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Celerity
Celerity's Journal
Celerity's Journal
December 28, 2023
We should expunge, forever, the epithet ‘precolonial’ or any of its cognates from all aspects of the study of Africa and its phenomena. We should banish title phrases, names and characterisations of reality and ideas containing the word.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-of-precolonial-africa-is-vacuous-and-wrong
To those who might be put off by the severity of the proposal, or its ideological-police ring, I hear you and ask only that, with just a little patience, you hear me out. It will not take much to jolt us out of the present unthinking in assuming that ‘precolonial’ or ‘traditional’, and ‘indigenous’, has any worthwhile role to play in our attempt to track, describe, explain and make sense of African life and history. When ‘precolonial’ is used for describing African ideas, processes, institutions and practices, through time, it misrepresents them. When deployed to explain African experience and institutions, and characterise the logic of their evolution through history, it is worthless and theoretically vacuous. The concept of ‘precolonial’ anything hides, it never discloses; it obscures, it never illuminates; it does not aid understanding in any manner, shape or form.
Let us begin with the fact that the ubiquitous phrase is almost exclusive in its application to Africa: ‘precolonial Africa’. How often do we encounter this designation in discourses about other continents? If not, what explains the peculiar representation – treating the continent as if it were a single unit of analysis – when it comes to Africa? I am afraid it comes from a not-so-kind genealogy that always takes Africa to be a simple place, homogenises its peoples and their history, and treats their politics and thought as if they were uncomplicated, each substitutable for the other across time and space. Once you are thinking of ‘Africa’ as a simple whole, it becomes easier to grossly misrepresent an entire continent in the temporal frame of ‘precolonial’.
In reality, ‘precolonial’ Africa never existed. It is a figment of the imagination of scholars, analysts, political types, for whom Africa is a homogeneous place that they need not think too hard about, much less explain to audiences. It was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a racist philosopher, who argued in the 1820s that Africa was a land ‘outside of Time’ and not a part of the movement of ‘History’. Our intellectual forebears in the 19th century fought against this false characterisation. They were the first to remind people of the fact that Africa had always been a part of the movement of history and the global circuit of ideas. They knew what was behind Hegel’s effort to divide Africa into ‘Africa proper’, or ‘Black Africa’, and ‘European Africa’ – it was his need to reconcile his idea that Africa stood outside of history with the undeniable reality of the attainments of ancient Egypt. His ‘solution’ was to identify the achievements of Egyptian Africans as coming from exogenous sources and to remove it from ‘Africa proper’.
All who talk glibly about ‘precolonial’ Africa, insofar as the designation bespeaks a temporal horizon, award an undeserved victory to the racist philosopher. Of course, the ‘pre’ in ‘precolonial’ supposedly designates ‘a time before’ colonialism appeared on the continent. But how do we deign to describe a period from the beginning of time to the moment when the European, modernity-inflected colonial phenomenon showed up? It accords more of a mythological than a historical status to the arrival of modern European colonialism in Africa and its long and deep history. The ‘precolonial’ designation, in practice, even excludes two earlier European-inspired colonialisms in Africa. After all, for those of us who know our history, Roman and Byzantine/Ottoman colonial presences on the African continent were not without legacies on the continent, too.
snip
The idea of a 'precolonial' Africa is theoretically vacuous, racist and plain wrong about the continent's actual history
We should expunge, forever, the epithet ‘precolonial’ or any of its cognates from all aspects of the study of Africa and its phenomena. We should banish title phrases, names and characterisations of reality and ideas containing the word.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-of-precolonial-africa-is-vacuous-and-wrong
To those who might be put off by the severity of the proposal, or its ideological-police ring, I hear you and ask only that, with just a little patience, you hear me out. It will not take much to jolt us out of the present unthinking in assuming that ‘precolonial’ or ‘traditional’, and ‘indigenous’, has any worthwhile role to play in our attempt to track, describe, explain and make sense of African life and history. When ‘precolonial’ is used for describing African ideas, processes, institutions and practices, through time, it misrepresents them. When deployed to explain African experience and institutions, and characterise the logic of their evolution through history, it is worthless and theoretically vacuous. The concept of ‘precolonial’ anything hides, it never discloses; it obscures, it never illuminates; it does not aid understanding in any manner, shape or form.
Let us begin with the fact that the ubiquitous phrase is almost exclusive in its application to Africa: ‘precolonial Africa’. How often do we encounter this designation in discourses about other continents? If not, what explains the peculiar representation – treating the continent as if it were a single unit of analysis – when it comes to Africa? I am afraid it comes from a not-so-kind genealogy that always takes Africa to be a simple place, homogenises its peoples and their history, and treats their politics and thought as if they were uncomplicated, each substitutable for the other across time and space. Once you are thinking of ‘Africa’ as a simple whole, it becomes easier to grossly misrepresent an entire continent in the temporal frame of ‘precolonial’.
