Tesla tycoon Elon Musk slammed Amazon Prime Video’s hotly-anticipated new ‘Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power’ series in a cluster of tweets on Monday, suggesting the series’ original author J.R.R. Tolkien was “turning in his grave.”

The SpaceX CEO explained that “almost every male character so far is a coward, a jerk or both,” with only Galadriel – a female warrior elf – managing to be “brave, smart, and nice.” The series, the first two episodes of which premiered on Thursday, is the most expensive TV show ever made, costing $715 million for the first season alone – seven times as much as one season of HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’.

Therese Coffey conceded that there was some validity in criticisms of her appointment as Britain’s new secretary of state for health and social care. She is known for having some unhealthy habits in her personal life.

The issue came up on Wednesday in an interview with the radio station LBC. Host Nick Ferrari quizzed the new secretary about her well-documented fondness for cigars and alcohol and suggested jokingly that both of them “could do with losing a pound or two.”

“My focus is on how we deliver for patients. And I appreciate I may not be the role model,” Coffey said, adding that “Chief Medical Officer [Chris Whitty] and others, I am sure, will continue being role models in that regard.”

With Queen Liz II gone, and with the shenanigans of her representive in Aussieland, it's time to proclaim a republic...

Vale Lizzie....

At the moment the Queen died, the throne passed immediately and without ceremony to the heir, Charles, the former Prince of Wales. 

In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Fuhrer.
She told me that the “patriotic messages” of her films were dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the German public.

By John Pilger
Special to Consortium News

Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? I asked.  “Yes, especially them,” she said. 

I think of this as I look around at the propaganda now consuming Western societies. 

A peace treaty was only finally signed by a Russian diplomat and the the Mayor of Berwick in 1966. As the mayor said at the time: "You can tell the Russian people that they can now sleep peacefully in their beds". 

Berwick's early story was as one of the most important towns and ports in Scotland for a period of 250 years from 1018. But in 1296 Edward I of England sacked the town and slaughtered 8,000 of its residents. This marked the start of two centuries during which Berwick changed hands between Scots and English on average every 15 years. This was not an environment that encouraged business to flourish and the town's fortunes inevitably waned as a result.

As Kiev has banned journalists from the frontlines of the ‘offensive’ in Kherson Region, the Washington Post sent a reporter to a hospital in the rear area, where wounded Ukrainian soldiers told a harrowing tale of fighting against the odds. Wednesday’s piece about plucky underdogs who just need more weapons, ammunition, and equipment appeared just ahead of a US-led meeting of Ukraine’s arms suppliers in Ramstein, Germany.

Liz Truss has won the role of prime minister, and must navigate her party – and Britain – out of the mess her predecessor left behind.

Months of controversy and a mass exodus of ministers prompted Boris Johnson to announce his resignation as British prime minister in July, which started the race to find a new Conservative Party head.

Ms Truss, who was foreign secretary, narrowly beat her last remaining competitor Rishi Sunak, chief financial minister, with 57 per cent of 81,326 votes from Conservative Party members.

Coercion is a word that sits between beliefs and persuasion. The psychological nature of coercing people to do certain things is very complex as one needs to know many parameters — from the weakness and strength of the person being coerced to the extend of why someone would be “changing an opinion” or “doing something unknowingly/knowingly unsavoury” even under threat. 

There is a fatal disconnect between a political system that promises democratic equality and freedom while carrying out socioeconomic injustices that result in grotesque income inequality and political stagnation.

Decades in the making, this disconnect has extinguished American democracy. The steady stripping away of economic and political power was ignored by a hyperventilating press that thundered against the barbarians at the gate — Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, ISIS, Vladimir Putin — while ignoring the barbarians in our midst. The slow-motion coup is over. Corporations and the billionaire class have won.

The only people with the power to do this, to plan and execute all the portions of the US side of this theatrical performance, and to obtain the necessary silence from all participants, are the alphabet agencies. The (Khazar-controlled) CIA has the power to say, “This is a matter of the utmost national security.

You will comply with our instructions in all details and, if you dare ever breathe a word of this, you will most likely disappear and your family along with you.” The CIA could enforce obedience from the NYPD, the hotel, the prosecutor’s office, the judges and the courts, the phone companies, the airport authorities, and could easily arrange the multiple bank accounts and mobile phones.

48 hours in and 3,265 supporters have given nearly $280,000. Wow.

Seems like this minnow has a fighting chance!

~ 28 August 2022 update by Private Media (publisher of Crikey) on crowdfunding platform GoFundMe.

On 26 August, online publisher Crikey launched a crowdfunding campaign to support its decision to defend a defamation lawsuit from Lachlan Murdoch. Crikey's campaign raises several serious questions.

THE SELF-MODIFYING UNFINISHED AND UNSATISFIED MONKEY

We are a funny lot. Some dude, Desmond Morris, called us, the Naked Ape, but this is limited in scope of intellectual visualisation — a bit like the naked mole. 

For 18 months, as ISIS advanced, the US did nothing to stop them.

Collusion with terror: For 18 months, until the Russian Air Force entered Syrian skies, the US did absolutely nothing to stop ISIS from taking over swathes of Syria and Iraq

In 2017, US and allied Kurdish forces bombarded the city of Raqqa, the bastion of ISIS in Syria and the de-facto capital of the terror group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

BY William Van Wagenen

Concurrent to this, US forces conducted massive air strikes on the Iraqi city of Mosul, to support Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces against ISIS there too.

HERE GUS RESTORES A BIT OF TRUTH IN A NASTY CARTOON BY BADIUCAO — A FELLOW CARTOONIST, WHO FOR AN OLD GUS DOING CARTOONS SINCE 1951, HAS LOST THE SENSE OF HISTORY AND REALITY. IT'S GREAT TO BE PASSIONATE ABOUT PREVENTING WAR AND HURT OF PEOPLE. GUS HAS BEEN DOING IT, A LIFETIME OVER — BUT BADIUCAO HAS "LOST THE PLOT"... 

Black Hole: as billions in American arms and aid enter Ukraine, US officials receive hand written receipts

“Hand receipts, it’s all paper.”

Ukraine is consistently ranked as one of the most corrupt governments in all of Europe. Given that reality, it might not come as much of a surprise that Kiev has no functioning mechanism to track the massive amount of inflows of American weapons and aid into the country.