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Mon, 17/07/2023 - 15:05
How can education rise to the massive challenges young people will face? By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 8th July 2023 “From one day to the next, our profession was wiped out. We woke up and discovered our skills were redundant.” This is what two successful graphic designers told me about the impact of […]
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Mon, 17/07/2023 - 10:00
Can he be any more obvious? Is there even one of his supporters who cringes when he transparently sucks up like this? Former President Trump praised the judge overseeing his classified documents case as his legal team seeks a postponement of his trial in Florida. Trump’s motion for a continuance of the trial, filed last Monday, awaits a decision by Judge Aileen Cannon, an appointee of the former president who presided over his initial challenge to the FBI search of his Florida home.   Asked on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News whether he believes the judge will grant the motion, Trump said he did not know. “I know it’s a very highly respected judge. A very smart judge, and a very strong judge,” Trump said. When host Maria Bartiromo noted that Trump appointed the judge in the case, Trump said, “I did, and I’m very proud to have appointed her.” “But she’s very smart and very strong, and loves our country,” Trump said.
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Mon, 17/07/2023 - 09:23

(source)

A high-ranking official in the Albanese Government, speaking under the condition of anonymity, confirmed to Magpie News that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was invited to the NATO Summit to take place in Gallipoli, Turkey.

Ukrainian President Vasily Petrovych Goloborodko has repeatedly asked for additional military assistance. It is understood that Albanese plans to donate one of the new AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines.

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Mon, 17/07/2023 - 08:00
They no longer have any need or desire to be statesmen And, as with everything else, it’s a long, slow evolution that’s been accelerated at warp speed by the presence of Donald Trump in American politics: There are 26 Republican governors. Three of them showed up here this week at the annual summer meeting of the National Governors Association. And of those three, one left after the first night, and another had little choice but to attend — his chairship of the group began at the conclusion of this year’s gathering. Striding the Hard Rock Cafe casino stage like a megachurch pastor, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox used his maiden speech as NGA chair to implore his fellow governors to make the organization a model of robust yet civil debate. “If we’re ever going to find our better angels again, it has to start with us setting the example of how to disagree better,” Cox said. But it’s hard to do much disagreeing, or have a conversation at all, when nobody is listening: Fewer than a half-dozen governors were still in attendance for his remarks Friday, the session’s closing day, and they were all Democrats.
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Mon, 17/07/2023 - 07:34

In April, when Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman with a top-secret clearance, was arrested for posting a trove of classified documents about the Russia-Ukraine war online, the question most often asked was: How did such a young, inexperienced, low-level technician have access to such sensitive material? What I wanted to know was: How did he ever get accepted into the Air Force in the first place? Teixeira seems to have leaked that secret information for online bragging rights rather than ideological reasons, so his transgression probably wouldn’t have fallen under the military’s newly reinforced regulations on extremist activities. After he was indicted, however, perturbing details about his behavior emerged, including his online searches for violent extremist events,... Read more

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Mon, 17/07/2023 - 06:30
Asa Hutchinson is lustily booed before the Turning Point crowd He’s a hard right establishment Republican. And it’s just not good enough. Why? During the event, Carlson asked the former governor about his veto of the first-in-the-nation gender-affirming care ban for minors.  Hutchinson said at the time of his veto that he believes the law went too far and was an example of government overreach.  On Friday, the former governor said that he believes only two genders exist and he would not personally support a member of his family changing genders, but he does not think the government should be involved in the decision.  “There should not be any confusion on your gender. But if there is confusion, then parents ought to be the ones that guide the children,” he said.
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Mon, 17/07/2023 - 04:57
“Of all of these four objectives that I call sustainable development. 1. Material Sufficiency; 2. Social Justice; 3. Environmental sustainability; and 4. Peace; we’re off track on all of them” – Prof. Jeffrey Sachs. “Nothing about the international economy guarantees the end of poverty or social justice. There’s nothing in the global economic system that Continue reading »
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Mon, 17/07/2023 - 04:55
In terms of the long-term survival of our species, the ritualisation of war the First Peoples of Australia achieved should be celebrated as a great advancement in human relationship. Rather than just celebrating the longevity and attachment to land of aboriginal people, we need to recognise that all their various cultures achieved one of the Continue reading »
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Mon, 17/07/2023 - 04:53
’You cannot serve God and mammon’. Make your choice. I have been proud to be a management consultant for over forty years. I worked for PwC for five years before establishing my own consultancy twenty-five years ago. However, given the taint of PwC’s recent behaviour, consulting as a profession has been damaged for at least Continue reading »
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Mon, 17/07/2023 - 04:52
The Federal Government has been urged to ignore advice from Private Healthcare Australia (PHA) suggesting that private health insurance funds have an important role in increasing access to dental services. Rather, it is the underfunded and overworked public dental services that have expertise in delivering services to vulnerable people, says health policy analyst Charles Maskell-Knight. Continue reading »
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Mon, 17/07/2023 - 04:50
The North Atlantic military alliance has no business in the continent and it should just stop going on about the so-called China threat. As Nato and its boss, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, keep banging on about “the China threat”, you really have to wonder what the real game plan is. A joint communique by Nato’s Continue reading »
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Mon, 17/07/2023 - 04:30
Wait. The Insurrection Act? Where did that come from? Trump did amend that post later to say Espionage Act, but it appears that the Insurrection Act is on his mind. You have to wonder if maybe he’s gotten a target letter from the Special Council. There is good reason for him to worry about that. Jennifer Rubin looked at a new prospective prosecution memo which sees Donald Trump potentially facing some very serious charges based upon the public evidence. One of them is the likelihood of being charged under the Insurrection Act: Building on a prior prosecution memo, a group of seven former prosecutors and defense attorneys — lawyers with decades of collective constitutional and criminal law experience — published at Just Security a voluminous updated memo giving their best estimate (and advice to Smith) as to what to expect. The authors at Just Security consolidated the seven-part conspiracy the House select committee set out into three essential prongs. They explained the first prong: “Trump knew he lost the election but did not want to give up power, so he worked with his lawyers on a wide variety of schemes to change the outcome.
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Mon, 17/07/2023 - 03:00
Florida Republicans think so. That’s how batshit insane they are. And Ron DeSantis has empowered them: The Brevard County Republican Executive voted by a supermajority this week to call upon Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to ban sale and distribution of Covid “and all related vaccines” in the state, Florida Today reported. The nonbinding resolution also demanded that “Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody seize all remaining doses in the state for safety testing, ‘on behalf of the preservation of the human race,’ the resolution states,” the report said. The resolution is part of a trend among GOP county officials in the state, and “closely mirrors” a measure advanced in February in Lee County. Last month a similar resolution was passed in Tampa Bay Hillsborough County, bringing the total to more than half a dozen counties, the outlet reported.
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Mon, 17/07/2023 - 00:30
Michigan Republicans go lower I’ve never forgotten the first time I encountered an essay by the late, great Molly Ivins. She described happenins inside the “Austin Funhouse,” a.k.a, the Texas state capitol where, pre-Viagra, overstimulated legislators often went to “fist city.” In Michigan they hit lower, says Michigan Democrats’ state Senate Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow.