Kabul blast at Afghan Voice, Tebyan centre kills dozens

At least 40 people have been killed and dozens wounded in a blast in Kabul at a compound comprising a news agency, Shia cultural centre and religious school, the interior ministry has said.

The explosion early on Thursday struck an area close to the Afghan Voice news agency and Tebyan cultural centre, local media reported.

The Perils of a Post-ISIS Middle East

As 2017 draws to a close, the mood among leading pundits on the U.S.-led campaign to dislodge the Islamic State from Iraq and Syria might seem justifiably upbeat, even jubilant. After all, the accomplishments in the campaign’s first three years are many: eliminating key ISIS leaders, clearing the group from its so-called “dual capitals” of Mosul and Raqqa, and reducing the territorial safe havens from which it can plot attacks. It’s with some justification that, on December 9, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over ISIS in Iraq.

Alexey Navalny and the Empty Spectacle of the Russian Election

It’s hard to write about the Russian Presidential election, not because it is particularly difficult to understand but because the normal language of such things can’t describe it. There are candidates, but their names can appear on the ballot only if the Kremlin allows it. There is a campaign, but candidates are allowed to appear on television only if the Kremlin O.K.s it. There are, usually, debates, but Vladimir Putin, who has been in power in Russia for eighteen years and is running for another six-year term, doesn’t deign to take part in them. There are opinion polls, but their results are adjusted to fit the probable result of the vote. And then there is the vote, but its outcome is preordained. In other words, the event scheduled for March 18, 2018, is not an election, but it is called one.

Russia Warns U.S.: Don’t ‘Meddle’ In Upcoming Presidential Election

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government has issued a warning to the U.S.: Don’t “meddle” in the country’s upcoming election.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the U.S. this week of “direct interference into the electoral process” after the State Department criticized Russia’s decision to ban opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny from running for president.

“The Next Standing Rock.” Minnesota's Indigenous Water Protectors Stand Up to Line 3

Debra Topping has been harvesting wild rice near her home on the Fond du Lac Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota for thirty-eight years. Around late summer, she skims the shallow lakes where it grows, using two lightweight wood batons, called “knockers,” to pull the stalks of grass over the canoe, and swatting the husked tips, the “spikelets,” into the boat. The seeds are protein-rich and nutty in flavor. Topping sometimes cooks them inside a pumpkin, with sweet potatoes and squash—her grandson’s favorite dish. An uncle once told Topping that the family needed 100 pounds of finished wild rice per year for each person. In practice, she says, it’s more like four times that much—enough to share with the community during feasts, ceremonies, and funerals. “Wild rice is why the creator put us where we’re at, as indigenous Anishinaabe people,” she tells The Progressive.

The Misogynist Within

I’m a misogynist. I’m a black man who likes to think of himself as a feminist. I’m a progressive. I’m gay. Hopefully, I’m a relatively decent guy; I certainly mean well. Still, I’m also a misogynist.

How could I not be? I’ve spent my entire life in a society that, by every imaginable measure, devalues and dismisses women. It’s the case for politics: In the nearly 230-year history of the US Senate, we have elected just 50 women to serve; nearly half of that number are in office now. It’s the case for wages: Women still make roughly 80 cents on the dollar that’s paid to men. It’s the case for families: “Single mother” remains a casual, if coded, slur in a great many minds, shorthand for a jezebel who’s damned her offspring by failing to get and keep a man. It’s even the case for our diversions—in sports stadiums and movie theaters and museum galleries and comedy clubs, and on and drearily on it goes.

Breitbart quietly deletes recent interview with openly racist congressional candidate

Breitbart News is covering up its recent promotion of an openly white nationalist and anti-Semitic congressional candidate, Paul Nehlen. Meanwhile, Joel Pollak, the site’s senior editor-a-large and frequent spokesman, is falsely claiming the site hasn’t covered him in “months.”

In reality, Nehlen’s public association with white nationalists dates back more than a year and was contemporaneous with Beitbart’s relentless promotion of his primary challenge to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI).

Al Franken Makes First Public Speech Since Announcing His Resignation

An emotional Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) thanked his supporters and friends during a speech in Minneapolis Thursday night, in what is expected to be one of his final public appearances as a senator.

“Serving the people of Minnesota in the United States Senate has been the honor of my life, and I’m here tonight to say thank you,” Franken told the crowd.

The Far Right Is Now in Power in Austria

Europe’s newest right-wing government took office on December 18; this time in Austria. The two parties that form the government are the Freedom Party and the People’s Party. During the fall campaign, they vilified refugees, attacked Vienna (Austria’s liberal, big-city capital), and—less loudly—promised major tax cuts for the rich. This won them a combined 57.5 percent of the vote. Austria thus appears to be the newest member in the Central European club of “illiberal democracy,” as Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán proudly calls it. But the Austrian situation is—for those of us who prefer our democracy liberal—both scarier and less scary than that of its neighbors.

How China bungled its coming out party

LONDON — The biggest news story of the year stars China — but not the story of how Beijing took advantage of Donald Trump’s isolationism to emerge as the world leader on trade and climate. Let’s call that the romance theory of world politics.

The reality is more like a thriller. China started the year following its proven strategy of waiting for its time, moving slowly and relying on long-term forces to tilt the plot in its favor. Then something happened. Maybe Beijing grew impatient, or maybe fate and destiny played their usual tricks. Be that as it may, the most surprising and consequential story of the year was how Chinese power revealed itself in all its breathtaking size for the very first time in centuries, and — more importantly — how the world recoiled in horror.