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Axis is a four-letter word that should be banned or at least binned for the time being. The US uses the term in a distinctly hostile way, and now Andrew Shearer, Australia’s chief security adviser, has adopted the same language. When the world teeters on the edge of uncertainty following the outcome of the US Continue reading »

“IDF will fuck the Arabs!”, “Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!” Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans chanting on 8 November, as reported by The Times of Israel. Yet the BBC just compared them to Jewish victims of the Nazi pogroms. Why this story matters is because of the outsized Continue reading »

Peter Dutton and the Murdoch press are celebrating Trump’s anti-immigration fuelled victory. While he may not use Trump’s extreme language such as ‘migrants are poisoning the blood’, or that they are ‘eating the dogs’, his anti-immigration rhetorical skills are his best pathway to the Lodge. So what aspects of immigration will Dutton focus on now Continue reading »

This was a mood election; It was not a referendum about Kamala Harris. Nor was it a referendum of Donald Trump’s character. Immediately after an election journalists such as me write analysis and commentary explaining the result and what it says about the mood of the electorate. In many cases, such as Tuesday’s triumph for Continue reading »

At the beginning of World War I, when the British Expeditionary Force in France was being battered by the advancing German army there was great anxiety in Britain. Then the Russians magically came to the rescue. …a ‘Great Rumour’ spread across the United Kingdom that Russian troops had landed in Scotland on their way to Continue reading »

There’s been a a certain amount of negativity floating around lately. So, let’s talk about a toxic, venomous freak of nature and the parasite that afflicts it. Biology warning, this gets slightly squicky. Let’s start with the toxic, venomous freak of nature:  the Portuguese man-o’-war. If you’ve spent a lot of time in warm ocean […]

HD och Sydsvenskan har talat med ett tiotal universitetslärare vid några av de mest populära programmen vid Lunds och Malmö universitet. De ger en närapå samstämmig bild: trots toppbetyg är det många av studenterna som inte kan läsa böcker. – Vissa av våra studenter har problem med läsförståelsen och att ta till sig muntliga och […]

The New York Review of Books offered a Q&A with this person: In Joseph O’Neill’s first essay in our pages, he warned readers that “the Republican Party enjoyed a mystifying presumption of legitimacy,” contrasted with “the curious timidity of Democrats.” In that instance, he was describing the 2000 presidential election fiasco in Florida, but he has made clear in his subsequent writing to what extent that dynamic has dogged American politics ever since: from an article about Democrats’ failure to win statewide elections—“Their core mission is to practice a ceremonial innocence about the unshakable virtue of American conservatism—and to do so even as the worst, full of passionate intensity, are cleaning their clocks”—to his analysis of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s campaign. “What will they do?” he asked in October. “Stick with the cautious, timid posture we saw at the veep debate, or go on the offensive? It seems extraordinary that this is a question at all.” There’s a lot to it and I don’t agree with all of it.

I Sverige har MMT knappt nämnts i den publika diskussionen överhuvudtaget. En genomsökning av tidningsdatabasen Retriever, som samlar upp det mesta som skrivs i detta land med någorlunda regelbundenhet finns MMT nämnt i ett par artiklar … Ett epicentrum för denna teoribildning har varit och är Levi Institute vid Bard College där professorerna L Randal […]

“Who Goes Nazi?” The Niemöller Countdown has started. The Krassenstein Brothers spell it out: BREAKING: Trump will appoint Tom Homan, a Project 2025 architect, as his Border Czar. But don’t worry—he says he won’t separate families; instead, he plans to deport them together. Does this include U.S.-born children of immigrants? Those born in the U.S., who have never even been to countries like El Salvador, will now have to be “deported” there if they want to see their parents again. View on Threads It’s now oh-so familiar. Donald Trump’s xenophobic litany dates from his golden escalator ride in 2015. The mad king doesn’t know the difference between seeking asylum and being committed to one (in Venezuela). So Trump’s incoming administration is poised to purge the country of immigrants. Heads up. They won’t stop there. Journalist Dorothy Thompon knew what she was witnessing as early as 1931. Greg Olear writes about it at his Substack: No American was more vociferously opposed to fascism than the foreign correspondent turned columnist and radio broadcaster Dorothy Thompson.

One annoying tendency in modern political discourse is right wingers and centrists calling people communist.

They don’t know what the word means.

A communist believes that the means of production should be owned and controlled by the proletariat: the workers.

If you don’t believe this, you aren’t a communist. Wanting universal healthcare doesn’t mean you’re a communist unless you think the health workers themselves (or, just perhaps, the party or government) should control the healthcare providers.

Wanting universal healthcare, in the modern context, makes you a socialist.

Now there’s a lot of argument around what it means for the proletariat to control the means of production. If the “Party” controls it, like in the USSR or pre-Deng China, is that communism, or is it just old fashioned government authoritarianism?

Who’s your daddy? President-elect Donald Trump spoke with his mentor: During the call, which Trump took from his resort in Florida, he advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe, said a person familiar with the call, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. The two men discussed the goal of peace on the European continent and Trump expressed an interest in follow-up conversations to discuss “the resolution of Ukraine’s war soon,” one of the people said. Unlike Trump, Vladimir Putin is in control of himself. He waited to end the call before laughing out loud. Trump kids himself that he’s the world’s greatest dealmaker. What sort of deal might he accept for Putin’s ending his aggression in Ukraine? Half the country? The U.S. exiting NATO? Hardly, Trump’s on the verge of doing the second on his own. He understands how the NATO alliance works the way he understands tariffs. Putin’s got Trump’s number. He had it in Helsinki.

Hello, I’m currently searching for a chastity belt. Not for purity or protection but for one purpose only: locking up my optimism so it never sees the light of day again. Ever. As a thirty-three-year-old Black woman, my optimism has the nerve to keep hanging around, “trying to find the good in ALL people,” defying every harsh truth that should have killed it off long ago. In fact, it’s still here, rearing its head with messages of “justice prevailing” and “light at the end of the tunnel.” The thing won’t die, so I need it restrained.

Required Specifications

Impenetrable, Ideally with the Force of History
Give me your tungsten, your steel. Your titanium forged to suppress and control. The kind that can survive one or several terms of a Trump presidency and come out the other end with an unwavering grip. Optimism in this world can grow like weeds, and mine goes rampant at the slightest whiff of change in the air. I want a belt that’s so locked down that not even sweet nothings about “the arc of justice” can penetrate.

Donald Trump’s second victory in the United States is a warning sign to democracies everywhere of the centrality of emotions – and their manipulation – in the new politics of gross inequality and psychic rebellion fuelled by tech-driven alternative realities, writes Hardeep Matharu

“The life of an amphibious sailor was estimated at three minutes in combat.”

The post Veterans Day Remembrance appeared first on Jeffrey Zeldman Presents.

A stirring portrait of the radical husband-and-wife legal team who defended 1960s revolutionaries against the US government

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Any action can seem futile amid so much suffering. I’ve realised the important thing is to stop despairing and do something

- by Claire E Schultz

Read at Psyche

Hysteria around Labour's VAT on private schools and inheritance tax on farms are not the existential threats they've been made out to be in the press

Governments around the world need to act now to prevent the worst of what is coming our way