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Rishi Sunak gathered lots of approving front pages in the Conservative-supporting newspapers on Wednesday, after pledging to increase defence spending by £75 billion and pay for it by scrapping 70,000 civil servant jobs.
The £75 billion figure features prominently on the front page of the Telegraph, the Times and Daily Mail. The only problem is that it isn’t really true.
A senior Labour MP and co-author of a new Policy Exchange report attacking attempts to define Islamophobia privately told former Conservative Cabinet Minister Baroness Sayeeda Warsi that the Conservative think tank is a "dangerous" outfit with extremist tendencies that he is trying to "temper" with his presence.
I know the bad orange man is bad, but since October, people with actual influence have been mostly yelling at people for objecting to the slaughter in Gaza instead of using their platforms to actually shift the administration. Don't argue that no one has any influence; Biden is a creature of DC and listens to these people.
I know they generally believed the following:
The popularizer of “fake news” conspired to create it
Dozens of parents and campaigners gathered outside Parliament on Wednesday to draw attention to the fact that at least 20,000 migrant families in England are still excluded from childcare support – weeks after the
I have out up Marsh family videos here before. This one is very good:
Statistical Notices update the definitions and guidance contained in the Banking Statistics Yellow Folder
The Government is being urged to drop data protection reforms which appear to put commercial interests ahead of protecting children’s data, and instead support action aimed at better protecting the education sector under existing law.
Statistical Notices update the definitions and guidance contained in the Banking Statistics Yellow Folder
It’s the National Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity To Man Day. It’s a real thing. And if you’re wearing the same hangover as I am, you know just where to point that finger, right? Yeah, right in the mirror. You need to look yourself right in your bloodshot eyes and say, “How many times have I told you not to mix your liquors? Gin and tequila and wine? On a Thursday? You know better than that. You know that combination is dynamite, and not the good kind of dynamite.”
With a general election looming, it once again appears to be open season on benefits claimants and disabled people.
During a weekend welfare policy blitz, the Prime Minister pledged a new slew of curbs on benefits for disabled and chronically ill people if the Conservatives win power again. He also doubled-down on retaining the controversial two-child benefit cap, a key driver of child poverty.
Ha!
A mistaken vocal inflection produced by the waitress when you mentioned you have a boat.
Oh!
Often produced involuntarily when you realize you are much kinkier than you thought you were.
Wham!
Your drunk uncle describing the impact of his 2018 Dodge Ram during his first DUI.
Twang!
A combination of traditional values and piss water boycotts.
“I know what the hell I’m doing.”
I read a little while ago that Portland, Oregon is phasing out gas-powered leaf blowers starting in 2026, with the goal of "improving public health and quality of life for landscape workers and other residents." Now THAT'S civilized.
Rishi Sunak's rhetoric around 'sick note culture' is a transparent attempt to blame workers for government policies that have pushed millions of us into poverty and ill health.
(Photo by Leon Neal - WPA Pool/Getty Images)
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: TikTok, FOX News/Watters/Trump, Superman, X-Men '97, Drag Race All Stars, Doctor Who, AHS: Delicate & more!
Back in 1997 I took out a personal loan from the UCLA Credit Union to acquire my first computer: a glorious Quantex Intel Pentium II with 64 MB of RAM. Playing games on Windows 95 had become part of my day job at Audio Visual Services, and when I finally left to attend grad school in New York City, I knew I needed to have my own PC. It cost over $3500 (7x the quarterly tuition at UCLA the time—or almost two years ), and I think I paid about $39 per month for five years.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has announced its new class of fellows, and a couple of philosophers are among them.
In Being Human in Digital Cities, Myria Georgiou explores how technology reshapes urban life, transforming how we relate to ourselves, each other and the space around us. Examining the digital order’s influence, including datafication, surveillance and mapping, Georgiou’s essential book advocates for centring humans through the paradigm of the “right to the city” based on social justice, equity, democracy and sustainability, writes Samira Allioui.
Peaceful protesters are facing extreme and multiple punishments for the same offence: the offence of trying to defend Earth systems.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 19th April 2024
I was sent a promotion by Abebooks yesterday suggesting I might like to buy a copy of 'Money for Nothing and My Tweets for Free', which I wrote and published in 2022.
This is what they linked to:
There’s a mystery of mirror molecules at the origin of life on Earth – and these scientists may have solved it
- by Aeon Video
In the face of growing international pressure, the Biden administration has continued to double down on a policy of blanket support for Israel, even as it presses ahead with a possible military offensive against the town of Rafah that many observers have warned could trigger the largest humanitarian crisis of the war so far. This week on Intercepted, co-hosts Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain discuss the Biden administration’s approach to the conflict with Thanassis Cambanis, director of the foreign policy think tank Century International.
This was Stephanie Kelton on The Daily Show in the USA last night, talking about modern monetary theory:
In case the link does not work (and YouTube seems to be unreliable this morning), it's also here.
One of the strangest consequences of running a blog that has quite a high volume of traffic is that I receive a great many press releases a day. Most go straight into the electronic bin, but there are exceptions that demand that I read them. One of those came in from Extinction Rebellion this morning.
