“Immured in his prison cell, Pakistani politician Imran Khan could scarcely have hoped for a better result. Just days before the country’s Feb. 8 election, the cricket legend-turned-populist politician was sentenced to more than a decade behind bars in three trumped-up cases. His party was stripped of its signature cricket bat symbol by the Election Commission, denying voters the chance to identify the party on ballot papers—a critical aspect of voting in a country where 40 percent of people are illiterate—and forcing its candidates to run as independents. Its members were beaten, imprisoned, and driven into rival parties or out of politics altogether. On polling day, cell phone signals vanished, and internet access was choked. After the votes were cast, there were widespread allegations that many were stolen overnight, reversing unassailable leads. And yet, despite every effort to thwart them, Khan’s supporters recorded the highest number of votes and clinched the largest number of seats. Independent candidates affiliated with Khan’s party, who took 93 out of a total of 295 national seats and won one province outright, were denied the majority that they insist they won and may be excluded from government, but the vote represents a momentous development. A new generation of voters has emerged—concentrated in Pakistan’s heaving towns and cities—who now demand a break with history. These voters want to have the power to choose their own leaders, not leave the country in the hands of the powerful military that has maintained a granitic grip on politics for most of its history.” (Omar Waraich/Foreign Policy)
“According to the latest figures by the health ministry in Gaza, Israeli military operations have killed 28,576 Palestinians since the start of hostilities. The health ministry is controlled by Hamas and does not distinguish between civilian casualties and members of Hamas killed during combat. But in prior wars, the health ministry's data "have held up to U.N. scrutiny, independent investigations and even Israel’s tallies." Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas fighters. By any account, many thousands of Palestinian civilians, including many children, have been killed. The number of Palestinians killed exceeds 1% of the total population in Gaza. A group of 16 human rights organizations, including Oxfam, Amnesty International, and the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), note that ‘Israel continues to use explosive weapons and munitions in densely populated areas with massive humanitarian consequences for the people of Gaza.’ Along with the fatalities, these attacks have ‘destroyed a substantial portion of Gaza’s homes, schools, hospitals, water infrastructure, shelters, and refugee camps.’ But human rights organizations are not the only ones sounding the alarm. It's also President Joe Biden and his administration.” (Popular Information)
“Last month, Richard Haass, the former longtime head of the Council on Foreign Relations, approached top officials in the Biden administration, including Vice President Kamala Harris, with an audacious plan for changing the politics around the Israel-Hamas war. Haass believed that Joe Biden needed to separate himself from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose military campaign was hurting U.S. credibility abroad and the president’s popularity at home. And he proposed that Biden do so by going to Israel to deliver a speech — possibly to the Knesset, the nation’s parliament — where he’d lay out his vision directly to the Israeli people. Haass, who previously worked in the State Departments for both Bush administrations, had come to the idea after growing increasingly dismayed by Israel’s defiance of Washington’s warnings that its bombardment of Gaza was causing widespread civilian casualties and threatened to destabilize the Middle East. And he first floated it from his perch as a panelist on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe,’ the cable news show Biden closely watches. But by January, Haas was taking his advocacy a step further. Though he did not speak directly to Biden, he did pitch a Knesset-like speech to, among others, Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, according to two people familiar with the discussions but not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations. The senior officials reacted coolly to his proposal, according to those two people. A White House official confirmed Thursday that there had been no discussion of scheduling a trip to Israel.” (Jonathan Lemire and Nahal Toosi/Politico)
“I think the last vote I cast in person was for Elizabeth Warren in the presidential primary, and since then I have only voted by mail and drop box. Massachusetts is a state where you don’t have to be disabled, sick, or out of town: you can vote before the election for no reason at all. In 2020, we all did it to not get Covid; in 2022, I did it because I was going to be at my job teaching in New York; and now I do it—because I know it has been done! Even if I am suddenly called out of town, or sick, or have a writing deadline, I know I have voted. I miss voting in person, but the upside is that I can now also spend Election Day getting out the vote, knowing that my own ballot is waiting to be counted. The Suffolk County Republican Party did not have that luxury, as they learned last night in the special election held in NY-03 to fill George Santos’s seat. And it suggests a factor that could help to defeat Donald Trump in the fall: MAGA political strategists have pursued wooed culture wars voters who don’t believe in mail in ballots—and then don’t show up at the polls.” (Claire Potter/Political Junkie)
