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*sigh* One by one, the giants continue to fall: William Friedkin, the Oscar-winning director behind The French Connection and The Exorcist who was one of the most admired directors to emerge from a wave of brilliant filmmakers who made their mark in the 1970s, died Monday. He was 87. Friedkin died in Los Angeles, his wife, former producer and studio head Sherry Lansing, said. His pictures, which also included 1977’s Sorcerer, 1985’s To Live and Die in L.A. and 2006’s Bug, were marked by an exceptional visual eye, a willingness to take what might have been a genre subject and treat it with high seriousness and a sense of how sound could add a subterranean layer of dread, mystery and dissonance to his stories — a haunted and haunting quality that lifted his visceral works into another realm, conveying a preternatural sense of “fear and paranoia, both old friends of mine,” as he said in his 2013 memoir, The Friedkin Connection. Fear and paranoia. I’m not a religious person, but I distinctly remember jumping out of my seat and shouting “JESUS CHRIST!” about a dozen times the first time I saw The Exorcist.
I don’t know quite what to make of all this but I’ll just throw it out there for you to mull over: Apparently, quite a few people think the indictments are simultaneously trying to stop Trump while also upholding the rule of law and defending democracy. I’m pretty sure that prosecutors trying to stop the Trump campaign would not be in keeping with either of those two things. I guess some people are confused. People may decide they don’t want an indicted criminal suspect for president but nobody is trying to stop him from running or stop anyone from voting for him. Are they suggesting that he shouldn’t be prosecuted because he is running for president even if there is evidence against him? This distinction between MAGA Republicans and Non-MAGA Republicans is not particularly useful at this point. If you are willing to vote for Trump then I fail to see the difference. Yep. 68% think Biden is illegitimate based upon nothing but bullshit from Donald Trump and his henchmen. That’s the ballgame. More Democrats than Independents or Republicans are concerned about both. That certainly says something, I’m not sure what.
Sixty years later, will anybody have heard of COVID-19?
The post The Pandemic Your Grandparents Forgot appeared first on Nautilus.
Opposition leader (for now) Peter Dutton has defended the fact that he has never attended the Garma festival, telling colleagues that he has arrested plenty of indigenous people in his time. ”A lot is being made that Pete has never... Read More ›
The US is going to hell is a lovely sentiment from someone who wants to be president. Kicking a sports team that represents America, especially a women’s sports team, when it’s down is especially thoughtful. You can certainly understand why 38% of Americans are just gaga over this man.
Huffington Post published this last week. I can’t say it shocks me — or that I believe it’s the only example of this phenomenon: A prominent conservative writer, lionized by Silicon Valley billionaires and a U.S. senator, used a pen name for years to write for white supremacist publications and was a formative voice during the rise of the racist “alt-right,” according to a new HuffPost investigation. Richard Hanania, a visiting scholar at the University of Texas, used the pen name “Richard Hoste” in the early 2010s to write articles where he identified himself as a “race realist.” He expressed support for eugenics and the forced sterilization of “low IQ” people, who he argued were most often Black. He opposed “miscegenation” and “race-mixing.” And once, while arguing that Black people cannot govern themselves, he cited the neo-Nazi author of “The Turner Diaries,” the infamous novel that celebrates a future race war.
In June 2023 Political Economy at the University of Sydney hosted a discussion on Jamie Martin's new book, The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire and the Birth of Global Economic Governance (Harvard University Press). Jamie gave a presentation on the book, and Martijn Konings was the discussant. Today we are publishing a recording of the event, along with an edited transcript of Martijn's contribution and Jamie's response.