In reality, ‘precolonial’ Africa never existed. It is a figment of the imagination of scholars, analysts, political types, for whom Africa is a homogeneous place that they need not think too hard about, much less explain to audiences. It was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a racist philosopher, who argued in the 1820s that Africa was a land ‘outside of Time’ and not a part of the movement of ‘History’. Our intellectual forebears in the 19th century fought against this false characterisation. They were the first to remind people of the fact that Africa had always been a part of the movement of history and the global circuit of ideas. They knew what was behind Hegel’s effort to divide Africa into ‘Africa proper’, or ‘Black Africa’, and ‘European Africa’ – it was his need to reconcile his idea that Africa stood outside of history with the undeniable reality of the attainments of ancient Egypt. His ‘solution’ was to identify the achievements of Egyptian Africans as coming from exogenous sources and to remove it from ‘Africa proper’.
All who talk glibly about ‘precolonial’ Africa, insofar as the designation bespeaks a temporal horizon, award an undeserved victory to the racist philosopher. Of course, the ‘pre’ in ‘precolonial’ supposedly designates ‘a time before’ colonialism appeared on the continent. But how do we deign to describe a period from the beginning of time to the moment when the European, modernity-inflected colonial phenomenon showed up? It accords more of a mythological than a historical status to the arrival of modern European colonialism in Africa and its long and deep history. The ‘precolonial’ designation, in practice, even excludes two earlier European-inspired colonialisms in Africa. After all, for those of us who know our history, Roman and Byzantine/Ottoman colonial presences on the African continent were not without legacies on the continent, too.
snip
December 28, 2023
https://archive.is/PC0kX
TEL AVIV — Escalating strikes and counterstrikes along the border between Israel and Lebanon are raising fears of a possible new front for Israel, even as its fighters remain mired in bloody urban combat in Gaza to the south in its campaign to destroy Hamas. Hezbollah fired more barrages at northern Israel on Wednesday in the latest in a string of attacks by Iranian-backed groups across the Middle East against Israeli and U.S. assets.
Hezbollah has lobbed scores of rockets and explosives-laden drones at Israel this week, including at a Greek Orthodox church, where two Israeli Christians were wounded. Drones targeted the Egyptian resort city of Dahab in the Sinai Peninsula, the second such incident there in the past month. There was an explosion outside the Israeli Embassy in India’s capital, New Delhi. And an airstrike near Syria’s capital, Damascus, killed a senior officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The group has vowed that Israel will “pay.”
“We are now at a fork in the road,” Eylon Levy, spokesman for the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Wednesday. “Either Hezbollah backs off from the Israeli border, in line with U.N. Resolution 1701, or we will push it away ourselves.” “Hezbollah and its Iranian warlord patrons are dragging Lebanon into a totally unnecessary war, into the war that Hamas started,” Levy said. “Our region does not deserve a broader war.”
On Tuesday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was in “a multifront war,” in which the country had been attacked from “seven arenas” — Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran — and had responded in six. Israeli media reported that Israel has not yet acted in Yemen, where Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have for weeks been firing missiles at Israel and at commercial vessels at sea, disrupting international shipping routes.
snip
Israel's war in Gaza threatens to spill into Lebanon and beyond
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/27/israel-lebanon-gaza-hamas-palestinians/https://archive.is/PC0kX
TEL AVIV — Escalating strikes and counterstrikes along the border between Israel and Lebanon are raising fears of a possible new front for Israel, even as its fighters remain mired in bloody urban combat in Gaza to the south in its campaign to destroy Hamas. Hezbollah fired more barrages at northern Israel on Wednesday in the latest in a string of attacks by Iranian-backed groups across the Middle East against Israeli and U.S. assets.
Hezbollah has lobbed scores of rockets and explosives-laden drones at Israel this week, including at a Greek Orthodox church, where two Israeli Christians were wounded. Drones targeted the Egyptian resort city of Dahab in the Sinai Peninsula, the second such incident there in the past month. There was an explosion outside the Israeli Embassy in India’s capital, New Delhi. And an airstrike near Syria’s capital, Damascus, killed a senior officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The group has vowed that Israel will “pay.”
“We are now at a fork in the road,” Eylon Levy, spokesman for the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Wednesday. “Either Hezbollah backs off from the Israeli border, in line with U.N. Resolution 1701, or we will push it away ourselves.” “Hezbollah and its Iranian warlord patrons are dragging Lebanon into a totally unnecessary war, into the war that Hamas started,” Levy said. “Our region does not deserve a broader war.”
