The recent visit to China by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken seemed promising, until we learned what he really had in mind: a long war with no finish line. This was not how the Australian media reported what happened during more than seven hours which Blinken spent with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Continue reading »
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Australia should do all it can to foster a long-term, peaceful resolution of the acute, multi-decade dispute spanning the Taiwan Strait. But Chey and Keating are unmistakeably correct on this issue: Australia should never become involved in any war over Taiwan. The former senior Australian diplomat, Jocelyn Chey, concluded a recent open letter to the Continue reading »
Before he left for a brief trip to Sydney, Indonesian President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo took a stab at reconciliation. It’s unlikely to succeed. It’s a truism of politics: Leaders whose time is up sometimes get an itch to tidy up wrongs unmentioned when pitching for power. The Indonesian Constitution restricts presidents to two five-year terms. Continue reading »
As the National Anti-Corruption Commission is opening for business, some ministers tend to believe that the mere fact of winning government gives them an unlimited licence to distribute public loot to their friends, constituents and major donors. The silence and complicity of senior public servants in response to such misgovernment is one of the great Continue reading »
Last week, English cricket was hit by a bombshell in the form of a report entitled ‘Holding Up a Mirror to Cricket’. Commissioned by the England and Wales Cricket Board, the report by the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) found that the game in the land of its origin was riven by racism, Continue reading »
‘Weaponise’ is the word de jour in America. Aside from the crude partisan employment of the term by Trump and other American politicians, it has subtly found its way into mainstream publications. Such loaded terms corrupt analysis by imposing implicit judgements that obviate the need for serious thought. Once condemned for weaponising, it cannot then Continue reading »
I should hope so The Wall St Journal reports: Special counsel Jack Smith’s team in recent weeks has taken a growing interest in the role of lawyers and other figures involved in legal efforts aimed at reversing Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, people familiar with the matter said. Prosecutors from Smith’s team have issued subpoenas and asked questions centered on several key figures in those postelection efforts, including Sidney Powell, a pro-Trump lawyer who spread baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. The subpoenas have also requested communications with Emily Newman, a lawyer who worked with Powell, and Mike Roman, a Republican operative who headed Election Day operations for the Trump campaign and dispatched lawyers to swing states before November 2020. Federal prosecutors also recently interviewed Rudy Giuliani, who served as Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, for roughly eight hours on topics including Powell, people familiar with the testimony said. They were interested, among other things, in a December 2020 meeting in the Oval Office, during which Powell pitched a plan to have the U.S.
When I wrote about Vilém Flusser earlier, some commenters here at Crooked Timber weren’t happy: why am I spouting off about this obscure Czech-Brazilian media theorist? At first I despaired at the lack of intellectual curiosity, but then I realized that they were right: Vilém Flusser isn’t famous enough to write about, given the inexorable […]
Nobody likes him Former president Donald Trump held his first big rally over the weekend in a little town called Pickens, South Carolina. Reports of the crowd size vary, with Trump claiming 75,000 which is absurd, but it was a large and very enthusiastic crowd. He gave his usual spiel, whining “I am being indicted for you” and he once again delivered his creepy new mission statement, declaring that this 2024 election is the “Final Battle” against the “Communists,,” “globalists” “warmongers” and the “sick people” and “degenerates” who “hate our country.” It was the usual cheery, positive vision of the future we’ve come to expect from him and it was especially uplifting on the 4th of July weekend. It makes you proud to be an American. He was very well received which isn’t surprising since the district went for him in big numbers in both 2016 and 2020. The weather was very hot but they were ready to party: Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared as well, and was her usual ray of sunshine as well.
Dear Fellow Signers of the Declaration of Independence:
Now that our noble document is complete, it is time to address the elephant in the room: my name is much bigger than everyone else’s. I’ll be the first to admit that it is absolutely massive. Yet I must also speak this self-evident truth: it is not entirely my fault.
The fact is I thought we were all doing big signatures. That’s what I was told. Do none of you remember Thomas Jefferson—hopped up on parchment fumes and cheap barleywine—running around telling everyone our “sigs” had to be “freakin’ huge”? Then I go first, and everybody bursts out laughing like I did something foolish.
I hereby call on my brethren of the Second Continental Congress—those who I know to be defenders of liberty, progress, and the values of the Enlightenment, to which we are all fan-boyishly devoted for some reason—to publicly stand up and say everybody told John Hancock we were doing big sigs.
In 2012, as the health service was being subjected to another round of disastrous reform, a think tank was founded which aimed to push back against this effort ‘to dismantle many of the founding principles of the NHS’. In the years since, the Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI) has become one of […]
The levels of overload on the NHS and the increased mortality of patients and health workers experienced during the peak moments of the pandemic offered an uncannily familiar experience to those of us who grew up with classic BBC sci-fi series such as The Day of the Triffids (1981) or Survivors (1975–7, 2008–9). In my […]
The National Health Service (NHS) and many public healthcare systems around the world are in a state of crisis. For years they’ve been allowed to deteriorate — for long enough, in fact, that plenty of powerful forces now see an opportunity to pursue profitable reforms. When people think of private healthcare, their minds naturally turn to […]
Our National Health Service (NHS) is in trouble. Over 7 million people in England are languishing on waiting lists. Cancer patients are experiencing delays to diagnosis and treatment. UK outcomes are well behind those in other comparable countries. And when emergency strikes, ambulances are struggling to get to people in time to save their life. […]
One of Labour’s most powerful campaigning weapons has been the question aimed at the Tories: is the NHS safe in Tory hands? But, as the electorate looks like putting Keir Starmer into No. 10, is it time to ask that question of Labour itself? Starmer and his Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s embrace of the […]
When the NHS was founded after the Second World War, the country was in approximately £27 billion worth of debt. The Labour Party had been voted into power by a working class that was determined not to be poor anymore. The NHS and other social welfare reforms were demands that were conceded under widespread popular […]
I was the consultant on call and had an enthusiastic medical student with me when I first met George in an ambulance that had been parked outside A&E for ten hours. He had mild dementia and had developed severe chest pain at 2 PM the night before. His wife had desperately called for an ambulance. […]
In the summer of 2022, the largest strike wave in three decades swept the UK. Public services, battered and bruised by over a decade of austerity, were on their knees — and those staffing them were on the brink too. From the beginning, NHS workers were at the forefront, with first cleaners and porters, and then […]
Over the course of a forty-year career, Michael Marmot has changed how the public, politicians, and academics think about health. The professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London (UCL) and director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity has led research that challenges the orthodox view that lifestyle choices predominantly determine good […]
In the UK today, it’s hard to avoid the sense that everything is falling apart. Rents and bills are soaring, real wages are falling, and public services are crumbling. Homelessness and violent crime are on the rise, while public spaces are falling into disrepair. And all of this is taking place in the context of […]
This summer marks the seventy- fifth anniversary of the NHS. Fittingly, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his ministers have celebrated the occasion by proposing new legislation to compel more NHS organisations to increase the numbers of NHS-funded patients sent to private hospitals. Private hospitals have been getting much less NHS money than was expected when […]
Michael Rosen is one of Britain’s most beloved public figures. A writer and poet, his We’re Going on a Bear Hunt is a fixture of childhood for millions. He also served as Children’s Laureate from 2007 to 2009 and has, for decades, been an outspoken socialist. But in recent years, he has also become one […]