Christian nationalism is incompatible with American democracy, says author

Christian nationalism is incompatible with American democracy, says author

CNN reports: There’s an image that captures the threat posed by the White Christian nationalist movement — and how it could become even more dangerous over the next four years. Taken during the Jan. 6 insurrection, the photo shows a solitary White man, his head pressed in prayer against a massive wooden cross, facing the domed US Capitol building. An American flag stands like a sentinel on a flagpole beside the Capitol under an ominously gray sky. The photograph depicts a foot soldier in an insurgent religious movement…

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How Mark Zuckerberg threatens democracy

How Mark Zuckerberg threatens democracy

Yaёl Eisenstat writes: Mark Zuckerberg announced a spate of changes in Meta’s approach to speech and moderation issues this week, part of his longstanding effort to dominate the information landscape while resisting responsibility for his company’s contributions to political violence, extremism, and other antidemocratic activities in the United States and around the world. Let’s talk about the most serious implications. Two of the key changes are that Meta will end fact-checking and roll back content moderation. According to reporting from…

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Trump’s threats against Canada, Greenland, and Panama, vis-à-vis the Rio Treaty security pact

Trump’s threats against Canada, Greenland, and Panama, vis-à-vis the Rio Treaty security pact

Francisco Lobo writes: President-elect Donald Trump’s recent statements about his administration’s foreign policy toward Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal has given rise to international consternation. In particular, his statements about annexing Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal – the first in his words by the “use of economic force,” the remaining two with the possibility of military force explicitly on the table– have been sufficiently worrisome to inspire foreign leaders to respond. What’s been missing from the commentary and analysis is a regional treaty,…

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Mark Zuckerberg lies about content moderation to Joe Rogan’s face

Mark Zuckerberg lies about content moderation to Joe Rogan’s face

Elizabeth Lopatto writes: I’ll spare you the experience of listening to one of the richest men in the world whine and just tell you straight out: Mark Zuckerberg’s interview on The Joe Rogan Experience is full of lies. Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta, sets the tone at the very beginning: “I think at some level you only start one of these companies if you believe in giving people a voice, right?” Unfortunately I wasn’t born yesterday, and I…

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Trump Organization hires top white collar defense lawyer to handle conflicts of interest

Trump Organization hires top white collar defense lawyer to handle conflicts of interest

The Associated Press reports: The Trump family business released a voluntary ethics agreement Friday that allows it to strike deals with private foreign companies, a move that could help outside actors try to buy influence with the new administration. The so-called ethics white paper bars the Trump Organization from striking deals directly with foreign governments, but allows ones with private companies abroad, a significant departure from President-elect Donald Trump’s first term. An ethics pact that Trump signed eight years ago…

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Rust Belt voters on why they backed Trump again despite his broken promises

Rust Belt voters on why they backed Trump again despite his broken promises

The Observer reports: The last time Donald Trump was president, he travelled to Youngstown, Ohio, among the most depressed of America’s rust belt cities, and promised voters the impossible. The high-paying steel, railroad and car industry jobs that once made Youngstown a hard-living, hard-drinking blue collar boom town were coming back, he said. “Don’t move. Don’t sell your house,” he crowed to a rapturous crowd in 2017. “We’re going to fill up those factories – or rip ”em down and…

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Russia’s crisis of depopulation is at the heart of Putin’s paranoia

Russia’s crisis of depopulation is at the heart of Putin’s paranoia

Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes write: We live in a strange time marked by widespread and ongoing depopulation. The entire world is grappling with a crisis of childlessness. By 2015, the global fertility rate had dropped to half of what it was in 1965, and most people now lives in societies with fertility rates below replacement levels. Populations are shrinking across rich and poor nations, secular and religious societies, democracies and autocracies alike. As the eminent American demographer Nicholas Eberstadt…

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The key to a healthy gut microbiome is a healthy diet

The key to a healthy gut microbiome is a healthy diet

Università di Trento: A varied diet rich in vegetables is known to be healthy for one’s well-being. Excessive consumption of meat, especially red meat, can lead to chronic and cardiovascular diseases. That is also because what we eat shapes the gut microbiome. At the same time, excluding certain foods, such as dairy or animal products, is not necessarily a general solution to achieve microbial balance. But can we find out which food products determine differences in the gut microbiome? Starting…

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Will Trump just let California burn?

Will Trump just let California burn?

Ed Kilgore writes: Right now, as Los Angeles deals with a horrendous wildfire emergency, Donald Trump is just an extremely unhelpful critic of the people trying to save lives and homes. The torrent of abuse and misinformation he is spewing is unfortunate but not calamitous. But in ten days he will become once again the president of the United States, and his intensely politicized approach to natural disasters, particularly in blue states like California, will become highly relevant to real-life…

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How a phone call drew Alito into a Trump loyalty test

How a phone call drew Alito into a Trump loyalty test

The New York Times reports: Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. received a call on his cellphone Tuesday. It was President-elect Donald J. Trump, calling from Florida. Hours later, Mr. Trump’s legal team would ask Justice Alito and his eight colleagues on the Supreme Court to block his sentencing in New York for falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment to a pornographic film actress before the 2016 election. And the next day, the existence of the call would…

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Musk and Ramaswamy’s DOGE is dispatching hired guns across U.S. government

Musk and Ramaswamy’s DOGE is dispatching hired guns across U.S. government

The Washington Post reports: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are sending representatives to agencies across the federal government, four people familiar with the matter said, to begin preliminary interviews that will shape the tech executives’ enormous ambitions to tame Washington’s sprawling bureaucracy. In recent days, aides with the nongovernmental “Department of Government Efficiency” tied to President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team have spoken with staffers at more than a dozen federal agencies, said the people, who spoke on the condition of…

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Leaked Meta rules: Users are free to post ‘Mexican immigrants are trash!’ or ‘Trans people are immoral’

Leaked Meta rules: Users are free to post ‘Mexican immigrants are trash!’ or ‘Trans people are immoral’

The Intercept reports: Meta is now granting its users new freedom to post a wide array of derogatory remarks about races, nationalities, ethnic groups, sexual orientations, and gender identities, training materials obtained by The Intercept reveal. Examples of newly permissible speech on Facebook and Instagram highlighted in the training materials include: “Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit.” “Gays are freaks.” “Look at that tranny (beneath photo of 17 year old girl).” The changes are part of a broader policy…

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Danes struggle with how to respond to Trump Greenland threat

Danes struggle with how to respond to Trump Greenland threat

BBC News reports: Copenhagen’s gloomy January weather matches the mood among Denmark’s politicians and business leaders. “We take this situation very, very seriously,” said Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen of Donald Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland – and punish Denmark with high tariffs if it stands in the way. But, he added, the government had “no ambition whatsoever to escalate some war of words.” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen downplayed Trump’s own suggestion that the US might use military force to…

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Syria: The legacy of the Hama massacre

Syria: The legacy of the Hama massacre

Yazan Shahdawi writes: Hama has a long and storied history. It witnessed massive demonstrations in 2011, involving tens of thousands of protesters, who filled the central Assi Square in defiance of Bashar al-Assad’s rule. Its reputation for dissent dates back to 1982, when it became a symbol of opposition after the infamous Hama Massacre, a brutal crackdown ordered by Hafez al-Assad to secure his regime’s control. Hama suffered extensively under the Assad family’s 54-year rule. Its people endured massacres, arrests…

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