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  1. The Guardian: Report shows banned non-fiction books doubled over last school year in US theguardian.com/books/2026/may
    „Banned non-fiction titles included Challenges for LGBTQ+ Teens by Martha Lundin, Aztec, Inca, and Maya by Elizabeth Baquedano and Night by Elie Wiesel, a Nazi death camp memoir.“
    Inzwischen über 3.700 Bücher, davon 1.100 Non-Fiction.
    #BadNews

  2. The Guardian: Report shows banned non-fiction books doubled over last school year in US theguardian.com/books/2026/may
    „Banned non-fiction titles included Challenges for LGBTQ+ Teens by Martha Lundin, Aztec, Inca, and Maya by Elizabeth Baquedano and Night by Elie Wiesel, a Nazi death camp memoir.“
    Inzwischen über 3.700 Bücher, davon 1.100 Non-Fiction.
    #BadNews

  3. One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly – NPR

    Music

    One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly

    The story of Coolidge Auditorium, at the Library of Congress, is one of American ingenuity, cultural integrity and a century of free concerts.

    October 25, 20258:18 AM ET, Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

    Tom Huizenga 6-Minute Listen Transcript

    The Dalí Quartet, accompanied by Ricardo Morales on clarinet, performs during the Library of Congress’ Stradivari concert in Coolidge Auditorium in 2023. The Library was given a rare set of Stradivarius instruments in 1935.
    Shawn Miller/Library of Congress

    The year is 1925. The Great Gatsby is published, the jazz age is swinging, and on October 28th, a new concert hall opens at an unlikely spot — the Library of Congress, in Washington D.C. If only its cream-colored walls could talk. For 100 years, performers of all stripes have graced the Library stage, from classical music luminaries like Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky to Stevie Wonder, Audra McDonald and Max Roach. Today, it remains one of the capitol city’s most beautiful, best sounding and perhaps best kept secrets.

    The idea for a concert hall at the Library of Congress did not stem from congress. It came from philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge — and one bespoke piece of bipartisan legislation. “She was indefatigable and intrepid,” says Anne McLean, senior producer for concerts at the Library, “a remarkable woman, six feet tall, a brilliant pianist.” McLean is sitting with me on the stage, overlooking the empty auditorium. To mark the centennial, celebratory concerts and commissions have been heard in the hall all year. But not now. The government shutdown has forced the hall to close its doors, and unless a deal is reached before Tuesday, it’ll be closed on the anniversary itself.

    Coolidge was born into a wealthy Chicago family in 1864. She studied music, traveled abroad, married a Harvard-trained orthopedic surgeon and, in 1924, came to Washington to establish a foothold in the nation’s capitol. She approached Carl Engel, the Library’s music chief, about the possibility of adding a small concert hall to the Library’s voluptuous — and voluminous — Thomas Jefferson building, designed after the Paris opera house and completed in 1897. You can’t see the hall from the outside, as it’s tucked inside the building’s Northwest Courtyard.

    In 1924, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge wrote her first check to the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, to begin the construction of a new auditorium.

    Eager to get started, Coolidge wrote a check for $60,000 to the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, on Nov. 12, 1924. And yet there was no legal mechanism in place for a civilian to make such a monetary gift to the U.S. government. Congress worked quickly, taking only a little over a month to pass a bill allowing such a contribution.

    It took less than six months to build the hall itself — the intimate, 485-seat Coolidge Auditorium, with its warm precise acoustics. “There are a lot of secrets to it,” McLean says. “The back wall of the auditorium is slightly shaved to be concave and extremely responsive to string sound. Underneath the stage is hollow. But that hollowness is a factor, as is the cork floor, which was very unusual for its time.” McLean says the sound blossoms in the hall. Keen to spread the sound far and wide, Coolidge even had the building wired for the relatively new medium of radio. She added to her initial sum to establish a fund for the commissioning of new music. Engel dubbed her “The Fairy-God-Mother of Music.”

    Construction of Coolidge Auditorium, at the Library of Congress, began in May, 1925. It was finished in time for the very first concert on Oct. 28 of that year. Library of Congress

    Coolidge was well-connected and fiercely advocated for music. In 1944, she took to the local Washington airwaves with another bold idea. “I could wish for music, the same governmental protection that is given to hygiene, education or public welfare,” she said over WTOP. “How wonderful, if we could have in the cabinet, a secretary of fine arts.”

    Coolidge never got her wish, but what she had already created was arguably more important — a living, breathing concert hall that serves as a cultural beacon — preserving history and cultivating new music through commissions.

    The Martha Graham Dance Company performs the world premiere of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring on the stage of the Coolidge Auditorium on Oct. 30, 1944. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation Collection / Library of Congress

    Perhaps the most famous commission became one of America’s most iconic pieces of music. Aaron Copland‘s ballet Appalachian Spring, written for dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, received its world premiere at Coolidge Auditorium on Oct. 30, 1944. “I think people knew what they were hearing,” McLean says. The ballet would win the Pulitzer prize for music the following year, along with the New York Music Critics Circle Award. It’s hard to imagine a full ballet produced on Coolidge’s modestly-sized stage.

    Continue/Read Original Article Here: One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly : NPR

    #100Years #AaronCopland #CoolidgeAuditorium #Culture #FreeConcerts #Ingenuity #LibraryOfCongress #MarthaGraham #Music #NationalPublicRadio #NPR #TomHuizenga #WeekendEdition

  4. One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly – NPR

    Music

    One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly

    The story of Coolidge Auditorium, at the Library of Congress, is one of American ingenuity, cultural integrity and a century of free concerts.

    October 25, 20258:18 AM ET, Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

    Tom Huizenga 6-Minute Listen Transcript

    The Dalí Quartet, accompanied by Ricardo Morales on clarinet, performs during the Library of Congress’ Stradivari concert in Coolidge Auditorium in 2023. The Library was given a rare set of Stradivarius instruments in 1935.
    Shawn Miller/Library of Congress

    The year is 1925. The Great Gatsby is published, the jazz age is swinging, and on October 28th, a new concert hall opens at an unlikely spot — the Library of Congress, in Washington D.C. If only its cream-colored walls could talk. For 100 years, performers of all stripes have graced the Library stage, from classical music luminaries like Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky to Stevie Wonder, Audra McDonald and Max Roach. Today, it remains one of the capitol city’s most beautiful, best sounding and perhaps best kept secrets.

    The idea for a concert hall at the Library of Congress did not stem from congress. It came from philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge — and one bespoke piece of bipartisan legislation. “She was indefatigable and intrepid,” says Anne McLean, senior producer for concerts at the Library, “a remarkable woman, six feet tall, a brilliant pianist.” McLean is sitting with me on the stage, overlooking the empty auditorium. To mark the centennial, celebratory concerts and commissions have been heard in the hall all year. But not now. The government shutdown has forced the hall to close its doors, and unless a deal is reached before Tuesday, it’ll be closed on the anniversary itself.

    Coolidge was born into a wealthy Chicago family in 1864. She studied music, traveled abroad, married a Harvard-trained orthopedic surgeon and, in 1924, came to Washington to establish a foothold in the nation’s capitol. She approached Carl Engel, the Library’s music chief, about the possibility of adding a small concert hall to the Library’s voluptuous — and voluminous — Thomas Jefferson building, designed after the Paris opera house and completed in 1897. You can’t see the hall from the outside, as it’s tucked inside the building’s Northwest Courtyard.

    In 1924, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge wrote her first check to the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, to begin the construction of a new auditorium.

    Eager to get started, Coolidge wrote a check for $60,000 to the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, on Nov. 12, 1924. And yet there was no legal mechanism in place for a civilian to make such a monetary gift to the U.S. government. Congress worked quickly, taking only a little over a month to pass a bill allowing such a contribution.

    It took less than six months to build the hall itself — the intimate, 485-seat Coolidge Auditorium, with its warm precise acoustics. “There are a lot of secrets to it,” McLean says. “The back wall of the auditorium is slightly shaved to be concave and extremely responsive to string sound. Underneath the stage is hollow. But that hollowness is a factor, as is the cork floor, which was very unusual for its time.” McLean says the sound blossoms in the hall. Keen to spread the sound far and wide, Coolidge even had the building wired for the relatively new medium of radio. She added to her initial sum to establish a fund for the commissioning of new music. Engel dubbed her “The Fairy-God-Mother of Music.”

    Construction of Coolidge Auditorium, at the Library of Congress, began in May, 1925. It was finished in time for the very first concert on Oct. 28 of that year. Library of Congress

    Coolidge was well-connected and fiercely advocated for music. In 1944, she took to the local Washington airwaves with another bold idea. “I could wish for music, the same governmental protection that is given to hygiene, education or public welfare,” she said over WTOP. “How wonderful, if we could have in the cabinet, a secretary of fine arts.”

    Coolidge never got her wish, but what she had already created was arguably more important — a living, breathing concert hall that serves as a cultural beacon — preserving history and cultivating new music through commissions.

