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Ingredients

• 425 ml of Marley’s Spirit or Dandelion & Burdock Fizz
• 225 grammes of jellied eel blood (harvested by the muck swallows and mud larks that live under the Thames; if you can’t harvest fresh eel, store-bought is fine)
• 50 grammes of strong flour
• 50 grammes of piddling flour
• 110 grammes of charming foppish stutter
• 1 ml of dried mayonnaise soaked in Pimms
• Candied rummy jubblers
• 225 ml of Posh Spice
• 110 grammes of London copper saying, “What’s all this then, eh?” (crumbled by hand by a chimney-sweep)
• 110 grammes of upper lip (stiffened into peaks)
• Zest of blood sausage
• 275 ml of bovine spongiform beef suet (In a pinch, Artful Dodger grease will do)
• A sprinkling of Welsh corgi
• Sultanas

Instructions

Known as plum puddly-dunks or Christmas pudding, “figgy” pudding is a traditional British dessert served on Bonfire of St. Clive’s Day. (“Pudding” in the United Kingdom is what “dessert” is called elsewhere.

The nearly unanimous vote in the UN Security Council on Friday calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza is a moment of honour for the United Nations and shame for the United States. By voting to stop Israel’s war on Gaza by a vote of 13 yes, 1 no (US), and 1 abstention (UK), the Continue reading »

A visceral emphasis on fear over engagement has marked Australia’s approach to China since 2015. Only 17 Australians graduated with Honours degrees in China Studies between 2017 and 2021 across the entire country. This year no grants were awarded by the Australian Research Council for China-related research or collaborative research involving Chinese institutions. Will the Continue reading »

For truly effective measures to counter climate change, governments need to break from the ideological clutches of classical free market economics. Systemic change must be led by governments with requisite political power and intent, well-defined objectives, and authority to act without fear. Just a week before Cop28, global “one-day temperatures” breached the 2 degrees Celsius Continue reading »

At a minimum Australians expect ministers in the Defence portfolio to display a basic knowledge of defence matters. The Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy’s address to the National Press Club is particularly worrying as justification for “the greatest industrial undertaking Australia has ever attempted”. Conroy’s comments on the AUKUS submarines (SSN-AUKUSs) are simplistic to Continue reading »

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Pearls and Irritations’ weekly roundup this week commented on the paucity of analysis regarding the House of Representatives Select Committee’s report Rebuilding Employment Services. This is not surprising given the number and complexity of its recommendations. However, it is hard to pin down many specifics in the report other than the current system is useless. Continue reading »

“The world looked away during the World War, and Jews, 6 million of our people, were murdered in that looking away…  It is incumbent upon humanity to look at what is happening in Gaza now and to say we will not accept this. We will say no. Not in our name.” – Louise Adler The Continue reading »

The revelations in recent weeks of Indian government involvement in the assassination in Vancouver of a Sikh separatist – and in a conspiracy to murder another in New York – may turn out to be what those in the diplomatic business call “manageable.” The United States and India need a relationship in working order. But Continue reading »

In the last few days, I’ve read poems in Ely, Birmingham, St Andrews, Edinburgh and Brighton; each event was lovely and special in its own way. A big thank you to everyone who came along to them, and indeed, to all the 15,000 people who have dragged themselves to my 59 shows this year. In…

In light of recent events in Gaza, MintPress News brings you our original 2022 documentary, Gaza Fights Back. Filmed on the ground with exclusive access to the Palestinian resistance, the film offers valuable context to the current state of affairs in Gaza.

The post Watch the MintPress News Documentary Film: Gaza Fights Back appeared first on MintPress News.

And these are just for starters Judd Legum came up with a good Top 10 Trump dictatorial promises. I might have put invading Mexico and destroying NATO in the top 10 but that’s just me. Anyway, the first is his explicit promise to be a dictator on Day One. The following are the other nine: Trump says election fraud in 2020 gives him the power to “terminate” the Constitution On December 3, 2022, Trump posted the following message about the 2020 presidential election on his social media platform, Truth Social: Following a backlash from some Republican elected officials, Trump later claimed reports that he was open to terminating the Constitution were “fake news.” Trump says he will issue “full pardons” to January 6 insurrectionists Trump has promised to issue pardons to those involved in the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection.

A Freedom of Information battle means Byline Times can now reveal the cost to the public for the Government's doomed legal challenge to the Covid inquiry

What's happening in Sarajevo provides a uniquely palpable demonstration of the enfeebling impact and influence of Western NGOs abroad, which offers obvious and grave lessons for developing countries everywhere, Kit Klarenberg reports.

The post Enslaved by Nonprofits: How NGOs Colonize Developing Countries appeared first on MintPress News.

America’s fascist, collaborationist past Russian meddling in the 2016 election will be a factor in Donald Trump’s trial on his (alleged) attempt to overturn the 2020 election. See, he had good reason to think 2020 might have been rigged (AP): To hear his lawyers tell it, Donald Trump was alarmed by Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, motivated as president to focus on cybersecurity and had a good-faith basis four years later to worry that foreign actors had again meddled in the race. But to federal prosecutors, 2016 is significant as the year that Trump spread misinformation about voter fraud and proved himself resistant to accepting the outcome of elections that might not go his way. But for now forget about the former Liar-in-Chief’s motivations and focus on Russia’s (in a moment). “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905. From the series Great Ideas of Western Man. Rachel Maddow’s “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism” expands on her podcast‘s tale of U.S.

Turkey presents an inversion of the usual presumptions about the current global struggle between liberalism and conservatism.

The MVC team explores the theme of American idealism in Frank Capra’s holiday classic It’s A Wonderful Life.

This has been lifted from comments and made into a post. It is by Altandmain.

The US hasn’t fought a serious opponent since WW2. Even then, the US vastly overstates it role and understates the USSR’s role in defeating Germany.

Likewise, the UK had this problem. The UK was not prepared for WW1. It also suffered from that problem in WW2. The reason is because it was focused on imperialist colonial wars. It’s military in early parts of WW1 and WW2 didn’t do so well at first and had to undergo a very steep learning curve.

The US has this problem now as well.

Free speech for me, but not for thee It’s that time of year again. A nip is in the air (regionally). Christmas trees whiz by strapped to the roofs of sedan. Clauses are everywhere this time of year. Thus, Baby Jesus is battling Lucifer over the Establishment Clause. One of the battle fronts this year is in Iowa “where the Satanists have antagonized the Christians with a goat’s head wreath in the Des Moines capitol building.” See, because the Supreme Court ruled that Christians could erect Christmas displays on state property if other faiths get to erect theirs … you know where this is going. Satanists each year make a pointed point about the foolishness of it all by erecting displays honoring Lucifer. Amanda Marcotte weighs in on this less-clebrated holiday tradition: Every year, Christian conservatives discover the Satanic display and have a loud, public temper tantrum about it. In this, Satanists prove their point: Conservatives claim to respect religious plurality, but it’s a lie.

What a world! For eight weeks now, events in Israel and Gaza have been the story of the hour, day, week. And what exactly are we to make of that?  Let’s start with the obvious: American media coverage of the horrors there has been nonstop since the Hamas slaughter of October 7th. In fact, it’s knocked Russia’s war in Ukraine, the one we were told was so essential to the future of democracy, off front pages (and their media equivalents) everywhere. And the coverage of recent protests has strikingly outpaced those of any other antiwar protests in this century. What the American news media do is, of course, only part of any story, but their recent protest focus contrasts vividly with... Read more

Source: Power, Protest, and All That’s News appeared first on TomDispatch.com.