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Charlie Sykes interviewed John Bolton and was surprisingly insistent: During our interview, we talked about his serial defense of Trump’s relations with Putin, his refusal to voluntarily testify in the impeachment proceedings, and his decision to write a book instead. I may have more to say tomorrow after you all have a chance to listen, but here’s sample. (The transcript is edited for clarity.) Charlie Sykes: [In your book, you write that Trump] said that it was a good idea to have these internment camps in China. He was offering favors to dictators, including the Turkish strongman. He did not know the United Kingdom was a nuclear power. He did not know that Finland was not part of Russia. And of course, you also write about what you colorfully called “The Drug Deal,” that was going down in Ukraine. You wrote about all of this, you put it in your book, but you wouldn’t testify voluntarily to the House when the impeachment of Donald Trump was up. Why not? John Bolton: I felt that the impeachment effort was very ill advised.

C.I.A. whistleblower John Kiriakou told the Belmarsh Tribunal in Sydney, Australia on Saturday that the threat to Julian Assange is a threat to every national security reporter. (With transcript)

The post John Kiriakou: The Threat to Journalism appeared first on scheerpost.com.

I’m very excited to announce details of a series of new shows (aka ‘a tour’) taking place this autumn, in which I’ll be reading poems and making shrewd observations about the human condition and/or bin day. There are around 30 dates and tickets are on sale now. Details & links are here … Tickets are…

One question for Jillian Scudder, astrophysicist and author of “The Milky Way Smells of Rum & Raspberries.”

The post How Will the Universe Evolve? appeared first on Nautilus.

An agenda to reduce the number of visas by calling them streams under a broader umbrella is a waste of time and resources. read now...

Considering that CPAC is the largest conservative conference in the US, the line-up of their...

He discussed what high school kids all want to talk about This is just sad: Scott Kercher, a beloved history teacher in New Jersey, dared to tackle some of the tough issues of our times, hosting frank conversations about racism and gender identity when he came to the 85% white school district of Sparta in Republican Sussex County. He won an award and statewiderecognition for his efforts as head of the district’s diversity council, but make no mistake: This is a cautionary tale. Now an effective leader who knew how to connect with kids is gone, thanks to an intrusion of right-wing politics that is threatening the quality of education in Sparta. It’s a powerful example of the kind of atmosphere that we do not want to build in our schools, where teachers are scared to speak up and nobody wants this job because of the political lurch that we’re living through right now. But let’s start at the beginning. In 2020, more than 400 former students wrote a letter in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, saying they didn’t think Sparta was doing enough to prepare them for a diverse world.

~ Today's Water Cooler ~

He didn’t just attack liberals. He attacked the whole state. I guess he figured that he would impress everyone in California by telling us that his state is so much better. I suppose he probably did impress those at the Reagan library — they were the usual California GOP masochists who love to be humiliated by red staters. He’ll probably get some money out of it. But still, this seems like a poor way to introduce yourself : As he moves toward entering the 2024 presidential race, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made a pilgrimage to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Sunday, where the Republican accused leaders in blue states such as California of being “lockdown politicians” and charged that the nation’s coronavirus crisis created “a great test in governing philosophies.” Speaking to a sold-out audience, with some 1,300 tickets sold and nearly 1,100 in attendance, according to organizers, DeSantis touted how Florida has led the nation in net migration — even though that is a trend set into motion long before he became governor.

“Live Free or Die.”

Since 1945, I’ve been the Granite State’s official motto. I’m rugged. Independent. I don’t bend to authority. Naturally, New Hampshire residents look to me for guidance. And to be sure, many who draw inspiration from my words live long, liberated lives. But some, admittedly, do not.

So I’d like to take a moment and reiterate this: You can most definitely die while living free.

I thought this was common knowledge, but apparently not. Certain people are clearly under the impression they can do whatever the hell they want here and nothing bad will happen. They climb Mount Washington—alone in January. They ride their motorcycle down the Kancamagus highway–at 2 a.m. with no helmet. They go water skiing in Lake Winnipesaukee—alone in January at 2 a.m. with no helmet.

And guess what happens to these folks? They live free and die.

The U.S. government spent years warning deepfakes could destabilize democratic societies.

The post U.S. Special Forces Want to Use Deepfakes for Psy-Ops appeared first on The Intercept.

After nine successive increases in the Reserve Bank’s cash rate, this article argues that it is time to pause. In addition, given the sources of increased inflation, more targeted measures are called for rather than the blunt instrument of further interest rate increases. Over the course of 2022 consumer prices increased by 7.8 per cent, Continue reading »

The march to maintain hegemony is pursued with a sense of ‘exceptional America’. But it is now taking place in a world without elbow room. The planet is imperilled. We have to call out folly, not run with it. I cannot see how, without regime change in Washington, trust in high level relations can be Continue reading »

In a recent article, the Hon. P.J. Keating berated the wretched Greg Sheridan for manifold errors in a typical The Australian Newsrag opinion piece. Only a fool provokes PJK on spurious grounds. Though enjoyable to witness the public dissection of a noxious Murdoch apparatchik, there is much more to note in Keating’s article. A phrase Continue reading »

Major General Kathryn Campbell, currently sitting in a fairly empty office in the Department of Defence on a miserly $900,000 plus a year, seems set to become, by acclamation as much as by the weight of the evidence so far available the chief bureaucratic victim of the Robodebt affair. Indeed, apart from the several hundred Continue reading »

Last week 4.8 million people contracted Covid-19 and 39,000 died as a result. The pandemic rages on around the world with, globally, cumulative cases of 675,565,574 and 6,873,798 deaths documented. In the USA right wing politicians desperately want wicked China to have created the virus and/or deliberately or carelessly let it loose from a laboratory Continue reading »

Over the last week or so, Australian politicians and representatives of the university sector got busy pressing flesh in India, hoping to open avenues that have largely remained aspirational. It was timed to coincide with G20 talks in New Delhi, which has seen a flurry of contentious meetings traversing security, economics and education, all taking Continue reading »

Wars are started by political forces. They are promoted by propagandists, fought by soldiers and it is always the ordinary people that suffer. Wars are almost never about principle and almost always about profit in one form or another. The war in Ukraine, like all other wars has been sold to us as a struggle Continue reading »

The Chinese currency has outperformed the greenback by volume of trading on the Moscow Exchange for the first time on record.

RT — Question More (Russian state-sponsored media)
Yuan squeezing out dollar on Russian market – Kommersant
The Chinese currency has outperformed the greenback by volume of trading on the Moscow Exchange for the first time on record

Have US leaders thought this through? Have they a history of thinking things through?

Naked Capitalism
America’s Chips War With China: Another Sanctions Backfire Coming?
Yves Smith