The Tunisian-Italian rapper who won over Europe’s most anti-immigrant country

The Tunisian-Italian rapper who won over Europe’s most anti-immigrant country

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Rachael Allen writes: One rainy Monday evening in October, a cheering crowd welcomed Ghali Amdouni back to Milan, his hometown. Born to Tunisian immigrants, Ghali, as he is known, was raised by his mother in a poor neighborhood where for a time they slept on carpets and cooked with camping stoves. Tonight, she stood beside him onstage and blew kisses to the nearly 13,000 people who had come to hear him perform trap music, the originally grim variety of hip-hop…

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Unrepresentative democracy: The defining political fact of our time is that the public’s main concerns are being ignored

Unrepresentative democracy: The defining political fact of our time is that the public’s main concerns are being ignored

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Tim Wu writes: We are told that America is divided and polarized as never before. Yet when it comes to many important areas of policy, that simply isn’t true. About 75 percent of Americans favor higher taxes for the ultrawealthy. The idea of a federal law that would guarantee paid maternity leave attracts 67 percent support. Eighty-three percent favor strong net neutrality rules for broadband, and more than 60 percent want stronger privacy laws. Seventy-one percent think we should be…

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The shameless smearing of Ilhan Omar

The shameless smearing of Ilhan Omar

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Just randomly overheard @realDonaldTrump on @CNN call @RepAdamSchiff "little shifty Schiff." Doubt it will even make the papers. Think for a second what would have happened if @IlhanMN or @RashidaTlaib had said that. Then ask yourselves what explains the double standard — Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) March 3, 2019 Paul Waldman writes: The whole purpose of the Democrats’ resolution [ostensibly rejecting anti-Semitism] is to enforce dual loyalty not among Jews, but among members of Congress, to make sure that criticism of…

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Debunking the myth that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic

Debunking the myth that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic

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Peter Beinart writes: It’s a bewildering and alarming time to be a Jew, both because anti-Semitism is rising and because so many politicians are responding to it not by protecting Jews but by victimizing Palestinians. On February 16, members of France’s Yellow Vest protest movement hurled anti-Semitic insults at the distinguished French Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut. On February 19, swastikas were found on 80 gravestones in Alsace. Two days later, French President Emmanuel Macron, after announcing that Europe was “facing…

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Rumours grow of rift between Saudi king and crown prince

Rumours grow of rift between Saudi king and crown prince

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The Guardian reports: There are growing signs of a potentially destabilising rift between the king of Saudi Arabia and his heir, the Guardian has been told. King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are understood to have disagreed over a number of important policy issues in recent weeks, including the war in Yemen. The unease is said to have been building since the murder in Turkey of the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which the…

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Global warming has already raised the risk of more severe droughts in Cape Town

Global warming has already raised the risk of more severe droughts in Cape Town

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Cape Town residents queuing for water during the water crisis. Shutterstock Mark New, University of Cape Town; Friederike Otto, University of Oxford, and Piotr Wolski, University of Cape Town Between 2015 and 2017 South Africa’s South Western Cape region experienced three of its lowest rainfall years on record. This led to the progressive depletion of water supply reservoirs and by the summer of 2017/18 there was a real danger that – without drastic reductions in water use – the region,…

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On a continent wracked with epidemics, millions turn to traditional healers

On a continent wracked with epidemics, millions turn to traditional healers

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The New York Times reports: Across the African continent, according to the World Health Organization, there are about 80 times as many traditional healers as there are medical doctors. Millions of Africans consult healers but, studies suggest, usually do not admit it if they see doctors, too. In Congo, doctors now fighting Ebola believe that many of their patients first get infected while visiting such healers. They may arrive at the home of someone like Mr. Muriisa [who the reporter…

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The climate change lawsuit that could stop the U.S. government from supporting fossil fuels

The climate change lawsuit that could stop the U.S. government from supporting fossil fuels

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60 Minutes reports: Of all the cases working their way through the federal court system none is more interesting or potentially more life changing than Juliana v. United States. To quote one federal judge, “This is no ordinary lawsuit.” It was filed back in 2015 on behalf of a group of kids who are trying to get the courts to block the U.S. government from continuing the use of fossil fuels. They say it’s causing climate change, endangering their future…

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Heatwaves sweeping oceans ‘like wildfires’, scientists reveal

Heatwaves sweeping oceans ‘like wildfires’, scientists reveal

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The Guardian reports: The number of heatwaves affecting the planet’s oceans has increased sharply, scientists have revealed, killing swathes of sea-life like “wildfires that take out huge areas of forest”. The damage caused in these hotspots is also harmful for humanity, which relies on the oceans for oxygen, food, storm protection and the removal of climate-warming carbon dioxide the atmosphere, they say. Global warming is gradually increasing the average temperature of the oceans, but the new research is the first…

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The engines of outrage

The engines of outrage

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Arthur C. Brooks writes: Political scientists have found that our nation is more polarized than it has been at any time since the Civil War. One in six Americans has stopped talking to a family member or close friend because of the 2016 election. Millions of people organize their social lives and their news exposure along ideological lines to avoid people with opposing viewpoints. What’s our problem? A 2014 article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on…

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The geography of partisan prejudice

The geography of partisan prejudice

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The Atlantic reports: We know that americans have become more biased against one another based on partisan affiliation over the past several decades. Most of us now discriminate against members of the other political side explicitly and implicitly—in hiring, dating, and marriage, as well as judgments of patriotism, compassion, and even physical attractiveness, according to recent research. But we don’t know how this kind of stereotyping varies from place to place. Are there communities in America that are more or…

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Fox News did their own ‘catch and kill’ on the Stormy Daniels story to help Trump win the election

Fox News did their own ‘catch and kill’ on the Stormy Daniels story to help Trump win the election

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Jane Mayer writes: When [Bill] Shine assumed command at Fox, the 2016 campaign was nearing its end, and Trump and Clinton were all but tied. That fall, a FoxNews.com reporter had a story that put the network’s journalistic integrity to the test. Diana Falzone, who often covered the entertainment industry, had obtained proof that Trump had engaged in a sexual relationship in 2006 with a pornographic film actress calling herself Stormy Daniels. Falzone had worked on the story since March,…

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Syria: ‘The kingdom of fear is back’

Syria: ‘The kingdom of fear is back’

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Alex Simon writes: Until recently, some [Syrians] found solace in the notion that conflict would end and life would improve. Today that prospect feels increasingly remote. The war has purportedly been won, yet many of the country’s most acute problems endure: Conscription, disappearances, and executions persist; state-led theft of property is on the rise; and a longstanding crisis of public services is, if anything, deepening. The result is that many are still finding ways to flee, and those who choose…

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Team Trump keeps pushing deal to send nuclear tech to Saudis

Team Trump keeps pushing deal to send nuclear tech to Saudis

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The Daily Beast reports: The Trump administration is still actively working to make a deal to send U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, according to two U.S. officials and two professional staffers at federal agencies with direct knowledge of those conversations. American energy businesses are still hoping to cash in on Riyadh’s push for energy diversification. “This could be a very big contract. This administration is all about contracts,” said Hussein Ibish, a resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States…

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