Author: nick
Jamie McDonald’s got his work cut out for him. Sworn in on July 29 as the new U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, he inherits one of the DOJ’s great reclamation projects: making the Southern District sovereign again. And, despite the best efforts of his predecessor Jay Clayton—now director of national intelligence—recent prosecutions show the job’s not close to finished. “Sovereign” was once the word for the SDNY—famously measured in how it wielded power, no matter how rabid Main Justice might be. But, under Merrick Garland’s watch, the Southern District discovered it was fun to play Batman.…
Becca Renk Foster, Popular Resistance. Ometepe Island “I’m not a member of any political party, but I believe that the tourism development in our community has been beneficial for the island.” I’m standing with tour guide Luis Argeñal on the green folds of Concepción, looking out over a pastoral scene to the cloud-shrouded Maderas. We are on Ometepe Island, two volcanoes sticking up out of vast Lake Nicaragua. My family has come to stay in the tiny hamlet of Balgüe where my husband and I visited twenty-five years ago when we first moved to Nicaragua. Back then, we had…
The moon occupies a special place in human history’s brilliant constellation of fake news stories. When the first British newspapers appeared in the early 17th century, they had a field day with fantastic stories of extraterrestrial life. Playwright and poet Ben Jonson, who qualifies as the first press critic, wrote the theatrical production “News from the New World Discovered in the Moon.” In the play, which was performed at Whitehall for King James and assorted aristocrats in 1620, the character of The Printer says, “I’ll give anything for a good copy now, be’t true or false.” In 1835, the New…
Mike Ludwig, Truthout. A Kansas activist discovered that police tracked him with Flock-style cameras after he wrote an op-ed criticizing them. The op-ed Canyen Ashworth wrote last September may have been critical of the police where he lives in Lenexa, Kansas, but it could hardly be considered radical. A racist and nonsensical police investigation into the immigration status of a sitting city council member had generated embarrassing headlines, and a chaotic Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid on a beloved local taqueria went viral. Pointing to basic reforms, Ashworth argued Lenexa’s city leaders had “work to do” in order to “meet the moment” and restore…
On the last Thursday of May, Tanya Simon’s staff packed up her office. They filled boxes with personal items accumulated over more than 25 years at 60 Minutes: Emmys, photos with celebrity interviewees such as Eminem, and portraits of the show’s legendary correspondents, including her father, Bob Simon. Source link
Juan Cole Informed Comment Diesel prices are high in many markets around the world, but we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Energy analyst Ron Bousso at Reuters warns that the Hormuz crisis has taken 9 million barrels a day of petroleum off the market, and it is only a matter of time before it causes a 1970s-style energy crisis that will elevate the price of gasoline, diesel and natural gas for years to come. This week the news broke that the price spread (“crack”) between the price of a barrel of crude oil and the price refiners want to be paid to produce a…
In the latest wave of climate-related narratives spread by the Kremlin, climate change is a vehicle to reinforce familiar disinformation tropes: the alleged authoritarianism and hypocrisy of the EU, Europe’s supposed self-inflicted decline through sanctions against Russia, and, ultimately, the claim that Europe has no choice but to restore relations with Russia as a supplier of affordable oil and gas. Climate change used to be a fringe topic in Kremlin propaganda. It was rarely mentioned, and when it was, it was often accompanied by absurd claims or outright denial. But as the effects of climate change become increasingly difficult to…
The second woman nominated to the Supreme Court by a Republican president doesn’t neatly fit into the box of expectations either side had for her. Source link
Trump says the war is going great and the “bully of the Middle East” is no longer in charge. We’re not buying slogans, so we pull the thread on what “going great” is supposed to mean when U.S. munitions stockpiles are thinning, regional bases are taking hits, and the Strait of Hormuz still looks anything but normal for global shipping. If you care about U.S. foreign policy, oil prices, and the real costs of escalation with Iran, this conversation is built for you. I’m joined by writer Nolan Denaro, whose recent reporting cuts through the talking points. We unpack why…
Amid escalating U.S. threats of economic warfare, a top Iranian official said Friday that Tehran must make plans to overcome “unjust sanctions.” The official, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has led Iranian negotiators in talks with the U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday had threatened “economic D-Day” against Iran, promising the “MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY.” White House officials have reiterated Trump’s threats. On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned of severe punishment against countries that continue to trade with Iran. “Any remaining tie to Tehran will hasten a nation’s economic oblivion, whether that tie be purposefully constructed…