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Culture wars have two main functions. First, to split an existing, dominant social or political coalition apart by the clever use of wedge-issues. (Not all wedge-issues are a part of a culture war.) So, a culture war reveals a latent or induces real divergence in a pre-existing coalition. So, for example, how to think about trans-issues […]

In mainstream economics, there’s — still — a lot of talk about ‘economic laws.’ The crux of these laws — and regularities — that allegedly exist in economics, is that they only hold ceteris paribus. That fundamentally means that these laws/regularities only hold when the right conditions are at hand to give rise to them. […]

Source - Patreon

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It’s all about them, remember? During every presidential campaign the media starts kvetching that the Democrat isn’t giving them enough attention. (They don’t do it as much with Republicans because of the “play the refs” tactic.) Remember this from 2015? It was the big story on Beltway Twitter over the weekend: The Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign, at a Fourth of July parade in New Hampshire, kept reporters behind a moving rope line so as not to get too close to their candidate. The images were striking and quickly earned snide comments from reporters who have long been frustrated with their access to Clinton’s campaign, as well as from others who saw the effort as heavy-handed. And it’s not hard to see why people are frustrated. We would hardly be the first to suggest that it looks like the media are being herded like cattle or sheep. Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri took to “Morning Joe” on Monday and gamely tried to defend the tactic, with limited success.

Marko Suprun, an influential NATO state-funded Ukrainian ‘fact-checker’ with close ties to Nazi activists, was taken into police custody in Washington, DC, after assaulting a contributor to The Grayzone at an event hosted by a neocon Beltway think tank.  The Ukrainian-Canadian host of a self-styled ‘anti-disinformation’ outfit — which receives thousands of dollars from the US and UK governments and works with Facebook to censor content — was arrested on Capitol Hill last week after assaulting a contributor to The […]

The post Top Ukrainian ‘fact-checker’ arrested for assault on Grayzone contributor first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Top Ukrainian ‘fact-checker’ arrested for assault on Grayzone contributor appeared first on The Grayzone.

Australia’s cats have been warned to treat the strange bag that is sitting in the middle of the lounge room with caution and suspicion. “Its intentions and purpose are unknown at this present time and it wasn’t there this morning... Read More ›

Yeah: Also, he also whined about being kept off the campaign trail. Yesterday, court was not in session. He could have gone somewhere to campaign. Guess what he did? I’m feeling crazy today. How in the world is it even possible that this imbecile is possibly going to be exonerated for the crimes we’ve all seen with our own eyes, win the presidency again and be given carte blanche to abuse his power with total immunity. Check out this BS: He’s South Asian, by the way.

Physicist Claudia de Rham on her 3 greatest revelations while writing The Beauty of Falling: A Life in Pursuit of Gravity.

The post Making Light of Gravity appeared first on Nautilus.

As state supreme courts consolidate power and corporate money, shoddy oversight allows justices to hide their financial conflicts of interest from the public.

Today’s Supreme Court argument on presidential immunity was profoundly depressing. It really sounded like the majority is persuaded that they must protect criminal president Donald Trump (and any like him in the future) from any kind of accountability for his crimes. I don’t know if they will think better of it as they deliberate (probably over a period of many months) but it appears that this court has not been chastised at all by the country’s reaction to their radical actions in Dobbs or anything else. So, if they do what it looks very likely they will do, which is to at least give Trump the delay he seeks and possibly upend the constitutional order at his behest, he could get off scott free whether he wins or loses. But there are further ramifications that I don’t think any of us have contemplated in light of this case. Greg Sargent has and it’s chilling: But there’s another way to understand Trump’s move: It’s about what comes next.

The archaic, undemocratic electoral college stakes are very high Josh Marshall notes that 538 has finally put up their polling average and then takes a look at the state of the electoral college strategy: The headline here is Trump and Biden tied at the national level and Trump holding what they call a “tenuous” lead in the swing states. But the breakdown of their averages shows something more specific. The two candidates also basically tied in the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The precise averages are actually Trump +1.1 (Michigan), Biden +.1 (Wisconsin) and Trump +0.9 (Pennsylvania). But those datasets are still weighted toward GOP-leaning polls at the moment. In any case, those are basically ties and I’m fairly confident Biden wins those. It’s the Southern-tier states of Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Arizona which each have Trump leads of around 5 points, give or take. Here’s the key. If Biden holds the Blue Wall states and wins that single electoral vote in Nebraska he gets to 270 votes. Literally the absolute minimum to win. That’s if he loses Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada. So 270 to 268.

China knows that, if it has to, it can stand alone and that it can defend itself. It knows, too, that most nations of the world, other than America (which is, despite itself, somewhat conflicted), want to do business with it; to connect with its growing confidence and with its strengthening brand of non-threatening, non-coercive, Continue reading »

“There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune” The tide – or maybe call it “the vibe” – is running in the direction of the Albanese government being pushed into changing its timid stance on negative gearing. Just as the eventual change to the stage-three Continue reading »

As a China-watching think tank winds up after Morrison-era cuts, a respected analyst reviews government funding for security-related research and education. One Sunday morning nearly four years ago Kevin McCann was surprised to learn that an organisation he chaired was being hounded in the News Corp tabloids for being in “China’s grip” and “lobbying against Continue reading »

As a gentile with an historical association with Israel, I must admit to being greatly puzzled by the double standard that is evident in the destruction of Gaza. In 1971-2 I spent five months at Kibbutz Misgav-am in northern Israel, situated right on the Lebanese border. I had earlier spent a year in Africa, and Continue reading »

As predicted in Pearls & Irritations earlier this month, an appeal by the two losing candidates in the 14 February Indonesian presidential election has been trounced this week by the Constitutional Court. Challenges to the result came from two former provincial governors: Dr Anies Baswedan (25 per cent), and Ganjar Pranowo, (16 per cent). The Continue reading »

Lies and impunity paved the way for the worst time in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hanan Ashrawi says Gaza is “worse than even the Nakba, because it is a wilful, deliberate, total genocide”.     Continue reading »

“Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law,” said Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights. The United Nations’ human rights chief on Tuesday called for an international investigation into mass graves discovered at two Gaza hospitals that Israeli forces recently assailed and destroyed, further imperilling the enclave’s barely Continue reading »