Romania. Rafah. Re-militarization.

Major victory in Romania

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What we're reading

The deadliest phase of this ongoing Nakba is being perpetrated now in Gaza. As I write it can feel that there are no words, no ways, no means of doing anything that feels effective enough. With each killing, each image, every devastation, psychic wounds are inflicted with the physical ones, memories are resurfaced and re-lived. Studies on trauma describe processes of depersonalisation and dissociation, which can be defensive measures to protect us from the horror, but we cannot normalise this genocide. Novara

This conflict is not going away. But nothing Trump says, or does, will change the fact that Springsteen is a patriot in the tradition of Tom Paine—a proud American with the wisdom and the courage to challenge leaders who have gone awry while at the same time speaking, without irony or artifice, of “the America I love, the America I’ve written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years.” The Nation

From 2005 to 2017, the amount of electricity going to data centers remained quite flat thanks to increases in efficiency, despite the construction of armies of new data centers to serve the rise of cloud-based online services, from Facebook to Netflix. In 2017, AI began to change everything. Data centers started getting built with energy-intensive hardware designed for AI, which led them to double their electricity consumption by 2023. The latest reports show that 4.4% of all the energy in the US now goes toward data centers. MIT Technology Review

Analysis

Romanians rejected the far right for a pro-Union mathematician – now the hard part

Gianluca Falco

The message from the polls was clear: a large share of Romanian society still believes in democratic values, pluralism and a firm pro-European stance, despite populist pressures.

Reportage

At the Rafah crossing, a barricade dividing life and death

Chiara Cruciati

Here, everything is available, and yet nothing is. The crossing is a non-place, surreal, the boundary between life and death and the vivid image of genocide: a captive, starving and bombed population, separated from life-saving aid.

Commentary

Don’t expect half-truths from an Augustinian pope, including on militarization

Roberta De Monticelli

An Augustinian Pope will take every word and plumb its depths. He will grieve less over “consumerism” than over the inconsistency, incoherence and scattered nature of our lives, the unforgivable distraction with which we throw our lives away, deaf to a higher calling.

Analysis

Italy claims it has increased military spending to 2% of GDP

Andrea Valdambrini

The scenario Rutte envisions would allocate 3.5% of GDP to the armed forces, plus an additional 1.5% for military-related expenditure which can include infrastructure that facilitates troop mobility – ports, roads, bridges, etc.

Interview

Schlein: ‘We are once more the party of labor’

Andrea Carugati

We spoke with Democratic Party leader Elly Schlein outside the floor of Chamber of Deputies: ‘The government is “stable” in the sense that it doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t disturb the markets. She has become the queen of austerity.’

Romania. Rafah. Re-militarization.

Major victory in Romania

What we're reading

Analysis

Romanians rejected the far right for a pro-Union mathematician – now the hard part

Reportage

At the Rafah crossing, a barricade dividing life and death

Commentary

Don’t expect half-truths from an Augustinian pope, including on militarization

Analysis

Italy claims it has increased military spending to 2% of GDP

Interview

Schlein: ‘We are once more the party of labor’

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