    The Martha Graham Dance Company performs the world premiere of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring on the stage of the Coolidge Auditorium on Oct. 30, 1944. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation Collection / Library of Congress

    Perhaps the most famous commission became one of America’s most iconic pieces of music. Aaron Copland‘s ballet Appalachian Spring, written for dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, received its world premiere at Coolidge Auditorium on Oct. 30, 1944. “I think people knew what they were hearing,” McLean says. The ballet would win the Pulitzer prize for music the following year, along with the New York Music Critics Circle Award. It’s hard to imagine a full ballet produced on Coolidge’s modestly-sized stage.

    Continue/Read Original Article Here: One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly : NPR

    #100Years #AaronCopland #CoolidgeAuditorium #Culture #FreeConcerts #Ingenuity #LibraryOfCongress #MarthaGraham #Music #NationalPublicRadio #NPR #TomHuizenga #WeekendEdition

  5. One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly – NPR

    Music

    One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly

    The story of Coolidge Auditorium, at the Library of Congress, is one of American ingenuity, cultural integrity and a century of free concerts.

    October 25, 20258:18 AM ET, Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

    Tom Huizenga 6-Minute Listen Transcript

    The Dalí Quartet, accompanied by Ricardo Morales on clarinet, performs during the Library of Congress’ Stradivari concert in Coolidge Auditorium in 2023. The Library was given a rare set of Stradivarius instruments in 1935.
    Shawn Miller/Library of Congress

    The year is 1925. The Great Gatsby is published, the jazz age is swinging, and on October 28th, a new concert hall opens at an unlikely spot — the Library of Congress, in Washington D.C. If only its cream-colored walls could talk. For 100 years, performers of all stripes have graced the Library stage, from classical music luminaries like Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky to Stevie Wonder, Audra McDonald and Max Roach. Today, it remains one of the capitol city’s most beautiful, best sounding and perhaps best kept secrets.

    The idea for a concert hall at the Library of Congress did not stem from congress. It came from philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge — and one bespoke piece of bipartisan legislation. “She was indefatigable and intrepid,” says Anne McLean, senior producer for concerts at the Library, “a remarkable woman, six feet tall, a brilliant pianist.” McLean is sitting with me on the stage, overlooking the empty auditorium. To mark the centennial, celebratory concerts and commissions have been heard in the hall all year. But not now. The government shutdown has forced the hall to close its doors, and unless a deal is reached before Tuesday, it’ll be closed on the anniversary itself.

    Coolidge was born into a wealthy Chicago family in 1864. She studied music, traveled abroad, married a Harvard-trained orthopedic surgeon and, in 1924, came to Washington to establish a foothold in the nation’s capitol. She approached Carl Engel, the Library’s music chief, about the possibility of adding a small concert hall to the Library’s voluptuous — and voluminous — Thomas Jefferson building, designed after the Paris opera house and completed in 1897. You can’t see the hall from the outside, as it’s tucked inside the building’s Northwest Courtyard.

    In 1924, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge wrote her first check to the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, to begin the construction of a new auditorium.

    Eager to get started, Coolidge wrote a check for $60,000 to the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, on Nov. 12, 1924. And yet there was no legal mechanism in place for a civilian to make such a monetary gift to the U.S. government. Congress worked quickly, taking only a little over a month to pass a bill allowing such a contribution.

    It took less than six months to build the hall itself — the intimate, 485-seat Coolidge Auditorium, with its warm precise acoustics. “There are a lot of secrets to it,” McLean says. “The back wall of the auditorium is slightly shaved to be concave and extremely responsive to string sound. Underneath the stage is hollow. But that hollowness is a factor, as is the cork floor, which was very unusual for its time.” McLean says the sound blossoms in the hall. Keen to spread the sound far and wide, Coolidge even had the building wired for the relatively new medium of radio. She added to her initial sum to establish a fund for the commissioning of new music. Engel dubbed her “The Fairy-God-Mother of Music.”

    Construction of Coolidge Auditorium, at the Library of Congress, began in May, 1925. It was finished in time for the very first concert on Oct. 28 of that year. Library of Congress

    Coolidge was well-connected and fiercely advocated for music. In 1944, she took to the local Washington airwaves with another bold idea. “I could wish for music, the same governmental protection that is given to hygiene, education or public welfare,” she said over WTOP. “How wonderful, if we could have in the cabinet, a secretary of fine arts.”

    Coolidge never got her wish, but what she had already created was arguably more important — a living, breathing concert hall that serves as a cultural beacon — preserving history and cultivating new music through commissions.

    The Martha Graham Dance Company performs the world premiere of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring on the stage of the Coolidge Auditorium on Oct. 30, 1944. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation Collection / Library of Congress

    Perhaps the most famous commission became one of America’s most iconic pieces of music. Aaron Copland‘s ballet Appalachian Spring, written for dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, received its world premiere at Coolidge Auditorium on Oct. 30, 1944. “I think people knew what they were hearing,” McLean says. The ballet would win the Pulitzer prize for music the following year, along with the New York Music Critics Circle Award. It’s hard to imagine a full ballet produced on Coolidge’s modestly-sized stage.

    Continue/Read Original Article Here: One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly : NPR

    #100Years #AaronCopland #CoolidgeAuditorium #Culture #FreeConcerts #Ingenuity #LibraryOfCongress #MarthaGraham #Music #NationalPublicRadio #NPR #TomHuizenga #WeekendEdition

  6. One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly – NPR

    Music

    One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly

    The story of Coolidge Auditorium, at the Library of Congress, is one of American ingenuity, cultural integrity and a century of free concerts.

    October 25, 20258:18 AM ET, Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

    Tom Huizenga 6-Minute Listen Transcript

    The Dalí Quartet, accompanied by Ricardo Morales on clarinet, performs during the Library of Congress’ Stradivari concert in Coolidge Auditorium in 2023. The Library was given a rare set of Stradivarius instruments in 1935.
    Shawn Miller/Library of Congress

    The year is 1925. The Great Gatsby is published, the jazz age is swinging, and on October 28th, a new concert hall opens at an unlikely spot — the Library of Congress, in Washington D.C. If only its cream-colored walls could talk. For 100 years, performers of all stripes have graced the Library stage, from classical music luminaries like Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky to Stevie Wonder, Audra McDonald and Max Roach. Today, it remains one of the capitol city’s most beautiful, best sounding and perhaps best kept secrets.

    The idea for a concert hall at the Library of Congress did not stem from congress. It came from philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge — and one bespoke piece of bipartisan legislation. “She was indefatigable and intrepid,” says Anne McLean, senior producer for concerts at the Library, “a remarkable woman, six feet tall, a brilliant pianist.” McLean is sitting with me on the stage, overlooking the empty auditorium. To mark the centennial, celebratory concerts and commissions have been heard in the hall all year. But not now. The government shutdown has forced the hall to close its doors, and unless a deal is reached before Tuesday, it’ll be closed on the anniversary itself.

    Coolidge was born into a wealthy Chicago family in 1864. She studied music, traveled abroad, married a Harvard-trained orthopedic surgeon and, in 1924, came to Washington to establish a foothold in the nation’s capitol. She approached Carl Engel, the Library’s music chief, about the possibility of adding a small concert hall to the Library’s voluptuous — and voluminous — Thomas Jefferson building, designed after the Paris opera house and completed in 1897. You can’t see the hall from the outside, as it’s tucked inside the building’s Northwest Courtyard.

    In 1924, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge wrote her first check to the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, to begin the construction of a new auditorium.

    Eager to get started, Coolidge wrote a check for $60,000 to the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, on Nov. 12, 1924. And yet there was no legal mechanism in place for a civilian to make such a monetary gift to the U.S. government. Congress worked quickly, taking only a little over a month to pass a bill allowing such a contribution.

    It took less than six months to build the hall itself — the intimate, 485-seat Coolidge Auditorium, with its warm precise acoustics. “There are a lot of secrets to it,” McLean says. “The back wall of the auditorium is slightly shaved to be concave and extremely responsive to string sound. Underneath the stage is hollow. But that hollowness is a factor, as is the cork floor, which was very unusual for its time.” McLean says the sound blossoms in the hall. Keen to spread the sound far and wide, Coolidge even had the building wired for the relatively new medium of radio. She added to her initial sum to establish a fund for the commissioning of new music. Engel dubbed her “The Fairy-God-Mother of Music.”

    Construction of Coolidge Auditorium, at the Library of Congress, began in May, 1925. It was finished in time for the very first concert on Oct. 28 of that year. Library of Congress

    Coolidge was well-connected and fiercely advocated for music. In 1944, she took to the local Washington airwaves with another bold idea. “I could wish for music, the same governmental protection that is given to hygiene, education or public welfare,” she said over WTOP. “How wonderful, if we could have in the cabinet, a secretary of fine arts.”

    Coolidge never got her wish, but what she had already created was arguably more important — a living, breathing concert hall that serves as a cultural beacon — preserving history and cultivating new music through commissions.

