Hannah Arendt would not qualify for the Hannah Arendt prize in Germany today

This past weekend the prominent Russian-American journalist and writer Masha Gessen was awarded the prestigious Hannah Arendt prize for political thought under police protection in Germany. But the event, which was to be a grand ceremony hosted by the Heinrich Böll Foundation in the city hall of Bremen in north-west Germany, almost did not happen at all after Gessen published an essay in the New Yorker comparing Gaza before 7 October to the Jewish ghettoes of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Trump’s ‘dehumanising and fascist rhetoric’ denounced by top progressive

A leading American progressive said Donald Trump was using “horrific … dehumanising and fascist rhetoric”, after the former president told supporters immigrants were invading the US and “poisoning the blood of our country”.

“This is horrific,” said Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state Democrat and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, on Monday.

“Donald Trump’s description of immigrants who are coming to the southern border is dehumanising and fascist rhetoric. These are dangerous lies, designed to villainise immigrants and make horrific policy seem somehow acceptable.

Trump tells rally immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’

Donald Trump, just weeks after using the fascist terminology “vermin” to describe sections of American society he dislikes, again declared at a New Hampshire rally that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

Condemned for his previous remarks at the last rally he held in New Hampshire – where he threatened to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections” – Trump appeared to double down in Durham on Saturday.

'Israel only responds to force’: support for Hamas soars in West Bank after October attack

Fluffy pink slippers on her feet and scarves thrown over her hair and pyjamas, Amal Abu Ghazi, 39, leaned against a wall as she watched her family clear out the rubble from their ruined house in the Jenin refugee camp, in the north of the occupied West Bank.

Her husband used a stick to smash the remaining shards of glass out of the window frames of their two-storey home and her brothers-in-law hauled out the remains of sofas and tables; somehow, a laptop had managed to survive intact. Israeli soldiers had burst in two nights ago, Abu Ghazi said, arresting her sons, 20 and 18, and ordering the rest of the family to wait outside before troops used explosives to demolish the building.

‘I’m not sure I fully trust anyone who stayed’: Ukrainian city split by suspicion a year after Russian retreat

Often, when Kostiantyn Grygorenko walks the streets of Izium, he spots people he suspects collaborated with the Russians during the five-month occupation of his home town last year.

He used to feel an overwhelming rush of emotions when he saw them. Now, he tries to conserve his energy and nerves and ignore them. But still, it gets to him.

“These people are walking around the town, living among us, and they think they’re not guilty of anything. But I think they’re criminals and should go to jail,” said Grygorenko, editor-in-chief of the local weekly newspaper Izium Horizons.

Masha Gessen Kicks the Hornet’s Nest on Israel and the Holocaust

Masha Gessen was heading to Germany to receive a prominent cultural prize when they heard that the ceremony wasn’t going forward. That’s because an essay they had published in The New Yorker had apparently tripped alarms in Germany for its references to ghettos in Europe and Gaza.

Gessen was not entirely surprised by the controversy. When they had reviewed with fact-checkers the passage that appeared to cause offense, they had predicted that this would be “when the reader is going to throw their laptop across the room,” they said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine.

Justice Neil Gorsuch took 10 minutes to approve Dobbs abortion opinion – report

The conservative supreme court justice Neil Gorsuch took just 10 minutes to approve without changes a 98-page draft of the opinion that would remove the federal right to abortion that had been guaranteed for nearly 50 years, the New York Times reported.

According to the paper, Samuel Alito, the author of the opinion in Dobbs v Jackson, the case that struck down Roe v Wade, from 1973, circulated his draft at 11.16am on 10 February 2022.

There’s only one way out of this Gaza war and Netanyahu is blocking it. Joe Biden must force him from power

Joe Biden’s bond with Israel and the Jewish people runs so deep he is said to feel it in his kishkes (that’s “guts”, for the non-Yiddish speakers among you). Biden demonstrated that early in the current crisis by visiting Israel within days of the 7 October massacre, which saw 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, killed, many tortured and mutilated. He demonstrated it again, just as swiftly, with the dispatch of two US aircraft carriers to the region, aimed at deterring Hezbollah and its Iranian backers from attacking Israel from the north – his one-word message: “Don’t.” And he showed it once more just last week, wielding the US veto at the United Nations – making Washington all but a lone voice against the global chorus demanding that Israel end its offensive in Gaza, which has left so many thousands dead.

Giuliani Won't Testify, Despite Pledge To 'Definitively Clear' His Name By Doing So

Rudy Giuliani on Thursday declined to testify in his defamation case in Washington — signaling an abrupt about-face for the former Donald Trump election lawyer.

As the second half of his trial kicked off this week, Giuliani had told reporters that he would “definitively clear” his name by taking the stand and proving that his lies about two Georgia election workers weren’t lies at all.

Putin Says There Will Be No Peace In Ukraine Until Goals Are Achieved

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed that there would be no peace in Ukraine until his goals are achieved and said those objectives remain unchanged at a year-end news conference.

Offering rare detail on Moscow’s operation, Putin dismissed the need for a second wave of mobilization of reservists, saying there are some 617,000 Russian soldiers currently in Ukraine, including around 244,000 troops who were called up to fight alongside professional Russian military forces.