Reading

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Sat, 01/03/2025 - 04:55
For a self-promoted tough guy — particularly if it involves refugee women and children — Peter Dutton’s career has been marked by many instances of being missing in action. Abul Rizvi (P&I 6/2/20) wrote that: “For years now Peter Dutton has boasted of his border protection achievements. But a brief examination of the detail of Continue reading »
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Sat, 01/03/2025 - 04:00
The maelstrom of the first few weeks of Donald Trump’s second presidency doesn’t show any signs of winding down. Each day brings another atrocity, whether it’s randomly firing massive numbers of workers, purging the Department of Justice and the Pentagon, slashing the FAA and the National Weather Service, rolling back civil rights regulations, eviscerating the scientific research infrastructure of the country and destroying our health and safety organizations. The entire nation is reeling from the wrecking ball Elon Musk has taken to the federal government. Meanwhile, Trump himself is busily tearing up the global order and working hard to blow up the economy with his daft misunderstanding of how things actually work. A case in point, his continued insistence that tariffs are not paid for by a country’s own businesses and consumers. Reporter: Americans who are concerned about higher prices believe, as most people do, that tariffs are paid by consumers and importers when they import things into this country.
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Sat, 01/03/2025 - 02:30
More “Coming soon to an election near you” Think you’ve seen everything? N.C. Republicans propose that future voter registration drives be conducted with sample forms — facsimiles, not official forms. The sample forms shall be “for informational purposes only and shall not provide spaces for an individual to fill in the individual’s personal information.” So, Republicans would like to see voter registration drives that don’t actually register voters, just provide information on how someone might register on their own. It takes a criminal mind. Anyone who uses a genuine form in their voter registration drive shall be a Class 2 misdemeanor under proposed House Bill 127. Of course, there is a lot of heat coming down over N.C. Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin’s Trumpish attempt to steal a state Supreme Court seat.
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Sat, 01/03/2025 - 02:23

A decades-old Israeli blueprint to break Syria into ethno-states is taking shape, with Tel Aviv deepening ties to Syria's Druze as a tool to secure new territorial gains.

The post Ethno-State Strategy: Israel’s Backing of Druze Militias Is Reshaping Syria’s Borders appeared first on MintPress News.

Created
Sat, 01/03/2025 - 02:11
If you are familiar with DiS1972, you know that this little cookbook is one of my favorites and one I go back to again and again.  Today’s drink originated at the The Blind Melon of Cincinnati Ohio. I always do a little research to see if any of the establishments featured in these Benson &Continue reading Benson & Hedges 100’s Presents Drink Recipes from 100 of the Greatest Bars: Howard’s Surprise (1979)
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Sat, 01/03/2025 - 00:59

“Gallery-goers might have been outraged not only because of the work’s simplicity—it is a 79.5-centimeter-square canvas bordered thickly in gray and white, filled in with black paint—but because it was not even a square.”

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A rotating guest column in which writers reexamine critically unacclaimed works of art

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In 1915, long before the release of Spinal Tap, and longer still before sculptor Anish Kapoor purchased the rights to Vantablack, the Polish Russian artist Kazimir Malevich first exhibited Black Square in Saint Petersburg, at The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10 (called simply “zero-ten”). The number indicated a “point zero” for a new arts movement, suprematism—from whence all possibility might begin—and for the ten featured artists. “Up until now… painting was the aesthetic side of a thing, but never was original and an end in itself,” Malevich wrote in a handout accompanying the exhibition.

Created
Sat, 01/03/2025 - 00:00

It was, with the somewhat unexpected return of Jadis, White Witch and Queen of Narnia and Empress of the Lone Islands, the hopes of this Editorial Board that Queen Jadis’s second reign would be marked by more understanding and compassion than her first reign was. In some ways, we feel that in the instability of these times, there have been moments of alarm combined with moments of a return to normalcy.

For many Narnians, the reign of High King Peter, Queen Susan, King Edmund, and Queen Lucy was an era of fraught political tensions. Having begun their reign with a war against the forces of the White Witch, many felt that these four rulers failed to unite all of Narnia behind their cause. While a significant number of Narnians pointed to the Pevensie monarchs’ association with Aslan as a net positive, a vocal plurality stated that, as he is the son of the Emperor-over-the-Sea, he should have focused his efforts on improving Aslan’s Land, instead of inserting undue foreign influence over Narnian monarch selection.

Created
Fri, 28/02/2025 - 22:48
The American Delusion

So, Nick Kristoff is crying about USAid, and I agree, mostly:

I’m hearing from experts around the world about what the destruction of USAID is meaning: “a global health massacre,” in the words of a doctor who has devoted her life to humanitarian work on the front lines. Millions of malnourished children left to starve. Pregnant women not getting micronutrients to prevent neural tube defects. Programs against schistosomiasis abandoned. HIV positive patients left without ARV’s. Water no longer purified. Surveillance against Ebola and bird flu set back. TB patients unable to get medicine. I’ve long argued that USAID should be reformed, but this Trump/Musk demolition is cruel and incompetent and benefits China, while killing children just as wonderful as our own.

Created
Fri, 28/02/2025 - 21:36
Some exciting news … I’ve been collaborating (well, having fun) with a brilliant band, The Catenary Wires, who have very cleverly put some of my poems to music. The result is an album of thirteen songs to be released on 9th May on Skep Wax Records. It’s called ‘Sounds Made by Humans’. It can be…
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Fri, 28/02/2025 - 21:02
If the US is now our enemy, how do we defend ourselves? By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian  27th February 2025 All the talk now is of how we might defend ourselves without the US. But almost everyone with a voice in public life appears to be avoiding a much bigger and more troubling […]