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In a new phase of a multi-year cover-up, the OPCW has accused Syria of a chemical attack in Douma. But to make the case, the OPCW breaks its own rules and offers an argument that its own findings undermine. In the latest chapter of an international cover-up scandal, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has directly accused Syria of committing a deadly chemical attack in the town of Douma. A new report from the chemical watchdog’s Investigation […]
The post In Douma cover-up, OPCW’s new smoking gun backfires appeared first on The Grayzone.
My Kevin’s debt ceiling conundrum He really has no idea what he’s doing. He’s just vamping to get through the day. Eric Levitz at NY Magazine: Hostage taking is, traditionally, a means to an end. A criminal organization wants to earn fast cash, so it kidnaps the child of a business tycoon. Or a militant group wants some of its members released from prison, so it seizes a government building. Maybe some of the individuals involved are sadists or psychopaths who get a kick out of threatening people’s lives. But their ultimate aim isn’t to terrorize; the ransom is the point. House Republicans, however, appear to be nontraditional hostage takers. Instead of formulating demands and then contriving a hostage situation in order to get them met, Kevin McCarthy’s caucus has formulated a hostage situation and is now scrambling to come up with some demands. The party knows it wants to threaten to trigger a global financial crisis unless Joe Biden gives them something. But they don’t actually know what that thing is.
A firm including a senior policy adviser to non-secular PM Scott Morrison has recently evaluated the contentious $247-million-dollar National School Chaplaincy Program. read now...Via the Puck newsletter, the stuff of nightmares. This weekend, No Labels is having its annual donor conference in Miami, and, naturally, the event presents a complicated decision for eager-beaver Republican ’24 candidates who would love to hobnob with mega-donors, like Dallas billionaire Harlan Crow, a supporter of Mike Pompeo, but don’t want to be showered with Ross Perot-style criticism. No Labels, of course, doesn’t see itself as a pesky third party spoiler vehicle, but rather an insurance policy against a Joe Biden and Donald Trump rematch—and they’re putting $50 million to work to get onto the ballot in all 50 states as they poll test for their ideal franken-party fusion candidate. So far they’ve been hyping a Joe Manchin and Larry Hogan ticket to donors. Manchin, Hogan and Susan Collins are all on panels at the retreat this weekend. So they’re putting No-Labels on the ballot in all 50 states? I wonder if anyone can then run on the No Labels line?
It has literally nothing to do with antisemitism.
The post Exactly Why and How Republicans Hate Ilhan Omar appeared first on The Intercept.
Latest links… “He wants scholars to get real and acknowledge the field’s genuine strengths, which don’t necessarily lie in direct response to today’s political issues” — the “he” is John Guillory (NYU) and “the field” is literature, but he’s addressing problems relevant to philosophy, too “There is a popular picture of Socrates as someone inviting us to think for ourselves… [That] popular picture is severely incomplete” — Alex Pruss (Baylor) on Socrates’ conservatism What to say to a friend whose book you haven’t read — some suggestions “[The spider] tenses the threads of the web so that she can filter information that is coming to her brain… This is almost the same thing as if she was filtering things in her own brain” — extended cognition in the animal world How do ChatGPT and other large language models work? — philosopher Ben Levinstein (Illinois) provides a “conceptual guide” to them. Here’s Part 1. “Free Will?” — a documentary featuring philosophers and others, released this month — watch the trailer here A reflexive puzzle — (via The Browser) Discussion welcome.
~ Today's Water Cooler ~
Amid allegations of drunken rampages across Kiev, Mozart Group co-founder Andy Milburn has disbanded his mercenary firm. Milburn is now lashing out at The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal for exposing his intoxicated tirade against the Ukrainian soldiers he trained. One of the most prominent mercenary firms operating out of the United States has collapsed under its director’s weight. Mozart Group co-founder and retired Marine Col. Andy Milburn has been involved in a series of drunken episodes both on and off camera […]
The post ‘The Crazy American’: How Col. Andy Milburn’s drunken antics torpedoed top US mercenary group appeared first on The Grayzone.
Tema Okun, the author of a famous (or infamous?) paper on white supremacy, speaks out decades later.
The post Tema Okun on Her Mythical Paper on White Supremacy appeared first on The Intercept.
