“You’re always building models. Stone circles. Cathedrals. Pipe-organs. Adding machines. I got no idea why I’m here now, you know that? But if the run goes off tonight, you’ll have finally managed the real thing.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “That’s ‘you’ in the collective. Your species.” — William Gibson, Neuromancer Sometime in […]
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I have mentioned this before but I want to put it out there again in case some of you missed it. This issue in The New Republic on what an American fascism would look like is a must read. It’s worth the subscription. Here’s an excerpt of editor Michael Tomasky’s intro which begins by noting that there is a lot of reluctance in our political discourse to draw this comparison as if it’s hysterical to acknowledge the threat: We have trouble seeing the hysteria. We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviews—being a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would use the tools of democracy to destroy it, and it was only after he was given power that Germany saw his movement’s full face. Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways.
US House races. When asked about their House district race, likely voters choose the Democratic over the Republican candidate by a wide margin (62% to 36%). In the 10 competitive districts (as defined by the Cook Political Report), support is higher for the Democratic candidate than for the Republican (59% to 39%). Nine in ten or more Democratic and Republican likely voters would choose their party’s candidate, while independents are more divided. Across demographic groups and in the coastal regions, majorities favor the Democratic candidate over the Republican. Preferences in the US House race were similar in April (60% Democrat, 38% Republican). Thirty percent of likely voters are “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic about voting for Congress this year. Fewer than four in ten across parties, regions, and demographic groups hold this view. In the competitive House races, 37 percent are “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic about voting for Congress this year. Congressman Ted Lieu tweeted this out saying that Democrats are going to flip the House . If this holds up they may very well.
Along with a preview for the Doctor Who S01 finale, "Empire of Death," Russell T. Davies drops a big clue about Sian Clifford's "Kind Woman."
The Dems are playing Axios reports: The desperate scramble by Republicans to rationalize what he said tells the whole story. They know that Wisconsin is key. And they are freaking out about Trump insulting the state like this, especially since theb local news was all over it across the state: “He was talking about how terrible crime and voter fraud are,” said campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung. In another statement, the campaign wrote that it was a “total lie” that Trump called Milwaukee a “horrible city.” However, they went on to add, “President Trump was explicitly referring to the problems in Milwaukee, specifically violent crime and voter fraud,” suggesting he did make comments about the city, just not in the way some were interpreting it. The campaign then includes a series of tweets from Republican members from Wisconsin inside the room who agree with the campaign’s description that Trump was not making a blanket disparaging statement about the city.
This year, as the world celebrated the holiday season, my Palestinian Christian community in Sydney, and elsewhere, experienced profound bereavement and fear, a sentiment shared by our Muslim and Jewish siblings. This year, I wondered for the first time, if my people’s culture, that of the Palestinian Christians, continuous since Jesus of Nazareth walked our Continue reading »
The temperature is rising and the world is getting increasingly dangerous, even the rich bits. Former Tuvalu PM slams Australia’s climate policies. Rights of and around rivers. All of the last 12 months were the hottest on record The graph below shows the average global temperature increase above the pre-industrial level (1850-1900) for each month, Continue reading »
No doubt like many other people around the world, we have been surprised and increasingly concerned that Noam Chomsky has not commented publicly on current events for around one year; in particular, on the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. The most recent major interview we could find was this from 5 June 2023 with Piers Morgan. Continue reading »
If the Tories’ plan for young people to serve in national service is not bizarre enough, we now find that the Labour Party will use nuclear weapons should they deem it necessary. The ideas raised by possession of nuclear arms are just as contradictory now as they have been throughout the nuclear age. They demonstrate Continue reading »
Last week activists in Brisbane CBD took their voices and violin to the doorstop of giant American weapons and aircraft company Boeing. To denounce Boeing, along with other US, Australian and UK based ammunition and weapons manufacturers for prolonging the wars in Gaza and the Ukraine in order to make huge profits from civilian suffering Continue reading »
“Under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.” – Albert Einstein, 1949. I’ve been ignoring Continue reading »
Remember when the Republic ans spent an entire year wailing that refrain over Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky? By the way, just the other day…
I saw this and assumed it must be a joke. It isn’t: Who knew? On Friday morning, Pope Francis was in fact full of praise for 105 entertainers from 15 countries who were invited to meet with him at a gathering that the Vatican described as an effort to “establish a link” between the humorists and the Roman Catholic Church. “In the midst of so much gloomy news,” Francis told them, “you denounce abuses of power, you give voice to forgotten situations, you highlight abuses, you point out inappropriate behavior.” He also lauded them for getting people to “think critically by making them laugh and smile.” Francis is a bit of a wisecracker himself. One of his standard punchlines, when people say they are praying for him, is to reply: “For or against?” — a line he riffed on during Friday’s gathering. He has also quipped that the best remedy for an ailing knee is tequila, and the comedian Ellen DeGeneres once made up a whole set built on one of Francis’ mother-in-law jokes.
