“In the last 30 years, Republicans have never won a government shutdown fight. From Newt Gingrich throwing a tantrum after not getting a ride on Air Force One, to Ted Cruz reading Green Eggs and Ham on the Senate floor as part of a symbolic, futile filibuster against Obamacare, to Donald Trump fake-dramatically walking out of negotiations with Nancy Pelosi, Republicans consistently end up flipping out, taking all the blame for shutting down the government, and agreeing to stand down while achieving nothing. There’s a pretty long history of this, and in different contexts. Whether Republicans control Congress or the White House, they always seem to lose out on these particular staring matches. So of course, they’re determined to try again.The reason is that it’s an election year, and Republicans have once again decided that their path to victory goes right through the U.S.-Mexico border. Inflation and the economy were effective complaints in 2023, but they are starting to recede. Transgender rights have been a disastrously unproductive wedge issue for Republicans. But immigration is the one area where they’ve put Joe Biden on the back foot, and judging from House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) field trip with a bunch of conservatives to Eagle Pass, Texas, on Wednesday, the GOP is now transferring that momentum to the shutdown fight.” (David Dayen/TAP)
“On December 11, the remains of 23-year-old Zambian citizen Lemekhani Nyirenda finally made it back home to his family. A month earlier, the Zambian government had released a statement on his death in Ukraine, which raised more questions than answers. Subsequently, it became clear that Nyirenda, who studied in Russia before being imprisoned on drug charges, had signed up for the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary company, to fight in Ukraine in a bid to get a reduced sentence. In a November 29 post on the Russian social media platform VKontakte, Wagner founder Evgeny Prigozhin claimed he spoke to Nyirenda, who allegedly told him he had volunteered because: ‘You, Russian, helped us Africans gain independence. When it was difficult for us, you stretched out a hand to us and continue to do this now. Wagner is saving thousands of Africans; going to war with you is paying back for at least some of our debt to you.’ But Nyirenda’s family has insisted on an investigation into his recruitment, suspecting he may have been coerced. They also say he was wrongfully convicted; he had been working as a courier to support himself while studying in Moscow but was stopped and searched by the police, who found a package he was carrying with drugs in it. Nyirenda’s death and how the Russian government handled it speak to the glaring gap between Russian official rhetoric and how it treats Africans in reality.” (Kimberly St Julian-Varnon/AlJazeera)
“Routine cross-border trade and travel characterise mobility patterns in Africa. At a broader level, labour migration, forced migration, seasonal migration and migration for educational purposes form part of the migration dynamics in Africa. These happen at the domestic, regional and international levels and can be documented or undocumented. Currently, 85 per cent of mobility occurs within the continent. Conflicts and repressive governments, however, remain major sources of displacement in African countries. There are now an estimated 40.4 million forcibly displaced Africans (internally displaced persons, refugees, and asylum seekers), with an estimated 96 per cent of them hosted by neighbouring countries within the continent. These figures starkly contrast with what migration within and from Africa is made out to be by popular European discourses. Images of ‘illegal’ migrants flooding Europe foreground the European Union's externalisation visions. Such labelling has resulted in externalisation policies that look at African migrants as individualised agents that are a threat to the EU and its member states.”(Felicity Okoth/IPS)
“Russia, an autocracy whose elections are neither free nor fair, will almost certainly rubber-stamp another term for Russian President Vladimir Putin after he signed into law constitutional amendments that reset his term limits. And in the Western Hemisphere, the United States and Mexico will elect presidents who could usher in continuity or rupture the countries’ critical bilateral relationship. A long list of middle powers and small states are slated to hold elections this year, too. Among them are El Salvador, Iran, Senegal, South Africa, Taiwan, Tunisia, the United Kingdom, and Venezuela. In total, more than 40 percent of the planet’s population is expected to cast ballots in more than 50 national contests. (Dozens of other countries will vote in municipal, regional, and supranational elections, including to select members of the European Parliament.) The most democratic country to head to the polls, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, is Iceland; the least democratic one is North Korea. Neither one will hold much sway over global affairs.” (Allison Meakem/FP)
