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Brazil's Lula Alarmed by Growing Venezuela-Guyana Tensions
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio da Silva said a war between Venezuela and Guyana over the oil-rich Essequibo region was “one thing we don’t want here in South America.” Venezuelan voters backed annexing of the territory.
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Holocaust Comparisons Are Overused – but in the Case of Hamas’s Oct. 7 Attack on Israel, Such Comparisons May Reflect More Than Just the Emotional Response of a Traumatized People
The horrors of Oct. 7 echo the brutal tactics Nazis used during the Holocaust, including not only murder but cruel humiliation of the victims. The testimonies of Oct. 7 survivors reveal the torture of parents and children, sometimes in front of each other, including rape and sexual violence and mutiliation, mocking and lingering in the murder process as the terrorists relished – and recorded — the atrocities they committed. Hamas also shares the Nazi ideological commitment to the annihilation of the Jews. But Oct. 7 is not the same as the Holocaust.
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Anti-Semitism on U.S. College Campuses
A new survey asked students whether they have experienced any adverse academic, social, or other consequences as a direct result of 10/7 and its aftermath, as well as their opinions about their university’s response to the Hamas attacks on Israel and the resulting conflict. The results were sobering.
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Interference-Free Elections? How Quaint!
There are three major elections taking place in 2024: in Taiwan, the United States, and Russia. So, what are the chances that we’ll see cyber-enabled disruption campaigns targeting each of these polls? Tom Uren writes that in the case of the upcoming U.S. election, it seems inevitable.
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How Cryptocurrency Fueled Hamas' Terror Attack on Israel
A crackdown on cryptocurrency accounts linked to Hamas has reignited scrutiny of digital assets after the terrorist group attacked Israel. Criminal and terrorist organizations use crypto to bypass laws and sanctions.
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Terrorist Use of Cryptocurrencies
Are terrorist groups currently using cryptocurrencies to support their activities? If not, why? What properties of new and potential future cryptocurrencies would make them more viable for terrorist use?
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Former U.S. Ambassador and National Security Council Official Charged with Secretly Acting as an Agent of the Cuban Government
Federal prosecutors have charged Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, of Miami, Florida, a former U.S. Department of State employee who served on the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995 and ultimately as U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002, with committing multiple federal crimes by secretly acting for decades as an agent of the government of the Republic of Cuba.
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Santos, Now Booted from the House, Got Elected as a Master of Duplicity – Here’s How It Worked
U.S. Rep. George Santos, a Republican from New York, was expelled on Dec. 1, 2023, from Congress. How could a politician engage in such large-scale deception and get elected? What could stop it from happening again, as politicians seem to be growing more unapologetically deceptive while evading voters’ scrutiny? I am a scholar of political deception. Experiments I conducted have revealed how the trustworthiness of politicians is judged almost entirely from perceptions of their demeanor, not the words they utter.
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Texas Must Remove Floating Barrier from Rio Grande, Fifth Circuit Court Orders
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Texas on Friday to remove the floating barrier it deployed in the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass this summer, affirming a lower court’s ruling. The appeals court upheld an earlier ruling by an Austin federal judge to remove the 1,000-foot-long barrier the state deployed near Eagle Pass.
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Venezuela Voters Back Territorial Claim on Region in Guyana
Venezuela’s government pressed ahead with the non-binding referendum despite the UN’s top court urging restraint in a territorial dispute with neighboring Guyana. Venezuelan voters also supported the formation of what Venezuela’s government describes as a new state whose inhabitants would be given Venezuelan citizenship.
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The Road to October 7: Hamas’ Long Game, Clarified
When Hamas took over the Gaza Strip by force of arms in 2007, it faced an ideological crisis. It could focus on governing Gaza and addressing the needs of the Palestinian people, or it could use the Gaza Strip as a springboard from which to attack Israel. Even then, Hamas understood these two goals were mutually exclusive. And while some anticipated Hamas would moderate, or at least be co-opted by the demands of governing, it did not. Instead, Hamas invested in efforts to radicalize society and build the militant infrastructure necessary to someday launch the kind of attack that in its view could contribute to the destruction of Israel. The road from Hamas’ 2007 takeover of Gaza to the October 2023 massacre offers insights about the organization and its goals.
