Source: The New Arab [UK]
“A federal jury on Monday awarded $667,000 in damages to a group of Muslim men incarcerated in Missouri who were pepper-sprayed by state correctional officers while praying. The lawsuit in eastern Missouri’s U.S. District Court alleged that the men had been allowed to pray together many times in their prison housing unit after the chapel was locked down during the COVID-19 pandemic. The money will be distributed among eight men who were handcuffed, pepper-sprayed and placed in solitary confinement after praying in the housing area at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre on Feb. 28, 2021. Those who were placed in solitary confinement at the 2,684-bed facility were left without access to soap or running water to wash off the pepper spray, and some resorted to washing their faces with toilet water, according to the lawsuit.” (03/10/26)
https://www.newarab.com/news/jury-awards-667k-muslims-pepper-sprayed-prison-guards
Source: Politics Politics Politics
“The Dumb State of Iran Discourse. Scoping Out Trump’s Wartime Deadlines (with Kirk Bado).” (03/10/26)
https://www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/p/the-dumb-state-of-iran-discourse
Source: Liberal Currents
by Christopher M Cruz
“A genuinely liberal education is about freedom, and not in some utilitarian or sophomoric sense of freedom as a rejection of form or boundaries. The indispensability of a liberal education is the freedom from being tied to the zeitgeist of one’s age or situation to love what is true, good, and beautiful, and to be initiated into the world while cultivating a love for it. Such a vision of education advances an inward concern as opposed to the more technical processes typically promoted in teacher education.” (03/10/16)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/upholding-liberal-education/
Source: Gideon’s Substack
by Noah Millman
“Every administration in my lifetime has promised to reduce American involvement overseas and in the Middle East in particular. And every single one of them has instead expanded and deepened our involvement in the region. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, so I think that fact demands a structural explanation.” (03/10/26)
https://gideons.substack.com/p/why-we-will-never-stop-bombing-the
Source: Politico
“In a sign of the bad state of relations between Spain and Israel, Madrid on Wednesday permanently withdrew its ambassador to Tel Aviv. The diplomatic downgrade comes after years of tense exchanges between both governments. Spain has been a leading critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military operations in Gaza and, this month, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez blasted Israel for joining the U.S. in its ‘illegitimate’ attack on Iran. Madrid recalled its ambassador to Tel Aviv, veteran diplomat Ana María Salomón Pérez, last September, after Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused Sánchez’s government of inciting a ‘pro-Palestinian mob’ and banned Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz and Minister of Youth Sira Rego from entering the country. The decision to definitively retire the ambassador is a highly symbolic move that underscores the degradation of ties between the two countries.” (03/11/26)
https://www.politico.eu/article/spain-downgrades-diplomatic-ties-israel
Source: SFGate
“Cambodia hopes to shut down all of the country’s notorious online scam centers by the end of next month, the head of the Southeast Asian nation’s effort to combat the cybercrime said Wednesday. Senior Minister Chhay Sinarith, in charge of the Commission for Combating Online Scams, told The Associated Press in an interview that the government since July had targeted 250 locations believed to be carrying out the lucrative criminal activity, and has shut down about 80%, or 200, of them. He said police would carry out suppression activities after April in an attempt to keep the scam centers from reemerging. Cambodia has launched previous crackdowns against online scam centers but without major effect.” (03/11/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/cambodia-aims-to-shut-down-all-online-scam-22070771.php
Source: Washington Post
“Tariff Refunds on Hold — What Happens Now?” (03/10/26)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/make-it-make-sense/tariff-refunds-on-hold–what-happens-now/
Source: Persuasion
by Sam Kahn
“We’re no longer in the domain of the Pax Americana, where the West’s gains at the end of World War II, and then at the end of the Cold War, are vigorously defended (even if the defense of the North Atlantic sometimes extended all the way to Afghanistan) with the premise that many of those gains are as much about principles — universal human rights, the rule of law — as territory. We’re also no longer in the kind of sovereignty that the Russians sometimes facetiously proposed — and that Trump not so long ago seemed interested in — where national autonomy is paramount regardless of sticky annoyances like human rights; or where, in an alternative version of the same theory, powers have exclusive control over their regional sphere of influence.” (03/10/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-end-of-legitimacy
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“Since Donald Trump kicked off a March weekend by attempting to bomb a country of 90 million people back to the Stone Age, there is a question nobody in the White House has been able to answer: Why go to war with Iran? The shifting set of justifications has been pretty comical to watch, whipsawing from liberating the Iranian people to self-defense from Iranian attacks to preventing nuclear capability after a breakdown in negotiations (which was apparently not true) to payback for the 1979 revolution to the complicated tale that Iran would hit U.S. targets anyway once Israel struck first, so we might as well preempt that and get the volley of munitions started early. But in a press conference on Monday, Trump quietly hit on another rationale, one that may have more truth behind it than the others.” (03/11/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/03/11/iran-war-trump-saudi-arabia-gulf-state-capital-oil/
Source: The Downballot
“The third time was the charm for New Hampshire Democrat Bobbi Boudman, who flipped a Republican-held seat in the state House in a special election on Tuesday night. Boudman, a financial analyst, defeated Republican Dale Fincher, a Christian nonprofit speaker and investment firm founder, by a 52-48 margin to win Carroll County’s 7th District. … Since the start of Trump’s second term, Republicans have flipped zero Democratic seats.” (03/10/26)
https://www.the-downballot.com/p/breaking-democrats-win-gop-seat-in