    The Martha Graham Dance Company performs the world premiere of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring on the stage of the Coolidge Auditorium on Oct. 30, 1944. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation Collection / Library of Congress

    Perhaps the most famous commission became one of America’s most iconic pieces of music. Aaron Copland‘s ballet Appalachian Spring, written for dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, received its world premiere at Coolidge Auditorium on Oct. 30, 1944. “I think people knew what they were hearing,” McLean says. The ballet would win the Pulitzer prize for music the following year, along with the New York Music Critics Circle Award. It’s hard to imagine a full ballet produced on Coolidge’s modestly-sized stage.

    Continue/Read Original Article Here: One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly : NPR

    #100Years #AaronCopland #CoolidgeAuditorium #Culture #FreeConcerts #Ingenuity #LibraryOfCongress #MarthaGraham #Music #NationalPublicRadio #NPR #TomHuizenga #WeekendEdition

  7. One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly – NPR

    Music

    One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly

    The story of Coolidge Auditorium, at the Library of Congress, is one of American ingenuity, cultural integrity and a century of free concerts.

    October 25, 20258:18 AM ET, Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

    Tom Huizenga 6-Minute Listen Transcript

    The Dalí Quartet, accompanied by Ricardo Morales on clarinet, performs during the Library of Congress’ Stradivari concert in Coolidge Auditorium in 2023. The Library was given a rare set of Stradivarius instruments in 1935.
    Shawn Miller/Library of Congress

    The year is 1925. The Great Gatsby is published, the jazz age is swinging, and on October 28th, a new concert hall opens at an unlikely spot — the Library of Congress, in Washington D.C. If only its cream-colored walls could talk. For 100 years, performers of all stripes have graced the Library stage, from classical music luminaries like Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky to Stevie Wonder, Audra McDonald and Max Roach. Today, it remains one of the capitol city’s most beautiful, best sounding and perhaps best kept secrets.

    The idea for a concert hall at the Library of Congress did not stem from congress. It came from philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge — and one bespoke piece of bipartisan legislation. “She was indefatigable and intrepid,” says Anne McLean, senior producer for concerts at the Library, “a remarkable woman, six feet tall, a brilliant pianist.” McLean is sitting with me on the stage, overlooking the empty auditorium. To mark the centennial, celebratory concerts and commissions have been heard in the hall all year. But not now. The government shutdown has forced the hall to close its doors, and unless a deal is reached before Tuesday, it’ll be closed on the anniversary itself.

    Coolidge was born into a wealthy Chicago family in 1864. She studied music, traveled abroad, married a Harvard-trained orthopedic surgeon and, in 1924, came to Washington to establish a foothold in the nation’s capitol. She approached Carl Engel, the Library’s music chief, about the possibility of adding a small concert hall to the Library’s voluptuous — and voluminous — Thomas Jefferson building, designed after the Paris opera house and completed in 1897. You can’t see the hall from the outside, as it’s tucked inside the building’s Northwest Courtyard.

    In 1924, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge wrote her first check to the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, to begin the construction of a new auditorium.

    Eager to get started, Coolidge wrote a check for $60,000 to the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, on Nov. 12, 1924. And yet there was no legal mechanism in place for a civilian to make such a monetary gift to the U.S. government. Congress worked quickly, taking only a little over a month to pass a bill allowing such a contribution.

    It took less than six months to build the hall itself — the intimate, 485-seat Coolidge Auditorium, with its warm precise acoustics. “There are a lot of secrets to it,” McLean says. “The back wall of the auditorium is slightly shaved to be concave and extremely responsive to string sound. Underneath the stage is hollow. But that hollowness is a factor, as is the cork floor, which was very unusual for its time.” McLean says the sound blossoms in the hall. Keen to spread the sound far and wide, Coolidge even had the building wired for the relatively new medium of radio. She added to her initial sum to establish a fund for the commissioning of new music. Engel dubbed her “The Fairy-God-Mother of Music.”

    Construction of Coolidge Auditorium, at the Library of Congress, began in May, 1925. It was finished in time for the very first concert on Oct. 28 of that year. Library of Congress

    Coolidge was well-connected and fiercely advocated for music. In 1944, she took to the local Washington airwaves with another bold idea. “I could wish for music, the same governmental protection that is given to hygiene, education or public welfare,” she said over WTOP. “How wonderful, if we could have in the cabinet, a secretary of fine arts.”

    Coolidge never got her wish, but what she had already created was arguably more important — a living, breathing concert hall that serves as a cultural beacon — preserving history and cultivating new music through commissions.

    The Martha Graham Dance Company performs the world premiere of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring on the stage of the Coolidge Auditorium on Oct. 30, 1944. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation Collection / Library of Congress

    Perhaps the most famous commission became one of America’s most iconic pieces of music. Aaron Copland‘s ballet Appalachian Spring, written for dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, received its world premiere at Coolidge Auditorium on Oct. 30, 1944. “I think people knew what they were hearing,” McLean says. The ballet would win the Pulitzer prize for music the following year, along with the New York Music Critics Circle Award. It’s hard to imagine a full ballet produced on Coolidge’s modestly-sized stage.

    Continue/Read Original Article Here: One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly : NPR

    #100Years #AaronCopland #CoolidgeAuditorium #Culture #FreeConcerts #Ingenuity #LibraryOfCongress #MarthaGraham #Music #NationalPublicRadio #NPR #TomHuizenga #WeekendEdition

  8. SIP condena asesinato del periodista colombiano Mateo Pérez Rueda en Antioquia

    La SIP reclama una investigación oportuna por el asesinato de un periodista en Colombia

    Por Martín García | Reportero                                      

    La Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa (SIP) expresó su consternación por el asesinato del periodista colombiano Mateo Pérez Rueda, director del medio El Confidente, de Yarumal, Antioquia, y exhortó a las autoridades a desplegar todos los recursos necesarios para esclarecer el crimen, identificar y sancionar a los responsables, y garantizar que el caso no quede en la impunidad.

    Pérez Rueda, de 25 años y estudiante de Ciencia Política en la Universidad Nacional, fue reportado como desaparecido el 5 de mayo en la vereda Palmichal, municipio de Briceño, una zona con presencia de grupos armados ilegales y confrontaciones con la fuerza pública. La Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP), alertó sobre el caso y la información sobre el asesinato fue posteriormente confirmada por la Gobernación de Antioquia.

    El periodista se encontraba en la zona con el propósito de documentar la crisis humanitaria derivada del conflicto armado cuando fue interceptado por integrantes del Frente 36 de las disidencias de las FARC, según reportes de prensa.

    Testimonios de familiares indican que Pérez Rueda habría sido retenido por hombres armados mientras se identificaba como periodista, sin que ello evitara su agresión. Mateo fue “interceptado por hombres armados en la vía rural de Briceño, lo hicieron bajar de la moto, le pidieron que los acompañara hasta un lugar cercano de la vereda donde había gente y algunas personas pudieron evidenciar cómo fue maltratado. Se identificó como periodista varias veces, hicieron caso omiso y parece que acabaron con su vida”, dijo su primo Jorge Rueda, quien agregó que la familia espera que su cuerpo sea recuperado.

    Hasta esta fecha, las autoridades locales no habían podido localizar al periodista debido a la falta de garantías de seguridad en la zona rural. El gobernador de Antioquia anunció una recompensa de hasta 300 millones de pesos colombianos (entre US$80,000 y US$84,000) por información que permita esclarecer el caso y dar con los responsables.

    “Lamentamos la violencia que deja una profunda cicatriz en familiares y periodistas, y reiteramos nuestra preocupación por el deterioro de las condiciones de seguridad para el ejercicio periodístico en zonas de conflicto en Colombia”, expresó Pierre Manigault, presidente de la SIP y titular del grupo Evening Post Publishing Inc., con sede en Charleston, Carolina del Sur, Estados Unidos.

    “Este crimen refleja la persistente vulnerabilidad de los periodistas que cubren territorios controlados por actores armados ilegales y la urgencia de reforzar las medidas de protección y justicia. Exigimos al Estado colombiano una investigación diligente, independiente y efectiva que garantice que este asesinato no quede en la impunidad y que se proteja el ejercicio del periodismo en todo el país”, dijo por su parte Martha Ramos, presidenta de la Comisión de Libertad de Prensa e Información de la SIP, y directora editorial de la Organización Editorial Mexicana (OEM). –sn–

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    #NoticiasMX #PeriodismoParaTi #PeriodismoParaTiSociedadNoticias #Antioquia #Briceño #Cdmx #Colombia #crisisHumanitaria #DerechosHumanos #ElConfidente #FARCDisidencias #FLIP #gruposArmados #Información #InformaciónMéxico #LibertadDePrensa #MateoPérezRueda #México #Morena #noticia #noticias #NoticiasMéxico #NoticiasSociedad #periodismoColombiano #PeriodistaAsesinado #PrensaInternacional #seguridadPeriodistas #SIP #SN #Sociedad #SociedadInteramericanaDePrensa #SociedadNoticias #SociedadNoticiasCom #sociedadNoticias #SociedadNoticiasCom #ViolenciaContraPeriodistas #Yarumal
  9. Enjoyed last night. Local friends Shanti and Martha had us over to their evacuation house, they are finalizing things to move home after #eatonfire. we brought Thai food and they bought nonsense pizza (bulgogi beef and such). Everyone had a good dinner, kids played together on various computer games, and then after dinner I played nonsense improv on their grand piano, and shanti demoed various sheet music he enjoyed studying while my wife and Martha talked... we had to drag kids away at 10:30

  10. PREVIEW: Cold Hard Cash: A Martha Chainey Escapade #5--Conclusion
    Martha and her colleagues are on the brink of discovering the stolen funds if they can only survive the final confrontation and walk away with the money... and their lives!

