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When we want to change the world we’re usually reacting to a problem. Even positive visions usually come out of negatives. We want liberty because we have tyranny. We want health because we have sickness. We want prosperity because we have poverty. We want equality because some people have way more than they need and others less than need.

When we solve a problem it’s generally mediated by a principle. Very often the principle is just the problem stated slightly differently.

Problem: Some people have more than they need, others have less than they need.

Principle: Make sure no one has more than they need while anybody has less than they need.

A principle tells you, generally speaking, what you should be doing about a problem. It doesn’t tell you how to do it.

So, for the example above, post-war Welfare states generally came upon the solution:

The world is reeling in horror of the people burned alive sheltering inside tents in Al-Aqsa martyrs hospital. First hand accounts and devastation flood our feed. ABC’s media watch chastises Australian media on lack of coverage of journalist’s death. In Britain, Anti-Zionism is now a protected belief. Bob Carr on the power of the Israel Continue reading »

You should… That’s right. The RCP average at the end of October in 2012 was a virtual tie between Obama and Romney. I’ve been saying for a while that I think this election is more like 2012 than 2020 or 2016. We’ll see. But I thought it might be worth looking at where we were in October in a recent election the Democrats won handily.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Weirdo billionaire Trumper Bill Ackman responded to Stevens by daring him to respond to his full post, point by point —- and Stevens did it. I think it’s worth sharing with all of you here: Bill, saying you support the candidate who has promised to cut taxes for billionaires vs. the candidate who will raise taxes on billionaires, but you don’t really support the tax cuts is a bit like the old “I read Playboy for the articles.” But fine, let’s assume you are convinced that all the benefits of a Trump presidency compensate for the burden of having your taxes cut. Let’s look at your 33 reasons. But first, let’s dispense with the misty-eyed absurdity that you can vote for an openly racist Trump, but you’d like it known that you don’t support racism. The ballot box isn’t a cafeteria where you can go down the line and pick and choose what you like. If you vote for Trump, you are voting for a criminal out on bail who describes non-white immigrants with the same language as National Socialism described Jews. Don’t pretend that by voting for Trump you get some pass because you insist that’s not who you are.

Alexander Graham Bell reflects on the very first telephone call in a letter to his father.

The post “This Is a Great Day with Me” appeared first on Nautilus.

A tale of ecological salvation in Mexico.

The post Ranchers, Cattle, Tequila, and Bats appeared first on Nautilus.

Same boat parade: Eric and Lara forgot to put life jackets on their small kids which is bad enough. And they had their children on a boat with a huge Trump head with blood all over it which was, at one time, considered to be so outrageous that they destroyed Kathy Griffin’s career over it. But that’s just the Trump family. You would think, however, that someone would have said something about the Nazis in the boat parade and maybe told them to leave or at least said something about it today. But no, like his father, Eric obviously believes there were very find people on both sides.

Proud Toyota Hilux owner, Jayden Jaydensen has formed an unlikely bond with a local magpie. The 26 year old tradie said he was scoffing down his daily four and twenty during his second lunch break when he saw the magpie... Read More ›

I think everyone reading this already knows that Trump is planning to purge the nation of millions of non-citizens. Most people think he’s just going to round up undocumented immigrants (of color, he certainly won’t target any Swedes or Brits who’ve overstayed their visas and are working illegally.) This past weekend he amended that to say that he’s going to deport Haitians who are in the country legally so I think we can assume that he’s not going to stick to any of those pesky legal niceties. He plans to deport millions and millions of foreigners from the “shithole countries” he loathes so much. But as Philip Bump points out in this piece, and I’ve been writing here non-stop for months, on the stump he’s more and more often targeting “the enemy within” by which he means his political enemies: “You know, I always say: We have the outside enemy, so you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say Kim Jong Un, you can say — but that’s — it’s going to be fine.

Both of us are researchers who are deeply influenced by the work of French philosopher Louis Althusser. Responsible in large part for a vigorous approach to Marxism in the 1960s and 1970s (dubbed “structural Marxism”), Althusser the scholar was always controversial.