On Tuesday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was in “a multifront war,” in which the country had been attacked from “seven arenas” — Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran — and had responded in six. Israeli media reported that Israel has not yet acted in Yemen, where Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have for weeks been firing missiles at Israel and at commercial vessels at sea, disrupting international shipping routes.
snip
December 28, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-war-military.html
https://archive.is/4yzVc
Standing before a gray backdrop decorated with Hamas logos and emblems of a gunman that commemorate the bloody Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Osama Hamdan, the organization’s representative in Lebanon, professed no concern about his Palestinian faction being dislodged from Gaza. “We are not worried about the future of the Gaza Strip,” he recently told a crowded news conference in his offices in Beirut’s southern suburbs. “The decision maker is the Palestinian people alone.”
Mr. Hamdan thus dismissed one of Israel’s key objectives since the beginning of its assault on Gaza: to dismantle the Islamist political and military organization that was behind the massacre of about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and which still holds more than 100 hostages. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly emphasized that objective even while facing mounting international pressure to scale back military operations. The Biden administration has dispatched senior envoys to Israel to push for a new phase of the war focused on more targeted operations rather than sweeping destruction.
And critics both within Israel and outside have questioned whether resolving to destroy such a deeply entrenched organization was ever realistic. One former Israeli national security adviser called the plan “vague.” “I think that we have reached a moment when the Israeli authorities will have to define more clearly what their final objective is,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said this month. “The total destruction of Hamas? Does anybody think that’s possible? If it’s that, the war will last 10 years.”
Since it first emerged in 1987, Hamas has survived repeated attempts to eliminate its leadership. The organization’s very structure was designed to absorb such contingencies, according to political and military specialists. In addition, Israel’s devastating tactics in the Gaza war threaten to radicalize a broader segment of the population, inspiring new recruits. Analysts see the most optimal outcome for Israel probably consisting of degrading Hamas’s military capabilities to prevent the group from repeating such a devastating attack. But even that limited goal is considered a formidable slog.
snip
Skepticism Grows Over Israel's Ability to Dismantle Hamas
Israel has vowed time and again to eliminate the group responsible for the brutal Oct. 7 attack, but critics increasingly see that goal as unrealistic or even impossible.https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-war-military.html
https://archive.is/4yzVc
Standing before a gray backdrop decorated with Hamas logos and emblems of a gunman that commemorate the bloody Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Osama Hamdan, the organization’s representative in Lebanon, professed no concern about his Palestinian faction being dislodged from Gaza. “We are not worried about the future of the Gaza Strip,” he recently told a crowded news conference in his offices in Beirut’s southern suburbs. “The decision maker is the Palestinian people alone.”
Mr. Hamdan thus dismissed one of Israel’s key objectives since the beginning of its assault on Gaza: to dismantle the Islamist political and military organization that was behind the massacre of about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and which still holds more than 100 hostages. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly emphasized that objective even while facing mounting international pressure to scale back military operations. The Biden administration has dispatched senior envoys to Israel to push for a new phase of the war focused on more targeted operations rather than sweeping destruction.
And critics both within Israel and outside have questioned whether resolving to destroy such a deeply entrenched organization was ever realistic. One former Israeli national security adviser called the plan “vague.” “I think that we have reached a moment when the Israeli authorities will have to define more clearly what their final objective is,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said this month. “The total destruction of Hamas? Does anybody think that’s possible? If it’s that, the war will last 10 years.”
Since it first emerged in 1987, Hamas has survived repeated attempts to eliminate its leadership. The organization’s very structure was designed to absorb such contingencies, according to political and military specialists. In addition, Israel’s devastating tactics in the Gaza war threaten to radicalize a broader segment of the population, inspiring new recruits. Analysts see the most optimal outcome for Israel probably consisting of degrading Hamas’s military capabilities to prevent the group from repeating such a devastating attack. But even that limited goal is considered a formidable slog.
snip
December 28, 2023
Having been hit by a wave of strikes, Elon Musk’s company stands accused of failing to understand the Scandinavian culture of industrial relations
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/teslas-battle-with-nordic-trade-unions-alarms-investors-dsx7hjn8j
https://archive.is/GecLU
Some of the largest investors in the Nordic countries have challenged Tesla over their “deep concern” about the electric carmaker’s intractable conflict with Sweden’s trade unions, which has led to a series of rolling strikes across the region. Since Swedish mechanics downed tools at the end of October, unions in Denmark, Finland and Norway have joined in a wave of co-ordinated industrial action that threatens to derail the American company’s trade across the region.
Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and the world’s richest person, has denounced the strikes as “insane”. Yet Sweden’s powerful unions argue that Musk and Tesla have failed to respect a national code of labour practices that have held an almost sacred status in the country since 1938. “We have been trying to negotiate with [Tesla] for over five years to sign a collective agreement,” Jesper Pettersson of IF Metall, which represents Tesla workers in Sweden, said. “The vast majority of workplaces of this size and dignity in Sweden have an agreement.”
