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THREE forest campaigners have been convicted of a traffic obstruction offence relating to an incident at Billys Creek on the Dorrigo Plateau in early 2024. Meredith Stanton, David Mcrae and Jane St Vincent Welch faced Coffs Harbour Local Court on Monday, 17 February, to fight on-the-spot fines of $200 received while protesting on private land...

The post Clouds Creek forest campaigners to appeal criminal convictions appeared first on News Of The Area.

CAMP Quality Family Fun Day at Big Banana Fun Park last Sunday was hugely successful judging by the smiles, amount of laughter and tired kids at the end of the day, said the organisers. The experience gives families facing cancer the opportunity to have a much-needed break from the trauma of cancer, bringing laughter and...

The post Big Banana hosts special fun day for Camp Quality families appeared first on News Of The Area.

Politicians, media commentators and academics routinely assert that Australia is a middle power. They assume that while their country is not a great power, it has a loftier status than smaller states around the globe, enabling it to “speak louder than the latter and to exert some influence on the former”, as John Campbell once Continue reading »

Governments want you to feel powerless, but the tools for change are in our hands. Australia’s economy is failing to decarbonise. Burning trees to produce electricity is phoney environmentalism. You’re never too small to make a difference I attended The Australia Institute’s third Climate Integrity Summit a couple of weeks ago. These summits are not Continue reading »

The 2025 school year is under way, and every young Australian is sharing the experience of renewing friendships and the routines of school and learning. But, these days, students are far less likely to be sharing the same type of school, as we are increasingly herding students into schools which have less in common than Continue reading »

In 2023 Kathleen Folbigg was pardoned and released after 20 years of wrongful imprisonment; soon after, her convictions were quashed by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal. There remain two further actions before this sorry saga can be declared closed: (a) the awarding of proper compensation and (b) a full inquiry, best done by a Continue reading »

The English often sing There’s Always Been an England. For America the song would probably be something along the lines of there will always be an enemy. In the case of the US, it would be a combination of enemies — real and imagined — from both outside and inside the country. First Nations people, Continue reading »

I wrote a joke for you.

The post A Jewish Joke appeared first on Jeffrey Zeldman Presents.

And inevitable A Bulwark column by Will Selber (“retired spook”) takes on the Trump administration’s frenzied effort to purge the military of the miniscule number of transgender persons in the services. A casual observer might think it the greatest problem facing the Pentagon. As a commander, Selber had to deal with a lot of personnel issues from vaccine refusal to sexual assault charges. But his training provided little guidance for how to counsel an airman who wanted to transition. Still, his primary responsibility was to ensure his unit “was in tip-top shape at all times.” I asked, “You sure you want to do this?” The answer was yes. I must admit, I had some reservations. For old men like me, transgenderism is a foreign concept. So I read up on it. However, what really convinced me to approve the airman’s request was the airman. Imagine how much courage it took to come into a commander’s office and request such a procedure. That’s courage. And we need more of that in the military. If these team members were otherwise met standards for service, so what if they identify as transgender?

Your fruit bowl comes to the rescue, traffic tax hits the jackpot, anti-abortion activists get buffered, and the Granite State goes green.

“The United States has changed teams” Russian dissident Gary Kasparov spoke at the Principles First conference in Washington last weekend, writes Michael Tomasky. Kasparov “uttered a very simple line that chilled the thousand or so people in the room: ‘The United States has changed teams.’ ” The hell it has. I resent being told the United States of America switched sides because the White House is in the grip of a band of lawless sociopaths. Donald Trump’s country-wreckers have changed teams, certainly. Most of the Republican upper echelons has. Many MAGA foot soldiers have as well. How many have aligned with Vladimir Putin’s “might makes right” geopolitics simply because Trump has is unclear. How many would snap out of it after he’s gone is even less clear. The lean toward Russia on the Christian right comes from the ludicrous proposition that there people live under biblical law because the nation is heavily white and Putin is hostile to LGBT people. One conservative Christian couple from Canada moved to Russia to be free from “LGBT ideology” and quickly found themselves free from being free.

Why are you wallowing in negative rumours about Doctor Who from the British tabloids and unnamed sources when they're not even true?

Mathilda Mallinson was one of two pro-immigration cast members on the controversial Channel 4 show. She explains what the show taught her

GOP lawmakers said that they couldn’t enforce bathroom bans with the civil rights protections on the books.

The post Iowa Becomes the First State to Repeal Civil Rights Protections for Trans People appeared first on The Intercept.

It’s the End of the World and I Don’t Feel Fine Pete Dolack Fredric Jameson is no longer here to remind us that imagining the…

Donald Trump has upended the narrative on the Ukraine War. But what does it mean for the future of Europe? Plus a lot more on NATO, China, the US dollar, technofeudalism and our duty to stop the Palestinian genocide while fighting antisemitism. 0:00 – Intro to Yanis Varoufakis 2:26 – Did Ukraine Lose the War? […]

The post Ukraine, Europe, China and Technofeudalism – in conversation with Cyrus Janssen appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Superannuation is complicated A guaranteed government income in retirement would be simpler – Brendan Coates and Joey Moloney Stress prompts many to under-spend superannuation For…

Busting the ‘natural rate of unemployment’ myth Lars Syll Sixty years ago Milton Friedman wrote an (in)famous article arguing that (1) the natural rate of…

Building humane alternatives to homo economicus Asad Zaman Introduction: As discussed in my recent article on self-knowledge as the key to understanding society (see ERA…

Global EV Sales Have Soared, but Buckle Up for a ‘Weird Moment’ in the U.S. Market Dan Gearino Electric vehicle sales slowed in the United…

Universities: dead, buried and cremated? Geoff Davies In the late nineties, the management of the Australian National University was attacking its academic staff. That may…

Trade isn’t money for nothing Stephanie Kelton On 16 December 2024, the president-elect Donald Trump returned to a familiar grievance: accusing our trading partners of…

In praise of government consumption Merijn Knibbe DOGE, a new branch of the U.S. government, does not escape the Iron Law of Bureaucracy. It is…

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