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So, we’re watching The Bells of St. Mary’s for the fifth time—wholesome movie, so much more fun than hot jazz and lively bars—when some fella in the balcony starts hollering, “Hee-haw!” at me. “Is that man drunk, daddy?” whispers Zuzu, afraid. “No,” I sigh, sinking lower into my seat. “That’s just Sam Wainwright.”

George Bailey here. I love Sam Wainwright, I really do. But if he says, “Hee-haw!” one more time, I’m going to fucking kill him.

His speech at my father’s funeral? “Hee-haw.” My wedding toast? “Hee-haw.” His honeymoon night? “Hee-haw,” over and over again. I only know this because his fancy, fur-draped wife came crying to Mary and asked if that was normal. It is not normal.

So, we’re watching The Bells of St. Mary’s for the fifth time—wholesome movie, so much more fun than hot jazz and lively bars—when some fella in the balcony starts hollering, “Hee-haw!” at me. “Is that man drunk, daddy?” whispers Zuzu, afraid. “No,” I sigh, sinking lower into my seat. “That’s just Sam Wainwright.”

George Bailey here. I love Sam Wainwright, I really do. But if he says, “Hee-haw!” one more time, I’m going to fucking kill him.

His speech at my father’s funeral? “Hee-haw.” My wedding toast? “Hee-haw.” His honeymoon night? “Hee-haw,” over and over again. I only know this because his fancy, fur-draped wife came crying to Mary and asked if that was normal. It is not normal.

For most of the post-WW2 period, Washington’s strength rested on its ability to convince other nations that it was in their vital interests to see the United States prevail in its role as the global leader. Sometimes this was self-sabotaged by outbreaks of strident unilateralism, such as George W. Bush’s attack on Iraq in 2003. Continue reading »

R. David Harden, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama’s special envoy for Middle East peace, and Larry Garber, who served as the USAID mission director to the West Bank and Gaza have recently penned an article in the New York Times arguing that, to achieve peace and end the war on Gaza, ‘The Continue reading »

The Albanese Government’s economic management has been very competent, but unfortunately also marked by a lack of ambition in tackling the challenges facing Australia. Halfway through the Albanese Government’s first term in office and at the end of the calendar year it is timely to review the Government’s economic management. Fiscal policy The key economic Continue reading »

Is there is a tipping point in Gaza when genocide will be unstoppable? The answer is tied to how long massacres run amok, and how deeply torture saturates children’s minds and imaginations. Each day nations pontificate over a permanent ceasefire is a massacre-torture day in Gaza. Claims of genocide in Gaza are being stoked, globally. Continue reading »

Gareth Evans’ review of Australia’s strategic relationship with the United States (“Why Australia can’t rely on the US to save it from China,” 12 December) provides a timely wake-up call on the dangers of Australia sleepwalking into what would be a catastrophic conflict with China. As Evans says, “a cutting-edge issue … is whether the Continue reading »

The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal has adopted the findings of the inquiry of the Honorable Thomas Bathurst AC KC into the convictions of Ms Kathleen Folbigg. As a result, her five criminal convictions from 2003 have been quashed and she has been acquitted. Notably Bathurst found ‘that there is an identifiable cause of the Continue reading »

Back in mid-October, a controversy broke out about a blast on the grounds of the al-Ahli Arab (Baptist) Hospital in Gaza City. Some quarters blamed it on Israel, but the latter’s defenders took the stance that Israel wouldn’t hit a hospital. It appears that it probably didn’t on that occasion, and that the blast can Continue reading »

When Israeli president Isaac Herzog described the assault on Gaza as a war “to save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilization,” he wasn’t really lying. He was telling the truth — just maybe not quite in the way that he meant it. The demolition of Gaza is indeed being perpetrated in defense of western values, and Continue reading »

“The question at the core of the case is what control the U.S. government has over the American mind.”

The post Barring Speakers Under U.S. Sanctions Puts Ideas Off-Limits, Say Free Speech Advocates appeared first on The Intercept.

As Israel excels in massacring civilians and destroying Gaza’s infrastructure, its ground offensive against Hamas is becoming a quagmire.

The post Industrial Killing of Civilians in Gaza Won’t Defeat the Armed Insurgency appeared first on The Intercept.

Or will they help the GOP cut its losses and move on? Donald Trump came to America’s attention as a political actor back in 2011 when he became the self-appointed leading voice on the right insisting that President Barack Obama had been illegally elected president because he supposedly wasn’t born in the US. He made all the rounds of the news shows demanding that Obama produce his birth certificate even claiming that he sent people to Hawaii, Obama’s birthplace, telling the Today show audience “they cannot believe what they’re finding.” When Obama produced the birth certificate Trump claimed “an extremely reliable source” told him it was a forgery. This went on for years until Trump was elected president in 2016. And it was all a lie. Isn’t it so typically Trump that after all that it would be him who turned out to be disqualified from the presidential ballot? At least that’s what the Colorado Supreme Court ruled last night in a case that cites the 4th Amendment barring officers of the government from running if they’ve participated in an insurrection.

A trove of investigative files reveals that the Department of Justice almost never prosecutes grizzly bear killers under the powerful law.

The post Grizzly Bear Poachers Flout the Endangered Species Act — and Get Away With It appeared first on The Intercept.

‘Ideally controlled experiments’ tell us with certainty what causes what effects — but only given the right closures. Making appropriate extrapolations from (ideal, accidental, natural or quasi) experiments to different settings, populations or target systems, is not easy. ‘It works there’ is no evidence for ‘it will work here.’ Causes deduced in an experimental setting […]

Byline Times has been unravelling the dealings behind the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the UK since the very early days of the pandemic. Here’s what we learnt – and what we still need answers to...

Adam Barnett wonders why the Reform Party and its leader are treated as mainstream when they're not

Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill and journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous discuss the U.S. role in Israel’s scorched-earth campaign to annihilate Gaza.

The post Watch: A Conversation on the Horrors in Gaza With Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous appeared first on The Intercept.

Your right to vote: Use it or lose it Antidemocratic actions in Republican-led legislatures. Militias gearing up for a second civil war (and staging to go weapons-hot on Jan. 6). Donald Trump echoing the rhetoric of Hitler and Mussolini. An economy and an ecology that’s left younger Americans with grimmer prospects than their parents’. Is it any wonder many younger Americans lack enthusiasm for a gridlocked politics that has not served them well? Winston Churchill said (but did not originate the phrasing): Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.

Sunak had eight meetings with senior media executives over the Summer - compared to just one meeting with health professionals.