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I’m sure he’ll be right back in the Senate GOP fold now. No biggie. He’s still on their team. FFS: Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, announced on Tuesday that he would lift his blockade of nearly all the military promotions he had delayed for almost a year in protest of a Pentagon policy ensuring abortion access for service members, continuing to hold up only the most senior generals. Mr. Tuberville said he had lifted his holds on about 440 military promotions. “Everybody but the 10 or 11 four-stars,” he said. “Those will continue.” The announcement represented a stark reversal from Mr. Tuberville, who for 10 months had steadfastly defended his move to stall senior military promotions over a new Pentagon policy that offers time off and travel reimbursement to service members seeking abortions or fertility care. His blockade had single-handedly disrupted the Pentagon’s ability to fill its top ranks, leaving hundreds of promotions in limbo.

With “friends” like these … This story about the head of the Florida GOP and his wife, the founder of LGBTQ-hating Moms for Liberty, is stunning: The head of Florida’s Republican Party indicated Saturday he will not step down while facing an investigation into sexual assault, rejecting calls by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to give up his role as the party’s top operative. In a letter to the state GOP, chairman Christian Ziegler did not address the allegation – which continued to send shockwaves through the state on Saturday as troubling new details about the investigation emerged – but suggested a conspiracy was afoot to leak details from the Sarasota Police Department probe. “We have a country to save and I am not going to let false allegations of a crime put that mission on the bench as I wait for this process to wrap up,” he wrote.

A look at the 18-24 year old cohort a year out I’m taking all polls with a grain of salt, including this one. But it’s interesting to get a sense of what this particular group is thinking because this is the first presidential election for most of them and like every sub-group of any generation, they have their own experiences and live in a unique world of conventional wisdom that has no other context. Just 49% of voters aged 18-29 say they “definitely” plan on voting for president next year, according to the new canvass by the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School. That’s “From a lack of trust in leaders on a variety of critical issues such as climate change, gun violence, and the war in the Middle East, to worries about the economy and AI, young people’s concerns come through loud and clear in our new poll,” Setti Warren, the institute’s director, said in a statement.

Age 25: Sure, I’ll try rock climbing. No harness? No worries. My life is carefree because I’ve never seen or paid for a medical bill. I watched Free Solo and thought, “Alex Honnold is definitely on his parents’ health insurance.”

Age 26: I will never try rock climbing. In fact, I don’t climb at all—no hills, ladders, or stairs of any kind. My house has a second floor that I’ve never seen because tripping on a carpet, spraining my ankle, and getting an X-ray would cost five hundred dollars.

Age 25: I take my bike out for leisurely rides on I-95, and I don’t wear a helmet because my parents’ health insurance comes with free MRIs.

Age 26: Is riding a bike still fun if my body is covered from head to toe in bubble wrap? If I wear elbow pads, will my broken arm heal without medical intervention? Can I use duct tape and a bottle of ibuprofen to fix my bones?

As COP28 flounders, the Paris Agreement is dead, and the imperative for emergency action has never been greater. This demands a fundamental change to Australia’s strategic priorities. Second in a two-part series: Whither climate change? – The World and Australia The first article in this series highlighted the risks of accelerating climate change, and the Continue reading »

The Elders today call for governments providing military assistance to Israel to review their approach, and set conditions for any future provision. They warn that Israel’s renewed military campaign in Gaza risks fuelling an escalating cycle of mass atrocities. Israel’s disproportionate response to the horrendous terror attacks by Hamas on 7 October – which the Continue reading »

At the very core of the Israel-Palestine conflict are Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and immoral siege – with the help of Egypt – of Gaza. For Palestinian hostilities against Israel to cease, at the very least, these have to end. There are other more negotiable issues including the return (or compensation) of Continue reading »

The AUKUS arrangements between the United States, United Kingdom and Australia envisage the transfer of nuclear-propulsion technology and nuclear-powered submarines to the Royal Australian Navy – what policy wonks call the First Pillar. This does little to advance Canberra’s security but does much to confirm that Washington is keen to keep other powers in the Continue reading »

I live in the inner west/southwest of Sydney, traditional lands of the Gadigal, Wangal and Darug-speaking peoples. Our built heritage traces the area’s development and amplifies its desirability, economic viability, and people’s quality of life. According to Time Out, Marrickville and Enmore are some of the coolest neighbourhoods in the world. Australia’s short history of Continue reading »

If this 2022-23 opinion poll is correct then a clear majority of Palestinians want a single-Islamic state, not a shared Islamic-Jewish one let alone a two-state solution. Futhermore most want to achieve this through armed struggle not peaceful negotiation, and they want their President to be Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader jailed in Israel for Continue reading »

Western capitals now openly acknowledge the reality that their proxy war in Ukraine has run out of steam. Desperate new policy directions are being discussed in NATO circles. But a decision to end the war will be taken only by Moscow. An article by Big Serge, Russo-Ukrainian War: The reckoning on 16 November 2023 offered an in-depth detailed analysis by a military expert of how the war is Continue reading »

I came across an interesting quote made last month by a retired Israeli major general named Yitzhak Brick about the ongoing IDF assault on Gaza. “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S.,” Brick said. “The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t Continue reading »

An Israeli whose family members were held by Palestinian militants tells of friendly fire deaths and complains, “We used to think the IDF knows what it’s doing.” Meanwhile, freed captives detail “horrifying captivity trauma” from Israeli bombings.  A relative of newly-released Israeli captives has publicly accused the Israeli military of killing its own people and says Tel Aviv is blocking the victims’ families from speaking out.  In testimony delivered to Israel’s finance committee on December 3, Noam Dan, whose cousin’s […]

The post Relative of Israeli captives confirms ‘3 hostages killed by Israeli fire,’ blasts military first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Relative of Israeli captives confirms ‘3 hostages killed by Israeli fire,’ blasts military appeared first on The Grayzone.

The media company has now paid to settle a claim that alleges the involvement in, or at least the knowledge of, illegal activities by senior executives

After Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 primary victory, her campaign got a call from a representative of the pro-Israel lobby offering to raise big money and start a relationship with the group.

The post AOC Was Offered $100,000 by AIPAC to “Start the Conversation.” She Turned Them Down. appeared first on The Intercept.

The BBC confirmed the start time for its Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson-starring Doctor Who Christmas Special: "The Church on Ruby Road."

Not. Gonna. Happen. There were no Confederate flags, but the high school band still struck up “Dixie” as a fight song at pep rallies before integration finally reached Greenville, South Carolina in 1970. A recent arrival in the “New South,” I was called Yankee now and again. It was strange then. That “heritage” seems even stranger now. Anna Venarchik, herself an Alabama native, writes about the legacy of The United Daughters of the Confederacy. The UDC over decades very successfully retconned the Civil War as something other than bloody treason by an entire region of the country to prevent the future I saw at a northern Virginia Waffle House. That too was a Lost Cause.  “They all think we’re white supremacists but they don’t want to bother to find out,” said one member on a Zoom Venarchik attended this decade.” Who “they” were went unsaid. “I am interested in people understanding that the organization is a forward-looking organization,” a youngish septuagenarian from a New York chapter told Venarchik, before reversing herself and declining an interview.

What is taking place in Gaza now is but an episode, a traumatic and a defining one, but nonetheless, a mere chapter in the history of a people who proved to be as durable and resilient as history itself.

The post History of Gaza: Conquerors, Resurgence and Rebirth appeared first on MintPress News.