Reading

Created
Sat, 18/11/2023 - 06:00
While the Israel-Gaza horror carries on, Biden and Xi manage to thaw the frozen relationship with China a little bit This David Sanger piece is a nice succinct rundown of the summit this week Between Biden and Xi: When President Biden met President Xi Jinping on Wednesday on the edges of Silicon Valley, there was a subtle but noticeable shift in the power dynamic between two countries that have spent most of the past few years denouncing, undercutting and imposing sanctions on each other. For the first time in years, a Chinese leader desperately needed a few things from the United States. Mr. Xi’s list at the summit started with a revival of American financial investments in China and a break in the technology export controls that have, at least temporarily, crimped Beijing’s ability to make the most advanced semiconductors and the artificial intelligence breakthroughs they enable. All this may explain why Mr.
Created
Sat, 18/11/2023 - 05:00

Give yourself one point for each answer yes.

1. Are your pants unbuttoned before the appetizer is even put on the table?

2. Are you wearing a pilgrim hat and drinking your fourth High Noon?

3. Did you loudly ask what the turkey’s pronouns were, then smirk into your Modelo?

4. Did you explain the origins of the holiday to the children’s table using one to three racist terms?

5. When called out for using one to three racist terms, did you then proceed to use four more?

6. Did you walk into the kitchen and say, “How you girls doin’ with the cooking?”

7. Did you also ask if they’ve been “slaving away”?

8. Then call them “busy beavers”?

9. Instead of eating the home-cooked meal, did you pull out a bag of Ancestral Supplements because you’re on the Liver King’s hunter-and-gatherer diet?

10. Did you just spend a single semester in England, and call the can of cranberry sauce a “tin,” then compliment your cousin on her “jumper”?

Created
Sat, 18/11/2023 - 04:58
Calling out China for its persecution of Uighurs is not to be a Sinophobic racist. Calling out Myanmar for its crimes against Rohingya people is not to be anti-Buddhist. Calling out Saudi Arabia and Egypt for their murder and suppression of dissidents is not to be Islamophobic or anti-Arab. And calling out Israel for its Continue reading »
Created
Sat, 18/11/2023 - 04:56
The US national security establishment has long-standing, pervasive and influential linkages with civil and military bureaucracies throughout the world who see their primary role not as serving their own governments but subordinating them to the interests of the United States. There is need for constant vigilance against this enemy within. It’s a familiar story, and Continue reading »
Created
Sat, 18/11/2023 - 04:54
The Albanese government is about to have to make a really important decision. It’s going to have to decide what’s more important: supporting Australians who are financially under water, or keeping an election promise. And it’ll have to do it soon. It’s already working on its May budget, now just six months away. That choice Continue reading »
Created
Sat, 18/11/2023 - 04:53
Labor is too naïve in dealing with Dutton; how Canberra smooths the path for well-heeled lobbyists; how the “cost of living” obsession obscures serious social and economic fault lines; the RBA graded by an aged academic, and how to identify a conservative. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and Continue reading »
Created
Sat, 18/11/2023 - 04:00
The Speaker of the House has called an early recess for the Thanksgiving break because his Republicans members were so punchy from all the infighting and name-calling that they allowed a continuing budget resolution with no budget cuts to pass, mostly with Democratic votes, and couldn’t even work up a good old-fashioned cry. There are a few die hards who are still shaking their fists on the Capitol steps vowing never to let it happen again but nobody has the energy to cheer them on at this point: Their obsession with “individual spending bills” instead of omnibus legislation doesn’t really seem like the greatest idea at the moment since they can’t even get their own draconian spending bills to the floor much less pass them. So I’m not sure why they thought a government shutdown was going to shake anything loose. Not that it really matters. They have not done any actual legislating since this congress convened nearly a year ago so why start now? America is tired too — tired of their inane, infantile, behavior. And people are no doubt grateful to be spared any more of it for the next week or so.