On a winter night in 2014 I stood by the side of a highway outside Damascus as a Syrian army officer shone a torch over the contents of my suitcase he had ordered me to empty onto the grey dirt. The young officer on checkpoint duty was a member of the elite Fourth Armoured Division Continue reading »
Reading
In early December, 2024, The University of Hong Kong (HKU) hosted a lucid dialogue entitled: “China in 2050 – Two Perspectives”. The presenters were recognised China scholars, Professor Rana Mitter of Harvard University and Professor Daniel Bell from HKU. “What might be a realistic and desirable future for China” was a primary question addressed. Although Continue reading »
Aaaand: More threats: The average price of eggs in the US today is $3.02.
Prepare to be gaslit From Brian Stelter’s bold-heavy Reliable Sources newsletter this morning: Mark Zuckerberg just announced sweeping changes to the social internet, all in line with the desires of President Trump and Trump voters. Out with the fact-checkers that conservatives deride. In with more permissive rules for posting opinions that conservatives hold dear. The recent elections “feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said in a video that was shared first with Fox News. That’s one of the reasons why Zuckerberg said big changes are coming to Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
The strength of ideologies and fads in the US helps to explain why physician involvement in public life has declined.
The expression “punch-drunk,” Google informs me, means “stupefied by or as if by a series of heavy blows to the head.” Google’s Oxford Language entry then offers a not-terribly-illuminating example of the term’s use: “I feel a little punch-drunk today.” Right now, a better one might be something like: “After November 5, 2024, a lot of people have been feeling more than a little punch-drunk.” Learning on the night of November 5th that Donald Trump had probably been reelected president certainly left me feeling stupefied, with a sense that I’d somehow sustained a number of heavy blows to the head. The experience was undoubtedly amplified by the fact that I’d spent the previous three months in Reno, Nevada, as part... Read more
Source: Finding Hope appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
Oh, that’s rich The leaders of the incoming Republican administration share the same first and middle intials, just in reversed order: D.J. Trump and J.D. Vance. I’m trying to decide if they stand for Delayed Justice or Justice Denied. On the delay and deny front, Juan M. Merchan, the New York trial judge overseeing Donald Trump’s “hush-money payment to a porn star” trial, denied a Monday request by Trump’s lawyers to delay his Friday sentencing, reports The New York Times: Although Mr. Trump’s lawyers had implored the judge to postpone the sentencing, Justice Merchan dismissed their claims as “a repetition of the arguments he has raised numerous times in the past.” Mr. Trump is now poised to escalate his effort, court filings show, turning to a New York appeals court in hopes that it will intervene in his case. Late Monday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers filed a civil proceeding against Justice Merchan before the appeals court, challenging two of the judge’s recent decisions to uphold Mr. Trump’s conviction. Mr. Trump’s lawyers will argue to the appeals court that Mr.
One of the many pleasures of Carol Moldaw’s seventh collection, Go Figure, is its fidelity to description. “Bulbous ropes of kelp,” begins the poem “Northern California.” “Sandstone sea-break cliffs” and “A bluff of salt-pocked Monterey cypresses / twisted in the same configuration, like ’50s teens, / the boys, with windblown ducktail flattops.” But that description is never quite an end in and of itself. More often it sets us up for the devastation of the psychological—for the emotion that lasts—as in the ending in this poem, six tercets, descending like Dante’s Inferno: “No sooner had I finally let on to myself / that this was my psyche’s landscape / than it burst into hellish, unquenchable flames.”
I know the first trimester sucks, but don’t worry—it gets better. You should really look forward to the second trimester.
- - -
In the second trimester, the nausea lifts. You won’t hate the smell of your husband’s breath. You’ll be able to enjoy all the foods you couldn’t in your first trimester, like wet spinach. In fact, it just might become your favorite food.
- - -
In the second trimester, you’re simply overcome with relaxing hormones. It’s like being on opioids, but it’s not the Sacklers’ fault. You no longer have sciatica, and you forgive all your exes. It’s bliss.
- - -
I know the mood swings are intense right now, but don’t worry—they go away in the second trimester. You’ll stop getting upset about every tiny thing and return to only getting upset about the normal stuff, like the cost of living, the lack of good TV these days, the government, the environment, and the patriarchy. So nice.
- - -
Morning sickness is soooo much better in the second trimester. For example, you may get it only in the morning.
- by Bridget Ritz & Brandon Vaidyanathan
- by Caitlin Rajan
Misa Tanaka Today the Bank published the 2025–28 ‘Bank of England Agenda for Research’ setting out the key areas for new research over the coming years and a set of priority topics for 2025. Misa Tanaka works in the Bank’s Research Hub and is the Bank’s Head of Research. If you want to get in … Continue reading Launch of the 2025–28 Bank of England Agenda for Research
I confess: I was disappointed when the Justin Trudeau Liberals won the fall 2015 election. I was hoping for an orange break-through. So, it comes with some irony that I find myself defending the economic policy legacy of the Justin Trudeau Liberal government nine years hence. The acute drama that unfolded in December with the Finance Minister’s resignation ahead of [...]
Emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal how leading “anti-hate” campaigner Imran Ahmed collaborated with Israeli embassy officials to censor pro-Palestine social media accounts — and courted them for donations to his censorship-obsessed Center for Countering Digital Hate. Since emerging in America from seemingly out of the blue in 2020, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has become one of the trans-Atlantic establishment’s most effective tools for censoring online speech. Its founder, Imran Ahmed, has nurtured close ties with the […]
The post Leaked emails expose ‘collaborative efforts’ between Israeli govt and Center for Countering Digital Hate first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post Leaked emails expose ‘collaborative efforts’ between Israeli govt and Center for Countering Digital Hate appeared first on The Grayzone.
He ruled for about the normal time for Canadian Prime Ministers. This, from Taibbi, is well-written nonsense:
The New Republic takes a look at where the MAGA base is these days. They point out that generally a base movement loses momentum when their party is out of power but that it never happened with the MAGA cult. (I think that’s because its cult leader stayed on as party leader and was still in the public eye.) Now they’re building a new army of foot soldiers: [D]efying the odds, the MAGA movement continued to flourish under Joe Biden. Now, with Trump returning to the White House, the far right grassroots is barreling into 2025 with plenty of momentum, while their leader both helps set their agenda while sustaining it by crowd-sourcing their conspiracies and lies for his own use. The far right is currently animated by several themes, many of them interrelated. For several years, demonizing “DEI” (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) frameworks—which focus on identities, racial and otherwise—was an obsession. But the far right has gradually replaced DEI with “woke,” a vaguer and broader idea which can refer to the vast majority of left-leaning positions and be applied to any number of hot button, culture war topics.
The tumult continues: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation Monday after nearly a decade in power, bowing to rising discontent over his leadership and growing turmoil within his government signaled by the abrupt departure of his finance minister. Trudeau, the latest incumbent to be driven out amid rising voter dissatisfaction worldwide, said it had become clear to him that he cannot “be the leader during the next elections due to internal battles.” He planned to stay on as prime minister until a new leader of the Liberal Party is chosen. “I don’t easily back down faced with a fight, especially a very important one for our party and the country. But I do this job because the interests of Canadians and the well being of democracy” are “something that I hold dear,” said Trudeau, who was initially teary-eyed at the announcement outside his official residence. He said Parliament, which had been due to resume Jan. 27, would be suspended until March 24. The timing will allow for a Liberal Party leadership race.