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Created
Mon, 07/08/2023 - 04:56
It’s hard to credit, but the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) continues its incessant grumbling about forms of interference across a number of areas of Australian political and economic debate. What stands out in this method of noisy declaration is the tactic of sidelining legitimate public debate. Such interference supposedly impairs the credibility of the Continue reading »
Created
Mon, 07/08/2023 - 04:55
Wars the US waged in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan following September 11, 2001 caused at least 4.5 million deaths and displaced 38 to 60 million people, with 7.6 million children starving today, according to studies by Brown University. The wars the United States waged and fuelled in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan Continue reading »
Created
Mon, 07/08/2023 - 04:50
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) held its annual summit on 11–12 July in Vilnius, Lithuania. The communiqué released after the first day’s proceedings claimed that ‘NATO is a defensive alliance’, a statement that encapsulates why many struggle to grasp its true essence. A look at the latest military spending figures shows, to the contrary, that NATO Continue reading »
Created
Mon, 07/08/2023 - 00:30
The Cold War never ended for the American right Cliff Schecter posted the clip below last night and it’s a fine example of the conservative reflex for branding as communist everything and everybody they dislike. Three-plus decades after the end of the Cold War that they declared Saint Ronald of Reagan had won, they still can’t let it go. They’re still looking for commies in woodpiles and for Reds under their beds before they cower beneath the sheets. Upon review, I was surprised to see that Ed Kilgore wrote in response to Donald Trump branding his opponents communists that he “hadn’t heard a Republican call a Democrat a commie since the high tide of McCarthyism.” Looking at the clip Cliff posted, where’s Ed been all this time? Kilgore wrote in March 2022: It’s not just Trump throwing the term around.
Created
Sun, 06/08/2023 - 23:00
More smoke grenades It’s time to revisit some old posts about a tactic used by the right now being deployed against the supposed “Biden crime family.” It is a variety of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks (All the president’s lawyers; 9/7/22): It is a time-tested tactic on the right. Practiced and perfected. Gin up fake controversy over anything and everything. From tan suits to sloppy salutes. From Benghazi to emails. Pimp it like hell until the press can’t stop itself from reporting the controversy. Rush Limbaugh built a career on serving up a daily dose of outrage to his listeners until they would go into withdrawal if it stopped. I’ve described the decades-long, Republican phony effort to convince the public there is massive voter fraud as them lobbing smoke bombs into newsrooms. By the time the smoke clears and we discover, yet again, there was never a fire, all the public remembers is they saw smoke and heard someone yelling, “Fire!” Lather, rinse, repeat. Digby calls it the “where there’s smoke there’s fire” gambit.
Created
Sun, 06/08/2023 - 19:47

‘All I can do is pray – earnestly, relentlessly – for world peace.’ Fujio Torikoshi was eating breakfast with his mother when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Feeling a rumble underneath his feet, Fujio stepped outside into the front garden and saw a black dot in the sky. That’s when it burst outwards, […]

Created
Sun, 06/08/2023 - 10:53

Since the overthrow of Niger’s US-friendly government, West African nations of the ECOWAS bloc have threatened an invasion of their neighbor. Before leading the charge for intervention, ECOWAS chair Bola Tinubu spent years laundering millions for heroin dealers in Chicago, and has since been ensnared in numerous corruption scandals. Hours after Niger’s Western-backed leader was detained by the country’s presidential guard on July 28, Nigerian President and chair of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Bola Tinubu leapt […]

The post From Chi-Town bagman to ECOWAS chairman: meet the former money launderer leading the push to invade Niger first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post From Chi-Town bagman to ECOWAS chairman: meet the former money launderer leading the push to invade Niger appeared first on The Grayzone.

Created
Sun, 06/08/2023 - 10:00
*sigh* Everything old is nude again. From Sam Adams’ Slate review of Ira Sach’s Passages: Movie theaters are full, Eurodance is big: Close your eyes and it’s the 1990s again. Adding to the throwback vibe, there’s a new controversy about sex in movies. The story of a love triangle between a German film director (played by Franz Rogowski), his husband (Ben Whishaw), and an elementary school teacher (Adèle Exarchopoulos), Ira Sachs’ Passages premiered to strong reviews at Sundance but was given an NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association for its explicit sex scenes. The film’s distributor, Mubi, has opted to release it in theaters unrated, but not before a round of interviews in which Sachs called the MPA’s decision “a form of cultural censorship” and pointed to the ratings board’s long history of disproportionately stigmatizing sex, especially when it’s between same-sex partners. Created in 1990 to replace the disreputable X, the NC-17 rating, which bars admission to anyone under the age of 17, has fallen almost completely out of use in recent years.