Ed Kilgore takes a look at the inconceivable result in the Times/Sienna poll showing that huge numbers of people remember the Donald Trump years as glory days for America. [W]hen the New York Times–Siena polling outfit asked voters “to describe the one thing they remembered most from Donald J. Trump’s presidency, only 5 percent of respondents referred to Jan. 6, and only 4 percent to COVID.” 39 percent cited “Trump’s behavior” as most memorable, and another 24 percent named “the economy.” Aside from the radical shrinkage of COVID and January 6 in the rearview mirror, what’s remarkable about this reaction is that it had little to do with what we normally think of as specific events, much less issue positions.
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The future of postal services in the UK is again under threat. The current Royal Mail Board have seriously mismanaged the company and have not done enough to move away from the approach of the previous CEO which saw an all out assault on their own employees. An increasingly likely next step for the company […]
Gordon Brown responds to a shocking UNICEF report that UK child poverty has worsened drastically more than 38 other OECD nations
Trump has brought his surrogates to the trial to violate his gag order for him: He went into the courtroom along with Byron Donalds, Doug Burgham and Vivek Ramaswamy. They stayed for about 45 minutes and then emerged and gave press conferences spouting all the crapola Trump isn’t allowed to say due to his gag orders. Unbelievable:
Climate scientists reveal data that earth’s heating is accelerating, heat extremes are increasing and 1.5C has been breached faster than forecast. We are failing to treat climate change as the single greatest threat to humanity. At the same time our government has announced a gas strategy which increases emissions and the earth’s heating. Either we Continue reading »
The jailing of military whistleblower David McBride, who exposed alleged war crimes by Australian troops in Afghanistan, for 5 years and 8 months by the ACT Supreme Court shines a light on a number of issues and one of them requires urgent consideration. The need for a public interest defence to protect individuals like McBride. Continue reading »
How long can Australian politicians continue with the pretence that the American alliance aligns with the nation’s interests? Trump or Biden? It doesn’t really matter except for determining the path of America’s decline into illiberalism. ANZUS must be exited. There are three compelling arguments for leaving the ANZUS alliance. The first is cynical but persuasive; Continue reading »
Imagine being Tony Blinken, and facing the arduous responsibility as US Secretary of State to rule the globe! This seems a daunting task, but fortunately, Blinken doesn’t have to strain his brain too much because he has a manual already written to instruct him. This manual is called The Grand Chessboard. It tutors you to Continue reading »
Australia’s most severe China knowledge gap is the virtual collapse of University-level advanced Chinese language study, together with the study of Chinese society, politics and culture. This is the major finding of a report, Australia’s China Knowledge Capability, published in 2023 by the Australian Academy of the Humanities. The main program that provided this expertise Continue reading »
Grassroots anti-AUKUS campaign, Labor Against War, has called on the Federal Labor Government to come clean about just how much it is pouring into US and UK coffers to rebuild their ageing nuclear shipyards, both of which build nuclear-armed submarines. Marcus Strom, national convenor of Labor Against War, said: “It’s quite telling that the budget Continue reading »
Fuelled by well armed pro Israel groups and by university administrators’ decision to move police and riot squads to break up peaceful encampments, a terrible thuggery has invaded US universities. On Australian campuses, despite the arrival of counter demonstrators at Monash and Sydney, university Vice Chancellors appear to have decided that resort to police intervention Continue reading »
To say Australian media has a poor record of getting things right in relation to Chinese ‘spying’ allegations is an understatement. It’s possible, in almost every media outlet for anyone who knows anything about China, to look beyond the headline and see an entirely different story; the ABC’s latest offering is no exception. As a Continue reading »
The complaint by Canberra about the latest Chinese military flare-up close to China’s coast is not only hypocritical but highly escalatory. An Australian MH-60R Seahawk helicopter was 8,535km from home and flew close to China’s northeastern coasts. So a Chinese warplane shot flares to warn it off. Suppose a Chinese military aircraft flew 8,535km to Continue reading »
CARRIED unanimously, Councillor Tony’s Judge’s motion to protect the iconic poinciana trees in Woolgoolga’s town centre sailed through City of Coffs Harbour’s council meeting on Thursday 9 May 2024. Importantly, point four of the motion provides longevity to the decision to protect the trees and requires transparency regarding any future proposals to remove the trees....
The post Council votes to protect Woolgoolga town centre’s iconic poinciana trees appeared first on News Of The Area.
James Fallows has a fascinating analysis of that weird rally last Saturday: Among Donald Trump’s virtues is that he does not drink. That is useful to remember in considering his current speaking style. On Saturday night Deb and I sat through the nearly two-hour entirety of his rally performance at Wildwood, on the Jersey shore, as televised by Fox. The whole thing is archived here, courtesy of Right Side Broadcasting. To me this version of Trump sounded genuinely different from the crowd-pleasing showman who rode televised rallies to success (and big audiences for the cable outlets) in 2015 and 2016. Maybe it’s just that his material is now so familiar and tired. Maybe it’s that Trump has nearly exhausted the “what will he say next??” Evel Knievel-style suspense and excitement of his live shows. Maybe it’s that he goes on at such length. Whatever: the result is less “outrageous” than … boring. It could also be that there is something more visibly wrong with him.
The ironic result of the triumph of the machine may be the creation of an ecosystem in which supra-rational gnostic appeals flourish.
Whether there’s something in my teeth.
Whether my breath smells like fish after eating fish, or whether it smells like fish anyway.
Whether I look older now than I do in any given picture.
Whether my stomach is sticking out.
Whether I’m yelling.
Whether there is a slight chance someone may discover that I’m wearing underwear.
Which shirts make me look wide.
When anything jiggles.
Whether I should just give up.
Frances Coppola looks at the rise of Global and reveals that much of the UK’s radio network is controlled by an opaque offshore entity
The Bulwark is featuring a fascinating piece today about Trump and fascism, a very urgent topic: IN THE INITIAL, HEADY DAYS after Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over Donald Trump, many public commentators played down Trump’s threats of not leaving the White House quietly, with some outright dismissing concerns about his electoral lies. Others, though, saw Trump for exactly who he was—and his actions for exactly what they were, even from the outset. One of those discerning voices was Federico Finchelstein, a professor at the New School who studies the history and dissemination of fascism. Just a few days into Trump’s refusal to concede, Finchelstein authored an op-ed in the Washington Post linking Trump directly to a series of previous authoritarians who clung to power, helping introduce Americans to the term auto-golpe (self-coup). It was one of the most prescient pieces of analysis of America’s post-election troubles—vindicated especially on January 6th, when Trump helped sic insurrectionists set on violently overturning the election results.
Life will stand a better chance against climate change if we mix big- and small-picture thinking.
The post The Case for Scientific Transculturalism appeared first on Nautilus.
“Why Hannibal Lecter?” And has a thing for “the late, great Hannibal Lecter,” a “wonderful man.” What a catch! Cohen will be back to testify before this goes live, so I’m bailing. Enjoy. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
I’ve spent most of my life as an advocate for a more peaceful world. In recent years, I’ve been focused on promoting diplomacy over war and exposing the role of giant weapons companies like Lockheed Martin and its allies in Congress and at the Pentagon as they push for a “military-first” foreign policy. I’ve worked at an alphabet soup of think tanks: the Council on Economic Priorities (CEP), the World Policy Institute (WPI), the New America Foundation, the Center for International Policy (CIP), and my current institutional home, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft (QI). Most of what I’ve done in my career is firmly rooted in my college experience. I got a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Columbia University,... Read more
Source: Reflections on Student Activism appeared first on TomDispatch.com.