mugs

How do empires end? The answer seems to be what Mike Campbell says in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises when he’s asked how he went bankrupt: “gradually, then suddenly.”

blink

The scenes at Kabul airport are reminiscent of the chaos in Saigon in 1975 when pro-American Vietnamese desperately tried to flee before the arrival of communist forces. So how does the US’s campaign in Afghanistan compare with the Vietnam war?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a US broadcaster at the weekend: "This is not Saigon."

But military historians might beg to differ.

vox

the suicide

BERLIN, May 12, 2153 – Within the ivy-covered walls of Farben University, a great battle is now raging. But although the Reich's ancient capital has seen its share of warfare down through the centuries, today's combatants have no swords, no guns, no bio-disrupters – just words and pictures, marshalled on either side of a fierce debate that has split the staid academic world in two, and is beginning to spill over into national politics as well. It all revolves around a simple question: Was the German Empire a good thing or a bad thing?

sunni

THE ARTICLE below is a half-truth disguised as gospel. One has to realise that Bin Laden was a SAUDI first and foremost — financed by the USA and Saudi Arabia. He got blamed for a lot of things "he did not do" as he became a turncoat.

Very few (none) articles actually mention the synergy between the Taliban and the Saudis, and there is a good (bad) reason for this: Saudi Arabia, the most inhumane government on the planet is a friend of the US because of oil. Very few pundits are thus game to involve the Saudis with the Taliban, while blaming everyone else from Russia, China and Iran.

spin

There is no good solution to the Afghan dilemma that US President Joe Biden inherited from his predecessors. As one of his last acts in office Donald Trump had already announced that he intended to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan. And his predecessor Barack Obama missed the opportunity to prepare the withdrawal with the valid argument that the invasion had actually become obsolete after Osama bin Laden's death.

pentagone

On Sunday, the Taliban movement asserted that it had established control over all districts of the Afghan capital city of Kabul, as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Western countries, including the US, are evacuating diplomatic personnel from Kabul.

holidays

For departing to the Camp David presidential retreat for a weekend vacation in the middle of several internal and foreign crises that the United States is facing, President Joe Biden has received an unflattering nickname from the conservative critics - "commander-in-absence".

intransigence...

Intransigence is experienced by many of us daily. It may even dominate our own emotional repertoire. Now, though, as NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announces rising Covid infections and accumulating deaths, this unhelpful trait seems increasingly endangering.

AI

Are you scared yet, human?

This Panorama/4C program looks at the problems of Artificial Intelligence (https://iview.abc.net.au/video/NC2103H026S00) … We have done our best here to follow the AI caper since the inception of this site (2005)... If you live outside Australia, your link might be different: 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000wft2/sign/panorama-are-you-scared-yet-human

con

The technology roadmap sketched by Morrison and Taylor is a con. It is in fact a statement of support for the fossil fuel industry which is heavily subsidised by and a significant donor to the Liberal and National Parties.

turnkey

Though Assange isn't in a US prison, his detention in the UK is TOTALLY illegal. The English crown and all its fucking members should be ashamed about its justice system. The Magna Carta has long been flushed down a dirty toilet on behalf of the Americans — especially their hypocritical Catholic president.

seat of power

Thousands of pages of the Queen’s secret letters to governors-general from Lord Casey to Sir William Deane, from 1965-2001, will soon be open to the public in the most significant release of royal documents since Sir John Kerr’s explosive ‘Palace letters’.

approval

Senate Passes $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill, Handing Biden a Bipartisan Win

The approval came after months of negotiations and despite deficit concerns, reflecting an appetite in both parties for the long-awaited spending package.

q+a

Last night on Q+A, (ABC TV 12/08/2021) Matt Cavanan excelled himself. We could go in detail in regard to his idiotic deliberate ignorance for which in a few years' time we can only guess he will apologise profusely. He is a "National". It's an Australian political party representing farmers, miners, cowboys, cows, camels and loonies. These people know something that we don't: climate change is not happening in Queensland (though it seems to be happening everywhere else on earth).