Reading

We’ll start with the proximate:

As mobs attempt to burn down hotels housing asylum seekers, don’t forget Nigel Farage led a campaign to publicise these hotels. He recorded himself turning up at a series of them in 2020 and asked his followers to identify more hotels, saying some residents “might be ISIS”.

Then let’s move backwards:

First there’s been a lot of anti-Muslim propaganda thru the years, including entire TV and movie eras where the most common villains.

Second is a sustained right wing campaign complaining about demographic replacement and stating that immigrants are more likely be criminals than natives.

I’d forgotten this:

Indie folk artist Cassandra Jenkins brought her latest album to light with a custom visual experience.

The post A Night Under the Stars with Cassandra Jenkins and Nautilus appeared first on Nautilus.

An Intercept investigation found 63 U.S. bases, garrisons, and shared facilities in the region. U.S. troops are “sitting ducks,” according to one expert.

The post The U.S. Has Dozens of Secret Bases Across the Middle East. They Keep Getting Attacked. appeared first on The Intercept.

This piece in Axios suggests that the Harris campaign sees some opportunities beyond the big upper midwest as their route to victory. Whether that’s real or just a feint, it’s probably a good sign that they’re able to spend money and deploy resources even if it’s just to force the Republicans to do the same: Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina — which had looked to be trending toward former President Trump — are suddenly crackling battlegrounds online, on the airwaves and on the ground. Pennsylvania is still the most important state where both campaigns are going all-in. But the Harris campaign is fielding an army of enthused volunteers and piles of cash as it eyes a broader field of play.In the past two weeks, the Harris campaign has added 370,000 new volunteers — including 15,500 in Georgia, 21,000 in Arizona, and 10,500 in North Carolina — three states with diverse or changing electorate. In Georgia, 100,000 votes are up for grabs, former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) told Axios in an interview. “Kamala Harris puts all of those votes back in play,” Duncan said.

The NSW Government has today realised that they won’t be facing an election anytime soon, so they’ve got on their soapbox and demanded that the State’s public servants return to working in the office or their local pokies den. ”We’ve... Read More ›

Walz allows for Harris to “turn a corner” in her policy on the war in Gaza, said James Zogby, president of Arab American Institute.

The post What Tim Walz Could Mean for Kamala Harris’s Stance on Gaza and Israel appeared first on The Intercept.

The more people see that decrepit Liberace clone the Republicans are running for president up against Kamala Harris, the worse he looks: A Morning Consult poll published Monday revealed that voters are suddenly viewing Trump as the decrepit candidate after Biden dropped his campaign. Americans are apparently far more likely to describe Vice President Kamala Harris as healthy, mentally fit, and a strong leader than the 78-year-old Republican presidential nominee. According to the poll, 71 percent of respondents agreed that Harris was “in good health,” while 52 percent said the same about Trump—6 percent fewer than believed the same about Trump when Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee. The number of respondents who thought that Trump was “mentally fit” for the job also dropped. Roughly 64 percent of respondents believed that Harris was mentally fit, while just 48 percent believed the same about Trump—a 5 percent drop from before Biden withdrew. Meanwhile, the number of respondents who believed that Trump is too old for the job rose.

On 29 July, 2024, Dr José Ramos-Horta, President of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste met in Beijing with Chinese People’s Republic President Xi Jinping to upgrade the relationship between the two countries to “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership”. On the one hand Ramos Horta punctured Canberra fears of a Timor-Leste – China Security Agreement, but on the Continue reading »

The headline above is outrageous and incendiary – it is also unquestionably true. We have a duty to bear witness to what the Palestinians must endure. The great Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote powerfully a couple of days ago about the rape culture that is part of the Israeli war machine. Riots occurred at the Continue reading »

On 6 Aug, 1945, approximately 200,000 people in the hitherto untouched town of Hiroshima perished in the worlds first use of a nuclear weapon in anger. On 9th Aug, a somewhat smaller number in Nagasaki likewise perished. Only the authority of secretary of state Stimson, who had visited the city of Kyoto, famous for its Continue reading »

Patricia Karvelas’s article reflecting on the Labor government’s ‘timid’, ‘pragmatic’, ‘realistic’ change of course in pursuit of bipartisanship on Indigenous affairs made for uber-depressing reading (ABC News, online, ‘Timidity reigns as Anthony Albanese backs away from Makarrata at Garma Festival’, 5th August). It confirmed that the institutional racism prosecuted by the No campaign, is alive Continue reading »

Two news items last week completely reversed the economic outlooks in Australia and America. In Australia, the trimmed mean inflation rate for June was 3.8%, which was below the 4.0% expected. This convinced economist that the RBA won’t increase its cash rate in August but instead will reduce it later this year if inflation keeps Continue reading »

Much has been made by the International Education Industry of a 2023-24 Treasury estimate that 84 percent of overseas students go home. Apart from the accuracy of this estimate over ten years after the Knight Review recommendations were implemented, the Industry argues that because a large percentage of students go home, there is no need Continue reading »

In response to riots, attacks on police, and destruction of property in numerous British cities, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer says ‘I utterly condemn the right wing thuggery we have witnessed this week-end.’ To hold perpetrators of violence accountable, he promises the full weight of the law: arrests, convictions and sentencing. A more immediate task, Continue reading »

The question of who is responsible for causing the Ukraine war has been a deeply contentious issue since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The answer to this question matters enormously because the war has been a disaster for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is that Ukraine has effectively been Continue reading »

People often object to criticisms of Israel’s ongoing mass atrocity in Gaza by saying, “Well what SHOULD Israel have done in response to October 7 then?” They say it like the question should confound you, as though it’s some kind of thought-terminating unanswerable Zen koan or something. But it isn’t. The question is very answerable, Continue reading »

2018 was a record-setting year for stocks, but it’s one investors would rather forget. The Dow fell 5.6%. The S&P 500 was down 6.2% and the Nasdaq fell 4%. It was the worst year for stocks since 2008 and only the second year the Dow and S&P 500 fell in the past decade.Dec 31, 2018 While MAGA tries to convince people that a 2.3% drop in the DOW today is a "Kamala Crash," even though she's not President, they completely have amnesia about the multiple "Trump crashes" that we saw when Trump WAS President. And no, don't say, "it was COVID" because what I'm… pic.twitter.com/YS7x9uloXq — Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) August 5, 2024 I just thought it was worth pointing this out when you hear the Trumpers screeching about the “Kamala crash” over the next few days. I have no idea what the market’s are going to do but I know that they will be saying that they never went down with Trump. They did, even beyond COVID.

Dear Children:

All my real estate, savings, and tangible assets are to go to all of you, and if you don’t want them, to Goodwill or the thrift shop. Or just find someone who looks like they need them. Some things that don’t look like much are more valuable than you might think, like the cowboy boots I wore in college. They are still good. I wore them at Woodstock!

The same is true for my digital estate. I left a fourteen-page list of passwords in that wooden box that Grandpa made himself—you know, the one he was always bragging about. I may have changed some of them since I last printed out the list, but you can probably figure them out. (I’m not writing anything down: the NSA!)

But here’s the idea. They are usually combinations of the first letters of titles of books that I was reading, or wanted to read, combined with numbers. I used the book about Vikings a lot, and the one about rattlesnakes, but also some lines from the poem about the captain that Grandpa liked.