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I know it’s mean to say it, but it’s important to acknowledge. Jill Filipovic writes about “that which cannot be mentioned” in her great newsletter today. It has to be said: One basic rule of being a person who opines on politics is that you are not allowed to disrespect voters. Voters, you are supposed to say, are very smart and thoughtful people; it is the politicians who are bad, who do not deliver, who do not give them what they want or need. If politicians behaved differently, then voters — good people, rational people — would respond accordingly…. But also, a lot of people are stupid, paranoid, incompetent and irrational. I know, this is a very disrespectful thing to say (“deplorable” would have been more polite). And there are of course some Trump voters who are perfectly kind of their neighbors and I am sure are, in many contexts, utterly decent people. There are some Trump voters who aren’t cult loyalist but normie Republicans who want normie Republican things, like tax breaks for the rich, unfettered capitalism, and women forced into submission.
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At the very bottom of a new index ranking 74 countries adhering to the UN Charter is the United States, with Israel being the second from the bottom. Both countries are frequently at odds with the UN multilateral system. The US needs to recognise that the UN system, operating under the UN Charter, is the Continue reading »
Invoking a “shared humanity”, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese called for a rehumanisation discourse in the Israel/Palestine conflict, in which ending Jewish Israel’s domination would be a re-humanising act for Jewish Israelis as well. On Saturday last, UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories, and Italian lawyer, Francesca Albanese delivered Continue reading »
Whistleblower David McBride’s lawyers argued on Day One of his trial that a soldier’s duty is not just to follow his superior’s orders, but to serve the entire nation. Joe Lauria reports. The trial of Australian whistleblower David McBride opened on Monday, with the prosecution and the defence sketching out their cases before Justice David Continue reading »
There are 21 countries attending APEC and over 1,200 organisations from within those countries. Only one of the 21 countries, which happens to be the host, has a recent history of promoting de-coupling, or de-risking which is diametrically opposed to what APEC stands for; they seem to forget that the C means cooperation. For the Continue reading »
Anguish, despair and fear for the future will ravage your brain when you read the latest edition of the UN Production (emissions) Gap Report. Your distress will further increase when you read that Australia will increase the Gap with the development of the Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct, when to stand any chance of addressing Continue reading »
No one who cares about basic human rights, or a sense of honour and of honouring, should be remotely intimidated by the sickening “success” of Dutton’s typically self-serving, cruel and mendacious campaign. The Voice did not fail. Australians failed the Voice. It’s exactly a month since the much-anticipated referendum was held to recognise First Nations Continue reading »
The Israeli media has been interpreting the October 7 attack as ‘reaching Holocaust levels’, or as ‘an equivalent of the 9-11 attack in the US’: and in an atmosphere of fear and anger, Israeli citizens are said to perceive the Hamas slaughter as a threat to the country’s existence. In Australia, to defend Israel, to Continue reading »
We need a better understanding of the complexities of Chinese politics – treating it like a ‘Black Box’ will leave us poorly equipped for a world where China is the other superpower, writes Louise Edwards. Australians generally understand how US politics works. They often know the distinctions between blue and red states and even the Continue reading »
World-renowned activist Issa Amro was dragged away by 15 armed Israelis, blindfolded, gagged, and cuffed so tightly he now needs an operation on his hands. Now, Amro joins MintPress to recount the horrifying realities faced by Palestinians at the hands of their Israeli occupiers.
The post The Nakba 2.0: Issa Amro’s Insider Account of Israeli Torture in Hebron appeared first on MintPress News.
The Republican Party has viciously turned on itself You know how it is when toddlers get tired. They get cranky. They cry and they pout and sometimes they even try to hold their breath until they turn blue if they don’t get their way. When this happens you know it’s time to give them a bottle and put them to bed. When they get older there can be the problem of how to handle an unruly teenager, defiant and hostile, challenging every rule and boundary and refusing to acknowledge any authority. Sometimes it’s enough to take away the car keys and ground them for a while but in other cases, intense therapy or even military school, as in the case of young Donald Trump, is seen as the only way to get through to them. But what do you do when elected officials suddenly start behaving like screaming toddlers and teenage bullies in the halls of congress? Is there any authority that can step in and quiet the tantrums? And when this increasingly anti-social behavior is happening in the shadow of a party leader and presidential candidate who exalts violence and cruelty, can we really just chalk it up to frustration and fatigue?
Multiple Labour MPs are expected to face the sack after defying the Labour whip by backing a ceasefire in Gaza
Itzhak Gilboa, Andrew Postlewaite, Larry Samuelson and David Schmeidler (2022) describe a practice that … is not uncommon among theorists: “[O]ne may suggest a model with a descriptive interpretation in mind, but, when facing an aggressive audience, one might take a step back and rather than promoting the model as an explanation of a real-life […]
Organizers swore off violence, but the cops used their garden tools as an excuse to attack them anyway.
The post Cop City Protesters Tried to Plant Trees. Atlanta Police Beat Them for It. appeared first on The Intercept.
Benefits from Biden’s infrastructure bill sinking in Voters’ choice next year is not just between preserving our experiment in government of, by, and for the people or creeping fascism. It’s also a choice of whether to improve Americans’ lives today and for our children’s future or to squander more energy and treasure on playground brawls, revenge, and punching down. Is returning to middle school any mature adult’s idea of “great”? Navigator this morning finds what Americans prefer: More: By a 43-point margin, Americans continue to support the Bipartisan Infrastructure legislation that President Biden signed into law two years ago today. When asked about a new infrastructure plan that would “improve roads and bridges, expand power infrastructure, increase passenger and rail access, and improve water infrastructure,” 65 percent of Americans support this legislation with only 22 percent opposed.
Could it be otherwise? Probably not, at least at the moment.
What is it about Alice Oswald’s poetry that is so immensely compelling? It could be the tautness, the hard brightness, of the language, the sense that every word in every line is earned, desperately necessary, a matter of urgency. It could be the fact that the poems are consistently so beautiful, so flinty and beautiful. They have the flexibility and the rangy toughness of plant life—and more often than not, Oswald seems inclined to work in book-length poems or sequences, letting an entire environment take root, out of which voices and lyrics flourish and emerge, both unexpected and inevitable. Though she loves the natural world, and loves to work in it—as a professional gardener—and write about it, Oswald is not a Romantic poet, at least not in the Wordsworthian sense. She doesn’t want to let her own voice smother the world in a cataract of discourse. Wants, rather, to let her syntax let her listen, to be a tool of a listening that is not only a getting out of the way, but also a record of boggling diversity of possibility in the created world. This means that poetry in her hands is intelligent but not intellectual, sometimes slow-burning but never slack.
Not even pretending Speaker Mike Johnson did it. He passed a stopgap spending measure through the House meant to prevent a government shutdown on Friday. With Democrats’ help. With all but two House Democrats. With more Democrats than Republicans. Now as it heads to the Senate, we await the MAGA fallout in the House. The Washington Post and CNN will give you the bill’s details. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reacted to Johnson’s accomplishment and its potential blowback on “The Late Show.” “I’m sure Mr. Johnson is very … smart,” she began ironically, because “the previous guy was driven out with torches and pitchforks.” “We all know how this ends. This is not a party that is trying to govern.” The two parties are doing two very different things. So now we are going to keep the government open. It is because the Democrats came to the rescue and said that we should. But this is the Republican Party still not even wanting to keep the government going because they don’t believe that governance is what we need in this country.
Let's discuss what regenerations have meant to BBC's Doctor Who, the symbolically charged transformation of dying Doctors into new Doctors.