The NYT Nazi fluff text is only further proof that, at a fundamental level, large segments of the US intelligentsia do not appreciate the existential crisis now facing their republic. In short, they’re not actually concerned — and they really should be.
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Jasmin Mujanović
@JasminMuj
Political Scientist, PhD. Author of "Hunger & Fury" (2018) via , and the forthcoming "The Bosniaks: Nationhood After Genocide" (2023).
Jasmin Mujanović’s posts
I was a child when Yugoslavia dissolved & during the Bosnian War; my family made refugees. Now I'm a scholar of reactionary, illiberal/authoritarian regimes. There's not many off-ramps left, America. This is extraordinary; you & your elected officials must respond accordingly.
Footage that certainly makes it appear that Vucic did not realize he had agreed to moving the Serbian embassy to Jerusalem — or at least not by July, Trump states. Comedy of errors.
From
PaoloStefanini
I think I speak for all of us when I say that what 2020 was really missing was a succession crisis in a nuclear-armed totalitarian cult-state.
As someone who spent most of my childhood essentially stateless, whose family was forcibly separated by politics & borders: those kids will never be OK. They will survive, many will persevere. But they’ll never be OK. What has been done to them is a crime against humanity.
A regime collapse scenario in Moscow, (in)directly the result of Ukraine’s astonishing liberation efforts & the utter humiliation of the occupation forces, appears more a matter of when than if, at this rate. It would be third such collapse since 1917 for the Kremlin.
Assume for a sec that the US is in the midst of a constitutional crisis (it is). Notice how the stores are still open, your bus completed its usual route & the game still on? That’s what makes genuine crises terrifying, bc they (co)exist for so long within our normal exp of life.
Croatian players celebrating their WC run by singing songs from neo-fascist crooner Thompson, which explicitly make reference to the criminal “Herceg-Bosna” regime in wartime Bosnia, whose entire senior leadership was convicted of crimes against humanity.
From
BiHFootball
As more atrocity sites are discovered in 🇺🇦 following the ouster of 🇷🇺 occupation forces, we can anticipate that the “denial stage” of Russia’s campaign will follow a familiar pattern. Again, I think Serb nationalist negationism of the Bosnian Genocide is instructive. 🧵
There were never any “Russian-backed separatists” in Ukraine. There were only Russian occupation forces, who have maintained an illegal, armed presence on the territory of Ukraine since 2014 — when this war actually began.
The ferocity of the Ukrainians’ resistance is shattering the illusion of Putin’s political and strategic genius. He has always been, primarily, a beneficiary of Western appeasement. He played the cards we allowed him to play. That mistake can never be repeated.
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Also considerably less significant but Trump refers to the “President of Kosovo” being in attendance. It was the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Avdullah Hoti, who signed on behalf of Pristina. So, clearly, everyone was paying attention at this important summit. 🙃
The focus of NATO policy in Ukraine should be to provide Kyiv with all necessary tools to defeat the Russian invasion and occupation. We should not be seeking a settlement, partition, accommodation, off ramps etc. We should be devoting our resources to fully defeating Putin.
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But trust your gut: trust that sick, queasy feeling you’ve had for months, trust your anxiety, and trust the fear you see in your neighbors eyes. All is not well, and everything won’t be OK. Not unless both ordinary citizens and responsible politicians act today.
With still refusing to own up to the absurdity of its recent Ukraine report, Ukrainians are learning what Bosnians, Kosovars & Syrians learned: a segment of the Western “progressive” community will never forgive them for the audacity of resisting their extermination.
When this damned war is over, just about a week after the last shot is fired, high-minded Westerners will ask the Ukrainians about "truth & reconciliation" and about when, exactly, they intend to "move on from the past." I implore you, as a Bosnian, to not be one of these people.
The West watched Sarajevo endure nearly 4yrs of siege by Milosevic’s forces while maintaining an unconscionably UN arms embargo. NATO intervened directly only after the genocide in Srebrenica. We cannot equivocate on our support for Ukraine. This is what “never again” means.
There's this dangerous idea that Trump's Twitter is not really "official" communication, that it's some bizarre, public Shakespearean aside. It's not. He is the U.S. President, and he's presently suggesting there is a coup under way. That is itself an assault on the rule of law.
