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Here’s a rough guide to Westerners visiting Indonesia. Bali gets chosen for its cheap packaged holidays, knock-out rural landscapes and friendly folk; relax for a fortnight, eat lots, drink more and head home. This year the island expects to welcome almost double last year’s 2.3 million. Some get disturbed by cruelty to animals, trashing of beaches, the Continue reading »

Parliamentary representatives of all stripes deserve to have the necessary staffing and means to discharge their duties to constituents. The messy legal proceedings between the sitting Federal Member for Kooyong, Dr Monique Ryan, and former chief staffer Sally Rugg, is instructive on a few levels. While it does relate to an alleged unfair expectation to Continue reading »

Water broke in the wee hours on the day of Headry’s flight back to her homeland Malaysia. She remembered clearly it was 3.40 am. The amniotic fluid flowed down, and her heart sank. “I cried and prayed that my baby could hold and not come out yet.” It was early February 2017. Her gynecologist, who Continue reading »

Over a period of decades, the US has refined and applied its own exceptional version of One Country, Two Systems. What is most curious is that this has materialised within plain sight yet it has largely remained undetected, as such. “One country, two systems” (OCTS) is most widely recognised as the regime applied to ground Continue reading »

And it’s even more dangerous than before Read this thread by Emptywheel and you’ll see what I’m talking about: WaPo’s 1800-word, 4 reporter story on the upcoming decision on whether to charge Hunter or not says it matters bc it’ll affect Biden’s campaign. Here's WaPo's front page, with the Hunter story on it. Can someone point me to where the story on the rape trial, the one in which TRUMP, not his son, is a defendant? How about the news that Trump's long-time digial media guru spent all day before Jack Smith's grand jury yesterday (on a Tuesday)? Now check out story. It's not until ¶¶10 & 11 that WaPo tells you that EVEN IF Hunter is indicted, it's not the stuff that right wing has been drooling abt non-stop for 5 years, it's a charge that Trump's campaign manager, personal lawyer, and OWN CORPORATION were convicted of. HOW FUCKING STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE to say that a Hunter Biden prosecution on tax charges would hurt Biden's reelection campaign, w/o mentioning Trump Org's conviction on tax charges? Trump is mentioned ~11 times.

A new bill proposes a novel way to block access to transition-related treatment — for adults too.

The post Texas GOP Opens Up a New Front in Genocidal Anti-Trans Campaign appeared first on The Intercept.

Hey, it’s Me, God. Not to toot My own horn, but I think I’ve been knocking this creation thing out of the park. I mean, I’ve really got it all laid out. You guys are gonna love what I’ve done with the place. Wait until you see the constellations. There are so many different ways to make milk. Plus, you’re never going to believe where cashews come from.

But listen, there’s just one catch: I’ve decided dogs can’t live as long as people.

I know, I know. I spent hours mulling this over and weighing My options. Look, I created man’s best friend, didn’t I? I did that. For you. Because I love you. Can’t we just leave it at that?

You’re thinking, “Jeeze, God, why do elephants and sea turtles get to live so long, but not dogs?” Sure, fair question. At one point, I considered making it so no animals could live as long as people. Ultimately, though, I decided it was a bad idea.

‘The streets of the poor quarters of great cities are, above all, a theatre and a battleground,’ reads the opening card of Helen Levitt’s In The Street. At the Barbican’s Alice Neel: Hot Off the Griddle, Levitt’s documentary, a loose assembly of footage from the streets of 1935 East Harlem, features alongside Alice Neel’s portraits […]

Despite reminding voters of the need to bring ID with them to the polling station, the Labour councillor forgot to do so himself, reports Catherine Avery

He’s all at sixes and sevens… The Washington Post reports: Tucker Carlson — who was fired by Fox News last week at the height of his popularity and influence in right-wing punditry — has aspirations of moving into a larger role that doesn’t limit him to a single medium, according to people familiar with his thinking. And he is willing to walk away from some of the millions that Fox is contractually obligated to pay him, if that would give him the flexibility to have a prominent voice in the 2024 election cycle. Most ambitiously, Carlson wants to moderate his own GOP candidate forum, outside of the usual strictures of the Republican National Committee debate system. The idea, which he has discussed with Donald Trump, the front-runner for the party nomination, would test his vaunted sway over conservative politics. And it would take a jab at his former employer — Fox is hosting the first official primary debate, which Trump has threatened not to attend — if he can manage to make his grandest plan happen.

Speaking with RadioTimes.co, a spokesperson for Doctor Who confirmed that Series 14 is currently "unaffected" by the WGA writers' strike.

April saw a flurry of activity in European cities rapidly advancing their own boycott procedures against Israel, with Barcelona, Liège, and Oslo all chilling their relations with Israel's apartheid government.

The post How European Cities are Breathing New Life into the BDS Movement appeared first on MintPress News.

Latest updates as Byline Times reports on the rollout of mandatory voter ID in England

Karim Khan vowed to turn around his office’s losing record. But if his case against Putin backfires, it could hurt the court’s already-battered reputation.

The post The Polarizing Prosecutor Trying to Nail Putin for War Crimes appeared first on The Intercept.

Is it open season again so soon? “Road rage incidents are on the rise nationally and right here in San Diego, according to the California Highway Patrol,” reports NBC 7 San Diego: “Somebody who is driving aggressively is driving in and out of traffic, slamming on brakes, making unsafe lane changes, following too closely, that type of stuff,” CHP Sgt. Brian Pennings said. “It escalates into offending or upsetting another driver.” Offending someone else isn’t always intentional, but once it happens, road rage is a common response. This can and has escalated into the road rager threatening gun violence. In recent months, the San Diego City Attorney has secured five road-rage-related gun violence restraining orders for alleged road rage drivers. These civil orders stop someone from buying, possessing or using a gun and can stay in effect for up to five years. Sgt. Pennings has seen his share of road rage incidents, including one that turned deadly for a driver at a stop light. “He looked over and there was a driver of the vehicle who was a female,” Pennings remembered. “She looked over at him, smiled, and he smiled back.

Ten years ago​ Sark was at a crossroads. Change imposed from outside the island seemed inevitable, but would it be dictated by the Barclays brothers, or by a British-style civil service bureaucracy? In fact, neither future has materialised: nothing happens quickly on Sark.

The letters page from London Review of Books Vol. 45 No. 10 (Friday 05 May 2023)

For Anne-Lise FrançoisFor you I got up to see the moon.Say it was 4 a.m.Say then it was 8.30ish.These are not natural hoursbut hours of a kind, my little book of,a little digital scannable...

Table of contents from London Review of Books Vol. 45 No. 10 (Friday 05 May 2023)

Is there​ a thread we can trace back through the post-independence era that might help us arrive at an explanation for what is happening in Khartoum now? There’s no doubt that successive experiments in modernity were stifled by crony capitalism, insider dealing, firesale bargains for the well-connected, a tangle of illicit trafficking and contrivances against years of sanctions, imposed on Washington’s insistence.

Europeans were eager for Native Americans to tell them the location of precious metals and the source of beaver pelts. But less practical Indigenous knowledge needed either to be assimilated into the existing intellectual scheme of the world or placed outside it as a monstrous anomaly. Like the jumbled artefacts in Renaissance Wunderkammern, Indigenous travellers to Europe were made into spectacles: ethnographic specimens and sensational sideshows.