The Australian government is keen to talk about defence, big submarines, China and national security. And renewable energy, big batteries, electric cars and big hydrogen. But put the two together — security and climate — and an odd thing happens. When it comes to the biggest threat to the nation, that of climate-related risks to Continue reading »
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Reports that Australia pays retired senior US military officials up to $7,500 a day for advice on AUKUS related defence projects, reveals a cultural cringe and taste for secrecy. Such practice is coupled to a common policy technique, of avoiding criticism by maintaining public ignorance. On controversial issues, such as the development of US military Continue reading »
It is difficult to imagine a scenario for next year’s Presidential elections which does not increase the already bitter polarisation of American society. The level of irrationality and violence in the United States means that in the coming decades it may well veer between bellicosity and isolationism. In the face of an uncertain American polity, Continue reading »
The horror stories revealed by the Robodebt Royal Commission have prompted commentaries that have criticised Robodebt as an ethical or moral failure, a legal failure, a failure of common sense, a failure to apply the laws of mathematics, a failure of the hollowed-out public service and a failure of leadership. However, there is an aspect Continue reading »
The reality is emerging that India’s democracy is not only deeply flawed, it has regressed into what the V-Dem Institute calls “one of the worst autocratisers in the last 10 years”. Now that India’s honeymoon with the West seems to be over, perhaps this is the time for the two nations of China and India Continue reading »
Carlin gives his impressions of the war in Ukraine during a visit to the country. There may be peace one day, but there will never be love from the Ukrainian side. After a week walking the streets of Kyiv in which, to my enormous surprise, I had not seen any sign of war, the Russians Continue reading »
The commentator’s “reckless” decision to “waste his most vividly racist comments in his texts” has resulted in a policy overhaul at the news network.
For billions of years, rivers connected continents to the sea. Then we came along.
The post The Oceans Are Missing Their Rivers appeared first on Nautilus.
“Beef between Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shows no sign of abating.” — Axios
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My fellow Americans, we have a rodent problem.
Mickey Mouse and his handlers at Disney have gone too far.
Florida is where woke goes to die. And I, Ron DeSantis, am running for president so I can kill joy nationally. As the next president of the United States, I promise to slaughter Mickey Mouse. And if killing one universally beloved cultural symbol isn’t enough, I’ll use my pudding-slick fingers to choke every character that brought even a glimmer of joy to your childhood, even if that means snuffing Snow White, asphyxiating Ariel, or throttling Tinker Bell.
Maybe. Among a very few GOPers. But that could make a difference in the general election. The front runner for the 2024 Republican nomination for president, former president Donald J. Trump, is currently on trial in civil court in New York for rape (rape!) and it seems that none of his potential voters care that he is jetting off to a new golf course in Scotland instead of appearing in court to defend himself. Neither do they care that he’s also been indicted on felony charges in New York City for illegally paying hush money to an adult film actress or that he and his offspring are the subject of a massive civil fraud case filed by the state Attorney General last September. And that’s just New York. Trump’s also got investigations pending in Georgia over election fraud and two major federal probes being handled by Special Counsel Jack Smith regarding the stealing of classified documents and criminal liability for the insurrection on January 6. But according to a new CBS/YouGov poll, the majority of Republican voters could not care less about any of that.
The company with millions in contracts for controversial voter ID verification previously worked on scrapped NHS Covid-19 ‘vaccine passport’ scheme, report Max Colbert and Josiah Mortimer
There is something very, very familiar about these women. I knew their type in school. Female bullies. I’m sure they think of themselves as Christians but they’re evil, horrible people. It wasn’t enough for Montana’s Republican-led state legislature to take away Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr’s seat in the legislature. Now people are taking her seat outside of the House chamber too. The Montana House of Representatives last week voted to censure Zephyr, Montana’s first openly transgender lawmaker. The vote came in response to Zephyr criticizing her Republican colleagues for restricting access to gender-affirming care. Zephyr announced Monday that she is suing to reverse the restrictions placed on her.
64% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, with one of the main reasons being the high cost of rent and housing, thanks in part to large investors, like Blackstone, buying up homes and leaving them vacant while raising rents.
