MSNBC draws backlash for canceling Mehdi Hasan show

MSNBC draws backlash for canceling Mehdi Hasan show

The Washington Post reports: MSNBC faced a blizzard of backlash Thursday after announcing that popular liberal host Mehdi Hasan would lose his Sunday-night show as part of a broader restructuring of the network’s weekend lineup. The network said the changes, which include a new weekend panel show, were made with 2024 election coverage in mind. But fans and prominent liberals questioned whether Hasan, one of the few Muslim hosts in cable news, was being penalized for his criticism of the…

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Trump may be sued over Jan. 6 incitement claims, appeals court panel rules

Trump may be sued over Jan. 6 incitement claims, appeals court panel rules

Politico reports: Donald Trump can be sued over claims that he incited violence on Jan. 6, 2021, an appeals court ruled Friday, rejecting the former president’s argument that he is entirely immune from being held liable for incendiary remarks that preceded the attack on the Capitol. The three-judge panel concluded that Trump’s actions as a candidate for president would not automatically be protected by “presidential immunity,” turning aside Trump’s sweeping argument that nearly all speech and conduct by an incumbent…

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Why Cornel West is broke

Why Cornel West is broke

Forbes reports: Cornel West has been a fixture of American society for more than three decades, publishing books, teaching at Ivy League institutions, commenting on cable news, collaborating on music with Prince—even popping up in sequels to the Matrix. Ubiquity provided liquidity, with West earning an estimated $15 million or so over the last 30 years. But oddly, as he mounts an independent run for president, his net worth resembles that of a first-year adjunct professor. “I live paycheck to…

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A glimpse of the world’s heart

A glimpse of the world’s heart

Nick Hunt writes: I am standing on the beach in Santa Marta, a small port city on Colombia’s humid Caribbean coast. Around me, brightly dressed families are eating ice cream and grilled meat. Venezuelan refugees beg for coins, and shredded plastic bags are snagged in the cactuses. Offshore, cargo vessels idle on blue-grey waves, perhaps heading east towards the Atlantic, or west to Panama and the Pacific. The industrial port bristles with cranes and gantries. Looking inland, my view is…

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What we get when we give

What we get when we give

Molly McDonough writes: From where in the body might kindness flow? Folklore and belief systems far and wide point to the heart. Ancient Egyptian mythology, for example, maintained that the leap to the afterlife required a test. Before the deceased could enter, their heart had to be weighed, placed on a balance under the watchful eyes of the gods. The dead person’s heart wasn’t beating, but it wasn’t considered dead weight; it held proof of virtue. If the person had…

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A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending otherwise

A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending otherwise

Robert Kagan writes: It is worth getting inside Trump’s head a bit and imagining his mood following an election victory. He will have spent the previous year, and more, fighting to stay out of jail, plagued by myriad persecutors and helpless to do what he likes to do best: exact revenge. Think of the fury that will have built up inside him, a fury that, from his point of view, he has worked hard to contain. As he once put…

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Israel knew Hamas’s attack plan more than a year ago

Israel knew Hamas’s attack plan more than a year ago

The New York Times reports: Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out. The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people. The…

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Mourned from Gaza to Glasgow, this is Dima’s story

Mourned from Gaza to Glasgow, this is Dima’s story

  Channel 4 News: More than 14,000 thousand people have been killed in Gaza, during Israel’s assault – according to officials there – and every single one of them has a story. Last week 29-year-old Dima AlHaj, her husband Muhammed, her six month old son Abood and more than 40 members of her extended family were killed when their house was hit. Dima worked for the World Health Organisation in Gaza and previously studied in Glasgow. Our international editor Lindsey…

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Why does Israel have so many Palestinians in detention and available to swap?

Why does Israel have so many Palestinians in detention and available to swap?

Omar Shakir writes: The last week has seen, as of Nov. 28, the release of 69 civilians held hostage in Gaza in exchange for 180 Palestinian prisoners as part of a short-term cease-fire agreement between Israeli authorities and Palestinian armed groups. While many have rightly hailed the release of civilians held hostage by Hamas after the killings of hundreds of Israelis and other civilians on Oct. 7 — hostage-taking is a war crime — less attention has been focused on…

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Palestine advocates decry MSNBC’s cancellation of Mehdi Hasan news show

Palestine advocates decry MSNBC’s cancellation of Mehdi Hasan news show

Al Jazeera reports: MSNBC has cancelled Mehdi Hasan’s weekend TV programme, sparking anger from many Palestinian rights supporters who consider the progressive host a rare critic of Israeli policies on United States cable news. The decision, first reported by the news website Semafor on Thursday, came amid what advocates describe as a crackdown on criticism against Israel in the media, at universities and in arts. The country is currently leading a military offensive in Gaza that has killed more than…

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Henry Kissinger, America’s most notorious war criminal, dies at 100

Henry Kissinger, America’s most notorious war criminal, dies at 100

Travis Waldron and George Zornick report: Henry Kissinger — who as a top American foreign policy official oversaw, overlooked and at times actively perpetrated some of the most grotesque war crimes the United States and its allies have committed — died Wednesday at his home in Connecticut. He was 100 years old. Kissinger’s death was announced by his consulting firm on Wednesday evening. No cause of death was immediately given. Kissinger served as secretary of state and national security adviser…

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Scientists discover rare 6-planet system that moves in strange synchrony

Scientists discover rare 6-planet system that moves in strange synchrony

University of Chicago reports: Scientists have discovered a rare sight in a nearby star system: Six planets orbiting their central star in a rhythmic beat. The planets move in an orbital waltz that repeats itself so precisely it can be readily set to music. A rare case of an “in sync” gravitational lockstep, the system could offer deep insight into planet formation and evolution. The analysis, led by UChicago scientist Rafael Luque, was published Nov. 29 in Nature. “This discovery…

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A political stalemate led to the bloodshed in the Mideast. Only a political settlement can truly end it

A political stalemate led to the bloodshed in the Mideast. Only a political settlement can truly end it

Omer Bartov writes: Like many other people in Israel and across the world, my first reaction to the attack on 7 October was of shock and horror. But that initial reaction was accompanied by rage, not only at the appalling massacre perpetrated by Hamas on women and children, the elderly and the handicapped, even babies, but also at those who could have prevented this act of violence, many that preceded it and the brutal retaliation that would come in its…

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Gideon Levy: ‘There is nothing cheaper than Palestinians’ lives in Israel’

Gideon Levy: ‘There is nothing cheaper than Palestinians’ lives in Israel’

  Veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy explains how Israeli public opinion has been conditioned to view Palestinian lives as less valuable, and how this has resulted in the lack of internal criticism towards Israeli war crimes. Levy also talks about the role of Israeli media and other things in this episode of Al Jazeera Sidebar with Jamal Elshayyal.