At its core the dispute is a collision between Musk’s notorious disregard for unions, which he recently claimed “create a lords and peasants sort of thing”, and Scandinavia’s hallowed grand bargain between labour and capital. Eighty-five years ago, representatives from Sweden’s workers and employers met at Saltsjobaden, a bathing resort in the Stockholm archipelago, to hammer out a deal under which they would negotiate on pay and working conditions without the government involving itself.
The “spirit of Saltsjobaden” has proven remarkably durable. Over the last decade Sweden recorded only 2.4 days of strike action per thousand workers, compared with 18 in the UK and 128 in France. Yet this apparently immovable object is now confronted with a previously irresistible force. As Tesla expands into Europe it has run into a far more entrenched culture of labour organisation than it was accustomed to encountering in the US. At its vast “gigafactory” facility east of Berlin, which generates about two thirds of Tesla’s European sales, the manufacturer has repeatedly clashed with IG Metall, the continent’s largest union.
snip
Nordic unions rise up against Tesla over corporate culture clash
Having been hit by a wave of strikes, Elon Musk’s company stands accused of failing to understand the Scandinavian culture of industrial relations
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/teslas-battle-with-nordic-trade-unions-alarms-investors-dsx7hjn8j
https://archive.is/GecLU
Some of the largest investors in the Nordic countries have challenged Tesla over their “deep concern” about the electric carmaker’s intractable conflict with Sweden’s trade unions, which has led to a series of rolling strikes across the region. Since Swedish mechanics downed tools at the end of October, unions in Denmark, Finland and Norway have joined in a wave of co-ordinated industrial action that threatens to derail the American company’s trade across the region.
Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and the world’s richest person, has denounced the strikes as “insane”. Yet Sweden’s powerful unions argue that Musk and Tesla have failed to respect a national code of labour practices that have held an almost sacred status in the country since 1938. “We have been trying to negotiate with [Tesla] for over five years to sign a collective agreement,” Jesper Pettersson of IF Metall, which represents Tesla workers in Sweden, said. “The vast majority of workplaces of this size and dignity in Sweden have an agreement.”
At its core the dispute is a collision between Musk’s notorious disregard for unions, which he recently claimed “create a lords and peasants sort of thing”, and Scandinavia’s hallowed grand bargain between labour and capital. Eighty-five years ago, representatives from Sweden’s workers and employers met at Saltsjobaden, a bathing resort in the Stockholm archipelago, to hammer out a deal under which they would negotiate on pay and working conditions without the government involving itself.
The “spirit of Saltsjobaden” has proven remarkably durable. Over the last decade Sweden recorded only 2.4 days of strike action per thousand workers, compared with 18 in the UK and 128 in France. Yet this apparently immovable object is now confronted with a previously irresistible force. As Tesla expands into Europe it has run into a far more entrenched culture of labour organisation than it was accustomed to encountering in the US. At its vast “gigafactory” facility east of Berlin, which generates about two thirds of Tesla’s European sales, the manufacturer has repeatedly clashed with IG Metall, the continent’s largest union.
snip
December 28, 2023
Revenge raids ordered across Crimea over missile destruction of Novocherkassk that may have killed 100
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russian-warship-destroyed-ukraine-war-attack-crimea-3zg6pckjc
https://archive.is/q0omh
President Putin is “completely furious” at the sinking of the Novocherkassk warship and has ordered raids across occupied Crimea in an attempt to hunt down the resistance fighters that provided intelligence on its location, according to a Ukrainian partisan group. “The flywheel of repression is spinning,” the Atesh group wrote on Telegram. “Local residents have been raided throughout the city, their smartphones are being taken away and their houses are being searched.”
The group added: “It is reported that Putin is completely furious over the destruction of the Novocherkassk large landing ship. An order was issued to punish the Crimean air defence forces. It is expected that many commanders will be removed and sent to the front to participate in assault groups.” The ship was struck at port in Feodosiya, Crimea, by a British cruise missile fired from a Ukrainian supersonic Sukhoi Su-24 jet. It went up in a huge explosion as its load, reported to be Iranian-made Shahed suicide drones, detonated.
Satellite images released by Radio Svoboda appear to show that the enormous blast hit a second ship nearby, a UTS-150 training ship that can be seen partially submerged. At least 52 men from 77 serving aboard the Novocherkassk have been reported missing or injured after the attack, according to the independent Russian media outlet ASTRA, including young conscripts and contract sailors. However, analysts believe the size of the explosion suggests that there may have been a far higher tally of injury and death. Yan Matveev, the Russian military analyst, said: “In the worst case, up to 100 people could have died instantly.