The post The Truth About Crazy High Rents in the US appeared first on MintPress News.
The governor has overseen a dramatic rise in home insurance premiums and legislative giveaways to insurance companies.
The post Ron DeSantis Has Raked in $3.9 Million From Insurance Industry, New Report Reveals appeared first on The Intercept.
“I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight.” — Tucker Carlson in a leaked text to a producer at Fox News (New York Times)
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Silently comparing dicks at urinals
Hostile takeovers
Chest to chest, lots of shouting, making a big show of being led away by girlfriend before a single punch is thrown
Sulking in silence until SOMEBODY’S ready to say, “SORRY”
Drawing pistols at dawn, noon, and sunset
Recklessly overpaying for a social media platform
MONSTER TRUCK SMASHJAM CRUSHFEST
Banging your best friend’s girlfriend
In a sea of crazy Like being dipped in living waters. That’s what it’s like anymore to hear an actual expert testify on Capitol Hill instead of partisan shills. Imagine hearings without grandstanding and hectoring from Republicans such as those on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “World’s greatest deliberative body,” indeed. Roll Call: Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee spent a hearing Tuesday making the case for legislation that would put the Supreme Court under an ethics code if the justices didn’t do so themselves, but witnesses were split as to whether Congress has the power to do so. The backers of proposed bills argued that the justices have waited for too long to impose their own ethics code, exemplified by recent reports about undisclosed luxury trips and a real estate transaction Justice Clarence Thomas received from a billionaire GOP donor. Amanda Frost, a University of Virginia Law School professor, testified that the Constitution is silent about the internal workings of the Supreme Court and instead left it to Congress to establish the court’s size, budget and rules like a quorum.
There are four primary determinants of social hierarchy. They are productive ability, social ties, ideology and violent ability. All are affected by geography.
None of these operate in isolation. Productive ability directly affects violent ability. Ideology determines what people will and won’t do but over time tends to move towards what a Marxist would call material determinants, though that time can be a LONG time: it took about two thousand years for the early kings to rise after the introduction of agriculture, so the power of ideology, though not the only factor slowing adoption, shouldn’t be understated. Two thousand years shows a lot of resistance.
The rise and fall of digital pioneers Ben Smith is making the rounds to promote his new book, “Traffic.” The proprieter of the shuttering BuzzFeed News told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tuesday night he did not aniticpate, in its infancy, what digital media would do to legacy media and politics. The pursuit of clicks contained in the BuzzFeed name came to define the goal of social media. That business model was the digital equivalent of “if it bleeds, it leads.” I recall once sitting in a packed Netroots Nation workshop on writing clickbait headlines to attract eyeballs before clickbait was a word and swiftly became a four-letter one. Smith did not forsee in those days what the lefties’ tech tools that gave rise to Jezebel or Huffington Post would become in the hands of the radical right. I recall, too, that Right Online, the onetime conservative shadow to Netroots, was thought a joke by our younger attendees. Right Online seemed a collection or hopelessly unhip retirees in the digital age trying still learning to turn on a computer and manipulate a cursor. That was then.
Part of what’s devastating about Jennifer Grotz’s Still Falling, her fourth full-length collection, is the calm, piercing exactitude of her renderings. Her language is supple, clear-eyed, neither showy nor minimalist, evincing an almost journalistic fidelity to the real—a fidelity that simultaneously allows her to leap and associate in dazzling, unexpected ways. She has the spiritual ranginess of W. S. Merwin or her teacher Adam Zagajewski, but also their consistency: you pick up a Jennifer Grotz book because you want to hear that voice again, and again. She’s making some of the finest work of our times. Maybe it’s no surprise, then, given these times, that her newest sweep of poems—Still Falling—is a cataract of grief, a cascade of elegy that is as quietly ecstatic as it is undaunted, steady, loving life as it mourns. There are echoes of Ellen Bryant Voigt in the opening sequence, which takes its measure, its beginning, from a bewildered memory of leaving behind a lover—of having to go, even as so much in the speaker of the poem yearns not to. As she drives away, the voice wonders: