Reading
In case you were wondering why all these people involved in sexual assault are being chosen for the Trump administration, this is why. And it is why those fucked up, incel bros voted for him: He “tells it like it is” — that they were asking for it. And he’s right that for millenia some men have told themselves that. Now read the Pete Hegseth police report. Listen to Matt Gaetz defend himself. It’s all a version of the same thing. When you’re a star you can get away with it. And Trump and his miserable, garbage cabinet and staff are proving it.
“If they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:31) Before November 5th, millions of us were already struggling with poverty, extreme storms, immigration nightmares, anti-trans bills, criminalized reproductive health, the demolition of homeless encampments, the silencing of freedom of speech on campuses… and, of course, the list only goes on and on. Since Donald Trump and J.D. Vance were elected, more of us find ourselves in a state of fear and trembling, given the reports of transgender people attacked in broad daylight, misogynist social media posts threatening “your body, my choice,” Black college students receiving notes about returning to enslavement, and the unhoused beaten and battered. In the wake of... Read more
Source: Lifting from the Bottom appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
The rejected Doctor Who script featuring the definitive origin of the Cybermen is getting an audio drama adaptation from Big Finish.
Timothy Snyder lays out the case against Pete Hegseth. It’s worse than you think: 1. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, has no qualifications for the job. He has never run a large organization and has no national security expertise. 2. Hegseth has zero notion of which other countries might threaten America or how. In his books this is simply not a subject, beyond a few clichés. 3. Hegseth does not believe in alliances. For him, “NATO is a great example of dumb globalism.” 4. Hegseth wants a political army that bans women from combat roles, is purged of “cowardly generals,” and is anti-woke. 5. Hegseth never notes that the politicized Russian army meets all of his standards perfectly, but is is ineffective and commits war crimes. 6. Hegseth never notes that the Ukrainian army, which does have women in combat, and is not politicized in the way he would like, has overperformed. 7. Hegseth has almost nothing to say about the most significant armed conflict of our time and has not visited Ukraine or learned anything about it.
Via Mediaite: Gorka opened the video saying “I knew this day would come, but I didn’t expect it so soon,” crowing about Trump’s order allowing Attorney General Bill Barr to declassify information about the 2016 election. “The Kraken has been unleashed,” Gorka declared in his signature affected bellow. “Watch, in the next two days, the rats, the hyenas, start to eat each other.” A large light source appears to be placed behind the camera for Gorka’s monologue, overexposing the video which seems to be inspired by villainous monologues from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. If you’re unfamiliar with this fruitcake: Sebastian Gorka, the pugilistic commentator who leveraged fears about Islam as a threat to Western civilization into a short-lived role in the first Trump administration, is poised for a second run inside the White House. Gorka was tapped to serve as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism, president-elect Donald Trump said Friday night.
Australia’s richest women, who is still in contact with one of her four children, Gina Rinehart, has come out strongly to defend beleaguered Opposition leader, Peter Dutton. Declaring him the best politician in Australia that money could buy. ”Peter is... Read More ›
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 24, 2024
By Tony Wikrent
q
Strategic Political Economy
Cory Doctorow [Pluralistic, via Naked Capitalism 11-22-2024]
…Trump is a scab, Dems need unions, Dems are not faithful to unions, unions make the Dems better, workers want unions, the public loves unions, and union membership is falling… it’s the union bosses’ fault.….
The NY Times reports: This is a good first clue that Trump has no intention of even pretending to follow the law this time. And why should he? He knows he has immunity: President-elect Donald J. Trump is keeping secret the names of the donors who are funding his transition effort, a break from tradition that could make it impossible to see what interest groups, businesses or wealthy people are helping launch his second term. Mr. Trump has so far declined to sign an agreement with the Biden administration that imposes strict limits on that fund-raising in exchange for up to $7.2 million in federal funds earmarked for the transition. By dodging the agreement, Mr. Trump can raise unlimited amounts of money from unknown donors to pay for the staff, travel and office space involved in preparing to take over the government. Mr. Trump is the first president-elect to sidestep the restrictions, provoking alarm among ethics experts. Those seeking to curry favor with the incoming administration now have the opportunity to donate directly to the winning candidate without their names or potential conflicts ever entering the public sphere.
