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Trump was ideologically incoherent and crassly transactional. But the threat he posed to American empire and thus the gargantuan security state helps establish a motive for why US intelligence intervened in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. As president, Donald Trump lavished the rich with tax cuts and deregulation. Yet, contradictorily, he also threatened the structure of American global hegemony that does so much to keep the American one percent tremendously wealthy. In fact, Trump undertook the most momentous rollback […]

The post Trump against empire: is that why they hate him? appeared first on The Grayzone.

Media Release Number 2023-05: Today’s Payments System Board meeting discussed ASX’s self-assessment against the Financial Stability Standards (FSS), the Bank’s framework for supervising payment system safety and resilience, payments system regulatory reform, the future of the cheque system, the future of the Bulk Electronic Clearing System (BECS), international and domestic work on central bank digital currency (CBDC), and the 12 October technology outage at the Bank.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released of the latest labour force data today (February 16, 2023) – Labour Force, Australia – for January 2023. My overall assessment is that the labour market is now in decline after two consecutive months of employment loss. In January 2023, total employment fell by 11,500 (-0.1 per cent)…

In a recent speech, Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles argued that a commitment to AUKUS and total support for the U.S. in its war drive against China "strengthens" our sovereignty. read now...

It’s not paranoia A majority of the Republican Party is self-avowed (white) Christian nationalists. They admit it: More than half of Republicans support Christian nationalism and believe the United States should be a strictly Christian nation — that’s according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution. Christian nationalism is an extreme and divisive worldview rooted in the belief that the U.S. is an inherently Christian nation and that the country’s laws should be rooted in Christian values.  The view has been prominent in white evangelical spaces for decades, but it gained significant national attention following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and throughout the Trump presidency. Now, according to researchers — who surveyed more than 6,000 Americans — the public’s view on Christian nationalism is divided mostly along political party lines. The survey found that most Republicans surveyed view themselves as either Christian nationalist sympathizers (33%) or adherents (21%).

Thousands took to the streets on Wednesday night to tell Keir Starmer what they think of him. On the streets in outrage at the murder of trans teenager Brianna Ghey, they were furious at his numerous betrayals of trans and LGBT people – he didn’t even bother to tweet condolences to her family – but […]

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Fat chance of it becoming law Two Democratic senators called on Congress to adopt a proposal that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made in 2011 to address a standoff over raising the debt ceiling, which would grant the president the authority to raise the limit on their own.  Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said in an op-ed in The Washington Post on Wednesday that McConnell’s plan is simple and took the “weaponization of the debt ceiling off the table” during a battle over raising the debt limit more than a decade ago.  The plan was included in the Budget Control Act of 2011, which ended an impasse between a Republican-led House with a Democratic-led Senate and then-President Obama.  “While the broader Budget Control Act had numerous flaws, the McConnell plan itself was a good solution then, and it remains a good solution today,” Merkley and Kaine said.  They said McConnell’s plan allowed Obama to raise the debt ceiling on his own while allowing Congress to pass a joint resolution to override that action if two-thirds of lawmakers wished to.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Geopolitical Economy Repor
Inside Latin America’s new currency plan, with Ecuador’s presidential candidate Andrés Arauz
Ben Norton interviews Andrés Arauz

The End keeps on not coming, but the delay has produced yet another opportunity for...

The time is now to prepare for the cosmic object that could spell our end.

The post Humans Could Go the Way of the Dinosaurs appeared first on Nautilus.

Why Black people are poorly represented in neuroimaging studies—and how science can do better.

The post Neuroscience Has a Race Problem appeared first on Nautilus.

It just sounds insulting. We don’t know why. Matt Lewis at the Daily Beast has some thoughts: For Donald Trump, the first step is always to label his victim. Indeed, assigning a good bad nickname appears to be a sine qua non in the Trump playbook. Once he gets that part right, the job is half-done. For example, “Crazy Joe” (which gave way to the superior “Sleepy Joe”) never resonated the way “Crooked Hillary” (or Lyin’ Ted, “Low Energy Jeb,” and Lil’ Marco) did. And now that “Meatball Ron” has become his leading moniker for Ron DeSantis, Trump might have landed on another keeper. Back in 2016, when Trump first started gaining traction, a few outlets dug into why his nicknames were working. Some people saw it primarily as a symptom of the coarsening of discourse and dirty political fighting he reveled in; but others spotted an evil genius at work.

"The price of tyres is up 800% and kids in Switzerland are taking mangoes to school".

The Potential Outcome framework starts by defining the potential outcomes with reference to a manipulation. In doing so it makes a distinction between attributes or pre-treatment variables which are fixed for the units in the population, and causes, which are potentially manipulable. This is related to the connection between causal statements and randomized experiments. The […]

Since attaining the dubious honour of Liberal Party Leader, Peter Dutton has really taken that mantle to new depths. read now...

He’s mad because of the windmills. It’s as petty as it gets. But it’s also clear that he intends to make transgender people a major target of his campaign and it’s just sick. These are some of the most vulnerable people in the world, especially the kids, and these pigs are going to bully them on a national basis and try to literally ban them from American life. It’s heartbreaking. But Trump always has his finger on the pulse of right wing media culture war obsessions and this is one. He’s not going to let DeSantis and the rest of them get to his right.

Embarrassed troopers have admitted they released the notorious Ned Kelly gang from captivity after being fooled into thinking they were a group of baristas on their way to open a pop-up cafe in Glenrowan. “They all had big bushy beards... Read More ›