Local authorities announced the death of only one — apparently a port worker. “The sailors will be called missing and relatives will obtain certificates of the death of their husbands and sons through the courts. “At least a couple of dozen people from two shifts should have been there. Neither the Kremlin media, nor the ministry of defence, nor Z-military correspondents and other supporters of the war wrote a word about them.” The Kremlin’s efforts to cover up its war dead have led to demands that mobilised family members be brought home through grassroots organisations such as ‘Put Domoy’ (‘The Way Home’).
snip
Raging Putin 'sends top brass to front' after warship humiliation
Revenge raids ordered across Crimea over missile destruction of Novocherkassk that may have killed 100
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russian-warship-destroyed-ukraine-war-attack-crimea-3zg6pckjc
https://archive.is/q0omh
President Putin is “completely furious” at the sinking of the Novocherkassk warship and has ordered raids across occupied Crimea in an attempt to hunt down the resistance fighters that provided intelligence on its location, according to a Ukrainian partisan group. “The flywheel of repression is spinning,” the Atesh group wrote on Telegram. “Local residents have been raided throughout the city, their smartphones are being taken away and their houses are being searched.”
The group added: “It is reported that Putin is completely furious over the destruction of the Novocherkassk large landing ship. An order was issued to punish the Crimean air defence forces. It is expected that many commanders will be removed and sent to the front to participate in assault groups.” The ship was struck at port in Feodosiya, Crimea, by a British cruise missile fired from a Ukrainian supersonic Sukhoi Su-24 jet. It went up in a huge explosion as its load, reported to be Iranian-made Shahed suicide drones, detonated.
Satellite images released by Radio Svoboda appear to show that the enormous blast hit a second ship nearby, a UTS-150 training ship that can be seen partially submerged. At least 52 men from 77 serving aboard the Novocherkassk have been reported missing or injured after the attack, according to the independent Russian media outlet ASTRA, including young conscripts and contract sailors. However, analysts believe the size of the explosion suggests that there may have been a far higher tally of injury and death. Yan Matveev, the Russian military analyst, said: “In the worst case, up to 100 people could have died instantly.
Local authorities announced the death of only one — apparently a port worker. “The sailors will be called missing and relatives will obtain certificates of the death of their husbands and sons through the courts. “At least a couple of dozen people from two shifts should have been there. Neither the Kremlin media, nor the ministry of defence, nor Z-military correspondents and other supporters of the war wrote a word about them.” The Kremlin’s efforts to cover up its war dead have led to demands that mobilised family members be brought home through grassroots organisations such as ‘Put Domoy’ (‘The Way Home’).
snip
December 27, 2023
Declining support for Rishi Sunak bodes well for Sir Keir Starmer, but voters still unsure whether Labour is fit for office
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/only-6-percent-of-voters-think-tories-have-done-a-good-job-wp8wmq2wl
https://archive.is/EDedb
Only 6 per cent of voters think the Conservatives have done a good job in government, but fears about Labour are holding back Sir Keir Starmer, a poll has found. The YouGov survey for The Times found that only 15 per cent of people think the Tories are fit for office, and half of all voters say they would never vote Conservative under any circumstances. However, reflecting widespread disillusionment with both main political parties, the poll also found that 43 per cent of voters do not think Labour are fit for office either, and another 29 per cent are unsure.
Almost one in five voters say they are not sure which party to support at the next election, and only 15 per cent say they are certain to vote Labour. Both Labour and the Conservative are preparing for a new year campaigning blitz in an effort to shift public opinion. Rishi Sunak plans to take part in a series of events with voters in marginal seats, where he will focus on the economy. He will highlight the cuts to national insurance that will come in effect next month and hint at future tax cuts in March.
https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1739333181101179108
Tory claims to be a tax-cutting party have yet to cut throug has more people think the Conservatives will put up their taxes after the next election, polling finds. Asked what they think will happen to the level of taxes “paid by people like you”, 49 per cent thought taxes would go up under the Conservatives and 47 per cent thought they would go up under Labour. Only 4 per cent thought taxes would go down under the Tories, compared with 8 per cent for Labour.
Starmer is also preparing to increase campaigning. He plans to deliver a speech in the new year in which he will try to again position himself as the change candidate. He will contrast what he will describe as 13 years of national decline under the Conservative Party with Labour’s plans for a “decade of national renewal”. The vision is designed to appeal to the 33 per cent of undecided voters who think that the Tories have done a poor job in government but at the moment still lean Conservative over Labour.
snip
snip
Only 6% of voters think Tories have 'done a good job'
Declining support for Rishi Sunak bodes well for Sir Keir Starmer, but voters still unsure whether Labour is fit for office
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/only-6-percent-of-voters-think-tories-have-done-a-good-job-wp8wmq2wl
https://archive.is/EDedb
Only 6 per cent of voters think the Conservatives have done a good job in government, but fears about Labour are holding back Sir Keir Starmer, a poll has found. The YouGov survey for The Times found that only 15 per cent of people think the Tories are fit for office, and half of all voters say they would never vote Conservative under any circumstances. However, reflecting widespread disillusionment with both main political parties, the poll also found that 43 per cent of voters do not think Labour are fit for office either, and another 29 per cent are unsure.
