Reading

Created
Wed, 17/01/2024 - 10:30
Remember when Ann Coulter used to ecstatically describe Donald Trump as an “alpha male” who was going to set the country straight? She even wrote a book called In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! Well, she’s been off of him for quite some time because he failed to build the wall. And she doesn’t seem to believe him when he and his henchman Stephen Miller promise to deport millions of people who look like they might not be citizens. She’s going after him and his voters on twitter and it’s kind of hilarious. She doesn’t think he can beat Biden: “How many people who voted for Biden in 2020 have since switched to Trump?” If there are ANY, it’s a lot fewer than: 1) those who voted for Trump but who’ve since died (older white people);2) immigrants who turned 18 in the last 4 yrs and will vote (minorities);3) Republicans who voted for Trump in 2020, but have since changed their minds over, e.g.
Created
Wed, 17/01/2024 - 08:17
Preparation: approx. 10 min.Cooking time: approx. 10 min. Ingredients:5-6 hg fresh or frozen plaice fillets½ tbsp salt1 tbsp melted butter or margarine1 eggwhite pepper4 tbsp breadcrumbs4 tbsp grated cheese (preferably manorhouse cheese) Garnish:1 lemonanchovy filletsolives or herbs Preparation: Poorly translated from the original Swedish using Google Translate ©️Hemmets Journal AB S/K/2
Created
Wed, 17/01/2024 - 07:30
Zeynap Tufekci studies authoritarian movements around the world. She took a look at the MAGA movement for the NY Times and it’s quite interesting. (Gift link, here.) An excerpt: Cheryl Sharp, a 47-year-old sales associate who was among the many Iowans turned away from a filled-to-capacity Trump rally last month, sounded pretty confident she knew why Donald Trump was so appealing to many voters. For her and many others, she said, his most important quality was strength: He had the fortitude to keep the country safe, avoid new wars and ensure the economy hummed along. “You want someone strong, globally, so that it creates mutual respect with other countries, and maybe a little bit of fear,” she told me. “Yes, it’s true, not everyone likes him. It’s good not to be liked. Being strong is better.” Sharp readily conceded that not everything Trump said was great, but she saw that as part of the right personality to be president. “You gotta be a little crazy, maybe, to make sure other countries respect and fear us,” she said.
Created
Wed, 17/01/2024 - 06:42
The Terminator Future (The End of Meat)

This is my third piece this week on how the world is changing and why. The first handled the geopolitical, the second the military tech at this moment and how that is making empire difficult.

This one is about the future.

There’s going to be a period of war which is all about autonomous robots. Drones, missiles, robodogs with guns, tiny swarms, etc…

Humans are a stupid and inefficient way to apply force: most of the human body is not designed for combat: we are slow, clumsy and easily damaged and destroyed compared to what we can build.

Created
Wed, 17/01/2024 - 06:00
There is so much talk about the Trump economy being the best the world has ever seen and it’s mainly because Trump just keeps saying it over and over again. It was good but it wasn’t great and on many metrics Biden’s is better. But, of course, we’ve been hearing nothing but gloom and doom about the economy for the past three years so people aren’t hearing that. Here’s some reality from Krugman: Now that Donald Trump is the Republican nominee — I know, it’s not official, but let’s get real — we can expect to hear a lot about how great the economy was on his watch. Which is strange, because he was the first president since Herbert Hoover to leave office with fewer jobs than when he came in. What’s happening here is that Trump has been given a mulligan for 2020. And to be fair, the huge job losses that took place that year were caused by Covid-19, not Trump’s policies. What’s really odd, however, is that this mulligan appears to be highly selective.
Created
Wed, 17/01/2024 - 04:59
Only an exceptional president could resist the endless war-profiteering of this mammoth war machine; alas, Biden doesn’t even try. When it comes to foreign policy, the president of the United States has two essential roles. The first is to rein in the military-industrial complex, or MIC, which is always pushing for war. The second is Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 17/01/2024 - 04:58
As the International Court of Justice received submissions from South Africa and Israel on the 11th and 12th of January on the claims by South Africa of an intention to commit genocide by Israel in Gaza, some 20 Gazan children would have lost a limb, forever maimed and severely disabled. Over 1,000 Gazan children have Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 17/01/2024 - 04:57
America’s seamless support for Israel’s pitiless onslaught on Gaza has both astounded and angered the world. War crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide have accumulated as the destruction and death have continued. The hypocrisy of the West as a whole is publicly on display on a daily basis. The Western media has performed as poorly Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 17/01/2024 - 04:56
Imagine this headline: “Brits bomb Belfast to obliterate IRA – 24,000 dead, 50,000 injured, all hospitals flattened – children limbless and starving”. You have to engage your imagination to comprehend the unbridgeable gulf that exists between Israel as an entity committing alleged war crimes, and other, more civilised, nations – even those with their warts. Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 17/01/2024 - 04:55
In their aggressive, unrelenting attempts to protect the government of Israel, groups such as the Australian Jewish Association, the Australia / Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Zionist Federation of Australia have all contributed to a groundswell of anger in Australia over Israel’s shocking treatment of the Palestinians Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 17/01/2024 - 04:54
Missing cabinet documents relating to the 2003 Iraq war are unlikely to reveal the impulses that drove John Howard to a disastrous foreign policy decision. Sometime around mid-2003, a colleague of then-secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ashton Calvert, asked after the cabinet submission authorising Australia’s commitment of military forces to Iraq. Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 17/01/2024 - 04:53
People in the poorest areas of Australia are dying 2.5 times more often from the disease than those in the richest areas. Perhaps this is the long-awaited ‘new normal’ of life with COVID, with more working from home, more COVID complacency, and more long-COVID. But some things haven’t changed. When it comes to some communities Continue reading »