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Over the past week, I have already indicated that a major climate activist event was going on in Newcastle, Australia, which is the largest coal export port in the world. The event – The People’s Blockade – run by the activist group – Rising Tide, which involved thousands of people concerned about climate change gathering…

Israel continue to bomb the homes of civilians in Gaza and Beirut while journalists on the ground investigate the damage under drones. In Pakistan Imran Khan supporters have taken to the streets while in Newcastle climate change activists have paddled in protest on Newcastle Harbour. Clare O’Neil speaks to the housing policy while US Senator Continue reading »

James Fallows has written a fascinating piece for Wired (temporarily out from under the paywall)about California and the future that I hope you will read with an open mind. An excerpt: California has at many points been held up as an American paradise. Now it’s widely seen as closer to hell. Runaway housing prices, tax burdens, homelessness, congestion, fire, drought, flood. The best sides of tech innovation, and the worst of tech-bro greed and narcissism. These are the state’s hallmarks. This perception is particularly rampant among Republicans: Polls show that two-thirds of Republicans say this one US state has done more damage than good for the country, and that almost half of them don’t consider it “American” at all. Beyond political party, fully half of adult Americans say in polls that California is in decline. As a recent headline put it shortly before Harris became the Democratic nominee, “California’s image will be a weapon” against her as a candidate.

As of January 21, 2025, I will no longer be oppressed by my salary, retirement savings scheme, or my office kitchen with its free coffee and biscuits. Instead, I will have the liberty to live out my womanly dream of quitting my job, having babies, performing animal husbandry, and stuffing the windows and doors with towels when the topsoil is swept into a storm that blackens out the sun.

Thank you, President-elect Trump.

I am thrilled to escape the woke trap of a professional career with enough seeds left in my ovaries to keep me pregnant through the next few years before I become a barren husk in desperate need of hormone replacement therapy, which will be outlawed by men who know better.

While coastal elites “ride the subway” to the office and avail themselves of universal pre-K, I will be safe birthing babies by my pastel pink rangehood, soaking almonds in bore water, and researching crop rotation, because even the veratrine isn’t taking care of the stubborn cicada problem we seem to have out here on the plains. I will reclaim a woman’s place at nearly the head of the family, up on a sort of rusty pedestal that Plan B can never reach.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

In case you were wondering why all these people involved in sexual assault are being chosen for the Trump administration, this is why. And it is why those fucked up, incel bros voted for him: He “tells it like it is” — that they were asking for it. And he’s right that for millenia some men have told themselves that. Now read the Pete Hegseth police report. Listen to Matt Gaetz defend himself. It’s all a version of the same thing. When you’re a star you can get away with it. And Trump and his miserable, garbage cabinet and staff are proving it.

“If they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:31) Before November 5th, millions of us were already struggling with poverty, extreme storms, immigration nightmares, anti-trans bills, criminalized reproductive health, the demolition of homeless encampments, the silencing of freedom of speech on campuses… and, of course, the list only goes on and on. Since Donald Trump and J.D. Vance were elected, more of us find ourselves in a state of fear and trembling, given the reports of transgender people attacked in broad daylight, misogynist social media posts threatening “your body, my choice,” Black college students receiving notes about returning to enslavement, and the unhoused beaten and battered. In the wake of... Read more

Source: Lifting from the Bottom appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

The rejected Doctor Who script featuring the definitive origin of the Cybermen is getting an audio drama adaptation from Big Finish.

Timothy Snyder lays out the case against Pete Hegseth. It’s worse than you think: 1.  Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, has no qualifications for the job.  He has never run a large organization and has no national security expertise. 2.  Hegseth has zero notion of which other countries might threaten America or how.  In his books this is simply not a subject, beyond a few clichés. 3.  Hegseth does not believe in alliances.  For him, “NATO is a great example of dumb globalism.” 4. Hegseth wants a political army that bans women from combat roles, is purged of “cowardly generals,” and is anti-woke.  5.  Hegseth never notes that the politicized Russian army meets all of his standards perfectly, but is is ineffective and commits war crimes.  6.  Hegseth never notes that the Ukrainian army, which does have women in combat, and is not politicized in the way he would like, has overperformed.  7.  Hegseth has almost nothing to say about the most significant armed conflict of our time and has not visited Ukraine or learned anything about it.