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.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.

At past Jackson Hole conferences, I have discussed broad topics such as the ever-changing structure of the economy and the challenges of conducting monetary policy under high uncertainty. Today, my remarks will be shorter, my focus narrower, and my message more direct.

The Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC) overarching focus right now is to bring inflation back down to our 2 percent goal. Price stability is the responsibility of the Federal Reserve and serves as the bedrock of our economy. Without price stability, the economy does not work for anyone. In particular, without price stability, we will not achieve a sustained period of strong labor market conditions that benefit all. The burdens of high inflation fall heaviest on those who are least able to bear them.

Conservatives on social media reacted to President Joe Biden’s recent divisive political speech, in which he referred to “MAGA Republicans” as a “threat” to “the very soul of this nation,” by sarcastically explaining how they are threats to the nation as well.

“I go to work. I work hard. I go to the gym. I hunt. I fish. I spend time with friends and family. I pay my taxes and don’t break the law. I play disc golf. I am a threat to the very soul of this nation,” one Twitter user wrote.

International travellers using Qantas face potential delays as baggage handlers prepare to walk off the job.

Ground handlers from Dnata, who are contracted to Qantas and other airlines, will walk off the job for 24 hours on Monday, September 12.

The industrial action was agreed to by Dnata workers on Friday with some 350 crew to strike.

It follows calls by the Transport Workers Union for Dnata to lift pay and conditions, including minimum guaranteed work hours.

Qantas sacked its own ground crew staff at the height of the COVID pandemic and moved to outsourcing roles to companies such as Dnata.

An airline spokeswoman said the negotiations were a matter for Dnata and the carrier had contingency plans in place to curb disruptions.

Former US president Barack Obama will need to get a bigger mantelpiece now that he has picked up an Emmy to go with his two Grammys.

Obama was named winner on Saturday of the best narrator Emmy for his work on the Netflix documentary series Our Great National Parks.

The five-part show, which features national parks from around the globe, is produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground.

He was the biggest name in a category full of famous nominees for the award handed out at Saturday night’s Creative Arts Emmys, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, David Attenborough and Lupita Nyong’o.

Barack Obama is the second president to have an Emmy. Dwight D. Eisenhower was given a special Emmy Award in 1956.

The Greens are threatening to block the referendum on the ‘Voice’ which promises to give effect to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

The Green’s spokesperson on Indigenous Affairs, Senator Lidia Thorpe has described the Voice as a ‘waste of money’ and a ‘wasted exercise’.

Instead the Greens want priority for a Truth and Justice Commission.

This could spell the end or the defeat of the referendum on the Voice.

Don’t the Greens ever learn?

BY JOHN MENADUE

We are taking exactly the same tactics in East Asia that led to the war in Ukraine. We’re organising alliances, building up weaponry, trash-talking China, having Speaker Pelosi fly to Taiwan, when the Chinese government said, “Please, lower the temperature, lower the tensions.” We say, “No, we do what we want,” and now send more arms. This is a recipe for yet another war. And to my mind, it’s terrifying.

A new database that Tufts is maintaining has just shown that there have been more than 100 military interventions by the United States since 1991. It’s really unbelievable.

More than six months into Russia-Ukraine war, peace seems increasingly out of reach. The United States, for its part, is continuing to send tens of billions of dollars to fund Ukrainian military spending—money that often circles back to the American weapons industry—without so much as a dissenting voice in Congress or U.S. corporate media, laments “Scheer Intelligence” host Robert Scheer. On American streets, there are few remnants of the anti-war movement that Scheer himself helped shape in the 1960s and 70s. 

The energy crisis, exacerbated in recent months by Washington’s anti-Russian sanctions policy, is perhaps the worst such crisis since 1973, when Arab countries imposed an oil embargo to protest Western support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. It has affected all Western states by now. While the search for new energy sources and improvements to existing relatively environmentally friendly ways of generating electricity on an industrial scale continues, nuclear power plants remain something of a lifeline for many of the world’s leading states.

All of this has prompted countries to revisit the possibility of using nuclear energy to combat the energy crisis, to analyze the state of the nuclear fuel market and their own capabilities in this field.

BY Vladimir Danilov

It’s Back to the Future for U.S. Grand Strategy

By Angela Stent, author of Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

BACK TO THE FUTURE? GRAND STRATEGY???? THIS IS PROPAGANDA MALAISE AND CLICHE GALORE.....

Angela IS A FULL-ON PRODUCT OF THE US HEGEMONY. Her comments are in normal type, GUS'S COMMENTS ARE IN CAPS....

Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine ended the first phase of the post-Cold War era. 

The Warrior Games is a multi-sport event for wounded, injured or ill service personnel and veterans organized by the United States Department of Defense (DoD).

The Army hosted the games for the second time in 2022, August 19–28.