The above is a graphic from the Financial Times, based on data accumulated by Mother Jones.
The red line, which was added by Brian Tyler Cohen, marks the date when Republicans ended the assault weapons ban in the United States.
As it turns out, now is the moment you've been waiting for. (L. Williams)
The former publisher of The National Enquirer testified on Monday before the Manhattan grand jury hearing evidence about Donald J. Trump’s role in a hush-money payment to a porn star, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The publisher, David Pecker, also testified in January, soon after the grand jury was impaneled by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg. The grand jury has heard from at least nine witnesses — including Mr. Pecker, who has gone in twice — and is expected to vote on an indictment soon...
Dan Fumano's Vancouver Sun piece from last October on the transition team behind the new regime at Vancouver city hall.Evan Scrimshaw on 'Treason's Tragically Flawed Logic'.David Moscrop, writing in Jacobin, explaining why Canada needs more public housing not more renting.Christopher Patterson and Lance Barrie in The Tyee/The Conversation making the case for the 15 minute city...Oxford, in the UK, explains its 'traffic filters' here.More on the former guy's 'catch and kill' grand master/mobsterish flash strategy to deal with potentially damaging stories, based on a 2018 piece in Vox by Andrew Prokop and Dylan Matthews.You get a peerage!...And you get a peerage!...And you get a peerage!...Explained by Rowena Mason in The Guardian.Uncle Neil tries to do what Pearl Jam couldn't when it comes to the ripping off of patrons when it comes to concert tickets...Ben Beaumont-Thomas, also in the Guardian, has that story....And, yes, that's Neil in Victoria a few weeks ago, singing for old growth forests, above.Joyce Johnson, in Vanity Fair from 2007, on the night Jack Kerouac first read the New York Times review of the just published (and highly edited) version of 'On the Road' that changed his life for good (and bad?).Scott Simon speaking to the soon to retire Sylvia Poggioli on NPR's 'Weekend Edition Saturday'.And a couple of new (to me at least) musical picks...Katy Kirby and The Beths.
...What’s frustrating is there’s reason to worry (District Attorney Alvin) Bragg is balking (at indicting Donald Trump). Despite all his chest-thumping about how he won’t be intimidated, Bragg is suddenly finding all sorts of reasons not to move forward to indictment. First he canceled the Wednesday grand jury meeting. Then, when they reconvened, he pivoted to another, unrelated case, pausing the hush money inquiry, quite possibly indefinitely...
We began in 1996 by archiving the Internet itself, a medium that was just beginning to grow in use. Like newspapers, the content published on the web was ephemeral - but unlike newspapers, no one was saving it. Today we have 26+ years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine and we work with 1,000+ library and other partners through our Archive-It program to identify important web pages.
As our web archive grew, so did our commitment to providing digital versions of other published works. Today our archive contains:
Anyone with a free account can upload media to the Internet Archive. We work with thousands of partners globally to save copies of their work into special collections...
The Internet Archive, a nonprofit library in San Francisco, has grown into one of the most important cultural institutions of the modern age. What began in 1996 as an audacious attempt to archive and preserve the World Wide Web has grown into a vast library of books, musical recordings and television shows, all digitized and available online, with a mission to provide “universal access to all knowledge.”Right now, we are at a pivotal stage in a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Internet Archive, still pending, brought by four of the biggest for-profit publishers in the world, who have been trying to shut down core programs of the archive since the start of the pandemic...
Transgender Americans experience stigma and systemic inequality in many aspects of their lives, including education, work and health-care access, a wide-ranging Washington Post-KFF poll finds.
Many have been harassed or verbally abused. They’ve been kicked out of their homes, denied health care and accosted in bathrooms. A quarter have been physically attacked, and about 1 in 5 have been fired or lost out on a promotion because of their gender identity. They are more than twice as likely as the population at large to have experienced serious mental health struggles such as depression.
Yet most trans adults say transitioning has made them more satisfied with their lives.
“Living doesn’t hurt anymore,” said TC Caldwell, a 37-year-old Black nonbinary person from Montgomery, Ala. “It feels good to just breathe and be myself.”...