    Written by Gary Phillips
    Art by Adriana Melo
    comiccrusaders.com/preview-col
    #cold hard cash #comics #comixology #indie

  11. blick.ch/ausland/naechster-mys

    Nächster mysteriöser #Todesfall in der russischen Elite
    Hochrangige #Russin (†58) stürzt knapp 50 Meter in den #Tod
    Immer wieder kommen hochrangige und mächtige Russen auf mysteriöse Weise ums Leben. Nun sorgt der Tod von Marina Yankina für Aufsehen. Sie war im russischen Verteidigungsministerium tätig und wurde nun leblos aufgefunden.

  12. I know we're wary of NYT links, but sharing this gift link for an excellent op-ed on birthright citizenship and the 14th amendment, from historians Martha Jones and Kate Masur.

    Will be using this in my US History I class in a few weeks, for sure, when we cover #Reconstruction.

    "Trump Says Birthright Citizenship Was for the Children of Slaves. He’s Wrong."

    nytimes.com/2026/03/30/opinion

    #Histodons #USHistory #GiftLink

  13. Keanu Reeves se métamorphose en ange déchu dans Good Fortune

    Le comédien culte Keanu Reeves surprend une nouvelle fois en prêtant ses traits à un ange maladroit dans Good Fortune, la première réalisation d’Aziz Ansari. Présentée au Festival de Toronto, cette comédie mystico-fantastique réunit également Seth Rogen, Keke Palmer et Sandra Oh. Sortie prévue aux États-Unis le 17 octobre.

    Keanu Reeves, un ange pas comme les autres

    Une bande-annonce révélatrice

    Lionsgate a récemment dévoilé une nouvelle bande-annonce de Good Fortune, qui a suscité un vif engouement après sa première mondiale au Festival international du film de Toronto. Le film met en scène Keanu Reeves dans le rôle de Gabriel, un ange bien intentionné mais maladroit. Persuadé que l’argent ne saurait résoudre tous les problèmes, il décide d’intervenir dans la vie de deux hommes aux destins opposés : un travailleur précaire et un riche investisseur.

    Publicités

    Une intrigue au ton biblique et comique

    Dans cette fable contemporaine, Gabriel tente de démontrer la supériorité des valeurs humaines sur la richesse matérielle. Mais son plan tourne court, l’ange perd ses ailes et devient humain. Dès lors, il doit apprendre à vivre sans ses pouvoirs, tout en affrontant les conséquences imprévisibles de son intervention. Cette approche légère et spirituelle rappelle les grandes comédies bibliques comme Dogma, mais avec la touche unique de Keanu Reeves.

    Aziz Ansari, un nouveau regard derrière la caméra

    Le premier long-métrage d’un humoriste reconnu

    Connu pour son rôle dans Master of None, Aziz Ansari signe ici son premier long-métrage en tant que réalisateur. Non content d’avoir écrit et produit Good Fortune, il y incarne également Arj, un travailleur précaire dont la vie est bouleversée par les décisions irréfléchies de l’ange Gabriel. Cette prise de risque marque une étape décisive dans la carrière de l’artiste, qui fait un retour remarqué après plusieurs années d’absence.

    Publicités

    Une équipe créative expérimentée

    Le film bénéficie de l’expertise de professionnels aguerris : Anthony Katagas et Alan Yang à la production, Adam Newport-Berra à la direction de la photographie et Carter Burwell à la composition musicale. Distribué par Lionsgate, Good Fortune se présente comme une comédie visuellement soignée, où humour et réflexion s’entrelacent pour offrir une expérience cinématographique singulière.

    Un casting étoilé pour une comédie universelle

    Seth Rogen et Keanu Reeves, un duo inattendu

    Aux côtés de Keanu Reeves, Seth Rogen incarne Jeff, un investisseur prospère dont la vie se retrouve bouleversée après l’échange orchestré par Gabriel. Ce tandem improbable promet des situations cocasses et décalées, où l’humour grinçant de Rogen se mêle au flegme de Reeves. L’alchimie entre les deux acteurs est au cœur de la dynamique comique du film.

    Publicités

    Des rôles marquants pour Sandra Oh et Keke Palmer

    Le casting est complété par des figures charismatiques : Sandra Oh, révélée dans Grey’s Anatomy, interprète Martha, tandis que Keke Palmer prête ses traits à Elena. Stephen McKinley Henderson endosse quant à lui le rôle d’Azrael. Chacun de ces personnages contribue à enrichir l’univers du film, en apportant à la fois profondeur et légèreté.

    Une sortie attendue et une portée internationale

    L’accueil du Festival de Toronto

    Présenté pour la première fois lors du prestigieux Festival de Toronto, Good Fortune a rencontré un accueil chaleureux, suscitant curiosité et enthousiasme. Le film, mélange de fantaisie et de comédie sociale, s’inscrit dans une tradition de cinéma populaire, accessible au plus grand nombre.

    Publicités

    Une sortie progressive dans le monde

    La sortie officielle est prévue pour le 17 octobre aux États-Unis, distribuée par Lionsgate. Aucune date n’a encore été communiquée pour la France, mais l’attente des fans reste palpable. Compte tenu du rayonnement international de Keanu Reeves, il est probable que Good Fortune connaisse rapidement une diffusion élargie, en salles ou via les plateformes de streaming.

    Avec Good Fortune, Keanu Reeves confirme sa capacité à surprendre, passant du registre sombre de John Wick à une comédie mystique portée par la fantaisie. Dirigé par Aziz Ansari, ce long-métrage promet un mélange habile d’humour, d’humanité et de réflexion, soutenu par un casting prestigieux. Rendez-vous le 17 octobre pour découvrir cette histoire céleste où les anges aussi peuvent perdre leurs ailes.

    https://youtu.be/SAMkXY2Ja80

    #AzizAnsari #Cinéma #comédie #Film2025 #GoodFortune #KeanuReeves #KekePalmer #Lionsgate #SandraOh #sethRogen #TorontoInternationalFilmFestival

  14. Kanzler beim Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbund: Spalter Merz taz.de/Kanzler-beim-Deutschen-

    „Der Kanzler hat
    offenbar kein Interesse an Kompromiss und Integration. Wenn er noch Erfolg haben will, muss er den Neoliberalen in sich bändigen.“
    #Merz #DGB

  15. With uncertainty with local post offices and the Trump Regime's continued attacks on mail in voting, it's more important than ever to get your ballots back ASAP!

    In a discussion over on our Substack, International Chair Martha McDevitt-Pugh reminds us to get those ballots back in the mail (or emailed!) as quickly as possible to avoid any issues or potential delays!

    #democratsabroad #votefromabroad #substack #mailinvoting #2026elections #USpol #USpolitics

  16. Wednesday Reads: The Demolition of U.S. Democracy

    Good Morning!!

    This looks like a war zone.

    I’m heartsick about what Trump is doing to the White House. The White House belongs to the American people, not to the current president. But Trump is doing whatever he wants to our government and to “the people’s house.”

    Yesterday, at his substack, Law Dork, Chris Geidner posted the clearest photos of Trump’s demolition I have seen so far. From the photos, it’s clear that either the entire East Wing or most of it will be destroyed. The first photo shows the destruction of the front of the building, and the second shows the damage from above, show how far back the damage to the roof goes. I can’t post the photos here–they are protected–but you can see them at the link.

    From the article:

    Exclusive: Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing is nearly complete.

    Photos obtained exclusively by Law Dork on Tuesday show that President Donald Trump is completely demolishing the East Wing of the White House as part of his stated plan to build a ballroom befitting his standards on the White House grounds.

    Although Trump earlier had said the ballroom “won’t interfere with the current building,“ this week it became abundantly clear that was a lie. And, this dramatic change to the governmental building, Trump says, is happening care of private money and outside of any governmental — and transparent — funding process.

    After The Washington Post first reported on Monday that demolition had begun, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday night that Treasury Department employees next door to the demolition were told to “refrain from taking and sharing photographs of the grounds, to include the East Wing, without prior approval from the Office of Public Affairs.“

    On Tuesday, Law Dork obtained these photographs taken of the ongoing demolition.

