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Simon Rosenberg as some advice for Joe Biden’s campaign which includes ideas on youth outreach, climate change etc. It’s all interesting but I think he makes an excellent point here that I haven’t heard anyone else make: I think Joe Biden should promise to clean up the city he has so long been a part of. Among the things we can tackle are the influence of foreign money, the need to raise ethical standards at the Supreme Court, eliminating the debt ceiling and the ability to shut down the government, and the wild abuse of Senate holds on nominations. Perhaps Biden could set up a commission to make broader recommendations on how to modernize and reform a city desperately in need of it. The utter sleaze of the Trump years has never been properly addressed. These trials in New York have illuminated Trump’s personal corruption and sleaze but we have yet to see anything really penetrate what he’s done to the political culture in Washington. This level of blatant corruption is one of the greatest threats to the system of all and at some point it’s going to have to be dealt with.

As you may or may not know, Trump hates animals, especially dogs. S. Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is so desperate to be his VP pick that she is currying favor with him by telling the tale of how she hated her pet dog and shot her. I’m not kidding. “Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant. What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season. Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy. Like other aspirants to be Trump’s second vice-president who have ventured into print, Noem offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies, all of it raw material for speeches on the campaign stump.

A call to women to put social needs, not just economic needs, back on the political agenda. If we want to fix that most of the world is in politically divisive macho mode, feminist women need to create new and recreate old priorities to create more equitable, survivable worlds. The macho basis of male economic Continue reading »

Strange but true. A reporter from the state-owned broadcaster in Australia was booted out by India, purportedly the biggest democracy in the world, and the Murdoch media in Australia has ignored it in toto. The fact that the ABC’s Avani Dias had been forced to leave the subcontinent was reported in The Age, a newspaper Continue reading »

Hamas is holding 132 hostages: 130 of them were taken captive on October 7 and two were taken hostage before then (one in 2014, the other in 2015). Israel holds thousands of Palestinians as de facto hostages. According to the Israel Prison Service, 3,661 of its 9,312 “security” inmates are held without charge or trial Continue reading »

In this quiet hour, I summon words, a humble man amidst shadows long, To speak of wounds not my own, to voice a plea so loud and strong. For streets that haunt with harried silence, for whispers in the dark, For the women who carry nightmares in the hollows of their hearts, I say, not Continue reading »

The so-called “cost of living” crisis is a low-wage problem of the Coalition’s making, the dangerously simplified world of central bankers, spooks and cops on the threat from social media, democracy becomes collateral damage from fear campaigns. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic Continue reading »

The complex interplay of vision, power, and governance in innovation districts, precincts, and hubs. The 21st century has been characterised by remarkable technological breakthroughs that have fundamentally altered how we interact with each other and the world. With this in mind, countries, regions, and industrial clusters create visions of a technology-driven future. Quite often, they Continue reading »

As tensions flare with Iran, the US continues to provide full support for Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. The events of early April seem to bear out the first line of T S Eliot’s “The Wasteland”, that “April is the cruellest month”. On 10 April, on Eid al-Fitr, the celebratory end of Ramadan, Israel killed three Continue reading »

I guess the Village 2.0 is circling the wagons round the NY Times and have decided to stick the shiv into Biden just to show the White House who’s boss. They’re going after the age thing again. You may wonder where this is coming from. Here it is in all its glory from Axios: President Biden has introduced a change to his White House departure and return routine. Instead of walking across the South Lawn to and from Marine One by himself, he’s now often surrounded by aides. Why it matters: With aides walking between Biden and journalists’ camera position outside the White House, the visual effect is to draw less attention to the 81-year-old’s halting and stiff gait. Actually, none of it matters. It’s 100% prime bullshit. Some Biden advisers have told Axios they’re concerned that videos of Biden walking and shuffling alone — especially across the grass — have highlighted his age. Weeks ago the president told aides that he’d prefer a less formal approach, a White House official told Axios. He suggested that they walk with him.

Learning to decode complex communication on Earth may give us a leg up if intelligent life from space makes contact.

The post How Whales Could Help Us Speak to Aliens appeared first on Nautilus.

The new Welsh First Minister Vaughan Gething and the £200,000 donation that could trigger a leadership crisis

Donald Trump held a little rally at a construction site in New York before his trial commenced on Thursday morning. He glad-handed the workers and passed out some pamphlets saying that he would end Biden’s electric vehicle mandate. They all seemed to like him but then they would: Fox News reported that the attendees were solicited and vetted by the campaign. In fact, one of the “workers” interviewed at the event was actually a notorious former staffer of George Santos: In other words, it was just another example of Trump fake news, which has been revealed in his hush money trial as a specialty of his going back decades. Trump was very upset that he had to attend that proceeding since his Supreme Court immunity case was being argued before the Supreme Court yesterday and he had wanted to attend. Unfortunately he’s a criminal defendant and doesn’t get the privilege of making his own schedule of court appearances around the country as he’s used to doing. Instead, he had to face more testimony from his old friend, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker who took the stand for the second day.

In a landmark lawsuit filed last year by the Federal Trade Commission, the government accuses Amazon of long being engaged in illegal market behavior.

“I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!” During MSNBC’s evening coverage of Thursday morning’s arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Trump v. United States case of presidential immunity, Ari Melber summed up his feelings (and mine) with a quote from Zoolander (2001): “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!” On Wednesday, the court considered how many organs a pregnant woman, septic and hemorrhaging, must risk losing before a doctor in Idaho could save her life and provide an abortion without risking jail. On Thursday, the Roberts court spun head-of-a-pin hypotheticals about whether a president can assassinate rivals or stage a coup with no consequences if it were alleged to be part of his/her official duties. We are that far down the MAGA rabbit hole. Chris Hayes noted that in real time during oral arguments: Everyone, including the justices who agreed to hear this farcical presidential immunity case, knew Team Trump’s arguments were a joke. At least, that’s what we assumed. Team Trump was not expecting to win. Putting off the start of special prosecutor Jack Smith’s Jan.