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The Modi government has weaponized India’s sedition and anti-terror laws to disappear Khalid and other political critics from public life.

The post Umar Khalid Challenged Modi’s Anti-Muslim Agenda. India Accused Him of Terrorism and Locked Him Up. appeared first on The Intercept.

‘All I can do is pray – earnestly, relentlessly – for world peace.’ Fujio Torikoshi was eating breakfast with his mother when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Feeling a rumble underneath his feet, Fujio stepped outside into the front garden and saw a black dot in the sky. That’s when it burst outwards, […]

Six months after the East Palestine derailment disaster, the only safety victory on our nation’s railroads came from workers.

Since the overthrow of Niger’s US-friendly government, West African nations of the ECOWAS bloc have threatened an invasion of their neighbor. Before leading the charge for intervention, ECOWAS chair Bola Tinubu spent years laundering millions for heroin dealers in Chicago, and has since been ensnared in numerous corruption scandals. Hours after Niger’s Western-backed leader was detained by the country’s presidential guard on July 28, Nigerian President and chair of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Bola Tinubu leapt […]

The post From Chi-Town bagman to ECOWAS chairman: meet the former money launderer leading the push to invade Niger first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post From Chi-Town bagman to ECOWAS chairman: meet the former money launderer leading the push to invade Niger appeared first on The Grayzone.

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*sigh* Everything old is nude again. From Sam Adams’ Slate review of Ira Sach’s Passages: Movie theaters are full, Eurodance is big: Close your eyes and it’s the 1990s again. Adding to the throwback vibe, there’s a new controversy about sex in movies. The story of a love triangle between a German film director (played by Franz Rogowski), his husband (Ben Whishaw), and an elementary school teacher (Adèle Exarchopoulos), Ira Sachs’ Passages premiered to strong reviews at Sundance but was given an NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association for its explicit sex scenes. The film’s distributor, Mubi, has opted to release it in theaters unrated, but not before a round of interviews in which Sachs called the MPA’s decision “a form of cultural censorship” and pointed to the ratings board’s long history of disproportionately stigmatizing sex, especially when it’s between same-sex partners. Created in 1990 to replace the disreputable X, the NC-17 rating, which bars admission to anyone under the age of 17, has fallen almost completely out of use in recent years.

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Lol. And, once again, what is with the vests with their names on them? Why????

DeSantis-stans are in a tizzy over his collapse. Jonathan Chait takes on their latest excuse — Democrats made the Republicans do it: National Review’s Andrew McCarthy explicated this theory in more specific lunatic detail: Today, the Journal — which previously only hinted at the notion that Jack Smith might be deliberately trying to help Trump beat DeSantis — goes all in: That this theory is totally deranged hardly requires saying. There is no evidence any, let alone all, of the prosecutors investigating Trump have coordinated with the Biden administration or have any interest in affecting the Republican nomination. Trump’s legal woes are easily and parsimoniously explained by the fact he has habitually flouted the law throughout his career, beginning at least 50 years ago, when he and his father refused to allow Black people to rent apartments, and continuing through decades of assorted schemes and swindles. More to the point, the Republican electorate’s attachment to Trump is explained even more easily.

It’s early, but it’s worth thinking about this anyway. I assume you’ve already read or heard about the NY Times poll this week which has everyone scared to death that Donald Trump will win again in 2024. (I would just say that people need to remember that almost every re-elected incumbent was very unpopular at this stage of the campaign. It’s the normal dynamic.) This discussion with the pollster Nate Cohn is instructive about the possible advantages for Biden and also the possible roadblocks, one of which is terrifying to me: Michael Barbaro: … [G]iven that at this moment he’s tied with Trump at 43 percent of the electorate that was polled here, that leaves us with about 14% of the general election voters who seem up for grabs. So what can you tell us about that group of people?  Nate Cohn: Well, the main thing that characterizes this group is that they don’t like either of these candidates, but to be honest they’re not a bad group for Democrats on paper, and they’re not a bad group for Joe Biden.  On paper, this is a group that’s disproportionately young.

