Alter (2004), Robert, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary, W W Norton 2004 Through a distinguished career of critical scholarship and translation, Robert Alter has equipped us to read the Hebrew Bible as a powerful cohesive work of literature. In this landmark work, Alter's masterly translation and probing commentary combine to give contemporary readers the definitive edition of The Five Books of Moses. 
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Archives & History Resources, City of Sydney, and Total Environment Centre, Cooks River environment survey and landscape design: report of the Cooks River Project, 1976 ' Description: Public Note: Sponsored by Canterbury Municipal Council, Marrickville Municipal Council, South West Sydney Regional Social Development Council, Total Environment Centre, with the support of Rockdale Municipal Council
Language English
Illustrations: Black and white llustrations
148 pages, 250 x 450 mm
Publisher Cooks River Project
Place of publication: Chippendale, NSW, Australia 
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Brown (2025), Bob, Defiance: Stories from Nature and its Defenders, Black Inc 2025 ' This book is a poweful reminder that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice only if brave people make the effort to bend it.' Geraldine Brooks)
' Our unifying purpose ought to be safeguarding life on Earth, honouring happiness and securing humanity for its future int he universe. Far more than money, this simple and obvious pursuit offers us meaning to life on our brilliant little planet.' 
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Giuffre (2025), Virginia Roberts, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, Doubleday 2025 ' In 2011, Virginia hit the headlines as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's most outspoken victim- the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison and whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalyzed his fall from grace. But first and foremost she became known as a voice of courage and resilience for women everywhere. This is her story, in her own words. A story that has never been told in full before now. It demonstrates, with extraordinary power, that victims are made, they are not born. And that once you come to truly understand the horrifying impact of abuse, you would never think to question why a victim stays, or returns over and over again.
In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published. This is the powerful story of an ordinary girl who would grow up to confront adversity and trauma of the darkest form, yet found the strength to move forwards, reclaim her voice and shine light on evil - advocating for others and fighting for a safer, fairer world.
Nobody's Girl is a remarkable recounting of one woman's fortitude in the face of depravity and despair and the legacy she leaves behind.' 
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Lonergan (1992), Bernard J F, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan : Volume 3), University of Toronto Press 1992 '. . . Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. Its aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, an understanding of understanding' 
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Abrahamic religions - Wikipedia, Abrahamic religions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The term Abrahamic religion groups three of the major religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) together due to their historical coexistence and competition; it refers to Abraham, a figure mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible, and the Quran, and is used to show similarities between these religions and put them in contrast to Indian religions, Iranian religions, and the East Asian religions (though other religions and belief systems may refer to Abraham as well). . . . The Catholic scholar of Islam Louis Massignon stated that the phrase "Abrahamic religion" means that all these religions come from one spiritual source. The modern term comes from the plural form of a Quranic reference to dīn Ibrāhīm, 'religion of Ibrahim', Arabic form of Abraham's name. ' back

Alistair Evans (2025_10_24), High-tech cameras capture the secrets of venomous snake bites, ' For more than 60 million years, venomous snakes have slithered across Earth. These ancient, chemical weapon-wielding reptiles owe their evolutionary success in part to the effectiveness of their bite, which they deliver at an astonishing speed before their prey can escape. Now, a study I coauthored reveals, in astonishing detail, exactly how these bites work. Published today in the Journal of Experimental Biology, it is the largest study of its kind to-date, and uses advanced video techniques to show how various snake species have evolved very different strategies to deliver their deadly bites. [. . .]
For our new study, my colleagues and I studied the bites of 36 different species of venomous snakes. These species were from the three main families of venomous snakes: vipers, elapids and colubrids. They included western diamondback rattlesnakes (Crotalus atrox), blunt-nosed vipers (Macrovipera lebetinus) and the rough-scaled death adder (Acanthophis rugosus).
All the snakes we studied were housed at an institution in Paris, France, called Venomworld. There, we built a small experimental arena consisting of plexiglass panels lined with a cardboard floor, in which we placed the individual snakes.
We presented the snakes with a simulated food source – a cylindrical hunk of medical gel, heated to 38 degrees so it resembled prey for those that can detect heat.
Two high-speed cameras, placed nearby at different angles, automatically captured the snakes striking the gel at 1,000 frames per second.
Using the footage from these two different views, we recreated the strike in 3D to investigate, in detail, its various components such as its duration, acceleration, angle, and how fast the snake’s jaw opened.
In total, we captured 108 videos of successful strikes – three for each of the species included in the study.' back