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Labeling Hamas as a Terrorist Organization
Since October 7, 2023, top news sources have published thousands of reports, articles, and stories covering the Israel and Hamas conflict. These sources vary in the terminology they use to describe Hamas, which affects how audiences view the conflict. Different news organizations use different terms to describe Hamas, and the use of these terms and descriptors can be misleading and inaccurate.
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British Documentary Alleges China Influences Universities, Spies on Hong Kongers in UK
A BBC Channel 4 documentary claims the Chinese government is interfering with academic freedom and spying on Hong Kong activists in the United Kingdom. The film also alleges that Chinese government agents pretending to be journalists used fake profiles and avatars to target Hong Kong activists now living in the U.K.
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How Word Choices in the Mainstream News Media Signal a Country's Level of Peace
By analyzing the frequency of certain words within mainstream news media from any country, a machine learning algorithm can produce a quantitative “peace index” that captures the level of peace within that country.
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Huawei’s New Mate 60 Phones Are a Lesson in Unintended Consequences
In October 2022, the Commerce Department introduced a set of export-control measures designed to prevent the use of American chip technology for Chinese military purposes. Rules were also imposed that aimed to restrict China’s semiconductor production to older 14-nm technology. These controls have had varying degrees of success, but the 14-nm restriction is one of the more overt failures, as the 7-nm chips in the new Huawei’s Mate 60 phones shows.
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More headlines
The long view
Improving the Security of Soft Targets and Crowded Places
Attacks on soft targets and crowded places (ST-CPs) represent a significant challenge. How can prevention, protection, and response and recovery investments reduce the risk of casualties from attacks on ST-CPs?
Canada’s Biosecurity Scandal: The Risks of Foreign Interference in Life Sciences
In July 2019, world-renowned biological researchers Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng were quietly walked out of the Canadian government’s National Microbiology Lab (NML). The original allegation against them was that Qiu had authorized a shipment to China of some of the deadliest viruses on the planet, including Ebola and Nipah. Then the story seemed to go away—until now.
Don’t Buy Moscow’s Shameless Campaign Tying Biden to Its Terrorist Attack
Russia has offered many different explanations to the ISIS-K’s 22 March 2024 terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, but the most recent explanation offered by Russia is the most audacious yet: Russia now charges that the Ukrainian energy company Burisma financed the attack. Burisma is at the center of an effort by a congressional committee to impeach President Biden, but the case has all but collapsed. Hunter Stoll writes that Russia’s disinformation and propaganda apparatus appears to be searching for ways to keep Burisma in the news ahead of the U.S. presidential election.
West Reliant on Russian Nuclear Fuel Amid Decarbonization Push
A new report and research from a British defense research group has found that many Western nations are still reliant on Russian nuclear fuel to power their reactors, despite efforts to sever economic ties with the Kremlin following its February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
‘Fake News’ Legislation Risks Doing More Harm Than Good Amid a Record Number of Elections in 2024
“Fake news” legislation that governments around the world have written in recent years to combat mis- and disinformation does little to protect journalistic freedom. Rather, it can create a greater risk of harm. That’s the main finding of a review I helped conduct of legislation either considered or passed over the past several years related to fake news and mis- and disinformation.
Video Games Might Matter for Terrorist Financing
Every day, billions of dollars flow across international borders among millions of people on a public online market, with functionally no government oversight or regulation. The market? Virtual currency and digital assets in video games. Moshe Klein writes that “as terrorists seek new methods of conducting financial activity, governments must remain one step ahead and consider how they can proactively investigate and close extant avenues for terrorist financing.”