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One of the weirdest things happening in the world today is the way US officials keep insisting that they are not at war with the groups they’re dropping bombs on in the middle east, and that they do not seek conflict with the people they are attacking. Shortly after another massive round of attacks on Continue reading »

As a community book seller loses her unique shop in Shepherd's Bush Market, Iain Overton looks at the broader struggles facing London's historic markets, facing the juggernaut of modern development.

Dream bigger “When does a political fight over some people’s rights feel like some people’s fight — and when does it feel like everyone’s?” asks Anand Giridharadas at The Ink. His topic is “de-siloing” our struggle for rights for specific groups and instead universalizing their struggles. We are too easily trapped in our own narrow narratives and sucked into right’s. Special counsel Robert K. Hur knew he would catch hell from MAGA Republicans for his investigation concluding without indicting President Biden for his retention of privileged materials. So on Thursday Hur redirected the public narrative away from “no criminal charges are warranted” to Joe Biden is senile with a few poisoned adverbs and adjectives. No one will talk about Biden’s innocence now, or the remarkable achievments of a great president. They’re too busy stomping around in the right’s “he’s too old” framing. What the left must do to de-silo their defense of liberties is less rhetorical jujitsu than speaking in terms that bring everyone into the fight.

The press did not fail to learn from 2016. It learned what drew eyeballs. Do reporters want to find themselves flung out of windows after January 20, 2025 under a Trump dictatorship? Seems so, the way they rushed to cover the poisoned special counsel report on “painfully slow,” old Joe Biden’s handling of sensitive materials. His exoneration was buried beneath coverage of a gratuitous, MAGA-reinforcing narrative in the report raising Biden’s age as an issue. The path the press chose, The New Republic subhead reads, “suggests we’re stuck in 2016 again.” We know what Trump thinks of the media. We know he admires how Vladimir Putin and other world strong men control theirs. He dreams of ruling with an “iron fist,” like the Chinese president. We know what sort of second term he has in mind. A dictatorship, more or less, with himself unfettered by law to do as he pleases. Including to whom he pleases. So, does the American media have a death wish? Apparently, but reporters will be making the owners money all the way to the sidewalk.

I think this is worth listening to. I’ve put notes below. It’s not in essay format, just what I found significant as I was listening.

Whatever you think of Putin, at least he’s educated and speak in complete sentences and has a historical understanding (whether you agree with it or not.) He makes Trump and Biden look like the idiots they are.

In fact, Putin makes almost every Western leader look like an ill-educated moron. Orban is an exception. This isn’t a political judgment. I don’t much like Putin, but I can respect him. I can’t respect Biden, Trump, Sunak, Scholz, Macron, Von Der Leyen or my own PM, Trudeau.

“Against the kingdom of the Beast, we witnesses shall rise!” Addressing the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s October 1981 London demonstration, Edward Palmer Thompson reached back into the mists of radical history, welcoming the crowd of 250,000 to Trafalgar Square with the revolutionary-millenarian marching call of seventeenth-century England’s New Model Army.  A socialist historian, poet, peace […]

Ex-Fox hack humiliated by world-class propagandist Guess Tucker Carlson forgot to tan his balls before interviewing Vladimir Putin. The Russian dictator chewed him up and spit him out. It was “a consummation Devoutly to be wished” for the perpetually puzzled former Fox News host. Tucker, was it good for you? Putin couldn’t care less. Digby has long said of the American far right, “shamelessness is their superpower.” But how much of their behavior is shamelessness and how much is lack of self-respect? MAGAs less well-heeled than Carlson compensate for their deficits with large-capacity magazines and family-impoverishing personal arsenals. Carlson had his self-respect (in a phrase the right loves to use) “shoved down his throat” by the Russian strong man. CNN‘s headline seems to summarize the event: Putin walks away with propaganda victory after Tucker Carlson’s softball interview Politico: Few expected anything ground-breaking to emerge from Tucker Carlson’s sit-down with Vladimir Putin, conducted in Moscow on Tuesday and published on the conservative pundit’s website Thursday.

In this column, Kristen Mulrooney writes letters to famous mothers from literature, TV, and film whom she finds herself relating to on a different level now that she’s a mom herself.

Dear Lorelai,

I come to you today on my hands and knees, begging for advice. I will give you anything in exchange for a couple of morsels of wisdom. What do you want in return? A skinny scarf? A cherry Danish? Coffee? Do you want a coffee? I can get you some coffee.

I’m writing to you, Lorelai Gilmore, because you and I have something in common. No, I wasn’t a teen mom, and my parents weren’t rich, and this might make you choke on your Jujubes, but I don’t even like to talk that much.

What I am is a woman who doesn’t have a relationship with my mother, and I am raising daughters. I am an under-mothered mother raising daughters, and I need you to tell me how to do that.

Substantial evidence of criminal behaviour and cover-up at Mirror Group Newspapers emerged last summer at trial

In his much-vaunted interview with the Russian leader, Tucker Carlson simply allowed Putin to repeat well-worn propaganda points. But who is Putin actually talking to?

Cook a seductive homemade third-century Roman meal of millet and turnips lightly drizzled in your finest vinegar

Enjoy the thrill of a full-day beekeeping course

Delight in the magic of a 5 a.m. Latin mass

Titillate your mind and learn about an amorous topic such as epilepsy or the plague

Relish a night of passionate role-play and re-enact Saint Valentine healing his jailor’s blind daughter

Whisper scripture to each other

Luxuriate with a physical and spiritual health treatment through three days of fasting and prayer

Bask in the sensuality of full immersion baptism

Enchant each other with a heart-to-heart about how to proselytize a violent pagan emperor

Revel in the playful mystery of an escape room where the room is a coliseum, and you need to escape malnourished lions

Beheading

When Sir Keir Starmer began ditching the pledges he’d made during his leadership campaign one by one, he made another pledge to deliver £28 billion worth of green investment per year. Unsurprisingly, this pledge has now been consigned to the towering trash heap of promises made by the current Labour leadership. On the same day […]

Katherine O'Donnell delivers a powerful rebuke to the media and politicians for the 'irrational, obsessional' hatred and misrepresentation that Brianna Ghey and her family faced every day

How the remarkable discovery of a beautiful pendant connects a modern-day metal detectorist and a Bronze Age pregnant woman

- by Psyche Film

Watch at Psyche

As Israel targets educators in its war, the vice president of a major, now-destroyed Gaza university speaks out.

The post No University Left Standing in Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.

When scents are used to intensify a narrative, they heighten young readers’ emotions and enrich their memory banks

- by Natalia Kucirkova

Read at Aeon

‘We are all equal, so they should treat us like equals,’ says Maria, an NHS domestic worker who has worked at Whipps Cross Hospital in London for the past 18 years. Like the majority of her fellow NHS workers, Maria, who works in a patient-facing role, was on the frontline of the pandemic — a […]

Conservatives are launching a new battle to destroy what’s left of the Voting Rights Act.

By Jeffrey Sterling: ProgressiveHub.net Much like prison visiting rules, use of the Espionage Act is arbitrary and punitive. Justice or security have nothing to do with it.