Ambrose Li & Enid Tsui, Hong Kong arts hub cancels gay-themed play hours before tickets go on sale, ' Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District cancelled a gay-themed play set to be staged at its Xiqu Centre less than two hours before tickets went on sale at 11am on Saturday, citing complaints the work promoted confrontation and defamed the city.
The author of We Are Gay, Candace Chong Mui-ngam, was also attacked in a 1,000-word opinion piece in the pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po Chinese-language newspaper for “building her happiness on Hongkongers’ pain”.
“It is with regret that we announce the cancellation of the play We Are Gay … the team received a written notification from [the managing authority of the district] that the performances have been cancelled,” the organiser said in a Facebook post. “The notification did not specify the reasons for the cancellation.”[. . .]
The opinion piece in the Wen Wei Po criticised Chong for being sympathetic to anti-government protesters in 2019 and attacked the play for “cultural subversion”.
“The play We Are Gay, which addresses homosexuality, uses its characters to criticise Hong Kong as ‘without freedom or hope’,” it said. “This goes beyond mere soft resistance – it is a blatant promotion of cultural subversion in Hong Kong,”
The play, which involves nudity and expletives, was “brimming with malice, utterly devoid of morals, detrimental to public decency and poisonous to society”, the piece said.' back

Amy Wallace (2025_10_19), Why Virginia Roberts Giuffre Would Not Stop Talking About Jeffrey Epstein, ' Though mostly populated by actors, “A Very Royal Scandal” ends with a close-up of Ms. Giuffre’s actual 17-year-old face. I could see in her eyes that day how validated she felt as the actor playing an outraged Ms. Maitlis spoke up for her and other survivors.
Six months later Ms. Giuffre died by suicide. She was 41 years old. The immediate, and ultimately unanswerable, question: Why?
But what also lingered for me, amid my immense sadness, were other questions: Why do we, as a society, ask those who have been weakened by abuse to do the heaviest lifting — not just calling out the predatory schemes of those who abused them, but also testifying and being deposed under oath, as well as sitting for interviews and news conferences? [. . .]
Ms. Giuffre and I would often imagine how things might unfold when her book was published and she could stop reliving her most terrifying and dehumanizing moments with Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell. In this imagined future, she finally would, for the first time since 2011, be able to aim her energies toward two things: spending more time with her own family, and protecting all kids by calling for the elimination of statute of limitation provisions for sexual abusers of minors.
It was ironic, Ms. Giuffre and I both knew, that the only way to wrench back her own power was to do the very thing we wished abuse victims weren’t always asked to do: tell her story, one last time.
“When I was a sex slave, I had no say,” she wrote in her book. “I will never have ‘no say’ again".' back

Australian Government (2013), Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 'WHEREAS all children deserve a safe and happy childhood. AND Australia has undertaken international obligations to take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect children from sexual abuse and other forms of abuse, including measures for the prevention, identification, reporting, referral, investigation, treatment and follow up of incidents of child abuse. . . . IN WITNESS, We have caused these Our Letters to be made Patent. WITNESS Quentin Bryce, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia. Dated 11th January 2013 Governor-General By Her Excellency’s Command Prime Minister back

Christoph Nedopil (2025_10_21), Trump is pushing allies to buy US gas. It’s bad economics – and a catastrophe for the climate, ' The price of partnership with the United States has changed. Washington is now using assurances of defence and trade access to pressure allies in Europe and Asia to buy more of its fossil fuels under decades-long contracts.
The scale is immense. The European Union intends to import up to A$1.15 trillion of US energy – mostly liquefied natural gas (LNG) – by 2028. That would be more than four times its current imports, though analysts are sceptical it will eventuate. [. . .]
These deals aren’t based on free trade. They represent the Trump administration’s geopolitical play using trade and security carrots and sticks to lock in long-term fossil fuel profitability and dominance. The goal: prop up energy sources facing cost pressures from clean technology, strengthen US control of the energy flows, and shut out China, the world’s top manufacturer of clean tech. [. . .] >br> The Trump administration’s efforts to force its allies to buy more and more fossil fuels draws on a straightforward “America First” logic. Here are three reasons for the push: The US now produces 22% of the world’s oil and 25% of its gas – well ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia. But fossil fuels are projected to begin declining by 2030. The Trump administration wants to convert a risky commodity market facing long-term decline into a stable, decades-long “subscription model”. New gas plants or import terminals will only be viable if intended for long-term use.
2. Maintaining dominance
US dominance has long rested on control of global energy flows, both by protecting shipping lanes and by providing the currency to settle oil trades. Decentralised renewables and clean technologies such as batteries and electric vehicles weakens that grip. By tying allies to US gas, Washington wants to keep its ability to use energy as leverage.
3. Kneecapping China
China controls more than 70% of the world’s global solar, wind and battery manufacturing, positioning itself as the emerging energy superpower. Under Trump, the US has switched from competing on clean tech to defending fossil fuels, rejecting the transition and cancelling major domestic renewable projects. By forcing allies to buy gas, Washington seeks to delay the green shift and block China from gaining influence over energy. A related strategy is to vilify China over human rights abuses in its green supply chain. [. . .]
Shifting decisively toward renewables will deliver cheaper power, greater energy independence and heightened resilience. It will also position the region at the forefront of the next great industrial transformation.' back