Almost one in five voters say they are not sure which party to support at the next election, and only 15 per cent say they are certain to vote Labour. Both Labour and the Conservative are preparing for a new year campaigning blitz in an effort to shift public opinion. Rishi Sunak plans to take part in a series of events with voters in marginal seats, where he will focus on the economy. He will highlight the cuts to national insurance that will come in effect next month and hint at future tax cuts in March.
https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1739333181101179108
Tory claims to be a tax-cutting party have yet to cut throug has more people think the Conservatives will put up their taxes after the next election, polling finds. Asked what they think will happen to the level of taxes “paid by people like you”, 49 per cent thought taxes would go up under the Conservatives and 47 per cent thought they would go up under Labour. Only 4 per cent thought taxes would go down under the Tories, compared with 8 per cent for Labour.
Starmer is also preparing to increase campaigning. He plans to deliver a speech in the new year in which he will try to again position himself as the change candidate. He will contrast what he will describe as 13 years of national decline under the Conservative Party with Labour’s plans for a “decade of national renewal”. The vision is designed to appeal to the 33 per cent of undecided voters who think that the Tories have done a poor job in government but at the moment still lean Conservative over Labour.
snip
snip
December 27, 2023
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/dec/27/bill-granger-renowned-australian-cook-dies-aged-54
The Australian cook and restaurateur Bill Granger has died in London aged 54. Fellow cooks, celebrities and lovers of his restaurants paid tribute after the family of the food writer confirmed on Instagram he had died peacefully in hospital on Christmas Day. Granger’s wife, Natalie Elliott, and three daughters, Edie, Inès and Bunny, were at his bedside, the post said.
Granger was born in Melbourne and became a global restaurateur and food writer with a career spanning more than three decades, having taught himself to cook. He was remembered on Wednesday as the person primarily responsible for the global popularity of avocado on toast and developing a distinctive style of Australian breakfast and brunch – so much so that he became widely known as the “godfather” of avocado toast.
Granger dropped out of art school in 1993 and moved to Sydney where he opened his first restaurant, bills, in Darlinghurst. The corner cafe became known for its fresh flavours and breakfast food, served at a central communal table. In 1999 he and Elliott launched their business globally, which eventually encompassed 19 restaurants in Australia, the UK, Japan and Korea.
Granger wrote 14 cookbooks, made five television series and was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia last January. “He will be remembered as the ‘King of Breakfast’, for making unpretentious food into something special filled with sunshine and for spurring the growth of Australian informal and communal eating around the world,” his family wrote on social media. “He will be deeply missed by all, with his loss most profoundly felt by his adored family, who are grateful for all the love and support that has been given.”
snip
https://twitter.com/KathyLette/status/1739757298510438519
Bill Granger, renowned Australian cook, dies aged 54
Globally successful restaurateur and food writer known as the ‘godfather of avocado toast’ dies peacefully in Londonhttps://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/dec/27/bill-granger-renowned-australian-cook-dies-aged-54
The Australian cook and restaurateur Bill Granger has died in London aged 54. Fellow cooks, celebrities and lovers of his restaurants paid tribute after the family of the food writer confirmed on Instagram he had died peacefully in hospital on Christmas Day. Granger’s wife, Natalie Elliott, and three daughters, Edie, Inès and Bunny, were at his bedside, the post said.
Granger was born in Melbourne and became a global restaurateur and food writer with a career spanning more than three decades, having taught himself to cook. He was remembered on Wednesday as the person primarily responsible for the global popularity of avocado on toast and developing a distinctive style of Australian breakfast and brunch – so much so that he became widely known as the “godfather” of avocado toast.
Granger dropped out of art school in 1993 and moved to Sydney where he opened his first restaurant, bills, in Darlinghurst. The corner cafe became known for its fresh flavours and breakfast food, served at a central communal table. In 1999 he and Elliott launched their business globally, which eventually encompassed 19 restaurants in Australia, the UK, Japan and Korea.
Granger wrote 14 cookbooks, made five television series and was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia last January. “He will be remembered as the ‘King of Breakfast’, for making unpretentious food into something special filled with sunshine and for spurring the growth of Australian informal and communal eating around the world,” his family wrote on social media. “He will be deeply missed by all, with his loss most profoundly felt by his adored family, who are grateful for all the love and support that has been given.”
snip
https://twitter.com/KathyLette/status/1739757298510438519
December 25, 2023
https://patch.com/illinois/lagrange/la-grange-park-racist-seeks-death-non-christians
LA GRANGE PARK, IL – Many call for "peace on Earth" in the Christmas season. Nicholas Fuentes, a nationally known racist from La Grange Park, calls for the death penalty for non-Christians. "This is God's country. This is Jesus' country," Fuentes said. Fuentes, who at last check still votes in La Grange Park, has grabbed headlines in the past. In November 2022, Fuentes and Kanye West, who stirred controversy over repeated antisemitic comments, dined with former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
In his recent podcast, Fuentes said he was focused on "occult" elements at the highest level of societies, particularly Jewish people. "So many of the people perpetrating the lies, the destruction of the country, they are evildoers. They are people who worship the false gods. They are people who practice magic and rituals or whatever," Fuentes said. "More than anything, those people need to be, when we take power, they need to be given the death penalty."