    Although the Post’s initial story detailed the “East Wing facade“ being demolished and that teams on Monday were “demolishing a portion ofthe East Wing,“ the Tuesday photograph obtained by Law Dork makes clear that most if not all of the entirety of the East Wing is being demolished.

    A second photo obtained by Law Dork from another angle shows the extent of the demolition has already reached all but the western and northern walls of the East Wing.

    Geider links to this piece by Ryan Gottleib at ENR East: White House Ballroom Build Advances as Oversight Gaps Emerge.

    Demolition crews began work Oct. 20 on the East Wing of the White House to clear space for a privately funded 90,000-sq-ft ballroom addition valued at roughly $200 million at the behest of President Donald Trump

    The project, announced July 31 by the White House, will be built by Clark Construction Group with AECOM as engineer and McCrery Architects as designer.

    Officials said it will create a larger venue for state and ceremonial events, financed entirely by the president and “patriot donors.”

    The addition marks the most substantial change to the Executive Residence since the Truman reconstruction of 1948-52. Renderings depict a limestone-clad structure with tall arched windows, ballistic-resistant glazing and interiors described by the White House as “ornately designed.” [….]

    The design calls for the addition to remain structurally distinct from the residence while echoing its neoclassical form. The press office said the ballroom “will be substantially separated from the main building… but its theme and architectural heritage will be almost identical.”

    As for Trump gaining approval for the project, he took care of that by appointing a sycophant.

    Regulatory filings show that as of Sept. 4 no submission had been made to the National Capital Planning Commission, which reviews major federal projects in the capital region.

     

    Commission Chairman Will Scharf, who also serves as White House staff secretary, said during a public meeting that “what we deal with is essentially construction, vertical build,” explaining why demolition and site-preparation work began before commission review. The interpretation leaves design oversight unresolved, even as groundwork proceeds.

    Under the Presidential Residence Act, the White House is managed by the National Park Service and operated by the Executive Office of the President’s Facilities Management Division.

    While Section 107 of the act exempts the executive residence from mandatory review, Executive Order 11593, issued in 1971, directs federal agencies to consult with the U.S. Interior Dept. before altering historic structures.

    Past administrations have voluntarily submitted major projects for review by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts. These measures, while not legally binding, form the preservation framework that has guided White House alterations for decades and remains relevant even for privately funded work.

    More from The Washington Post (gift article): White House expands East Wing demolition as critics decry Trump overreach.

    A demolition job that began Monday with the disappearance of the White House’s eastern entrance advanced Tuesday with the destruction of much of the East Wing, according to a photograph obtained by The Washington Post and two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the scene.

    Photos of construction teams knocking down parts of the East Wing, first revealed by The Washington Post on Monday, shocked preservationists, raised questions about White House overreach and lack of transparency, and sparked complaints from Democrats that President Donald Trump was damaging “the People’s House” to pursue a personal priority.

    “They’re wrecking it,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist and professor emeritus at Towson University in Maryland. “And these are changes that can’t be undone. They’re destroying that history forever.”

    A White House spokesman said that the “entirety” of the East Wing would eventually be “modernized and rebuilt.”

    WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 20: Workers demolish the facade of the East Wing of the White House on October 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

    The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit created by Congress to help preserve historic buildings, sent a letter Tuesday to administration officials, warning that the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom “will overwhelm the White House itself,” which is about 55,000 square feet.

    “We respectfully urge the Administration and the National Park Service to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes,” Carol Quillen, National Trust’s CEO, said in a statement, citing two federal commissions that have traditionally reviewed White House additions.

    White House officials dismissed the criticism as “manufactured outrage,” arguing that past presidents had pursued their own changes to the executive campus as necessary. They said that the privately funded ballroom will be a “bold, necessary addition” to the presidential grounds.

    You can read more using the gift link.

    After the backlash, Trump has decided to submit his plans for review–now that the work is in progress.

    Reuters: White House says it will submit ballroom plans for review, with demolition already under way.

    The White House said on Tuesday it will submit plans for President Donald Trump’s $250 million White House ballroom project to a body that oversees federal building construction, even though demolition work began earlier this week.

    Trump reveled on Tuesday in the demolition sounds by construction workers for the ballroom addition to the White House, the first major change to the historic property in decades.

    But critics, aghast about images of the White House walls crumbling after Trump had pledged the project would not interfere with the existing landmark, said a review process should have taken place before the work began.

    This schematic from the Washington Post article shows the planned layout of the new White House complex.

    The White House still intends to submit those plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, which oversees federal construction in Washington and neighboring states, a White House official told Reuters

    “Construction plans have not yet been submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission but will be soon,” the official said, adding that the NCPC does not have jurisdiction over demolition work.

    The commission is now led by Will Scharf, a White House aide.

    Asked why the demolition of East Wing walls was occurring despite Trump’s promise that it would not affect the existing building, the official said modernization work was required in the East Wing and changes had always been a possibility.

    “The scope and size was always subject to vary as the project developed,” he said.

    Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt thinks the critics of the East Wing teardown are just jealous.

    The Daily Beast: Karoline Leavitt Gives Wild Defense of Trump Destroying the White House.

    Karoline Leavitt thinks Democrats are just jealous that Donald Trump is building a swanky $250 million ballroom at the White House.

    The White House press secretary says that’s the only way to explain the “fake outrage” after part of the White House’s iconic East Wing was demolished to make way for the 90,000-square-foot structure.

    The Trump administration has received widespread backlash for starting work on the event space that will eventually dwarf the White House itself. “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton posted on X.

    But Trump officials have attempted to convince the public that it’s what presidents, administrations, and White House staff have longed for, for 150 years.

    “Are the Democrats jealous that Trump is building this big beautiful ballroom?” Fox News host Jesse Watters asked Leavitt on Tuesday.

    Leavitt replied that it “certainly appears that way.”

    “I believe there’s a lot of fake outrage right now because nearly every single president who has lived in this beautiful White House behind me has made modernizations and renovations of their own,” she added.

    I’m speechless at this point.

    Another Trump outrage from yesterday: Trump is demanding that he be paid $230 million for the prosecutions against him.

    The New York Times (gift link): Trump Said to Demand Justice Dept. Pay Him $230 Million for Past Cases.

    President Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit.

    The situation has no parallel in American history, as Mr. Trump, a presidential candidate, was pursued by federal law enforcement and eventually won the election, taking over the very government that must now review his claims. It is also the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts created by installing the president’s former lawyers atop the Justice Department.

    Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general; Attorney General Pam Bondi; and Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, with President Trump in the Oval Office last week.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

    Mr. Trump submitted complaints through an administrative claim process that often is the precursor to lawsuits. The first claim, lodged in late 2023, seeks damages for a number of purported violations of his rights, including the F.B.I. and special counsel investigation into Russian election tampering and possible connections to the 2016 Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the claim has not been made public.

    The second complaint, filed in the summer of 2024, accuses the F.B.I. of violating Mr. Trump’s privacy by searching Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida, in 2022 for classified documents. It also accuses the Justice Department of malicious prosecution in charging him with mishandling sensitive records after he left office.

    Asked about the issue at the White House after this article published, the president said, “I was damaged very greatly and any money I would get, I would give to charity.”

    He added, “I’m the one that makes the decision and that decision would have to go across my desk and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.”

    A bit more:

    Lawyers said the nature of the president’s legal claims poses undeniable ethics challenges.

    “What a travesty,” said Bennett L. Gershman, an ethics professor at Pace University. “The ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it.”

    He added: “And then to have people in the Justice Department decide whether his claim should be successful or not, and these are the people who serve him deciding whether he wins or loses. It’s bizarre and almost too outlandish to believe.”

    The president also seemed to acknowledge that point in the Oval Office last week, when he alluded vaguely to the situation while standing next to the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and her deputy, Todd Blanche. According to Justice Department regulations, the deputy attorney general — in this case, Mr. Blanche — is one of two people eligible to sign off on such a settlement.

    Unbelievable.

    Arizona’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against House Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday.

    NBC News: Arizona AG sues to force House Speaker Johnson to seat Democrat Adelita Grijalva.

    Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to try to force House Speaker Mike Johnson to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who won her late father’s seat in a special election nearly one month ago.

    Johnson, R-La., has said he will seat Grijalva once Senate Democrats agree to reopen the government. But the two parties haven’t been talking for weeks, and there is no indication when the shutdown might end.

    The lawsuit, which Mayes threatened in a letter to Johnson last week, argues that the speaker’s delay is depriving the 813,000 residents living in Arizona’s 7th District of congressional representation. It lists the state of Arizona and Grijalva herself as plaintiffs and the U.S. House, as well as the House clerk and sergeant at arms, as defendants.

    “Speaker Mike Johnson is actively stripping the people of Arizona of one of their seats in Congress and disenfranchising the voters of Arizona’s seventh Congressional district in the process,” Mayes said in a statement. “By blocking Adelita Grijalva from taking her rightful oath of office, he is subjecting Arizona’s seventh Congressional district to taxation without representation. I will not allow Arizonans to be silenced or treated as second-class citizens in their own democracy.”

