For three decades, Ronnie Kasrils engaged in a transnational crusade to bring about the destruction of apartheid in South Africa. A founder member of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party (SACP), the former government minister began his revolutionary odyssey sixty years ago this […]
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A new, well-funded pressure group is fighting to get Apple to weaken iPhone privacy protections in the name of catching child predators.
The post New Group Attacking iPhone Encryption Backed by U.S. Political Dark-Money Network appeared first on The Intercept.
Dear ES/PE community members, find below an abundant list of great academic opportunities: 13 calls for papers for conferences (some are fully or partly funded) and special issues, 10 job openings, 6 PhD fellowships, 4 visiting opportunities, 4 postdoc positions, and a grant in economic sociology, political economy, and related fields, with deadlines from today […]
“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” – Johnny Rotten In my 2015 review of Danny Tedesco’s documentary The Wrecking Crew, I wrote: “The Wrecking Crew” was a moniker given to an aggregation of crack L.A. session players who in essence created the distinctive pop “sound” that defined classic Top 40 from the late 50s through the mid-70s. With several notable exceptions (Glen Campbell, Leon Russell and Mac “Dr. John” Rebennack) their names remain obscure to the general public, even if the music they helped forge is forever burned into our collective neurons.
The GOP sure knows how to pick them The Messenger: In 2013, Joseph Roberts was accused of verbal and online sexual harassment and suspended from Savannah State University. He claimed he was suspended from school and “denied due process.” Five years later, he’d go on to share his story with Betsy DeVos, then former President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, as an advocate for men who were wrongfully accused of sexual misconduct on college campuses. In 2020, Roberts appeared on YouTube’s The Exceptional Conservative Show, where he recalled the day he was expelled from campus after three unidentified female students reported him. “They said things like they were afraid for their lives,” Roberts, who left the school just three weeks before graduation, claimed. “It was just total lies.” More than a decade later, Roberts, 42, was arrested on Sept. 7 in a separate incident for the gruesome death of his girlfriend, Rachel Imani Buckner, a recent law school grad whose dismembered body was discovered wrapped in plastic with duct tape along the shore in California’s Alameda County.
Kevin Drum: A regular reader asks if I can post a chart of gasoline prices over my lifetime. Of course. In fact, I can do better: I was born right in the middle of that warm postwar summer of ever-declining gasoline prices—which ended abruptly in 1973 with the first oil embargo. And then again in 1979 with the second oil embargo. And again in 2002-08 during the Iraq War. And again in 2011 because of turmoil in the Middle East. And then finally yet again in 2022 thanks to the Ukraine War. Will gasoline ever get down to $2 again? Probably not. OPEC countries need a higher price than that to avoid bankruptcy. But it will probably recede to $3 one of these days. I feel as if my whole life I’ve been aware that we are running out of oil and part of that was assuming that the price was going to go up. Obviously, we are now dealing with the crisis of climate change and have an obligation to drastically reduce our use of fossil fuels so we have even more incentive to end our dependence on gas.
Should we be reading into Doctor Who Showrunner Russell T. Davies's Instagram comment regarding Jemma Redgrave's Kate Lethbridge-Stewart?
And they love him more than ever Tom Sullivan already did a great post on the Trump speech in California yesterday and I can’t think of anything to add. But I do think you should see some more of what he said. It’s truly unbelievable: Trump’s charisma rests in this: He invites every one of us to liberate the worst version of ourselves from the shackles of decency and convention; to let the id trample our ethics. Gleefully. It’s an intoxicating and irresistible opportunity for tens of millions of Americans. https://t.co/zw3zqizJ9F — Terry Moran 🇺🇸 (@TerryMoran) September 30, 2023 Cheers from the audience that has been having a full blown hissy fit over the assault on decorum in the Senate if men don’t wear suits.
