Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
Reading
Bats! Statler, an Indian flying fox, was born at a zoo in 1987. Since then, he’s moved from facility to facility. For many years, he was kept in a small space and used for “education.” When he arrived at Bat World Sanctuary in 2018, his caretakers made sure he’d have a happy and peaceful retirement. To help save more bats like Statler, you can support Bat World Sanctuary here: http://thedo.do/batworld, and check them out on Facebook: http://thedo.do/batworldsanctuary.
I’ve heard of kitchen table issues but this is ridiculous I have to assume that Republicans think these are the issues people really care about and are demanding the GOP House of Representatives deal with immediately. It’s that important…
I wrote yesterday about the Steve Bannon plot to activate young environmentalists against Biden over the huge increase in American oil production during his administration (even as they lie to the MAGA cultists, telling them that Biden has shut off the spigot and Trump will come in an drill, baby, drill.) They figure they can get the young vote to turn on the Democrats and vote 3rd Party, whether it’s RFK or Jill Stein. Biden just put a monkey wrench in that plan: The US set aside 23 million acres of Alaska’s North Slope to serve as an emergency oil supply a century ago. Now, President Joe Biden is moving to block oil and gas development across roughly half of it. The initiative, set to be finalized within days, marks one of the most sweeping efforts yet by Biden to limit oil and gas exploration on federal lands. It comes as he seeks to boost land conservation and fight climate change — and is campaigning for a second term on promises to do more of it. The changes wouldn’t affect ConocoPhillips’s controversial 600-million-barrel Willow oil project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
BBC, Disney+ & Russell T. Davies' Ncuti Gatwa & Millie Gibson-starring Doctor Who Season 2 will also star Varada Sethu as a new companion.
It’s been reported that he doesn’t like his voters. Of course he doesn’t, he’s a rich guy who really only values important, powerful, rich people. He can’t stand his voters. They are marks to him, just like the rubes who bought his Trump University courses. He posts “something horrible” every day so I don’t know what he might be talking about but if he’s thinking of something else that Scavino might know about that’s “very sexually oriented” — via GIPHY We already know too much. Much too much.
The Syrian Civil War was the longest and most complex geopolitical conflict to emerge out of the Arab Spring, thus creating a complicated legacy for leftist analysts to interrogate. In this interview, exclusive for Counterpunch, former United Nations special rapporteur, and international relations scholar Richard Falk, breaks down Palestine and Syria and the history and Continue reading »
In Asian media this week: Resistance has regime capital in its sights. Plus: Japan, US, boost Tokyo’s anti-Beijing role; International law ‘backs China’ in islands’ disputes; Tech giants will not solve climate change, social injustice; South Korea voters deliver rebuff to president; Given a chance, Chinese and American folk like each other. Anti-junta forces in Continue reading »
“We are really running out of time. We need to reduce our emissions immediately,” one expert warned. “We cannot expect to save the Great Barrier Reef and be opening new fossil fuel developments.” Marine conservationists warned Thursday that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef may be suffering its worst-ever coral bleaching event amid record ocean heat fuelled Continue reading »
In journalism and politics there are beat ups every day of the week. But some are so outrageous that they make a zephyr breeze look like a tornado. The ABC and others recently reported that Labor was losing support in the Calwell seat due to what they see as Labor’s support for Israel. The evidence Continue reading »
The dire state of truth in Australia’s civic space crystallised in 2023. We had seen the waning influence of News Corp’s impact on our elections and assumed it meant that enough of us were becoming inoculated against the propaganda. The defeat of the notoriously mendacious Coalition government might have signalled a ceasefire, a moment for Continue reading »
Housing inequality has put Australia on a destructive trajectory, how the Coalition blocks economic reform, Australia’s changing politics played out in Tasmania. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic and political issues. Our road to destructive inequality Inequality is manifest in many domains, and Continue reading »
Janet Yellen came, she pontificated and postulated, ate some nice Chinese food, drank a beer with Nicholas Burns, a man that Chinese people loathe and hold little respect for; then she left. This tells the world all about her trip, what she ate and drank was more important than what she said and did. It Continue reading »
Iran has never had a nuclear bomb—why does Israel insist that it’s an imminent threat? It remains a classic moment in United Nations history. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the dignified setting of a General Assembly speech in the fall of 2012 to raise the spectre of an Iranian nuclear bomb. He displayed a Continue reading »
The pharma giant previously received billions in federal funding and raked in huge profits, but owes nothing in 2023 income taxes thanks to legal loopholes and Trump-era tax cuts.
Boo-hoo-hoo There has been something of a brouhaha this past week over a new book by Paul Waldman and Thomas Schaller called White Rural Rage. Evidently some political science scholars in the field felt that it was unfair to the rural voters by characterizing them as feeling rage instead of righteous anger. We urban types are mean as always and need to be more understanding of some people’s racism, xenophobia, misogyny and fetishistic Trump worship because well … they’re unhappy. Waldman and Schaller responded. Here are some extended excerpts. You can read the whole thing here and you should. When we wrote White Rural Rage, we knew that our provocative argument and book title would arouse ire on the far right. We were not disappointed. But we have been surprised by the ferocity of the criticism we have received from scholars of rural politics. Their response has made clear that there are unspoken rules about criticizing certain Americans—rules that get to the heart of the very case we have tried to make about the deep geographic divisions in our politics at this fragile moment in our nation’s history. Pillorying Donald Trump is fine.
“Meet the ‘pursuer of nubile young females’ who helped pass Arizona’s 1864 abortion law.” — Washington Post
- - -
We here at the GOP take values very seriously. We try to project a certain image to the public so that they’ll associate us with morality. So, it’s time for us to ask an important question. Is reinstating this misogynist 1864 law written by a child rapist bad for our brand?