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Created
Fri, 19/05/2023 - 00:52

The Grayzone has obtained video recordings of well-connected figures within Moldova’s political and business community openly testifying to rank corruption within the country’s government and economy, while outlining schemes to enrich Western investors for an appropriate fee. The invasion of Ukraine placed the tiny country of Moldova on the immediate periphery of a conflict with global significance. Bordering Ukraine, counting hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians as citizens, and home to the breakaway region of Transnistria, Moldova’s doggedly pro-Western government […]

The post Leaked recordings expose shocking state corruption in ‘US governed’ Moldova appeared first on The Grayzone.

Created
Fri, 19/05/2023 - 00:30
Of brown shirts and Charles Bronsons Charlie Sykes writes at The Bulwark, “A few months ago, in a particularly dark mood, I wrote a column suggesting that cruelty was no longer the point in MAGA World…. Trump has already pivoted to brutality, and there is nothing subtle about it.” “As it turns out, I may have understated the case,” Sykes quips: They are not alone, you are not surprised to know. Stephen Crowder of “Louder with Crowder” weighed in on the killing of homeless Jordan Neely on a New York Subway, declaring, “The second that you are engaging in an activity where someone else is forced to make a decision to save their life or a life of their loved one, completely, by the way, not of their own volition, you’ve put them in that scenario, you forfeit your right to live.” In essence: When in doubt, take them out. Trump, Nikki Haley, and Ron DeSantis have all rushed to celebrate Daniel Perry, the man charged with killing Jordan Neely. But DeSantis raised the ante, by calling him a “Good Samaritan,” and raising money for his defense.
Created
Fri, 19/05/2023 - 00:00
Many white Southerners adopted their own equation of the era of the civil rights movement with Reconstruction, warning that federal civil rights legislation violated local freedom. Despite the courage of the mass protesters, Black political rights still depended on federal enforcement. And the more the national government intervened, the more whites associated it with a loss of freedom.
Created
Fri, 19/05/2023 - 00:00
History was expunged from the national school curriculum more than a decade ago because, it was claimed, there was no interest in it. Evidently, the political establishment continues to fear that knowledge of their history might further empower young people, who are more interested in good governance than in the ethnic politics of elderly men reluctant to concede power.
Created
Fri, 19/05/2023 - 00:00
Lucian Freud’s etched portraits look at first like mangled bits of realism but are in fact stealthy works of cubism: many selves, many facets, many moments in one. They display two kinds of time: the time it took to make the work, and the person the portrait anticipates as a result of that long observation. 
Created
Fri, 19/05/2023 - 00:00
The British and American right differ in the weight they place on ideological purity. With a limited cast of characters – and an even smaller pool of funders – British conservatives can ill afford to divide their world into neoliberals and traditionalists. At NatCon London, the tirades about woke universities and pronouns often obscured political differences, but they can’t conceal them completely. 
Created
Fri, 19/05/2023 - 00:00
 ‘Michael’ (Bradley) and ‘Field’ (Cooper) were distraught to be revealed as two people and, more specifically, as two women: ‘the report of lady-authorship,’ Bradley wrote, ‘will dwarf & enfeeble our work at every turn . . . And we have many things to say the world will not tolerate from a woman’s lips.’ But what did they want to say?
Created
Fri, 19/05/2023 - 00:00
The story South Korea likes to tell about itself is ‘The Miracle on the Han River’, in which a country rises from the ashes of war and dictatorship to become a stylish economic success story. The story of hallyu fits with the nation-building narrative, but the reality of Korean culture’s international popularity is more complicated.
Created
Fri, 19/05/2023 - 00:00
Derek Parfit’s approach isn’t designed to get us to appreciate the mysterious, awe-inspiring significance of procreation and death in human life; it is simply the springboard for a new puzzle in moral theory-building. For it places intolerable pressure on what might seem like an uncontroversial moral principle: that if something is wrong, it must harm some particular person or group of persons.
Created
Thu, 18/05/2023 - 23:29
by Gregory M. Mikkelson

In late summer of 2001 I moved from the USA to Canada, where my rose-colored glasses paradoxically made the grass look even greener. While President Bush had just reneged on the Kyoto Protocol, Prime Minister Chrétien stood by it, having been one of the first to sign. Two years later Chrétien withstood the pressure to join Bush’s disastrous war against Iraq.