• The Roots of Labour’s Anti-Semitism Lie Deep within the Populist Left

    “Anti-Semitism is populism in perhaps its purest and most distilled form. It says that politics is indeed a battle between the virtuous masses and a nefarious, corrupt elite – and that that elite is ‘the Jews’. That’s why anti-Semitism carries so many of populism’s distinguishing features, from the fear of an enemy within, to its insistence that the media is bent on distorting reality,” Jonathan Freedland writes. Earlier this year a global study “found that a distinguishing feature of those with a populist worldview is a willingness to believe conspiracy theories, whether on the climate crisis, vaccines, or aliens from outer space. Anti-Semitism is nothing if not an all-encompassing conspiracy theory, suggesting that Jews are the secret rulers of the world.”

  • Can the “Masters of the Flood” Help Texas Protect Its Coast from Hurricanes?

    After centuries of fighting back water in a low-lying nation, the Dutch have become the world leaders in flood control. And their expertise is helping Texas design what would become the nation’s most ambitious — and expensive — coastal barrier.

  • “Safe Third Country” Agreements with Mexico and Guatemala Would Be Unlawful

    News reports that the United States seeks to sign “Safe Third Country” agreements with Mexico and Guatemala – possibly as soon as today – mark the latest phase in the Trump Administration’s efforts to keep Central American asylum seekers from reaching the country. Such agreements would bar asylum applications in the United States from thousands fleeing El Salvador and Honduras, as well as claimants from other world regions who transit Central America and Mexico to reach our border. And they would be contrary to both U.S. and international law on the protection of asylum seekers.

  • It Sure Looks Like Jeffrey Epstein Was a Spy—but Whose?

    In terms of scandals, the sordid saga of Jeffrey Epstein has it all. Mysterious gaudy fortunes. Jet-setting debauchery. Lots of pretty girls—including very young girls. Sex and more sex, not necessarily legal or consensual. Add a battalion of VIPs, including billionaires, A-list celebrities, royalty and no less than two American presidents. The only thing missing was espionage — and it’s not missing anymore.

  • Do Patents Protect National Security?

    On 12 June, the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Chinese firm Huawei Technologies Co. had asserted more than 200 patents against Verizon Communications Inc., reportedly demanding more than $1 billion in licensing fees. On its face, this would seem to be a private patent dispute. But, in fact, it is an important turn of events for national security: The Verizon-Huawei dispute contradicts a view espoused by many experts, and even the Trump administration, about the relationship between national security and intellectual property rights such as patents.

  • The New Anti-Semitism

    In France and other Western societies, the proliferation of new political forces that challenge the established liberal order—from both the right and the left—has revived old patterns of vilifying the Jews as the embodiment of the corrupt elites supposedly responsible for society’s ills. Until the past few years, the biggest threat to Jews in Europe came from Islamists and disaffected Muslim youths. The West’s new wave of anti-Semitism, however, is increasingly coming from new quarters: from the nativist far right, with its fear of “the other” and dreams of racial purity, and from the extreme left, which often identifies Jews with the capitalist elites it seeks to destroy and glorifies Palestinian militants.

  • A Political Murder and Far-Right Terrorism: Germany’s New Hateful Reality

    The death threats started in 2015, when Walter Lübcke defended the refugee policy of Chancellor Angela Merkel.On June 2, Mr. Lübcke was fatally shot in the head on his front porch, in what appears to be Germany’s first far-right political assassination since the Nazi era.

  • Right-Wing Terrorism Could Get Even Worse after Trump

    Right-wing terrorism has grabbed public attention in the Trump era, thanks to a series of bloody attacks on synagogues, black churches, and mosques. The violence itself is shocking enough, but President Donald Trump’s reaction to it—a mix of denial and equivocation—proved even more galling to many Americans. For white supremacists themselves, the Trump era is a golden one, reversing the steady marginalization the cause had suffered since the civil rights era. But for those hoping that right-wing terrorism will decline should Trump leave office after 2020, the reverse is more likely.

  • As Feds Struggle, States Create Their Own Anti-election Propaganda Programs

    As the 2020 presidential campaign heats up, individual states are ramping up education efforts to counter the threat posed by foreign disinformation campaigns to US elections. A lack of action at the federal level has prompted many states to craft their own programs designed to counter foreign efforts to undermine American democracy and educate the next generation of voters in schools.

  • The Chinese Influence Effort Hiding in Plain Sight

    The 80 Chinese student associations in Germany, which represent 60,000 students from the People’s Republic of China, are pieces of a Europe-wide puzzle of organizations. Perhaps numbering in the thousands, and meticulously fit together by Beijing, these associations support the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology and goals—and its narrative about China—among both Chinese and Europeans, and try to ensure that its overseas citizens, and others of ethnic Chinese descent, are loyal.

  • Iranian Nuclear Facility “Has Never Been Repurposed” as Promised under 2015 Nuclear Deal

    Iran’s underground Fordow uranium-enrichment facility has not followed the 2015 nuclear deal. Apparently, it has “never been repurposed” in that “everything required to enrich uranium to weapons grade could be quickly reconstituted in the underground portion of the facility,” continued the report.

  • How Israel and Iran Joined Forces to Kill a Nuclear Weapons Program

    At dawn on 30 September 1980 four American-made F-4E Phantom jets screamed low over central Iraq, each laden with air-to-air missiles and three thousand pounds of bombs. The skimming Phantoms climbed briefly to higher altitude so as to appear on Iraqi radars, before ducking back down to hit the deck. But while two decoy Phantoms maintained their trajectory towards Baghdad, the other two veered southwards towards the real target: Iraq’s Osirak light-water nuclear reactor. The jets were undertaking the first air-strike against a nuclear reactor, and the first preemptive air-strike attempting to prevent a country from developing nuclear weapons capability. Now, the famous Israeli Operation Opera that destroyed the Osirak reactor was still nine months away. The Phantoms soaring towards the reactor in 1980 belonged to the Iranian Air Force.

  • Conspiracy Theories Make Inroads in Venezuelan Politics

    Despite how predictable (and tiresome) it has become, the Maduro government’s repetitive use of elaborate plots and attributing Machiavelian-styled traits to its adversaries doesn’t come out of pure laziness; conspiracy theories have not just found their way into our political discussion for quite some time now, they’ve won acceptance.

  • Child Separation Policy: Allegations of Mistreatment Substantiated

    Between April 2018 and June 2018, the Trump administration separated at least 2,800 children from their parents under the “zero tolerance” policy. Among other disturbing things, a new staff report by the Committee on Oversight and Reform found that at least 18 infants and toddlers under two years old were taken away from their parents at the border and kept apart for 20 days to half a year; at least 241separated children were kept in Border Patrol facilities longer than the 72 hours permitted by law; and that the administration separated children unnecessarily—even under its own rationale.

  • Twitter Takes Down Louis Farrakhan’s 2018 Anti-Semitic Tweet after Policy Change

    Twitter said Tuesday that it was requiring anti-Semitic hate preacher and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to delete a 2018 anti-Semitic tweet that compared Jews to termites. The move came as the social media giant introduced new rules prohibiting “language that dehumanizes others on the basis of religion.”