“The US could soon surpass China as the world leader in rare earth minerals after more than 2.34 billion metric tons were discovered in Wyoming. American Rare Earths Inc announced that the reserves near Wheatland dramatically surpass the Asian nation’s 44 million metric tons, saying it 'exceeded our wildest dreams’ after drilling only about 25 percent of the property. The company has a stake in 367 mining claims across 6,320 acres of land in the Halleck Creek Project, along with four Wyoming mineral leases on 1,844 acres on the same project now called Cowboy State Mine. The types of minerals at the site are used in smartphones, hybrid car motors and military technologies - among others.” (Stacy Liberatore/Daily Mail)
“While most of the folks raising the subject are Republicans (many of whom believe there is some sort of secret plot to install Michelle Obama as the nominee), a lot of nervous Democrats are musing about the possibility of a ‘candidate swap’ at the convention, or a last-minute entry of a high-profile Democratic officeholder (i.e. California Gov. Gavin Newsom). Politico’s Jonathan Martin and Charlie Mathesian have each laid out the reasons why a last-minute ‘White Knight’ scenario isn’t going to happen — the most important being that state deadlines for primary ballot access in all but six states will have passed by the end of February, making it impossible for a candidate to collect the delegates needed to win the nomination. Even if someone does announce tomorrow, ‘Biden will likely amass more delegates on March 5, Super Tuesday, in the state of California than from those six states and D.C. combined.’” (Amy Walter/Cook Political Report)
“And although TikTok is ascendant, Instagram stars like Greivy, Christian Bendek, Moti Ankari, Caroline Vazzana and Lyn Slater are also front row regulars. Greivy, who has about 75,000 followers and attended shows for Christian Siriano, Son Jung Wan and Libertine, notes, “It’s all about the viral influencer, the attention they can attract on their social pages … Slater is one of the few big names who has multi-generational appeal. Describing herself as an ‘accidental icon’—her Instagram handle—she was a social worker for 45 years before becoming a content creator, model and cultural influencer. This March sees the publication of her first book, How To Be Old: Lessons in Living Boldly from the Accidental Icon. Let’s just say that you won’t see her in a leisure suit.” (Kristopher Fraser/The Digital Party)
“Tucker Carlson will not stop promoting Russia. First, the former Fox News star hosted the ruthless authoritarian Vladimir Putin for a friendly chat. Then he portrayed Moscow as a first-rate city. Now he has released a series of propaganda videos, showcasing how great Russia supposedly is. The videos posted Thursday featured Carlson gushing over Russia's subway system, a grocery store, and even the country's fast food. The series of videos was so ridiculous that Carlson was rebuked by some figures in conservative media, as Mediaite's Isaac Schorr pointed out. It can't be overstated how much of a propaganda win this all is for Putin, who can now boast that an American media personality visited Russia and declared it to be in better shape than the U.S. Of course, that's nonsense. As Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former longtime Foreign Service Officer who focused during his State Department career on relations with the former Soviet Union, noted to me, Carlson only seemed to visit limited areas of Russia that were in good order — not the parts of the country without working plumbing. ‘It does not appear that Carlson had an opportunity to visit those areas, and perhaps no desire; he seems to want only to praise Russia,’ Pifer said.” (Oliver Darcy/Reliable Sources)
“Archaeologists in Wyoming have discovered the oldest known bead in the Western Hemisphere: a nearly 13,000-year-old bone ornament crafted by the prehistoric Clovis people. The tubular, 0.3-inch-long (7 millimeters) polished bead has several grooves and was crafted from the bone of a hare, according to the researchers. The bead's slight red color might be from the surrounding reddish iron oxide-rich soil, they noted. The researchers found the bead near the remains of a prehistoric hearth along with other artifacts from the Clovis people. The Clovis were not the first people in the Americas; they arrived in North America before 13,000 years ago, via the Bering Land Bridge — a now-submerged path across the Bering Strait that existed during the last ice age. Evidence of the Clovis is tied to their iconic spearheads, but the Clovis disappeared around 12,750 years ago, right around the time when the frigid Younger Dryas period began and some of the region's large animals went extinct … To determine the type of bone that the Clovis used to craft the bead, the researchers took a sample of its collagen for a zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) analysis, which provided information about the collagen's chemical composition. The results indicated the bone belonged to a hare in the genus Lepus, but they couldn't pinpoint the species. However, there are a few candidates. At that time, black-tailed jackrabbits (L. californicus), white-tailed jackrabbits (L. townsendii), snowshoe hares (L. americanus) and Arctic hares (L. arcticus) all lived in what is now Wyoming. What's more, the team found jackrabbit bones at a nearby fire pit.” (Souma Sagar/LiveScience)
