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Let’s state the obvious bits and get them out of the way:

• The rebels are basically Al-Qaeda;
• They are supported by Turkey, Israel and the US;
• The Syrian army barely fought during the initial attacks and it was very embarrassing;
• Aleppo fell in a couple days. It may take a couple years to take it back;
• The timing is intended to take advantage of Hezbollah’s being weakened and tied down by Israel.

Syria was losing the previous war until Hezbollah and Russia intervened. It may well lose this war if Hezbollah and/or Russia don’t send troops, but both of them have other enemies they need to worry about.

If Syria falls, Russia loses its Mediterranean naval and air bases and thus a great deal of its military reach. Hezbollah loses its main supply line to Iran.

Now you see it, now you don’t Before the 2024 election itself disappears down the memory hole, take a moment to consider the disappearance of voter fraud as a campaign issue. Democrats would cheat. There would be massive corruption in the election. Migrants Democrats were importing through Joe Biden’s open southern borders would tip the scales for Kamala Harris. Nearly 9 in 10 Trump voters believed voter fraud would play a major role in 2024. Etc. Then Donald Trump won. Voter fraud vanished like ground fog at sunrise. It was morning in MAGAstan. Politico and Morning Consult ran a poll: In polling just days before the election, Trump supporters expressed little confidence in the election outcome, with a whopping 87 percent substantially or somewhat agreeing with the statement that voter fraud was a “serious issue” that could determine the outcome of the election. Among Harris supporters, roughly half expressed similar worries. That partisan divide disappeared after Election Day. Shocked? Views on the economy flipped as well, considered a “very important” issue ahead of Nov.

Not taking seriously political figures we find undesirable will not change their potential impact or ambitions – Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, and Nigel Farage only benefit from being underestimated, writes Hardeep Matharu 

Dear Sir or Madam:

It has come to the attention of our firm that your preschool is in violation of dozens of federal registration laws surrounding the intellectual property owned and operated by the estate of Frère Jacques, also known as Brother John.

Our findings show that classrooms within your organization are willfully using the “Frère Jacques” melody, ad nauseam, without approval or designation, to generate teaching mnemonics on subjects ranging from:

• Hand-washing techniques
• Alphabet memorization
• Line leader responsibilities
• Shoe-tying and knapsack maintenance
• Color and shape coordination

The reports also include allegations that our intellectual property has been “tortured beyond recognition” in the form of “gross and unnatural” adaptations that burrow into the mind like “an Alabama deer tick.”

As such, we are asking you to cease and desist all bastardizations of the “Frère Jacques” nursery rhyme, including but not limited to the following variants:

If the US president-elect’s efforts to eliminate America’s trade deficit succeed, real-estate prices in Miami and Manhattan will crash, the cost of servicing government debt will skyrocket and the Dow Jones will plummet. Perhaps he should be reminded that the most vengeful of deities is one that grants him his sincerest wish. ATHENS – Donald […]

The post America’s Trade Deficit Is Not Afraid of Donald Trump – Project Syndicate op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

When I was first invited to Manifesta, the annual conference of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB), I had no idea what to expect. I had never heard of the PTB, and I knew very little about Belgium — still less about Ostend, the coastal city where the conference took place. Arriving at my hotel, […]

"In many ways, this COP was a deep disappointment", those feeling the full force of catastrophic climate change tell the Byline Podcast

When he saw colours, Kandinsky heard music. Exploring the role of synaesthesia in his increasing move towards abstraction

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Why did Julian S Huxley, first director of the UN agency, think eugenics held the key to a more evolved, harmonious world?

