There are dozens A Newsweek headline on Saturday caught my attention: Democratic 2024 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson compared the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Florida Democratic Party to the now defunct Soviet Union, telling Newsweek on Saturday that their actions ahead of the primaries are “essentially authoritarian.” Williamson, along with fellow Democratic contenders Cenk Uygur, a political commentator and creator of the The Young Turks, and Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, has slammed the Florida Democratic Party’s decision to not include their names on the primary ballot. Instead, Democratic voters in the southern state will only see Biden’s name listed—unless the decision is reversed. In an earlier story, Newsweek reminded readers that Uyger is ineligible to serve as president. But that’s an aside. As for the Florida Democratic Party, it’s been a mess for some time. Not that we can talk here in North Carolina where Democrats in 2022 opposed Green Party recognition. Unwisely, I think. I hope that’s changed.
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From U.S. efforts to undermine a global carbon market to medicines disappearing from insurance plans, here’s a roundup of our reporting from the past week.
Sleepwalking into dictatorship The first time I heard colonizer used was (IIRC) in Black Panther (2018). Since then the smear has caught on a bit, and not in a Martin Luther King sort of way. But that single word of dialogue served in the film to instantly replace the European view of Africa with an African view of Europeans. It carries racial connotations, but is anchored not as much in skin color as behavior, on what Europeans do. We’ve used enablers in the past to describe Donald Trump’s allies inside and outside of government. Former Rep. Liz Cheney offers on “CBS Sunday Morning” a more pointed term for Trump’s confederates based on what they do. They are collaborators, and she doesn’t mean colleagues. She deploys collaborators as the French Resistance might against the Vichy government. “If you look at what Donald Trump is trying to do, he can’t do it by himself,” Cheney tells John Dickerson. “He has to have collaborators.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Gunn/Waller, Doctor Who, Halo, Star Trek: Discovery, HOTD, Reacher, Rick and Morty, The Boys, Fallout & more!
This one is for you — all you sons and daughters struggling to survive in wars or forced to flee your homes and risking your lives. Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you […]
The late Tony Benn once observed that there always seems to be money for war, but never enough to meet people’s basic needs. ‘If we can find the money to kill people’, he argued, ‘we can find the money to help people.’ Recent events in the European Union seem to be proving him right. The […]
Swedish-Eritrean journalist and writer Dawit Isaak has been held in Eritrean prison for 22 years without trial. He is the only Swedish citizen held as a prisoner of conscience. The Swedish government should initiate criminal proceedings against those responsible in Eritrea for crimes against humanity. Dictators all over the world must be held accountable for […]
Yes, I know. That’s an oddly generic (some might even say silly) title for a post by someone who has been scribbling about film here for 17 years. Obviously, I like movies. That said, I am about to make a shameful confession (and please withhold your angry cards and letters until you’ve heard me out). Are you sitting down? Here goes: I haven’t stepped foot in a movie theater since January of 2020. There. I’ve said it, in front of God and all 7 of my regular readers. *sigh* I can still remember it, as if it were yesterday: It turns out that it is not just my imagination (running away with me). A quick Google search of “Seattle rain records” yields such cheery results as a January 29th CNN headline IT’S SUNLESS IN SEATTLE AS CITY WEATHERS ONE OF THE GLOOMIEST STRETCHES IN RECENT HISTORY and a Feb 1st Seattle P-I story slugged with SEATTLE BREAKS RECORD WITH RAIN ON 30 DAYS IN A MONTH. Good times! February was a bit better: 15 rainy days with 4.1 hours a day of average sunshine. But hey-I didn’t move to the Emerald City to be “happy”.
The Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Special "Wild Blue Yonder" re-established the show's credentials regarding high-concept Sci-Fi Horror.
About 65 maintenance workers at CSL Behring, in the northern Melbourne suburb of Broadmeadows, having been on rotating strikes since August.
The post Big Pharma meets big resistance first appeared on Solidarity Online.