“‘BIGGEST AUDIENCE SINCE the moon landing.’ That was the headline when Nielsen released viewership numbers for Super Bowl 2024. About 123.7 million people in the US watched the game, more than any other game since Nielsen started keeping track and, yes, close to the 125 to 150 million people in the US who watched the moon landing in July 1969. Despite the scores of streaming options and other things to watch, people still tuned in to watch live—to see the Kansas City Chiefs win in overtime, to see Taylor Swift, to watch Usher, to see Martin Scorsese’s alien-invasion ad, to catch the new Deadpool & Wolverine trailer. Maybe live TV isn’t dead after all. It is, of course, easy to chalk this up to the event being, well, the Super Bowl, which is still the single most popular US sporting event of the year. Also of note: A billion-plus people watch events like the World Cup globally. Still, the Big Game wasn’t the only thing people tuned in for this week. On Monday, Jon Stewart reclaimed his place at The Daily Show desk and brought in 1.9 million viewers—the most the show has seen since 2018. It’s an election year, and as Alison Herman wrote in Variety, ‘anyone who has living memories of the War on Terror is powerless to resist Stewart’s particular blend of cynicism and moral righteousness.’” (Angela Watercutter/WIRED)
“How to make something from nothing? This age-old question inspires and challenges artists from all walks of life but takes on new meaning in a correctional institution, where creative souls spin intricate works from the most limited means—detritus on the floor, leftover coffee grounds, cuttings from magazines, the backs of official forms. In the collaborative art workshop for Prison Arts Collective, we take the question one step further: how can we create something from nothing, or next to nothing, in the most restrictive environment, together? Working in a group adds new depth and difficulty to the process of mining the imagination to innovate art and meaning. While many artists tend to create from their singular viewpoints, for those who are incarcerated, collaboration can be impossible and is fraught with the complexities, dangers, and limitations of living under confinement. Yet here, we ask everyone to come together on one project … When we return in August, the heat is up to 120 degrees. The participants express that they are concerned about us in the heat, but we are fortunate to travel in air-conditioned cars and stay in air-conditioned hotel rooms. Though their situation is clearly more difficult, they persist in their care for us coming in from the outside. We are happy to be back. We start in a circle with an exercise in which we greet each other by stating our first names with a representative gesture. Everyone repeats the name and gesture back in an echo. For those who are incarcerated, it can be a rarity to hear their own first names. Most of the day and night, they are referred to by their identification numbers or their last names, or simply as “inmate.” Some haven’t heard their first names in years. We listen to each name and repeat it back. The rhythm is singsong, and the mood is light.” (Annie Buckley/LARB)
“After we said goodbye, I walked for a while through Midtown, staring up at the kind of corporate towers in which I imagined my fantasy finance boys worked. Everything in my aesthetic education had taught me to find these buildings ugly. They were cold, faceless, feats of commanding presence that conveyed nothing so much as absence, nullity given form and made brilliant. The more I stared up at them, the more I saw in their synthetic, frictionless surfaces echoes of Andrew’s synthetic, frictionless life, and the more I understood the novelistic challenge before me. I might be enchanted by the void I’d sensed in Andrew, I might be tickled by the idea of being such a vacuum myself, but a vacuum wouldn’t carry a novel. How to imbue an outwardly dull person with vibrancy? How to locate color and flair in a life of hollowness and obliterative efficiency? Why should a reader be interested in these finance boys? Why was I interested? I went back into the field. There followed several months of what Jake would go on to call research. I had a fling with a former investment banker who now operated an Airbnb business that appeared to be illegal. I had a fling with an M.B.A. student who went to great pains to deepen his voice and who once showed up to my apartment at midnight with a twenty-ounce coffee. I had a fling with a McKinsey consultant who fired off work emails during our dates and who, I’m pretty sure, decided to break things off after he noticed that my bathroom ceiling was covered in mildew. I had a fling with a veep at Morgan Stanley who ended his days by watching My 600 lb. Life.” (Daniel Lefferts/The Paris Review)