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With Saint Patrick’s celebrations in full swing this weekend, I thought I’d help you get your Irish up and drive those snakes from your media room with 15 grand film recommendations. Sláinte! The Commitments – Casting talented yet unknown actor/musicians to portray a group of talented yet unknown musicians was a stroke of genius by director Alan Parker. This “life imitating art imitating life” trick works wonders. The Commitments can be seen as a riff on Parker’s 1980 film Fame; swapping the locale from New York City to Dublin (there’s a bit of a wink in a scene where one of the band members breaks into a parody of the Fame theme). However, these working-class kids don’t have the luxury of attending a performing arts academy; there’s an undercurrent referencing the economic downturn in the British Isles. The acting chemistry is superb, but it’s the musical performances that shine, especially from (then) 16-year old Andrew Strong. In 2007, cast member Glen Hansard co-starred in John Carney’s surprise low-budget hit, Once, a lovely character study that would make a perfect double bill with The Commitments.
ON MARCH 8, Marine Rescue Coffs Harbour awarded Graeme King with a National Medal for nearly three decades of commitment to the service. Member for Cowper Pat Conaghan presented the medal recognising Graeme’s outstanding 28 years of volunteer service keeping people safe on our waterways. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it...
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LITTLE Wings, a non-profit organisation that provides free flight and ground transport services for seriously ill children in rural and remote areas, chose Coffs Harbour for its first regional International Women’s Day lunch. Little Wings CEO Clare Pearson addressed gathered guests at Coffs Harbour Surf Club. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth...
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WTF is happening here? These are troubled times in Arizona. Until 2020, election officials were the largely anonymous folk who did the important yet unseen work of making democracy run smoothly. “Nobody knew who we were, what we did,” Fontes said ruefully. “It’s a little bit different now.” All changed with Donald Trump’s unprecedented refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election. His conspiracy to subvert the election has had an explosive impact in Arizona, a battleground state which has become arguably the ground zero of election denial in America. In 2020, the Republican-controlled state legislature sponsored a widely discredited “audit” of votes in Maricopa county, the largest constituency containing Phoenix. Republican leaders put themselves forward as fake electors in a possibly criminal attempt to flip Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona to Trump’s. Two years later, in the midterms, armed vigilantes dressed in tactical gear stalked drop boxes in a vain hunt for “mules” stuffing fraudulent ballots into them.
CONSTRUCTION on the long-awaited and anticipated ‘Whale Trail’ footpath for Woolgoolga is set to begin next week. The Whale Trail will connect the Woolgoolga Beach Reserve with the Solitary Islands Coastal Walk. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it for your business. Message us. Phone us – (02) 4981 8882. Email us...
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CELEBRATING the 144th anniversary of the South Solitary Island lighthouse first operating, the Friends of South Solitary Island Lighthouse have combined with the City of Coffs Harbour to officially open and turn on the Chance Brothers ‘optic’ once more. Formerly located on South Solitary Island, the historic optic will be lit on Friday March 15,...
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Please pass this on to any jackass who claims that Trump did a good job with the pandemic. Aside from the inability to even get masks and gowns to NY City in the early days and his insistence that people take snake oil or inject disinfectant, there was his desire to stop testing people because it made him look bad that we had so many case. It is one of the most important low points no one should be allowed to forget it. Ever.
Jamelle Bouie on Kellyanne Conway’s lame attempt to paper over the GOP’s problem on reproductive rights: Republican strategists are well aware that abortion is an albatross around the party’s neck. Their advice? Find new language. “If it took 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade, it’s going to take more than 50 minutes, 50 hours or 50 weeks to explain to people what that means, and more importantly, what it doesn’t mean, and to move hearts and minds,” said Kellyanne Conway, a former adviser to Donald Trump, at Politico’s Health Care Summit on Wednesday. During the conversation, she advised Republican candidates to focus on “concession” and “consensus” and to turn the conversation toward exceptions. She also urged Republicans to avoid ballot initiatives on abortion, for fear that they could mobilize voters against them. I have no doubt that Republicans will take this advice; they are desperate to neutralize the issue. But the Republican abortion problem isn’t an issue of language, it’s an issue of material reality.
