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Eighty-seven-year-old Pope Francis’ trip to Indonesia, Papua-New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore shows he’s not slowing up. One thing you can say about Pope Francis is that he walks the walk, even if it’s in a wheelchair. The recent visit to Indonesia illustrates this. Eighty-seven percent of Indonesia’s population of 283 million is Muslim; 3.1% are Continue reading »

In Asia media this week: Myanmar recalls retired veterans. Plus: Race starts for Japan’s new PM; US Gaza stance an obstacle for AUKUS; Kolkata protests over gruesome rape-murder; China-Africa summit strengthens South-South ties; Pope’s Indonesia visit contradicts ‘clash of civilisations’. Myanmar’s military junta is becoming more desperate and more brutal as it battles to retake Continue reading »

As Andrew Taylor and Supriya Mathew point out in a recent article in P&I, the current indications regarding population growth are that it will shortly begin to decline in the majority of countries during this century and has already done so in the wealthier (first world) countries. This forcefully raises the question of whether this automatically presages Continue reading »

In an age of logic and evidence-based reasoning, modern research has revealed a thousand-year curse. It could be stopping the superstitious and spiritually-conscious Javanese from vigorously striving to return a thieved “emblem of Indonesian cultural heritage”. At first glance it’s a ridiculous assertion. But apart from a sudden surge of greed eroding goodwill, how else Continue reading »

Don’t underestimate this slender predator from the British grasslands.

The post The Stealthy Assassin Robberfly appeared first on Nautilus.

This one’s for the PBS watching older Indies and Republicans: As a traveler, I’m both a proud American and a citizen of the world — and I’ve got a few thoughts on this coming election. This election is deeper than partisanship. It’s far more than Republican versus Democrat. In the future, big challenges like pandemics, refugees, and climate change will be blind to borders. They’ll be everyone’s problem and only solved by working together as a family of nations. The world needs not American isolation, but American leadership. Not the chaos of Trump, but the stability of @KamalaHarris . Of course, how you vote is your choice. But if you believe, as I do, in the importance of nations working together constructively, the stakes are really high…and the best candidate is clear. Register to vote today at http://vote.gov — and encourage your travelin’ friends to do the same! I also like his argument very much. If you are a person who has spent any time outside the US you know this is true. This world is a lot smaller than people think and we are facing some huge challenges as a country and as a planet.

Since 2016, I have been arguing here at RD that former president Donald Trump’s politics,...

“I wish I could use clear packing tape to secure my alphabet chart to the wall,” said the first-year teacher. She was having her weekly meeting with her mentor teacher, who had been teaching for thirty years.

“Packing tape you cannot use,” replied the mentor. “For when you take the chart down in June, it will rip paint from the walls, undoing the custodian’s careful painting job. You must use painter’s tape that the principal hands out.”

“But painter’s tape doesn’t hold things up very well,” the first-year teacher protested.

“We must do the best we can with the painter’s tape that is given to us,” said the mentor teacher.

The first-year teacher was in her classroom after school, making labels for her writing center. She had made simple drawings of pencils, crayons, and glue sticks and was about to secure those drawings to the shelf.

Then her mentor teacher walked into the classroom.

“Those are some fine labels,” said the mentor. “Now you must take the next step.”

The mentor heaved her five-pound, twenty-year-old laminator on the first-year teacher’s desk.

The leftist government of Honduras is on the defensive since its diplomatic dustup with Washington. Our investigation reveals a network of US government-backed regime change assets is driving the attacks, and using lawfare tactics to manufacture scandal ahead of next year’s elections in Tegucigalpa. The Honduran government has slammed the US for attempting to initiate a “coup d’etat” in the Central American country, after the media outlet Insight Crime released decade-old footage appearing to show the current president’s brother-in-law negotiating […]

The post US govt-backed media, activists behind attacks on Honduran government  first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post US govt-backed media, activists behind attacks on Honduran government  appeared first on The Grayzone.