The post Althusser, “levels” and a scholarly dialogue appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

Chris Wallace was on TV promoting his new book about the 1960 election and they featured this quote from Nixon after he presided over the counting of the electoral votes as VP after his razor thin loss to Kennedy: “I don’t think we can have a more striking and eloquent example of the stability of our Constitutional system and of the proud tradition of the American people of developing and respecting and honoring institutions of self-government” I hadn’t heard that before. Nixon was famously bitter about that loss and there were plenty of reasons to be suspicious about it. But he didn’t whine like a little baby and throw a tantrum. Even he had more dignity than that. Here’s Al Gore, in the same position, presiding over the same process in 2000, when he and the Democrats had a much better case for objecting to the results than Nixon in 1960 or Trump did in 2020. (He won the popular vote and the election was decided in a 5-4 partisan decision of the Supreme Court …) That’s how it used to be done.

Volunteers raised funds for a new ambulance in Lebanon’s south. Israel quickly destroyed it in an airstrike — killing five emergency workers.

The post Israel Escalates Attacks on Lebanese First Responders — Potentially a War Crime appeared first on The Intercept.

Open Letter to Antonio Guterres on the Australian Government’s failure to publicly defend the office of the United Nations Secretary General. Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations UN Plaza, NEW YORK USA Email undesa@un.org   Dear Sir, We write in shame that the Australian Government has failed to join over 100 Member states Continue reading »

One thing which was crystal clear from the vigils in Australia on 7 October 2024 was the almost complete unanimity between the Labor-Coalition political class at federal and state levels to only attend vigils solely commemorating the deaths of Israelis, while simultaneously completely ignoring vigils commemorating the deaths of Palestinians, or vigils commemorating the deaths Continue reading »

In the eye of the hurricane is a moment of calm and silence, before wild chaos and destruction resume. Symbolically, the world now stands in such a place. Continue reading »

The prime minister is a political operator rather than a visionary. His inability to persuade and sustain arguments is beginning to show. Anthony Albanese has always been a party organiser par excellence. He has never been a big picture politician. Pushing and shoving his faction into line has long been his metier. Not articulating, as Continue reading »

This ACT election is not an election about policies. Nor, by itself, about significant changes to the style of government. Andrew Barr, long-serving ACT Chief Minister is perfectly right in saying that it is not Labor’s fault that Labor has been in power for such a long time. Canberra voters have consistently returned Labor for Continue reading »

One year on from the defeat of the ‘Indigenous Voice’ referendum of 14 October 2023, some myths have arisen about the process and the outcome. These deserve further discussion. I supported the referendum unequivocally and would still do so today. Like many supporters of a ‘Yes’ vote, I had criticisms and doubts about the outcome, Continue reading »

The bombing of the Basque town of Guernica, in Spain, in 1937 remains graphically notorious as a “wanton man-made holocaust”.  Israel has made exceptional progress towards crafting a similar, enduring understanding of the hellscape it has created in Gaza. Continue reading »

As Vladimir Putin deploys mobile missile launchers throughout the Siberian Taiga armed with Yars heavy duty ICBMs, while making nuclear threats and claiming that these forces have been placed on a higher level of alert (though this isn’t necessarily so), NATO seems intent on compounding what seems already threatening and dangerous enough with the performance Continue reading »

Better late than never, Axios has decided to look at what will happen if Trump wins the White House. In this case their patented style is actually quite useful: There’s much more on topics such as health care, social spending, trade and economic policy etc., all of which are nightmares. I just highlighted the worst of it. Axios will likely publish the same analysis for Harris but I think we all know that it will not be this kind of fascist agenda, even if she were to win the trifecta. I would imagine they will present it as a similar threat to what you just read above, however. And that’s a big part of our problem. For all of Trump’s “distancing” this is little different than Project 2025. The wingnuts always have some ridiculous plan and nobody pays attention to it because it’s so outlandish and extreme. This time, we must. They’re serious.