Beto O’Rourke is the latest Democrat to make climate change central to his campaign

Beto O’Rourke is the latest Democrat to make climate change central to his campaign

Comments 0 Comment

BuzzFeed reports: Beto O’Rourke on Monday pledged to spend trillions to combat the climate crisis in the first major policy proposal of his presidential campaign, making him the latest Democrat in the 2020 race to embrace climate change as a top issue. “The greatest threat we face — which will test our country, our democracy, every single one of us — is climate change,” O’Rourke told supporters in a campaign email. His plan, starting day one in the White House,…

Read More Read More

As security officials prepare for Russian attack on 2020 presidential race, Trump and aides play down threat

As security officials prepare for Russian attack on 2020 presidential race, Trump and aides play down threat

Comments 0 Comment

The Washington Post reports: In recent months, U.S. national security officials have been preparing for Russian interference in the 2020 presidential race by tracking cyber threats, sharing intelligence about foreign disinformation efforts with social media companies and helping state election officials protect their systems against foreign manipulation. But these actions are strikingly at odds with statements from President Trump, who has rebuffed warnings from his senior aides about Russia and sought to play down that country’s potential to influence American…

Read More Read More

What ISIS did to my village

What ISIS did to my village

Comments 0 Comment

Hassan Hassan writes: When I was a teenager, in the 1990s, I spent my summer breaks herding sheep from sunrise to sunset. My daily routine was nearly always the same. I released the sheep from the barn, steered them along the village’s main road, grabbed a watermelon from a shop to add to my packed lunch, and turned to the desert. Once I left the populated section of the village, I directed the few dozen animals along the desert cliffs…

Read More Read More

In the Middle East, a new military crescent is in the making

In the Middle East, a new military crescent is in the making

Comments 0 Comment

Marwan Kabalan writes: With the breakout of the Arab Spring more than eight years ago, pro-democracy activists in the Arab world and elsewhere were hopeful that the tide of democratic change might have finally reached its shores. Many who had criticised the likes of American scholar Samuel Huntington, who saw democracy as an alien concept to Middle Eastern culture, felt vindicated. The euphoria of the Arab Spring did not last long, however. In Syria, Libya and Yemen, civil wars erupted,…

Read More Read More

My England is in a mess. Scotland’s case for independence is stronger than ever

My England is in a mess. Scotland’s case for independence is stronger than ever

Comments 0 Comment

John Harris writes: If the three-year saga of Brexit tells us anything, it is that the United Kingdom is irretrievably breaking apart. Beyond the glaring fact that Scottish and English politics now have almost nothing in common, there is a deep sense that Brexit is testing some of the UK’s already-fragile institutions to destruction. Even if a Labour government at Westminster succeeded in calming things down by getting to grips with some key social and economic problems and handing Scotland…

Read More Read More

The rise of the climate vote bloc

The rise of the climate vote bloc

Comments 0 Comment

Anna Taylor writes: April has been quite the month for climate action. The organisation I co-founded, the UK Student Climate Network, held its third Youth Strike 4 Climate demonstrations just two weeks ago which for the third month in succession saw tens of thousands take to the streets across the UK demanding climate justice and a Green New Deal. Extinction Rebellion also kicked off a huge act of extended nonviolent civil disobedience by reclaiming public spaces in London and causing…

Read More Read More

Corbyn launches bid to declare UK climate emergency

Corbyn launches bid to declare UK climate emergency

Comments 0 Comment

The Observer reports: Labour will this week force a vote in parliament to declare a national environmental and climate change emergency as confidential documents show the government has spent only a fraction of a £100m fund allocated in 2015 to support clean air projects. Jeremy Corbyn’s party will demand on Wednesday that the country wakes up to the threat and acts with urgency to avoid more than 1.5°C of warming, which will require global emissions to fall by about 45%…

