That is surely the US calculation: that Cubans will be so exhausted by an intolerable, externally imposed economic nightmare that they will acquiesce to anything that promises to end it.
Anything, anything, but admitting that socialism doesn’t work….
Since then, I’ve published many thousands of words, with countless more left on the cutting-room floor. But even the discarded words never felt wasted, because they were the byproduct of thinking. Any writer can attest to the transformational nature of the writing process: you can start out with one idea, only to end up somewhere quite different. Writing is more than a matter of merely outputting words. It’s a matter of discovering what your values are and convincing yourself that they’re worth fighting for.
I dunno. Typing to a deadline maybe? Telling a story? Fighting for your values might not be the real thing, you know?
It’s even possible to use writing as a way to find out what you think. Because in order to write it down you’ve got to structure it and – at least try – lay it out so someone else can understand the point. But that bit about fighting for – more than a little self-aggrandising there I’m afraid.
Much of the rest of it is Gramps “You really appreciated bread before all this tractor nonsense!”
When the Democratic National Committee finally released its autopsy on the 2024 election disaster, not even the DNC chair could defend it. “I don’t endorse what’s in this report,” Ken Martin conceded as the autopsy went public on Thursday. After several months of withholding the autopsy on the grounds of not wanting it to be a distraction, Martin fessed up at last: “When I received the report late last year, it wasn’t ready for primetime. Not even close. And because no source material was provided, fixing it would have meant starting over, from the beginning.”
In response, a former Obama speechwriter, Jon Favreau, summed up eight stages of Martin’s tortuous process that has spanned more than a year: “Promise to release autopsy; put incompetent friend in charge; incompetent friend produces incoherent product; announce you’re not releasing the autopsy; lie about why; gaslight people who ask, saying they’re the problem; face internal revolt; release autopsy.”
It reminds, nicely, how jaw gapingly pompous American political journalism is. That it was all just a bad candidate following a senile one, badly run, isn’t enough. And near all American political journalism is like this. It’s near unreadable in fact.
Britain can choose to be a partner in that project or accept a role as adjunct. National power could be boosted in an alliance of neighbours with broadly aligned global interests. Or it can be circumscribed by the Brexit cult of sovereignty that sees regulatory harmonisation with Europe as colonisation but welcomes subordination to US tech giants and industrial lobbies, which it calls free trade.
I’d call it Brexit Derangement Syndrome but BDS means something different these days, doesn’t it?
But the words that fill our papers and airwaves have consequences. They shape the beliefs and political views of the people who have, make no mistake, turned against their neighbours and voted Reform.
The media follows the prejudices of the population, not causes them. That things Nes is not happy about are believed by significant portions of the British population is because things Nes is not happy about are believed by significcant portions of the British population.
This is, obviously, the problem with democracy. The things the plebs believe, eh?
British Palestinians feel unable to speak openly about Israel’s war on Gaza, the director of the British Palestinian Committee has said, amid what campaigners believe is a growing climate of hostility around Palestinian identity and activism in the UK.
Given that we have weekly riots in the streets demanding the death and drowning in the sea of all Jews silly enough to live in the Middle East I dunno. What is it anyone wants to say that isn’t already rioted about?
Queen backs decision to keep pilot who bludgeoned wife to death in prison
Why was the wife in prison? How did he get in there to bludgeon her?
Royal consort told campaigners she supported their efforts to prevent the early release of a notorious killer
Ah, that headline needs rewriting, no?
In our view, that’s a good thing. But as the anti-datacenter movement has grown, it’s come under fire from all sides, including from liberal critics who dismiss it as another privileged form of nimby (not in my backyard) politics with naive demands. A New York Times op-ed, for example, called the fight against datacenters a “myopic” “distraction” from the “real fight”. In truth, anti-datacenter organizing is the real fight, one centered on an industry choke point that people can reach out and touch. This brewing populist resistance isn’t just about limiting local development – it represents a critical new front in the fight against tech-enabled authoritarianism. Where else can people push back on job-eating algorithms, distorting deep fakes, and autonomous drone strikes?
We’ve found some trivial issue we can organise around and thereby haave comfy jobs sa anti-capitalists.
Well done, Lads
Afeature of living at the end of an era is that some events in the present already feel like future artefacts – things you expect to see in a school history book, or a documentary many years from now. Here is King Charles’s 2026 state visit to the United States, right between the chapters on the war on Iran and the global energy crisis. Here is an image of the entire constellation of Trumpland, dining on spring-herbed ravioli and dover sole. Look at this interesting antiquity of the time: the gold plates, the universal sign of a regime at the peak of excess. And there you see the foreign dignitary, making a speech that at the time felt like bold truth-telling, but as we all now know was little more than naive theatre while the whole world teetered on the precipice.
Presumably the belief is that if Nesrine talks portentously of Great Things then Nesrine is a very serious commentator on Great Things. Rather than just being portentous.
