Reading

Created
Sun, 05/11/2023 - 04:55
There is “a real risk” of the Occupied Territory of Palestine in the West Bank “spiralling out of control”, the UN said this week. This risk is driven by the rapid rise in uncontrolled violence being carried out by armed settlers supported by the Israeli military against unarmed Palestinians, particularly in the unprotected farming areas Continue reading »
Created
Sun, 05/11/2023 - 04:54
‘Mental Health Reform’ has been a phrase bandied about for over 30 years in Australia. And while well intentioned, hopefully expressing the ‘Care and Concern’ felt by politicians, bureaucrats and health practitioners, it has always ended up defaulting to ‘Compliance and Control.’ As outlined in the previous articles on the Care Economy, we suffer from Continue reading »
Created
Sun, 05/11/2023 - 03:30
And listen Michelle Goldberg on “the argument.” It’s not an easy topic and she does a very good job of sorting it out: Last week, the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law sent a letter to nearly 200 college presidents urging them to investigate campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine for potential violations of federal and state laws against providing material support to terrorism. As evidence for these very serious accusations, the ADL and the Brandeis center offered only the student group’s own strident rhetoric, including a sentence in its online tool kit, which praised Hamas’s attacks on Israel and said: “We must act as part of this movement. All of our efforts continue the work and resistance of the Palestinians on the ground.” Under the direction of Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida has also ordered state universities to shut chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine.
Created
Sun, 05/11/2023 - 01:30
On Friday afternoon, New York County Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron expanded his gag order in the Trump Organization fraud case. He made clear again that, in essence, he would not stand for any more of Trump’s or his lawyers’ attempts at intimidation via social media or verbal diarrhea: “The threat of, and actual, violence resulting from heated political rhetoric is well-documented,” Engoron wrote. “Since the commencement of this bench trial, my chambers have been inundated with hundreds of harassing and threatening phone calls, voicemails, emails, letters, and packages. The First Amendment right of defendants and their attorneys to comment on my staff is far and away outweighed by the need to protect them from threats and physical harm.” On Oct. 3, 2023, Engoron imposed a gag order narrowly barring Trump from making statements about his staff after he smeared the judge’s law clerk on Truth Social. The order did not prevent Trump from making any statements about the judge or New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the lawsuit threatening the former president’s business empire.
Created
Sun, 05/11/2023 - 00:00
A Bigger We keeps winning The last four minutes of this Giridharadas dialogue mentioned on Friday is worth four of your minutes. The left must stop playing defense. We’re winning fights that matter. We are endeavoring to do a really cool thing in this country, which is to build a country made of the world, a country made of all the other countries…. We are trying to build a country where every kind of person from every last village on this planet can come here and realize more of their potential than they would have wherever they came from. We don’t live up to it a lot, but it is an awesome pursuit. Tell the story of what we’re fighting for.
Created
Sat, 04/11/2023 - 09:00
And why is he running for president We’re less than a week in to @repdeanphillips campaign, and it’s clearly one of the best-run campaigns in America. And by “best-run” I mean you take three-dozen coked-up rabid monkeys, coat them in motor oil, tape knives to their paws, and set them loose in a Cracker Barrel on a… — Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) November 3, 2023 This is what Wilson’s talking about: MANCHESTER, New Hampshire—Dean Phillips, the newly minted 2024 primary challenger to President Joe Biden, made a lofty promise to hold 119 town halls in New Hampshire in 13 weeks. But if the other 118 town halls are anything like the first, the Minnesota congressman—and New Hampshire voters—may be in for a painful ride. By the end of Phillips’ three-hour event in Manchester on Wednesday night, two voters had been thrown out after a tense exchange with the candidate over Israel, one voter stormed out when trying to defend the person who had been thrown out, and the candidate’s team was preparing to scrub the recording of the event from the internet.
Created
Sat, 04/11/2023 - 08:22
Ukraine Has Lost

It’s all over but the shooting, as the saying goes.

Avdiivka is being encircled in record time. The US is transferring its attention to Israel and Palestine. The Russians now have the largest armaments industry in the world for the stuff that matters, and North Korea and Iran are supplying them massively (though Iran may be about to be distracted.)

Back in March 2022 Ukraine could have negotiated peace terms. My guess is that the next negotiations will be surrender terms.

It was always clear, and I have said so consistently from the start, that Russia was going to win. Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition with Russia, especially when Russia has air superiority and far more artillery and artillery shells.

The West has been unable to ramp up weapon production, mainly due to the arms industry being a very small oligopoly who are interested in earning more per unit and maintaining bottlenecks.

Created
Sat, 04/11/2023 - 07:30
A different kind of soother for a Friday afternoon This is what we call a happy thought in these troubled times: Whenever I look at the latest polls and start to freak out about Donald Trump winning the presidency again, I calm myself by remembering that the guy is very likely going to be an at-least-once convicted felon by next November. While that won’t bother his fans, I still think it will bother enough swing voters that he will lose, and maybe spectacularly. That scenario got a little more likely Thursday when the California judge overseeing a misconduct trial against Trump attorney and coup-plotter John Eastman made a “preliminary finding” of culpability on Eastman’s part for his attempts to halt the certification of the 2020 election results. What’s the upshot? No, Eastman isn’t guilty of anything just yet. But he is now closer to being disbarred, and that could make it more likely that he flips.