- by Bruce Hood
Reading
- by Youngbin Yoon
Why do so many people obsess about false conspiracies, but ignore the real ones? By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 4th May 2024 I am a conspiracy theorist. I believe that groups of people conspire secretly against our interests to line their pockets, cover their backs or achieve political goals. By this definition I […]
This blog post looks at St. Louis Fed research on real wage growth, economic policy and investment risk-return, markup dynamics, and custom software spending.
Secret funding, offshore donors, control by the ultra-rich. Sorry, but this is not democracy. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 3rd May 2024 There’s a sensible rule in British politics: it should not be funded by foreign donors. Democracy is meaningless if a country isn’t run at the behest of its people. But the […]
I haven’t much time free today and with the federal government’s fiscal statement coming out tomorrow night and wage data and the labour force data coming out Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, it is going to be a full week. Given I am using all my time to finish the manuscript for my next book which…
His parochial obsessions are going to get us all killed There has been some serious push back on social media to the belief that MAGA peacenik Donald Trump could start WWIII from both the right and the left. Apparently, Joe Biden is a violent warmonger for providing material support to America’s traditional allies while Donald Trump is a dove because he only oversaw a war with American troops on the ground in Afghanistan and ramped up the drone war to unprecedented heights throughout the world. But whatever. Facts aren’t really relevant at the moment. We’re all about feelings and vibes and because Trump has indoctrinated massive numbers of Americans with the lie that the whole world respected and feared him so much that they all bowed down to him and we have world peace for the first time in history. And yes, a number of lefties are similarly deluded about Trump because they haven’t closely observed what he is or what he has planned. Here’s one little example: If Donald Trump wins a second term in the White House in November, NATO may fall apart, a recent wargame found.
Remember when Republicans used to call for the smelling salts because Bill Clinton wore jeans in the White House and Bush ran his campaign promising to “restore honor and dignity” to the presidency? Yeah, that was a while ago. It’s a whole different story today. He also gave am extended shout out to “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” for some reason. Never mind. Totally normal stuff. Very cool. Nothing to worry about.
When wildfires began erupting in the Texas Panhandle in February, Laurie Ezzell Brown, the editor and publisher of the Canadian Record, was in Houston on a panel discussing ways in which losing local newspapers represents a danger to democracy. Running the once-a-week Record from the Panhandle town of Canadian, she certainly knew something about the rise of “news deserts” in this country. While she was meeting with other journalists concerned about disappearing local newspapers, Brown kept an eye on reports about ignitions sparking wildfires west of her town and posted updates from afar so that her readers would remain informed. “Those fires never stay in the next county,” Brown said grimly. And indeed, as the flames galloped through fallow fields... Read more
Australian Opposition leader, Peter ”Disappearing” Dutton, has sent out an angry missive to journalists reminding them that he does not work weekends. ”Yeah the bloody journo’s need to learn that Pete doesn’t do weekends, or questions,” said a Liberal Party... Read More ›
Do they all just blatantly lie about everything? The Ohio race for Senate is pivotal. And the GOP has put up yet another phony: He is running for the Senate as an immigrant who made good, reaching out to Ohio voters with a stirring, only-in-America bootstraps story: arriving as a child from Colombia, taking a risk on a struggling business, and then turning it into a smashing success and himself into a millionaire 100 times over. Running under the banner of Donald J. Trump’s populist political movement, Bernie Moreno, the Republican challenging Senator Sherrod Brown, humbly calls himself a “car guy from Cleveland” and recounts the modest circumstances of his childhood, when his immigrant family started over from scratch in the United States. “We came here with absolutely nothing — we came here legally — but we came here, nine of us in a two-bedroom apartment,” Mr. Moreno said in 2023, in what became his signature pitch. His father “had to leave everything behind,” he has said, remembering what he called his family’s “lower-middle-class status.” But there is much more that Mr.
The “election integrity” party has a little problem with voter fraud. The Georgia GOP went MAGA. And look what happened: Georgia’s Republican Party has removed one of its officers after an administrative law judge found he voted illegally nine times after moving to the state. The state Republican Committee voted 146-24 on Friday to remove Brian K. Pritchard, its first vice chairman, state Chairman Josh McKoon said after the closed meeting. Georgia is one of a number of state Republican parties that have experienced turmoil as supporters of Donald Trump have taken over at the grassroots level, ousting previous leaders and demanding that the party prioritize Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. Many established Georgia Republicans including Gov. Brian Kemp have walked away from the state party organization. Kemp, for example, doesn’t plan to appear at the state Republican Convention next week in Columbus. And yet: But the fervor is having an impact, and demands for “election integrity” have translated into multiple changes to Georgia election law.
Australia’s recent vote to increase the status of the State of Palestine in the United Nations General Assembly is as welcome as it is historic. The positive vote recognizes that Palestine is qualified to join and recommends to the U.N Security Council that it reconsider the matter favorably. Many human rights advocates were concerned that Continue reading »
Right now, knowledge and understanding of China and its culture, its people and its history could help get relations back on a sound footing, but sadly teaching and research in schools and universities has fallen to a critically low level. Pioneers who helped established Chinese Studies some half a century ago feel that their efforts Continue reading »
Drinking the Kool-Aid is not only believing a foolish and dangerous idea but acting on it leads to unnecessary self-destruction. It refers to the 900 American cult members who drank cyanide-laced Kool-Aid at Jonestown in Guyana in 1978 in an act of “revolutionary suicide”. Critics of AUKUS on both sides of the Tasman think our Continue reading »
In just 7 days, a British court will decide whether to extradite WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange to the US where he will face trial on espionage charges. The Australian came up before the British High Court in a two-day hearing on 20 and 21 March but was too ill to even appear physically Continue reading »
With a couple of minutes Googling, your favourite Martian could be well informed on the role of government in the Australian economy from the moment of the arrival of the British colonialists. It’s been big. Colonial and other governments have not only provided legal and economic frameworks within which private organisations can work, they’ve done Continue reading »
The disparity is vast and immoral. Emotional language touches souls, but in Indonesia it should also grab economics and politics. The new government could demand reform. It wont. We’ll call her Siti. Real name usage might threaten the uni graduate’s fragile job as an English teacher at a government school. She earns less than Rp Continue reading »
The latest statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics paint a grim picture of a nation becoming more and more entangled in the web of incarceration. During 2022-23, the total number of people behind bars surged by three percent, accompanied by a one percent rise in the imprisonment rate. These figures not only reflect a Continue reading »
The Guardian newspaper reports that history professor Allan Lichtman is known as the Nostradamus of US presidential elections since he has correctly predicted the results of nine of the past ten ballots. And even the one he missed in 2000, he insists was stolen from Al Gore because thousands of black votes got rejected on a Continue reading »
Jiu-jitsu is a martial art in which one leverages one’s opponent’s strength in order to subdue them. It is increasingly likely to become the predominant mode of international conflict in the future. It will deploy the adversary’s greatest strength, its internal network of digital interconnections, as a wrecking ball. It is difficult to know if Continue reading »