It said, and I unashamedly quote:
Julian Reynolds
The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) has today urged a suite of actions and investments to protect the future of the Murray-Darling Basin in the face of climate change, which is threatening the river’s health and sustainability. In a new essay series A thriving Murray-Darling Basin in 50 years: Actions in the face…
On April 16, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, issued with authoritarian glee legal notices to X Corp and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to remove material within 24 hours depicting what her office declared to be “gratuitous or offensive violence with a high degree of impact and detail.” The relevant material featured a live…
it feels good to feel good, is that philosophy? did i just do a philosophy?? is it a good philosophy
I posted this video on YouTube this morning:
This is the transcript:
Taxes should be fair. I think that's obvious. Well, it should be to anyone.
They're not in the UK at present because we know that the wealthy underpay tax compared to those on lower incomes, and that's one of the reasons why I wrote the Taxing Wealth Report, precisely because we do need to redistribute income and wealth from those who've got high levels of both to those who have very little of either.
Join Phil Gasper, Sabrina Fernandes, and Vanessa Wills as they discuss the continued relevance of the Communist Manifesto in today's political landscape.
The post Online Meeting: The Communist Manifesto appeared first on New Politics.
I watched Keir Starmer talking on a news bulletin last night and heard him say, in words that echo those of Rishi Sunak, that we “have to stop the boats“.
He was, of course, referring to the inflatable craft being used by those seeking asylum in the UK to cross the English Channel when no other route is available to them before they can make an application to live in this country.
Samuel Moyn annd Julian Nicolai Hofmann explore the resurgence of Cold War liberalism amid global crises. Through historical analysis, Moyn examines liberalism's evolution, highlighting its transformation and proposing a revival of its progressive elements for the future....
On 17 April 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) published the Proposed Bureau’s text in advance of the 8th meeting of the Working Group on Amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) (WGIHR) which meets from 22–26 April 2024. Accompanying the 64 page Bureau text is an accompanying, non-public document on the rationales underpinning the proposed Bureau’s text for WGIHR 8. Third World Network
It was only a matter of time I suppose but the IMF is now focusing its nonsensical ‘growth friendly austerity’ mantra on Japan. In a recent interview, the former Portuguese Finance Minister now in charge of the IMF’s so-called ‘Fiscal Affairs Department’, Vitor Gaspar claimed that Japan is now in a precarious position and must…
The definitive memoir of life in the Black Panther Party -- and its decline due to the flaws of Leninism -- by one of its Field Marshalls.
Author
Submitted by The_Dilettante on April 24, 2024
Chapter 3 from the 1998 book Money and the Human Condition by Michael Neary and Graham Taylor.
Author
Submitted by UseValueNotExc… on April 24, 2024
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/97dca92d08491c88a4c9173764b60bac/href
Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than your feelings. Your feelings don’t matter.
Chapter 2 from the 1998 book Money and the Human Condition by Michael Neary and Graham Taylor.
Author
Submitted by UseValueNotExc… on April 24, 2024
Chapter 1 from the 1998 book Money and the Human Condition by Michael Neary and Graham Taylor.
Author
Submitted by UseValueNotExc… on April 24, 2024
He’s very desperate right now
The world has banded together to offer Donald Trump a fourteen-figure sum in exchange for never talking about anything at all ever again.
Saying they were willing to pay whatever it takes to stop that ‘excruciating fucking noise emanating from the US’, the world’s citizens agreed to crowd-fund the hush money payment to silence the former President.
“I’ve chipped in ten grand. If it means I never have to hear that whinging, crying little twatface man-baby throwing a sook again, it’ll be money well spent,” fund contributor Belinda Curnow said.
Organised fraudsters are targeting student loans to make millions of pounds because of a lack of government oversight of the university finance system, according to a new parliamentary report.
The House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee has identified a “back door” into the student finance system, caused by growing numbers of universities outsourcing courses to commercial partners.
Students and teachers targeted by police as ADL demands government breaks student anti-genocide protest movement
David Pecker confesses on the stand to conspiring with Trump against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election. pic.twitter.com/nzjE0rDWe9
— Molly Ploofkins (@Mollyploofkins) April 23, 2024
When Speaker of the House Mike Johnson pushed through aid to Ukraine this week, it...
As Congress and the national security state continue their quest to ban the TikTok social media platform in the United States, President Joe Biden has been courting TikTok influencers to help him shore up youth support for his reelection. While the administration has been publicly casting TikTok as a grave threat to American security, the White House has quietly hosted a number of influencers to pitch them on pro-Biden content.
The defense will try to say that Trump was just trying to keep these allegedly false accusations about his womanizing from Melania. Please. She knew who she was married to. He’s on record saying he’d be dating Ivanka if she wasn’t his daughter. He once said when asked if he would stay with Melania if she was disfigured in a car crash: “How do the breasts look?”
He very famously once said:
Robert H. Kane, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, has died.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned in a conversation with Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington that the safety of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan was a high priority of the United States, multiple sources familiar with the exchange told The Intercept.