Australia’s environmental protection legislation needs all hands-on deck right now. City centre households have lower emissions than the suburbs. Northern hemisphere summers getting hotter. Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act review Regular readers of my Sunday contributions will be aware that I consider climate change and the loss of biodiversity to be not the Continue reading »

Over twenty ALP branches around Australia have now passed anti-AUKUS resolutions and the list is growing by the day. Many of the branches are calling on the Albanese government to withdraw from the pact while others want a parliamentary inquiry into the $368 Billion deal. AWPR supports the call for a full and open inquiry which was Continue reading »

During his recent speech at the Solomon Islands National University, Minister for International Development and the Pacific Pat Conroy said “strategic competition […] is an unavoidable reality for our region”. July has already seen Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare visit China, French President Emmanuel Macron visit Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia, and United States Secretary of State Continue reading »

CANBERRA 2 August 2023.– One of Australia’s longest-serving senior federal bureaucrats – Andrew Metcalfe – says poor training, insufficient funding and sometimes ‘fragmented and desultory’ efforts by the public service were responsible some of Australia’s greatest public administrations tragedies. Metcalfe also blamed the previous Coalition government for starving Commonwealth departments and agencies of additional staff, Continue reading »

In the Ukraine War, scholar Serhii Plokhy has his own biases, which can get in the way of his profession’s fidelity to evidence. Are historians, as Serhii Plokhy suggests, really the worst interpreters of current events, except for everyone else? As a historian myself, I would like to believe so. It’s a comforting thought at Continue reading »

At 3 a.m. on July 26, 2023, the presidential guard detained President Mohamed Bazoum in Niamey, the capital of Niger. Troops, led by Brigadier General Abdourahmane Tchiani closed the country’s borders and declared a curfew.  The coup d’état was immediately condemned by the Economic Community of West African States, by the African Union, and by the European Union. Both Continue reading »

This is ridiculous: M. Evan Corcoran, a lawyer who accompanied former President Donald J. Trump to court this week for his arraignment on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election, has given crucial evidence in Mr. Trump’s other federal case — the one accusing him of illegally hoarding classified documents. Another lawyer close to Mr. Trump, Boris Epshteyn, sat for an interview with prosecutors this spring and could be one of the former president’s co-conspirators in the election tampering case. And Mr. Epshteyn’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, is defending Mr. Trump against both the documents and election case indictments. The legal team that Mr. Trump has assembled to represent him in the twin prosecutions by the special counsel, Jack Smith, is marked by a tangled web of potential conflicts and overlapping interests — so much so that Mr. Smith’s office has started asking questions.

Donald Trump pardoned Clint Lorance, a former Army officer convicted of murdering innocent civilians in Afghanistan.

The post War Criminal’s Bid to Become Lawyer Faces Obstacle: His Own Troops appeared first on The Intercept.

Donald Trump pardoned Clint Lorance, a former Army officer convicted of murdering innocent civilians in Afghanistan.

The post War Criminal’s Bid to Become Lawyer Faces Obstacle: His Own Troops appeared first on The Intercept.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” This is the Trump agenda. Nothing else really matters. And there are many, many Republican voters who are all in with him on this: DONALD TRUMP IS a long, long way from winning the GOP primary, let alone retaking the White House. But he always has revenge on his mind, and his allies are preparing to use a future administration to not only undo all of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s work — but to take vengeance on Smith, and on virtually everyone else, who dared investigate Trump during his time out of power. Rosters full of MAGAfied lawyers are being assembled. Plans are being laid for an entire new office of the Justice Department dedicated to “election integrity.” An assembly line is being prepared of revenge-focused “special counsels” and “special prosecutors.” Gameplans for making Smith’s life hell, starting in Jan. 2025, have already been discussed with Trump himself.

Share and enjoy NC state Rep. Lindsey Prather (D), a former educator, caught my attention this morning with this post from Houston. If you did not know the name Lauren Ashley before. Remember it now. “This woman needs to run for office. I’ll donate to her campaign and get my friends to do the same,” responded substacker Charlotte Clymer. That’s Mike Miles whom Ashley is castigating. He is the recently state-appointed Houston schools supertintendent. Because as in many other GOP-controlled states, democracy is optional in Texas. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) of frozen constituents, no water breaks for construction workers, and dead bodies in floating razor wire barriers fame took over the Houston Independent School System (HISD) in March: After a prolonged legal battle and weeks of speculation, the Texas Education Agency on Wednesday confirmed it’s removing Houston Independent School District’s democratically elected school board and superintendent, effectively putting the state in charge of its largest school district.

Also, regulators target carbon-heavy transportation, jetsetters could pay up, and fragile ocean ecosystems score a reprieve.