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  • Did a Nobel Peace Laureate Stoke a Civil War? | The New Yorker

    Did a Nobel Peace Laureate Stoke a Civil War?

    Did a Nobel Peace Laureate Stoke a Civil War?

    After Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, ended a decades-long border conflict, he was heralded as a unifier. Now critics accuse him of tearing the country apart.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/03/did-a-nobel-peace-laureate-stoke-a-civil-war

    In “Crabs in a Bucket,” a forthcoming book, the Somali author Nuruddin Farah likens Ethiopian politics to a destructive Groundhog Day. Farah, who is seventy-six, grew up in a part of Somalia that was ceded to Ethiopia by the colonial British after they ousted the Italians in the Second World War. “Think of a demolition site when you think about Ethiopia, a country under constant rebuilding, one whose laws are often dismantled to accommodate the new ruler, and whose peoples’ nerves are frequently shredded before another regime gains power, only to demolish what has gone on before,” Farah writes. “Ethiopian leaders are famous for telling big and small porky pies to their fellow citizens and to the rest of the world; they know how to start conflicts that lead to wars, not how to resolve conflicts.”


  • The Power of Positive Declassifying | The New Yorker

    The Power of Positive Declassifying

    The Power of Positive Declassifying

    Poof! Just like that, what was secret is now not secret, all through the power of your beautiful, enormous, manifesting mind.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/the-power-of-positive-declassifying

    As you become more practiced in the power of positive declassifying, you will acquire the ability to declassify entire tranches of documents in a single go. At first, even one document containing the address and spouse’s and children’s names of a spy will feel like a lot. But, in time, you will be able to think of a foreign country and, just by remembering what people from there smell like, declassify all files relating to it.


  • Putin’s Escalation in Ukraine Is a Losing Strategy | The New Yorker

    Putin’s Escalation in Ukraine Is a Losing Strategy

    Putin’s Escalation in Ukraine Is a Losing Strategy

    The push to claim new territory and mobilize more troops is unlikely to reverse Russia’s losses on the battlefield—but it could move the war into its most dangerous phase yet.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/putins-escalation-in-ukraine-is-a-losing-strategy

    We are fighting alone, whereas Ukraine has many allies. And, as the fight goes on, we will have less and less modern weapons, but Ukraine will only receive more


  • Inside Russia’s Vast Surveillance State: ‘They Are Watching’ – The New York Times

    ‘They Are Watching’: Inside Russia’s Vast Surveillance State

    ‘They Are Watching’: Inside Russia’s Vast Surveillance State

    A cache of nearly 160,000 files from Russia’s powerful internet regulator provides a rare glimpse inside Vladimir V. Putin’s digital crackdown.

    Link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/22/technology/russia-putin-surveillance-spying.html

    Unlike more technologically savvy counterparts in China, where internet surveillance is more automated, much of the work of Russian censors is done manually, the documents show. But what Russia lacks in sophistication it has made up for in determination


  • In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge Trials Come to an End – The New York Times

    16 Years, 3 Convictions: The Khmer Rouge Trials Come to an End

    16 Years, 3 Convictions: The Khmer Rouge Trials Come to an End

    The last surviving leader of the regime that killed 1.7 million Cambodians lost his appeal on Thursday. Some victims think the long, expensive tribunal was a hollow exercise.

    Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/world/asia/cambodia-khmer-rouge-tribunal.html

    It spent over $330 million. In the end, it convicted just three people


  • “My Son Hunter” Is Not the Hunter Biden Movie We Need, or the One We Deserve | The New Yorker

    “My Son Hunter” Is Not the Hunter Biden Movie We Need, or the One We Deserve

    “My Son Hunter” Is Not the Hunter Biden Movie We Need, or the One We Deserve

    The Breitbart film is an amateurish, often batshit satire-cum-thriller-cum-melodrama-cum-propaganda-organ, which switches between modes with the unexpectedness of a Surrealist cutup.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/my-son-hunter-is-not-the-hunter-biden-movie-we-need-or-the-one-we-deserve

    The movie promises to include, among its revelations, “Sex, Prostitution, Drugs, Cronyism, Money Laundering, More Sex, a Laptop from Hell,” not to mention “Chinese Spies, Ukrainian ‘Businessmen,’ ” and “the Selling Out of America.” As they say, don’t threaten me with a good time!