“For one thing, Trump’s poll numbers seem to rise each time he faces new charges. He regularly promises to pardon the Jan. 6 convicts. His Christmas wishes on social media revealed a deranged man bent on reinstatement to the White House, and revenge: ‘Merry Christmas to all, including Crooked Joe Biden’s ONLY HOPE, Deranged Jack Smith,’ it began, closing with ‘MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!’ I don’t believe many polls this far out from the election, but what to make of the fact that this guy seems nearly tied with Biden, if not beating him? Who are these people supporting him, and how can we possibly go on living in the same country with them? I think this demographic political melancholy is the source of a lot of progressive election fatalism. We are the people who believe in the people! As we chanted in college: ’El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!’ I have never succumbed to this darkness before. I’m desperately resisting it now, but its pull is strong.” (Joan Walsh/The Nation)
“The U.S. will mark the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection on Saturday, a milestone that will confer upon the reality-dwelling citizenry a grim reminder of the potency of propaganda and how quickly it can warp perception when introduced into the public square. Just three years ago, most of the country watched with dismay and horror as a violent MAGA mob beat back authorities and stormed the country's citadel of democracy. The Donald Trump-incited crush of disillusioned rioters, fueled by a stream of fantastical lies, believed that the 2020 election had been stolen by sinister forces working to undermine the democratic election. Of course, not only was their belief flatly incorrect, but evidence later emerged indicating that it was Trump who, in fact, had tried to subvert democracy. Facts, however, have little bearing on the sentiment inside the Republican Party, which has been fed a steady diet of lies and half truths by Fox News and the rest of the sprawling right-wing media machine. To wit, the false notion that Joe Biden nefariously stole the 2020 election is now widely shared inside the GOP. A CNN poll conducted over the summer found that nearly 70% of Republicans believe Biden's win was not legitimate, a number that has continued to tick up. In other words, the Big Lie that led to the 2020 insurrection is now the dominant thinking among Republicans.” (Reliable Sources/Oliver Darcy)
“Russia has recruited hundreds of young Africans to its Russian language and cultural programs across the continent over the past year as the spearhead of a wider push by the Kremlin to use education to deepen its ties with everyday citizens and governments. The courses are being offered online as well as in person at cultural hubs — called Open Education Centers — which are being launched at sites in more than half of the countries on the continent, mostly in partnership with local universities. In Kenya, East Africa’s largest economy, free Russian classes were first unveiled in March last year. Russia’s ambassador to Kenya, Dmitry Maksimychev, told Semafor Africa the free classes had driven a tenfold increase in the number of Russian language learners in Kenya between 2018 and 2023, with 900 people having enrolled in physical and online classes last year. One student who took part in the online classes told Semafor Africa that each class had around 30 students, with the course running for six months.” (Martin KN Siele/semafor)
“So, even if Netanyahu wants to keep the war going for political reasons—even if people like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have long-term ideas about cleansing the West Bank or Gaza’s Palestinians and collective punishment—the Israeli government, especially post-October 7th, doesn’t seem like a coherent entity with a coherent plan to you? Someone like Gantz actually comes from a school that basically says, We need to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through separation. He’s not getting at the complete two-state solution, but saying, ‘We need to separate from the Palestinians.’ Whereas someone like Smotrich is talking about breaking Palestinian national aspirations.” (Isaac Chotiner/TNY)
“A unique method of obtaining underground water enabled the Garamantes to thrive in the Sahara more than 2,000 years ago, long after the region became a desert. But their demise is a cautionary tale for modern regions, like California, that rely heavily on ancient groundwater for their modern supply. ‘They were lucky to have this world-class aquifer, Frank Schwartz, a hydrogeologist at The Ohio State University, told Live Science. ‘But it was a non-sustainable system, and it eventually ran out.’ But since the 1960s, archaeology has revealed that the kingdom was larger and more powerful than previously thought, with several cities fed by water transported by gravity in underground tunnels, or foggaras, from an ancient aquifer in the sandstone rocks of the nearby highlands — a major feat of ancient engineering. ‘This was the first society that grew up in Africa without a river,’ Schwartz said. ‘In Egypt, they had the Nile flooding every year. But here there was no river, nothing.’” (Live Science/ Tom Metcalfe)
“To appreciate the rise to prominence of the term ‘global south’ this year, the best analogy may be one of those late 1960s rock bands that played doggedly for decades before hitting the big time with their first world tour. The two words were apparently first coupled by a leftwing American activist, Carl Oglesby, in 1969 in an article decrying the ‘north’s dominance over the global south.’ For the next 50 years, the phrase was broadly confined in the west to the policy papers of development agencies, university debates and literary journals. But all the while it was taking root and flowering in postcolonial states, not least because it was seen as less loaded than the ‘third world’, western experts’ moniker of choice in the 1970s and 1980s for less-developed regions. And this year its hour has come. It is now the catch-all term at summits and in policy papers for the swaths of the world that are neutral over the war in Ukraine, and tend to see western powers as hypocritical and purblind.” (Alec Russell/FT)
