The Pearls and Irritations platform, with its commitment to fact-driven critique, exemplifies dissent as a profound act of civic engagement. Immanuel Kant, the renowned Enlightenment philosopher, offered a powerful defence of this kind of loyal, evidence-based dissent. Kant argued that the free public use of reason is essential for societal progress. The mission of Pearls Continue reading »
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The Chinese in Australia have lost our voice. In contrast, the Jews, not even a tenth of us in numbers, have a very strong voice. They even got six of our ex-PMs to sign a letter condemning the 7 October 2022 HAMAS attack. Is it not time, for Chinese Australians, to find our Voice, in 2024? Continue reading »
Commissioner Paul Brereton said one thing to his top NACC colleagues and another to the Attorney-General. EXCLUSIVE The head of the National Anti-Corruption Commission Paul Brereton made misleading statements to Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus over his management of conflicts of interest regarding the Robodebt referrals. A three-page official letter from Brereton to Dreyfus, released by the Continue reading »
Despite Victoria's announcement to halt native forest logging, controversial 'Forest Gardening' practices continue, raising concerns about the exploitation of Indigenous cultural practices and the environmental impacts of industrial logging under a new guise. Continue reading »
On 22 August, China commemorated the 120th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping’s birth. The third Plenary Session of the Communist Party of China in 1978 marked the beginning of China’s reform and opening-up under the leadership of Deng. His reforms transformed China from one of the poorest countries to the world’s second-largest economy. China’s gross domestic Continue reading »
History didn’t start on 7 October. True that. To get a deeper sense of why the shocking destruction in Gaza is happening, we have to revive the forgotten war that the US waged against North Korea in the 1950s. In many ways, it was the template for all that followed. Gaza is tiny: 365 km². Continue reading »
Political and economic pressures are rising in Papua New Guinea (PNG), with escalating social tensions suggesting a need for focused regional support. Critics argue that given ongoing civil unrest, political instability with Rainbo Paita’s challenge to Prime Minister James Marape and substantial economic challenges such as a stagnating minimum wage and increasing poverty, financial aid Continue reading »
Mike Barnicle had a viral clip on Morning Joe today about the media refusing to report on Trump as he really is: Greg Sargent went deeper on this subject today, referencing Barnicle and pointing out that we are simply not seeing the kind of coverage of Trump’s obvious unfitness that we saw about Joe Biden just a couple of months ago. It’s not that nobody ever says anything about this. But it’s almost in passing, as if it’s not the central story of the campaign. We have a man who is manifestly incapable of being president and we know it. And it’s much worse than it was in 2016 because nobody was sure at the time whether it was an act. It’s not an act. The media failure this time is completely inexcusable. Sargent writes: I’ve taken 10 prominent headlines on stand-alone stories that ran about Biden’s age before he dropped out. I’ve rewritten them (links to the originals are included) around Trump’s mental unfitness.
We wonder how it can be that Donald Trump is running even with Kamala Harris even after all we know about him and his demented performance on the stump? There are tens of millions of people who are just like him. Like Senator Ron Johnson who is a multi-millionaire. This still disorients me even after all this time. I thought it was just a fringe.
Raising my beautiful cherubs is my sole purpose in life. I am a womb with two legs. Madame Bovary? More like Madame Ovaries. (I haven’t read the book, and I definitely didn’t check it out of the local library before my tradwife besties had it banned.) Please take away my rights to my own body—oh wait, you already did. Cool. I am an unstoppable life-giving vessel doing my God-given part. My husband, Jedediah Jehoshaphat, is out there chopping wood, stocking our underground fallout bunker, and watching football with his friends.
(For the record, I never wrote this, because traditionally, women are property who can’t read or write, obviously.)
It’s been three months nonstop with my little darlings, Rifle (8), Brick (7), Eagle (6), Riesling Marie (5), and Paizleee Marie (also 5—they are not twins), and I’ve never been happier. Every September, I am devastated to be without them and feel not the slightest hint of relief, calm, or relaxation in their absence.