The post Discussion: Martijn Konings and Jamie Martin on ‘The Meddlers’ appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
For real Unindicted co-conspirator John Eastman gave an interview last week in which he discussed all the reason why the country is going to hell (transgender youth and ergonomic chairs are at the top of the list) and explained how that gave Trump the right to ignore the constitution. It’s worth reading in full to get a good sense of just how batshit this guy really is. Josh Marshall had some useful thoughts on this: There’s a lot of atmospherics in this interview, a lot of bookshelf-lined tweedy gentility mixed with complaints about OSHA regulations and Drag Queen story hours. But the central bit comes just over half way through the interview when Eastman gets into the core justification and purpose for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and overthrow the constitutional order itself. He invokes the Declaration of Independence and says quite clearly that yes, we were trying to overthrow the government and argues that they were justified because of the sheer existential threat America was under because of the election of Joe Biden.
In his recent comprehensive P&I article ( “Abandoned sovereignty: Australia’s intelligence function colonised by US”) Mike Scrafton has raised serious concerns about Defence Minister Marles’ announcement at the recent AUSMIN talks of the creation of “Combined Intelligence Centre – Australia” within our Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO) by 2024. Details of how this extraordinary joint Australian-US Continue reading »
The AUSMIN talks confirmed Australia’s status as a client state of the United States. Its shift has taken years but this is a significant change from the previous status of a friend, or ally, because it hands a significant slice of Australian sovereignty to a foreign power. The degree of military integration foreshadowed by Secretary Continue reading »
At the Australian Labor Party’s upcoming national conference in Brisbane, recognition of a Palestinian state — pursuant to Labor’s 2021 national platform that supports the recognition of Israel and Palestine as part of a two-state solution — is on the agenda. Senior Labor party figures, including former Foreign Ministers Bob Carr and Gareth Evans, have already come out in Continue reading »
White Australians like to think of themselves as an egalitarian and frank people, despising pretentiousness, while basking in a reputation for larrikinism and mateship. But this is all a front, papering over a culture that is deeply racist, excessively masculinist, and incorrigibly populist. Indeed, from its very beginnings, white Australia has been a morally backward Continue reading »
In the Sofronoff inquiry, Counsel Assisting, Ms Erin Longbottom went straight for the jugular of Shane Drumgold, prosecutor in the Bruce Lehrmann rape trial. She made mincemeat of him. By the end of her display of complete dominance, he was a shattered wreck. He had withdrawn his suggestions of political interference, softened his criticism of Continue reading »
The Robodebt Royal Commission revelations have triggered revulsion in all fair-minded Australians. They’ve also stimulated a critically important national conversation about what could be going on in Australian government, including in the Australian Public Service (APS), that such a thing was even possible. For 40 years now, without most Australians realising it, the APS has Continue reading »
The United States is going through a profound transition to which there are only difficult and costly choices. In this latest book on America’s political chaos, we are taken deep into the future of an unacceptable but perhaps unavoidable breakup of the union. Is America close to civil war, and how will the next one Continue reading »
The Florida governor created a new office for prosecuting election crimes — but no one wants to work there.
The post DeSantis Still Can’t Find Enough Employees for His Voter Fraud Crackdown appeared first on The Intercept.
Looking back at the past seven years, Christianity seems stronger than ever in the United...
A dreary afternoon. Rain patters against the windows. You’re inside getting cozy in your favorite recliner, about to open a new Goodreads tab.
Ahh. There’s nothing quite like it, is there?
When we dive into Goodreads, we get to explore exciting worlds brimming with possibilities. Exhilarating progress updates keep us glued to the page for hours on end. Colorful notification icons pop up and literally reshape our minds. Memorable characters come along in the comment section and captivate us with their vitriol and misogyny.
In fact, Goodreads helps us develop habits we’ll have with us for the rest of our lives. Like mindlessly checking Goodreads all the time and creating little book lists with the sole purpose of broadcasting our taste to everyone.
Yes, there’s something wonderfully addictive about plopping down in a comfy spot and being showy on the internet about how many books you’ve read. Sometimes Goodreads can be so engaging you can’t help but sit there, totally oblivious to the outside world, cyberbullying people about ’80s sci-fi novels, losing track of time.