The marketing of a new military tech tool powered by Meta’s artificial intelligence is “irresponsible” and “clumsy,” experts said.
The post Meta-Powered Military Chatbot Advertised Giving “Worthless” Advice on Airstrikes appeared first on The Intercept.
by Rutger Claassen and Ingrid Robeyns Let’s establish an upper limit on the personal wealth any individual can possess. This is the core principle behind ‘limitarianism’. Limitarianism represents one of the more radical proposals in the debate on wealth inequality. Over the past few years, one of us has developed the philosophy of limitarianism (first […]
Benjamin Franklin’s hope and warning, “A republic, if you can keep it,” resonates with too...
On 21 November 2024, the Australian government refused to grant a visa to former Israeli minister Ayelet Shaked, known for her anti-Palestinian views. She had been invited to attend a security conference in Canberra and other events organised by the Israeli lobby, Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC). Shaked described the government’s decision in the Continue reading »
Historically, many of its members have waged and/or supported wars in the name of democracy. Democracy has been held up as the beacon of good governance and ethical behaviour in a good versus bad, or democracy versus authoritarian, perceptual dichotomy; the struggle for dominance of which is viewed in Manichean terms. The idea perpetrated is Continue reading »
Australia’s industrial policy is shifting significantly with the introduction of the Future Made in Australia Act, which aims to enhance local manufacturing and reduce reliance on commodity exports. But concerns have arisen regarding the potential inefficiencies of targeted investments and the risk of deepening regional disparities. Australia needs a broader and more balanced approach that Continue reading »
In the ballyhooed, strident context of Trumpian change, if not, hysterical disruption, it is especially important to pinpoint and consider the real and the “factually alternative” content of Chinese foreign policy and international relations. Much analysis still originates with the continuing fear in the West of a hegemonic Chinese takeover. China is alleged to challenge Continue reading »
A review of Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden, Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race, UNSW Press I started reading the latest offering by economists Hamilton and Holden on Australia’s COVID-19 experience while I was nursing a deep disappointment that the Albanese Government decided not to establish a Royal Commission Continue reading »
For the aviation industry as a whole, and, for that matter, our federal government too, ‘net zero 2050’ is just the latest layer of greenwash. The sector is a serial offender, having misrepresented its global warming impact for decades. Qantas says it doesn’t buy political favours. But it has illegally sacked its workforce, short changed Continue reading »
Over the last 10,000 years or so societies have evolved from relatively simple and loosely structured groups of people to the complex entities of the present nation-states (and even a nascent world society), but in this time period the human being, as an organism, has not changed significantly. So, what has changed? The interaction between Continue reading »
Forty four years ago today as I am writing this (17/11/80) the harbinger of Donald Trump appeared in The New Yorker magazine. TV critic George W.S. Trow wrote a long essay (which later became a book) titled ‘Within the context of no context,’ giving notice to the world of what we now see unfolding across Continue reading »
The invitation said: ‘Global Multinational Corporations Summit.’ Main Topic: ‘An opening China and the World.’ So I dutifully packed my bags and headed tor Beijing. There on the 70th floor of the luxurious Shangri-la hotel I found bosses and representatives of about 30 Chinese multinationals who wanted to talk about Australia. But apart from two Continue reading »
Is this a funciton of people turning off the news? If so, maybe we should turn it back on… Mandate? Looks like it … 46% not motivated? That’s a bad sign: Maybe people are just tired. I’ll refrain from freaking out for a while on that one. But I’m worried that he’s so fully normalized that most people won’t react at all to what he does: Will this matter or will everyone ust move on to the next thing? Pay no attention to the partisanship when you analyze whether or not “economic anxiety” is the explanation for election outcomes, especially GOP partisanship. Obviously, that’s completely meaningless. The Cabinet: Note that more than half the people think they should be loyal to Trump. Slowly but surely it’s happening… Only a little over 50% approve of Trump’s tariffs. But this is just depressing although earlier polls showed this so we shouldn’t be surprised: I guess we should be happy that more don’t support using the military — for now. Trump will have a honeymoon it appears. And if Project 2025 is any gyude, and it should be, they are planning to take full advantage of it.