Oh, please, oh please Should Donald Trump actually show up for the scheduled June 27 presidential debate, he may find the rules irritatingly confining. There will be no opening statements. Both Trump and Joe Biden wil have two minutes to answer questions before moderators cut their mics. Red lights will flash when they have five seconds left. Trump will have little time to ramble on about windmills, electric boats and baby sharks doo doo doo doo doo doo. Commercial breaks will give both men a breather, the New York Times reports, but they will be prohibited from huddling with advisers. Not that Trump would, although he proved (when under threat of a contempt charge in a New York court) that his attorneys could contain him, barely. But Judge Juan Merchan will not be moderating for CNN: The two men are readying themselves for the debate in ways almost as different as their approaches to the presidency itself. The Biden operation is blocking off much of the final week before the debate, after he returns from Europe and a California fund-raising swing, for structured preparations. Mr.
Plus, the money tap opens for a major river, good news about crime rates, ride-share drivers catch a break, and your medical debt gets a clean bill of health.
Interesting if less practical than advertised The headline did not take me where I thought it would. Linda Kinstler’s New York Times guest essay, “Jan. 6, America’s Rupture and the Strange, Forgotten Power of Oblivion,” (gift link) examines “an ‘act of oblivion,’ an ancient, imperfect legal and moral mechanism for bringing an end to episodes of political violence.” It is a pragmatic effort at “forgetting — a forgetting that instead of erasing unforgivable transgressions, paradoxically memorialized them in the minds of all who had survived their assault.” Oblivion, a form of amnesty new to me and now fallen out of favor, served to put behind a society the rifts of past transgressions rather than see to it that every last transgressor receives punishment, especially where entire armies or classses are targets. That serves only to keep wounds open instead of heal them. I’m not there yet. Kinstler cites its roots in Greek history and writes, “As a legal mechanism, oblivion promised the return to a past that still had a future, in which the battles of old would not predetermine those still to come.
After that Doctor Who: The Legend of Ruby Sunday cliffhanger, we have a pretty good idea of what the new Tales of the Tardis might be about.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Doctor Who, Wytches, Superman & Lois, The Boys, Blue Beetle, Get Jiro!, Creature Commandos, and more!
. In den 1980er Jahren hatte die deutsche Rocklegende Udo Lindenberg eine große Anhängerschaft hinter dem Eisernen Vorhang. Besuche zeigten ihm, dass die Menschen in Ostdeutschland im Grunde genommen genauso waren wie im Westen. Er begann Erich Honecker zu bitten, ihm zu erlauben, durch das Land zu touren. Im Sonderzug nach Pankow stellt sich Udo […]
In Islington North, we believe healthcare is a human right. Together, we have stood by our principles to defend our local services. In 2010, we marched down Holloway Road to protest the planned closure of the Whittington Hospital A&E department — and we won. Now, in Islington North, we are fighting for the very future […]
This year marks 10 years of the Other Worlds Zine Fair: it’s 10 years since the first fair was held in protest at the MCA’s connections to Transfield and their involvement with the detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru. Before this, the annual MCA zine fair had been the largest and most established zine […]
In "The Legend of Ruby Sunday," Doctor Who starts answering the questions from the season with callbacks and deep cuts to past stories.