Read More Read More

Spare me your thoughts and prayers. The U.S. has betrayed its Jews

Spare me your thoughts and prayers. The U.S. has betrayed its Jews

Comments 0 Comment

Jane Eisner writes: The United States Constitution, and the government sworn to uphold it, is not protecting its citizens. It did not protect Lori Gilbert Kaye, the 60-year-old woman with a kind smile and a generous disposition, who was murdered by an anti-Semitic terrorist as she prayed in synagogue yesterday, the final day of Passover. It did not protect the others who were injured in this horrific hate crime, including the rabbi who bravely continued to teach and implored his…

Read More Read More

Ignore the Poway Synagogue shooter’s manifesto: Pay attention to 8chan’s /pol/ board

Ignore the Poway Synagogue shooter’s manifesto: Pay attention to 8chan’s /pol/ board

Comments 0 Comment

Robert Evans writes: On April 27, 2019, at around 11:30 a.m. local time, a young man with a semi-automatic rifle walked into the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in Poway, California. He opened fire, killing one worshipper and wounding three others. In the hours since the shooting, a manifesto, believed to be written by the shooter, began circulating online. Evidence has also surfaced that, like the Christchurch Mosque shooter, this killer began his rampage with a post on 8chan’s /pol/ board….

Read More Read More

If Trump weren’t president, he would already be indicted

If Trump weren’t president, he would already be indicted

Comments 0 Comment

  Mimi Rocah and Renato Mariotti write: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report is 448 pages long, full of shocking conduct and detail that has prompted non-stop discussion since it was released last week. But one thing seems indisputable from our perspective as former federal prosecutors looking at the evidence laid out by the report: If Donald Trump were not now president he would have been indicted on multiple counts of obstruction of justice. And that case would be as strong,…

Read More Read More

The war in Syria is now an economic one

The war in Syria is now an economic one

Comments 0 Comment

Bloomberg reports: The impact on Damascus, where the war ended a year ago with the defeat of the fighters in towns around it, is staggering. The city usually throbs with life in the spring, carts overflowing with fresh green almonds, Damascenes smoking shisha in outdoor cafes and families enjoying picnics. It felt lifeless on a visit this month. Vendors in the city’s old bazaar complain of miserable sales. Pubs that bustled with diners were largely empty. Increased power cuts have…

Read More Read More

The gray race for the White House

The gray race for the White House

Comments 0 Comment

Edward-Isaac Dovere writes: “Joe Biden. He understands what’s happening today.” The newspaper ad ran a few weeks before the 1972 Senate election in Delaware, when the upstart 29-year-old was challenging a 63-year-old incumbent. The ad, which appeared in The News Journal, Delaware’s major newspaper, happened to run under a column that described Biden’s newly combative strategy in the closing days of the race. Biden’s approach then, according to the columnist, was “in effect, ‘Dear old dad may have been right…

Read More Read More

Donald Trump’s role in the latest synagogue shooting

Donald Trump’s role in the latest synagogue shooting

Comments 0 Comment

While Jews were shot for being Jewish by an armed white man this weekend, @realDonaldTrump — who has emboldened white nationalists and incited white nationalist violence — spoke at the @NRA convention to advocate for more guns for more white men. He is to blame. https://t.co/hUyqLXaKuh — Sophie Ellman-Golan (@EgSophie) April 27, 2019 NBC reports: Multiple law enforcement sources confirm to NBC News that the suspect in the Poway synagogue shooting is 19-year-old John T. Earnest. According to a manifesto,…

Read More Read More

Mueller report exposes ‘Miners for Trump’ as a Russian troll effort

Mueller report exposes ‘Miners for Trump’ as a Russian troll effort

Comments 0 Comment

Joe Romm writes: In October 2016, Pennsylvania social media accounts promoted “Miners for Trump” rallies around the state with a picture of a gritty coal miner. The rallies coincided with a series of presidential campaign rallies by then-candidate Donald Trump. It turns out the social media promotions were not created by U.S. coal miners, however. Instead, they were the work of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian troll farm, according to special counsel Robert Mueller’s recently released report on…

Read More Read More