Not quite. It’s not Trump’s fault that the media chooses to be distracted by his grade school diversionary tactics. He’s obviously ripping the copper out of the wall but it’s the NYT et al who’re choosing to debate the quality of the insulation instead. twitter.com/ezraklein/stat
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You can only really write pieces like that if you’re convinced that the violence which these extremists represent, and engineer, will never touch you. Likely because you’re white, wealthy, and mobile and they’ll probably target vulnerable, static “minorities”.
I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it: Syria is the greatest moral and ethical catastrophe of the 21st century. It is a stain on our collective conscience. Assad and Putin butchered an entire country, but the world let them do it. Shame on us all, forever.
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A recently displaced Syrian father Abdullah in Idlib taught a game to his 4-year-old daughter Selva: You should laugh when you hear a warplane.
Now entire family laughs to maintain the pretense, to keep her sipirits high amid a war
Via @alganmehmett
Much of the post-1945 liberal international order, and especially after 1989, was based on two principles: collective security (i.e. NATO) and free trade (i.e. the EU, GATT, NAFTA, the WTO etc). Trump is systematically undermining both. This is a tectonic shift in world history.
If Ukraine is not provided with all of the necessary resources to fully liberate the entirety of its territory in the coming yr, incl Crimea, it will be the greatest strategic mistake by the West since the 1938 Munich Agreement.
Mr. : 100,000 people were killed in Bosnia, the worst atrocities in Europe since WWII & the Holocaust occurred there btw 1992-95. How dare you invoke Bosnia as a comparison for your government’s self-inflicted, incompetent, nativist Brexit circus? Revolting.
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From @DanielJHannan: May’s deal. It leaves us facing colonial rule from Brussels, of the sort imposed on Bosnia following the Yugoslav war. bit.ly/2B4a3Oc
Both far-right/left elements in the West are outraged by the outpouring of support for 🇺🇦 bc both depend on polarization to advance their pol aims. Center left/right voters finding common ground on the geopolitical issue of our time is bad news for the Molotov-Ribbentrop crowd.
Just spoke w/ a senior European official about Ukraine and the situation in Bosnia and the broader Balkans. One of his comments sums up our conversation: "France is a problem. I mean, they're really a very big problem." Indeed.
Some European governments are responding with more alarm to the formation of the Super League than Russia’s impending (re)invasion of Ukraine.
Global politics doesn’t get much clearer than this: an autocratic regime seeking to topple a democratic republic. If you’re not in complete solidarity w/ the Ukrainian people, incl their efforts to rebuff this invasion w/ NATO’s aid, you too are on the wrong side of history.
On the anniversary of #Kristallnacht let us also recall this 1941 photograph of a Muslim woman in occupied #Sarajevo using her veil to obscure her Jewish friend’s “yellow badge”. As then, today each of us have a personal responsibility to protect the most vulnerable.
If there is actual "framework" est bt RUS and US to share cyber-security resources, intel *that is* the evidence of collusion. Unbelievable.
Pence angle is especially important here. If the VP is implicated, then we are looking at an admin *completely* compromised by Moscow.
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The WaPo has nine sources here that Flynn either lied or had Pence lie for him. wapo.st/2kO6thF
A staggering degree of naivete in key European capitals, still at this hr, as Putin's missiles strike Kyiv. There is no world in which he is content w/ seizing Ukraine. If Ukraine falls, he will be emboldened. Even Chamberlain admitted his error by Sept '39, for God's sake.
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Now the fascists are in the US, they’re in the UK, they’re in the EU and sober ur-journalists roll their eyes at the alarmists who tell you that the normalization of extremism, illiberalism, and violence never ends well — not even in established democratic regimes.
Bonus: replacing a bluegrass station with Russian propaganda network Sputnik is a pretty perfect metaphor for the GOP in 2017.
Sensible Western governments would devote resources today to prepare for the collapse of the Putin regime and the almost certain chaos that will befall Russia as a result. And that implosion is coming, I suspect, sooner than many believe.
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This should not have to be said: the US cannot *grant* Russia access to any aspect, form of it cyber-security infrastructure. Unacceptable.
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Don’t go down the road where the normalization of hate speech leads to (more) deaths and then tit-for-tat reprisals. That’s when the wheels truly fall off and no think people piece will help then. And we’re too close to that as it is. Closer than the NYT can admit. /xx
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Until there is a concerted & consistent civil society & Congressional effort to restore accountability & leadership in the WH, it is difficult to see any of this ending w/o major instability of sort unlike anything Americans have seen in generations & possibly ever. /xxx
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That’s why both scholars of authoritarianism/sectarianism and/or survivors of such regimes have implored you to organize & inform yourself now, when it is/was still “normal”, when it’s still “someone else’s” child, when it’s a Q of archaic rules of order.
