The 1990s had witnessed the widespread adoption of official inflation targets by central banks … Not only did the major central banks in the developed world now have a target, but they all coalesced around the same number: 2 per cent acquired talismanic significanc … After 2008, central bankers’ pursuit of inflation targets became as […]
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Over the past week, I have already indicated that a major climate activist event was going on in Newcastle, Australia, which is the largest coal export port in the world. The event – The People’s Blockade – run by the activist group – Rising Tide, which involved thousands of people concerned about climate change gathering…
Israel continue to bomb the homes of civilians in Gaza and Beirut while journalists on the ground investigate the damage under drones. In Pakistan Imran Khan supporters have taken to the streets while in Newcastle climate change activists have paddled in protest on Newcastle Harbour. Clare O’Neil speaks to the housing policy while US Senator Continue reading »
As of January 21, 2025, I will no longer be oppressed by my salary, retirement savings scheme, or my office kitchen with its free coffee and biscuits. Instead, I will have the liberty to live out my womanly dream of quitting my job, having babies, performing animal husbandry, and stuffing the windows and doors with towels when the topsoil is swept into a storm that blackens out the sun.
Thank you, President-elect Trump.
I am thrilled to escape the woke trap of a professional career with enough seeds left in my ovaries to keep me pregnant through the next few years before I become a barren husk in desperate need of hormone replacement therapy, which will be outlawed by men who know better.
While coastal elites “ride the subway” to the office and avail themselves of universal pre-K, I will be safe birthing babies by my pastel pink rangehood, soaking almonds in bore water, and researching crop rotation, because even the veratrine isn’t taking care of the stubborn cicada problem we seem to have out here on the plains. I will reclaim a woman’s place at nearly the head of the family, up on a sort of rusty pedestal that Plan B can never reach.
The rejected Doctor Who script featuring the definitive origin of the Cybermen is getting an audio drama adaptation from Big Finish.
Timothy Snyder lays out the case against Pete Hegseth. It’s worse than you think: 1. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, has no qualifications for the job. He has never run a large organization and has no national security expertise. 2. Hegseth has zero notion of which other countries might threaten America or how. In his books this is simply not a subject, beyond a few clichés. 3. Hegseth does not believe in alliances. For him, “NATO is a great example of dumb globalism.” 4. Hegseth wants a political army that bans women from combat roles, is purged of “cowardly generals,” and is anti-woke. 5. Hegseth never notes that the politicized Russian army meets all of his standards perfectly, but is is ineffective and commits war crimes. 6. Hegseth never notes that the Ukrainian army, which does have women in combat, and is not politicized in the way he would like, has overperformed. 7. Hegseth has almost nothing to say about the most significant armed conflict of our time and has not visited Ukraine or learned anything about it.
Via Mediaite: Gorka opened the video saying “I knew this day would come, but I didn’t expect it so soon,” crowing about Trump’s order allowing Attorney General Bill Barr to declassify information about the 2016 election. “The Kraken has been unleashed,” Gorka declared in his signature affected bellow. “Watch, in the next two days, the rats, the hyenas, start to eat each other.” A large light source appears to be placed behind the camera for Gorka’s monologue, overexposing the video which seems to be inspired by villainous monologues from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. If you’re unfamiliar with this fruitcake: Sebastian Gorka, the pugilistic commentator who leveraged fears about Islam as a threat to Western civilization into a short-lived role in the first Trump administration, is poised for a second run inside the White House. Gorka was tapped to serve as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism, president-elect Donald Trump said Friday night.
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 24, 2024
By Tony Wikrent
q
Strategic Political Economy
Cory Doctorow [Pluralistic, via Naked Capitalism 11-22-2024]
…Trump is a scab, Dems need unions, Dems are not faithful to unions, unions make the Dems better, workers want unions, the public loves unions, and union membership is falling… it’s the union bosses’ fault.….
The NY Times reports: This is a good first clue that Trump has no intention of even pretending to follow the law this time. And why should he? He knows he has immunity: President-elect Donald J. Trump is keeping secret the names of the donors who are funding his transition effort, a break from tradition that could make it impossible to see what interest groups, businesses or wealthy people are helping launch his second term. Mr. Trump has so far declined to sign an agreement with the Biden administration that imposes strict limits on that fund-raising in exchange for up to $7.2 million in federal funds earmarked for the transition. By dodging the agreement, Mr. Trump can raise unlimited amounts of money from unknown donors to pay for the staff, travel and office space involved in preparing to take over the government. Mr. Trump is the first president-elect to sidestep the restrictions, provoking alarm among ethics experts. Those seeking to curry favor with the incoming administration now have the opportunity to donate directly to the winning candidate without their names or potential conflicts ever entering the public sphere.
