It wasn’t just Khashoggi: A Saudi prince’s brutal drive to crush dissent

It wasn’t just Khashoggi: A Saudi prince’s brutal drive to crush dissent

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The New York Times reports: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia authorized a secret campaign to silence dissenters — which included the surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudi citizens — more than a year before the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, according to American officials who have read classified intelligence reports about the campaign. At least some of the clandestine missions were carried out by members of the same team that killed and dismembered Mr. Khashoggi in Istanbul…

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Five ways the Syrian revolution continues

Five ways the Syrian revolution continues

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A Syrian refugee child sits on the window of his family’s trailer home painted by refugee artists in a camp near Mafraq, Jordan. AP/Raad Adayleh By Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University Bashar al-Assad has “won” the war in Syria – or so many analysts tell us. His regime has reconquered swaths of territory from rebel forces with starvation-and-surrender sieges, barrel bombs, chemical weapons and what one human rights investigator called “industrial scale” torture and killing of detainees. Still, the regime might…

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Israel’s justice minister promotes ‘fascism’ in election campaign ad

Israel’s justice minister promotes ‘fascism’ in election campaign ad

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Haaretz reports: A new election ad for the far-right Hayamin Hehadash party featuring Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked in sultry poses, spraying herself with a perfume labeled “Fascism,” has the look and feel of a satiric sketch, echoing the 2017 “Saturday Night Live” send-up of Ivanka Trump in a mock commercial for the scent “Complicit.” Right-wing Israeli party's election ad spoofs a perfume commercial. The perfume is called Fascism. It's supposed to be ironic + ends with @Ayelet__Shaked saying "smells like…

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I am an immigrant. Someday you might be one, too

I am an immigrant. Someday you might be one, too

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Laila Lalami writes: Like other species on this planet, human beings are a migratory type. When they suddenly find themselves in desperate need of physical safety or economic opportunity, they leave home and start over somewhere new. It has always been this way. The earliest stories we tell ourselves are stories of displacement: Adam’s fall from Eden, Moses’ flight from Egypt, Muhammad’s hegira to Medina. Trying to stop this process through the building of walls strikes me as both ineffective…

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It’s time to fight white nationalist terrorism and its apologists

It’s time to fight white nationalist terrorism and its apologists

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Christopher Dickey writes: Donald Trump was right. The special pleading around the question of whether to call terrorism by radical Muslims “radical Islamic terrorism” clouded a critical issue. The fight against extremism must start with ideas, and with language that is clear and unequivocal. Which is why we should be perfectly blunt about what Brenton Tarrant, the 28-year-old monster of Christchurch, claimed to represent, and did and does represent, which is white nationalist terrorism. Tarrant may have been a lone…

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Australians are asking how did we get here? Well, Islamophobia is practically enshrined as public policy

Australians are asking how did we get here? Well, Islamophobia is practically enshrined as public policy

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Jason Wilson writes: In the period of the country’s enthusiastic participation in the War on Terror, Islam and Muslims have frequently been treated as public enemies, and hate speech against them has inexorably been normalised. Australian racism did not of course begin in 2001. The country was settled by means of a genocidal frontier war, and commenced its independent existence with the exclusion of non-white migrants. White nationalism was practically Australia’s founding doctrine. But a succession of events in the…

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Only our compromise can break the Brexit impasse

Only our compromise can break the Brexit impasse

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Phil Wilson and Peter Kyle write: We are two Labour MPs, one from the north and one from the south, who have come together to try to help parliament and the country to find a way out of this mess. We have spent weeks talking to MPs, both Labour and Conservative, about whether a compromise solution can be found that can satisfy those who say they must honour the result of the last referendum, and those who are desperately worried…

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As costs skyrocket, more U.S. cities stop recycling

As costs skyrocket, more U.S. cities stop recycling

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The New York Times reports: Recycling, for decades an almost reflexive effort by American households and businesses to reduce waste and help the environment, is collapsing in many parts of the country. Philadelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents’ recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy. In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill. And last month,…

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Neanderthals were people no less evolved than us

Neanderthals were people no less evolved than us

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Rebecca Wragg Sykes writes: Who were the Neanderthals? Even for archaeologists working at the trowel’s edge of contemporary science, it can be hard to see Neanderthals as anything more than intriguing abstractions, mixed up with the likes of mammoths, woolly rhinos and sabre-toothed cats. But they were certainly here: squinting against sunrises, sucking lungfuls of air, leaving footprints behind in the mud, sand and snow. Crouching to dig in a cave or rock-shelter, I’ve often wondered what it would be…

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White nationalism is an international threat

White nationalism is an international threat

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Patrick Strickland writes: In Australia, whence the [Christchurch massacre] suspect [Brenton Tarrant] hails, the rise in unabashed Islamophobia has buoyed far-right and ultra-nationalist movements in recent years. The country’s broad far-right category includes “several very different groups positioned on an ideological spectrum of extremism from conservative anti-immigration, anti-Islam groups to far-right neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, generally racist, white supremacy groups,” a group of Griffith University criminologists wrote in 2016. Many of these groups nurture relationships with international counterparts, stretching from Greece’s Golden…

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After Christchurch, Muslims need more than just your thoughts and prayers

After Christchurch, Muslims need more than just your thoughts and prayers

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Masuma Rahim writes: Every single day, people like me are subject to a media onslaught. Every single day, we are demonised, both by the people who make our laws and by the people who have significant influence over public opinion. And when I say “we”, I don’t just mean Muslims. Because it’s not just Muslims who are losing their lives at the hands of far-right nationalism. It’s Jews and Sikhs and black people. Because when fascism comes to call, it…

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Australia racism and white supremacy: Brenton Tarrant and Fraser Anning were produced by the same culture

Australia racism and white supremacy: Brenton Tarrant and Fraser Anning were produced by the same culture

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Rachel Withers writes: Words from a vile manifesto, written by an Australian, have been floating around the internet following the New Zealand terrorist attack that saw 49 people killed at mosques during Friday prayers. It calls Islam a “savage belief” and the “religious equivalent of fascism.” “Worldwide, Muslims are killing people in the name of their faith on an industrial scale,” it reads. “The entire religion of Islam is simply the violent ideology of a sixth century despot masquerading as…

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Facebook faces fresh questions over when it knew of data harvesting

Facebook faces fresh questions over when it knew of data harvesting

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The Observer reports: Facebook is facing explosive new questions about when senior executives knew of Cambridge Analytica’s abuse of users’ data, one year on from when the scandal first broke, as federal prosecutors investigate claims that the social media giant has covered up the extent of its relationship with the firm. The Observer has also learned that a Facebook board member and confidant of its CEO Mark Zuckerberg met Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, in the summer of 2016…

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‘No Planet B’: Tens of thousands join global youth demo for climate

‘No Planet B’: Tens of thousands join global youth demo for climate

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We face the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced: climate change. Today, I had the honor of introducing my daughter, one of the organizers of the student climate strike. ✊🏽 pic.twitter.com/skNjgWQjd7 — Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) March 15, 2019 AFP reports: Tens of thousands of young people skipped school across the globe on Friday to march through the streets for an international day of student protests aimed at pushing world leaders into action on climate change. Classrooms in capitals…

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