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As the war on Gaza grinds on, it is becoming increasingly clear that Israel has no plans to leave the beleaguered Palestinian territory and instead institute its long-held goal of recolonizing the Strip.

The post From Libya to Paraguay: Israel’s Longstanding Goal of Expelling Palestinians From Gaza Inches Closer to Reality appeared first on MintPress News.

But it might work anyway… The idea that former President Donald Trump was performing his official duties when he told his supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” and then sat in his dining room watching them storm the building and refusing to do anything to quell the riot has always seemed to be a stretch. After he lost 60 of 61 court cases in which he tried to overturn the results of the election that he continued to exhort the top officials in the Justice Department to lie and say they had evidence of fraud hardly seems like a presidential duty either. And all the calls to local officials asking them “find” enough votes to change the outcome of their election wouldn’t normally be considered the job of a president. American elections, for better or worse, are processed by state and local authorities. Nonetheless, Donald Trump’s lawyers had filed an appeal in the US District court arguing that everything he did in the post election period were part of Donald Trump’s official duties as President and therefore he should be given immunity for all of it which is ridiculous.

The text telling me Tim had died came through a few minutes before a series of meetings with students. After the feeling of sickness and dread that hit me I wondered whether to go ahead anyway, and then thought what a strange thought that was. But my stepmum told me later that when my dad […]

Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., is the first candidate to win an endorsement from Justice Democrats for the 2024 cycle.

The post Justice Democrats Endorses Chicago Progressive Among First to Call for Gaza Ceasefire appeared first on The Intercept.

The Greater Manchester Mayor wants the UK to adopt a new codified constitution, proportional representation and an overhauled House of Lords

The government can afford it, can’t it? And a tad more discipline, just maybe? Associated Press this morning from the West Bank: Video appears to show the Israeli army shot 3 Palestinians, killing 1, without provocation Washington Post this morning from the West Bank: Settlers killed a Palestinian teen. Israeli forces didn’t stop it. Associated Press Dec. 18: In Israel’s killing of 3 hostages, some see the same excessive force directed at Palestinians Associated Press Dec. 15: Israeli military opens probe after videos show Israeli forces killing 2 Palestinians at close range The response to the horrific Hamas terrorist murders is to turn Israel into a pariah state?

The emptiness of words, and our shared resignation to meaning manipulation, is no small matter.

Inflation peaked back in June 2022, only three months after the Fed started hiking interest rates. At that time, the Fed’s policy rate had risen just 75 basis points, and no one knew how much higher it might go. In fact, we have no evidence that monetary policy had any significant effect on the course taken by prices – […]

The speculation will suck up the political oxygen and only serves to benefit the Prime Minister, writes Jonathan Lis

MAGA’s vision for America What sort of America do you want? That question will not appear on fall ballots but will be there nonetheless alongside whether we continue the American experiment in democracy. Gover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, famously hoped to return conditions in these United States to those of the late-Gilded Age McKinley administration (1897 – 1901). Upton Sinclair savaged conditions in the American meatpacking industry in “The Jungle” a few short years after McKinley. Today’s second Gilded Age MAGA Republicans are onboard. Indiana state Rep. Joanna King (R) this week introduced a bill that would exempt children at least 14 years of age and who have completed the eighth grade from attending school to work (with parental permission) on a farm during school hours. King is treading a wider path blazed last March by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas (BuzzFeed): Under the new law, children under 16 no longer have to get permission from the state’s Division of Labor to get a job, nor will they need to have their age verified or submit things like their work schedule for a permit.

Jane Hirshfield’s New and Selected is such a generous bounty—first of all it is essentially a new book of poems, a departure from older work into a new territory. So, allow me to dive right in, explaining why I am so excited about this book bringing together Hirshfield’s new and earlier poems.

Take for instance her poem, “Today, When I Could Do Nothing,” which is so of this, our moment in time, and yet it also continues some of the other poems in her earlier book Ledger, where Hirshfield explored the idea of a civic poem that takes lyric as its medium of discourse. Here, as in Ledger, the lyric detachment we have grown to love over the decades of faithfully reading Hirshfield’s work attains a new dimension: this is a kind of detachment that is so charged with the communal presence one finds so necessary in this moment of crisis. It feels like a departure, a new tone, a new register, in Hirshfield’s work, which is exciting to observe as one considers this volume’s gathering of her writing over the decades.

Karam Bales takes a close look at Andrew Bridgen's recent resignation from the Reclaim Party and the high-profile attendees at his 'Parliamentary meeting' of anti-vax campaigners.

Wow. First off, all of us executives are flattered to see so many, many thousands of people here supporting our product. The flowers, the chanting, the giant banners with our faces on them—it’s all really something.

But things have gotten a little intense here. Let’s maybe slow it down a bit, huh? Put away the torches? Let Elon Musk out of that cage? Just talk a few things through?

Thank you. Well, this is super embarrassing, but “revolutionizing the industry” was just one of the many nonsense things we said to sell you electric rollerblades. We never intended for RadBoots, the value-driven way to blade, to create mobs of crazed sporting goods enthusiasts hell-bent on fundamentally shifting the way people get around.

Yes, I know: “Fundamentally shifting the way people get around” was a thing we said a lot in the ad campaign. But we were going for more of a “the new iPhone has a different camera” type of shift. Not a “these electric rollerblades will alter society” type of shift.

The Shadow Minister for Democracy also hits out at voter ID – but it is still unclear if Labour will scrap it

Each snowflake’s unique symmetry is a beautiful illustration of the natural laws that govern all things great and small

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

In a world of few absolutes, it pays to be able to think clearly about probabilities. These five ideas will get you started

- by Michael G Titelbaum

Read at Psyche

As Israel intensifies its attacks in Lebanon, the prospect of the “great war” looms.

The post Israel Is Banking on U.S. Support for a Wider War Against the Axis of Resistance appeared first on The Intercept.

As we embark on a New Year, my thoughts on politics in Cymru have been with one eye reflecting on the past while the other is firmly focussed on the future. From the early struggles for democracy in Merthyr and Newport in the 1830s to the collective action of South Wales miners in almost every […]

The condition for loss by the Resistance is clear: Palestinians are ethnically cleansed further, ideally (from the Israeli point of view,) out of Palestine entirely.

How does the resistance win? It’s unlikely to be marching thru Tel Aviv, although I don’t think that’s necessarily impossible given how small Israel is and how incompetent its military at everything but aerial bombardment.

Collapse of the Settler Project: Israel currently has about a quarter million internal refugees. The settlements near the Lebanese border have been evacuated. People say Hezbollah is doing nothing or little, but in fact they’ve cause the Israelis serious problems. Without settlers, Israel cannot complete the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, plus a lot of the economy is based on settler expansion.

The Federal Open Market Committee makes important decisions regarding U.S. monetary policy and comprises leaders from around the Federal Reserve System.

To defend its controversial corporate consolidation plan, the grocery giant highlighted ties to local growers — including one that hired an alleged human trafficking kingpin.

After dismantling a New York Times front page feature alleging “a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” by Hamas, The Grayzone is demanding answers of the paper for its journalistic malpractice. The following was submitted to New York Times editors and lead author, Jeffrey Gettleman.  The Grayzone has identified  serious issues with the credibility of key sources quoted in the New York Times’ December 28 story, “Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on October 7.” Authored […]

The post Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report appeared first on The Grayzone.