Reading

Created
Wed, 25/10/2023 - 06:00
Elle Hardy author of Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World (yikes!!!) wrote this for TNR about a new war on the poor by Evangelical Christians: A God who does his best work in the dark hours is integral to the story of American evangelical Christianity. The stuff of country music songs and conversions in roadside motels, Jesus tends to come to people at their lowest and loneliest. The only problem is that some of God’s most pernicious modern apostles understand this all too well. At a time when fewer and fewer believers are going to church, it is consumption, in these dark times, that illuminates a deeply antisocial shift in evangelical Christian beliefs. Chief among the new doctrines is the idea that God rewards “seeding”—that is, the “sowing” of financial donations to churches, or favored online preachers—with a material harvest in return.
Created
Wed, 25/10/2023 - 05:00

This blog has been re-posted and edited with permission from Dries Buytaert's blog.

Last week, approximately 1,300 Drupal enthusiasts came together in Lille, France for DrupalCon. In good tradition, I delivered my State of Drupal keynote, commonly referred to as the "Driesnote". You can watch the video of my keynote or download my slides (264 MB).

Created
Wed, 25/10/2023 - 04:58
The turn of events we have seen in the defeat of the Voice referendum is what appears to be a successful counter-revolution in Australia steered by the right wing think-tanks and the Murdoch press. The arguments which were mobilised in opposition to the Voice to Parliament has transported the nation back 60 years to Paul Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 25/10/2023 - 04:57
Prime Minister Albanese has an obligation to engage President Biden in a conversation on Gaza. Australia cannot and must not stay in lock step with Israel. If US support for Israel is written in concrete, no matter how Israel behaves, or what inhumanity it inflicts on an imprisoned people, it is Australia’s duty to deliver Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 25/10/2023 - 04:56
Hamas’s appalling attack has exposed an Israeli government with no plan for resolving its country’s greatest challenges. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been at war with the Palestinians all his political life. Occasionally he has genuflected towards the notion of Palestinian statehood. That was entirely tactical. Netanyahu’s contempt for the idea that Palestinians might Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 25/10/2023 - 04:55
Albert Einstein once said that Palestinians (Jews, Christians and Muslims alike) lived in peace and worked together before the European Jews were sent to Palestine. He also said that if Jews could not co-exist peacefully with Arabs “then we have learnt nothing in 2000 years of civilisation”. I once interviewed numerous elderly Palestinian refugees who Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 25/10/2023 - 04:52
Prime Minister: You may wish to draw on the following in your meetings with President Biden, Vice-President Harris, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defence Austin.  Remind the President of your name, and how to pronounce it, and remind him again before the State Dinner.  Find out if the US remains committed to AUKUS, Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 25/10/2023 - 04:51
The news that Ukraine has begun to use US-supplied long range ATACMS missiles against Russian forces has been overshadowed by the Palestine-Israel crisis, but it is an escalation that has profoundly dangerous implications. To understand why this is so we must situate it within the historical development of US strategy since the collapse of the Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 25/10/2023 - 04:50
The world is appalled that the US has backed a war of vengeance by Israel on the captive Palestinian population. A US-led global peace process is critical to ending decades of violence in the Israel-Gaza conflict. It is hard to know what else to say about the awful conflict that is playing out in the Middle East. Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 25/10/2023 - 04:30
Greg Sargent observes this tiresome dynamic in which the media expects the Democrats to vote for a far right Speaker of the House because the wingnuts won’t take yes for an answer. He notes that it didn’t work this time. There’s a lesson in that: When Democrats refused to save Kevin McCarthy from the hard-right faction of House members who ousted the California Republican as speaker earlier this month, the pundit recriminations were thunderous and damning: Democrats had “burned” future possibilities of bipartisanship. They’d squandered a chance to own “the adult brand.” They should have “saved the country” but betrayed it instead. But now, with Republicans still struggling to elect a speaker, Democrats’ strategy — largely charted by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — is plainly working. The New York Democrat’s approach to navigating the GOP’s disaster isn’t just proving to be good politics for his party; it’s likely to produce a better result for the country as well.
Created
Wed, 25/10/2023 - 04:00

You have been found guilty of being basic during the month of October. For your heinous act, you have been sentenced to a pumpkin patch, where you will consecutively serve one weekend a year, or possibly two or three weekends a year, in October, until you are eligible for parole.

Before transport, you will dress yourself in such clothing as long-sleeve flannel, sweaters, vests, and hoodies as if a cold shall descend upon you, only to find a hot blaring midday sun throughout your stay. During transport, a teenage attendant will force you to weave through uneven, muddy terrain until you dent a fender trying to park between a Dodge Megacab and a Chrysler Pacifica.

You are required to pay all fees and unforeseen expenses in accordance with your stay, including the parking fee, entrance fee, pumpkin fee, pony ride fee, pony ride insurance waiver fee, and food and beverage costs. You must trek again through the mud back to your vehicle upon learning that only cash will be accepted.