‘Green growth’ withers in the heat of evidence. Humanity’s demands are creating a ‘global land squeeze’. Another year of murder for environmental defenders. Green growth: saviour or snake oil? Economic growth, expressed as an ever-expanding GDP, often justified with the claim that a larger pie makes for a fairer redistribution of its delights, is frequently Continue reading »
In the final of this three-part series, I explore why China’s emphasis on expanding land and naval forces suggests its focus is on defence of its borders and seaborne trade, not offence. In the first two articles of this series, I explored how US narratives on the ‘China threat’ have become entrenched in Western security Continue reading »
My mates and I, growing up in our happy, homogenous and very white suburbia in the 1960s and 70s, would probably not have met an indigenous Australian but for playing footy. Without our great game, we might, at least as kids and teenagers, have remained stuck in the fearful ignorance that was pretty common at Continue reading »
If stress has its own Richter scale, the people standing outside political offices of late seem to be under massive pressure. Vigils by stranded refugees have been ongoing for the past fortnight outside the Victorian electoral offices of Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and Immigration Minister Andrew Giles. These events have been characterised by chants, music, heart signs Continue reading »
Commentary on the tenure of Secretaries of Commonwealth Government departments is becoming perilous territory as those wading into it continue to make basic errors of fact. Geoffrey Hawker is the latest to do so (“Tenure and its Troubles”, Pearls and Irritations, 17 September 2023). Let’s take four of Hawker’s statements. “The trajectory from Whitlam through Continue reading »
The RSL was once one of the most influential lobby groups in Australia. Today it is better known for the number of poker machines it operates. Back in the day, as they say, they were knocking on doors in Canberra where the people they met to lobby often had returned service badges in their lapels. Continue reading »
It was OK with ASIO, the Defence Department, the Treasury Minister of the day (Scott Morrison) and it was definitely OK with the Northern Territory government to lease the Port of Darwin to a Chinese contractor. It was even OK with the Obama Administration who would have vetoed it for sure if they had a Continue reading »
There’s a heartbreaking graphic going around right now showing the almost microscopic changes that have occurred to the frontline of the war in Ukraine this year despite nonstop death and destruction of unfathomable horror the entire time. The graphic comes from a New York Times article titled “Who’s Gaining Ground in Ukraine? This Year, No Continue reading »
And that says everything Betraying Ukraine is her issue. It’s all she’s been talking about and she told her boy MyKevin that there was no way she would ever vote for a bill that contained funding to support it. And as I write this, the only continuing resolution MyKevin believes may pass with all GOP votes is one that keeps everything going except her pet issue — abandoning the Ukrainian people: Just hours before a government shutdown, the House planned to vote on a measure to keep the government open for 45 days at current spending levels, adding money for U.S. disaster relief but none of the billions of dollars for Ukraine that the White House has sought, Rules Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the bill would pass the House or what its fate in the Senate would be. The government will shut down at 12:01 a.m. Sunday if a deal is not reached. She is evil. And she is very powerful in the Republican Party right now. She’s no gadfly like Michele Bachman. She’s the real thing. I don’t know if this will pass.
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“We are voluntary servants.” Capitalism is over and ‘social democracy is finished’, says Yanis Varoufakis, economist, author and former Greek finance minister. He tells Hugo Rifkind what’s taking its place. 📻 Listen to Times Radio – https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio
The post Interviewed by Hugo Rifkind, for TIMES RADIO, on my TECHNOFEUDALISM appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.
Politico Playbook took a look at the feud between McCarthy and Gaetz. Nobody really knows why they’re so hostile but whatever it is, it’s definitely personal: To hear him tell it, Rep. MATT GAETZ is on a good-government crusade. The 41-year-old Florida Republican has railed against continuing resolutions, the short-term spending stopgaps that he blames for Washington’s fiscal dysfunction. He has insisted on regular order for appropriations bills and the devolution of power to the House rank-and-file. That’s why, he says, he’s spent months relentlessly hounding House Speaker KEVIN McCARTHY — to the point that he’s almost certain to lead a charge to remove him in the coming weeks. Most other House Republicans watching as Congress lurches toward a federal shutdown see something else entirely: “This isn’t a function of him being concerned about process,” Rep. MIKE LAWLER (R-N.Y.) told Playbook. “This is a function of personality.” “He wants Kevin,” added a Gaetz friend.
A time for choosing again pic.twitter.com/inYmHcu0Pt — mike luckovich (@mluckovichajc) September 26, 2023 President Joe Biden routinely expresses a kinder, gentler American exceptionalism. “This is the United States of America!” Uncle Joe begins. He tells us there is nothing Americans cannot do if we do it together. How many of us in our accustomed cynicism roll our eyes at the naivete of it? But on the other hand…. Maybe Biden’s sunny vision reflects a defense mechanism that is now part of him. The working-class kid from Scranton who overcame his childhood stutter has confronted so much tragedy in his life, so much deep personal loss. Perhaps his Catholic faith tells Biden there has to be a plan. God has a deep purpose we cannot always see. We just have to have faith. Personally, and as a nation. Biden’s most likely presidential opponent in 2024 has no faith, endured no sobering personal losses, never learned empathy. Donald Trump was born on third base with a sliver spoon up his ass. And a trust fund in the hundreds of millions.
Tick, tick, tick….