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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Elizabeth Warren would help billionaires survive on a few billion less

Elizabeth Warren would help billionaires survive on a few billion less

The New York Times reports: “Yes, billionaires will have to pay a little more,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said of the revised tax package she introduced recently, “six cents on each dollar.” This modest-sounding proposal, though, would have a far-reaching impact on the wealthiest Americans when combined with her other tax plans — shrinking colossal fortunes over time and making it much more difficult to hand down multibillion-dollar legacies. The tax bite for any individual would not equal the $100 billion…

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The media must meet the challenge of effectively covering the impeachment hearings

The media must meet the challenge of effectively covering the impeachment hearings

Margaret Sullivan writes: The national media’s shortcomings have been all too obvious in recent years as Donald Trump has gleefully thrown the norms of traditional journalism into a tizzy. They’ve trafficked in false equivalence. Allowed President Trump to play assignment editor. Gotten mired in pointless punditry. Granted, it’s been a mixed record. Journalists have done a lot right — they have pointed out lies, dug out what’s really happening, skillfully explained and analyzed. But on Wednesday — as televised impeachment…

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The death of old scientists clears the way for new advances

The death of old scientists clears the way for new advances

Veronique Greenwood writes: New ideas advance in science not just because they are true, but because their opponents die, physicist Max Planck wrote in 1948. He was referring to a fundamental theory that, at the time, provoked a nasty feud, yet today is taught in nearly every high school physics classroom. The belief that science advances one funeral at a time is the kind of folk mythology in which any researcher might indulge in a discouraging moment, says Kevin Zollman,…

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State Department freed Ukraine money before Trump says he did — he lacked lacked authority to block it

State Department freed Ukraine money before Trump says he did — he lacked lacked authority to block it

Bloomberg reports: President Donald Trump says he lifted his freeze on aid to Ukraine on Sept. 11, but the State Department had quietly authorized releasing $141 million of the money several days earlier, according to five people familiar with the matter. The State Department decision, which hasn’t been reported previously, stemmed from a legal finding made earlier in the year, and conveyed in a classified memorandum to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. State Department lawyers found the White House Office…

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How U.S. diplomats are defending American ideals and holding the Trump administration accountable

How U.S. diplomats are defending American ideals and holding the Trump administration accountable

The New York Times reports: State Department Foreign Service officers usually express their views in formal diplomatic cables, but these days they are using closed Facebook groups and encrypted apps to convey their pride in Marie L. Yovanovitch, the ousted ambassador to Ukraine, whose House testimony opened the floodgates on the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. #GoMasha is their rallying cry. In private conversations, they trade admiring notes about career State Department officials like William B. Taylor Jr. and George…

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Former NSC official Fiona Hill confronted Republicans for acting as ‘useful’ (idiots) for Putin

Former NSC official Fiona Hill confronted Republicans for acting as ‘useful’ (idiots) for Putin

  “The Russians were who attacked us in 2016, and they’re now writing the script for others to do the same. And if we don’t get our act together, they will continue to make fools of us internationally.” Fiona Hill Full transcript of testimony of Fiona Hill. For some relevant background on Putin’s work skills as a KGB case officer, watch this 2013 interview with Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy.

Berliners troll Trump by shipping him a 2.7-ton piece of the Berlin Wall

Berliners troll Trump by shipping him a 2.7-ton piece of the Berlin Wall

Quartz reports: US president Donald Trump will be receiving a special gift from Berlin residents on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall—a 2.7-ton section of the wall itself. The stunt is squarely directed at Trump’s vow to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, a part of his “zero tolerance” immigration policy. “We would like to give you one of the last pieces of the failed Berlin Wall to commemorate the United States’ dedication to building…

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