt attempts at election interference to date. Working from their headquarters in a resort hotel, the Russians published their own newspaper in the local language and hired students to write fawning articles about the president to help him win…

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Another Russian assassination? White Helmets backer found dead near his home in Istanbul

Another Russian assassination? White Helmets backer found dead near his home in Istanbul

The Independent reports: A former British army officer, who helped start the “White Helmets”, an emergency response group in Syria, has been found dead near his home in Istanbul, just days after the Russian foreign ministry menaced him, accusing him of being a spy. James Le Mesurier, 48, was the director of Mayday Rescue charity that trained members of the Syria Civil Defence, nicknamed the White Helmets, playing a major role in its creation in Turkey in 2013. He was…

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The GOP’s new ‘defense’ of Trump actually makes the case against him

The GOP’s new ‘defense’ of Trump actually makes the case against him

Asha Rangappa writes: Just under the deadline, Republicans turned in on Saturday the list of witnesses they’d like to have testify at impeachment hearings beginning this week. Among them is Hunter Biden, former vice president Joe Biden’s son, who Trump wanted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate as a condition of getting U.S. military aid. In listing Biden as a witness, the GOP may hope to build a defense that shifts the focus to alleged wrongdoing by the former vice…

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EPA to limit science used to write public health rules

EPA to limit science used to write public health rules

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is preparing to significantly limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine public health regulations, overriding protests from scientists and physicians who say the new rule would undermine the scientific underpinnings of government policymaking. A new draft of the Environmental Protection Agency proposal, titled Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science, would require that scientists disclose all of their raw data, including confidential medical records, before the agency could…

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The night the Cold-War world turned upside down

The night the Cold-War world turned upside down

Christopher Dickey writes: At the end of World War II, Europe had been divided between the Allied forces coalescing as NATO and the Soviets under Joseph Stalin. Defeated Germany was split between East and West, and Berlin itself partitioned. In the summer of 1948, Stalin imposed a blockade to try to bring the Allied-occupied part of the city to its knees, but the United States responded with a massive airlift that lasted almost a year, before, finally, a secure land…

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The forgotten mass destruction of Jewish homes during ‘Kristallnacht’

The forgotten mass destruction of Jewish homes during ‘Kristallnacht’

A looted Jewish shop in Aachen, Germany on the day after Kristallnacht, Nov. 10, 1938. Wolf Gruner and Armin Nolzen (eds.). ‘Bürokratien: Initiative und Effizienz,’ Berlin, 2001., Author provided By Wolf Gruner, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Every November, communities around the world hold remembrances on the anniversary of the Nazis’ brutal assault on the Jews during “Kristallnacht.” Also known as “the Night of Broken Glass,” it’s one of the most closely scrutinized…

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Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity?

Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity?

Camilla Townsend writes: It would become an accepted fact that the indigenous people of Mexico believed Hernando Cortés to be a god, arriving in their land in the year 1519 to satisfy an ancient prophecy. It was understood that Moctezuma (also known as Montezuma II), at heart a coward, trembled in his sandals and quickly despaired of victory. He immediately asked to turn his kingdom over to the divine newcomers, and naturally, the Spaniards happily acquiesced. Eventually, this story was…

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Betrayed by the U.S: The Marshall Islands faces the dual threat from nuclear weapons and climate change

Betrayed by the U.S: The Marshall Islands faces the dual threat from nuclear weapons and climate change

The Los Angeles Times reports: Five thousand miles west of Los Angeles and 500 miles north of the equator, on a far-flung spit of white coral sand in the central Pacific, a massive, aging and weathered concrete dome bobs up and down with the tide. Here in the Marshall Islands, Runit Dome holds more than 3.1 million cubic feet — or 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools — of U.S.-produced radioactive soil and debris, including lethal amounts of plutonium. Nowhere else has…

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Boris Johnson blocked report naming Tory donors linked to Kremlin

Boris Johnson blocked report naming Tory donors linked to Kremlin

Business Insider reports: Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has received a surge in cash from nine Russian donors, who have been named in a suppressed investigation into Russia’s attempts to undermine democracy in the UK. The report by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee identifies close links between major donors to the Conservative party and the Russian government, the Sunday Times reports. The report was due for publication this week but was blocked by Johnson, due to reported fears that the information…

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UK inquiry was warned of Russian infiltration, leaked testimony shows

UK inquiry was warned of Russian infiltration, leaked testimony shows

CNN reports: Russia’s influence reaches deep into the British establishment and successive UK governments have turned a blind eye to it, lawmakers were warned, according to multiple sources familiar with testimony given to a parliamentary inquiry. Members of the cross-party Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) were told that Moscow built up a network of friendly British diplomats, lawyers, parliamentarians and other influencers from across the political spectrum. One witness described the development as “potentially the most significant threat to the…

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Russian influence in Britain: What Boris Johnson wants to hide

Russian influence in Britain: What Boris Johnson wants to hide

Peter Jukes writes: According to its chairman, Dominic Grieve, Boris Johnson personally blocked – for “bogus” reasons – the imminent publication of a cross-party report on Russia meddling in UK politics by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). Elements of the suppressed report have now leaked out. According to CNN, the evidence of Bill Browder, the campaigner behind the anti-corruption Magnitsky Acts, suggests that Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, has deployed Russians “to infiltrate UK society and to conceal the underlying…

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