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Created
Fri, 15/12/2023 - 04:28

In a rebuke to Obama’s effort to normalize relations with Cuba, Biden is sticking with Trump’s policy, even as a Cuban migrant crisis racks the border.

The post State Department Stuns Congress, Saying Biden Is Not Even Reviewing Trump’s Terror Designation of Cuba appeared first on The Intercept.

Created
Fri, 15/12/2023 - 02:30
Paul Ryan on MAGA Howie Klein (Down With Tyranny!) posts this morning on former speaker Paul Ryan’s interview from two weeks ago. “The entertainers took over Congress,” Ryan told Teneo Insights [timestamp 2:10]. When “a handful of nihilists who go to Congress not to legislate but to be provocative entertainers, this is what happens.” The Party of Trump was not amused, Howie observes: Mediaite adds: Ryan has been on Fox Corporation’s board of directors since 2019. This has been a recurring point of contention for Trump, his allies, and Trump media backers like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson have accused Ryan of meddling behind the scenes. Maybe yes, maybe no. But why not get well paid for doing it, eh? Somewhere recently I read that once the war against the Axis powers was over, people all over France began claiming they were part of La Résistance against the Nazis and the collaborationist Vichy régime. A national case of stolen valor. So it may be in this country once MAGA is no more. Cheney and Kinzinger earned their plaudits for standing up to Donald Trump while they were still in office.
Created
Fri, 15/12/2023 - 01:28
Andrew Rosindell, the Romford Conservative MP currently on bail for alleged sexual offences which he strongly denies, made an unannounced appearance at a White Ribbon day event - drawing criticism from community members and a debate over his ongoing public engagements.
Created
Fri, 15/12/2023 - 00:38

Top American officials in the “national security” establishment are notably good at smooth rhetoric and convenient silences. Their scant regard for truth or human life has changed remarkably little since 1971 when Daniel Ellsberg risked decades in prison to leak the Pentagon Papers to the world. During the years between then and his death six months ago, he was a tireless writer, speaker, and activist. Most people remember him, of course, as the whistleblower who exposed voluminous official lies about the Vietnam War by providing 7,000 top-secret pages of classified documents to the New York Times and other newspapers. But throughout his adult life, he was transfixed above all by the imperative of preventing nuclear war. One day in 1995, I called... Read more

Created
Fri, 15/12/2023 - 00:00

Dear Eleven Adults Responsible for the Majority of Book Bans in Schools,

I’m sorry for that cold salutation. I don’t know all your names yet. But shout out to you, Jennifer Petersen. The Washington Post reported that you’re one of the eleven, working from Spotsylvania, which I imagined as a dark and misty town where dogs became vampires. My imagination got the best of me—I just love speculative fiction. Turns out, it’s a real place in Virginia.

If I’m being honest, I’ve been feeling more than a little overwhelmed with the state of our country lately. It feels like every day, something happens that makes me wonder whether I’ve stumbled right into the fifth dimension from A Wrinkle in Time and lost a couple of decades. I’m guessing you all know that book, since some of your schools have banned it.

What an unexpected pleasure it was to feel an actual jolt of joy when I read that the entire movement to ban books in US public schools is coming from fewer people than I fed this Thanksgiving. Thank god (do you have an issue with me saying “god”? Or “God”? I’m guessing no) it’s just eleven of you.

Created
Fri, 15/12/2023 - 00:00
The Hundred Years War created a sense of nationhood, especially in France. In England, the Anglo-Norman dialect died out, and though French was still part of the equipment of ladies and gentlemen, it was Parisian French they learned, and they learned it as a foreign tongue. In France, speaking English was enough to get your throat cut – because, after all, who spoke English except the English? 
Created
Fri, 15/12/2023 - 00:00
Time passes more intensely in dreams. It is a Robert Louis Stevenson hallmark, the quicksilver evolution of thought and the fabular turn, the victory of original perception. He was born with what he later called an ‘internal theatre’, a mode of production that serves to make the dramas of the mind visible.