Reading

JK Rowling recently tweeted a defence of her bigotry, conflating trans people with, in her words, “violent, duplicitous rapists”.The massive, unsupported generalisation in this message stinks of the worst dehumanising propaganda, the kind which foments hatred, and leads to atrocities. When one part of the population has its bigotry activated, particularly to fear for the Continue reading »

There is no way that the UK or the US would ever contemplate surrendering sovereignty over the control of its military operations to any other power. Australia should not either. If Australia is to acquire a fleet of SSNs, the government needs to negotiate an agreement that avoids counter-productive short cuts and ensures sovereign control Continue reading »

Rep. Jim Jordan launched his Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government at a familiar set of right-wing talking points.

The post House “Weaponization” Committee Arms Itself, Takes Aim at Biden, FBI appeared first on The Intercept.

What happens when capital (ownership, property accumulation, "growth") is favored over the other factors of production, labor (workers, people, welfare) and land (the environment, ecology).

Developing Economics 
Amartya Sen’s Work Shows Us the Human Cost of Capitalist Development
Benjamin Selwyn, professor of international relations and international development at the University of Sussex.Tax Research UK
Anyone who seriously thinks GDP measures prove that the country is succeeding economically is seriously economically deluded

GDP

Flatlining

Mother, who is believed to be Pence’s wife, Karen, was “hopping mad” when he received a subpoena from the special counsel’s office.

Após reportagem do Intercept sobre criança estuprada, defensorias emitem nota técnica ressaltando que nomeação esvazia direito ao aborto legal.

The post Menina do PI: 14 Defensorias Públicas afirmam que nomear defensor para feto ameaça direito ao aborto legal appeared first on The Intercept.

Sarah Huckasanders said the other night that there’s no left and right, there only normal and crazy. I cannot imagine that any sentient being doesn’t automatically understand into which category to put these loons who want to allow children to walk the streets with Ar-15s because they have constitutional rights too —– is stark raving mad. The Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives rejected a proposal Wednesday that would have banned children from being able to openly carry firearms on public land without adult supervision. The proposal, which was part of a long debate in the chamber on how to fight crime in St. Louis, was defeated by a vote of 104-39, with just one Republican voting in support of the ban. After the amendment on the open-carry restrictions for minors was initially supported by the Republican legislator sponsoring a broader crime bill, GOP lawmakers on a committee that he leads removed the firearms provision last week. “Every time we talked about the provision related to guns, we knew that was going to be difficult on our side of the aisle,” state Rep.

Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf discusses his just-released book

Documents show RMT’s Lynch requested talks when talks with US IBB union collapsed – and before that too, as well as in January as Skwawkbox revealed yesterday Skwawkbox revealed yesterday that the TSSA – which has been rocked this week by sexual harassment and bullying scandals yet is in merger talks with another union with […]

The public is being strung along – again. No matter how outraged you were by the vicious words used against the Duchess of Sussex, nothing will change and the press will do it again, writes Brian Cathcart

Up to two million people could be denied a vote unless they apply for ID – and even those with ID could be turned away by polling staff, reports Josiah Mortimer

Quit fixating on the Beltway sideshow If you missed Digby’s Thursday post on what’s happening in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, go back and review. All the political mishchief is not happening on Capitol Hill. The Marc Elias Democracy Docket newsletter this morning warns yet again to pay attention to what”s happening in red state courts dominated by MAGA judges: North Carolina (for better or worse) elects its judges and Democrats failed to hold the state Supreme Court in November. Turnout was disappointing. There are multiple reasons why. Among them: For those wondering why North Carolina Democrats including Cheri Beasley fared more poorly than Democrats in other states last November, districting uncertainty (combined with Democrats’ fecklessness in recruiting) meant Democrats in 2022 left 14 of 50 state Senate seats and 30 of 120 state House seats uncontested. Democrats in those districts had no state legislative Democrats to turn out for. Democrats in one-quarter of NC legislative districts, many of them very red, had no reason in 2022 to turn out for local Democrats running for legislative seats because there were none to vote for.

Skwawkbox has reported recently on the social media posts – and alleged posts – of Tan Smith, otherwise known and ‘Supertanskiii’. Ms Smith had posted images to her social media of her adopting what appears to be a Hitler pose next to a man wearing an ‘I love Hitler’ t-shirt. There does not seem to […]

I sometimes employ an undergraduate to observe my teaching, and criticize what I do. I’ve learned a lot from them over the years, but I really employ them, these days, to hold me accountable to the standards I set myself and to tell me what is happening in the room (this is especially valuable in […]

The failure to prosecute American officials and other powerful nations for war crimes has created a jurisdictional mess.

The post U.S. Hypocrisy on War Crimes Is a Gift to Putin appeared first on The Intercept.

Just days after its worst flood disaster on record, New Zealand braces for Tropical Cyclone Gabrielle

EDITED BY PETER ORNER AND LAURA LAMPTON SCOTT

Jean Marseille: An Introduction

Jean Marseille was born in the Bahamas to Haitian parents during what his mother and father thought was only a brief stop. This was in 1970, during the waning days of Papa Doc Duvalier’s dictatorship. Life in Haiti had gone from worse to unimaginable. As Jean once put it to me, “At that time, the Tonton Macoute”—Duvalier’s vast network of henchmen—“would kill you for anything.”

Laurent Dubois, in his book Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, quotes a resident of Port-au-Prince telling a journalist in the late sixties, “Duvalier has performed an economic miracle. He has taught us how to live without money and eat without food.”

Elon Musk’s selective leaks suggested Twitter ‘censored’ Conservatives, but evidence shows they refused to boost a right-wing disinformation campaign around Hunter Biden’s laptop

Who’s “out of touch” now? MAGA Republicans have turned so far inward that they are speaking to an increasingly thinner — and weirder — slice of America. I’ll admit that I did not subject myself to the Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) response to the State of the Union Address on Tuesday. But clips and accounts suggest how far down the MAGA rabbit hole she and her party have gone. Paul Krugman wites this morning: So as Greg Sargent of The Washington Post points out, it was remarkable that Sanders spoke largely in right-wing insider jargon. She boasted of eliminating C.R.T. in her state, without even explaining the abbreviation; how many Americans know that it stands for “critical race theory,” let alone why that’s supposed to be such a bad thing? For that matter, focus groups suggest that most people don’t know what “wokeness” means, or why they should fear it.

An institution entering the last of its salad days while still running on the fumes of its preening self-importance.

I had promised you a series on “The Little Things That Restore Your Faith in Humanity,” but then failed to deliver for months after the first item. It wasn’t because I forgot about it, got too busy or distracted, or saw no reason for optimism around me. It’s rather because the things that have caught […]

Denial

The first stage of grief is denial that calories still exist while you are grieving. Either you will have no appetite, or you will eat junk. You will want to eat fried potatoes in some form almost every day. You will eat all the food that your wonderful friends bring you. You will not step on a scale or even attempt to wear any real pants. When you finally give in and buy an air fryer for all the potatoes you want to eat, you have moved on to the “air fried” stage of denial, where you insist you’re eating healthy.

Anger

The next stage is anger that your phone keeps assuming that you want to call or text your loved one who recently died, which is obviously something you can’t do anymore—but you don’t know how to change the setting that is causing this to happen, and you don’t want to delete your loved one’s contact information in your phone. You will be tempted to throw your phone in the toilet. This will result in more anger, and the cycle begins anew.