White supremacy has its own peculiar logic, to which Trump is peculiarly attuned

White supremacy has its own peculiar logic, to which Trump is peculiarly attuned

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Jamelle Bouie writes: Trump is explicitly operating in the old American political tradition of race baiting, which used to go by another name — of denouncing blacks, immigrants and other hated groups to win votes and turn attention from the actual material agendas at work. This type of politics dominated the South from the end of Reconstruction until the civil rights era, electing generations of Southern politicians, including now obscure but once infamous names like Senator James K. Vardaman of…

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The Saudi campaign to eliminate dissent

The Saudi campaign to eliminate dissent

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Ayman M. Mohyeldin reports: Prince Khaled bin Farhan al-Saud sat in one of the few safe locations he frequents in Düsseldorf and ordered each of us a cup of coffee. With his close-cropped goatee and crisp gray suit, he looked surprisingly relaxed for a hunted man. He described his constant fear of being abducted, the precautions he takes when venturing outside, and how German law enforcement officials routinely check on him to make sure he is all right. Recently, bin…

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Alan Dershowitz’s position on rape

Alan Dershowitz’s position on rape

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Connie Bruck writes: Dershowitz has written frequently that defending the rights of the accused in rape cases is a crucial application of the presumption of innocence. In “Contrary to Popular Opinion,” published in 1992, he included a list of cases in which women acknowledged having made false accusations of rape. He argued, “It is precisely because rape is so serious a crime that falsely accusing someone of rape should be regarded as an extremely serious crime as well. Imagine yourself…

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How Karl Marx influenced Abraham Lincoln

How Karl Marx influenced Abraham Lincoln

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Gillian Brockell writes: It was December 1861, a Tuesday at noon, when President Abraham Lincoln sent his first annual message ⁠ — what later became the State of the Union ⁠— to the House and Senate. By the next day, all 7,000 words of the manuscript were published in newspapers across the country, including the Confederate South. This was Lincoln’s first chance to speak to the nation at length since his inaugural address. He railed against the “disloyal citizens” rebelling…

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Protections slashed and forests fall in the Amazon under Brazil’s far right leader

Protections slashed and forests fall in the Amazon under Brazil’s far right leader

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The New York Times reports: The destruction of the Amazon rain forest in Brazil has increased rapidly since the nation’s new far-right president took over and his government scaled back efforts to fight illegal logging, ranching and mining. Protecting the Amazon was at the heart of Brazil’s environmental policy for much of the past two decades. At one point, Brazil’s success in slowing the deforestation rate made it an international example of conservation and the effort to fight climate change….

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Amazon gold miners invade indigenous village in Brazil after its leader is killed

Amazon gold miners invade indigenous village in Brazil after its leader is killed

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The Guardian reports: Dozens of gold miners have invaded a remote indigenous reserve in the Brazilian Amazon where a local leader was stabbed to death and have taken over a village after the community fled in fear, local politicians and indigenous leaders said. The authorities said police were on their way to investigate. Illegal gold mining is at epidemic proportions in the Amazon and the heavily polluting activities of garimpeiros – as miners are called – devastate forests and poison…

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Europe’s historic onslaught of heat

Europe’s historic onslaught of heat

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Bob Henson writes: Even a seemingly minor change in average temperature, such as the 1°C rise observed globally over the last century, makes the most extreme heat events much more probable—and the greater the extreme, the bigger the proportional change, as shown in the illustration embedded below. The good ol' small-increases-in-the-mean-lead-to-large-increases-in-extremes bit. Works everytime, everywhere. https://t.co/ZUgmI1TBzz pic.twitter.com/nhqUzPLVFJ — Gernot Wagner (@GernotWagner) July 25, 2019 There’s bitter irony in the fact that the birthplace of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement on…

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Experts call for ban on glass skyscrapers to save energy in climate crisis

Experts call for ban on glass skyscrapers to save energy in climate crisis

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The Guardian reports: Leading architects and engineers are calling for all-glass skyscrapers to be banned because they are too difficult and expensive to cool. “If you’re building a greenhouse in a climate emergency, it’s a pretty odd thing to do to say the least,” said Simon Sturgis, an adviser to the government and the Greater London Authority, as well as chairman of the Royal Institute of British Architects sustainability group. “If you’re using standard glass facades you need a lot…

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Largest opposition protest in Moscow in a decade results in 1,400 arrests

Largest opposition protest in Moscow in a decade results in 1,400 arrests

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The Associated Press reports: Nearly 1,400 people were detained in a violent police crackdown on an opposition protest in Moscow, a Russian monitoring group said Sunday, adding that was the largest number of detentions at a rally in the Russian capital this decade. OVD-Info, which has monitored police arrests since 2011, said the number of the detentions from Saturday’s protest reached 1,373 by early Sunday. The overwhelming majority of people were soon released but 150 remained in custody, OVD-Info and…

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How Arab scholars preserved scientific texts serving as the foundations of modern knowledge

How Arab scholars preserved scientific texts serving as the foundations of modern knowledge

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In a review of Violet Moller’s new book, The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found, Katie Hafner writes: While religion dictated the cultural winds of the Western world, ideas flowed freely through the Middle East, traversing religions and cultures. Knowledge began flowing into Baghdad from every direction as scholars translated Greek manuscripts into Arabic. Book production soared as texts were read aloud to roomfuls of scribes so that many copies could be…

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The Arctic on fire

The Arctic on fire

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BBC News reports: Wildfires are ravaging the Arctic, with areas of northern Siberia, northern Scandinavia, Alaska and Greenland engulfed in flames. Lightning frequently triggers fires in the region but this year they have been worsened by summer temperatures that are higher than average because of climate change. Plumes of smoke from the fires can be seen from space. Mark Parrington, a wildfires expert at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (Cams), described them as “unprecedented”. There are hundreds of fires covering…

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How science got trampled in the rush to drill in the Arctic

How science got trampled in the rush to drill in the Arctic

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Adam Federman reports: Every year, hundreds of petroleum industry executives gather in Anchorage for the annual conference of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, where they discuss policy and celebrate their achievements with the state’s political establishment. In May 2018, they again filed into the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center, but they had a new reason to celebrate. Under the Trump administration, oil and gas development was poised to dramatically expand into a remote corner of Alaska where it had…

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Trump’s migration pact with the Guatemalan president

Trump’s migration pact with the Guatemalan president

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For The Economist, R.E. writes: Honduras has a little over 9m people—or at least it did. Around 2.2% of the population have been snatched by agents at America’s southern border since October. More still have slipped past; others dream of an escape. Your correspondent is writing this from Tegucigalpa, the capital, where a mood of puzzled gloom prevails among those pondering the exodus. The government, sensing a harsh verdict on its rule, prefers not to mention it. International agencies wonder…

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Trump attacks Elijah Cummings, claiming he represents a rat-infested ‘mess’

Trump attacks Elijah Cummings, claiming he represents a rat-infested ‘mess’

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The New York Times reports: President Trump lashed out at a leading African-American congressman on Saturday, calling him “a brutal bully” who represents a Baltimore-based district that has become a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.” Mr. Trump’s attack on Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland and leading critic of the president, parroted a segment that aired earlier in the morning on “Fox & Friends.” The president suggested that the…

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