If reports from Izyum accurate, namely the discovery of a mass grave w/ hundreds of bodies (& there is no reason to doubt their veracity), this will be the largest mass grave identified in Europe since Tomasica in 2013, which dates to the Bosnian Genocide & contained 435 remains
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The form is very familiar to me from the Balkans. It was rampant during the 1990s: Karadzic gave interviews to Western media every other day, there’s hours of footage. In the meantime, he was murdering thousands. But hey, dead Bosnians are so “other” and his English was great.
I strongly suspect Putin’s fall will most resemble that of Milosevic. That is, whether ousted through popular revolt or palace coup or some combination of the two, he will ultimately be toppled for losing a war, not starting one.
Imagine being the kind of person and living the kind of life that when you lose your job spontaneous street parties break out all over the country, they ring church bells a continent away, and all over the world people react with euphoria. What an “accomplishment”.
A president cannot routinely and glibly threaten war(s). It’s a fundamental abuse of the office and of the public as a whole. Congress...?!
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We can debate to what extent the U.S. & NATO should be supporting Ukraine's defense. I say that it should be to the greatest extent possible; others disagree. Fine, but surely we can all agree that actually publicly telling Putin we will not intervene in Ukraine is foolish.
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I'm utterly aghast. If this is allowed to proceed, the US becomes little better than a virtual Russian satellite state. Belarus 2.0.
It's time to eject Russia from the Council of Europe. A decision to this effect by 2/3 of the members would be sufficient. Moscow should have no seat at the table at any relevant international forum while it continues its aggression against democratic Ukraine.
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They continue to do so all up until the point that they don’t. When the news is no longer something you can turn off, when it’s on your street, at your kid’s school, in your community, it’s too late for “resistance”. Then it’s largely a matter of individual survival.
After Sarajevo, Mostar. The iconic Old Bridge lit up in the colors of Ukraine. The 16th century Stari Most was destroyed by Croat nationalist forces in 1993 but rebuilt in 2004. Like these stones, Ukraine and her people will endure. And Bosnians and Herzegovinians stand w/ them.
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...the fact that it is unclear who is, genuinely, in charge, what the civilian/military chain of command is, what would happen in event of a major security crisis suggests the situation has already catastrophically deteriorated.
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There's no more need for academic or policy analysis. If WH is *allowed* to invite RUS into US cyber-security infrastructure it's game over.
Today, there are 35,000 U.S. troops stationed in Germany; another 54,000 are in Japan. They’ve been there since 1945. Practically, the U.S. (and NATO) could have sustained a presence in Afghanistan. What was lacking was the political will to do so, not the military capacity.
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Both good points. But this isn’t November 2016, it’s a full year later. The inability and/or refusal of large segments of the media to fully comprehend what has, and is still, happening to this country is a dereliction of their democratic duties.
A couple of weeks ago the team at publicly offered their assistance to colleagues in Ukraine in documenting and reporting war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by Russian occupation forces. The horror in Bucha shows how, sadly, prescient they were.
In retrospect, the most unrealistic part of 1987’s “Running Man” was not the social dystopia presided over by a blood thirsty game show host, set in 2019. It was the idea that the public’s support for him could be eroded by secretly recorded footage exposing him as a serial liar.
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Seriously America, your executive branch is compromised by Russian assets who are unraveling the democratic world order. Please stop them.
The West is tying itself in knots to not consider Russia’s targeting of the children’s and maternity hospital in Mariupol as escalation in its aggression. But as in Bosnia in the 90s, Putin will feel emboldened by this and the massacres will proliferate and become more brazen.
The non-implementation of the sanctions, in particular, should be a five-alarm national security and constitutional crisis. And yet here we are, with both the media and Congress having more or less shrugged off another paradigmatic deterioration in the US’ rule of law. Shocking.
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Replying to @sarahkendzior
Trump's refusal last week to enact sanctions on Russia -- in defiance of a 98-2 Senate ruling -- was essentially an admission of which government he serves.
Casually surrendering our elections to Russian interference is another.
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RUS sabotaged US elxns to install Trump in WH. They succeeded. Now same admin opening door to further RUS penetration of US intel, security.
