Reading

Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 06:42

Nothing in the Gay Hussar’s long life was quite like the leaving of it. There we were, the bedraggled survivors of many a long lunch/dinner/afternoon under the table, some of us from the departing rear guard unit, the ‘Goulash Co-operative’, set up to save the famous restaurant from closure or, worse, being turned into some […]

Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 06:42

In All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present, the sociologist Stephen Mennell disseminated the determination of good taste. Describing the opacity by which culinary class is arrived at, from established tourist manuals to Michelin guides, Mennell describes how judgements are created without engagement or […]

Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 06:42

It’s far better to show up at a picket line with cake than a newspaper to sell. Donations of food and drink are usually welcome gestures of solidarity during an industrial dispute; in drawn-out struggles, they become essential. Feeding a strike is often unspectacular, hidden work, which deserves greater recognition. It’s not all tales of […]

Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 06:42

One afternoon in April 2022, Josh Saltzman, the owner of a sports bar in Washington DC, opened his inbox to find what looked like a french fry price-fixing conspiracy. Saltzman had received a notice from his bar’s food distributor that effective 4 April, the four major suppliers of frozen potato products, which sell products like […]

Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 06:41

Faint murmurings of renewal are stirring the still reservoirs of hope on Labour’s fragmented left. Talk of a new party is spreading — again. The mood — let’s stay realistic — is evident in discrete sectors of the party membership, among disenchanted MPs, in the diaspora of expelled or disaffected members, and in several Labour movement grouplets, at […]

Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 06:41

‘I suppose it’s better the devil you know,’ says Michael,* a food production worker from Spalding, Lincolnshire. He has worked for the food manufacturing company Bakkavor, which has been providing fresh food products to supermarkets like Tesco, M&S, Sainsbury’s, and Waitrose for around two and a half decades. ‘We used to get double time or […]

Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 06:41

Bad news for coffee lovers: you’re going to be paying more for your morning brew in 2025. Brazil and Vietnam are the world’s largest coffee producers, and both are forecasting lower production volumes this year. Brazil, which is the world’s largest producer of Arabica coffee, experienced the worst drought in seventy years in 2024. Drier […]

Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 05:30
Because they are evil, we must stand up to them. But because that are also stupid, we needn’t be afraid to. Dan Pfeiffer has some ideas about that. This is one of them: Here’s a useful heuristic for Democrats — if something makes Trump more popular, don’t do it. Confirming Trump’s nominees with substantial bipartisan majorities could make Trump more popular. Allowing him to sign a border security bill that Democrats only supported because they didn’t want to seem soft on the border (in an election that takes place in November of 2026?)seems like a bad idea. It’s not hard. Trump should be at the apex of his popularity and he is substantially less popular than any newly elected President in history. Here’s one way to think about making Trump and the Republicans less popular: Donald Trump and the Republicans control all three branches of government. They are the only ones with the power to solve pressing problems or address people’s needs. Trump declared that he can fix everything and that America is in a “Golden Age.” He is responsible for all outcomes. Trump will take credit for anything good.
Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 05:25

MintPress News’ investigations uncovering networks of former Israeli spies and lobbyists working in America’s newsrooms have gone viral, triggering a hit piece on us in the Israel state funded The Jerusalem Post. This is our response.

The post Jerusalem Post Targets MintPress After Exposé on Israeli Spies in US Media appeared first on MintPress News.

Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 05:00

The Great Gatsby,
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they bought regular kibble, even when specifically asked to get hairball control, and then retreated into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess that Mr. Fancybiscuits had made. When confronted, they only said, “Isn’t this why we have servants?”

- - -

Macbeth
by William Shakespeare

LADY MACBETH
Out, damned spot, out, I say! All the
Perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this
Carpet. T’was I cleaned up the last one. Methinks
I shall feign walking in my sleep—to bed,
To bed! Yet who would have thought Graymalkin
to have had so much puke in him?

Enter Macbeth

MACBETH
This is a sorry sight.

LADY MACBETH
Can’t hear you—sleepwalking.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 04:58
The deliberate extermination of a large population group or nation, aiming to eradicate their future, is genocide. According to the International Court of Justice, Israel’s war amounted to genocide resulting in the deaths of 48,156 Palestinians including 17,841 children. Both major parties have supported Israel’s war and the supply of intelligence and arms. It’s time Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 04:57
This week’s big China threat story is DeepSeek, an Open-Source AI (artificial intelligence) platform that the alarmists are signalling is further proof China is stealing our personal data. Those shouting loudest are the right-wing free marketeers but what are we to make of Wall Street greeting the rise of DeepSeek by wiping $1 trillion off Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 04:56
Last Tuesday night (2 am AEDT – 10 am US EST), the Doomsday Clock yet again moved its hands closer than ever towards midnight. ‘Midnight’ in this context means an event sequence that would destroy what we call ‘civilisation’, and probably involve the deaths of all or most humans as well as cataclysmic impacts on Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 04:55
The letter below was sent to Prime Minister Albanese on 24 January 2025. In it, I refer to the abduction of Professor Rasha Al-Ali from the University of Homs. Reports indicate that Dr Al-Ali’s body has been found and that – either before or after her murder – her fingers were cut off. Her abduction Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 04:54
Towards the end of his book, after referring to the NACC initial decision not to investigate alleged misbehaviour and to the completion of the APSC’s code of conduct investigation, Rick Morton states: ‘a large group of the senior management of the Australian Public Service … would like that to be the end of things, as Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 04:53
On 10 September 2024 federal aviation minister Catherine King gave Melbourne Airport the go-ahead to build a third runway. Eighteen months earlier, on 10 February 2023, Melbourne Airport’s owner, Australia Pacific Airports Melbourne (APAM) submitted its draft Third Runway Major Development Plan to the Minister, for her approval.  The federal Airports Act specifies what APAM Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 04:52
Donald Trump and the MAGA gang point to the ‘massive mandate’ he obtained to justify any policy he may implement. There is, of course, a lot of debate about so-called mandates which seem to be less about some enduring principle and more about a flexible justification for what you want to do. Looking at the Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 31/01/2025 - 04:51
Yu-Book Lim used to head a Singapore think tank and was Executive Chairman of IMC Plantations before that. He has just published an extended, thought-provoking essay: “Xi Jinping’s “Once-in-a-Century Upheaval” Prophecy.  Towards the end of this article, Mr Lim confidently argues that: “The US will become a has-been like the UK, albeit still suffering from Continue reading »