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Sun, 13/08/2023 - 00:30
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried ordered to jail Does this make your day? Daily Beast: The luck ran out for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on Friday, when a New York judge ordered that he be confined to jail in advance of his October trial. The former billionaire had repeatedly angered both prosecutors and the court while out on bail following his arrest in December. Most recently, he leaked documents to The New York Times about his former lover Caroline Ellison, who once ran Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund and is likely to be a witness in his trial. Prosecutors framed the leaks as a possible attempt at witness tampering, both by intimidating Ellison and influencing public perception of her in the media. An assistant U.S. attorney argued in court last month that there was “no set of conditions short of detention to ensure the safety of the community.” Judge Lewis Kaplan agreed that defendant Bankman-Fried has a right to try and repair his reputation. “But I find that there is a practical possibility [leaking documents] was intended to have [witnesses] back off.” Who else wants to play chicken with the courts?
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Sat, 12/08/2023 - 23:45
. In den 1980er Jahren hatte die deutsche Rocklegende Udo Lindenberg eine große Anhängerschaft hinter dem Eisernen Vorhang. Besuche zeigten ihm, dass die Menschen in Ostdeutschland im Grunde genommen genauso waren wie im Westen. Er begann Erich Honecker zu bitten, ihm zu erlauben, durch das Land zu touren. Im Sonderzug nach Pankow stellt sich Udo […]
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Sat, 12/08/2023 - 23:00
Plenty needs fixing As Greg Sargent tells it: Young people have delivered unmistakable political surprises lately. They have proved decidedly progressive on many big issues. They voted at outsize rates in the last three national elections. They are fueling population growth in swing-state college towns, making Republicans nervously rethink their strategy. Now, if a group of Gen Z political operatives has its way, young people might surprise us in another fashion: by getting involved in those sleepy, unglamorous, decidedly uncool contests known as state legislative races. This week, David Hogg, the 23-year-old gun-control activist driven into politics by the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., launched a political action committee called Leaders We Deserve, which is devoted to recruiting young candidates for state legislative seats — largely in red states. “That’s where the worst bills are coming from,” Hogg says. I’m forever telling friends less engaged in day-to-day organizing to stop obsessing over the presidential race.
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Sat, 12/08/2023 - 20:33
I was recently in Stansted Airport, queueing in a low-ceilinged, quasi-temporary structure to enter the departure area for a Ryanair flight. There were two queues; the ‘priority queue’ which passengers had paid extra to join, and the ordinary one, but just one airport employee covering both, toggling stressfully between two irritated groups. Each time she […]
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Sat, 12/08/2023 - 19:57

Today, Luton Town F.C. returns to top-flight football after a thirty-one-year stint in the wilderness that threatened the club’s existence. Luton is a remarkable place. An energetic, working-class town which owes its social and ethnic diversity, as well as its legacy of industry, to massive growth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With proud […]

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Sat, 12/08/2023 - 19:45
Most visitors to Argentina are attracted by its famous meat and wine. Personally, I come for the Freudianism and Marxism. I grew up in north west London in a family of socialists and psychoanalysts, acutely aware of the contempt with which most of Great Britain held both of those vocations in the late 1980s. So […]
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Sat, 12/08/2023 - 08:00
He’s just not manly enough for the MAGA cult An evangelical leader is warning that conservative Christians are now rejecting the teachings of Jesus as “liberal talking points.” Russell Moore, former top official for the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) who is now the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, said during an interview aired on NPR’s All Things Considered this week that Christianity is in a “crisis” due to the current state of right-wing politics. Moore has found himself at odds with other evangelical leaders due to his frequent criticism of former President Donald Trump. He resigned his position with the SBC in 2021 following friction over his views on Trump and a sex abuse crisis among Southern Baptist clergy. In his NPR interview, Moore suggested that Trump had transformed the political landscape in the U.S. to the point where some Christian conservatives are openly denouncing a central doctrine of their religion as being too “weak” and “liberal” for their liking.
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Sat, 12/08/2023 - 06:30
That’s what they call “Iowa nice.” More Iowa nice: A man in a Boston Red Sox hat in Iowa caused quite an uproar at Mike Pence’s event today, which was captured by local journalists with Iowa Starting Line. “Why did you commit treason on J6 and not certify President Trump’s win?” A Pence supporter (yes, they exist), stood up and fired back at the man, “That’s it buddy. Shut your mouth!”
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Sat, 12/08/2023 - 05:00
Republican: “The election was stolen.” Democrat: “That’s a lie!” Democrat: “Trump tried to steal the election after he lost.” Republican:”That’s a lie!” Republican: Democrat: “You’re lying, he didn’t do any of that!” Average American who doesn’t follow politics: “They’re all a bunch of crooks and liars.” This is a huge problem. The Republican lies are overwhelming at this point and people are probably making the calculation that they are telling the truth at least half the time.
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Sat, 12/08/2023 - 04:58
We are under constant bombardment. Hardly a day goes by without some news of a military nature. If it is not about sending more equipment to prolong the war in Ukraine, it is about Australian minerals being domesticated to serve Americas military interests. It may shift to the Talisman Sabre Exercises, with the expectation that Continue reading »
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Sat, 12/08/2023 - 04:56
It has been overlooked during Garma festival that, under current policies, global warming would render aboriginal lands in central and northern Australia unliveable and the top-end a nuclear target… In his classic book The Fate of the Earth speaking for humanity Jonathan Schell describes the horror of a full-scale nuclear holocaust where human beings and Continue reading »
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Sat, 12/08/2023 - 04:56
In Asian media this week: Urban poor the worst climate victims. Plus: Pakistan goes to the polls, without Imran Khan; China blocks Philippine ships near Spratly shoal; Alliance changing Asia-Pacific peace and stability; International currency changes on BRICS agenda; Barbenheimer memes not harmless fun. Climate change – its differing and devastating effects and concerns about Continue reading »
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Sat, 12/08/2023 - 04:55
Dutton may be leading the Liberal Party to a pyrrhic victory; Our future manufacturing sector – dispel Holdens and Bonds underwear from your mind; and how the “small government” idea is stifling the nation. Read on for our Weekly Roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues Continue reading »