Gemma Ware (2025_10_10), Nobel laureate Shimon Sakaguchi on his immune system breakthrough – and the treatments he hopes it will unlock , ' Back in the 1980s, when Shimon Sakaguchi was a young researcher in immunology, he found it difficult to get his research funded. Now, his pioneering work which explains how our immune system knows when and what to attack, has won him a Nobel prize. Sakaguchi, along with American researchers Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell, were jointly awarded the 2025 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for their work on regulatory T-cells, known as T-regs for short, a special class of immune cells which prevent our immune system from attacking our own body. In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, Sakaguchi tells us about his journey of discovery and the potential treatments it could unlock.' back

Igor Stravinsky, Firebird, The Members of the Royal Danish Ballet Soloists Mette Honnignen. Torgen Jeppesen & Lars Damsgaard One day, the Tsar's son, Ivan Tsarevich, goes hunting and manages to capture a bird with wings like fire, who is obviously the Firebird the name is mentioning. The Firebird begs for her release, and offers Ivan one of her magic feathers. Ivan agrees and is told to wave that feather whenever he is in trouble. Ivan releases the Firebird and keeps hunting. He comes across 12 maidens and a princess that are all playing a game with golden apples from a tree. Ivan joins their game and learns that they are captives of an evil king named Kastchei, whose soul is protected inside of an egg in a casket. If the egg is destroyed, he dies. The maidens and the princess leave, and warn Ivan not to follow. But he does, and enters Kastchei's palace. He sets off an alarm, and is captured. Kastchei tries to turn him to stone. Ivan waves the feather the Firebird gave him and the Firebird sends Kastchei and all of his "subjects" in to a mad dance. Eventually, they crash and the Firebird shows Ivan where the casket with Kastchei's soul is. Ivan breaks the egg, killing Kastchei. Although Stravinsky didn't mention this in the original score, a lot of productions end with Ivan marrying the princess.' back

Igor Stravinsky (Rite), Rite of Spring; Joffrey Ballet. Documentary and Performance, ' Sorry about the picture and sound quality, but this was recorded on VHS in 1989! The Ballet itself begins at 25'40".' back

Iliad - Wikipedia, Iliad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Iliad (Ancient Greek: Ἰλιάς, romanized: Iliás, a poem about Ilion (Troy)') is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Odyssey, the poem is divided into 24 books and was written in dactylic hexameter. It contains 15,693 lines in its most widely accepted version. The Iliad is often regarded as the first substantial piece of European literature and is a central part of the Epic Cycle.' back

Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip - Wikipedia, Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' By October 2024, Israel said it bombed 40,000 locations in the Gaza Strip (which is 360 km2). By one estimate, the bomb tonnage dropped on Gaza is more than 70,000 tonnes, which academic Robert Pape noted surpassed the combined bomb tonnage dropped on Dresden, Hamburg, and London in World War II. He also stated that "Gaza will also go down as a place name denoting one of history's heaviest conventional bombing campaigns." Satellite imagery showed at least 69% of all buildings were damaged or destroyed, which surpasses the scale of destruction in Cologne and Dresden and approaches that of Hamburg during World War II.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (1987), A theory of Peace, ' The argument: I began to think about peace in a very practical way during the Viet Nam war. I was the right age to be called up. I was exempted because I was a clergyman, but despite the terrors that war held for me, I think I might have gone. It was my first whiff of the force of patriotism. To my amazement, it was strong enough to make even me face death.
In the Church, I became embroiled in a deeper war. Not a war between goodies and baddies, but the war between good and evil that lies at the heart of all human consciousness. Existence is a struggle. We need all the help we can get. Religion is part of that help and theology is the scientific foundation of religion.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (1992a), An essay on value, ' 1: We must kill to live. The question before is is whether or not to kill some fraction of the old growth forest (OGF) in the Wingham management area (WMA) in order to keep the sawmilling operation at Mt George alive.
2: Religion: Although the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), as we have it, is a document based largely on resource, commercial and employment considerations, I believe the Commission is facing a religious issue, and will have no peace until it realizes that fact.
3: Matters of life and death are questions of religion. For those who have power over life and death, deciding what to kill is a question of value. The value system of any organism is determined by the history of its survival.
4: If the decision is good, the benefit from killing will exceed the value of what is destroyed, yielding a profit and enhanced probability of survival. A wrong judgement of value leads to the opposite result.' back

John Milton (The John Milton Reading Room 1), Paradise Lost: Introduction "Haile wedded Love": Milton's Redefinition of Marriage, ' In Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve's fall is told in a single line: "she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat" (Genesis 3:6). In Paradise Lost, Adam eats the fruit of knowledge two hundred fourteen lines after Eve. Milton imagines an intervening mental strife unequalled in the history of the world as Adam comes to choose love and death over rational knowledge of God. The story is no longer one of disobedience, but man's disobedience of God in favor of a human relationship.' Sara Silverstein and Thomas H. Luxon back

Kevin Kwong (2025_10_21), How the Tang dynasty took China to new heights politically, economically and socially, 'To understand Chinese culture, it is necessary to go back to the very beginning of its civilisation. In this series, we look at the most influential dynasties in Chinese history and how each, with its technological inventions and cultural advancements, helped propel the nation forward.
By the time China ushered in the Tang dynasty (618-907), Chinese culture was on the cusp of an unparalleled peak.
Riding on the success of the preceding Sui dynasty (581-617) – which unified China after four hundred years of division – the Tang inherited a strong central government and competent bureaucracy, the latter bolstered by a merit-based imperial examination system.
The Silk Road – a vast network of trade routes that connected China with the West as far as the Mediterranean – had been in use since the Han dynasty (206BC-AD220), and its expansion, both on land and at sea, would further spread the influence of Chinese art and culture far beyond its borders. [. . .]
The Tang dynasty came to an end in 907, and China was split into what is known as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, as a rapid succession of five short-lived dynasties controlled the north of the country, while 10 independent kingdoms ruled the south.' back

Mahabharata - Wikipedia, Mahabharata - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Mahābhārata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Rāmāyaṇa. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pāṇḍava princes and their successors. It also contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or puruṣārtha (12.161). Among the principal works and stories in the Mahābhārata are the Bhagavad Gita, the story of Damayanti, the story of Shakuntala, the story of Pururava and Urvashi, the story of Savitri and Satyavan, the story of Kacha and Devayani, the story of Rishyasringa and an abbreviated version of the Rāmāyaṇa, often considered as works in their own right.' back

Richard Behiel (2025), The EPR Paradox, Einstein's Critique of Quantum Physics , ' In this video, we explore the legendary 1935 EPR paper in full technical detail, seeing what the EPR paradox is all about, and how it relates to wavefunction collapse, local causality, and spooky action at a distance. This video also sets the stage for a follow-up video on Bell’s theorem.' back

Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick & Andrew King, For the first time, we linked a new fossil fuel project to Beyond the 2050 deadline, all emissions from the Scarborough project would require technologies to permanently remove CO₂ from the atmosphere. Achieving that would require a massive scale-up of current technologies. It would be more prudent to reduce greenhouse gas emissions where possible. People in a submerged vessel look out window at coral reef. About 16 million corals on the Great Barrier Reef would be lost in each new mass bleaching due to the project. Dean Lewins/AAP ‘Negligible’ impacts? Hardly Our findings mean the best-available scientific evidence can now be used by companies, governments and regulators when deciding if a fossil fuel project will proceed. Crucially, it is no longer defensible for companies proposing new or extended fossil fuel projects to claim the climate harms will be negligible. Our research shows the harms are, in fact, tangible and quantifiable – and no project is too small to matter.o hundreds of deaths. Here’s the impact of Woodside’s Scarborough gas project, Global warming from Woodside’s massive Scarborough gas project off Western Australia would lead to 484 additional heat-related deaths in Europe alone this century, and kill about 16 million additional corals on the Great Barrier Reef during each future mass bleaching event, our new research has revealed.
The findings were made possible by a robust, well-established formula that can determine the extent to which an individual fossil fuel project will warm the planet. The results can be used to calculate the subsequent harms to society and nature.
The results close a fundamental gap between science and decision-making about fossil fuel projects. They also challenge claims by proponents that climate risks posed by a fossil fuel project are negligible or cannot be quantified. [. . .]
We estimate these emissions will cause 0.00039°C of additional global warming. Estimates such as these are typically expressed as a range, alongside a measure of confidence in the projection. In this case, there is a 66–100% likelihood that the Scarborough project will cause additional global warming of between 0.00024°C and 0.00055°C. [. . .]
We calculated that the additional warming from the Scarborough project will expose 516,000 people globally to a local climate that’s beyond the hot extreme of the human climate niche. We drilled down into specific impacts in Europe, where suitable health data was available across 854 cities. Our best estimate is that this project would cause an additional 484 heat-related deaths in Europe by the end of this century. [. . .] A report prepared by consultancy ACIL Allen has found that Woodside’s Scarborough Energy Project is expected to generate an estimated A$52.8 billion in taxation and royalty payments, boost GDP by billions of dollars between 2024 and 2056 and employ 3,200 people during peak construction in Western Australia.' back

Seb Starcevic (2025_10_22), Shadow missile strike on Russia while Kremlin pounds Kyiv, ' Ukraine struck a key chemical plant inside Russia with British Storm Shadow missiles — while the Kremlin hammered Kyiv in a massive overnight bombardment.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on social media late Tuesday it launched “a massive combined missile and air strike” on the Bryansk chemical plant southwest of Moscow.
The barrage included “Storm Shadow air-launched missiles, which overcame the Russian air defense system.” Ukraine's military added that the Russian factory “produces gunpowder, explosives, and components for rocket fuel,” calling it an important part of Russia’s “military-industrial complex".' back

Sophie Wushuang Yi (12025_10_22), Opinion | Retreating globally, US finds a new arena to flex power – at home, ' The Donald Trump administration is executing not merely a restructuring but a fundamental redefinition of American military purpose. The clearest evidence emerged in June, when the US president deployed 700 active-duty Marines to Los Angeles alongside 4,000 federalised National Guard troops to confront immigration enforcement protests – without California Governor Gavin Newsom’s consent.
A federal judge subsequently ruled that this deployment violated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits using the military as domestic law enforcement. Yet the administration persisted, revealing Trump’s solution to American strategic decline: when you cannot project power globally, redirect military force towards domestic political control.
This represents the first presidential federalisation of the National Guard against a governor’s wishes since 1965, fundamentally challenging federalism principles. More significantly, the deployment explicitly integrated military forces with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, collapsing institutional boundaries that have anchored American constitutional order. While National Guard units could be deployed as component military forces under Title 10 authority, as some were to Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s, they possess no arrest authority domestically.
Unlike police or ICE agents operating under civilian law enforcement protocols, Marines and National Guard troops lack the legal power to detain civilians. Yet Marines – trained for amphibious warfare, not crowd control – reportedly detained a civilian with zip ties during the Los Angeles operation, performing law enforcement functions they constitutionally cannot execute.
This transformation occurs against stark strategic realities. A recent Congressional Research Service report documents that China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy operates the world’s largest naval force by hull count, with over 370 ships, while the US Navy maintained 296 battle force ships as of January. Moreover, China’s shipbuilding capacity vastly exceeds American yards’ output. Defence analysts increasingly warn that the US Pacific Fleet is facing numerically superior opponents operating in home waters.' back

