Reading

In Asian media this week: Tokyo ready to export ‘lethal weapons par excellence’. Plus: Failed Evergrande in massive accounting fraud; Thailand leads ASEAN on same-sex marriage; American naval dominance is waning; Big-brand carmakers planning EV utes; Not-so-Huggie – low birth rate ends baby-nappy production. The Japanese Government has approved a plan to sell to other Continue reading »

The contribution of nuclear power to electricity generation is the lowest for thirty years and its price twice that of renewables. It crackles like a Geiger counter in a uranium mine: in 2023, Emmanuel Macron announced plans for six additional EPR [European Pressurised Reactor] nuclear power plants. Hang on, no, perhaps fourteen in the long Continue reading »

Here I write as a 62-year-old person, formulating the persistent issues of my life by giving my ongoing attention to Friedreich’s Ataxia. I can hardly avoid doing this because it has so shaped my entire life since it’s onset when I was 14 – that means I have had to deal with it for nearly Continue reading »

Tasmanians show what they think of the old parties and the Coalition retreats to the deep north, inflation tumbles but the media hasn’t noticed, getting the climate change message across. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic and political issues. Politics Following the Tasmanian Continue reading »

The Tasmanian election was a disaster for both major parties, but only Labor has a path back. All elections carry messages which parties and politicians ignore at their peril. There have been many such messages for the Liberals, and all have been ignored. The message is that the electorate, right around the country, has been Continue reading »

A Palestinian family’s journey from the Beit Tima massacres to Gaza. On January 12, a message arrived from my sister in Gaza, bearing the devastating news: our parents’ home, a sanctuary of memories, had been razed by Israeli F16 rockets, reducing our beloved home to rubble. This is no ordinary house. Within its walls, I Continue reading »

Despite public protestations, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is helping Israel transfer 1.4 million Palestinians from Rafah to tent cities in the Sinai Desert. On Saturday, western news agencies reported that closed-door negotiations took place in Paris that were aimed at reaching an agreement on a ceasefire in Gaza. According to Reuters the talks represented Continue reading »

After the battles over 5G, social media and advanced microchips, Chinese electric cars are the new front line of US economic warfare. Like any environmentally correct person in North America, I was toying with the idea of buying a Tesla to replace my beat-up eight-year-old Honda. While doing some research, this came up and suddenly Continue reading »

Orignally published April 10, 2020

Hey there, I’m Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I know things look bad for me right now, but I’m gonna be back in a few days, and when I return, I want all the eggs hidden. And I want the eggs to have candy in them. And I want all the kids in town to go look for the eggs so they can eat the candy. This is all about the kids. Adults can’t help them look.

Oh, I almost forgot about the Easter Bunny. Easter is what you’re gonna call the day I come back to life, and the Easter Bunny is what you’re gonna call the man-sized rabbit that hides all the candy-filled eggs the children will hunt down.

Is this too weird? I don’t want this to feel weird. But it’s really important all of this happens every single year from now until forever.

Glenn Youngkin, lame duck: No Virginia governor has come into office with a deeper dealmaking background than Glenn Youngkin, who as former co-chief executive of the Carlyle Group made a fortune acquiring and merging companies around the globe. But as the Republican chief executive of a purple state, Youngkin has struggled to translate that business acumen into political success — or even economic development success, with the demise Wednesday of his much-touted plan to bring the Washington Wizards and Capitals to Alexandria. While Youngkin and his group of financial experts had negotiated with team owner Ted Leonsis to cut what the governor called “the single largest economic development deal in Virginia’s history,” the governor was never able to work the same magic with members of the General Assembly who had to sign off on the $2 billion project. The plan’s failure wipes out a significant legacy-making opportunity for a novice politician who burst onto the scene in 2021 and drew national attention as a fresh Republican face.

As he makes another bid for the White House, Donald Trump is well aware of...

Some Friday messaging advice Two bits about defining Trump caught my attention. You’d think the guy’s image is as set as can be with his friends and foes. What else is there to tell about the twice-impeached, yada-yada? But this is campaign season. The GOP was working “but her emails” all the way up to the election in 2016. Take the hint. Joe Biden is running ads here in N.C. beginning with “Here’s the difference between me and Donald Trump…” In the wake of the Key Bridge collapse this week, Biden immediately pledged, “It’s my intention that federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge.” Full stop. Brian Beutler reminds his Off Message readers that should Trump get reelected we can expect him to hold recovery funds hostage and to extort Maryland and Baltimore for favors: Four years ago this week, it became clear that Donald Trump would husband emergency pandemic resources like ventilators and personal protective equipment for Republican-run states. Or rather, Trump made it clear.

Former Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall will be adapting the Agatha Christie murder whodunnit The Seven Dials Mystery for Netflix.

In this column, professional speechwriter Chandler Dean provides partly satirical, partly genuine “How To” advice focused on a hyper-specific subcategory of speeches—from graduation speeches to wedding toasts to eulogies, and all the rhetorical occasions in between.

It’s an odd thing that we make our election losers do. You don’t have to give a speech when you lose at an award ceremony, or when you don’t get the promotion you were up for, or when you just barely miss the cut for the wedding party. The closest opportunity you get to uplift and inspire in those scenarios is when you gossip about it with your partner on the car ride home. And tragically, that’s rarely televised.

The myths of demagogues collapsed too Lost amidst the tangle of steel and roadway that fell into the icy Patapsco River in Baltimore on Tuesday were eight men pursuing their American Dreams. Two were rescued. Crews pulled the bodies of two others from the water on Wednesday. Four others are presumed dead. Will Bunch considers who the victims were and what their lives meant: From the day in the mid-2000s when a then-20-year-old Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval crossed the border into America, he never stopped working. The youngest of eight children, Suazo was fleeing numbing poverty and a dead-end career path in Azacualpa, a small rural village in the western mountains of Honduras. The undocumented Suazo wound up in Greater Baltimore, a magnet for Central American refugees with its relatively cheap housing for the bustling Eastern Seaboard, a friendly climate toward migrants, and lots of opportunity. With American dreams of entrepreneurship, he took menial jobs like clearing brush, then launched a package delivery service, and when COVID-19 ended that, started working overnight construction for a Baltimore contractor, Brawner Brothers.

Last Christmas I came out of a pub in Manchester city centre with my brother, parents and grandparents early in the evening. I looked up from the base of one of the towers along Great Ancoats Street. 14 stories, 100 or so apartments. I saw four lights on. One supposes this great exodus of the […]

Hi, Jesus. It’s Pop. Just got your message. Sorry I missed you yesterday. It was kind of wild around her. A good Friday it was not. You wouldn’t believe everything going on with this farkakte universe. Expanding and expanding and expanding, we can’t keep up! And all these bad things happening to good people? Don’t get me started. We’re trying to fix that bug, but it’s a real head-scratcher, you don’t want to know.

Anyway, no rest for the divine. So, as I said, I got your message. And, look, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t forsaken you. You think I’d forsake you? I seem like a forsaker to you? What do you want me to do? I was on another line, that’s it.

You know I’ve always been there for you. You’re my number-one boy! Remember that time we did the trick with the wine? Oh, the loaves, the fishes, the things we could do. By the way, how’s Lazarus holding up? A real mensch that guy. You should be so lucky to have a friend like him.