    As he left the Capitol on Tuesday evening, Johnson blasted the Arizona lawsuit as “patently absurd.”

    Mayes, he said, has “no jurisdiction.”

    We’ll see what the judge has to say about it.

    At the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War) tells military officials they can’t talk to Congress without his approval.

    AP: Hegseth changes policy on how Pentagon officials communicate with Congress.

    Leaders at the Pentagon have significantly altered how military officials will speak with Congress after a pair of new memos issued last week.

    In an Oct. 15 memo, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his deputy, Steve Feinberg, ordered Pentagon officials — including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — to obtain permission from the department’s main legislative affairs office before they have any communication with Capitol Hill.

    The memo was issued the same day the vast majority of Pentagon reporters exited the building rather than agree to the Defense Department’s new restrictions on their work, and it appears to be part of a broader effort by Hegseth to exert tighter control over what the department communicates to the outside world.

    According to the memo, a copy of which was authenticated by a Pentagon official, “unauthorized engagements with Congress by (Pentagon) personnel acting in their official capacity, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives.”

    More from NBC News: Pete Hegseth cracks down on Pentagon staff speaking to Congress.

    It’s a departure from current practice; previously, Defense Department agencies were free to manage their own interactions with Capitol Hill.

    But under Hegseth, the department has sought stricter control over messaging coming out of the Pentagon. Dozens of reporters turned in their badges and left the building last week, when most news agencies refused to sign unprecedented restrictions Hegseth imposed that threatened consequences for journalists who reported information he had not approved for release, even if it was unclassified.

    The new directive, which would further curb information flow from the Pentagon to Congress, is designed “to achieve our legislative goals,” Hegseth and his deputy wrote in the memo.

    “Unauthorized engagements with Congress by DoW personnel acting in their official capacity, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives,” the memo says, using the initialism for the “Department of War,” the Defense Department’s secondary but unofficial name used by the Trump administration.

    Why is Hegseth so paranoid? Is it because he’s incompetent and realizes the competent DOD people know that?

    Two more articles to check out:

    The Washington Post (gift link): Health insurance sticker shock begins as shutdown battle over subsidies rages.

    Millions of Americans are already seeing their health insurance costs soar for 2026 as Congress remains deadlocked over extending covid-era subsidies for premiums.

    The bitter fight sparked a government shutdown at the start of October. Democrats refuse to vote on government-funding legislation unless it extends the subsidies, while Republicans insist on separate negotiations after reopening the government. Now lawmakers face greater pressure to act as Americans who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act are seeing, or about to see, the consequences of enhanced subsidies expiring at the end of the year.

    Healthcare.gov — the federal website used by 28 states — is expected to post plan offerings early next week ahead of the start of open enrollment in November. But window shopping has already begun in most of the 22 states that run their own marketplaces, offering a preview of the sticker shock to come.

    Premiums nationwide are set to rise by 18 percent on average, according to an analysis of preliminary rate filings by the nonpartisan health policy group KFF. That, combined with the loss of extra subsidies, have left Americans with the worst year-over-year price hikes in the 12 years since the marketplaces launched.

    Nationally, the average marketplace consumer will pay $1,904 in annual premiums next year, up from $888 in 2025, according to KFF.

    The situation is particularly acute in Georgia, which recorded the second-highest enrollment of any state-run marketplace this year and posted prices for 2026 earlier in October. About 96 percent of marketplace enrollees in Georgia received subsidies this year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank that supports extending the subsidies.

    Now Georgians browsing the state website are seeing estimated monthly costs double or even triple, depending on their incomes, as lower subsidy thresholds resume.

    Use the gift link to read more.

    It’s a shame this didn’t get more publicity. CNN: Democratic senator protests Trump’s ‘grave threats’ in marathon overnight floor speech.

    Sen. Jeff Merkley has been speaking on the Senate floor for more than 12 hours after announcing he would protest what he called President Donald Trump’s “grave threats to democracy.”

    The Oregon Democrat began his remarks at 6:24 p.m. ET Tuesday and was still speaking as of Wednesday morning.

    Senator Jeff Merkley

    “I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the Civil War. President Trump is shredding our Constitution,” he said at the start of his remarks.

    The senator’s marathon speech stands as a symbolic show of Democratic resistance as his party remains in a standoff with Republicans over health care subsidies amid the government shutdown. The shutdown is expected to drag on with the impasse entering a fourth week Wednesday. Democrats have so far held their position, blocking the GOP stopgap bill to reopen the government 11 times until their demands are met.

    Merkley in his speech pointed to the Trump administration’s previous halting of research grants for universities in its battle over campus oversight as well as the recent indictments of several of the president’s political opponents as well as his push to deploy National Guard troops to Portland.

    “President Trump wants us to believe that Portland, Oregon, in my home state, is full of chaos and riots. Because if he can say to the American people that there are riots, he can say there’s a rebellion. And if there’s a rebellion, he can use that to strengthen his authoritarian grip on our nation,” he said.

    Read the rest at CNN.

    Those are my offerings for today. Sorry there’s not more good news.

    #ArizonaAttorneyGeneralKrisMayes #demolitionOfWhiteHouseEastWing #DonaldTrump #healthCareCosts #JeffMerkley #JusticeDepartment #KarolineLeavitt #PeteHegseth #RepElectAdelitaGrijalva #ToddBlanche #TrumpDemandsRepaymentForProsecutions #TrumpSGarishBallroom

  17. Woher kommt der Ekel?
    | Philosophie Magazin

    Unmögliches Streben nach Reinheit
    Martha Nussbaum
    *1947

    Die Philosophin sieht einen Zusammenhang zwischen #Ekel und diskriminierenden Formen der #Rechtsprechung. Ekel sei die #Angst vor der menschlichen Verwundbarkeit. In Reaktion auf sinnlich wahrnehmbare „primäre Objekte des Abscheus“ wie Exkremente schützt er uns vor Gefahren. Ekel diene jedoch auch als Begründung für die #Kriminalisierung von #Homosexualität und die Konstruktion nationalsozialistischer #Reinheitsideologien. In diesen Fällen werde die existenzielle Furcht als Abgrenzungsmechanismus nach außen projiziert. Um die moralische Gefährdung einzuschränken, die von ihm ausgeht, sollte Ekel, so Nussbaums Appell, niemals Grundlage öffentlichen Rechts werden. •
    philomag.de/artikel/woher-komm

  18. Tony Blair: Soulless Creature of the West’s War Machine.


    Article republished by Jerry Alatalo | April 8, 2026

    (Source: ScheerPost.com)

    [Editor’s note: Jonathan Cook’s literary evisceration/disembowelment of Iraq War criminal Tony Blair applies in equal measure to war criminals Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and their fellow ZioFascist imperialist members of the so-called “Board of Peace”.

    Tony Blair is a founding member of the “Board of Peace,” an international organization established by Donald Trump to oversee peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts in Gaza. Blair has praised Trump’s vision for the region and is involved in discussions about redevelopment plans.

    The Board of Peace currently has 27 member states, including countries like the United States, Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, among others. Membership requires a financial commitment, with countries able to renew their membership every three years.

    Particularly relevant – considering the repeated irrational public statements from the “Board of Peace” chairman: Donald Trump’s control over the Board of Peace, including his ability to determine membership and set the agenda, raises significant concerns about its legitimacy as an impartial entity in international relations. This centralization of power may undermine the Board’s effectiveness and perception as a fair arbiter in global conflicts.]

    Please share this information far and wide. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. Thank you very much. Peace.

    ***

    Blair’s Latest Deceit-Riddled Column Vilifies The UK Left To Justify Genocide

    Jonathan Cook Substack

    Tony Blair, the man who led Britain into a disastrous and illegal war on Iraq more than 20 years ago based on false information, is still very much a sought-after commentator in the UK media.

    His regular political pronouncements are treated as pearls of wisdom; his columns as consequential insights from a globe-striding elder statesman.

    Even his leading role on Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, the US president’s panel of autocrats seeking to elbow the United Nations – and international law – off the world stage, appears to have done little to dent his claim to moral authority.

    Blair, more than anybody, illustrates the capacity of western leaders – with the help of a complicit establishment media – to rewrite their criminal past and escape accountability in perpetuity.

    The former British prime minister’s latest political intervention is a lengthy, and typically repugnant, article published by the Sunday Times newspaper. It effectively blames “the left” for an arson attack last month on four ambulances owned by a Jewish charity in London.

    No, Blair hasn’t unearthed any startling new information tying leftwingers to the attack. His article is a pure disinformation – propaganda designed to malign those critical of Israel.

    More on that in a moment.

    But as a prelude, let us note that there are many terrible things going on in the world right now that might be considered more pressing for Blair to write about than the torching of a handful of ambulances: whether it be a genocide in Gaza – where Israel destroyed not just four ambulances but the enclave’s entire health sector – or an illegal, joint US-Israeli war on Iran that has similarly targeted medical centres and other civilian infrastructure.

