The issue of the Voice referendum has again brought to light problems that have to do with a serious lack of understanding of governance systems in Australia and, even more seriously, where major problems exist, lacking a capacity to generate superior alternatives. In this article I will argue that the need to act is both Continue reading »
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The West’s decline is no triumph, but nor is it a tragedy. It’s just the latest reminder that all organising systems, even empires, are transient, that success always brings complacency, but that the best of human civilisation is renewed and transformed even as the old order fades away. In the grand theatre of global politics, Continue reading »
For the record: I was born in Ukraine, studied in Russia, and worked in America as a laser fusion researcher and Professor of Mathematics and Physics. I have relatives and friends in all three countries, and for the last 35 years, I have been trying to do my best to make them friends, partners, or even allies. Continue reading »
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – August 13, 2023
by Tony Wikrent
Heather Cox Richardson, August 12, 2023 [Letters from an American]
In Marion, Kansas, yesterday morning, four local police officers and three sheriff’s deputies raided the office of the Marion County Record newspaper; the home of its co-owners, Eric Meyer and his 98 year old mother, Joan Meyer; and the home of Marion vice mayor Ruth Herbel, 80. They seized computers, cell phones, and other equipment. Joan Meyer was unable to eat or sleep after the raid; she collapsed Saturday afternoon and died at her home.
The NY Times: Congressional Republicans have for months repeatedly written to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland demanding he appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, the president’s son, over his business dealings. Some even demanded that a specific man be named to lead the inquiry: David C. Weiss, the Trump-appointed Delaware U.S. attorney who has long investigated the case. But on Friday, after Mr. Garland elevated Mr. Weiss to special counsel status, Republicans in Congress reacted publicly not with triumph, but with outrage. “David Weiss can’t be trusted and this is just a new way to whitewash the Biden family’s corruption,” Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The reaction was a notable political development, one that underscored both how Mr. Weiss, a Republican, has fallen in conservative circles, and how deeply it has become ingrained in the G.O.P. to oppose the Justice Department at every turn.
Actually, we do. Trump flew in on “Trump Force One” unexpectedly and a brief tour of the fair to the delight of the crowd. Meanwhile: They want a mob boss instead of a creepy weasel. I guess if that’s what’s on offer, it sort of makes sense.
And yet not soon enough Breaking (CNN): Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are in possession of text messages and emails directly connecting members of Donald Trump’s legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County, sources tell CNN. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to seek charges against more than a dozen individuals when her team presents its case before a grand jury next week. Several individuals involved in the voting systems breach in Coffee County are among those who may face charges in the sprawling criminal probe. Investigators in the Georgia criminal probe have long suspected the breach was not an organic effort sprung from sympathetic Trump supporters in rural and heavily Republican Coffee County – a county Trump won by nearly 70% of the vote. They have gathered evidence indicating it was a top-down push by Trump’s team to access sensitive voting software, according to people familiar with the situation. A Jan.
How systematic school defunding and conservative opportunism have opened the door to propaganda machines preying on our country’s students.
Doom has made her way to a satellite above Earth in a new teaser for Doctor Who: Doom's Day - Extraction Point from M.G. Harris & BBC Books.
Mapping the hissy fits If it wasn’t for bad faith, they wouldn’t have no faith at all (with apologies to Albert King). For those who missed MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight” on Friday, guest George Conway, attorney and former Republican, presented a hand-drawn “GOP Hunter Biden Flow Chart” that made a mockery of the prolonged right-wing hissy fit Republicans keep throwing over President Biden’s son Hunter’s legal troubles. CliffNotes version: Heads, right-wing hissy fit. Tails, right-wing hissy fit. Obviously, Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee missed the show. Or she didn’t and the joke went over her head (not hard). On Friday evening and Saturday morning, Blackburn responded to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment Friday of U.S. Attorney David Weiss as Special Counsel for the ongoing investigation and prosecutions referenced and described in United States v. Robert Hunter Biden. Blackburn’s Xitter posts perfectly encapsulated the bad faith running through the veins of today’s Republican Party like the arrows of Conway’s flow chart.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Young Justice, Star Wars Rebels, Gargoyles, Rick and Morty, Ahsoka, Doctor Who, Strange New Worlds, and more!
