WTFness at the NYT The spouse’s sharp eyes picked out a detail in a New York Times account of Ukraine’s surprise counterattack last week that sent its forces over the border into Russia: Ukrainian troops sliced easily through a thinly defended border, pushing tens of miles into Russia and shifting the narrative of the war after a glum year in which Ukraine had struggled, often in vain, to hold back Russian advances across its eastern front. By Monday, Ukraine’s commanding general had told President Volodymyr Zelensky that his troops held 390 square miles of territory in Russia’s southeastern Kursk region. Two dozen settlements were overrun. You take some of our land, Vlad? Fine, we’ll take some of yours. But that account from Monday is not what raised the wife’s ire. It was the story in Tuesday’s The Morning briefing by German Lopez on what Ukraine hoped to gain from the incursion: to “divert Russian troops from strategic locations,” to improve Ukrainian morale, to impress Washington, and “to shore up support abroad“: Kyiv has relied on aid from Western nations to defend itself.
Reading
Let us go then, youse and I…
Do I dare
Distoib the universe?
In the room the women come and go,
Talking of Larry, Curly, Moe…
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons…
You knucklehead! That’s not coffee—it’s gunpowder!
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!
The yellow fog…
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
Zzzzz—mimimimimimi—zzzzz—mimimimimimi…
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us—
Whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop!
—and we drown.
Facing increasing opposition in America from LGBTQ rights activists, growing numbers of US Christian organisations are looking further afield to countries in Europe where their ex-gay message has a better reception. A conference is due to take place in Poland in October
Right-wing commentators and politicians were quick to suggest the riots were caused by the working class being ignored - ignoring the fact they were ignited by misinformation spread by the far-right minority
I spent yesterday evening watching Agnieszka Holland’s remarkable film “Green Border” which has just been released to streaming in the UK after spending about 30 seconds in cinemas. The episode that provides the film’s context is the 2021 decision of Alexander Lukashenko, dictator of Belarus and Putin’s puppet, to make use of refugees as a […]
- by Aeon Video
- by Kiki Fehling
The post Doctor Who Magazine 607 appeared first on Doctor Who Magazine.
Joanna McLafferty, Kirstine McMillan and Joseph Smart On 7 May 2024 the SONIA rate, the UK’s risk-free reference rate, printed at exactly 5.2000% and has remained there to the end of July 2024 (the time of writing). Flatlining of SONIA is not a phenomenon we see often. Prior to this, over the past six years … Continue reading SONIA: steady as she goes
Before NATO invaded Kursk–and make no mistake, it was a NATO incursion by proxy–the Ukraine was not in any existential danger. Now, however, words this evening from former Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, “you’ll know it when you see it and you’ll see it soon,” make it abundantly clear that the peace will be dictated by Russia.
Full stop.
No third party intercessors, except maybe China. Non-zero chance for India.
But for the West and NATO? How you like that crow you pack of corrupt idiots? Y’all make Tommy “Catastrophic Success” Franks look like a modern day Sherman.
A prominent propaganda outlet in the Balkans, which is directly overseen by a British government agency that Reuters once labeled “an influential soft-power extension of UK foreign policy,” appears to be on the brink of collapse after a major schism between staff members and leadership. Leaked emails reviewed by The Grayzone reveal a “deep crisis” has engulfed the Western-created and funded Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), which threatens to tear the organization apart. A flagship propaganda platform in the arsenal […]
The post Internal crisis shakes Balkan media network run by UK intel, leaked emails show first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post Internal crisis shakes Balkan media network run by UK intel, leaked emails show appeared first on The Grayzone.
Two hot air balloonists were blown off course. They descended, floating over a person walking on the street.One of the balloonists leaned out and yelled down: “Where are we?”The man looked up, thought for a moment, then earnestly replied: “You’re in a balloon!”The other balloonist grinned and said: “That person must be a microeconomist…”“How do […]
Doing real American stuff Just watch it: As Tom Nichols said on twitter: This is what I meant when I said democracy will collapse in small pockets here and there in the country instead of all at once. Imagine this police dept but without the state’s TBI, or DOJ, or a federal government willing to step in. That’s a view of the future.
It’s well documented that Donald Trump Jr loves JD Vance and was instrumental in getting him on the ticket. They are two peas in a pod in so many ways, even beyond the beards. Junior is less intellectually able but that’s not saying much. But JD apparently respects him anyway. A new fact check on JDs lies about Kamala Harris indicate that some of them come directly from Junior. For instance: “She has said things like, ‘it’s reasonable not to have children over climate change.’ I think that’s the exact opposite message we should be sending to our young families.” — Vance, interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Aug. 11 ✅ Follow Fact-checking politiciansFollow This is false. Vance made this comment as he tried to explain 2021 remarks that Harris was one of those “childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives and they want to make the rest of country miserable, too.” (Harris has two stepchildren.) To Bash, he said: “I criticized Kamala Harris for being part of a set of ideas that exists in American leadership that is anti-family.
Pat Carta, an extraordinary organizer with Local 34 and one of the great leaders of the unions at Yale, has died. I worked closely with Pat between 1993 and 1996. She trained me as an organizer, and though I don’t think she ever realized this, she felt like family to me. In fact, she reminded me a great deal of my family, particularly my mom. She was tough, warm, smart, loving, difficult, charismatic, powerful, relentless, demanding, honest, fearless. I always wished I could tell her what she meant to me, but she wasn’t someone who invited that kind of disclosure. Unless you said it from afar. As I’m doing now. Though it’s been nearly 30 years now, two things about […]
Almost as soon as presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz...
An acoustic experiment reveals that spooky forest sounds may come from above.
The post How the Night Sky Speaks to Us appeared first on Nautilus.
He’s their role model This piece by Josh Kovensky at Talking Points memo is a must read if you hope to understand where the right is going — with or without Trump: The American right’s love affair with Hungary seemingly knows no bounds. Hungarian officials appear at GOP events; CPAC has a Budapest event. Hungarian President Viktor Orbán met with Donald Trump last month, and earned a dilatory shoutout from the Republican candidate at the RNC, where Trump called Hungary a “strong country, run by very powerful, tough leaders — a tough guy.” But if the strength is the draw, then how did Orbán become a strongman? What is it about Orbán that right-wingers are supporting when they say that they like what he’s done in Hungary? TPM spoke with Zsuzsanna Szelényi, a former Hungarian MP who recently wrote a book, Tainted Democracy, about Orbán’s rise to power and the crackdown that followed. Szelényi was once a member of Orbán’s political party, Fidesz, in the early 1990s, before leaving as the party grew more conservative, and eventually founding her own opposition party in 2012.
Former Australian Prime Minister (yep, really), Scott Morrison, has left court after testifying in the Linda Reynolds defamation case, telling friends that he’s relieved to get out of there with his pants not on fire. ”Never good to be in... Read More ›