Author: nick
Some called it “Operation Grim Beeper.” That may seem clever to adolescents, but there is nothing funny about the promiscuous mutilation of human beings. On the afternoon of September 17, 2024, thousands of handheld pagers exploded simultaneously across Lebanon. Their purported target? Hezbollah operatives. Forty-two people, including children, were killed by the indiscriminating devices. More than 3,500 were injured in an instant, the booby-trap blast blowing open abdomens and claiming fingers and eyes. Although purchased from a Taiwan company, the pagers were produced by a shell company that was part of a Mossad operation, packed with powerful plastic explosives and a…
Photograph Source: Fahim Fadz – CC BY 2.0 The tentative agreement United Teachers Los Angeles signed with the Los Angeles Unified School District on April 12 has been approved by UTLA members with a 92% “Yes” vote, with almost 27,000 members voting. This is similar to the result of our May 2023 vote on the tentative agreement we won in the wake of our March 2023 strike. Service Employees International Union, our ally in both contract battles, begins voting on their TA with LAUSD this week. ‘Extortion’ & ‘hostage-taking’ The right-wing media is not happy. The Washington Post calls our…
The UAE wants to ramp up production without constraints from OPEC, which could prove bearish for prices at some point. Source link
Two Democrats in California’s 22nd District have very different ideas. Source link
The Trump Administration is taking the United States and its armed forces places it has never been before. Source link
Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works, by Helen Pearson, Princeton University Press, 350 pages, $29.95 “Nullius in verba” is the official motto of the world’s oldest national academy of sciences, the Royal Society of London. Usually translated as “Take nobody’s word for it,” the slogan represents a commitment to empirical evidence and experimental proof over reliance on authority, dogma, or tradition. In Beyond Belief, the award-winning science journalist Helen Pearson writes an engrossing history of the modern “evidence revolution.” That movement aims to draw on rigorous research to figure out what works in fields ranging from medicine to…
Well, it bears repeating. Again. The Iranians never had a nuke, had no near-term prospect of weaponizing their enriched uranium stockpiles, were not hell-bent on blowing up the world and were not two weeks from anything other than still another wolf-crying episode from the one actual “crazy” leader in the middle east. That would be Bibi Netanyahu. Hands down. But those truths did not stop the Donald from blatant lying and fear-mongering yet again today. And to even go so far as to imply that he has the mullahs by the short hairs. Trump: “Iran, they are not going to…
As President Donald Trump prepares for his upcoming Beijing trip, speculation is swirling again over a possible meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on the sidelines. At their last summit in Hanoi in February 2019, negotiations collapsed after the two sides failed to bridge the gap between Pyongyang’s offer to dismantle nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and Washington’s demand for a broader denuclearization package in exchange for major sanctions relief. Even so, both leaders have reasons to look again, and both have signaled renewed interest. Trump has reiterated his openness to an unconditional talk, while Kim appears receptive on…
“I promised you that we would change the face of the Middle East.” So spoke Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nearly seven weeks after he and President Donald Trump initiated Operation Epic Fury. Amid the noise and chaos, it is easy to lose track of the broader vision behind the war with Iran. This war is the culmination of a comprehensive Israeli effort—backed by the United States—to remake the Middle East following Hamas’ terror attack on October 7, 2023. Proponents argued it would produce a more peaceful and stable region. They were wrong. Like past attempts to remake the Middle…
Seven years ago, police in Midlothian, Virginia, sought to identify a bank robber by asking Google to search the records of more than 500 million people who used the company’s “location history” feature. That search identified 19 devices that were in or near the bank around the time of the robbery, which police winnowed down to three people, including Okello Chatrie, the man who was ultimately convicted of the crime. Depending on your perspective, that use of a “geofence” warrant was either an unobjectionable example of smart police work or an outrageous invasion of privacy. On Monday, the Supreme Court…