The Donald is evil, the US cannot be stood, I’m leaving!
‘I don’t want to be part of a dictatorship’: the Americans queueing up to renounce their citizenship
OK.
In the 00s, the numbers of US citizens renouncing were in the hundreds annually; since 2014, they’ve been in the thousands. This is expected to be a bumper year (matching 2020’s 6,000-plus)
OK.
0.0017% are tryig to leave in any one year.
There are about 800,000 naturalisations each year….the queue running the other way, to get in. If you’re running at 133x the number trying to get in as get out then, well, you know, you might be doing OK?
Still gives Zoe something to write about, no?
Neither figure comes close to the true cost of renouncing if you get a lawyer, which, with no complications at all, will cost $7,000 to $10,000, says Alexander Marino, who heads Moody’s, the largest renunciation law practice in the world.
Blimey. Wonder who suggesated this article to Zoe/the Editor then?
Trump defies attempts to make his actions cohere with any particular strategy. His wars, killing of innocents, and indeed, the threatening of entire civilisations are reshaping the world, but without him even having orchestrated some master plan. He is animated by little more than momentary impulses and resentments.
Not really necessary to read more of Nesrine here. It’s not informative, analytical, it’s performative, political porn for The Elect.
That dreadful man, why isn’t he forced to use the servants’ entrance?
Oh well, guess it sells newspapers.
Imagine your house is on fire, and when you dial 999 the call handler suggests you try putting the blaze out yourself. Resources are tight, you see, and demand high, and the service increasingly relies on volunteers. Or perhaps your child’s maths teacher is off sick. The headteacher texts and asks if you can leave work to explain algebra to the class. It’s your family, after all, so shouldn’t you be the one to help?
The idea is ludicrous of course. And yet that’s exactly what is happening to the almost 6 million people in the UK who are unpaid carers for sick, disabled and older relatives. While we rightly wince at headlines of DIY dentistry and patients on NHS waiting lists crowdfunding for surgery, it has long been normalised for family to fill the gaping holes in the social care system.
Or a horrific one, obviously.
Is the state there to fill in the gaps between society’s activities? Or should the state do everything and society fill in the State’s cracks?
The whole social contract of Dubai involves a wilful blindness to the proximity of suffering and violence. After all, Gaza is geographically close.
Ta Dah! See? Those bastard tax exile influencers in Dubai are close to Gaza and the Eeeevil Jooos! Let ’em burn!
It’s also 1,500 miles. The distance from London to Tunisia. Or London to Istanbul, London to Moscow….
You know, close by.
‘Visible from space’: why Spain has the world’s biggest concentration of greenhouses
Southern weather but with European property rights, not African. From that, plus clustering, etc.
Don’t bother with the piece itself. It’s very clearly PR from the growers’ association. And if it isn’t that then the writer has missed their vocation.
‘A toad is a perfect tenner’: experts recommend wild candidates for new banknotes
We have experts in what should be on banknotes now?
Tony Juniper…Chris Packham….Lucy Lapwing….Isabella Tree….Hannah Bourne-Taylor….
The Guardian’s continued linguistic degradation. “Expert” now means “Nutter we like”.
Anyway, the Wren:
For the £50 note, as that’s what it’s worth after 80 years of fiat money and MMT.
A war spiralling in the Middle East. A death toll now in the thousands across Iran and Lebanon. Energy prices soaring. The Gulf seized up with Iranian strikes. It’s one of those eras that feels bewildering, incomprehensible, out of control. But there is, at the heart of it, a simple logic: everything that is unfolding is a result of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians.
Gosh, yes, that is well done Nesrine. Here, have a cookie.
Marseille is a haven for artists and progressives. How could it be on the cusp of far-right rule?
Mary Fitzgerald
The more artists and progressives you’ve got around the further far right your views are driven…..
Let’s spell out what is happening here. A state committing genocide – Israel – has joined forces with an ailing superpower led by an aspiring autocrat. Together they have launched a plainly illegal war, as defined by the UN charter, which prohibits the use of force unless a state faces an actual or imminent attack.
What’s the point of bleating about human rights if we don’t go blow up those who violate them?
Owen’s definition of a Just War here would seem to insist that invading Rwanda to limit the Tutsi slaughter would be unjust. The slaughter of 600k is not an attack on another country now, is it?
Hmm.
Axel Springer’s offer raises fewer questions, but will also need government approval before being confirmed. Its £575m bid is a cash offer. The media giant, which already owns Politico, Business Insider and the German mass-market newspaper Bild, does not own other major UK-centred media assets.
It’s a number of years since I even saw a Business Insider piece let alone saw them break some interesting story or must read piece. Bild, on the other hand, can be great fun. So, which side of the company will run the Telegraph?
The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all
Taylor Lorenz
Presumably the lithium dosage has been corrected…..