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Imagine if you are a UK Guardian reader and wanting to assess the options for an almost certain victory by Labour in the upcoming general election. Your understanding of the challenges facing the next government will be conditioned by what you have been reading in that newspaper. Unfortunately, there have been a stream of articles…

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Video: Jeffrey Sterling was a CIA whistleblower. He is an attorney and an advocate for other whistleblowers. We discussed his experience, the problem of excessive secrecy, and the importance of whistleblowers to civil society.

By Norman Solomon: TomDispatch While he can no longer speak to the world about the latest developments, Ellsberg will continue to speak directly to hearts and minds about the extreme evils of our time—and the potential for overcoming them with love in action.

Another one bites the dust: The pastor of one of the country’s largest churches—and who Donald Trump once named as a spiritual adviser—has admitted to “inappropriate sexual behavior” with a woman who says he sexually abused her when she was just 12 years old. On Friday, Cindy Clemishire told The Wartburg Watch, a religious watchdog blog, that Robert Morris, the pastor of Texas’ Gateway Church, asked her to come into his room when he stayed with her family for Christmas in 1982. She was 12 and he was 20 at the time. She said Morris molested her and then ordered her not to say anything about his behavior “because it will ruin everything.” The abuse continued for years before Clemishire confided in a close friend, prompting Morris’ wife to find out and Morris to step down from the ministry, according to the report. He eventually returned to the church and founded Gateway Church in 2000, turning it into one of the country’s largest megachurches with an estimated weekly attendance of 100,000, according to the church.

We’ve all heard about the resurgence of the far right in Europe (although the extent of it was very overstated at first) but the UKisn’t among them: Sunak surprised many in his own party by announcing an early election on May 22, against widespread expectations that he would wait until later in the year to allow more time for living standards to recover after the highest inflation in 40 years. Market research company Savanta found 46% support for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, up 2 points on the previous poll five days earlier, while support for the Conservatives dropped 4 points to 21%. The poll was conducted from June 12 to June 14 for the Sunday Telegraph, opens new tab. Advertisement · Scroll to continueReport this ad Labour’s 25-point lead was the largest since the premiership of Sunak’s predecessor, Liz Truss, whose tax cut plans prompted investors to dump British government bonds, pushing up interest rates and forcing a Bank of England intervention.

Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has celebrated his success over the weekend in overtaking Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the polls by heading to his local pet store and strangling a basket of puppies. ”It’s important that we don’t just dwell... Read More ›

Recently, I attended a demonstration called by groups opposing the carnage in Gaza, where eight months of air, ground, and sea attacks by the Israeli Defense Forces have leveled entire quadrants of cities and killed more than 36,000 Palestinians. Many of the participants, justly outraged by the ongoing mass murder triggered by Hamas’s October 7th terrorist massacre, bitterly criticized President Biden over his continuing support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war. Asked about the likely choice in November between Biden and Donald Trump, the consensus among the demonstrators was that they wouldn’t vote for “Genocide Joe,” and that there was nothing to choose from between Biden and Trump when it comes to Middle East policy. Some would simply stay home,... Read more

Source: Trump or Biden on Israel? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Matt Yglesias writes: Sophisticates knno that the Trump Crime Wave has been reversed, but the 2024 data (so far, it’s early yet) is actually better than that and suggests we’re on pace for the lowest murder rate year since *2014* fully reversing the post-Ferguson rise in lethal violence. And yet a majority of Americans are convinced that we are in the midst of an unprecedented crime wave. Why? Because Donald Trump and the Republicans are pathological liars and the mainstream media is apparently incapable of effectively countering their lies. We know this because large numbers of non-MAGA voters who don’t watch Fox believe this. Some of it is the hangover from the pandemic crime spike and it takes a while for people to absorb changes. But they would be aware of it if the media would be more assertive in challenging the lies. Instead, much of the time they frame it as a matter of opinion.

The Holocaust was racist genocide of an unprecedented scale of industrial organisation. The ensuing term Never Again applies to all humankind and resonates with Jewish conceptions of justice. This moral value is now in jeopardy, impacting on Australians of conscience. Changed the national conversation. Now a range of pundits have positioned themselves as experts by Continue reading »

Since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took office in 2022, Australia has returned to a more rational path of seeking pragmatic cooperation with China. Despite starting from a low base, the relationship between China and Australia has improved significantly, said Mark Beeson (Beeson), an adjunct professor at the Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney, in an Continue reading »

After meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken last April, New Zealand’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters, sa­id that the two countries had pledged “to work ever more closely together in support of shared values and interests.” In recent moves exemplifying this support, New Zealand has deployed a targeting team to a United States-led Continue reading »