The Reserve Bank of Australia has ruled that all mortgage holders in Australia must receive a kick to the groin each month in a move that is designed to put a hold on inflation. ”We saw yesterday with Valentine’s day... Read More ›
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~ Today's Water Cooler ~
In a 2016 piece about the mass shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, I wrote: But there is something about [Orlando] that screams “Last call for sane discourse and positive action!” on multiple fronts. This incident is akin to a perfect Hollywood pitch, writ large by fate and circumstance; incorporating nearly every sociopolitical causality that has been quantified and/or debated over by criminologists, psychologists, legal analysts, legislators, anti-gun activists, pro-gun activists, left-wingers, right-wingers, centrists, clerics, journalists and pundits in the wake of every such incident since Charles Whitman perched atop the clock tower at the University of Texas and picked off nearly 50 victims (14 dead and 32 wounded) over a 90-minute period. That incident occurred in 1966; 50 years ago this August. Not an auspicious golden anniversary for our country. 50 years of this madness. And it’s still not the appropriate time to discuss? What…too soon? All I can say is, if this “worst mass shooting in U.S.
The failure to produce an artificial heart is a testament to the wizardry of nature.
The post If Technology Only Had a Heart appeared first on Nautilus.
‘What exactly aren’t we understanding? It is a fact these companies worked with the Government’, a campaigner who lost his key worker father, told Byline Times
There are a lot of things you should be afraid of—vaccines, chemtrails spreading airborne vaccines, malfunctioning Katy Perrybots—but there’s no need to be scared of using a semicolon (unless you’re using one in a 5G text—then you might as well just give yourself COVID). To show a mastery of this mysterious piece of punctuation is to join the likes of writers at the New Yorker, Nobel laureates, and the elite who make up the world’s secret societies such as Yale’s Skull and Bones Society or Harvard’s Pelvis and Ligaments Club. Please read on, as I’ve prepared clear explanations on when and why to use this enigmatic symbol.
Scheduled for the 2040s, while the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines might never eventuate, the theatre surrounding the announcement provides a publicly-digestible narrative for the surrender of Northern Australia to the American military in the present day. Time to talk about time and submarines. Time is the most salient consideration in the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines debate. The Continue reading »
Six years ago, John Menadue, Robert Manne, Tim Costello and I agreed that Australia’s refugee and asylum seeker policy was in a complete mess. The trouble started with the 2013 election campaign when Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott tried to outdo each other, pledging that the boats would be stopped and that anyone headed for Continue reading »
Surely the Australian people are entitled to an explanation as to why in December last year the government voted against an International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. On 30 December a vote was taken in the UN General Assembly whereby the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was Continue reading »
I have no sympathy for Michelle Rowland in her persecution over accepting almost $20,000 in donations from betting and gambling behemoth, Sportsbet, before the last election. Sportsbet was then, and is now, a leader in the industry she, as the prospective federal minister, would be responsible for regulating. After the May election she was confirmed Continue reading »
There are very sound strategic reasons to continuously build and maintain heavily automated missile frigates and Air Independent Propulsion conventional submarines in Australia, as an alternative to spending $150B-$200B on unmaintainable AUKUS Nuclear Submarines. “I do not say, my Lords, the French will not come, I only say they will not come by sea” John Continue reading »
The Order of Australia system is a bunyip aristocracy that reflects the hierarchies of British society in which the high and mighty get the cream and others are left with the skimmed milk. Just before the country slipped into its raucous celebrations for Australia Day last month, Mr David Hardaker served up in Crikey a Continue reading »
Pearls and Irritations is essential reading for anyone interested in public policy analysis. In some fields it is not the only source of opinion and commentary, but its writers are more often come to the subject with deeper experience, including from years in the bureaucracy, academia, and the public square, and with a more firm Continue reading »
It would be a grave mistake for Beijing to respond in kind in the face of incessant provocations and escalations by America and its allies. Western countries, especially those in the Anglo-American sphere love to drum up exaggerated claims about China’s economic coercion and geopolitical threat. But compared to the often genocidal or starvation-level sanctions Continue reading »
But you don’t blow anyone’s mind JV Last at the Triad (subsc. only —) says that Nikki Haley would be “fine” as president and I’m not going to argue because I don’t think she would be fine at all. She’s a creature of the Republican party and it is a toxic, neo-fascist institution that taints anyone who seeks to represent it. Sorry, that’s just how it is. And Last makes that case for me when he discusses why Haley has no chance in hell: I think the jury is still out on DeSantis. He’s just a name to a lot of Republicans. In fact, there are a good number who can’t tell the difference between him and George Santos.
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Steve Scalise: “The president, for a few weeks now, has been falsely saying that there are people that want to get rid of Social Security and Medicare. And it’s been inaccurate for a long time — and you saw last night when he tried to pin it on us,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told NBC News one day after Biden’s speech to Congress. “I just hope he stops going around the country telling that falsehood because there’s no truth to it. “We want to strengthen Social Security by ending a lot of those government checks to people staying at home rather than going to work,” Scalise said, endorsing work requirements for benefits. Right. All those disabled cancer patients and old people need to get a job, amirite???
About 28 years and 8 months ago I was terrified of the future. Looking back I had every right to be. Time telescopes in like the scene in a movie when the shit hits the fan. In life however the dénoûment never really arrives, or at least it hasn’t …
Israel is engaging in a strategy to "Judaize" East Jerusalem, the Galilee and the Naqab to make the areas more attractive to Jewish residents, with the hope of forcing Palestinians out.
The post Israeli Far Right Ramping Up Violence Against Palestinian Prisoners, Human Rights Defenders appeared first on MintPress News.
High on pentane Seems I remember a “60 Minutes”(?) story sometime in the wake of Se[tember 11 on the vulnerability of U.S. chemical plants to terrorist attacks. Critics branded Bush Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff’s proposed security upgrades “toothless.” “There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, and we’re going to let chemical operators figure out the right way, as long as the cat gets skinned,” Chertoff said. So. Whatever happened with that? Meantime, hazardous chemicals transported by rail seem to be having a bad 2023 so far (Newsweek): On February 3, a tanker train derailed in the Ohio town of East Palestine, near the state border with Pennsylvania. The crash led to multiple explosions and chemical leaks, prompting the governors of both states to issue evacuation notices for the town and its surrounding areas. Controlled burns of the vinyl chloride from the train’s tanks were initiated, with residents warned that the air could be flooded with dangerous gases like phosgene and hydrogen chloride. The fiery crash was one of more than a dozen train derailments reported in the U.S. this year, only 1 1/2 months in.
An update on the debate on the role of slavery in Britain's growth during the Industial Revolution.