We need to reinvent democracy

We need to reinvent democracy

Reporting from the Athens Democracy Forum, Serge Schmemann writes: Some 60 countries held some sort of election in 2024, noted Neha Sahgal, vice president of research at the Pew Research Center, and the bottom line was that right-wing nationalism was now mainstream. “It doesn’t matter what ‘should be’ in our mind,” she said. “This is the reality right now.” There was no sense in discussing the “defense of liberal democracy,” argued Ivan Krastev, head of the Center for Liberal Strategies…

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Trump causes a $2 trillion loss in U.S. stock market with a single social media post

Trump causes a $2 trillion loss in U.S. stock market with a single social media post

CNBC reports: On Friday morning, the S&P 500 was less than a couple of points from another all-time high. Then, after a single social media post from President Donald Trump, $2 trillion in market value was wiped out. The unraveling shows the sway the president’s one-man trade policy still has over the fate of the global economy. Trump at 10:57 a.m. ET wrote on his Truth Social platform that China was “becoming very hostile” with the rest of the world,…

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BDS: Boycotting Israel has gone mainstream

BDS: Boycotting Israel has gone mainstream

The Guardian reports: For more than a decade Shouk offered an Israeli-inspired, plant-based and kosher menu in and around Washington. Last week the chain was forced to close the last of five locations and lay off the last of 30 staff. It said the war in Gaza had made it impossible to do business; activists claimed the restaurant appropriated Palestinian food and imported Israeli products. “It didn’t let up: boycotts, harassment, you name it,” recalled Dennis Friedman, 46, a Jewish…

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Genes harness physics to help grow living things

Genes harness physics to help grow living things

Anna Demming writes: Sip a glass of wine, and you will notice liquid continuously weeping down the wetted side of the glass. In 1855, James Thomson, brother of Lord Kelvin, explained in the Philosophical Magazine that these wine “tears” or “legs” result from the difference in surface tension between alcohol and water. “This fact affords an explanation of several very curious motions,” Thomson wrote. Little did he realize that the same effect, later named the Marangoni effect, might also shape…

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The social aftershocks from weaponized mass starvation in Gaza will reverberate for generations

The social aftershocks from weaponized mass starvation in Gaza will reverberate for generations

Alex de Waal writes: On August 22nd, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification mechanism, affiliated with the United Nations (UN), reported that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza had officially passed the “famine” threshold. The same day, the United States government’s own Famine Early Warning Systems Network quietly confirmed this finding, noting that there was good evidence to believe that in Gaza, “mortality from the interaction of hunger and disease” was at famine levels. For months, Gaza’s descent into famine had…

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As Trump cancels largest solar project in North America, China advances with largest in the world

As Trump cancels largest solar project in North America, China advances with largest in the world

Politico reports: The Trump administration’s cancellation of what would have been one of the world’s largest solar power projects has some industry observers fretting over the future of renewable energy on public lands. They predicted the Esmeralda 7 project — by far the largest solar project that had moved through the permitting process under former President Joe Biden’s Interior Department — won’t be the last major project in the pipeline to be pulled. It was one of a number of…

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The Zionist consensus among American Jews has collapsed. Something new is emerging

The Zionist consensus among American Jews has collapsed. Something new is emerging

Shaul Magid writes: It has been two years since the mass murder on 7 October 2023, an event that shook world Jewry more than any event since the creation of the state of Israel. For Jews it was shocking. For the state of Israel, it was deeply humiliating. The entire Zionist project was founded on the presumption that the Jewish state would prevent things like this from ever happening again. A response was inevitable. But the response Israel pursued –…

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‘This is deliberate chaos’: Congress erupts at Trump’s shutdown mass firings

‘This is deliberate chaos’: Congress erupts at Trump’s shutdown mass firings

Axios reports: Members of Congress pushed back Friday against the White House announcing layoffs of federal workers as part of the government shutdown. Why it matters: The blowback includes Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who called the layoffs “arbitrary” and said she “strongly” opposes them. “Regardless of whether federal employees have been working without pay or have been furloughed, their work is incredibly important to serving the public,” Collins said. Members of Congress from the Washington, D.C….

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Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist

Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist

The Guardian reports: Peter Thiel, the billionaire political svengali and tech investor, is worried about the antichrist. It could be the US. It could be Greta Thunberg. Over the past month, Thiel has hosted a series of four lectures on the downtown waterfront of San Francisco philosophizing about who the antichrist could be and warning that Armageddon is coming. Thiel, who describes himself as a “small-o Orthodox Christian”, believes the harbinger of the end of the world could already be…

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MIT is first school to reject Trump’s extortion plan

MIT is first school to reject Trump’s extortion plan

NBC News reports: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday became the first school to reject an offer of federal funds in exchange for agreeing to the Trump administration’s education agenda. MIT disagreed with a number of aspects of the administration’s proposal, which was sent to nine major universities last week, arguing that it would restrict the university’s freedom of expression and independence, Sally Kornbluth, president of the Cambridge-based school, wrote in a letter Friday to the Department of Education….

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Research suggests rich people tend to be more selfish – but why is that?

Research suggests rich people tend to be more selfish – but why is that?

North Monaco/Shutterstock By Steve Taylor, Leeds Beckett University From Disney’s Scrooge McDuck and Cruella de Vil to DC Comics’ Lex Luthor to and Mr Burns in the Simpsons, there are plenty of examples of wealthy people using their money and power in evil ways. But is there any truth to the stereotype that rich people are mean? There are many rich people who act benevolently, including philanthropists who give a lot of their money away. However, research in psychology has…

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Wajahat Ali + Mehdi Hasan: Trump wants Nobel Peace Prize for war, insurrection and indicting Letitia James

Wajahat Ali + Mehdi Hasan: Trump wants Nobel Peace Prize for war, insurrection and indicting Letitia James

  A desperate Trump Administration is attempting to distract from the Epstein Files and its disastrous economic policies by indicting Letitia James and declaring war on American critics. As I went live with Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan, news broke that a grand jury had indicted Letitia James, the New York Attorney General, who successfully prosecuted Trump for fraud. Even though this is another chilling escalation in Trump’s reckless, dangerous, and cankled march towards authoritarianism, it shouldn’t be surprising.

Qatar pushes to secure Marwan Barghouti’s release in Gaza prisoner exchange deal

Qatar pushes to secure Marwan Barghouti’s release in Gaza prisoner exchange deal

Middle East Eye reports: The Israeli prime minister’s office unilaterally removed Marwan Barghouti’s name from the prisoner exchange list at the last minute, endangering the Gaza ceasefire deal’s implementation, a source close to the prominent Palestinian prisoner told Middle East Eye. Barghouti, who is the most popular Palestinian political figure according to polls, was one of the most valuable names to potentially be traded for the 48 Israeli captives in Gaza. A source close to Barghouti and his family told…

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He wrote a book about antifa. Death threats are now driving him and his family out of the U.S.

He wrote a book about antifa. Death threats are now driving him and his family out of the U.S.

Wired reports: A professor at Rutgers University who wrote a book about “antifa” almost a decade ago is trying—and struggling—to flee the US for Europe after a weeks-long online campaign against him by far-right influencers was followed by death threats. Mark Bray, a historian at Rutgers who specializes in Spanish history and radicalism, has been a far-right target ever since he published Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook in 2017. But after president Donald Trump issued an executive order seeking to designate…

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