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“Monopolies not only have economic power, but use that power to buy political power,” she tells The Lever’s David Sirota.

It was quite a surprise when I noticed last week that we had posted so many articles over 13 years. The 20,000 articles (listed here) include over 700 of my own. A selection of these, about 100, is now published in an eBook, ‘Summing Up’. When we launched Pearls and Irritations I wrote all the Continue reading »

Beijing is projecting an image of China as a crisis deal-maker with peace as its priority, as Asian media are reporting this week. China has been active in recent days, taking the first steps towards seeing talks replace battles. It has turned its attention to Ukraine, Palestine and the main South China Sea flashpoint. It Continue reading »

What is social cohesion and who is responsible for achieving it? The Scanlon Monash Index of Social Cohesion identifies five indicators : Belonging and the importance of maintaining pride in the Australian way of life Worth and satisfaction with financial situation and happiness Social justice, equity and trust in the Australian government Participation as a Continue reading »

“In the Chinese context, there are a lot of talks about remembering your original mission. The original mission is to eliminate inequality”  – Wang Dan, chief economist of Hang Seng Bank China. CGTN Radio host Xu Yawen interviews Wang Dan, a chief economist of Hang Seng Bank China, Josef Mahoney, Professor of Politics and International Continue reading »

In August, Dan Duggan makes his final submission to Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who will decide whether Duggan is extradited to the United States for training Chinese pilots in 2012. All Australians should be extremely concerned about whether it’s even possible for our fellow citizen Dan Duggan, and his wife Saffrine and six children, to receive Continue reading »

As of the 14th of July 2024, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at the Australian National University (ANU) is 76 days old. For Palestinians, 14,000 kilometres away, past the iridescent waters of the Riau Islands, through the rice paddies of India and the vastness of the Saudi sands; for Palestinians trying to survive in their home, Continue reading »

A reading survey of three years ago found that a quarter of Australians never read a book – or listen to one. Released in 2021, Australia Reads found that fewer than half of us – 42 per cent – read three or four books a year. Just over a quarter of the 3000 readers canvassed Continue reading »

Coalition plans to join hands with North Korea and fast-track nuclear power, how Melbourne is stretching to the South Australian border, a bipartisan board of censors to purge dirty books from public libraries. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic and political issues. Australia’s Continue reading »

We live in treacherously dangerous times. The recent attack on the life of Donald Trump, is just one of many pieces of evidence that every human on our planet is living under threat. Thanks to the actions of former PM, John Howard, the threat of gun violence here in Australia is less than that in Continue reading »

The legal ruling by the world’s highest court obliges Western states not just to end their persecution of the boycott movement but to take up that cause as their own. Don’t be fooled. The ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 19 July that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is unlawful is earth-shattering. Israel is a Continue reading »

“Will Chamberlain, a conservative lawyer who worked on Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, posted on X that Harris ‘shouldn’t be President’ because she doesn’t have biological children; ‘becoming a step-parent to older teenagers doesn’t count,’ he said." —New York Times, 07/23/2024

1. Integrating into a structure with a history that began way before you ever came on the scene.

2. Finding the balance between respecting time-honored traditions, and having the courage to create new ones.

3. Winning over the members of the house whose objections can be loud, and sometimes downright offensive.

4. Attending a lot of sporting events.

5. Pretending to like them all.

6. Adapting to your new digs, which still contain a lot of memorabilia from former occupants, such as questionable Christmas decorations, and family portraits featuring the “First Lady.”

Higher education is perhaps Britain’s last truly world-leading sector. In many towns, not least those ravaged by deindustrialisation, universities function as social anchors, generating tens of thousands of jobs and reams of secondary economic activity. It is bitterly ironic, then, that successive governments have decided to expose the higher education sector — an unparalleled public […]

Även vår politiska miljö har börjat degenerera till ett ovärdigt spektakel. Från falukorvsviftande till helikopterpresskonferenser och trollarméer är vi på väg mot ett scenario där jippo och gyckel alltmer ersätter substans och innehåll, där viljan att regera trumfar samhällsbygget. Anti-intellektualismen är utbredd i vårt land. Skepsis mot experter och forskare blir allt vanligare … Vi […]

Maybe misogyny doesn’t sell? Greg Sargent’s Daily Blast: In recent days, Donald Trump and MAGA media figures have ramped up the attacks on Kamala Harris’s laugh, her personality, and her temperament. That’s vile stuff, but MAGA’s strategy also suggests an inability to entertain a remarkable possibility: What if Harris’s laugh and energy are actually well suited to this moment in American politics? Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, co-founder of the progressive strategy group Way to Win, has been advising Democrats to respond aggressively to racist and sexist attacks on Harris. We talked to Ancona about whether Harris’s temperament might prove to be kryptonite to MAGA’s negativity and hate. Listen to this episode here. Ancona moderated a panel at Netroots-Baltimore this month: Amplify: Getting Louder to Win in 2024 (video). One finding to note: to get more young people to turn out, younger candidates need to be prominent in our interactions with voters. They need to see younger faces reflected in the Democrats’ 2024 slates. Several of NC’s statewide candidates fit that bill. These three are all roughly 40.

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Four weeks ago today, I was hit by a truck while crossing the street in Healdsburg, CA. I was hospitalized for a week in Santa Rosa with 9 rib fractures, a broken wrist and facial bone fractures. I learned how to walk, shower, dress and care for myself while in excruciating pain. On release, I … Continue reading Health Update →

Gabor Pinter, Emil Siriwardane and Danny Walker In September 2022 the interest rate on UK gilts rose by over 100 basis points in four days. These unprecedent market movements are generally attributed to two key factors: the 23 September announcement of expansionary fiscal policy – the so-called ‘mini-budget’ – which was then amplified by forced … Continue reading What caused the LDI crisis? →

Though her family sometimes received food stamps and occasionally had their utilities cut off, Marcie Alvis Walker’s parents led her to believe that they were an average middle-class Black family. They encouraged her to pursue her dreams and told her that if she worked hard enough, she’d achieve them. The small catch was that Walker’s dream was an elusive one for any cash-strapped and undereducated Black woman: being a New York Times–bestselling author. Now, as a published non-bestselling author, she wishes she’d had a backup plan.

Last night, I wanted to slap a dude’s face off because he tweeted, “Has anyone else given up on The Bear?”

Is our Democrats learning? If you haven’t seen the first Kamala Harris ad that dropped Thursday, here ’tis. Both with the Beyoncé soundtrack and her “fighting for the future” framing, Harris is defining freedom our way while reclaiming it from conservatives who wrap themselves in it while stomping on the freedoms of everyone not in their MAGA tribe. Claiming freedom, that all-American value, is a move on which Anat Shenker-Osorio has insisted for years. It’s finally sinking in. Anand Giridharadas’s The Ink observes: Harris frames the election as the freedom to choose a future — following the advice messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio has been talking to us about all year. This isn’t about the narrow notion of freedom that’s gotten currency on the right, the sort of freedom that’s about retreating from public life and obligations, even if it is wrapped in the flag. It’s about coming together to work for a bigger, broader sense of freedom that includes all of us — the idea that the flag actually should stand for.

The Commons has agreed a clamp down on MPs’ lobbying gigs, with further action promised on second jobs