He said he was more concerned about such people than he was about nonwhites and mass migration. "These are people communicating with demons and engaging in this sort of witchcraft and stuff. These people that are suppressing the name of Christ and suppressing Christianity, they must be absolutely annihilated when we take power," said Fuentes, who was Lyons Township High School's student body president before he graduated in 2016.
"This is God's country. This is Jesus' country," Fuentes continued. "This is not the domain of atheists and devil worshippers, perfidious Jews. This is Christ's country." In the fall, Fuentes fantasized about having African Americans killed, saying it would be "awesome." For years, Fuentes aired his podcast from his parents' home in La Grange Park. He is believed to have moved his studio to Berwyn. Last year, his mother, Lauren Fuentes, appeared to be a big fan of her son's racist ideology during an appearance on his podcast.
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Trump Ally Nicholas Fuentes Seeks Death Of Non-Christians
He targets Jewish people and those who "worship false gods." He calls for killing them "when we take power."https://patch.com/illinois/lagrange/la-grange-park-racist-seeks-death-non-christians
LA GRANGE PARK, IL – Many call for "peace on Earth" in the Christmas season. Nicholas Fuentes, a nationally known racist from La Grange Park, calls for the death penalty for non-Christians. "This is God's country. This is Jesus' country," Fuentes said. Fuentes, who at last check still votes in La Grange Park, has grabbed headlines in the past. In November 2022, Fuentes and Kanye West, who stirred controversy over repeated antisemitic comments, dined with former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
In his recent podcast, Fuentes said he was focused on "occult" elements at the highest level of societies, particularly Jewish people. "So many of the people perpetrating the lies, the destruction of the country, they are evildoers. They are people who worship the false gods. They are people who practice magic and rituals or whatever," Fuentes said. "More than anything, those people need to be, when we take power, they need to be given the death penalty."
He said he was more concerned about such people than he was about nonwhites and mass migration. "These are people communicating with demons and engaging in this sort of witchcraft and stuff. These people that are suppressing the name of Christ and suppressing Christianity, they must be absolutely annihilated when we take power," said Fuentes, who was Lyons Township High School's student body president before he graduated in 2016.
"This is God's country. This is Jesus' country," Fuentes continued. "This is not the domain of atheists and devil worshippers, perfidious Jews. This is Christ's country." In the fall, Fuentes fantasized about having African Americans killed, saying it would be "awesome." For years, Fuentes aired his podcast from his parents' home in La Grange Park. He is believed to have moved his studio to Berwyn. Last year, his mother, Lauren Fuentes, appeared to be a big fan of her son's racist ideology during an appearance on his podcast.
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December 23, 2023
https://prospect.org/power/2023-12-22-university-of-phoenixification-elite-education/
CEO of Apollo Global Management Marc Rowan takes part in a panel at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit, November 7, 2023, in Hong Kong.
Most viewers probably thought it was an inspired bit of absurdity when, during the opening sketch of a recent Saturday Night Live satirizing the now-infamous college presidents hearing on antisemitism, Kenan Thompson swooped in to offer his perspective on the matter from his post as “president of the University of Phoenix.” (“Lady, we’ll offer a class on anything … the only two mandatory classes at the University of Phoenix are ‘How to log into the University of Phoenix online’ and ‘How to set up autopay.’”) But a leading orchestrator of the entire media frenzy around antisemitism in the Ivy League, Apollo Global Management co-founder Marc Rowan, is literally the CEO of the parent company of the University of Phoenix. Apollo acquired the scandal-plagued diploma mill’s parent company, confusingly also named Apollo, in 2017. And while Rowan has been mounting what the American Association of University Professors has termed a “hostile takeover” of his alma mater in Philadelphia, he’s been simultaneously orchestrating an equally alarming plot to dump University of Phoenix onto the University of Idaho, in a scheme that could have an even more devastating impact on American higher education.
Under Apollo’s stewardship, the University of Phoenix shut down 80 associate degree programs and closed, sold, or made plans to shutter all but one of its more than 200 physical campuses and mini-campuses worldwide. It whittled its full-time faculty to just 127 full-time instructors for 96,000 students. It agreed to pay Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Commission $191 million to settle a deceptive practices lawsuit, and was the subject of more than 3,000 consumer complaints to the FTC between 2017 and the beginning of 2021, along with over 73,000 borrower defense to repayment claims to the Department of Education. It appointed its third president in a single year after the DOE launched an investigation into the role of its newly appointed president in the collapse of his last online university. And it reported a six-year graduation rate of 26.2 percent.