- by Stefan Bernhardt-Radu

Read at Aeon

Time pressure and the limitations of memory compel you and your listener to engage in a fascinating linguistic trade-off

- by Julie Sedivy

Read at Psyche

A volunteer unit made of mainly women talk about how joining Ukraine's Butcha Witches 'is like taking revenge on life'

One would reasonably think that if someone had been exposed in the past for pumping out a discredited academic paper after being at the forefront of the destructive austerity push during the Global Financial Crisis, then some circumspection might be in order. Apparently not. In 2010, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff published a paper in…

There are encouraging signs that Canada’s economy and labour market are improving after a period of stagnation brought about by the Bank of Canada’s aggressive interest rate hikes in 2022 and 2023. Newly released data for the third quarter of 2024 (July-September) shows the economy has continued to grow, albeit slowly. Consumer spending was the brightest light in the third [...]

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

I used to see these t-shirts and hats that said “Free Melania” and I wondered why anyone would think she was being held prisoner. She didn’t care for the routine of being First Lady and has a separate life from Donald. But she is clearly one of them. Just another rich, creepy weirdo. So, apparently, is Cheryl Hines: Seriously, this is what it’s come to: Actress Cheryl Hines, the wife of former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., posted a video promoting her beauty products featuring her husband showering half-naked in the background… Hines held up a bottle of spray and a tin of body cream as she covered most of Kennedy, who President-elect Trump nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). 49% of America wanted a reality show instead of politics. It looks like they’re getting exactly what they asked for.

“I never realized before that men hate us so much.” That was the lesson drawn by one of my fellow organizers in Reno, Nevada, the morning after the 2024 general election. She’d turned 21 during the campaign, a three-month marathon she approached as a daily opportunity to learn as much as she could about everything she encountered. “Of course, they hate immigrants, too,” she added, “and I’m both.” That morning of November 6th, I sat down with her and four other women to face the election results. The six of us had spent almost every day together over the previous three months, recruiting, training, and deploying volunteers in northern Nevada in the campaign to elect Kamala Harris president and return... Read more

Source: Election Aftermath appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Politico is really on a roll today: Two members of Congress offered very different views Sunday morning of whether the Justice Department and FBI have been biased against Republicans in recent years. In consecutive appearances on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) discussed President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Kash Patel to lead the FBI. The agency is now led by Chris Wray, a previous Trump appointee whose term has yet to expire, but who will presumably be fired if he doesn’t resign. “Obviously, in recent years, we have seen the FBI and the Department of Justice weaponize in a way that it has become completely political,” Lawler said in his interview, also discussing Trump’s pick of Pam Bondi to be attorney general. “That’s not good for the American people. It’s not good for our system of justice. The lack of confidence that Americans have in the Department of Justice and the FBI is terrible.” Though Trump talked about “retribution” during the 2024 campaign, Lawler said he believed “revenge” was not the order of the day.

From back when I was shooting film sometimes:

Local man-child and social group deadweight, Trevor Millson (33), has again attended a Christmas social bbq with his friends brandishing nothing but a $10 box of Cadbury favourites. Wearing a t-shirt and jeans combo recycled from his laundry hamper, Trev... Read More ›

I don’t know about you but that does not look good to me. In fact, I think this, from about 1965, actually looks better: But it’s not all aboutthe food right? It’s about the company:

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 01, 2024

By Tony Wikrent

Jonathan Larson: A Life of Learning, Service, and Curiosity (July 17, 1949 – November 2024)

Politico published a fatuous piece today exhorting Democrats to stay with Elon’s hellhole because … well, I guess they think that hapless lefties battling an onslaught of Nazis and other assorted assholes all day will somehow convert people to their cause? Apparently, some Democrats I otherwise respect think this is true as well. Two days after the election, Patrick Dillon, a longtime Democratic strategist and current Biden administration official, announced on X that he was leaving the platform… Dillon, who currently serves as adviser to Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, is of course not alone. You may well have seen it in your timelines already: a growing drumbeat of Democrats and left-leaning types announcing why they’re leaving the platform. In just the few weeks since the election, that has included former CNN anchor Don Lemon, basketball star LeBron James, author Stephen King, actress Jamie Lee Curtis and MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace. But the situation is a bit more complicated for Democratic lawmakers, strategists and the like who might have come to dislike X but have also grown to depend on it to shape minds and win elections.