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Guten tag. I’m just wondering if anybody else can relate to this feeling I’ve been having that I just can’t shake. It’s only Tuesday, but what a week, huh? Just when we thought yesterday was another regular Monday, the Reichstag burned down, and it sounds like Chancellor Hitler is going to permanently suspend more of our rights. Crazy, right? Never thought that would happen here. My real problem, though, is that it’s my job to finish tuning this glockenspiel in time for the big concert tomorrow, and I just can’t seem to focus.

It’s only been a day since the fire, but it feels much longer. They said the communists are planning a violent uprising, so we need the Reichstag Fire Decree. Apparently, it’s going to suspend the right to assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other important-sounding stuff in our German constitution.

Should we do something? It feels like we should do something. Hopefully, I’ll feel more like I can dedicate the brain space to that just as soon as I finish my work, which is tuning this glockenspiel.

Leaked documents show UK intelligence operatives grooming British politicians to silence academics expressing skepticism of London’s Ukraine proxy war effort. One of the targets, Richard Sakwa, believes the campaign resulted in real-world harassment. Leaked emails reviewed by The Grayzone reveal a high-level British intelligence plot to smear and silence British political scientists such as Richard Sakwa, who is widely regarded as one of the English-speaking world’s foremost authorities on Russia. In a March 2022 email entitled “Russians in our Universities,” […]

The post British intel sought to silence West’s top Russia academic, leaks reveal first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post British intel sought to silence West’s top Russia academic, leaks reveal appeared first on The Grayzone.

The second administration of President Donald J. Trump has already started working its special magic across the Washington, D.C. capital region. Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have fired tens of thousands of federal workers, with more to come. Those who have lost their jobs include people who find housing and other support for veterans struggling with mental illness. They include civil servants who maintained safeguards to prevent our nuclear weapons from becoming dirty bombs. They include healthcare researchers developing treatments for cancer and other killer diseases; workers who ensured that low-income, homeless, and rural students were able to get an education; agricultural researchers who opened up international markets to American farmers; and too many others to... Read more

Donald Trump is reshaping relations between Europe and the US more dramatically than at any time since World War II.

The post Shredding the Postwar Order appeared first on The New York Review of Books.

Dear ICE official(s),

I noticed you recently detained your first Iranian foreign national. As a first-generation Iranian American, I’ve been conditioned to assume this is a testament to our great Persian culture. At least I’m sure that’s what my dad will say. Is he from Shiraz?

I just had a few questions ahead of any potential deportation and/or the disappearance of myself or my family members.

I know a lot of people might criticize your lack of a formal DEI initiative, but I want to commend the diversity of the first batch of students you’re detaining. It’s like the cast of The Sex Lives of College Girls, if you swapped the white girls for a South Korean and a Palestinian.

Speaking of college, are you deporting only Western, South, and Eastern Asians (and Muslim Africans) with impressive educations? I noticed that, thus far, most of them are pursuing their PhDs. If it helps, despite pleas from my dad, I have no interest in being an MD or PhD.

I should note that this was NOT my original assumption. I assumed this was like Georgescu, or Khan in Pakistan or the arrest of Istanbul’s Mayor: politically motivated bullshit, designed to make sure a popular politician can’t run and either disproportionate or a stitch-up.

- by Gina Rippon

Read at Aeon

- by Rebecca Lester

Read at Psyche

Close to Chingford Station in the suburbs of east London and along a path leading into Epping Forest, large iron gates stand at the entrance to Hawkwood Plant Nursery. Rows of fruit and vegetables are planted all around. Fields replete with raised beds and a forest garden provide the backdrop to a large glasshouse connected […]

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“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and H.H.S. will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.” — Andrew Dixon, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services.

We in the federal government have recently unearthed a scandal of epic proportions: During the previous administration, trillions of taxpayer dollars were wasted on “programs” intended to “help” “people.” Effective immediately, this administration vows not to waste any taxpayer money on anything, because nothing is real.

Do you have any idea how much taxpayer money the government has been spending on “education”? Neither do I, but I know it’s not zero dollars. And here’s the thing: Education is free.

(To be clear, the school where my kids go is not free. That’s why we need vouchers to pay for it.)

Objections from a top immigration official that none of the protesters were convicted of crimes were overruled amid political pressure.

The post Germany Turns to U.S. Playbook: Deportations Target Gaza War Protesters appeared first on The Intercept.