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Secrets are a kind of currency. They can be hoarded, but if kept for too long they lose their value. Like all currencies, they must, sooner or later, be used in a transaction—sold to the highest bidder or bartered as a favor for which another favor will be returned. To see the full scale of […]

The post The Ultimate Deal appeared first on The New York Review of Books.

Apparently, some people think that one of the unnamed recipients of classified information in the Trump indictment was Kid Rock. It’s because of this interview from 2022 on Tucker Carlson’s show. But the event happened in 2017 so it was when Trump was president and has nothing to do with this indictment. He does show just how cavalier he always was with government secrets. In the 2022 interview, Rock said the embattled former business mogul asked him for assistance when writing a tweet about ISIS and probed the rocker on how he would handle North Korea – showing him maps in the Oval Office. A 52-year-old Rock – whose real name is Bob Ritchie – is not the mystery person mentioned in the indictment, though the stories he told to Carlson do call into question Trump’s handling of top secret material. Rock recalled one session with Trump when the now ex-president ‘ended the caliphate,’ a reference to the Islamic State terror group that took over parts of Iraq.  ‘He wanted to put out a tweet.

Military activities generate uncounted but large amounts of greenhouse gas. Ocean temperatures hit all-time peak in April. Victoria to end logging of native forests. And, do your personal CO2 emissions influence your life expectancy? Military greenhouse gas emissions Under pressure from the USA, the Kyoto Protocol, negotiated in 1997, excluded military activities from nations’ mandatory Continue reading »

A multipolar world is being forged by the Global South. Tectonic shifts are taking place between the “collective West” led by the United States and the “Global South” with China in this camp. Hong Kong’s predicament is that it lies on a fault line of the geopolitical plates. Political transitions are never easy for the Continue reading »

Is it not a great irony that the Chinese are now more supportive of the post-war Bretton Woods system than the Americans? There is a hole in public discourse and strategic analysis regarding the so-called “China Threat”. Concerned that his critics in the West are blithely unaware of the correlation of China’s values with the Continue reading »

Labor’s ability to seamlessly follow in the Coalition’s strategic footsteps is showing welcome signs of weakening as opponents of AUKUS and the submarine deal find their voice. By any measure, Anthony Albanese and his government have been a disappointment. True, Albanese has an authentic, anachronistic and atypical backstory, but that hasn’t stopped him from displaying Continue reading »

The latest Audit Office report documenting mismanagement by the Morrison government of a grants program – in this case the Community Health and Hospitals Program – has generated outrage. At a time when the health system is under great pressure, over a billion dollars in grants were allocated on the basis of a dodgy process. Continue reading »

It was a day of triumph and a day of shame for The Age newspaper, the once-great Melbourne daily. On Friday June 2, 2023, with justifiable pride, the newspaper trumpeted its victory over the defamation suit brought by Ben Roberts Smith, VC. On the same day, the newspaper announced that it would “trial a reduction” Continue reading »

“This nation, after three thousand years of grandeur and decay… exhibits today all the physical and mental vitality that we find in its most creative periods… Very probably such wealth will be produced in China by 2030 as even America has never known and once again, as so often in the past, China will lead Continue reading »

Gareth Evans, the former foreign minister of Australia received the fifth annual Jeju 4.3 Peace Prize presented by the Jeju 4.3 Peace Foundation. To achieve true reconciliation regarding the Jeju April 3 Incident, the US government must take responsibility for its historical wrongdoing in the same way as the Korean government, argues Gareth Evans, the Continue reading »

A lot of people have pooh-pooh’d the idea that Elon Musk’s degradation of twitter is of any real world importance and I’ve always thought that was ridiculous. No, it doesn’t really matter that a bunch of right wingers are hurling insults at everyone — what else is new? But this does matter: A viral hoax that briefly sent the stock market down last month apparently first gained traction on Twitter through a conspiracy-mongering, pro-Russian account. The picture that grabbed attention on the morning of May 22, captioned “Large Explosion Near the Pentagon,” was generated by artificial intelligence without much sophistication, experts said. But it is probably a harbinger of things to come, especially as generative AI gets better at producing images to meet the demandsof anyone’s imagination. Research by The Washington Post, misinformation tracking firm Alethea and othersfound that the earliest confirmed Twitter posting of the image came from an account called @CBKNEWS121.