The term for this is “culturcide,” where by an aggressors seeks to eliminate all traces of a people and their culture by targeting their art, sacral spaces, educational institutions etc which have no military value. Think Milosevic’s campaign in Bosnia, or ISIS.
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Russian forces burn museum with paintings of Maria Prymachenko.
A history museum in Ivankiv town, Kyiv Oblast, was destroyed by a Russian attack, according to Ustyna Stefanchuk, an art collector. The museum had about 25 works by famous Ukrainian artist PrymachenkoюThe world’s No. 1 men’s tennis player Novak Djokovic spent the last few days hanging out w/ a former underling of convicted genocidaire Ratko Mladic, & contemporary genocide denier & secessionist Milorad Dodik. Let’s see how many sponsorships “Nole” loses as a result.
Obvious absurdity aside, the more disturbing bit is that this is also an obvious attempt circumvent proper govt transparency.
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BREAKING: President Trump has been urging world leaders to call him on his cellphone, raising security and secrecy concerns.
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The last two days have brought credible allegations of major dysfunction & crisis w/in the USG. There are fundamental Qs re the integrity/legitimacy of the 2016 elxns. It’s unclear what, if any, steps have been taken to secure the mid-terms. Above all...
Ukraine obviously has the manpower advantage. NATO must help ensure every Ukrainian capable and willing to fight has the means to do so. While the country’s western borders still remain open they must be used to flood the Ukrainian military and partisans with all available arms.
Basically, the African-American electorate in the U.S. just gave the liberal international order - the free world, if you will - a new lease on life.
The Lewandowski hearing today illustrates a simple point: the rule of law evaporates quickly when there’s no actual consequence for breaking the rules. Calls for civility, gasps, and scandalized op-eds are no substitute for law enforcement. Failure to do so is complicity.
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After the overwhelmingly positive support this team has received from folks in Bosnia and Herzegovina, from all political and ethnic stripes, this is such a disheartening reminder of how deep the rot of ethno-sectarianism runs in contemporary Croatian society. Ugly, ugly scenes.
If it’s unclear, then they’re not holding or functioning. The purpose of constitutional government is clarity and the equal application of the rule of law. That’s not happening in the US right now and it’s a terrifying signal to the international community.
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Sometimes it feels like the institutions are holding and then sometimes it feels like they are very much not.
If you think Trump firing Mueller will *cause* a constitutional crisis you haven't been paying attention for the last six months.
Serb nationalist barricades in Croatia, 1990. Serb nationalist barricades in Sarajevo, 1992. Serb nationalist barricades in Kosovo, 2022.
All of them engineered and directed by Belgrade, none of them “spontaneous manifestations of popular revolt.”
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Folks, story here not that Trump accepted RUS elxn claims. It's that they're now going to proceed to share cyber ops apparently.
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My point is, there are daily affronts and scandals with this administration and it's hard to keep track of it all. But today may have been a genuine historical turning point. This is the end of an epoch and I, for one, am genuinely frightening of the future that awaits. /xxx
I've been thinking all day about the now almost entirely forgotten assassination of the Russian Amb. to Turkey in 2016. Even at the time, it felt very strongly to me like a moment of great unraveling, the loudest shriek in what was already a period of cacophonous history.
He’s not, and never was, a brilliant political strategist. He’s a demagogue and has one trick: smash & grab. Confronting, rather than enabling him, is all that was ever necessary. And yet so few in American political life, including the access media, failed that basic civic duty.
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Trump allies are deeply perplexed by his move against Sessions, given that it all but guarantees an investigation by House judiciary.
Bashar al-Assad is, arguably, the greatest butcher of the 21st century. And the fact that the West did so little to help the Syrian people rid themselves of this monster is one of the great moral and political sins of our time. It is our shame, and we must recognize it as such. twitter.com/FARED_ALHOR/st
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It is July 11 in Srebrenica. Today, the remains of 50 more boys & men will be finally laid to rest, 27 yrs after they were killed. The Srebrenica Genocide is the greatest single atrocity in Europe since WWII. But Srebrenica was also the capstone of a broader Bosnian Genocide. 🧵
Straight out of East European and Central Asian kelptocrat's faux-populist playbook. Another way oligarchs circumvent transparency.
