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As the International Court of Justice received submissions from South Africa and Israel on the 11th and 12th of January on the claims by South Africa of an intention to commit genocide by Israel in Gaza, some 20 Gazan children would have lost a limb, forever maimed and severely disabled. Over 1,000 Gazan children have Continue reading »
America’s seamless support for Israel’s pitiless onslaught on Gaza has both astounded and angered the world. War crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide have accumulated as the destruction and death have continued. The hypocrisy of the West as a whole is publicly on display on a daily basis. The Western media has performed as poorly Continue reading »
Will voters view Joe Biden’s advanced age as negatively as they do Trump’s greed and dishonesty?
The post Don’t Normalize Donald Trump appeared first on The Intercept.
Imagine this headline: “Brits bomb Belfast to obliterate IRA – 24,000 dead, 50,000 injured, all hospitals flattened – children limbless and starving”. You have to engage your imagination to comprehend the unbridgeable gulf that exists between Israel as an entity committing alleged war crimes, and other, more civilised, nations – even those with their warts. Continue reading »
In their aggressive, unrelenting attempts to protect the government of Israel, groups such as the Australian Jewish Association, the Australia / Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Zionist Federation of Australia have all contributed to a groundswell of anger in Australia over Israel’s shocking treatment of the Palestinians Continue reading »
Missing cabinet documents relating to the 2003 Iraq war are unlikely to reveal the impulses that drove John Howard to a disastrous foreign policy decision. Sometime around mid-2003, a colleague of then-secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ashton Calvert, asked after the cabinet submission authorising Australia’s commitment of military forces to Iraq. Continue reading »
People in the poorest areas of Australia are dying 2.5 times more often from the disease than those in the richest areas. Perhaps this is the long-awaited ‘new normal’ of life with COVID, with more working from home, more COVID complacency, and more long-COVID. But some things haven’t changed. When it comes to some communities Continue reading »
Is this a constitutional crisis? On Friday 12 Jan 2024, a USA official spokesman announced that Australia was to provide a support role for the UK and USA troops who were about to attack Yemen. No announcement had been made to this effect by the Australian Government. The Australian people had to wait for the Continue reading »
“So much for Australia’s engagement with Asia,” wrote former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer this month, punctuating a claim that the media gives “close to 20 times the coverage to the US presidential elections as Indonesia’s.” Kicking journos is an easy sport but needs two teams to engage – and in Jakarta our captain isn’t on Continue reading »
Around 25 years ago, wise commentators said China may, in due course, be able to produce acceptable basic, manufactured white-goods but making motor cars that would sell globally was not conceivable. Far too many complex inputs went into making a modern family sedan compared to a refrigerator. As for landing a rover on the Moon Continue reading »
Dear Young Masters, Mistresses, and Distinguished Guests,
Over countless generations, it has been our honor to wait upon the lords and ladies of Saltburn as they set the standard for elegance, refinement, and homosocial outdoor nudity. However, the mess you have been creating of late has become intolerable.
Do you ever wonder why the turnover of a footman is notoriously high? Or why the preparations for last season’s Blacklight Gala took over a month? Or why we passive-aggressively served you runny eggs as a hint that you, too, might not enjoy having to mop up a mess of unfertilized goo before 9 a.m. on a Sunday?
We can hold our tongues no longer. We need to discuss the stains.
The intimate stains.
Conservatively, we are spending almost as much time on our hands and knees as you are. Do you have any notion of the volume of ejaculate we’ve scrubbed from your great-great-great-grandmother’s chaise longue? It’s concerning. Scrubbing endangers the brocade.
The first irrelevant primary is over. More to come, unfortunately. 14% of Republicans came out to caucus last night. It was one of the lowest turnouts in history. Sure, it was cold, but this was low even taking that into account. Enthusiasm? Yeah, sure. Also: I’m looking forward to when this little superfluous pageant is over. Lol:
It's the latest in a series of constitutional changes by ministers - including enforcing photo ID for in-person voters and hiking the spending limits for parties.
For the royalists always ye have with you At Saturday’s Martin Luther King prayer breakfast here I spotted a local Republican, a former elected, who sometimes commented back in the day at Scrutiny Hooligans (my Asheville group blog, RIP). When in 2011 I posted a piece titled “Colonist or Royalist” likening corporate Republicans and T-partiers to those who backed King George III, the British East India Company, and other elites who “don’t care about your jobs or your economy, and they don’t care about you,” it really got under his skin. Too close to the bone? He stopped coming. I kept using royalists. Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley (speaking of Iowa) said this in 2017 about eliminating the estate tax (Des Moines Register): “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley said, “as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” My 2017 post on this continued: In Iowa and in other Republican primary states to come, cosplaying patriots are lining up to crown a king. Or a dictator. Whatever. Because freedom.
2023 was a year marked by devastating conflicts from Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine to Hamas’s horrific terror attacks on Israel, from that country’s indiscriminate mass slaughter in Gaza to a devastating civil war in Sudan. And there’s a distinct risk of even worse to come this year. Still, there was one clear winner in this avalanche of violence, suffering, and war: the U.S. military-industrial complex. In December, President Biden signed a record authorization of $886 billion in “national defense” spending for 2024, including funds for the Pentagon proper and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy. Add to that tens of billions of dollars more in likely emergency military aid for Ukraine and Israel, and such spending could... Read more
Comedian and musician Tim Heidecker hit the road last summer for his Two Tims tour. It featured two acts: a stand-up comedy set by his alter ego, “Tim Heidecker,” a hacky, misogynist idiot; and live music by the real Tim Heidecker & The Very Good Band. His diary of the tour, From the Bus, is one of the three mini-books that make up McSweeney’s 72. Our website editor, Chris Monks, caught up with Tim recently to discuss the book, his music, and his comedy career.
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CHRIS MONKS: From the Bus is the first thing I’ve read by you that isn’t in the voice of one of your personas. Was it refreshing writing it, given you’re often writing absurd, exaggerated versions of yourself?
Two can play this game Doesn’t it seem from the press’ perspective that good news for Democrats is always bad news for Democrats? Fine. Donald “91 Indictments” Trump won the Iowa caucuses Monday night. Handily. As expected. But with lower than expected turnout. Let’s examine why that’s bad news for Trump. The headline this morning is that, per entrance polling (Edison Research and major news organizations), “63 percent said that Trump is qualified to be president even if he’s convicted of a crime.” That’s bad news for Trump. Because 32% said he would be unfit for office if convicted of a crime. While it is unclear how many Monday caucus-goers were crossover Democrats there to put their thumbs on the scales, that means as much as a third of Trump’s support could bleed away if he’s convicted of his various charges before the election. Trump lost the 2020 election by seven million votes. If Iowa’s conservative Republicans are at all representative of the rest of his base, that bleed is enough to lose Trump the presidency again even if the Supreme Court doesn’t deem him disqualified from running.
Taiwan’s presidential election has strengthened its democracy, but could led to increased tensions with China
As part of my role in the Drupal Association, we are trying to find new ways to unleash innovation. Innovation as it happens is a key goal for the Drupal Association. What surprised me when I started with the Drupal Association was to meet companies that were contributors, (some of them known for being long-time contributors) or that are very interested in contributing, but then not knowing how they could maximize their contributions or even where they should be contributing to.