Despite the ongoing excessive whining in the press about Vice President Kamala Harris not doing interviews and MAGA’s laughable insistence that Trump won the debate (and also that it was rigged), the truth is that Harris is running an exceptional campaign. At every important juncture, she has met the moment and surpassed it. Personally, I never understood the widely (but not deeply) held belief that she was a mediocre politician. As a Californian I have followed her career pretty closely from the time she made a name for herself as the San Francisco district attorney and then Attorney General. I happily voted for her for the Senate. She always struck me as a talented politician who was very likely headed for higher office if the breaks came her way. She took a shot for president in 2019 and had a bad primary run, but she’s hardly the first presidential aspirant to flame out in their first run. Joe Biden ran twice before he finally got the nomination. Even the sainted John McCain and Ronald Reagan failed in their first attempts.

Trump always wants to cast himself as a victim. Delaying his sentencing until after the election makes that harder.

The post It’s Good Trump Won’t Be Sentenced Until After the Election appeared first on The Intercept.

Laughter is good medicine The New York Times(?) provides readers needed comic relief: On Tuesday night, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris spent 90 minutes trading blows in a fierce debate. Out of duty to a weary electorate eager for change, we enlisted the musical talents of the Gregory Brothers and a special guest, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, to provide the debate recap you didn’t know you needed. Take it in, friends. We’ve got a long way yet to go and more work to do.

As the TUC passes a motion warning of the “existential crisis” in British journalism, Peter Jukes asks for your help to deal with the dual threats of legacy media monopolies and big tech

In addition to billions in weapons, the U.S. military is renovating an air base in the south of Israel, according to a new contract.

The post U.S. Army Is Upgrading an Israeli Base to Make Room for New Boeing Jets appeared first on The Intercept.

In addition to billions in weapons, the U.S. military is renovating an air base in the south of Israel, according to a new contract.

The post U.S. Army Is Upgrading an Israeli Base to Make Room for New Boeing Jets appeared first on The Intercept.

Weeks on from the riots, as communities of colour across the country recover, there is an emerging ‘community cohesion’ agenda which is being posed as the panacea to the problems the riots exposed. This must be challenged. Romanticising the power of ‘community moments’ to provide a social glue to the damage of racism and austerity […]

Spinning madness into reason Just yesterday, I argued that “so much of what Donald Trump does and says is not strategy so much as pathology. And feral instinct. His fanboys handle strategy.” That’s still true this morning. Among the reasons the press and some of the left’s own have trouble coming to grips with his lunacy is, as children of the Enlightenment, we put so much stock in reason. Unreason does not compute.* We all want to make a steak out of hash. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is perhaps the quickest and sharpest Democrats have to carry its message. Yet, here he is attempting to paint Donald Trump’s unhinged cats-and-dogs rant during this week’s debate as a distraction strategy. It may be instinct. Distraction may be someone else’s strategy. But it’s not Trump’s. He doesn’t think with his atrophied frontal lobes. Piers Morgan’s guests did the same this week, offering what Trump needs to do differently and how he needs to reconfigure his campaign. He needs to fire his advisors and get new ones who will help him present himself as more presidential in coming days. Rep.

Our parties have totally realigned. Democrats are conservative now. Kamala Harris made not one but several references to the American military in her DNC acceptance speech. That’s not what Democrats used to be about. According to pop culture, they used to be about soft, fuzzy things, like dust bunnies.

And Republicans are the new liberals. Donald Trump is pro-choice, haven’t you heard? Well, before he was pro-life, which happened before he was pro-choice originally, which was before he was pro-life that other time, which was before he was pro-choice for those forty-five minutes. Anyway, he tried to kill Mike Pence. Doesn’t sound pro-life to me.

These days, Democrats are into freedom. In fact, it’s literally Kamala’s walk-on song, “Freedom.” You know freedom? That thing Reagan used to talk about all the time? I’m all turned around—if Harris uses the same word as Reagan, have the parties totally realigned?

The Labour-linked TSSA transport union faces an uncertain future say staff and activists, as a week-long strike by union employees is set to kick off

The latest episode of the hit Media Storm podcast focuses on how journalism is still failing to challenge the structural forces of patriarchy and misogyny