    Twisted logic

    Blair once served as a Middle East envoy to an international body known as the Quartet. In that role, he spent several years shuttling futilely between his eponymous institute in London and Israel and the Palestinian territories.

    There are, however, two self-evident reasons why Blair may have been averse to dedicating his latest column to the catastrophes unfolding in the Middle East.

    First, because his close allies – the leaders of the US and Israel – are indisputably the ones committing the crimes of genocide and aggression respectively in Gaza and Iran.

    And second, because Blair was himself responsible for launching, alongside the US, a war of aggression on Iraq in 2003.

    But it is not just that Blair is in no position to moralise on matters of the utmost global importance.

    He has made it his primary duty in public life to excuse the West’s supreme crimes – crimes that, were there meaningful accountability for western leaders, would necessitate that he stand trial at the international war crimes court in the Hague.

    That is the context for understanding both why Blair penned his column on the arson attack in London and the twisted logic that underpins his argument in that article.

    Dirty war

    Anyone who has studied Blair’s back-catalogue of opinion pieces will hardly be surprised by the Sunday Times headline: “We must end left’s unholy alliance with the Islamists.”

    Or its subhead: “Parts of the left cast Jewish communities as supporters of Israel and Jews become ‘fair game’.”

    Although the article ostensibly concerns an arson attack on a Jewish community ambulance service in London, Blair has much larger – carefully veiled – ambitions.

    This is his latest manoeuvre in a dirty war to silence and crush Britain’s progressive left – waged by those, like Blair, who duplicitiously claim both to belong to that left and to serve as its natural leaders.

    Blair is central to a cabal of so-called Atlanticists who view the world in Manichean terms, as “a clash of civilisations” between a supposedly superior, enlightened Judeo-Christian West, led by the US, and a backward, primitive Islamic East, now, it seems, led de facto by Iran.

    Israel is presented as a first line of defence against this dangerous “Muslim” enemy.

    Everything for Blair is seen through this racist prism.

    He would sound more obviously like some Victorian, pith-helmeted empire-builder were it not for the fact that his fundamental, and fundamentalist, worldview continues to be shared by the entire UK ruling class, including the billionaire-owned media and the main political parties.

    And for good reason. A Britain belonging to a “superior” West can openly aid Israel’s genocidal campaign of carpet-bombing and starvation in Gaza, and loan air bases to assist the US in its illegal war of aggression on Iran, and still pretend to itself that this is all being done “defensively”.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/8D3Qr3wQliE?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent

    Christendom is still, apparently, “defending” itself against the rampaging barbarian hordes.

    Achilles’ heel

    In fact, Blair’s column in the Sunday Times should be seen as another front in a continuing war being waged by British prime minister Keir Starmer – a disciple of Blair – on the Corbynite left.

    Their joint aim is to shepherd back into the Atlanticist fold a Labour party that supposedly lost its way under Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.

    Corbyn’s crime was to have taken Labour towards internationalism – and the prioritising of human rights for all, not just westerners. That project necessarily entailed treating British Muslims as an integral part of British society, no less than British Jews.

    Corbyn’s politics were an ideological assault on – and continue to pose a threat to – the Blair-Starmer worldview.

    In other words, Blair’s article is part of a running battle – as the British establishment’s claim to moral authority is steadily eroded by its collusion in Israeli and US crimes – to prevent the progressive left ever reviving its political fortunes.

    With the help of the Israel lobby, Blair and his ilk believe they have identified the achilles’ heel of a British left determined to highlight a brutal US-led western imperialism and its inherent hypocrisies.

    The goal is to crop out the left’s increasingly persuasive critique of US imperialism and zoom in instead on the left’s parallel criticisms of Israel: its apartheid rule over Palestinians, its ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, and its genocidal campaign of destruction in Gaza.

    Blair wishes to wave all this away, as if wielding a magic wand, by labelling it as “antisemitism”.

    After that move worked so successfully in fatally wounding Corbyn as Labour leader, Blair and Starmer assume the same smear can be repurposed more generally – in this case, to implicate an undefined “left” over the torching of a handful of ambulances.

    It goes without saying, that in prioritising the suppression of the left’s critiques of western imperialism, Blair and Starmer are leaving the door wide open to a resurgence by the far-right – which indeed is antisemitic.

    That should serve as a reminder that Blair, Starmer and the rest of the British establishment have no real concern for the welfare of the Jewish community they profess to be protecting.

    If the Jewish community turns out to be collateral damage in their war on the left, then so be it.

    ‘New antisemitism’

    In the article itself, Blair argues that a so-called left-wing antisemitism “is a pernicious and novel development in progressive politics: the alliance with Islamists”.

    First, notice the sleight of hand. British Muslims who, quite reasonably, are deeply critical of Israel because its army has been committing for decades war crimes with impunity against their extended families are reduced here simply to “Islamists”.

    Blair is doing to Muslims precisely what he accuses – falsely – the left of doing to Jews. He is conflating Muslims, a religious group, with Islamists, champions of an extreme political ideology.

    Yet he considers it patently antisemitic to conflate Jews, a religious and ethnic group, with Zionists, champions of an equally extreme political ideology – one whose adherents still mostly deny a genocide in Gaza.

    Paradoxically, Blair is laundering his own rancid Islamophobia to smear the British left as antisemites.

    The imagined “alliance” between the left and “Islamists” aside, there is nothing novel about the allegation of a “new antisemitism”. It has been the blueprint for vilifying the left for decades – trotted out every time Israel is exposed committing war crimes so egregious they cannot be hidden.

    As the American Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein noted in his book Beyond Chutzpah, the term “the new Anti-Semitism” was actually coined way back in 1973 by Israel’s then foreign minister, Abba Eban, to deal with what was at the time a novel development: parts of the western left had started to grow more critical of Israel.

    That year, Eban wrote in a publication of the American Jewish Congress: “Let there be no mistake: the new left is the author and the progenitor of the new anti-Semitism.”

    The aim was to demonise and discredit this “new left”, which had begun to appreciate that the Palestinian territories conquered by Israel in 1967 were facing permanent, brutal military occupation.

    This new scrutiny emerged in the context of additional concern from Israel that it was being seen as a geopolitical liability following the 1973 war, when western powers supported Israel against its Arab neighbours. In echoes of current events, a resulting Arab oil embargo plunged the world into economic crisis.

    Shrill warnings about a “new antisemitism” would re-emerge a decade later, in the 1980s.

    This followed another double whammy for Israel: its so-called “new historians” excavated from the archives revelations of shocking crimes committed at Israel’s founding in 1948; and the Israeli army was exposed as committing systematic war crimes during its occupation of Lebanon, including overseeing a massacre of Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.

    Again, echoes from the present moment.

    The only really novel development in this latest moral panic about a “new antisemitism” is that the lobby no longer needs, when Israel is in reputational trouble, to fabricate these smears itself. It can outsource the job to figures like Tony Blair.

    Deep collusion

    It is a sign of how insular the worldview of western leaders like Blair has become that he apparently imagines the following argument will resonate: “In its opposition to Israel, [the left] has found an animating cause. And the war in Gaza has allowed it full rein in pursuing it.”

    So the problem, suggests Blair, is that the left has chosen to highlight Israel’s genocidal campaign of carpet-bombing and starvation of Gaza’s population. Presumably, he believes it should have cheered the slaughter on instead.

    And therein lies the real problem for Blair. The left has also been highlighting the deep collusion of the British establishment, of which he is a figurehead, in Israel’s genocide of Gaza’s Palestinians.

    The UK has provided arms to Israel, shipped US and German munitions to carry out the genocide, operated RAF spy flights to assist with Israel’s targeting of Palestinians, and run cover for Israel with continuous genocide denial.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/4ONSNWgQjIk?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent

    The British establishment’s real grievance with the left is that it has pursued with “full rein” the exposure of Israel’s war crimes and Britain’s complicity in those crimes, organising regular mass demonstrations against the slaughter.

    Israeli talking points

    Blair continues: “Parts of the left cast the Jewish community as supporters of the government of Israel. And Jews become ‘fair game’.”

    Strangely, he fails to note that it is not the left making this claim about the Jewish community. It is Jewish community leaders. They are on record regularly asserting – with little evidence – that there is almost unanimous support among British Jews for Israel.

    So, accepting Blair’s logic, what should we conclude? If most Jews truly do support Israel – in fact, polling suggests that’s not close to being true in relation to the slaughter in Gaza – does Blair regard the Jewish community as having made itself “fair game” for an arson attack?

    Maybe he needs to have a word with the Board of Deputies, rather than vilify “the left” once again.

    Next, Blair insists that the left cannot “legitimately” criticise Israel’s two-and-a-half-year genocide in Gaza unless it first condemns Hamas’ one-day attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

    He writes: “You cannot pretend that Israel does not face a substantial terrorist threat from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Iranian regime and other groups that do not recognise Israel’s right to exist.”