Serbia’s coach shown on global TV visibly cussing out members of the Swiss national team, using anti-Albanian slurs. The Swiss roster incl several ethnic Albanians. Serbia’s entire World Cup run has been defined by chauvinism and sectarianism. Shameful.
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This isn't rocket science; that is the quid pro quo of the whole Russian operation in full view of the public and world.
An extraordinary outpouring of support for the people of Turkey and Syria by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s citizens. Keep in mind, this is one of the poorest countries in Europe, and folks are practically taking food out of their own mouths to donate.
From
Istraga.ba
I’ve repeatedly made the point that had Kyiv fallen to the Russians, we would presently be dealing w/ a major security crisis in the W. Balkans, as the Dodik regime in Bosnia, w/ Belgrade & Moscow’s assistance, would have pulled the trigger on its planned secessionist ops.
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Americans perhaps don't appreciate how dependent the Canadian economy is on US trade. So the idea that Ottawa is slapping 16 *billion* dollars worth of tariffs on the US is incredible. It shows, as I've said before, how existential a threat this is for the Canadian govt.
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When your closest neighbor & most steadfast ally, w a tenth of your population, slaps 16 billion dollars worth of tariffs on your goods something has gone catastrophically wrong. And that CDN officials have explicitly invoked CAN's military contributions is also noteworthy.
Congrats, you caught the thief with the raccoon eye mask and sack with a dollar sign on it. Too bad anyone more tactful than the Hamburgler has already “cracked” the pay-to-play resort the POTUS has relocated government operations to. twitter.com/jonswaine/stat
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Sessions calls undocumented "filth," Spicer relativises Holocaust, Gorka's a neo-Nazi, Bannon's a white nationalist. This is a pattern.
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Filth. He described illegal immigrants as "filth."
Whatever your views on immigration that's f**king embarrassing for a US official to say. twitter.com/jdawsey1/statu
This is extremely disturbing. Not only is this a war-time propaganda song celebrating Radovan Karadzic’s genocidal war in Bosnia, it’s the same tune the Christchurch terrorist played on his way to slaughter 51 Muslims. It’s known on the far-right as they “Remove Kebab song”. t.co/8WYUmEQhce
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How many “freak”, “once in a century” weather events do we need to see in a row to realize that this is, obviously, the new normal? These are manifestations of climate change. It’s happening, and it’s going to get worse until there’s a sustained, global response.
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In short, concealment/denial are the final stage of atrocities. The situation in Ukraine remains fluid but we cannot pretend like we don’t know where this is going. Moreover, we should expect mass killings to continue. It’s why NATO must continue to arm UA to prevent these. /x
A public so dangerously misinformed about basic facts imperils its own democracy. Ignorance and sectarianism replacing informed debate is how constitutional government comes undone.
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According to this Quinnipiac poll of Republican voters, 77% believe the Russia investigation is a witch hunt and 58% believe the FBI is biased against the president. This is the alternative reality that his loyal leaders and media have created for voters. poll.qu.edu/national/relea
I won’t post photos but “markings” many are noting on the #Christchurch shooter’s weapons are historic battles & leaders popular w far-right extremists including, in Cyrillic, “Miloš Obilić”, 14thC Serbian knight who killed Murad I @ 1389 Battle of Kosovo, also a far-right trope.
Horrific scenes out of N. Ireland. I say this to you, friends, as a Bosnian: nationalism is a disease of the soul. Whatever one’s convictions, when the bomb throwers & militants begin to set the terms of the debate, it’s the decent, ordinary folk on all sides that pay the price.
The shift to training students, almost exclusively, "for the job market", rather than instilling them with a basic understanding of civics and the humanities is, arguably, among the most catastrophic public policy decisions of the last four decades.
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You do not want to live in a world remade by the Putin, Trump, Le Pen axis. Defend constitutional govt, defend international norms. /END
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I don't even know who the NYT even imagines their audience is anymore. Trump and his base aren't reading them, they're alienating anyone with a lick of critical thinking w their apologism for him & their soft-lens puff pieces on neo-Nazis & assorted reactionaries. Ridiculous.
GOP move trying to barge into a classified hearing is not merely “theatrics” as I’ve repeatedly heard it described. It’s introducing physical force into legitimate legislative proceedings. It’s how you get brawls among legislators and a rapid normalization of political violence.
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We knew RUS would try to compromise 2018 elxns as well. But if this proceeds, its full WH participation in that effort.
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Refugees welcome, y'all #QuebecCity