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JV Last at the Bulwark points to a column by Noah Smith, a centrist (ish) economist who just can’t find a good reason to say that the Biden economy is terrible: [H]ere’s economist Noah Smith struggling not to praise Biden—and failing—in a post titled: “If this is a bad economy, please tell me what a good economy would look like.” Here’s Noah again: Smith goes on to give detailed explanations of the employment, inflation, and real income indicators—go read the whole thing—before trying to put Biden’s accomplishment in perspective: While we’re all doing back flips to account for the public’s unrelenting negativity (*cough* the media *cough*) the numbers don’t lie.
My fear is not that AUKUS SSNs, if they arrive, will be late, ineffective, and obsolete. My fear is that they will arrive and will be effective and even lethal. Because, if that is the case, they will play a part in the drive to a potentially devastating war with China that would be a Continue reading »
Indonesia looks poised for an economic boom that can spur its quest for a higher international political profile. Many scholars, politicians, and corporate figures in Indonesia believe the nation has the attributes to become more than the regional power it is now. Many Indonesians view Southeast Asia comprising the ten member countries in the Association Continue reading »
The Government’s draft Strategy on Health and Climate Change is vital to cope with the expected increase in deaths and illness from accelerating climate change. It fails in many respects and should be rewritten to reflect the views of medical experts. Surely it is now obvious that climate change is the fast train to world Continue reading »
There may be an upside to the Ben Roberts-Smith case. Not for the family of Ali Jan or the people of Afghanistan. Not particularly for Roberts-Smith and the men of the SAS, past and present, or their commanders, only some of whom deserve an upside. No, an upside for the rest of us, Australians all. Continue reading »
If Palestinian leaders can’t sort out their differences and unite now, when Palestine is at the precipice of disaster, then when? The title of this article is borrowed from an inspiring and hopeful peace movement amongst young Jews in the United States of America who, after witnessing the brutality of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine Continue reading »
As the war drags on, delusions mount, with no end, or victory, in sight. Let’s take a look at recent events in the Ukraine war from the point of view of those in the American intelligence community who don’t feel they have the ear of President Joe Biden but should. On July 17 Ukraine attacked Continue reading »
On July 28, The Washington Post reported that, bowing to pressure from China hawks in Congress, US President Joe Biden will bar Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu from attending the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which the US will host in San Francisco in November. In response, Mao Ning, the Continue reading »
“It would be great to see a fresh crook in there,” one poll respondent said.
What I’m finding as I lose my sight.
The post Blindness Is a Strange Country appeared first on Nautilus.
Trump’s own words are being used against him. Again. We’ve mostly forgotten about the Manhattan hush money case but it’s chugging along. Here’s the latest: The Manhattan district attorney seeking to jail Donald Trump over his hush money payment to a porn star is seeking to potentially weaponize the same piece of damning evidence that nailed the former president at his rape trial: the deposition where he said stars like him get away with sexual harassment “unfortunately—or fortunately.” It’s now up to a federal judge to decide whether those prosecutors can get a video that shows Trump at his worst: unapologetic about sexual assault, uttering misogynistic comments, and willing to lie to the American public to save his own skin. It’s a testament to the breadth of Trump’s legal problems that we’re witnessing the collision of two totally separate cases: a civil defamation case about rape and a criminal case about a cover-up. And it all comes down to a closed-door question-and-answer session Trump had on Oct. 19, 2022.
The FBI’s secret infiltration of the 2020 protest movement, first revealed by The Intercept and the podcast series “Alphabet Boys,” is being challenged for chilling free speech.
The post Lawsuit Targets FBI Probe of Racial Justice Activists appeared first on The Intercept.
The FBI’s secret infiltration of the 2020 protest movement, first revealed by The Intercept and the podcast series “Alphabet Boys,” is being challenged for chilling free speech.
The post Lawsuit Targets FBI Probe of Racial Justice Activists appeared first on The Intercept.
