Reading

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) contacted The Grayzone to dispute our characterization of their organization as a CIA cutout. Listen to our highly revealing conversation with the NED’s communications director. On April 4, 2023, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Vice President of Communications and Public Engagement Leslie Aun contacted me, Alex Rubinstein, to request a phone conversation about an article I published at The Grayzone a day before. My report detailed the open justification of the terrorist bombing of […]

The post The Grayzone debates National Endowment for Democracy VP on group’s CIA ties appeared first on The Grayzone.

This is an excuse to show you a really good tunnel

And Mankind’s folly Ahead of the Memorial Day holiday, a book arrived unexpectedly from an old friend. John Nation writes about his exploration of WWI battlefields in France in “A Nomad in No Man’s Land.” It began with a simple road sign, Ligne du Front–“Front Line.” The Somme battlefield. Brian Klaas reflects today on his recent visit to Normandy cemeteries. “From the beginning, then, there was a tension” in memorials to the Confederate war dead, Klaas writes, “between paying respects to those who had died—the sons and fathers and brothers—and a debate over whether you could ever separate out the injustice of a war’s cause from those who fought in it. For some, the answer was absolutely not. After all, Confederate soldiers fought to keep others enslaved, one of the great stains on human history.” Above the WWII beaches in Normandy stand memorials to the “sheer scale of that human tragedy” that occurred there marked by row upon row of white marble headstones: 9,387 in the Allied cemetery. The Nazi cemetary, Klaas expplains, “is dark and black.

The front lines are not inside the Beltway, says David Pepper “The battle for democracy is a long battle,” says David Pepper, former Ohio Democratic chair. It is harder for Democrats to win with election-cycle thinking, I’d argue, and because they always seem to be fighting the last war with the wrong weapons. More on that later. Paul Rosenberg provides a Salon interview with David Pepper following the release of “Saving Democracy: A User’s Manual for Every American.” (It’s on my to-do list.) Pepper wrote it as a follow-up to “Laboratories of Autocracy: A Wake-Up Call from Behind the Lines” because so many readers (as I did) skipped to the end to look for answers to Pepper’s all-too-familiar diagnosis of where the reactionary right is taking the country. “Team D” and “Team A” are fighting different battles, Pepper argues. Small-d democrats still believe the answer to pushing back on the autocrats is about electoral victories at the federal level. Then they win them they discover “that they weren’t really victories.” Why not?

On this week’s Lever Time Premium, David Sirota sits down with political theorist Adolph Reed Jr. to discuss his new book.

Two filmmakers, awaiting the result of a pregnancy test, take turns recording their experiences in this honest, intimate short

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

In an age before photos or audio recordings, people found other ways to stay sensorially connected to their deceased

- by Nicola Laneri

Read at Psyche

Conceptual art often confounds. The key is to understand the rules of the artwork and the aesthetic experiences they yield

- by Sherri Irvin

Read at Aeon

There are a lot of legal cases against Trump pending right now and you would think that a billionaire front runner for the Republican nomination would have the very best legal talent that money can buy. But, as we know, he is the worst client in the world because he doesn’t pay and won’t shut his pie hole so his legal bench is D-list at best. Here’s a rundown: [Y]ou would think a client facing that amount of legal peril would have a top-notch team of lawyers in place to defend him. But when you have a client like Trump, normal expectations don’t apply. Just recently attorney Tim Parlatore announced — very publicly, via voluntarily testifying for the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation — that he was resigning from the Trump legal team, allegedly because of his inability to provide the right kind of counsel to Trump due to obstacles created by fellow Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn. Parlatore claims that Epshteyn was keeping him and other lawyers from being able to speak to Trump and that Epshteyn was not being honest with their client.

Your phone knows everything about you. What about your other stuff?

An odyssey through South African apartheid.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Republicans are wringing their hands about Teflon Don Oh heck. Maybe failing to push for the 2nd impeachment which would have barred him from office was a mistake. Oops. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ technology-challenged but donor-rich entry into the GOP presidential primary cemented his place in the early primary as the chief alternative to Trump. But it will hardly clear the field. And with a growing cast of characters still waiting in the wings to announce their own campaigns, warning signs of a 2016 replay are once again flashing in the GOP. According to interviews with nearly a dozen GOP strategists, former candidates and party insiders, the intraparty dynamics now at play — and Trump’s own alchemical grip on the base — suggest a primary where a constellation of Republicans once again risk splitting the non-Trump vote in early nominating states.

Today, I am Perth giving a keynote presentation to the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) 2023 Congress. My talk is titled – Why fiscal fictions lead to inferior health policy outcomes. Given the travel time to the other side of the world (the continent at least) – us East Coasters get…

A large majority of Americans want stricter gun laws. They are tired of seeing their kids mowed down on a weekly basis: A majority of Americans in a new poll released on Friday said they would support stricter gun control laws. Sixty-four percent said they were in favor of stricter laws, while 36 percent said they were opposed, the CNN-SSRS poll found.  A slightly smaller portion — 54 percent — said that such gun control laws would reduce gun-related deaths in the country, and 58 percent said they believe the government is able take effective action to prevent mass shootings. Some 59 percent in the survey said they were in favor of banning semi-automatic rifles, while 94 percent said they would support taking measures to prevent convicted felons and those with mental health issues from owning guns. Eight in 10 also said people under the age of 21 should be barred from purchasing any type of gun, the poll found.

Australian energy providers have called on the Albanese Government to loosen the laws around selling human body parts, as a way for their customers to combat rising energy prices. ”Times are tough, things are hard, Nanna’s cold so why can’t... Read More ›

Trump Jr is actually more juvenile than his father. He’s also an idiot: On his online show “Triggered With Don Jr.” earlier this week, Trump’s son had a slip of the tongue during an extensive takedown of DeSantis, who he also referred to as a “failure to launch” with “the policies of a DC swamp rat” and a “nasal and effeminate voice.” “Trump has the charisma of a mortician, and the energy that makes Jeb Bush look an Olympian,” Trump Jr. said in the gaffe.

The following is a paper by retired Australian Army Major General Michael G Smith AO, first published in The New Daily on May 26, 2023.  This paper addresses the most significant issue facing the Australian people since the Second World War, namely our future national security, our independence, our sovereignty, our prosperity and, ultimately, our Continue reading »

We now have a Defence Strategic Review. But where is the National Risk Assessment, the National Security Strategy, and the Plan? A failure to resource the DSR changes adequately could mean that our deployable military operational capability will in reality be less at the end of this decade than it is today. On the 24th Continue reading »

With the passing of the 75th remembrance of the Nakba this May, Palestine and its Occupation can often be forgotten from one May to another. May will come around next year, the Palestinian flag will be waved, Palestinian supporters will rightfully demonstrate in capital cities around the world while the US and UK recommence their Continue reading »