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Unlike mainstream commentators, I don’t think there is anything the ‘Yes Campaign’ could have done to win the No voters. You can provide someone with information but can’t lead them to judgement. No voters knew what they wanted. No point questioning their choice. The claim there was not sufficient information, adequate explanation, or the Yes Continue reading »

If Dutton does to the next election what he did to the Voice referendum, public policy won’t stand a chance; the “Home Affairs” experiment has failed; and what the French do in their spare time. Read on for the Weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic and political Continue reading »

The savage Israeli reaction to the suggestion by UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, that some Hamas actions may be a response to 56 years of Israeli repression was extraordinary. We have long known about Israeli sensitivity to criticism. But this brings things to a new level. Cannot Israel accept even some of its own responsibility for Continue reading »

With Israeli airstrikes on Gaza killing at least twenty Palestinian journalists—and the Biden administration working to muzzle others—Big Tech is quietly coordinating with Tel Aviv to muzzle Palestinian media outfits.  Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip killed three Palestinian journalists on October 25 in one of the deadliest days for local reporters since the military’s bombing campaign began nearly three weeks before. As the hours passed, footage appeared showing the moment Ramallah-based journalist Mohammed Farra learned that his wife and […]

The post Israeli targets journalists, kills their families as Big Tech & Biden admin silence Palestinians first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Israeli targets journalists, kills their families as Big Tech & Biden admin silence Palestinians appeared first on The Grayzone.

He’s an anti-immigrant zealot too Greg Sargent writes about the new Speaker’s extreme views on immigration: Rep. Mike Johnson, the newly elected House speaker, has repeatedly flirted with what’s known as the “great replacement theory,” the idea that Democrats are scheming to supplant American voters with immigrants. The Louisiana Republican’s views show how fringe conspiracy theories have gone mainstream in the Republican Party at the highest levels of power. “This is the plan of our friends on this side — to turn all the illegals into voters,” Johnson said at a congressional hearing in May 2022, gesturing at Democrats. “That’s why the border’s open.” The “open borders” trope is a lie, and while a few municipalities allow voting for noncitizens in local elections, in no sense do national Democrats have any such “plan” for “all the illegals.” As far as I can determine, no House speaker in recent memory has been quite as reckless and incendiary with this kind of language. Johnson employs it regularly.

How did you sleep last night?

Not great, honestly.

How come?

Look, I wasn’t going to tell you, Holly, because I know you get freaked out by this stuff, but I saw a ghost in our bedroom.

Oh my god. I told you we shouldn’t have moved into this old house, Greg.

I know. She just appeared out of nowhere and was, like, trying to teach me Spanish for a while. And the crazy thing is that I took Spanish in high school, but I couldn’t remember shit last night.

Wait, what?

I said I took Spanish in high school, but I don’t remember shit. She must think I’m an idiot.

What are you talking about?

I told my parents back then that my brain can’t think about languages like that, and I was right. And now this ghost is up my ass about it.

Greg. Can you please focus? Was this, like, an evil spirit kind of ghost?

I would say more strict than evil, but I could see her getting super pissed if I keep blowing it like I did last night. She asked me to tell her my name in Spanish and I said, “Si amo e Greg.”

So?

That’s not how you say it, Holly, those are all the wrong words except for “Greg.”

Byline Times' Co-Founder Peter Jukes recalls his journey of the past decade: from exposing the corruption of our newspapers to launching his own in shops across the country this week

China from Deng (82) on, had two main plays.

The first play was a standard mercantalist export driven developing state. Low costs were used to create low cost goods primarily for overseas consumption. Foreign currency was plowed back into capital machinery acquisition. Foreign partners were given good deals and the decision makers become rich, but to play one had to give up intellectual property.

This is the standard industrialization sequences, followed by almost everyone, including Britain, Germany, the United States, Japan and South Korea.

Or they pretend not to anyway It may seem obvious that everyone in the country knows that Donald Trump tried to overturn the election results in 2020 because we all watched him do it live as it was happening. His campaign filed more than 60 lawsuits in various states, as was his right, none of which were found to be meritorious. His minions and accomplices in the Republicans party both in Washington and around the country actively tried to help him do that by pressuring election officials, persuading local officials to sign on as “alternate electors” etc. And I think you’d have to have been in a coma not to know that he aggressively tried to bully Vice President Mike Pence into refusing to count the electoral votes on January 6th. Trump’s famous January 2nd phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger was all over the news the very next day in which he very pointedly said:  “What I want to do is this.

Government documents pointing to construction at a classified U.S. base offer rare hints about a little noted U.S. military presence near Gaza.

The post U.S. Quietly Expands Secret Military Base in Israel appeared first on The Intercept.

The attack on the BBC by the Israeli President Isaac Herzog is now being weaponised by political enemies who have long wanted to destroy the public service broadcaster

Chemicals of decomposition are also starting points of life.

The post The Stench of Death Has a Sunny Side appeared first on Nautilus.

As the West Asian powderkeg inches closer to disaster over Israel's ongoing slaughter in Gaza, Craig Murray dissects the various factors at play that could push the region over the precipice.

The post Craig Murray: As Genocide Unfolds, Chances of a Regional War Become Almost Unavoidable appeared first on MintPress News.

Doctor Who Showrunner Russell T. Davies' life & career will be in the spotlight in an upcoming "imagine..." special for BBC One and iPlayer.

Upcoming “Corporate Bullsh*t” David Dayen reviews an upcoming book by Nick Hanauer, Joan Walsh, Donald Cohen and Zachary Roth. “Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America” examines the boilerplate arguments corporate shills have used to object “to virtually every government and social program, from the abolition of slavery to the increase in the minimum wage.” Dayen writes: These timeworn tactics have been successful, the authors write, because “they offer a civic-minded, reasonable-sounding justification for positions that in fact are motivated entirely by self-interest.” It’s an attempt to set the terms of debate and to make those terms unchanging and unmovable. The endless repetition of these talking points is a source of their strength. But identifying their history and application to virtually everything can be a source of their weakness. The six categories of corporate bullshit begins with pure denial.

Russia’s relationship with Hamas is well-known and well-documented

To help celebrate our twenty-fifth year of being on the information superhighway, we have reached out to some of our favorite former columnists for check-ins and updates. Today we reconnect with globe-trotting, pint-drinking Kevin Dolgin, who wrote a travel column about out-of-the-way places for this site from 2000 to 2011.

I was recently contacted by the editors of McSweeney’s, who informed me that they had not forgotten I exist. In fact, they invited me to write another installment of my column Kevin Dolgin Tells You About Places You Should Go in Europe as part of their twenty-fifth anniversary festivities.