If enough people are talking with each other about why the rule of law, strong democratic values and human rights are worth defending, the demagogues will fail
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Paul Niland dissects the lies and outright skirting of the law being perpetrated by Trump and Musk
Dear Mr. Plant,
I wanted to talk with you in person, but you haven’t been around much lately. Hair salon or at J. R. R. Tolkien book club, I’m told. There are things we need to figure out, but you only seem to want to communicate through songs. I have received your tape, which I think addresses our project from your perspective. It’s not all that helpful.
First of all, yes, I understand that your wife (or “lady,” as you say) was excited about purchasing a glittery golden stairway. Well, it arrived, and I hate to tell you this, but it’s not gold. Someone just put gold glitter on a stairway made of plywood and old loading pallets, and that’s what got delivered.
But that’s not the big problem here. The big problem is that the stairway is infinity feet tall. It goes all the way to heaven. I didn’t even know they made those. I cannot get it into the house. It already breaks every kind of building code and zoning rule. It’s the tallest thing ever made. Impossibly tall and, really, an affront to God. Right now, it’s in the side yard, creaking.
A privately funded, ‘anti-woke’ lobbying company has been in the forefront of the attacks, reports Alan Lester
- by Aeon Video
- by Kevin (Ze) Hong
- by Anirudh Krishna & Dirk Philipsen
The early stages of Trump's new administration are following an alarming and predictable pattern, argues Christian Christensen
Last week, I wrote about – The decline of economics education at our universities (February 6, 2025). This decline has coincided and been driven by an attempt by economists to separate the discipline from its roots as part of the political debate, which includes philosophical views about humanity and nature. In her 1962 book –…
Gabe Sherman at Vanity Fair has many contacts in Trump world. He reports on Elon Musk’s crazed rampage in detail and asks whether Trump’s on board: “Trump is the king on the chessboard and Elon is a bishop. Sometimes the bishop takes the lead,” the Republican said. Plus, it’s useful for Trump if Musk takes political heat. “Trump can let the public hate Elon and Elon doesn’t care. So then Trump can come in and save a few programs and look like the restrained one. He can be ‘Trump the Merciful King.’” But other Republicans I spoke to said Trump can’t––or won’t––challenge Musk because Trump understands Musk’s unprecedented power. Musk is reportedly worth nearly $400 billion and has more than 216 million followers on X. (Trump has less than half that follower count on X, plus an audience of 8.8 million on Truth Social.) “How can he say no to Elon?” a former Trump campaign staffer said.
A Palestinian man describes the horror of his Israeli captivity while the BBC questions the president of Israel about the torture and abuse in their prisons. Jeffrey Sachs explains why the US went to war with Iraq in 2003. ABC Insiders uncovers Trump’s plan for Gaza while the King of Jordan says they will never Continue reading »
This is a follow-up to my previous post on the end of US democracy and its implications. I argued that there is no choice but to dispense with the idea of the US as the central actor in a democratic and stable world system [1]Here I will discuss how what’s left of the democratic world […]
I think we can see where this is leading: “let them enforce it” Ever since Justice it was understood that the ultimate interpreter of the executive’s “legitimate power” under the Constitution (specifically Article II) was the Supreme Court. I think we’re about to see that concept contested, which has kept our system more or less stable short of civil war, in a way we’ve never seen. It could be the whole ballgame. By the way, Elon responded to that tweet: The gall.
Around a decade ago when I was fairly new to my academic job, I made an uncharacteristically politic decision to attend the annual Politics Dinner, which each year featured a lecture from an Australian politician. That year it was my (then) least favourite politician. Christopher Pyne was then the government minister responsible for higher education […]
Last April, in a move generating scant media attention, the Air Force announced that it had chosen two little-known drone manufacturers — Anduril Industries of Costa Mesa, California, and General Atomics of San Diego — to build prototype versions of its proposed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), a future unmanned plane intended to accompany piloted aircraft on high-risk combat missions. The lack of coverage was surprising, given that the Air Force expects to acquire at least 1,000 CCAs over the coming decade at around $30 million each, making this one of the Pentagon’s costliest new projects. But consider that the least of what the media failed to note. In winning the CCA contract, Anduril and General Atomics beat out three of... Read more
Say it ain’t so… Somebody made a killing on Trump’s memecoin scam, somebody who obviously knew it was coming. Gosh I wonder who it might be? The curious trade came a little past 9 p.m. on Jan. 17 — a $1,096,109 bet less than two minutes after the soon-to-be president of the United States posted on his social media account that his family had issued a cryptocurrency called $Trump. In those first minutes, a crypto wallet with a unique identification code beginning 6QSc2Cx secured a giant load of these new tokens — 5,971,750 of them — at the opening sale price of just 18 cents each, starting a surge in the $Trump price that would soon reach $75 per token. This early trader, whose identity is not known, walked away with a two-day profit of as much as $109 million, according to an analysis performed for The New York Times. But the fast profits for early traders, whose names are unknown but some of whom appear to be based in China, came at the expense of a far larger number of slower investors who have cumulatively suffered more than $2 billion in losses after the price of the token crashed.
Australian Opposition leader, Donald Dutton, has reacted angrily to calls to release more polices, screaming at journalists that he will do so as soon as his mentor Donald Trump does. ”The Australian people need to know that I will do... Read More ›