Digital Authoritarianism and Trolling in Turkey

In 2007, Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) had its second election victory, increasing its vote share to 47,8 and consolidating power. In the same year, it imposed important regulations to ‘clean’ the Internet of undesirable content. Law 5651, On Regulation of Publications on the Internet and Combating Crimes committed ...
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Digital Authoritarianism and Trolling in Turkey

Why Does White Fragility Never Break?

The Framing of Racism in Higher Education

------ When I was a graduate student at Emory University in 2018, the law school suspended a professor, Paul Zwier, for using the N-word in class. Zwier’s response to the suspension was strange. Inside Higher Ed reported on a letter in which he said, “I’m not sure whether I used the ...
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Why Does White Fragility Never Break?

Feminist Legal Pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies at 87

Progressives mourn a SCOTUS legend, famous for potent dissents, who saw gender equity as a path to civil rights for all

----------- Today, flowers are strewn on the steps of the Supreme Court, where “Equal Justice Under Law” is carved in stone. More than a thousand people gathered there tonight to mourn the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last night from cancer at age 87. Justice Ginsburg was born in ...
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Feminist Legal Pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dies at 87

While Trump Flails, Biden Quietly Moves Forward

Re-election initiatives increasingly look like spaghetti thrown against the wall — and it isn’t sticking

————— It feels like power is slipping away from Trump and his administration, and they are trying desperately to claw it back. Meanwhile, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his team are trying to criticize the president without getting sucked into his orbit, so they can focus on moving the country ...
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While Trump Flails, Biden Quietly Moves Forward

Anti-maskers Are Not Rugged Individualists

They are collectivists living in fear of being punished by their group

On August 21, people gathered around the Washington County School District building in St. George, Utah. They came by the hundreds to protest the governor’s mandate requiring schoolchildren to wear face masks. According to local newspaper The Spectrum, a protester said during a closing prayer that “safety is not as ...
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Anti-maskers Are Not Rugged Individualists

Why Trump Could Win Again

Democrats must respond to rising inequality and the working class

A mere six weeks away from the 2020 election, the polls remain in flux. Some suggest that Biden is performing better than Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Kerry did, while other polls place Biden behind Clinton. Evidence of the race tightening with Hispanic and white working-class voters suggests an ...
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Why Trump Could Win Again

The United States Post Office is in Trouble

The strange fate of the United States Postal Service

As I turn onto the northbound entrance for the New Jersey Parkway and speed through the EZ-Pass lane, I take a look at my clock--I have less than two hours to make the 60-mile journey from Brick, New Jersey to Newark Penn Station, find parking, hop on the train, and ...
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The United States Post Office is in Trouble

Is the TikTok Deal Another Level of Trumpian Corruption?

Threatening China’s ByteDance may have forced a deal that benefits a campaign donor

----- Here’s one more chore that Joe Biden should add to his Day One presidential to-do list: launch an investigation into whether the Trump administration improperly steered the U.S. operations of the world’s hottest new social media platform, TikTok, into the hands of one of his most important supporters, Oracle co-founder ...
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Is the TikTok Deal Another Level of Trumpian Corruption?

Donald Trump: Democracy’s Mirror image?

Modern liberal democracies can always cancel themselves

______ In a modern representative democracy, power alternates via elections. Or, as one minimalist definition puts it: ‘democracy is simply a system in which incumbents lose elections and leave when they lose’.[1] But since they only leave after the event, democracy on this account of it can only ever prove itself ex-post. ...
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Donald Trump: Democracy’s Mirror image?

What Americans Can Learn from the Lebanese

Inspiration amid the ruins of Beirut

______ On August 4, 2020, 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at Beirut’s port blew up, destroying the city’s main commercial hub and damaging large areas of the Lebanese capital. The blast killed more than 170 people, wounded more than 6,000, left nearly 300,000 homeless, and caused damage worth $10-15 billion. Lebanon ...
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What Americans Can Learn from the Lebanese

“Alternative Facts” Produce Real Disasters

As Trump officials hide the truth to support the boss’s re-election campaign, Americans become more ill-informed — and vulnerable — than ever

----- Saturday night, at about 10:30, reporter Dan Diamond posted another blockbuster story in Politico. Political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services have been altering the weekly scientific reports issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reports that track the course of the coronavirus pandemic. These ...
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“Alternative Facts” Produce Real Disasters

White Liberals Must Face the Truth: Donald Trump Represents all Republicans

The GOP isn’t a deranged cult. It’s a party of dangerous politics

----------------- Ezra Klein, a prominent white liberal, is the top editor at Vox. During August’s Republican National Convention, he tweeted something I think we should address head-on. “This isn’t a political party,” Klein said. “It’s a personality cult.” There are good reasons for making such a claim. The president’s most ardent supporters exhibit traits ...
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White Liberals Must Face the Truth: Donald Trump Represents all Republicans