Trump and the MAGA wingnuts are hystericl screeching about Hillary Clinton’s emails again so it’s worth reminding everyone what it actually was about and comparing it to Trump’s bizarre classified documents case: The obvious comparison that Republicans have, and will, make to Trump’s predicament is Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. The email server became a public controversy during her 2016 presidential campaign against Trump, with his rally crowds chanting “Lock her up,” a sentiment Trump said he was “starting to agree with” in July 2016. Trump ally Alex Jones sold “Hillary for prison” T-shirts. The initial investigation into Clinton’s private email server revealed classified information had been shared in upwards of 2,000 email chains stored on the server. In making the server a campaign issue, Trump promised to enforce the law. “In my administration, I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information,” Trump said in August 2016.

Chetty’s pitch to the nation is that our problems have technocratic solutions, but at times I sense that he is avoiding an argument … Poor people would be better off if their children had better prospects, but also if they had more money—if the fruits of our society were shared more broadly. “I can take […]

What kind of a country do we want? Fox News and guests threw a blizzard of chaff into the air last night to reassure MAGAstan that the 37-count Trump felony indictment was a malicious hit job by the left against the patron saint of kitch. After a few glances, I needed a palate cleanser. John Pavlovitz regularly reposts some of his sermonettes. One from April he posted last night, “The Conservative War on Everything,” outlines how the conservative project “is a case study in what fear does when it fully grips a group of people.” Their view is as bleak and cold as Trump’s “American carnage.” Their oversized displays of “patriotism” smack of flop-sweat desperation. “In this environment,” Pavlovitz wrote, “the human heart become unable to manufacture empathy for the other, as it finds encroaching enemies everywhere it looks.” The result is a withered soul. Millions of them. Another post he wrote just days ago, “Woke Will Win,” indirectly lays out the choice America faces: fear or hope.

Zlatan i all ära, men för mig kommer alltid den här grabben att vara nummer ett.Bosse Larsson spelade 16 säsonger i MFF. Han vann sex SM-guld och toppade skytteligan vid tre tillfällen. 1965 gjorde han 28 mål på 22 matcher. Denne legendar är — precis som yours truly — uppvuxen på Rosendalsvägen på Backarna i Malmö […]

Also, the EPA tackles toxic plastic, NYC medical residents strike for fair pay, Dollar General addresses terrible working conditions, Southern courts take small steps on trans rights, and more.

Disinformation, slippery slopes and whataboutism The Department of Justice released the indictments in the Trump documents case Friday afternoon and it was much worse (and far more detailed) than many commentators anticipated. It included 37 felony counts in all against Trump for national security violations and obstruction of justice. The bathroom photo (above) became instantly iconic. Pages 28-33 of the indictment reveal that documents found at Mar-a-Lago contained national defense, foreign intelligence, and U.S. nuclear secrets. From the indictment: The Mar-a-Lago Club was an active social club, which, between January 2021 and August 2022, hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests. After TRUMP’s presidency, The Mar-a-Lago Club was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents. Nevertheless, TRUMP stored his boxes containing classified documents in various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club—including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room. Soon after the release, Special Counsel Jack Smith delivered a brief statement.

Doctor Who: Doom's Day is available on the official Doctor Who website, continuing the series' tradition of satirical British Science Fiction.

A few weeks ago, Daniel Dennett published an alarmist essay (“Creating counterfeit digital people risks destroying our civilization”) in The Atlantic that amplified concerns Yuval Noah Harari expressed in the Economist.+ (If you are in a rush, feel free to skip to the next paragraph because what follows are three quasi-sociological remarks.) First, Dennett’s piece is (sociologically) notable because in […]

The disgraced former Prime Minister's long career at the top of British politics should be a matter of national shame

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