Gather round, men, for tonight I shall finish my mission of vengeance against this cruel machine that mocks my attempts to understand the ways of the Almighty! My life’s goal is finally within my grasp, and soon I shall snare that SpongeBob SquarePants plush toy and spite the malignant force that prevents me from being fulfilled in life! I merely need a bit more time. And more quarters.
This is not an obsession, for obsession implies a lack of reason. This is a quest to assert man’s dominance over the mechanized world! I have been studying this game for what feels like a lifetime, learning its ways. The feel of the joystick. The proper amount of pressure to exert. This claw is now an extension of both my hand and my will to succeed. And once I capture my prey, it will justify the hours of my life and the hundreds of dollars in quarters I have spent on this game. All my means are sane. My motive and object mad.
Last year, a study from the End Child Poverty Coalition found that nearly half the children in Luton were growing up in poverty. For too long, economic policy has been detached from the lived reality of working-class people in places like Luton. Like many former industrial towns, our town has been left battered and bruised […]
The LA Times’ Jonah Goldberg discusses the idea that Republicans are hooked on victimization, believing that they are under siege by powerful forces that are destroying their way of life: Among his core supporters, about 37% of the party according to a breakdown of the poll by the New York Times’ Nate Cohn, literally nobody thinks he committed any crimes and 94% think the party needs to rally around him against these presumably bogus charges. […] If the Republican establishment forces were as powerful as Trump and his voters think, they’d be able to do something about it. If the Deep State were half as formidable as they think, Trump would never have been president in the first place. But large segments of the GOP suffer from the delusion that they are victims of the ruling classes and that the woke left is running everything — or will — if Trump doesn’t stop them. Even in states with Republican governors and legislative supermajorities, like Tennessee, a certain paranoia that the left could take over at any moment dominates politics.
Bankruptcy, fistfights and leather couches Rachel Maddow’s staff noticed a sprawling story that while not exactly headline news ought to be. (I’d missed it until her show Monday night.) Multiple state Republican parties are at or near bankruptcy. The headline for Jim Geraghty’s National Review column last week dubbed it a “quiet collapse” in four key states. Political donations follow power. Especially in the states. Especially in non-general election years. So it is not surprising that in four states with Democratic governors that state Republicans are not seeing their coffers as full as when the GOP holds the governor’s mansion. What Geraghty sees in that less is something more. In Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota Republicans are “going broke and devolving into infighting little fiefdoms.” Arizona Republicans are down to their last $23,000 in their federal account while their failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake barnstorms the country as “real” governor in exile. She could be raising money to help her fellow Arizona Republicans, but no.
As regular readers know my judgment is that we are now into civilization collapse. It’s slow right now, and it will be stop and start, but it will continue and pick up speed over time.
That means that you should be preparing for collapse to get worse, including climate change and ecological collapse.
Civilizations rise and fall, that’s normal, and ecological collapse commonly happens at the same time, but what’s unusual right now is that we have a world system which is global, and thus is collapsing all at once, and we have a global ecological collapse.
So it’s going to be bad. Very bad.
Still, there are things to be done.
A government ad campaign poured cash into national newspapers during the pandemic. Byline Times is one of a number of signatories to a submission on the scheme to the COVID Inquiry
There can be little question that the grim prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which still shows no sign of closing anytime soon, is a key legacy — in the worst sense imaginable — of America’s post-9/11 forever wars. I’ve been covering the subject for decades now and that shameful legacy has never diminished. Last month, in response to a column I wrote for TomDispatch — one of dozens, I’m sad to say, that I’ve done on Guantánamo over these endless years — I received a surprise email: an invitation to attend a meeting at the British Parliament. A group known as the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Closing the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility, formed this April, was gathering for the... Read more
To all who celebrate
The current spate of industrial action is the symptom of a deeper malaise revealed by the pandemic: a Government apathetic to the plight of teachers