Stephen Chen (2025_10_19_, The ‘potassium railway’: how North America lost a trump card in trade war with China, ' Landlocked in the heart of Southeast Asia, Laos ranks among the world’s poorest nations.
However, for over a decade, China invested heavily to build a dual-purpose passenger and freight railway through the thick rainforest between Kunming and Vientiane, the Laotian capital. This 1,000km (621-mile) rail line, with speeds of up to 200km/h (124 mph), has been operating quietly for four years.
According to a Chinese government study released this month, this railway has become a critical conduit for China to secure potassium – a strategic resource vital for agricultural production.
It resolves a long-standing threat to the food security of its 1.4 billion people while injecting powerful momentum into emerging industries like green energy and life sciences.
It also gives China unprecedented confidence in trade negotiations with the West.
Potassium fertiliser is essential for high-yield modern agriculture, yet China suffers from severe potassium scarcity – holding less than 4 per cent of global reserves, mostly in hard-to-extract salt lakes. For decades, China relied heavily on potassium salt imports from North America, home to the world’s largest reserves.' When US President Donald Trump launched his trade war in 2018, China responded cautiously – partly due to technological gaps, but also over food security fears. back

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Home page of The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 'Founded in Rome on 17 August 1603 as the first exclusively scientific academy in the world by Federico Cesi, Giovanni Heck, Francesco Stelluti and Anastasio de Filiis with the name Linceorum Academia, to which Galileo Galilei was appointed member on 25 August 1610, it was reestablished in 1847 by Pius IX with the name Pontificia Accademia dei Nuovi Lincei. It was moved to its current headquarters in the Casina Pio IV in the Vatican Gardens in 1922, and given its current name and statutes by Pius XI in 1936. Its mission is to honour pure science wherever it may be found, ensure its freedom and encourage research for the progress of science.' back

Tom F. Wright (2025_10_24), ‘No kings’: America’s oldest political slogan is drawing millions out onto the streets, ' Every few decades, Americans rediscover that their republic was built on a rejection – the rejection of being ruled by a monarch. Now, in one of the largest protest movements in many years, the phrase “No kings” is everywhere: on placards, online memes, and in chants aimed at a president who seems to want to rule rather than serve.
Yet the words are hardly new. They are the first note in the American political scale, the country’s founding slogan before it even had a flag.
Long before it echoed through the colonies, the slogan “No king but Jesus” rang out in the English civil war, where it was used to declare that divine authority, not royal prerogative, should rule the conscience.
When it crossed the Atlantic, colonial Americans inherited a phrase, a stance and an image that could turn theology into politics and rebellion into virtue. [. . .]
n today’s fractured America, “No kings” offers something rare: a language of protest that feels constitutional rather than ideological. It has the potential to speak to conservatives alarmed by executive overreach, to progressives wary of authoritarian drift, and to independents nostalgic for civic balance.
That gives it unusual rhetorical strength. Unlike most modern slogans – “Drill baby, drill”, “Make America great again” (Maga), or “Defund the police” – it doesn’t divide, it recalls a principle. “No kings” reminds Americans that what unites them is the rejection of tyranny. [. . .]
To chant “No kings” now is not nostalgia but muscle memory. That is how a republic tests its pulse: by mocking grandeur, refusing awe and rediscovering equality in the act of saying no.' back

Veronika Melkozerova (2025_10_17), Blackout for blackout: Ukraine punches back for Russian attacks, ' KYIV — For much of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Moscow was able to pound Ukrainian cities and its energy grid and suffered very little retaliation.
That’s changing.
Thanks to a successful effort to develop its own long-range drones and missiles and then to dramatically ramp up production, Ukraine is now able to hit Russia almost daily. It can now methodically target not only oil refineries but also power plants and electricity substations, sparking a growing energy crisis inside Russia. [. . .]
On Friday, the Kremlin launched more than 450 drones and 30 missiles on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, causing partial blackouts. Last week alone, Russia launched more than 3,100 drones, 92 missiles, and around 1,360 glide bombs against Ukraine, most of which were heading for energy infrastructure targets.
But Ukraine is now repaying in the same coin. In addition to bombing oil refineries, Kyiv hit a civilian power plant in Russia’s Belgorod city near the border with Ukraine earlier this month, causing blackouts. Zelenskyy said it’s part of Kyiv’s deterrence strategy.
“The enemy must bear the cost of this war. But we do not kill civilians,” Zelenskyy said.' back

Wee Kek Koon (2022_04_22), Reflections | Why Chinese Buddhists, Taoists and Confucians get along yet the world’s Christians, Muslims and Jews cannot, ' Followers of the Abrahamic faiths have clashed throughout history, but in China believers in Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism have usually got along One reason is that these belief systems are not dogmatic; in the same Chinese temple one can offer devotions to Buddhist and Taoist deities and to Confucius back