    Unravelling the hotchpotch of Israeli talking points in his column is no simple task. But let us start by noting – for the umpteenth time – that states do not have an intrinsic “right to exist”, even if peoples do.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/k12E7LuD2_4?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent

    Apartheid South Africa had no “right to exist”. That state is now relegated to the history books. A new South Africa was born in its place. White and Black South Africans exist in this new state. No one, apart from a few diehard racists, is any the poorer for the erasure of that apartheid state.

    There is precisely no reason why the apartheid state of Israel, nearly 60 years into an intensifying, brutal occupation and in the third year of a genocide, should have any right to exist. It must be brought to an end like apartheid South Africa was.

    That objective, whatever Blair claims, is not the preserve of the left and groups dismissed by him and the UK government as “terrorists”.

    In fact, a large panel of eminent judges at the International Court of Justice ruled two years ago that Israel’s system of illegal occupation and apartheid rule had to end. Are they also culpable for the arson attack on the four ambulances in London?

    The left’s recognition of the corrupt and corrupting nature of an Israeli ethnocratic state isn’t the problem. It is evidence only that the progressive left refuses to follow politicians like Blair in making endless excuses for a discredited, criminal and unsustainable status quo.

    Moral abyss

    But this is just Blair’s warm-up act. Now he jumps feet first into the moral abyss.

    He continues: “You cannot complain about the restrictions on goods and material going in and out of Gaza unless you also reference the reasons for the restrictions: the fear in Israel that such materials will be used for the purpose of building a terrorist infrastructure, which is precisely what nearly 300 miles of tunnels underneath Gaza represent.”

    Seen another way, the tunnels represent the best chance a people in a tiny territory under an illegal blockade and Israel’s regular “mowing the lawn” stand of resisting their oppressor, one of the most fearsomely armed militaries in the world.

    But more significantly, and appallingly, Blair appears to be excusing Israel’s starvation of the 2.3 million people of Gaza, half of them children.

    According to Blair, no one, not even the progressive left, should be allowed to criticise an Israeli siege that has blocked food, water, fuel and medicines to Gaza – unless they first justify that blockade as essential to Israel’s “security”.

    Again, maybe he needs to have a word with the judges of the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Because they are seeking Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, on charges of crimes against humanity over his efforts to starve Gaza’s population.

    Is the ICC also responsible for torching four ambulances in London?

    Meanwhile, Starmer will be delighted by Blair’s argument. After all, at the outset of the genocide, asked whether Israel had a right to cut off all essentials to Gaza answered that Israel “had that right”. The prime minister presumably represents, in Blair’s view, the legitimate “left”.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/5HQYfsUAf3s?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent

    Historical illiteracy

    In Blair’s assessment, not only should the left not criticise Israel, nor oppose its starvation blockade of Gaza, but it also should not use the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s killing of many tens of thousands – and more likely, hundreds of thousands – of civilians.

    Blair opines: “You should not diminish the charge of genocide — whatever your views of Israel’s actions — by a barb particularly aimed at Jewish memories of the Holocaust, which was a genocide.”

    This seems clear evidence either of Blair’s mendacity or his historical illiteracy. The Holocaust is not the only example of genocide. Far from it. There have been many different genocides, each unique.

    And their status as genocides is determined not by “Jewish memories”, whatever that is supposed to mean, but by legal considerations set out in the 1948 Genocide Convention. Human rights groups and a raft of leading Israeli genocide scholars have all judged that the slaughter in Gaza to clearly meet those criteria.

    Are they too responsible for the arson attack in London?

    Gaza’s dead and maimed cannot be denied the status of genocide victims simply because such a characterisation might offend the feelings of Israel apologists like Blair.

    Lesser humans

    In another wantonly deceitful Israeli talking point, Blair claims “the war would have ended at any point in time if Hamas had said they were releasing the hostages”.

    Yet Gaza’s problems did not start with the taking of Israelis as hostages by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Before the genocidal “war”, the enclave had suffered decades of brutal, illegal occupation and siege – abuses that continue, despite the last of the hostages being released many months ago.

    In any case, Blair cannot justify the levelling of the enclave, mass murder and the engineered destitution of its people just because he can point to crimes committed by Hamas. That is collective punishment of the wider population, a grave war crime.

    Blair even has the chutzpah to blame Gaza’s immiseration on Hamas’ failure to achieve “a Palestinian State … through negotiation”. As if the Israeli government has not been openly opposed for decades to a Palestinian state and to any negotiations to achieve it.

    Israel refuses to speak even with Mahmoud Abbas, the so-called “moderate” Palestinian leader in the West Bank, who says security coordination with Israel is “sacred”.

    Is Hamas to blame for not negotiating with itself?

    Blair wonders how Britons would react “if we woke up one day and between the hours of 6am and midday, 1,200 of our citizens were murdered, including young people at a music festival, with women raped and others taken hostage”.

    Set aside again the Israeli disinformation – no tangible evidence has ever been produced of any rapes taking place on 7 October – and instead ask a more pertinent question, one Blair desperately wants to distract us from.

    How would Britons respond if they woke up every day for eight decades to find they were losing more of their homeland – and their homes – to colonising immigrants claiming a right to take their lands based on a supposed 3,000-year-old birthright?

    How would Britons react if many hundreds of thousands of them were given lengthy prison terms, often following torture, by kangaroo military courts set up by those same colonisers with near 100 per cent conviction rates?

    How would Britons feel about foreign settler militias being allowed, again for decades, to regularly rampage through their towns and villages, setting fire to their homes and cars, pointing guns at them, sometimes shooting at their family members – all watched over by paramilitary forces that not only refused to intervene to protect them but often joined in the attacks?

    Blair observes of the likely response of Britons: “I suspect it would be total determination that those responsible were going to be removed as a threat, and nothing would deter us from doing so.”

    And yet here is Blair writing a column condemning a British left that agrees with him. They believe the threat to Palestinians posed by Israel’s criminal settlers, by Israel’s criminal army, by Israel’s criminal government needs to be removed with “total determination”.

    The difference is that Blair is indifferent to Palestinian suffering because, in a long tradition of racists, he regards them as lesser humans. He cares only when Israelis suffer a reaction to their state’s systematic abuses of the Palestinians.

    Soulless creature

    Blair correctly concludes by arguing that he is defending more than just Israel.

    “It’s about defending reason,” he writes. “Defending facts. Standing up to the noise and intimidation to assert the truth.”

    But Blair is not “defending reason”, in the sense of rationality. He is defending rationalisation – excuses for wanton criminality that currently includes overwhelming US-led western aggression towards Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

    The British establishment, in which he is a central figure, is deeply enmeshed in those criminal endeavors, from its role sharing intelligence to Israel and the US, the latter as a member of Five Eyes, and providing air bases, weapons and diplomatic cover.

    And also, as Blair does here, by manipulating the information sphere with a mix of continuous pro-war messaging and relentless demonisation campaigns against those – mostly on the left – who try to convey a little of the reality of western criminality.

    Blair is not defending facts. He is defending the inhuman void into which western foreign policy sucks all those like him whose job is to whitewash imperial crimes.

    And while he may face “noise” – from the the street protests organised by the anti-war left he so despises – he faces no meaningful intimidation. After all, the left does not have prisons to lock up criminals like Blair. It is the left that is being locked up – as terrorists – for holding placards opposing Israel’s genocide. That is the real intimidation.

    What Blair wants is for the left to be utterly silenced so that its protests do not rouse uncomfortable twinges of guilt forcibly reminding him that long ago he became a soulless creature of the West’s war machine.

    It is not just that Blair has faced no consequences for his criminal undertaking in Iraq. He has instead become fabulously wealthy, venerated by western establishments, and an oracle for an equally complicit, billionaire-owned media.

    Blair is the model that proves there is no price in the West to be paid for selling one’s soul, for engineering mass slaughter in the service of a western empire.

    Which is why those mass slaughters not only continue but grow relentlessly in scale.

    Jonathan Cook

    Jonathan Cook is a MintPress contributor. Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

    Author Site

    #BoardOfPeace #DonaldTrump #GazaGenocide #InternationalLaw #Iran #Israel #Zionism
  19. Unter Trump sind die USA zu einem Erpresser- und Schurkenstaat verkommen!

    Die freie Welt braucht dringend eine schnelle Alternative zu Visa und Co. Weg von amerikanischen Zahlungsmitteln!

    #Visa #USA #Meinungsfreiheit # #Pressefreiheit

  20. Im Gegensatz zu Olaf Scholz, der den Mord an dem saudischen Regierungskritiker Jamal Khashoggi bei einem Besuch 2022 noch thematisierte, wird der Name Khashoggi in der Pressekonferenz von Friedrich Merz nicht mehr fallen – sondern verschwindet in einem Satz über „ungleiche Werte“. 2025 wurden in Saudi-Arabien laut Reprieve 356 Menschen hingerichtet, fast täglich eine.
    Null Toleranz bei Protesten, Meinungsfreiheit

    #SaudiArabien #Merz #Wirtschaft #Sklaverei