Reading

“Telling workers they’ll be fired for striking is violating federal labor law, and that’s not something becoming of a senator.”

The post UAW Files Labor Complaint Against Sen. Tim Scott for Saying “You Strike, You’re Fired.” appeared first on The Intercept.

More than 11,000 people have been confirmed dead in the devastating floods in the Libyan city of Derna. Yet mainstream media outlets would have you believe the destruction that has drawn worldwide headlines is due to climate change.

The post The Real Reasons the Derna Dam in Libya Broke appeared first on MintPress News.

With something expected to drop this weekend regarding the 60th anniversary of the BBC's Doctor Who, The Subwave Network shared a video.

It sure looks like they’re going to shutdown the government. What comes next should be very fun: President Biden has steered clear of the chaos in the lower chamber, but his aides have instead urged McCarthy to stick to the spending deal he struck with Biden back in May. One such aide said, “We agreed to the budget deal…House GOP should abide by it,” and added that their “chaos is making the case that they are responsible if there is a shutdown.” Gaetz was all too ready to lay the blame at McCarthy’s feet should a shutdown occur. On Wednesday afternoon, he said, “We will have a government shutdown and it is absolutely Speaker McCarthy’s fault. We cannot blame Joe Biden for not having moved our individual spending bills. We cannot blame House Democrats. We can’t even blame Chuck Schumer in the Senate.”  Does Gaetz think he’s going to be the speaker? I’m beginning to think he does. Which is ridiculous. What does Gaetz want McCarthy to do? He wants him to defund the Jack Smith Special Counsel. He is only following orders: I think there’s a typo.

Although supporters stood in the rain for hours to enter, Trump’s rally in Dubuque is not as well attended as past rallies have been. The venue can hold 3,000 people. From my vantage point in the back, accounting for the large press area, I would guess the room is about half full pic.twitter.com/bFWvG6ws8n — Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) September 20, 2023 Trump has been speaking for over an hour. His supporters are beginning to leave. — Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) September 20, 2023 CNN reports on what he’s selling in Iowa this year: Trump largely focused his Dubuque speech on immigration and the border. While he did at times call out Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump largely focused on attacking President Joe Biden over what he referred to as the “nation-wrecking catastrophe” on the southern border, describing it as “an invasion.” The former president also lauded his immigration policies while in office, saying he replaced “catch-and-release” with “detain and deport.” He also argued that Mexico paid for the wall because they supplied the US with soldiers at the border for free.

During the disastrous Vietnam War, it was said that the US government treated the public like a mushroom farm: keeping it in the dark and feeding it with manure. The heroic Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers documenting the unrelenting US government lying about the war in order to protect politicians who would be embarrassed Continue reading »

India appears to have taken a leaf out of Saudi Arabia’s book in dealing with its critics abroad, with the alleged killing by Indian agents of a prominent Khalistan activist in Canada recently. In fact, if one goes by the accusation levelled by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, India has not even bothered to hunt Continue reading »

‘I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice’ ~ Abraham Lincoln The UK High Court decision in the Assange case may be just over a week away. The delegation of Australian politicians currently in Washington DC have reportedly been granted audience with Republicans Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, & Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy and Continue reading »

Two significant reports concerning people with disabilities are due be released. First will be the Independent Review of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and second, the findings of the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. Underpinning both inquiries is Australia’s commitment to the United Nations Convention on the Rights Continue reading »

Magicians regularly use distraction to trick us into perceiving one thing while another is happening. Politicians use similar tricks to signal concern about public policy problems. Recently there has been an organised campaign to get us to believe that NAPLAN literacy results can all be explained by differences in the methods used to teach reading. Continue reading »

Inherent in the nature of insanity is the fact that those inflicted by it are unaware of their mental state. As the emission of greenhouse gases continues, global warming accelerates, bushfires and floods engulf the planet, new fossil fuel projects are subsidised, climate science is ignored, climate change projections are kept away from the public Continue reading »

“War is good for business.” So reads a quote from an arms industry executive in a recent Reuters article titled “At London arms fair, global war fears are good for business” about Europe’s biggest arms show, the biennial Defence and Security Equipment International. You will probably be unsurprised to learn that Reuters does not name Continue reading »

Amnesty’s new report accusing Eritrea’s government of gruesome war crimes relies heavily on anonymous testimony, grainy satellite images, and zero field investigation. It is the latest salvo in the West’s campaign to topple the country’s independent government. Eritrea is a small country with a geostrategically significant coast on the Red Sea. Fiercely independent, it is one of only two African nations that refuse to collaborate with AFRICOM, the US Africa Command. Committed to an incremental, self-reliant development strategy, it has […]

The post Amnesty International pushes regime change in Eritrea with dubious, unverifiable report first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Amnesty International pushes regime change in Eritrea with dubious, unverifiable report appeared first on The Grayzone.

