Who is behind Trump’s plan to “take over the Gaza Strip” and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”?
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"Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to the federal payment system late on Friday, according to five people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending. — New York Times
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A lot of people doubted that my Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could do what it set out to do. But I am proud to say that in just weeks, we have used the Tesla, SpaceX, and X playbook to make America’s collapse much more efficient.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of studies and literature on foreign fighters and the risks they pose to their home countries focuses on jihadis, with a smaller smattering of pieces on far-right individuals seeking combat experience in Ukraine. However, many countries in the world will soon experience (if they aren’t already) the return of a different Continue reading »
It’s said that what the world needs today are strong leaders whom social media and associated propagandists insist are the only ones who can bring order back into a dangerously chaotic world. Their strengths, it is claimed, outweigh their shortcomings. In Australia, attention is turning to Peter Dutton, who according to his supporters, is the Continue reading »
Anyone having to deal with the health and human services industries knows how rigidly they are controlled by the Medical Model and its sister act, Compliance Surveillance. What goes unnoticed in this mechanically e-captive state of affairs is that the dominant model of assessing and accrediting the quality of care is only one approach to Continue reading »
This story is about vast quantities of uranium, stealing squillions of dollars, how to screw desperately poor people and what an outstanding job the mainstream media does in keeping us all blithely ignorant of this. The French are at it again. The Americans are at it again. The BBC is at it again. I just Continue reading »
Senator Jacqui Lambie is incandescent about the salaries of secretaries of Commonwealth departments and she wants to “slash” them from their million dollar levels (approx) to no more than $438000, the current pay for the Commonwealth Treasurer. Senator Lambie has been immediately assailed in The Mandarin by Dr Huw McKay from the Crawford School at Continue reading »
There was a messianic fervour in Donald Trump’s Second Inaugural speech that wasn’t evident eight years ago. As dark as the 2016 American Carnage diatribe was, there was still the sense that Trump was a salesman pitching a vision he didn’t quite believe in, but thought he needed to sell in order to legitimise himself Continue reading »
The Federal Parliament has yet to pass a law ensuring five-year funding for the ABC. If it doesn’t get passed, it leaves the national broadcaster open to cuts and threats should the government change. Would a Coalition Government return to crippling ABC budgets? Most likely if it follows past practices – and the Trump manual. Continue reading »
It only took a week for Donald Trump to have America looking like Belarus as a dictator, helped by totally subservient politicians, put governing in the hands of unqualified, unintelligent loyalists. As one commentator asked this week “When did brains go out of fashion!” Health and science have been immediate targets of the Trump regime Continue reading »
In an age of renewed great-power competition Democrats play for Team USA. Republicans won’t even play for their home team. Elon Musk and his Elonjungen busted into USAID headquarters last week and illegally shuttered the foreign aid agency that for 60 years has been a key instument for projecting U.S. soft power in the world. He found and posted a list of small-dollar grants supporting mainly diversity-related projects he declared “waste and abuse,” lefty boondoggles proving that USAID had to die. The cited items amount to not even a fraction of a percent of the agency’s $40 billion budget. On that basis, the unelected Musk declared the agency “a criminal organization” and shuttered its operations around the world. How many quirky, objectionable line items might be found among the Pentagon’s $800 billion budget? (The public budget, that is, not the “black budget.”) A similar fraction? Similar enough and thus substantially more in dollar sums that means the Pentagon has to die? Has anyone looked? Just asking. When was the last time the Pentagon passed an audit? Oh, never.
A spokesman for the Conservative leader would not reiterate the party's previous support for a two state solution for Israel and Palestine
The eminent sociologist Michael Burawoy died on Monday, after being hit by a car while walking near near his home. I’ve found a couple of tributes: this from Marta Soler Gallart which tells a story I didn’t know but surprises me not in the least, and this from Oleg Komlik. There’ll be loads of tributes […]
Depending on the breaks A bit over six months ago, President Biden’s June 27 debate with Donald Trump went badly for him. Embarrassingly badly. He looked old, frail. He lost his train of thought. How long had his staff been covering for him? Everyone wanted to know. It was its own mini scandal and led to Biden dropping out of the race a few weeks later. The country elected Donald Trump instead in November. Then Trump on Tuesday declared in a press conference that the United States would ethnically cleanse 1.8 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, take “a long-term ownership position” there, and develop the beachfront into a series of Trump-branded resorts. (Trump’s ownership stake was implied.) “Everybody I’ve spoken to [inside his demented head] loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land” and developing it, Trump told a roomful of reporters. It would create thousands of new jobs and be “magnificent,” Trump continued.
Dear Old Man Who Bartered with My Cancer-Patient Daughter at the Community Yard Sale Fundraiser,
Thank you for attending the Alex’s Lemonade Stand community yard sale last Saturday. By “attending,” of course, I mean “looming over my ten-year-old daughter’s card table and haggling over the price of a sequined stuffed seal as if your Social Security payments depended on it.”
I imagine you saw the sign: ALL PROCEEDS DONATED TO CHARITY. The one my daughter painted with her one good hand while still hooked to a chemo pump like she’s the saddest science experiment ever.
Or maybe you noticed the giant cardboard cutout of her: bald head gleaming and feeding tube affixed to her nose like a fashion accessory from the Underworld’s spring/summer collection. The only thing better than having cancer is reminding the whole goddamn neighborhood about it with oversized props.
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Of the principles and themes outlined in this issue, Tribune readers will easily discern. ‘Gastropolitics’ discusses how food matters to socialist politics. Food institutions historic, existing or imagined, are discussed, as well as the transformative urges behind their establishment. Coverage is given to the acceleration of climate catastrophe, where ever-growing prices and the cartelisation of […]
I would like to create a room. A room for when I feel heavy. When I must sit down and be restored. Yes, the food and all that, all that nonsense. Of course there is food, and there’s a glass of wine. But there is company. Good company cannot be bought; it can only be […]
Faint murmurings of renewal are stirring the still reservoirs of hope on Labour’s fragmented left. Talk of a new party is spreading — again. The mood — let’s stay realistic — is evident in discrete sectors of the party membership, among disenchanted MPs, in the diaspora of expelled or disaffected members, and in several Labour movement grouplets, at […]
Last year’s Indian general election was humbling for the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP, which had been boasting that it could win 400 or more seats, instead saw its seat share drop from 303 in 2019 to 240 this year and was obliged to form […]