“ROBERT SMIGEL (HEAD WRITER, CONAN O’BRIEN): Conan joined Lorne in the pursuit of finding the right host. He went out to dinner with various people. The more he did, the more he thought, These guys are great, but I kind of think I could do it. LISA KUDROW (CLOSE FRIEND OF O’BRIEN’S AND EARLY GUEST, CONAN O’BRIEN): Conan was spending time looking for who the host would be. He knew he wanted to do a show that was not just celebrity interviews, but [hosted by] someone who knew enough and who read enough to ask intelligent questions of scientists or authors or other people too. And I said, ‘So it sounds like you want you.’ And he said, ‘That would never happen.’” (VF)
“One out of every five moviegoers has vanished since the pandemic, according to research compiled by one Hollywood studio. Whether they’ll ever return to see a film on the big screen is anyone’s guess — and, if they do, when. It’s an alarming stat that offers some explanation as to why the box office turned on its head in 2023, leaving the film industry bewildered and befuddled. Superhero fare — the genre that helped prop up the business for well over a decade — no longer got a free pass as megabudget pics bombed, including The Flash and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, both from DC, and Marvel Studios’ The Marvels. ‘Audiences’ tastes are changing, and it feels like they want more challenging fare,’ says chief Comscore box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian. The existential crisis settled in for the long term when a pair of fresh, original summer movies — Barbie and Oppenheimer — outwitted everyone and transformed into the cultural phenomenon known as Barbenheimer. While Barbie is based on known IP, there were no guarantees that filmmaker Greta Gerwig’s fresh and irreverent take would work. Barbie is the first female-led, live-action movie to top the yearly global and domestic box office chart in modern times, with more than $1.44 billion in worldwide ticket sales, while Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer ranks third on the year’s top global earners with $952 million, a record for a biopic. The two movies made up nearly 10 percent of all domestic ticket sales, and nearly 29 percent of the top 10 grossing films, according to Comscore.” (Pamela McClintock/THR)
“Though he’ll be remembered as an inventive journalist who managed a moderately successful turn to popular fiction, Tom Wolfe was also a social theorist in natty but thin disguise—his work both espoused a mostly coherent worldview and made a case for a particular way of viewing the world. All told, the bulk of Wolfe’s writing is animated by a conviction that revolutions of style are also revolutions of substance—look closely enough at an aesthetic trend or fashionable consumer fad, he insists excitedly, time and time again, and you’ll find the elements of a social or cultural turn, and perhaps one that’s escaped the attentions of most cultural observers. His Esquire feature on hot rods, for instance, the piece that brought him to prominence, is more than just the first major showcase for his pyrotechnic prose or an informative and engaging look at youth car culture. It’s an exhortation, one that he’d repeat often, to locate meaning in the putatively superficial—to examine the values underpinning artifice … Being articulate about the inarticulable, for Wolfe, demanded the adoption of a now standard critical posture—taking popular culture seriously and viewing its products and developments as worthy of close study, if not respect.” (Osita Nwanevu/TNR)
“AFTER MULTIPLE DEPLOYMENTS with the US Army Special Forces, Joe Hudak returned home in 2011 changed by his time in Iraq, Afghanistan, and South America.He was quickly diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He tried talk therapy and a range of medications, but they didn’t help. He attempted suicide twice in 2012. ‘I was fighting a war in my head,’ he says. He retired in 2015 after 20 years in the Army. Eventually, he learned about Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions, a Texas-based organization helping service members access psychedelic treatments in countries where such drugs are legal or unregulated. In 2022, the group paid for him to fly to Mexico to be part of a study sponsored by Stanford University testing a psychoactive drug called ibogaine. Derived from the root bark of the African iboga shrub, ibogaine has been used for centuries by the Pygmy tribes in Central Africa in spiritual and healing ceremonies. It is illegal in the US and many other places.Hudak was one of 30 special operations veterans with traumatic brain injuries and severe psychiatric symptoms who took an oral dose of the drug. After treatment with ibogaine, they experienced an average reduction of 88 percent in PTSD symptoms, 87 percent in depression symptoms, and 81 percent in anxiety symptoms. The effects lasted for at least a month, when the study period ended. The results are published today in the journal Nature Medicine. ‘I had all these voices in my head that would yell at me and shame me,’ Hudak says. ‘What ibogaine did was cut out those extraneous voices.’ He suddenly had more life, more energy. He could be present for his 7-year-old son. A friend from high school remarked that Hudak seemed like his old self again.” (Emily Mullin/WIRED)