The author of letters to social media companies demanding the financial punishment of Russell Brand is a British lawmaker implicated in London’s war on Covid-19 and Ukraine dissenters. Her husband was a commander in the Army’s psy-ops division. Allegations of sexual impropriety and abuse by comedian and podcaster Russell Brand by the British media prompted YouTube to demonetize the star’s popular channel on September 20.  The Grayzone can now reveal that YouTube’s financial censorship of Brand is the result of […]

The post Intel-linked UK official pushing censorship of Russell Brand  first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Intel-linked UK official pushing censorship of Russell Brand  appeared first on The Grayzone.

In 1754, eleven men came together in a Covent Garden coffeehouse, agreeing to pool their money to spend on initiatives for the public good. The Royal Society of Arts (RSA) was born. From education to environmentalism, the society has championed many important causes. It fought to outlaw the practice of children sweeping chimneys, and its […]

The mystery as to why a top prosecutor working on the Durham investigation abruptly resigned has been solved. It is exactly what we thought it was: A former federal prosecutor who helped investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe said Wednesday she left the team because of concerns with then-Attorney General William Barr’s public comments about the case and because she strongly disagreed with a draft of an interim report he considered releasing before the election. “I simply couldn’t be part of it. So I resigned,” Nora Dannehy told Connecticut state legislators during her confirmation hearing as a nominee to the state Supreme Court. It marked the first time Dannehy has spoken publicly about her sudden resignation from the probe overseen by former special counsel John Durham. Durham, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut, was appointed in the spring of 2019 by Barr to investigate potential wrongdoing by government officials and others in the early days of the FBI probe into ties between the Trump 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.

Jotting down some ideas? That counts as writing, since brainstorming is an essential part of the writing process.

Taking a shower or bath? That’s letting your unconscious brain do some work, so it definitely counts as writing.

A long walk? Yes, same as above, totally counts as writing.

Attempting to locate a pen that actually writes? That’s pre-writing, which is writing.

Wandering around a bookstore and thinking about all the effort each author put into each book, not to mention the agents, editors, designers, proofreaders, and booksellers, and then getting a half-caf iced latte with oat milk and not buying a single book, but adding a bunch of books to your list of books you plan to borrow from the library? That counts as writing, yes.

Some light gardening? If you think about gardening metaphors while doing it, that’s writing, for sure.

Commenting on a Buy Nothing post about a free lawnmower? That’s writing.

Reading a Substack post about writing every day? That is absolutely writing-adjacent—so yes, it counts.

Here’s the latest on maneuverings to out-maneuver the MAGA crazies: The long-shot idea that Democrats could bail out the beleaguered Speaker Kevin McCarthy is suddenly getting real. Small groups of centrist Democrats are holding secret talks with several of McCarthy’s close GOP allies about a last-ditch deal to fund the government, according to more than a half-dozen people familiar with the discussions. The McCarthy allies engaging in those conversations are doing so out of serious concern that their party can’t stop an impending shutdown on its own, given the intransigence of a handful of conservatives. Lawmakers involved in the talks — who mostly belong to the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, the Republican Governance Group or the centrist New Democrat Coalition — have labored to keep their work quiet. Many Republicans involved are incredibly worried about revealing their backup plan, wanting to wait until every other tool in McCarthy’s arsenal has failed. That moment may not be until next week, just ahead of the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.

We've got #WhoSpy back with another teaser image for the BBC, Disney+ & Russell T. Davies's upcoming Doctor Who 60th-anniversary event.

Sic transit gloria mundi The Guardian on Wednesday: Rupert Murdoch loathes Donald Trump so much that the billionaire has not just soured on him as a presidential candidate but often wishes for his death, the author Michael Wolff writes in his eagerly awaited new book on the media mogul, The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty. According to Wolff, Murdoch, 92, has become “a frothing-at-the-mouth” enemy of the 77-year-old former US president, often voicing thoughts including “This would all be solved if … ” and “How could he still be alive, how could he?” CNBC Thursday (today): Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chairman of the board of both Fox Corp. and News Corp., the company said on Thursday. The move will be official in November. Murdoch, 92, will be appointed chairman emeritus of each company. Lachlan Murdoch, one of his sons, will become sole chairman of News Corp and will continue as Fox Corp.’s executive chair and CEO. “Our companies are in robust health, as am I,” the elder Murdoch said in a note to employees.