Shrinking demand signifies rocky times ahead for many individual oil and gas producers but the industry will survive for decades yet. Emissions from farming and forestry aside, Australia’s emissions have been stagnant for 20 years. Feral pigs are destroying our wetlands and rivers. Drilling into the oil and gas industry (1) Over the next few Continue reading »
History will prove that the Russo-Ukrainian war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were catalysts for paradigmatic changes in the international landscape and the driving force behind the eventual demise of the US-led “liberal international order.” During the Cold War period after World War II, two “international orders” emerged in the world, namely the “socialist international order” Continue reading »
You would think that the suffering we are now seeing, including on and after October 7, would also compel international leaders to negotiate a peaceful future. There is no future in hate. In his vibrant State of the Union address the U.S. President, Joe Biden, referenced what he loves about America. This includes the way Continue reading »
As we approach St Patrick’s Day, politically aware readers should know that in Brisbane on March 17 1948, Australia’s only Communist Party MP Fred Paterson was savagely smashed from behind by a Queensland policeman. Some time after it occurred, this attack on Paterson became known as The Great St Patrick’s Day Bash. Yet most Australians, Continue reading »
I’m walking around the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. I’ve looked at the military aircraft in the front courtyard which looms large but doesn’t yet give too much away of what the Vietnam War was all about. It feels very American with each piece of used equipment stamped with U.S. Army Continue reading »
What does it mean when good people do bad things? This has been an eternal question and one raised yet again as the world watches Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians and the cheering Israelis, most of them, calling for more and more blood, slaughter, and atrocities to be committed against civilians. Not only are they Continue reading »
Many Australians are aware of the assistance Papuan New Guinea locals and Timorese locals gave allied forces in World War II. But few know of the assistance Borneo locals provided to Australians during both the Japanese occupation of the island and in the Allied effort to retake it. This extract from the book, Forgotten Heroes: Continue reading »
Economics has achieved much; there are large bodies of often nonobvious theoretical understandings and of careful and sometimes compelling empirical evidence. The profession knows and understands many things. Yet today we are in some disarray. We did not collectively predict the financial crisis and, worse still, we may have contributed to it through an overenthusiastic Continue reading »
Michael Tomasky runs down all the roadblocks, delays, ratfucks and manipulations being used by the Trump team (which is a D-List team at best, which says something) to ensure that Trump does not go to trial on any of his criminal cases before the election. It’s depressing, but it’s true and you should read the whole thing if you haven’t seen it all put together. His conclusion is absolutely correct: When we talk about what’s wrong with our democracy, we talk about our political structures and processes. We talk about the Senate. We talk about the Electoral College. We talk about gerrymandering. And of course all these problems are real. We don’t talk about our legal system. We should. The American legal system doesn’t uphold the values of democratic rule like equality. It far more often corrupts and perverts them. Rich people like Trump twist the system into a pretzel and win delay after delay after delay. Corporations pay fines, usually not that large when considered against their bottom line, and they admit no wrongdoing, even after their practices have killed people. Poor people, meanwhile, get pushed around by the system constantly.
Are you better off? Yes you are better off. That was a historic horror show. How about 5 years ago when the economy under Trump was supposedly the greatest the world has ever known: Yep. So how are people feeling right now? Paul Krugman: So Quinnipiac is doing swing-state polls that among other things ask people both about the state of the economy and their personal finances. Here’s Michigan, but you see the same disconnect elsewhere I keep seeing claims that never mind the macro data, people’s lived experience is of a bad economy. But consumer sentiment isn’t a lived experience; it’s a narrative, and one that is actually at odds with people’s personal lives Why?
So about five hundred million years ago, give or take, there was this little creature called Plectronoceras. It was about 2 cm long — just under an inch — and it had a conical shell with a bunch of tentacles sticking out. It was a cephalopod, an early member of the group that includes octopuses […]
Doctor Who fans aren't too thrilled with the show's return times. Here's why it's a sign of things to come - and why that's not a bad thing.
“We have nothing to add,” the FBI said, when asked for evidence of TikTok’s actual threat.
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Leadership, hindered by a lack of diversity, has steered away from a tool for public good and one that is instead subject to capitalist forces resulting in monopolisation. Governance, which should correct for this, has failed to do so.
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Blue grass and blood stains The Nation: In March 14, the Kentucky Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve HB 5, the “Safer Kentucky Act.” The legislation will now head to the Senate floor for a vote, and it will almost certainly pass. The 78-page bill criminalizes homelessness—and decriminalizes the use of deadly force against individuals engaging in “unlawful camping.” Under this law, if a property owner believes an unhoused trespasser is attempting to commit a felony or attempting to “dispossess” them, they can shoot the homeless person. Notably, The Bluegrass State found it necessary to make the language of existing related statutes more inclusive by changing his to his or her, and he to he or she. But shoot to kill. It’s fine. The dispossess language is subsection a. “[W]e are entering a time of vast restratification,” Chip Elliot wrote in Esquire in September 1981. “The United States is becoming more European…but it is a Europe of a different century.