...(I)t is difficult to remember just how deafening the political quietude was back in 2003. While several million people converged on New York City to say no to what we then called “Bush’s war,” the sports world institutionally, from team owners to media puff pieces, was a center of unquestioned patriotism. For people who only read the sports page, and stay off the front page, being confronted with dissenting views was a non-option.
Into this stifling atmosphere came Steve Nash, then with the Dallas Mavericks, showing up at the 2003 All-Star game wearing a T-shirt that read, “No war. Shoot for peace.” When challenged by a shocked press corps, Nash said, “I think that war is wrong in 99.9 percent of all cases. I think [Operation Iraqi Freedom] has much more to do with oil or some sort of distraction, because I don’t feel as though we should be worrying about Iraq.”
He leveled a tragically prescient statement to the powers that be, saying, “I think that Saddam Hussein is a crazy dictator, but I don’t think he’s threatening us at this point in time. We haven’t found any nuclear weapons—no matter what anyone says—and that process is still under way. Until that’s finished and decided I don’t think that war is acceptable.”
Nash did not say that Bush, Cheney and Condoleezza Rice were just mistaken, but actually had very nefarious, and ulterior motives, stating, “Unfortunately, this is more about oil than it is about nuclear weapons.” Nash also took issue with the pro-war media. Two years before The New York Times and The Washington Post apologized publicly for their craven, utterly embedded pro-war coverage, Nash said, “I think a lot of what we hear in the news is misleading and flat-out false, so I think it’s important for us to think deeper and find out what is really going on.”
Nash also did not buckle when Mavs owner Mark Cuban—who fancies himself as a renegade free-thinker—came down on Nash for his views. The Canadian citizen also did not budge when then Spurs center David Robinson said, “If it’s an embarrassment to [Nash] maybe [he] should be in a different country.”...
Well....Horgan’s last line of defence is that cruise ship operators will include B.C. ports in their itineraries even if they are not obliged to do so in U.S. law.
Maybe. But the premier has been wrong at every turn...
The arrival of Princess Cruises’ Sapphire Princess at the Canada Place cruise terminal on April 12 will be symbolic of a hoped-for continuation of tourism’s rebound in Vancouver.
It will be the first of what the Port of Vancouver expects to be a record 331 cruise ship visits to the city in the 2023 season...
Imagine that!
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According to stories bursting across the right-wing mediasphere today, a key reason for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was its focus on spreading “woke culture” rather than efficiently managing risk and profits. Ground zero for this is the allegation that SVB had donated over $73 million to the “BLM Movement & Related Causes.” That struck me as quite a lot of money for a single company, even a large and profitable one, to give to anycause or even all causes. So I tried to find out where this factoid came from and rapidly found my way to a Trumpist think tank. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s a complete lie...
Steve Bannon’s sometime partner Guo Wengui was arrested this morning on a sweeping indictment charging a $1 billion conspiracy, four sets of wire and security fraud charges each tied to a particularly business, as well as other money laundering charges.It will take (me at least) some time to understand the full scope of the alleged behavior.But for now, know that SDNY started seizing some of the proceeds of this fraud last year, and will now move to seize the yacht on which Bannon was arrested for his own fraud indictment...
Former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon pleaded not guilty on Thursday (August 20, 2020) hours after being arrested on a luxury yacht for allegedly skimming donations from an online fundraising campaign for the president’s controversial border wall with Mexico.Using a non-profit organization that he controlled, Bannon “received over $1m from the ‘We Build the Wall’ online campaign, at least some of which he used to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in [his] personal expenses”, federal prosecutors in New York allege...
...(T)he New Federal State of China, “declared” three years ago by Steve Bannon and exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui, made its first CPAC appearance (in 2023) with a $75,000 sponsorship, and two high-tech booths where volunteers handed out leaflets and explained why the battle to destroy the CCP had to be won in America.That isn’t hyperbole. “The elimination of the Chinese Communist Party is essential in breaking the shackles of slavery imposed on the Chinese people,” Bannon said at the 2020 ceremony launching the NFSC, “and also, in bringing about peace to the international community and all mankind.” Guo, citing “Chinese culture,” pricked his finger and signed the declaration with his blood.The Bannon-Wengui partnership burst into the headlines before the 2020 election, when Bannon was arrested on Guo’s yacht on charges that were later superseded by a pardon from President Trump...