Reading

Created
Thu, 12/10/2023 - 04:54
PM Albanese supports indigenous Australians but not indigenous Palestinians, whose land has also been stolen from them. Why? Albanese claims that the recent Hamas attack is “a dreadful circumstance that people didn’t see coming”, a damning admission of his ignorance about the genesis and history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Anyone who didn’t see this coming Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 12/10/2023 - 04:53
A tonic for readers who are drowning in news about China, climate change and socioeconomic problems, but who are starved of alternative and critical perspectives. Boldly refusing to follow the pack mentality of the mainstream media, and not afraid to reject the Cold War mindset, Pearls and Irritations is essential reading for those who want Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 12/10/2023 - 04:50
One of the most important developments in economics is something in which economists had no hand: the identification of the environmental limits which humans, busily producing and consuming, cross at their peril. Earth has existed for about 4 billion years and humans have lived on Earth for about 200,000 years. For almost all of that Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 12/10/2023 - 04:30
The congressman who was seen cursing out Capitol pages had another outburst It’s hard to know if this person is mentally unstable or if he’s just another infantile Republican trying to get attention: Democrats are furious at GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden for a curse-laden outburst that interrupted a White House briefing on the Israel terrorist attack. Multiple attendees described Van Orden (R-Wis.) as acting belligerent towards the Biden administration briefers when he asked questions. Several people said Van Orden cursed directly at the briefers, prompting loud boos in the room. One person in the room said Van Orden shouted that the briefers’ presentation was “pathetic.” Another attendee described it as “offensive and inappropriate.” One member, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), shouted “shame on you” in response to Van Orden’s verbal affront — prompting Van Orden to drop an f-bomb toward the Minnesota Democrat, who is Jewish. “He was rude and attacked the presenters. I thought they had very substantive things to say.
Created
Thu, 12/10/2023 - 04:00

As a British woman in the Edwardian era, I have to admit that at times I’ve been swept up in fantasies of Gilded Age splendor. Perhaps it was the allure of evening gowns and perfumed parlors that led me to Henry Higgins’s door for speech classes. It was certainly what made me stay.

But tonight, choked to the gills in Parisian satins, I can’t help but wonder whether I’ve made a huge mistake.

Just a few hours ago, after telling Higgins quite plainly he would “not be seeing me again,” I changed my mind and returned to his home anyway—so seductive was the offer of social and financial security. And yet, despite all we’ve been through, instead of greeting me with any hint of delight, the man just slumped into his chair and said, “Eliza, where the devil are my slippers?” He didn’t even look at me.

I feel like the last person in the world to realize this, but I should have chosen Freddy.

My reasons are myriad. Freddy:

Created
Thu, 12/10/2023 - 03:00
And it doesn’t look as if they are getting any closer to pulling themselves together As the whole world watches the events unfolding in Israel in slack jawed horror, I think most people are vastly relieved that the person who won the 2022 American presidential election was not Donald Trump. As Israel’s most powerful ally, President Joe Biden has been a steady hand at the wheel trying to ensure that the war doesn’t spread beyond Israel’s borders and reassuring everyone that the US is not going off the rails despite its ongoing political turmoil. You can’t say the same for the putative Republican nominee for president in 2024, Donald Trump whose only contribution to the discourse has been to repeatedly assert on his Truth Social feed that this never would have happened if he were still president and proclaim “I KEPT ISRAEL SAFE!
Created
Thu, 12/10/2023 - 01:30
With any luck, this one won’t fly This was not unexpected. When North Carolina Republicans are not creating secret police forces, they are conjuring new ways to make it harder for non-Republicans to vote. They’re creative that way. So when they passed SB 747 and their supremajorities (thanks, Tricia Cotham!) overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto, I expected state Democrats and Marc Elias to jump right on that. I warned the GOP, I don’t bluff. Now, we will win.https://t.co/Q2dWScgaMu https://t.co/y4bS5I3INB — Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) October 11, 2023 Democracy Docket provides the outlines: On Tuesday, Oct. 10, Voto Latino, the Watauga County Voting Rights Task Force, Down Home North Carolina and two individual voters filed a federal lawsuit challenging part of North Carolina’s newly enacted voter suppression law, Senate Bill 747.  The new lawsuit ensued just minutes after the Republican-controlled North Carolina Legislature overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D) veto of S.B. 747. The lawsuit specifically challenges S.B.
Created
Thu, 12/10/2023 - 00:15

[ The below is a personal statement that I make on my own behalf. While my statement's release coincides with a release of an unrelated statement on similar topics made by my employer, Software Freedom Conservancy, and the Free Software Foundation Europe, please keep in mind that this statement is my own, personal opinion — written exclusively by me — and not necessarily the opinion of either of those organizations. I did not consult nor coordinate with either organization on this statement. ]

Created
Thu, 12/10/2023 - 00:09
“We are heading for a wider war” We who watched Iraq invade Kuwait in 1990 and the Trade Towers fall in 2001 have seen war fever take hold. The fever is not just a product of justified outrage nor of the “fog” of sketchy information, but also of active propaganda. Google: Nayirah and Office of Special Plans. Approach with caution. Here is CNN’s tumbnail sketch of where things stand this morning: At least 1,200 people were killed in Israel in Hamas’ October 7 onslaught when armed militants poured over the border into Israel, raiding homes, rampaging through communities and taking as many as 150 hostages back to Gaza. In retaliation for the atrocities, Israeli jets have been pounding Gaza — the densely inhabited coastal strip that Hamas controls — with hundreds of airstrikes, reducing neighborhoods to rubble. Officials say a “complete siege” has trapped residents, cutting them off from food, electricity and resources. Many survivors are in critical condition and struggling with an overwhelming emotional toll as a humanitarian crisis swiftly unfolds in the region.
Created
Thu, 12/10/2023 - 00:00

The first thing one notices when one reads a Jesse Nathan poem is: one’s body humming along to the music of his words.

How does such a thing work?

It’s the sound patterns—rhyme, inner rhyme, alliteration, assonance—yes, but it’s also how the poet uses the sound patterns on the line-by-line level, and as connective tissue between different poems, and finally, between different sections of the book. So the meaning lives in the music here, on both the micro and macro level, as the sound plays a live role in Nathan’s explorations of memory, his various investigations into ecology, into poetics of place, into history.

Which is to say, Eggtooth is not an ordinary debut but something quite different.

Created
Wed, 11/10/2023 - 23:00

Oh man, good for me. Look at me! I am listening to jazz.

Here I am, just taking in the moment. Fully present. Just me and the music.

Yup yup yup yup yup. Completely immersed. Thinking about nothing else.

The rhythm. The musicality. The syncopation.

Is that the right word? “Syncopation”? That’s a jazz thing?

Sync-o-pate sync-o-pate sync-o-pate.

One thing’s for sure: I am not on my phone right now.

I don’t even know how many minutes it’s been since I looked at my phone.

Because I am too busy listening to this song.

Is it a song?

Does it have to have words to be a song?

Maybe it’s a piece?

That’d be kinda pretentious. This isn’t a museum.

I mean it’s “ART.” No one is saying this isn’t art.

But it’s not Van Gogh. You can’t listen to a Van Gogh.

Is that insensitive? He cut off one ear. But he still had another one.

Oh, you know what? I bet they call it a “tune.”

Man, jazz guys are so cool.

That bass player is rockin’ that flat cap.

I don’t think I could pull that off.

Maybe if I carried a bass with me people would buy it.