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Created
Sat, 23/12/2023 - 04:51
Usman Khawaja played an important batting role in Australia’s recently finished demolition of Pakistan in the first Test in Perth. The ongoing controversy, however, around his writings on his cricket boots and black armband as a protest display have raised questions about the relations of sport and politics and the role of sporting and other Continue reading »
Created
Sat, 23/12/2023 - 04:50
The victimisation by Israel of Palestinian children is so profound that Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkain, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem law professor, has described it as “Unchilding,” that is, in order to “eliminate the next generation of Palestinians, Israel treats Palestinian children as both nobodies who are unworthy of global children’s rights and as dangerous and killable Continue reading »
Created
Sat, 23/12/2023 - 04:49
After the birth of Jesus, there was the flight into Egypt. Benjamin Netanyahu’s 1st Century predecessor, Herod, had decreed the slaughter of all the male children under the age of two – not Gaza this time, but West Bank Bethlehem. You don’t say “No’ to God – nor to God’s messenger, the angel Gabriel. To Continue reading »
Created
Sat, 23/12/2023 - 04:19
I don’t know about you, but my relationship to dentistry is somewhat infantile. I went this week. I go every six months (hygienist too) but though I brush twice a day with an expensive electric toothbrush, I’m very bad at all that interdental work you’re supposed to do. But then when I notice that the […]
Created
Sat, 23/12/2023 - 04:00
It’s a real contest but if I had to choose Donald Trump’s most fatuous claim it would have to be that until he became president “nobody could say Merry Christmas anymore.” He said it again just the other day and his ecstatic followers practically went into a collective fugue state and began speaking in tongues they were so thrilled. This war on Christmas has been a theme on the right for many, many years but Trump is the first politician to say that he “won” it. It was smart. After all, the war didn’t exist in the first place so every time anyone says “Merry Christmas” he gets the credit. Boom! I have no doubt that his right wing evangelical fans are thrilled by all this. This is one of Christianity’s most important holidays after all. On the other hand, most of them are also fine with Trump evoking Adolph Hitler’s rhetoric so their alleged reverence for Christmas as a religious holiday may be beside the point.
Created
Sat, 23/12/2023 - 02:30
Trump caught in another recording Motown’s Berry Gordy might have set the recording to music but Detroit News got there first: Then-President Donald Trump personally pressured two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to recordings reviewed by The Detroit News and revealed publicly for the first time. On a Nov. 17, 2020, phone call, which also involved Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Trump told Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, the two GOP Wayne County canvassers, they’d look “terrible” if they signed the documents after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification of the county’s election results, according to the recordings. “We’ve got to fight for our country,” said Trump on the recordings, made by a person who was present for the call with Palmer and Hartmann. “We can’t let these people take our country away from us.” Trump didn’t insist they “find 11,780 votes,” but you get the idea.
Created
Sat, 23/12/2023 - 00:00

The miracle of birth is so incredibly beautiful to behold. Do you know the only thing that could make it better? Percussion. Nothing calms one’s stress and eases the pain of delivering a baby than a little boy standing nearby absolutely shredding on his drum. That’s why it’s so lucky that I just so happened to be passing by this barn, where I discovered a woman having a baby. What better audience?

Now, to be fair, I did ask permission before I started drumming. And she nodded—at least I thought it was a nod; she could have just been recoiling or looking down to make sure the donkeys weren’t in the baby’s landing zone. Nonetheless, I took that as a go-ahead to play my drum throughout the labor and delivery. Newborns love loud banging, right?