The warning issued late last month by Schumer, the most powerful Democrat in Congress, to Pakistan came after intense activism by members of the Pakistani diaspora amid concerns that the Pakistani military may harm Khan, the former prime minister who was ousted from office in 2022.
From his popular podcast, to his travels with Will and Jada Smith, to GAP ads...
I thought this was clever and cogent: Sunak, like so many top Tories, has hardly ever worked. He has just gambled successfully….... Read more
Amod Sandhya Lele is interviewed by Céline Leboeuf.
One wonders how the Australian mainstream media will react to the news that India, the so-called biggest democracy in the world, has thrown out ABC correspondent Avani Dias from the country. Dias was denied a visa after her program Sikhs, Spies and Murder: Investigating India’s alleged hit on foreign soil was aired on the ABC Continue reading »
The idea that nuclear submarines can be built in Adelaide under AUKUS has the characteristics of the “group think” that led to invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has been described by former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer as a “bit of a fairytale”. “Some government in the future will make the obvious decision and not Continue reading »
Unlike virtually every non-Anglophone country on the planet, Australia still has no mandatory teaching of foreign languages in its schools. Why do we assume, as a matter of colonial entitlement, that people from non-Anglophone countries will understand us, but it is not even a matter of decency to make the same effort to understand them? Continue reading »
In the oceanic commentary on the Bruce Lehrmann cases, little attention seems to have been given as to how he got into Minister Linda Reynolds office in the first place. If he hadn’t all could have been spared the terrible things that have happened as a consequence of his admission – the catastrophic ignominies he Continue reading »
Former US ambassador Chas Freeman argues that Iran’s strike “changes all the rules of the game in the Middle-East”. For Ambassador Freeman, the most important factor is that: “the Saudis, the Emiratis and others informed the United States that they would not permit American operations against Iran from their territory and Iran warned those states Continue reading »
A mass grave created by the IDF has been uncovered at a Gaza hospital, where Palestinian civilians appear to have been the victims of a gruesome massacre. “Bah, that’s old news Caitlin,” you may be saying. “We already know about the massacre and mass graves which were discovered a few weeks ago at the al-Shifa Continue reading »
The Case Against RFK Jr.
RFK Junior is not who you think he is.
It pains me to say it, but he is a dangerous nutcase.
He claims to want to heal America, but his vision for our future is tainted by his endorsements of hateful conspiracy theories – and the fact that he is being funded in large part by donors aligned with Donald Trump.
The U.S. Department of Labor issued a final rule today making changes to the regulations about who is eligible for overtime pay. Here’s why this matters:
Camus embodied an existence that was itself conflicted, caught between the vectors of history and lived experience.
I probably return to the Iraq war as a reference point a bit too much, but in my defense the same fucking people who promoted that now/still control most of the microphones.
The brief genre of "Iraq war mea culpa" was telling because, for the most part, they were thumbsucking exercises expressing, "How could I, a Harvard grad with a big brain, have been wrong, and those pig people, the protesters, have been right? Here are 27,000 words about why they are, AKSHUALLY, the stupid ones, and I will learn nothing from this."
Voters across England have been sent mock newspapers with a bright red masthead – which on closer inspection look like Labour Party leaflets.
On further closer inspection, they turn out to be Conservative Party leaflets.
Dear valued customers,
Here at Weird Sisters Soups & Brines, our top priority has always been to prepare nourishing, ready-to-eat soups, enjoyable alone or with the whole clan. After a long day with kinsmen slaughtering foes in an odorous peat bog, there’s nothing like returning to the sod hut and forgetting all your toils and troubles over a bubbling bowl of Weird Sisters Soup. Filled with the eye of newt and chunks of frog toes our customers have come to savor, our soups are always sure to beguile you.
Dan Watters and Kelsey Ramsay have a new free Doctor Who story, in which the Doctor hears a siren call across Space and Time.
There's this idea that Trump's trial are helping him, but the polling over the last month says that is hogwash.
Biden's gaining in the polls, & those paying attention to the trials favor Biden over Trump by a clear margin. pic.twitter.com/5J9OfztdsD— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) April 23, 2024
Something not clear in this already incredible self-own of a chart is that "Target" isn't even "the goal we need to hit to prevent climate catastrophe." Target is just "What Biden pledged to hit back in 2021." It's less aggressive than what the EU or the UK say they're targeting. https://t.co/xULAsZGDBc
— austin walker (@austin_walker) April 22, 2024
We are thrilled to announce the release of our distributed programming
environment Spritely Goblins version 0.13.0
for Goblins on Guile!
This release has two major new features: a powerful new object
persistence mechanism (to save your running programs to disk and wake
them up later!), as well as a new abstraction which makes writing IO
code much easier!
Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined by Kaliya Franklin and Mikey Erhardt
The New School’s Creative Publishing & Critical Journalism (CPCJ) and Woodbine Research Center present a discussion on the role of radical politics in publishing. ...
For those who celebrate
I know I've asserted many times that the obsessive focus on elite universities is ridiculous, and it is, but this stuff fits in with my favorite more general theme - elite mendacity and incompetence.