Reading archive 2023-12-17

Meet the woman working to stop the far-right creator money machine: Nandini Jammi is fighting to defund right-wing influencers like Alex Jones

Opinion  Biden can go over Netanyahu’s head

Trump quotes Putin condemning American democracy, praises autocrat Orban: Trump also called Jan. 6 defendants ‘hostages’ and again demonized immigrants as ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ - "In the speech, Trump also repeated his own inflammatory language against undocumented immigrants, by accusing them of 'poisoning the blood of our country' — a phrase that immigrant groups and civil rights advocates have condemned as reminiscent as Hitler in his book 'Mein Kampf,' in which he told Germans to 'care for the purity of their own blood' by eliminating Jews."

Biden’s support of Israel could come at a cost to U.S. foreign policy: America’s partners and allies are increasingly frustrated that the United States isn’t using enough leverage to protect Palestinian lives - "In its efforts to woo the Global South away from Moscow and China, Washington has called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a colonial war of aggression. Yet for many, Israel’s war on Gaza looks virtually the same. 'Israel was attacked, and it has a right to self-defense,' Daalder said. 'But it is doing so in a territory it occupies, and which the entire world thinks is occupied territory. On the one hand, we’re trying to get other countries to oppose what Russia is doing in Ukraine, while on the other hand we’re trying to have them support what Israel is doing in Gaza.'"

Ron DeSantis wanted to change the way campaigns were funded. Then the fights started.: With just weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses, the GOP candidate’s bold strategy is now in tatters and its top architect has resigned

James Biden’s dealmaking caught on FBI tapes in unrelated bribery probe: While Joe Biden campaigned in Mississippi, his brother planned to build a powerful consulting business -- a deal that brought him to the periphery of a federal case

Opinion  In the West Bank, I saw how peace will require confrontation with Israel - "For settlers, obstructing Palestinian statehood is part of the mission, Yehuda Shaul, a leading Israeli expert on settlements, told me. He noted that back in 1980, Matityahu Drobles, who was then head of the World Zionist Organization’s settlements department, stated his goal bluntly in a broad plan. 'Being cut off by Jewish settlements, the minority [Arab] population will find it difficult to form a territorial and political continuity,' he wrote at the time. 'The best and most effective way of removing every shadow of a doubt about our intention to hold on to Judea and Samaria forever is by speeding up the settlement momentum in these territories.'

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"The violent settlers almost always go unpunished. From 2005 to 2022, 93 percent of the 1,597 investigations opened by the Israeli police into cases where Israelis were said to have harmed Palestinians were closed without indictment, according to Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din; only about 3 percent led to convictions."