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United Against Nuclear Iran, a secretive neoconservative organization with close links to the CIA and the Mossad, is trying to escalate the Israeli assault on Gaza into an Iraq-level U.S. Attack on Iran.

The post United Against Nuclear Iran: The Shadowy, Intelligence-Linked Group Driving the US Towards War With Iran appeared first on MintPress News.

And say anything Donald Trump believes Americans who gave their lives in defense of their country are “suckers” and “losers.” What must he think of his fans who will believe any lie he tells? Paul Waldman responded to Donald Trump’s Wednesday town hall on Fox News: Trump has always employed this very simple strategy: Dish out the most preposterous hyperbole and lies, but do it with the utter conviction that only an experienced con artist can muster. It’s what he did as a businessman, what he did when he ran for president in 2016, and what he has done ever since.  Trump’s shtick has worn thin, Waldman believes, but it’s the only one he’s got. Trump went to it again upon leaving a New York City courtroom on Thursday. Trump stood before reporters and lambasted N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James. Presiding Judge Arthur Engoron (who received a bomb threat at his Long Island home on Thursday) will determine how large of a fine the Trump Organization will pay for committing decades of fraud in New York. Engoron mentioned Bernie Madoff’s case at the end of the day, reported Susanne Craig of the New York Times.

Seemingly lasting an eternity, Professor Chris Painter dissects the failures of governance of the 2019-2024 Parliament, in response to momentous events

Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace.
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go.
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for a living.
And the child born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, good and gay.

I was a Friday child with a Saturday moon rising.

In all of my fifty-four years of life, with me being the baby of the family and all, you’d think someone might’ve mentioned that we were poor. You’d think that during my tendril years of running wild along our family vine that someone would’ve sat me down and explained that for all my reaching for the sun, I just wasn’t ever gonna touch the sky.

Raskin and Markey will need increased security “Democrats Propose Bill to Neuter Militias” is how Vice News described it: Militias who like to spend their weekends training to overthrow the government could find themselves running afoul of federal law, under new legislation being proposed in the House and Senate Thursday that seeks to curtail paramilitary activity.  The “Preventing Private Paramilitary Activity Act” is being introduced by Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts, and Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, both Democrats.  Here’s the bill. Here’s Raskin’s statement: Washington, DC – Following the anniversary of the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol, Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-08) and Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) introduced the Preventing Private Paramilitary Activity Act,legislation that wouldcreate a federal prohibition on paramilitary groups through civil and criminal enforcement.

Doctor Who Series 15 is getting a Blu-Ray box set - but the new mini-episode revealing Leela's fate in the "Time War" has our full attention.

Apart from getting rid of the Bolsheviks, the aims of the Western intervention were remarkably ill-defined. Sometimes it was to protect British interests and keep the Germans, Turks, Poles, or Japanese imperial or territorial ambitions in check; sometimes to support ‘democratic forces’ in Russia, notably the transient Czechs; and sometimes just to back up the (anti-democratic) Whites.

With the exception of a brief threat to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, in November 2021, the war was only of interest to a few specialist staff at foreign ministries. The idea that there are ‘forgotten’ wars raises the question of who is doing the forgetting. Certainly not the participants or their civilian victims.

When Martin Luther King Jr. walked up the steps to the Lincoln Memorial, he delivered a speech that would change history. With passion and eloquence, he showed us a vision of true equality—an America where people of all colors and backgrounds could enjoy life, liberty, and a piece of this sweet Fort Lauderdale timeshare I’m offering.

Seriously, he would have wanted you to sign up right away. It’s a primo bog-side location in the heart of the city’s outskirts.

America was founded on principles of justice. Unfortunately, it took over a century to begin living up to those ideals. Only when Dr. King uttered his famous words, “I have a dream,” did we realize that he probably meant to follow up with, “that you will all go for the Platinum Package, with access to a reasonably well-maintained thirteen-hole golf course.”

That, and the fact that you haven’t given me your credit card number yet, might be the greatest injustice of all.

Denial in Israel is a means of keeping supporters abroad on message. We in the Global North need lies so that we can continue to see our support for Israeli action as morally possible.

For early audiences, the thrill of the chase was part of the fun, and it was better to travel down the byways of interpretation, individually or through social consultation, than to arrive at a fixed conclusion. For writers and publishers, the cultivation of uncertainty, even the sowing of confusion, was a useful resource. 

Are we being told that to seek truth in books is dangerous? Perhaps. But Lucy Ives also seems to be saying that books are things we pour meaning into as much as they dispense it. ‘A novel is a medicine bundle,’ Ursula Le Guin writes, ‘holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.’

The sad reality is that Claudine Gay and Harvard University were upended by a bunch of ruthless right-wing politicians and activists, desperate friends of Israel alarmed by the rise of a pro-Palestinian constituency, disturbed mega-donors and resentful insiders seething at a ‘diversity’ ethos that they perceive as lowering standards.

Is Bella Baxter an unruly kind of feminist? Yes, in a way, but before we make this claim we need to understand what else she is – principally an uninformed child in an adult body. 

The Blue CarRain began to speckle the pavementThat is known as an establishing shot.*We claim things happenin the pastto prove we have survived them.The idea is that the past is sealedand cannot...

You do walk through the world with some people. You don’t know anything about them, but you walk through the world; if they die, you do not get used to it.

As always in Guston, there is a sense of what cannot be shown, or has been erased, and can only be gestured towards: ropes instead of lynchings, clubs and sticks instead of beatings. But the props look like props.

Like sculptures, fossils need curators. A raw lump of stone must be prepared and cleaned before it can be studied as a fossil; scientists of the past may well have inadvertently destroyed interesting surface layers. Still, most of its molecular secrets will have remained locked inside – as long as a fossil isn’t blasted into space, it can be handed down to future generations to explore.

I know a good deal about the Bonhomme Richard. I know that it was originally a French merchant vessel called the Duc de Duras; that it was loaned to the fledgling US navy; and that it took part in the War of Independence. I know it was 152 feet long, weighed 998 tonnes and carried 42 guns. But at the time this replica was created in 1975, I knew only that it was my dad’s obsession.

The letters page from London Review of Books Vol. 46 No. 2 (Saturday 13 January 2024)

Table of contents from London Review of Books Vol. 46 No. 2 (Saturday 13 January 2024)

Keats was deeply interested in suffering. He came by it naturally and also medically; sometimes it appeared as an impulse towards poetic tragedy. He wants what he has always wanted, to soothe pain. If he cannot soothe it, he wants to redeem it as creative power.