A lot! Joyce Vance gives us the low down: Friday night, Judge Chutkan rejected Trump’s “big” argument that he couldn’t be criminally prosecuted for acts committed during his presidency because he had blanket immunity. We discussed the motion when he filed it in early October (read here if you want a refresher on its substance). At the time, I characterized the argument as a flawed one, likely to be a swing and a miss. Judge Chutkan agreed. “The Constitution’s text, structure, and history do not support that contention [that the charges should be dismissed],” she wrote in her opinion. “No court—or any other branch of government—has ever accepted it. And this court will not so hold. Whatever immunities a sitting President may enjoy, the United States has only one Chief Executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.’” Read her entire opinion here.
When Doctor Who: The Star Beast was broadcast last week, it came with a Prologue. Just one that the director of the episode hadn't seen.
Philip Bump takes the time to outline all the ways that Trump has already shown that he will fulfill the plans he’s touting on the campaign trail [T]his would not be comparable to his inauguration in 2017, an event that took most people by surprise and demanded that he quickly figure out what, exactly, he was going to do. Positioned between the base that devoured his hostile rhetoric and the party that facilitated his election, he split the difference, bringing with him advisers (Stephen K. Bannon and Reince Priebus, respectively) from each camp. He learned his lesson. The latter camp encouraged him to respect the informal (and, of course, formal) boundaries that accompanied the job. The former camp let him do what he wanted. By the end of his term, nearly all that was left was those enablers, and he’d discovered that most of the boundaries he’d been encouraged to respect were transparently thin. That’s the recognition that he’d take into January 2025. Trump’s rhetoric, as the likelihood of his being renominated increases, has been less constrained even than it was on the campaign trail in 2015.
They have lost their minds He’s not lying.
The Doctor versus the Toymaker - a fight the Doctor can't win (what?!?). Here's a look at Doctor Who 60th anniversary episode "The Giggle."
Biden does some mild corporate bashing. And it’s smart politics: President Joe Biden took aim at corporations for charging prices he said were artificially high even though the rate of inflation has slowed and some shipping costs have fallen. “Any corporation that has not brought their prices back down, even as inflation has come down, even as the supply chains have been rebuilt, it’s time to stop the price-gouging,” Biden said at the launch of a new White House supply chain initiative. “Give the American consumer a break.” While it’s true that the annual rate of inflation has cooled from its high last summer, this doesn’t translate directly into falling consumer prices. It only means that prices are rising at a lower rate. Prices for some everyday goods have fallen over the past year, a reality reflected in lower Thanksgiving costs this year, for example. And lower costs have in turn left some consumers with more money in their budgets for things like Black Friday shopping, which rose 7.5% this past weekend over a year ago.
Western financial institutions are funding the extinction of threatened species. Many EV batteries make lights work. Investing in the extinction of leopards, tigers and rhinos Feeling feverish? No problem, rhino horn will cool you down. Joints stiff and painful? Tiger bone works wonders. Difficulty breastfeeding? Pangolin scales ease the flow. Wind problem? Blown away Continue reading »
Israeli children sing, “We will annihilate everyone” in Gaza. The song was played on Israel’s national broadcaster Kan. This fact was exposed by the Electronic Intifada – Ali Abunimah – on 19 November. It pretty well says it all. So, what can you do about it? Well, one thing you might do is support BDS. Continue reading »
When people consider the many threats facing our planet today, too often the threat of nuclear weapons is overlooked. Yet it is perhaps the most acute of them all, because the existential danger is ever-present for as long as the weapons exist. Anyone concerned about the climate crisis, about environmental degradation and biodiversity loss, needs Continue reading »
Neoliberalist theory and practice went so horribly wrong because governments that put their faith in markets forgot one word – competition. From the early-1980s, much of the Western world began turning to neoliberalism – a faith in free markets and smaller government. The collapse of the Soviet Union by the end of that decade confirmed Continue reading »