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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 05:30
We need this Fox Dominion trial for the sake of democracy Michael Tomasky makes the case: Here’s an instructive and telling little exercise for you, one that I engaged in myself this past Sunday morning. Head over to Google and search for “NBC defamation lawsuits by former employees.” And then, do the same with CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. You’ll find a few interesting incidents. A Native American employee sued NBC over discrimination at the 30 Rock workplace. The CBS affiliate in Dallas settled an age discrimination case brought by an on-air reporter. After you’ve done that, go Google “Fox News defamation lawsuits by former employees”—and watch your computer explode. There’s the record $1 million fine Fox paid in 2021 over various #MeToo allegations from female employees. There’s the staggering $20 million Fox agreed to pay to Gretchen Carlson in 2016.
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 05:14
In facing the great challenge of our time, a super-state resident in continental Asia and an itinerant naval power seeking to maintain primacy – the foreign minister was unable to nominate a single piece of strategic statecraft by Australia that would attempt a solution for both powers. Paul Keating’s response to Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s Continue reading »
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 04:58
“Keep Calm and Carry On” posters should be put up in all Canberra government departments. The British Ministry of Information produced the original of this meme in 1939 to prevent public panic about widely predicted German air attacks. A new version is needed in Australia in 2023 to counter fears of imminent invasion and subversion Continue reading »
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 04:57
US foreign policy is based on an inherent contradiction and fatal flaw. The aim of US foreign policy is a US-dominated world, in which the US writes the global trade and financial rules, controls advanced technologies, maintains militarily supremacy, and dominates all potential competitors. Unless US foreign policy is changed to recognise the need for Continue reading »
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 04:55
When a senior officer in the Australian Defence Force assumes political positions that are in the realm of the overtly political, and is not disciplined for having done so, the government is derelict in its duty to maintain the firewall between the civil and the military. Worse, it constitutes an offence against democratic theory and Continue reading »
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 04:52
In a recent article in The Conversation, Professors Stephen Duckett and Fiona McDonald and Ms Emma Campbell suggest “restrict[ing] Medicare access to GPs who agree to bulk bill all patients, while allowing those who don’t bulk bill to rely solely on out-of-pocket payments”. While there is much to commend this proposal, it is not without Continue reading »
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 04:51
The minister for Home Affairs and the department have been given extraordinary powers, including significant power to hurt and oppress others. For good or ill, the legislature has authorised and permitted their determined cruelty to asylum seekers over many years, their beliefs about stripping citizenship from our nationals, deporting our home-grown criminals and establishing the Continue reading »
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 04:50
Since the global financial crisis there has been a fundamental change in the operation of the Australian economy. Since World War Two, the majority of the benefits of economic growth have flowed to the bottom 90 per cent of income earners. However, as shown in Figure 1, between 2009 and 2019 the top 10 per Continue reading »
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 04:48
Cooking time: 25-30 mins.Preparation time: 25 minsMain cooking utensils: ovenproof dish, saucepanOven temperature: 375°F.Oven position: center For 4 people you need:4 fillets sole1 tablespoon white wineseasoning Normandy sauce:2 tablespoons butter¼ cup all-purpose flour1¼ cups fish stock*1 egg yokjuice of 1 lemonseasoning1 tablespoon butter8 cooked mussels8 cooked button mushrooms Garnish: watercress TO SERVE: Hot with mixed […]
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 04:00
Some things never change Kevin McCarthy went to Wall Street to unveil his debt ceiling plan: stick it to the poor. How perfect: On Monday, the speaker delivered remarks at the New York Stock Exchange on the pressing issue facing Congress: raising the debt ceiling and ensuring the US can avoid a catastrophic default that could happen as soon as July. After months of stalemate, and Biden remaining adamant that he will not use the debt ceiling as bargaining chip, McCarthy confirmed that the House will vote on a bill “in the coming weeks” that would raise the debt ceiling through next year while keeping federal spending at the 2022 level over the next decade.  Part of that deal would include strengthened work requirements on welfare programs, like the food stamps program called SNAP. “Our proposal will also restore work requirements that ensure able-bodied adults without dependents earn a paycheck and learn new skills that will grow our economy and help the supply chain,” McCarthy said. “Right now, there are more job openings than people who are looking for jobs. You know why?
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 02:30
Here we go again. It seems as if every other election cycle or so for the past few decades has produced dreams of a centrist third party “unity” ticket that would appeal to all the Americans who say they want the partisan bickering in Washington to stop. The Beltway media gets excited at the idea of “the grown-ups” being in charge and the Big Money Boys lick their chops at the prospect of a party based entirely on their needs and their needs alone. This year it looks like the perennial group that calls itself No Labels has decided to throw a monkey wrench into our closely divided electoral college map and possibly send Donald Trump back to the White House in 2024 — in the name of unity, of course. No Labels is already gathering signatures to get on the ballot and is trying to recruit a Democrat and a Republican to run as a bipartisan ticket. Joe Manchin D-W.V., Kirsten Sinema, D-Az., Susan Collins, R-Me., and former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan are the names mentioned most often.
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 00:47

In the year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the discussions of what this violence might mean for the future of Russian culture have generated more heat than light. Ukrainian interventions in the debate, however, equipped as they are with an intimate knowledge of both Russian civilisation and Russian barbarism, have tended to be more […]

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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 00:30
So long as victims are nonwhite “I thought I understood gun culture. But I didn’t,” writes John DeVore at Medium. It took a while to sink in, DeVore explains. Today he just feels naive. “It’s not about liberty or personal protection. It’s certainly not about tyranny. It’s about control. Strength. Boots, smashing faces.” The Republican Party — once the party of business and law and order — now exists to fight for a future where white heterosexual Christians are firmly in charge of American society. And they will fight dirty if they have to. Because “they” are coming for you, “the liberals, the Blacks, the Jews. The drag queens want to steal your children. Have you bought a gun today?” The valorization of Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Perry was deeply unsettling for DeVore. But Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott’s intentions on pardoning Perry (allegedly spurred on by Fox News host Tucker Carlson) was DeVore’s “ah-ha moment.” Perry was convicted this month of murdering a Black Lives Matter supporter.
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 00:18
Hélène Landemore enthusiastically shared a piece, “The Inflation of Concepts,” published at Aeon by John Tasioulas (who she describes as her “Oxford colleague”). Appealing to the work of Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls, Tasioulas focuses on a “threat to the quality of public reason” (which he claims) “tends to go unnoticed. This is the degradation of the core ideas mobilised in […]
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 00:06
The Teixeira Documents Are Being Kept Secret By Media

So, back when the DNC was hacked and documents were leaked showing that the DNC had been helping Clinton and kneecapping Sanders, I found it interesting that most of the media focused on “the Russians did it!” rather than on the content of the leak, which was, after all, in the public interest to know.

The same thing is going on with the Texeira documents. WSWS has a particularly good article on this:

While about 60 or so documents have been made public so far, US media outlets indicate they have access to far more.  The Washington Post reported Thursday, “The Post also reviewed approximately 300 photos of classified documents, most of which have not been made public.”