by Rutger Claassen and Ingrid Robeyns Let’s establish an upper limit on the personal wealth any individual can possess. This is the core principle behind ‘limitarianism’. Limitarianism represents one of the more radical proposals in the debate on wealth inequality. Over the past few years, one of us has developed the philosophy of limitarianism (first […]
On 21 November 2024, the Australian government refused to grant a visa to former Israeli minister Ayelet Shaked, known for her anti-Palestinian views. She had been invited to attend a security conference in Canberra and other events organised by the Israeli lobby, Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC). Shaked described the government’s decision in the Continue reading »
Historically, many of its members have waged and/or supported wars in the name of democracy. Democracy has been held up as the beacon of good governance and ethical behaviour in a good versus bad, or democracy versus authoritarian, perceptual dichotomy; the struggle for dominance of which is viewed in Manichean terms. The idea perpetrated is Continue reading »
Australia’s industrial policy is shifting significantly with the introduction of the Future Made in Australia Act, which aims to enhance local manufacturing and reduce reliance on commodity exports. But concerns have arisen regarding the potential inefficiencies of targeted investments and the risk of deepening regional disparities. Australia needs a broader and more balanced approach that Continue reading »
In the ballyhooed, strident context of Trumpian change, if not, hysterical disruption, it is especially important to pinpoint and consider the real and the “factually alternative” content of Chinese foreign policy and international relations. Much analysis still originates with the continuing fear in the West of a hegemonic Chinese takeover. China is alleged to challenge Continue reading »
A review of Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden, Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race, UNSW Press I started reading the latest offering by economists Hamilton and Holden on Australia’s COVID-19 experience while I was nursing a deep disappointment that the Albanese Government decided not to establish a Royal Commission Continue reading »
For the aviation industry as a whole, and, for that matter, our federal government too, ‘net zero 2050’ is just the latest layer of greenwash. The sector is a serial offender, having misrepresented its global warming impact for decades. Qantas says it doesn’t buy political favours. But it has illegally sacked its workforce, short changed Continue reading »
Over the last 10,000 years or so societies have evolved from relatively simple and loosely structured groups of people to the complex entities of the present nation-states (and even a nascent world society), but in this time period the human being, as an organism, has not changed significantly. So, what has changed? The interaction between Continue reading »
Forty four years ago today as I am writing this (17/11/80) the harbinger of Donald Trump appeared in The New Yorker magazine. TV critic George W.S. Trow wrote a long essay (which later became a book) titled ‘Within the context of no context,’ giving notice to the world of what we now see unfolding across Continue reading »
The invitation said: ‘Global Multinational Corporations Summit.’ Main Topic: ‘An opening China and the World.’ So I dutifully packed my bags and headed tor Beijing. There on the 70th floor of the luxurious Shangri-la hotel I found bosses and representatives of about 30 Chinese multinationals who wanted to talk about Australia. But apart from two Continue reading »
Is this a funciton of people turning off the news? If so, maybe we should turn it back on… Mandate? Looks like it … 46% not motivated? That’s a bad sign: Maybe people are just tired. I’ll refrain from freaking out for a while on that one. But I’m worried that he’s so fully normalized that most people won’t react at all to what he does: Will this matter or will everyone ust move on to the next thing? Pay no attention to the partisanship when you analyze whether or not “economic anxiety” is the explanation for election outcomes, especially GOP partisanship. Obviously, that’s completely meaningless. The Cabinet: Note that more than half the people think they should be loyal to Trump. Slowly but surely it’s happening… Only a little over 50% approve of Trump’s tariffs. But this is just depressing although earlier polls showed this so we shouldn’t be surprised: I guess we should be happy that more don’t support using the military — for now. Trump will have a honeymoon it appears. And if Project 2025 is any gyude, and it should be, they are planning to take full advantage of it.
So in the last three years or so — since COVID, basically — Romania and Taiwan have both joined a very special club of countries. There are not a lot of countries in this club. If you’re very generous, you could include perhaps a dozen or so. But to my way of thinking, there are […]
To Fadime Sahindal, born April 2, 1975, in Turkey, murdered by her own father on January 21, 2002, in Sweden. Culture, identity, ethnicity, gender, and religiosity should never be accepted as a basis for intolerance in political and civic aspects. In a modern democratic society, people belonging to these different groups must be able to […]
Uh-huh Can we stop parroting that we can’t normalize Donald Trump? Or autocracy, kleptocracy, oligarchy, etc.? Look around. Anyone who says, “Well, that’s never going to happen,” to warnings that some batshit insane event might happen under the coming Trump administration has not been paying attention over the last decade. “Well, that’s never going to happen” keeps happening. A brief review (in no particular order): After all of the above and much, much more — and yet still more — Americans elected Donald John Trump as president for a second time on Nov. 5, 2024. Let’s contemplate some of what may come next. Look, fighting back against what’s coming is not just righteous, but patriotic. I’m tired. You’re tired. We’re all tired. But for all its flaws, the ideal of America that MAGA Republicans want to unmake with extreme prejudice is worth fighting for. I’m sorry I’m not more upbeat about it like James Fallows or Rebecca Solnit. That doesn’t lessen the imperative, especially since there is no guarantee how low the foes of freedom won’t stoop once they get rolling.
I’ve started a Bluesky list featuring some of the brilliant writers, designers, coders, editors, and others who’ve contributed to A List Apart “for people who make websites.”
The post A List Apart contributors list on Bluesky appeared first on Zeldman on Web and Interaction Design.
S-O-P for M-A-G-A Now that campaign season is almost over (our N.C. state Supreme Court recounts, lawsuits, etc., could drag into December), I’ve scheduled my Covid booster and flu shots for later this morning. With quacks and cranks poised to take over the health system on January 20, hoarding your necessary meds is a good idea. As is getting your shots, advises Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse. She got hers on Friday: Increasingly, I’m contemplating the issues we are going to face at the intersection of public health and the rule of law. Dr. Vin Gupta posted on BlueSky today, “We need as many healthcare professionals to be courageous and speak to truth, for our patient’s sake and for the sanctity and credibility of our profession. That starts now. We cannot allow the highly abnormal to be normalized.” He said it in the context of the qualifications, or lack thereof, of Trump’s nominees for key positions in the health sector, including Marty Makary as FDA commissioner, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for surgeon general, and Dr. Dave Weldon for CDC director, all of whom would work for Kennedy. Each of them is controversial.