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What's filling, yummy, creamy but crunchy and a guaranteed tummy-warmer on a cold evening? Megan Jane de Paulo's Creamy Mushroom Soup with Crunchy Mushroom Croutons. read now...

Baby Zoomies!     Merida the highland cow is now just over a week old! Be sure to hello to this bundle of fluff on your next visit to Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm in Bristol, UK. She’s so fluffy! The Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm’s (Bristol, UK) highland cow, Agnes, gave birth to a female calf in early March. Her keepers have named her Merida.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines? In February, veteran journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell report detailing how President Joe Biden ordered the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines.

The post The Chris Hedges Report: How America Destroyed the Nord Stream Pipelines w/ Seymour Hersh appeared first on scheerpost.com.

I don’t have a strong opinion on this Wuhan Lab Leak brouhaha because I don’t think it’s knowable one way or the other. But polling says that most Americans believe the virus was caused by a lab leak even as most virologists think it’s far more likely to have been passed from animal to human. It’s now a political football being used by the right wing to persecute Dr. Fauci and others for the pandemic. The usual. Here’s the latest on the zoonotic transmission theory from a group of scientists: An international team of virus experts said on Thursday that they had found genetic data from a market in Wuhan, China, linking the coronavirus with raccoon dogs for sale there, adding evidence to the case that the worst pandemic in a century could have been ignited by an infected animal that was being dealt through the illegal wildlife trade. The genetic data was drawn from swabs taken from in and around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market starting in January 2020, shortly after the Chinese authorities had shut down the market because of suspicions that it was linked to the outbreak of a new virus.

Sir Lenny Henry gets more than a doctor in the following Red Nose Day 2023 Doctor Who sketch. In fact, he gets David Tennant's Fourteenth.

The AUMFs have long been used as justification for further military action even after the U.S.’s supposed withdrawal.

The post Biden Announces Support for Senate’s Iraq War Authorization Repeal appeared first on scheerpost.com.

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The New York Times takes a look at the latest polling for Ron Desantis: It’s been a tough few months for Ron DeSantis. Donald J. Trump and his allies have blasted him as “Meatball Ron,” “Ron DeSanctimonious,” a “groomer,” disloyal and a supporter of cutting entitlement programs. Now, he’s getting criticism from many mainstream conservatives for calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “territorial dispute.” Is all of this making a difference in the polls? There are signs the answer is yes. In surveys taken since the Trump offensive began two months ago, Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, has steadily lost ground against Mr. Trump, whose own numbers have increased. It can be hard to track who’s up and who’s down in the Republican race, since different pollsters have had such wildly divergent takes on Mr. Trump’s strength. In just the last few days, a CNN/SSRS poll showed a tight race, with Mr. DeSantis at 39 percent and Mr. Trump at 37 percent among registered voters, while a Morning Consult poll found Mr.

During his recent National Press Club appearance, former PM Paul Keating scolded mainstream media journalists — who deserved every stinging syllable of his pinpoint-accurate words. read now...

The post Why Silicon Valley <span class="dewidow">Bank Crashed</span> appeared first on Roosevelt Institute.

Do not despair. There may be politicians who have abandoned any genuine intent to gain Scottish Independence, but the path is still open. It is a question of nerve and will. I think we should lift our eyes beyond the current SNP leadership contest – although I shall in future be commenting on its incredible […]

The post The High Road to Independence appeared first on Craig Murray.

I’ve been saying for a while that the Republicans could not pick a worse time to play their little game of debt ceiling chicken with the economy still fragile coming out of the pandemic. Now, it may be suicidal. Catherine Rampell writes: A plea to lawmakers: If it was a bad idea to threaten default on U.S. debt before, it would be astoundingly, colossally idiotic now. Recent financial-market turmoil — in regional U.S. banks, as well as some of the larger European institutions — suggests there might be much more fragility in the financial system than previously understood. In a sane world, politicians might respond to this new information constructively. They might, for instance, figure out what they could do to ensure that financial regulators detect vulnerabilities at significantly sized banks sooner. Politicians might also take some modest actions to combat inflation themselves, so that less of the burden of dampening demand falls on the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate increases — which are part of the reason we’re seeing stresses in the financial system today.

Cosmologists are using secondary signatures from the cosmic microwave background to map the universe’s hidden matter.

The post Shadows in the Big Bang Afterglow Reveal Invisible Cosmic Structures appeared first on Nautilus.

A trove of secret intelligence cables obtained by The Intercept reveals Tehran’s political gains in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.

The post How Iran Won the U.S. War in Iraq appeared first on The Intercept.

~ Today's Water Cooler ~

Via the New Yorker: Two decades ago, Bush and the Republicans were nearly united in their embrace of a brash militarism that sought to topple Saddam and transform Iraq and the broader Middle East in the process. Iraq, after paying a terrible price in the death of hundreds of thousands and disruption of millions of lives, was indeed transformed. But so, too, was American politics, where the backlash to the conflict arguably gave rise to the Presidencies of both Barack Obama—who first rose to fame as an antiwar state legislator—and Donald Trump. Trump is a Bush-basher of long standing, and he often framed his takeover of the Republican Party as an explicit repudiation of the extended Bush family and its internationalist legacy. Trump has said Bush “lied” to start the war, that he should have been impeached for how badly it was conducted, and that, over all, Bush had a “failed and uninspiring Presidency.” Seven years after Trump won the White House by attacking the last Republican to hold the office, his views of foreign policy are now ascendant, if not yet dominant, in the G.O.P.

Lest we forget the consequences, today we recall the great lie of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ in Iraq which led to the smashing of that country and the slaughter of hundreds of thousand of innocent men, women and children. Peace Rally – Address, 18 March 2023 When the lie was revealed, our precious alliance with Continue reading »

Little that was distinctive about Penny Wong’s foreign policy has survived the signing of the AUKUS agreement. In her first speech to DFAT staff she observed that the department had lost influence under the outgoing coalition administrations and she intended to bring it back to the centre of government. And here we are now with Continue reading »

What are the budgetary implications of the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal? Here are some numbers provided by a Defence spokesman to select journalists. It is expressed in today’s dollars so does not include future inflation. Since it was a background briefing not an official communique it’s not clear who takes responsibility should these costings prove Continue reading »