Today's Liberal News

“The Palestine Laboratory”: Antony Loewenstein on How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation

We speak with journalist and author Antony Loewenstein about his new book, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World. Loewenstein explains that Israel’s military-industrial complex has used the Occupied Palestinian Territories for decades as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology that it then exports around the world for profit.

From Drone Strikes to Settler Attacks, Israel Intensifies Effort to “Completely Take Over Palestine”

This week, Israel has launched several attacks on Palestinians with weapons used in the conflict for the first time in nearly 20 years, including deploying U.S.-made Apache helicopter gunships inside the West Bank and firing a targeted assassination aerial strike. Jewish settlers have also raided Palestinian villages in the West Bank, attacking residents and setting fire to homes and vehicles.

As Media Spotlights Titanic Sub, Hundreds of Migrants Who Died in Greek Shipwreck Get Scant Coverage

As many as 700 migrants are feared to have died after an overloaded fishing vessel capsized last week off the coast of Greece. As search and rescue efforts continue with dwindling expectations, the Greek Coast Guard is facing backlash over its failure to help rescue passengers before the boat sank. Most of the migrants were women and children; many were from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria and Palestine.

How AI Is Enabling Racism & Sexism: Algorithmic Justice League’s Joy Buolamwini on Meeting with Biden

We speak with Dr. Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, who met this week with President Biden in a closed-door discussion with other artificial intelligence experts and critics about the need to explore the promise and risk of AI. The computer scientist and coding expert has long raised alarm about how AI and algorithms are enabling racist and sexist bias.

Why Putin Let Prigozhin Go

In announcing the deal purportedly brokered by the Belarusian leader, Aleksandr Lukashenko, that Evgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the short-lived rebellion against Russia’s military leadership, would be permitted to “retire” to Belarus, in exchange for stopping his “March of Justice” to Moscow, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov explained that the deal, “was for the sake of a higher goal—to avoid bloodshed, to avoid internal confrontation, to avoid clash

The Coup Is Over, but Putin Is in Trouble

A short recap of the past 24 hours in Russia reads like the backstory for a fanciful episode of Madam Secretary or The West Wing. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the brutal convicted criminal who leads the Wagner mercenary group, declared war on the Russian Ministry of Defense and marched into the city of Rostov-on-Don. He then headed north for Moscow, carrying his demand for the ousting of Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. The city went on alert.

Prigozhin Planned This

Updated at 6:50 p.m. ET on June 24, 2023The Wagner Group, a mercenary force that is effectively an arm of the Putinist state, has been very good at meddling in the politics of countries other than Russia—and ensuring that its preferred regime either takes or stays in power.

Why Coups Fail

Updated at 6:53 p.m. ET on June 24, 2023Russia is splintering. Even though Yevgeny Prigozhin just announced a surprising stand-down while en route to Moscow, it’s clear that his effort remains by far the greatest threat to Vladimir Putin since he took power in the summer of 1999. The story of the Wagner Group plot may not yet have reached its end, so it’s worth understanding how coups work: what causes them to succeed or, in this case, why they fizzle or fall short.

The Post-Racial Republicans

The sharp exchange between former President Barack Obama and two nonwhite 2024 GOP presidential candidates captures how diverging perceptions about racial inequity have emerged as a central fault line between the Republican and Democratic coalitions.In their presidential campaigns, Republican Senator Tim Scott, who is Black, and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who is Indian American, have repeatedly insisted that systemic or structural racism is no longer a problem in America.

How AI Is Enabling Racism & Sexism: Algorithmic Justice League’s Joy Buolamwini on Meeting with Biden

We speak with Dr. Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, who met this week with President Biden in a closed-door discussion with other artificial intelligence experts and critics about the need to explore the promise and risk of AI. The computer scientist and coding expert has long raised alarm about how AI and algorithms are enabling racist and sexist bias.

A Crisis Erupts in Russia

A simmering political feud in Russia has exploded into a crisis. The head of a Russian mercenary army fighting in Ukraine alongside Moscow’s official military forces has declared war against the Russian ministry of defense, claiming that Russia’s war in Ukraine was all the result of a giant plot by defense bureaucrats to mislead Russian President Vladimir Putin into a pointless conflict.