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One of the defining features of our civilization is that we deny what we don’t want to believe is true if it’s inconvenient to us.

Covid has been the most recent example, with the World Health Organization (WHO) taking two years to admit that it was an airborne virus, insisting it spread thru droplets. I daresay that refusal to admit reality cost a couple million people their lives.

Back in the 2000’s a number of us warned about the housing/sub-prime bubble for years. (A correspondent said he found 42 people who publicly predicted the crash.) It was obvious just from looking at charts, it was classic bubble formation.

We have a new surprise Doctor Who 60th-anniversary teaser to share - this time, it looks like Neil Patrick Harris is dialing up the "big bad."

The historian of American foreign policy Gabriel Kolko would often say that those who seek to determine the destiny of humankind were in for surprises and, ultimately, disappointment. Any vainglorious and limitless ambition to rule the world is doomed to failure, regardless of the state. The world, whether it be the global economy or the Continue reading »

In 2022, Australia exported a record 81.4 million metric tonnes of LNG, earning the industry $92.8 billion (when expected revenue was $44 billion). If all of these windfall benefits were taxed, the revenue could be used to completely rewire the nation and accelerate the shift to a clean energy future. This has not happened and Continue reading »

After the nauseating display of royal excess and dynastic exceptionalism last week, an Australian republic cannot come soon enough. On 2 May, four days before his coronation, King Charles III gave the royal assent to a controversial new Public Order Act, signing it into law. The Act gives the UK police unprecedented powers to stop Continue reading »

If we fail to reach the goal of reducing emissions by 50 percent by 2030, it won’t be for lack of options. Cutting greenhouse gas emissions to keep the world from heating to catastrophic levels is entirely possible and would save money. Although emissions continue to rise, there’s still time to reverse course. Ways to Continue reading »

Being led by the nose by warmed-over former colonies like the US, Australia and India to fight a country thousands of miles away is neither smart diplomacy nor smart foreign policy. In war games, Beijing’s missiles and rockets cascade down on Taiwan and on U.S. forces as far away as Japan and Guam. Initial casualties Continue reading »

At what point did you lose your empathy and compassion towards those outside your circle? Why are you able to feel for those around you yet not for other human beings who live close by and who have exactly the same wants and desires from life as you and your family? Dear Mr Netanyahu, You Continue reading »

As the Russia-Ukraine war enters what could be its most decisive phase, the award-winning American journalist, Stephen Kinzer, has announced a ‘Society for Abolishing World War II Analogies’. Members of this club, he writes in The Boston Globe, must pledge never to call anyone a new Hitler or dismiss peace proposals as appeasement and ‘another Continue reading »

The key to economic development and ending poverty is investment. Nations achieve prosperity by investing in four priorities. Most important is investing in people, through quality education and health care. The next is infrastructure, such as electricity, safe water, digital networks, and public transport. The third is natural capital, protecting nature. The fourth is business Continue reading »

“I realized I’d better jump on this while there are still some left on the market,” Mike Lindell said.

This piece by Dan Pfeiffer in the NY Times makes the case. This has got to stop: After months of unity, some Democrats, reverting to their natural state of disarray, are breaking ranks to pressure the president to the table. A poll from Echelon Insights showed that voters support the idea of negotiating over the debt limit. Mr. Biden’s strategy is undoubtedly risky. But from the perspective of someone who had a front-row seat inside the White House to the last two debt-limit standoffs between a Democratic president and a Republican House, Mr. Biden’s refusal to negotiate on the debt ceiling is the best strategy. Facing an urgent deadline and a daunting political context — with the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, joined to an unstable, far-right bloc of Republican representatives who limit his maneuverability — the president can ideally find a way to extend discussions around the debt ceiling and fiscal issues. Otherwise, he will have to find a way around the House. The president must know that Mr. McCarthy is not a negotiating partner who can be trusted to deliver.

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The slow failure of our infrastructure is a crisis that everyone knows about, but no one wants to talk about. We all see the problems and know they’re getting worse, but addressing them head-on is politically tricky. For most people, it’s simply easier to stay silent. Well, I’m not most people. I’m a farmer with one wolf, one goat, and one head of cabbage, and American infrastructure has failed me.

Every day when I go to the market, I have to cross a river using only a rowboat. That’s already an outdated system, but it gets worse. Thanks to a chronic lack of upkeep enabled by a culture of inertia in Washington, the rowboat can hold only me and one of my three items. This creates serious problems, which our political system is ill-equipped to handle.

Politicians just aren’t familiar with the constant struggles and challenges Americans like me face. When I attempted to speak to my senator at a Town Hall, he suggested that I simply take the goat across, row back, take the cabbage across, row back, and finally take the wolf across. When I tried to explain why that wasn’t possible, he moved to the next question.

One of the Georgia fake electors says he was just doing what Trump’s lawyers told him to do: Lawyers representing David Shafer, the embattled chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, are arguing their client should not be charged with any crimes for his actions following the 2020 election because he was following advice provided by attorneys working for former President Donald Trump, according to a letter sent to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis last week. Specifically, Shafer’s attorneys say their client was relying on “repeated and detailed advice of legal counsel” when he organized a group of “contingent” electors from Georgia and served as one himself, thus “eliminating any possibility of criminal intent or liability,” according to a copy of the May 5 letter. The letter, which was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, comes as Willis and her team of prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are planning to make an announcement on possible charges against Trump or his allies later this summer.

The post Gordrag’s Bane appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Don’t repeat the mistakes of 2016 Yes, it’s Mike Allen. But remember how wrong we were in 2016. No way was America crazy enough to elect Donald Trump as president: Call it the Trump Law of Inverse Reactions: Everything that would seem to hurt the former president only makes him stronger. Why it matters: Trump’s grip over Republicans seems stronger than ever — and chances of beating President Biden are as high as ever. Allen checks off the Trump investigations, the 34 felony indictments, the expected indictments, the rape trial and the rest, like he’s Arlo Guthrie ticking off the 24-8×10 color glossy pictures, etc. And that’s not to mention the two impeachments. (Allen doesn’t.) And still Trump is the frontrunner for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. The 18% have gone down the rabbit hole, turned the hole inside out, flattened reality and formed it into a Möbius strip. They are beyond saving. What of the rest of us? “Trump far surpasses Biden in being seen as having the mental sharpness and the physical health it takes to serve effectively as president,” reports ABC News.

How a CIA-linked social media spying tool may have been used to monitor, censor, suppress, and even ban anyone who liked, linked, or commented on the Biden Hunter laptop story.

The post Did Intel-Linked Dataminr Play Sinister Role in Hunter Biden Laptop Suppression? appeared first on MintPress News.

A year after Israel killed the Palestinian American journalist, an FBI probe remains pending, yet the U.S. has gone silent on her death.

The post Shireen Abu Akleh’s Colleagues Are Still Waiting for Justice appeared first on The Intercept.

The way mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and his private army have been waging a significant part of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has been well covered in the American media, not least of all because his firm, the Wagner Group, draws most of its men from Russia’s prison system. Wagner offers “freedom” from Putin’s labor camps only to send those released convicts to the front lines of the conflict, often on brutal suicide missions. At least the Russian president and his state-run media make no secret of his regime’s alliance with Wagner. The American government, on the other hand, seldom acknowledges its own version of the privatization of war — the tens of thousands of private security contractors it’s used... Read more

Source: The Army We Don’t See appeared first on TomDispatch.com.