United States | News & Politics

Errol Musk, rarely mentioned by his tech billionaire son, dismissed New York Times report as ‘nonsense’ and ‘false’

Pro-Palestine student activists across the country have struggled to get their universities to respond to pressure for divestment from Israel and its military–industrial complex. So when a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology withdrew from a grant from the Israeli military after hearing feedback from students protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza, it was especially welcome news.

“This is one of the only cases where we know that student activism and public pressure led directly to an Israeli tie being cut, let alone a collaboration with its genocidal military,” said Mila Halgren, a postdoctoral associate at MIT. (The university did not respond to a request for comment.)

MIT has come under internal and public scrutiny for conducting research on warfare technology sponsored by Israel. In July, the United Nations condemned the school for conducting “weapons and surveillance research funded by the Israeli ministry of defense — the only foreign military financing research at the institute.”

That research included projects on drone swarm control — technology which the Israeli military has used during its siege on Gaza — pursuit algorithms, and underwater surveillance.

Online users have flagged the video to Nintendo and described it as ‘ICE propaganda’

As students push for MIT to drop projects tied to the Israeli military, the school has obscured information about the funding.

In an interview Sunday, the top Senate Democrat hesitated to commit to voting 'no' on a Republican funding bill, even without any concessions on a policy that would lead to higher healthcare premiums for millions.

Praise and partisanship become strange bedfellows.

Luigi Mangione fans singled out in White House memo

ICE has unleashed a war on “illegal” immigrants, claiming some wild successes.

Archived

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Reade worked briefly as a Senate aide for Biden in the early 1990s before accusing him in 2020 of sexually assaulting her in a Capitol office building in 1993 — allegations Biden categorically denies. Her accusations surfaced during Biden’s presidential campaign but did not result in formal charges.

[...]

Reade moved to Moscow in 2023, claiming she faced threats in the U.S. after repeating her accusations when Biden announced his re-election bid. She appeared at Russian state media events and granted an interview to Tucker Carlson during his visit to Moscow in February 2024. Since relocating, she has worked with Russian propaganda outlet RT.

[...]

A member of New York’s Chinese dissident community on Tuesday pleaded guilty to spying on his fellow activists on behalf of the Chinese government.

Tang Yuanjun (唐元雋), 68, had long been an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party, joining monthly protests outside the country’s Manhattan consulate and founding a pro-democracy nonprofit in Flushing, Queens, where he has lived since 2002.

However, as he publicly advocated against his homeland’s government, Tang was quietly acting on orders from Beijing’s intelligence service to collect information on his fellow Chinese-American rights advocates, according to a guilty plea entered on Tuesday.

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cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/46562517

The Wall Street Journal, its parent company and Rupert Murdoch asked a federal judge to dismiss Donald Trump‘s $10 billion defamation lawsuit over the publication’s report on the president’s past connections to Jeffrey Epstein.

“The First Amendment’s protections for truthful speech are the backbone of the Constitution,” the Journal’s attorneys wrote in their motion.

The attorneys also challenged the notion the that the article could have damaged Trump’s reputation, noting that he had “publicly admitted to ‘locker room talk’ and has made numerous bawdy public statements,” as well as to his relationship with Epstein.

Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman sat down with longtime political prisoner and Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier for his first extended television and radio broadcast interview since his release to home confinement in February. Before his commutation by former President Joe Biden, the 81-year-old Peltier spent nearly 50 years behind bars. Peltier has always maintained his innocence for the 1975 killing of two FBI officers. He is expected to serve the remainder of his life sentences under house arrest at the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Nation in Belcourt, North Dakota. In a wide-ranging conversation, we spoke to Peltier about his case, his time in prison, his childhood spent at American Indian boarding school and his later involvement in the American Indian Movement (AIM) and more. “We still have to live under that, that fear of losing our identity, losing our culture, our religion,” Peltier says about his continued commitment to Indigenous rights. “The struggle still goes on for me. I’m not going to give up.”

AMY GOODMAN: In a Democracy Now! global TV/radio broadcast exclusive, we spend the hour with longtime Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier. In February, he was released from a federal prison in Florida after spending nearly half a century behind bars for a crime he says he did not commit. President Biden, on his last day in office, commuted Peltier’s life sentence to home confinement. Biden’s decision came after mounting calls by tribal leaders and supporters around the world in a decadeslong community-led campaign fighting for his freedom.

In the ’70s, Peltier was involved with AIM, the American Indian Movement. In 1975, two FBI agents and one young AIM activist were killed in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Two AIM members were later arrested for killing the agents. At trial, the jury acquitted them. Leonard Peltier was arrested later, tried separately and convicted. Peltier has always maintained his innocence.

Notable supporters of Leonard Peltier over the years included Nelson Mandela, Pope Francis and Amnesty International. Supporters of Peltier say his trial was marked by gross FBI and federal prosecutorial misconduct, including the coercion of witnesses, fabricated testimony and suppressed exculpatory evidence.

After being released in February, Leonard Peltier returned home to live on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota. September 12th was Leonard Peltier’s 81st birthday. People gathered throughout the day, visiting him to celebrate this first birthday in almost a half a century where he was home. We got there on his birthday. The next day, Saturday, we spoke in his living room in his first extended TV/radio broadcast interview since his release from prison.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6212926

cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/60404

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Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel returns after suspension sparked fears of censorship.