Front-runner Robert Jenrick comes out top, but ousted candidate Priti Patel raised nearly as much as Kemi Badenoch, while others languish
Musk’s new “commission” looks like a go He plans to cut taxes and regulations to make life easier for his vastly wealthy friends to raze the government to the ground: Donald Trump plans to outline a suite of economic proposals in a speech here Thursday, including introducing a government efficiency commission recommended by Elon Musk, taking an even more aggressive swipe at regulations than during his first White House term and pledging to rescind certain unspent funds appropriated during the Biden administration. The commission would conduct “a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” and make “recommendations for drastic reform,” the Republican former president plans to say in an appearance before the Economic Club of New York. The goal would be to identify ways to eliminate fraud and improper payments, according to portions of the speech viewed by The Wall Street Journal. An “audit” and “performance review” by the guy who just destroyed twitter for his personal entertainment. Whatever.
Sean Grayson had a history of credibility issues. It didn’t stop him from being hired at police departments in Central Illinois.
The post Cop Who Shot Sonya Massey Lied to Make a Drug Arrest. It Didn’t Hurt His Career. appeared first on The Intercept.
They’re banning what’s already banned As closely as I monitor these things, this one slipped by me (Center for Media and Democracy): Eight states will vote to amend their state constitutions in November to ban noncitizens from voting in elections. If these amendments pass in Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin, it will bring the total number of states with constitutions specifying only citizens are allowed to vote to 20. The little known dark money group Americans for Citizens Voting (ACV) is backing and tracking the effort. Since 2018, voters in six states have added the amendment to their state constitutions. ACV has its eyes locked on another 11 states in 2025: Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia, according to its website. ACV has enlisted the help of the pay-to-play American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to move a model state constitution amendment in these states and others to ban noncitizens from voting in elections.
During World War II, American leaders proudly proclaimed this country the “arsenal of democracy,” supplying weapons and related materiel to allies like Great Britain and the Soviet Union. To cite just one example, I recall reading about Soviet armored units equipped with U.S. Sherman tanks, though the Soviets had an even better tank of their own in the T-34 and its many variants. However, recent news that the United States is providing yet more massive arms deliveries to Israel (worth $20 billion) for 2026 and thereafter caught me off guard. Israel quite plainly is engaged in the near-total destruction of Gaza and the massacre of Palestinians there. So, tell me, how over all these years did the self-styled arsenal of democracy become... Read more
By Swamp Yankee
(Ian–this is another elevated comment. I thought (and think) it’s an excellent one, informed by life experience. In general the quality of comments lately has impressed me.)
As Israeli forces target refugee camps and civilian infrastructure, fears grow that this military campaign is setting the stage for the de jure annexation of the West Bank.
The post Operation Summer Camps: Israel’s Largest West Bank Assault in Two Decades Sparks Fears of Annexation appeared first on MintPress News.
Zoë Hitzig’s newest, called Not Us Now, is a collection of poems written against—into the teeth of—the particular kind of algorithmic society many of us are now ensnared in. A society in which our moves are tracked and goaded by corporate systems for guiding behavior and feeling. Which makes for a culture of trending and buzzing, immediacy, and profitable smoothness. Hitzig offers a vision for another, freer, wildly alive, and compelling use for the power of numbers. Which is to say, she uses the language of our society against it, to unmake and remake it in the imagination. Here, for instance, is the lyric power of “Greedy Algorithm”:
Is this or is this not
what you tasked me with.
To play our every hand.
To replace each arrival with
the nearest destination.
To keep you in what may
still be called breath.
Cliffs, ropes, pills, wings …
it’s not like you specified
any real alternatives.
The failure of imagination is not the algorithm’s fault but, as always, dear Brutus, in the imaginations that imagined it. So the poem finishes:
Precious few, but not no principled conservatives Only a fool would predict a new Donald Trump scandal will finally collapse his support. The Trump shock troops who cover their lawns and trucks and boats and bodies in loud professions of their MAGA faith are too far gone. Trump has spent his life flouting the law using his daddy’s money, his own notoriety, and a bevy of attorneys to keep himself out of the hoosegow. It’s the habit of a lifetime of crime. Laws that apply to ordinary people are but annoying flies Trump swats away. He believes his shit doesn’t stink (contrary to reports) despite attracting swarms of prosecutorial flies. If anything does end Trump, it won’t be a bullet or another criminal indictment or an investigation into his illegally accepting $10 million in 2016 from an account tied to the Egyptian General Intelligence Service. It might be a personal insult to ordinary Americans. Like the families of fallen soldiers he’s already described as losers and suckers. Only this time, he did not issue the insult on foreign soil but at Arlington National Cemetery.
For those advising an attempt to take over the Republican Party. I think candidly that that is even less likely than taking over the Democratic Party.