  • Review: ‘We Are the Proud Boys,’ by Andy Campbell – The New York Times

    The Proud Boys and the Long-Lived Anxieties of American Men

    The Proud Boys and the Long-Lived Anxieties of American Men

    Andy Campbell details the history of an ascendant far-right group.

    Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/18/books/review/andy-campbell-we-are-proud-boys.html

    “I have superhuman strength,” said McInnes, who publicly resigned from the Proud Boys in late 2018. “I’m smarter than ever before. I also crave my wife in a way that’s unprecedented.”


  • Why Is Trump Openly Embracing QAnon Now? | The New Yorker

    Why Is Trump Openly Embracing QAnon Now?

    Why Is Trump Openly Embracing QAnon Now?

    The former President is likely signalling to prosecutors that he won’t go quietly, so they had better beware.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-is-trump-openly-embracing-qanon-now

    At a campaign rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Saturday night, for the Republican Senate candidate J. D. Vance, Trump played background music that the Times described as “all but identical” to a song associated with the QAnon right-wing conspiracy movement. Many people in the crowd responded with a one-armed salute, with their index finger raised, that reminded some observers of Nazi rallies


  • How a War Correspondent Understands Far-Right Extremism | The New Yorker

    How a War Correspondent Understands Far-Right Extremism

    How a War Correspondent Understands Far-Right Extremism

    Luke Mogelson discusses his new book, “The Storm Is Here: An American Crucible,” and the precarious future of democracy.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/newsletter/the-daily/how-a-war-correspondent-understands-far-right-extremism

    I was surprised by how frightened many Americans on the far right are. I was prepared for the anger, but I hadn’t really understood the extent to which fear precedes it. I was in Nashville on Christmas when Anthony Warner, who believed that alien lizards disguised as human beings roamed the planet, blew himself up downtown. That’s an extreme example, but so many people I met at anti-lockdown protests, pro-Trump events, and Stop the Steal rallies told me that they were genuinely terrified of their fellow-citizens on the left, especially after the uprising in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.


  • Why Hasn’t the U.N. Accused China of Genocide in Xinjiang? | The New Yorker

    Why Hasn’t the U.N. Accused China of Genocide in Xinjiang?

    Why Hasn’t the U.N. Accused China of Genocide in Xinjiang?

    A new report from the Human Rights Office found “widespread arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Uyghyrs and other predominantly Muslim communities.” Some activists think it didn’t go far enough.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-hasnt-the-un-accused-china-of-genocide-in-xinjiang

    The most important element of the report is that the violations in Xinjiang and the policies carried out in Xinjiang may amount to crimes against humanity under international human-rights law. This means that China is committing atrocities in Xinjiang, which is extraordinarily significant.


  • R. Crumb Means Some Offense – The New York Times

    R. Crumb Means Some Offense

    R. Crumb Means Some Offense

    Even from his refuge in France, the comics artist still makes America’s pulse race.

    Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/t-magazine/r-crumb.html

    Encountering Crumb today feels like being in a staring match with an artist who’s still almost daring the culture to eject him. “The average people out there,” he tells me, “what they know of my work … either they love it because they are degenerates themselves or they hate it because they stand with the forces of political correctness.” His iconography includes every taboo imaginable: not only incest and racism but also sexual assault, castration, self-mutilation and murder.


  • How Trump Supporters Came to Hate the Police | The New Yorker

    How Trump Supporters Came to Hate the Police

    How Trump Supporters Came to Hate the Police

    At the Capitol riot and elsewhere, MAGA Republicans have leaped from “backing the blue” to attacking law-enforcement officials.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-trump-supporters-came-to-hate-the-police

    “We have guns, too, motherfuckers!” a man yelled over him. “With a lot bigger rounds!” Another added, “If we have to tool up, it’s gonna be over! We’re coming heavy!” I also overheard a woman talking on her phone. “We need to come back with guns,” she said. “One time with guns, and then we’ll never have to do this again.”


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