Mike Pompeo is giving interviews showing once again just what a smarmy, arrogant prick he is: Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, repeatedly praised Jan. 6 as an example of a “peaceful transition” of power in an interview Thursday. “We delivered a peaceful transition on January 6, 2021, exactly as our Constitution requires,” Pompeo, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, told Sky News. Pompeo was responding to questions about why his new book — “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love” — does not focus more on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, because it reflects on his four years working in the Trump administration. Pompeo, who said the book was centered on “how we delivered security abroad,” condemned the violent aspects of Jan. 6 but defended the outcome in speaking with Sky News. “It’s terrible when folks commit these kinds of acts of violence, and I hope they’ll be prosecuted appropriately for doing that.
What's next. Brad DeLong makes some observations and poses some questions. He suggests that the answers the future will provide are dialectical, that is, an attempt to deal with the various facets these questions suggest. The outcomes, yet to be determined, will be the results of political struggles.
It is a usual piece to provoke thinking but it is too short and summary to include all the relevant factors. After all, the world system is a complex adaptive system with many gears and these issues are, as hie points out, age-old. They now appear in a new form.
Where I think he is right is in saying to forget the utopian thinking. We are back to the old slog, arguing over production-distribution-consumption based on self-interest. What is needed to break out of this endless cycle is a rise in collective consciousness at the individual level sufficient to raise the quality of the culture and various institutions, here especially those that sit on the commanding heights of the world economy.
Over the past century, the theory that rational behavior involves maximization of utility has become central to Economic theory. In economics, this theory is established on axiomatic grounds, and supported by intuitions and speculations. However, When psychologists examined this theory of behavior by carrying out actual experiments on human behavior, they found that the theory leads to wrong predictions in many examples. By now, an overwhelming amount of evidence has emerged to show the strong conflict between economic theories of human behavior and actual behavior; a survey of is given in “Empirical Evidence Against Neoclassical Utility Theory: A Survey of the Literature,” This post provides the details of this conflict in one example taken from the paper, where four major predictions of economic theory are all in direct conflict with the experimental evidence.…
Values are non-rational but not irrational either. Values are the ultimate criteria of individuals, societies, and cultures. They shape worldviews. Worldviews justify what is accepted as "rational." Values provide specific criteria for judgement.
“The official curriculum for the [AP African-American Studies] course, released Wednesday by the College Board, downplays some components that had drawn criticism from DeSantis and other conservatives. Topics including Black Lives Matter, slavery reparations, and queer life are not part of the exam.” — Associated Press, 02/01/23
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The College Board is thrilled to introduce our new AP course in African-American Studies, filling a crucial gap in our course offerings. After incorporating feedback from various stakeholders like the Florida Department of Education, we are pleased to report that the AP African-American Studies curriculum will cover Black history from January 1996 all the way to December 1996.
There is universal assent that we are in a period of geopolitical tension and flux. In a rough chronology, 1815-1914 was the era of British hegemony, the not-so-peaceful Pax Britannica. What followed between 1914 and 1945 was a disastrous period of two world wars and the Great Depression. The end of World War II marked Continue reading »
There is in the American psyche, the Hollywood psyche, the false notion that any other major power will be just like America. The view can be terrible but wrong. Dostoevsky (if I may be excused for mentioning a Russian) wrote of how people only see a mirror when they converse. Sir Harold Nicholson, spouse of Continue reading »
The only place in our media landscape where I can get a well argued and penetrating alternative view to our overwhelmingly conservative mainstream media. The first thing I do in the morning is reach for my smartphone and open “Pearls and Irritations”, the only place in our media landscape where I can get a well Continue reading »
Treasurer Chalmers has the radical idea that economics is about human well-being; NSW Labor moves to the right of Coalition; and in spite of fires and floods, Australians have poor knowledge of climate change. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues Continue reading »
According to Australian news sources, 40,000 Chinese students are being forced to rush back to Australia incurring many thousands of dollars in costs, face difficult times finding accommodation and it’s all China’s fault. The reality is very different. From Australia’s perspective, if 40,000 Chinese students are going to suddenly arrive there, it would certainly boost Continue reading »
So we have just had our first presentation of Australian Honours under the new Labor government. Under the Morrison government, there was little recognition of artists in the national honours awards, any more than there was in arts policy (non-existent except by implication from in/action) and funding (in continuing decline). Artists even had to fight Continue reading »