Political discussion

here is my list of categories:
. MEDIA WATCH
. NATIONAL POLICY
. DEEP QUESTIONS
. CULTURE WARS
. THE PRESIDENCY / PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
. INFORMATION WARS
. POLITICAL VIOLENCE WATCH
. FREEDOM OF SPEECH
. INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
. DEBATE QUESTION
. PARTISAN POLITICS
. OPEN MIC

and here's another topic suggestion...
. INFORMATION WARS: Disinformation aimed at women. e.g. https://www.economist.com/europe/2019/11/07/how-women-are-singled-out-for-vile-abuse-for-political-ends

for those who can't access the full article from The Economist, above, here are the paragraphs after the first two:


Russian propaganda regularly dismisses female critics in sexist ways. “Women are targeted in cyberwars the same way they are in kinetic wars,” says Ms Aro. After Russian operatives carried out a nerve-agent attack in 2018 in the British city of Salisbury, pro-Kremlin sites concocted a story that Yulia Skripal, a victim of the poisoning, had been raped and impregnated. Russian state tv has claimed that Ukrainian protesters are plagued with sexual “psychosis”, and that Ukrainian politicians are closeted lesbians. When Svitlana Zalishchuk, a female former parliamentarian in Ukraine, publicly criticised Russia, doctored nude images of her appeared online. Nina Jankowicz of the Wilson Centre in Washington has dubbed such tactical smearing “sexualised disinformation”.

Sex-themed lies pervade pro-Kremlin fake news. If they are to be believed, ridiculous things are true: that the United Nations mandates sex education which fosters impotence and homosexuality among the young, or that British government funding has turned the whole of the Belarusian opposition gay. Another common narrative is of migrants sexually assaulting European women. These stories are usually exaggerated or fabricated—how victims are forced to apologise to their rapists, how law enforcement and politicians turn a blind eye to migrant crimes for fear of being labelled racist, how “semi-feminised” Western men are too enfeebled to protect women from such assaults.

Far-right political groups across Europe emulate Russia’s disinformation tactics and its themes. In Spain the populist Vox Party has shared false statistics about sexual assaults committed by migrants via its official Twitter account. Ironically Vox—which has made anti-feminism part of its platform—frames hard-line stances against migration as good for women. It is not always so easy to determine the source of fakery, though. Ms Jankowicz notes that often the most convincing co-ordinated disinformation blurs its origins. Luckily suspicious patterns offer clues.

One red flag is when lots of pages publish the same inflammatory messages, with the same captions, at roughly the same time. This is, in part, how Avaaz, an advocacy group, identified networks of fake accounts spreading far-right messages in Poland, Britain, Spain, Germany, France and Italy ahead of this year’s European Parliament elections. In April, within 11 minutes, more than two dozen Facebook pages, many since removed, “independently” posted a Polish-language story with warnings that migrant taxi drivers are sexual assailants, accompanied by an image of a woman lying limp by the roadside—a screenshot that was lifted from a fictional Polish film. And during campaigns for Spain’s election, a blitz of disinformation on WhatsApp reached 9.6m people, more than a quarter of potential voters. According to one of the erroneous stories, Manuela Carmena, then the left-leaning mayor of Madrid, planned to set up zones where gay people could have sex in public. What she had actually said was that the city should welcome gay people.

another possible topic...
. NATIONAL POLICY: Does it matter that the WTO is about to lose all its teeth? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-02/wto-faces-cliff-edge-crisis-next-week-as-mediator-eyes-departure

Some more ideas....
. PRESIDENCY: The IG report: did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign in 2016?
. CULTURE WARS: Truman State University blocks animal activist group on campus, citing 'emotional risk' https://www.thefire.org/public-university-rejects-animal-rights-club-citing-emotional-risk-to-students/
. NATIONAL POLICY: Trump's new orders on anti-semitism

I may have put out TOO MANY topics! If we need a thinned down list, here is one: (AND, your suggestions are still welcome!)

. PRESIDENCY: John Roberts puts HOLD on subpoena of Trump's tax returns. Good idea or bad? https://www.axios.com/supreme-court-trump-tax-returns-stay-066deaaa-bc71-42a7-954a-ed7ee5c9c356.html
. PRESIDENCY: Should the whistleblower be revealed?
. INTERNATIONAL: Bolivia: a "coup"?
. INTERNATIONAL: UK: election (12/12) results -- what significance?
. PRESIDENCY: Did Trump try to BRIBE Zelensky? https://www.lawfareblog.com/bad-arguments-trump-didnt-commit-bribery
. FREEDOM OF SPEECH (ha): My book is out! "Beyond Two Parties". Who thinks two is plenty? https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Two-Parties-America-Multiparty-ebook/dp/B0821W3VY1/
. INFORMATION WARS: Disinformation aimed at women. e.g. https://www.economist.com/europe/2019/11/07/how-women-are-singled-out-for-vile-abuse-for-political-ends
. NATIONAL POLICY: Does it matter that the WTO is about to lose all its teeth? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-02/wto-faces-cliff-edge-crisis-next-week-as-mediator-eyes-departure
. PRESIDENCY: The IG report: did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign in 2016?
. CULTURE WARS: Truman State University blocks animal activist group on campus, citing 'emotional risk' https://www.thefire.org/public-university-rejects-animal-rights-club-citing-emotional-risk-to-students/
. NATIONAL POLICY: Trump's new orders on anti-Semitism