But for Rowan, the University of Phoenix overhaul was a glorious success. The Apollo fund that acquired the online school extracted about $1 billion in dividends during the first four years of its investment, despite the unprecedented tens of billions of dollars in student loans the Biden administration has canceled on behalf of students of virtually every shady for-profit online college other than University of Phoenix. Apollo then brokered the aforementioned lucrative agreement to double its initial investment by selling the school to the University of Idaho, though state attorney general Raúl Labrador has sued to block that purchase, arguing the deal was hashed out in secret meetings that violated state law. (The university has demanded $2,400 from a local education website to comply with open records requests it filed to learn more about the transaction.)
The media depiction of the “Ivy League antisemitism crisis” as an in-crowd battle between Harvard and its obnoxious billionaire alumnus Bill Ackman is fun, because it pits the nation’s most insufferable institution against a self-aggrandizing Wall Street jerk with a million Twitter followers, and because both sides have emerged looking worse for wear. The fraud has showcased the self-enrichment Ackman and other well-heeled Ivy League alumni derive from their tax-deductible donations, the scandal has shone a spotlight on the possible shoddiness of Harvard president Claudine Gay’s scholarship, and The New York Times has looked deservedly ridiculous for devoting ten reporters to covering the university’s palace intrigue during the deadliest war in recent memory.
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The University of Phoenixification of Elite Education
https://prospect.org/power/2023-12-22-university-of-phoenixification-elite-education/
CEO of Apollo Global Management Marc Rowan takes part in a panel at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit, November 7, 2023, in Hong Kong.
Most viewers probably thought it was an inspired bit of absurdity when, during the opening sketch of a recent Saturday Night Live satirizing the now-infamous college presidents hearing on antisemitism, Kenan Thompson swooped in to offer his perspective on the matter from his post as “president of the University of Phoenix.” (“Lady, we’ll offer a class on anything … the only two mandatory classes at the University of Phoenix are ‘How to log into the University of Phoenix online’ and ‘How to set up autopay.’”) But a leading orchestrator of the entire media frenzy around antisemitism in the Ivy League, Apollo Global Management co-founder Marc Rowan, is literally the CEO of the parent company of the University of Phoenix. Apollo acquired the scandal-plagued diploma mill’s parent company, confusingly also named Apollo, in 2017. And while Rowan has been mounting what the American Association of University Professors has termed a “hostile takeover” of his alma mater in Philadelphia, he’s been simultaneously orchestrating an equally alarming plot to dump University of Phoenix onto the University of Idaho, in a scheme that could have an even more devastating impact on American higher education.
Under Apollo’s stewardship, the University of Phoenix shut down 80 associate degree programs and closed, sold, or made plans to shutter all but one of its more than 200 physical campuses and mini-campuses worldwide. It whittled its full-time faculty to just 127 full-time instructors for 96,000 students. It agreed to pay Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Commission $191 million to settle a deceptive practices lawsuit, and was the subject of more than 3,000 consumer complaints to the FTC between 2017 and the beginning of 2021, along with over 73,000 borrower defense to repayment claims to the Department of Education. It appointed its third president in a single year after the DOE launched an investigation into the role of its newly appointed president in the collapse of his last online university. And it reported a six-year graduation rate of 26.2 percent.
But for Rowan, the University of Phoenix overhaul was a glorious success. The Apollo fund that acquired the online school extracted about $1 billion in dividends during the first four years of its investment, despite the unprecedented tens of billions of dollars in student loans the Biden administration has canceled on behalf of students of virtually every shady for-profit online college other than University of Phoenix. Apollo then brokered the aforementioned lucrative agreement to double its initial investment by selling the school to the University of Idaho, though state attorney general Raúl Labrador has sued to block that purchase, arguing the deal was hashed out in secret meetings that violated state law. (The university has demanded $2,400 from a local education website to comply with open records requests it filed to learn more about the transaction.)
The media depiction of the “Ivy League antisemitism crisis” as an in-crowd battle between Harvard and its obnoxious billionaire alumnus Bill Ackman is fun, because it pits the nation’s most insufferable institution against a self-aggrandizing Wall Street jerk with a million Twitter followers, and because both sides have emerged looking worse for wear. The fraud has showcased the self-enrichment Ackman and other well-heeled Ivy League alumni derive from their tax-deductible donations, the scandal has shone a spotlight on the possible shoddiness of Harvard president Claudine Gay’s scholarship, and The New York Times has looked deservedly ridiculous for devoting ten reporters to covering the university’s palace intrigue during the deadliest war in recent memory.
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