You’ve heard the one about cockroaches and Cher surviving the Apocalypse? You can add this item to that list: Maxell UD XL-II 90 cassettes. I was going through some musty boxes the other day and found a stash of mix tapes that I’ve had since the 70s and 80s. I’ll be damned if they didn’t sound just as good as the day I recorded them (My theory is that they are manufactured from the same material they use for “black boxes”). I was into putting together “theme sets” long before I got into the radio biz. My mix tapes were popular with friends; I’d make copies on demand, and name them (of course). One of my faves was “The Oh My God I am So Stoned Tape”. I don’t think that requires explanation; I mean, it was the 70s and I was a long-haired stoner music geek. Nearly 50 years later, I’m still putting together theme sets. It is my métier. Kind of sad, really (grown man and all). Anyway …turn off the news (it’s depressing!), turn down the lights, do some deep breathing, and let “The Oh My God I am So Stoned Tape 2023” wash anxiety away.
If only they would listen…
THE Coffs Senior Computer Club are celebrating their twentieth anniversary with a mini expo to be held on Monday 14 August. Club president Fay Rollands told News Of The Area, “Everything you do has to be on the computer these days. “You have to go online, plus you have to learn extra things as...
The post Two decades of computer learning for seniors appeared first on News Of The Area.
Yep: House and Senate Republicans on Friday ripped Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to appoint U.S. Attorney David Weiss as the special counsel in the ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden. Republicans accused Weiss of signing off on a “sweetheart deal” with the president’s son and suggested that he was appointed as special counsel to inhibit congressional investigations into the Bidens and to avoid testifying before Congress. “This action by Biden’s DOJ cannot be used to obstruct congressional investigations or whitewash the Biden family corruption,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said in a tweet. “If Weiss negotiated the sweetheart deal that couldn’t get approved, how can he be trusted as a Special Counsel? House Republicans will continue to pursue the facts for the American people.” Rep.
You knew it would happen: “FBI is now killing all online critics of Biden,” Ali Alexander, organizer of “Stop the Steal” protests that fueled the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, announced on his Telegram account on Wednesday. “This is all by design.” This alarming claim was prompted by the death of Craig Deleeuw Robertson, 75, in an FBI raid on his Provo, Utah residence early that morning. According to a criminal complaint from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Robertson was to be charged with interstate threats, impeding federal law enforcement officers by threat, and making threats against the president — all on the social media platforms Truth Social and Facebook. But Robertson was reportedly armed when agents showed up on his doorstep with arrest and search warrants, according to law enforcement sources who spoke to the Associated Press, and was killed by gunfire. “The FBI is reviewing an agent-involved shooting which occurred around 6:15 a.m. on Wednesday,” the agency said in a statement shared with Rolling Stone, noting that the subject of their warrants was deceased.
Agricultural intensification is killing European birds. Europeans are killing Australia’s native rodents. Getting rid of invasive species and reintroducing native species can re-establish natural ecosystems. Agricultural intensification is killing birds Among terrestrial vertebrates, birds contain the most species. Unfortunately, there is strong evidence that in many places around the world species have been lost and Continue reading »
Few nation-states have been shaped by their underlying physical geography and location in the world quite as much as Australia. Since notional foreign policy independence was uneasily embraced during the second world war, Australia’s policymaking elites have had trouble deciding whether it was a curse or a blessing to be in possession of an entire Continue reading »
West Africa is emerging as a highly unstable region and massive over-population is at the heart of the problem. Until 1960 Niger was part of French West Africa and is now the largest country in the region. Named for the Niger River which rises in the Loma Mountains in Sierra Leone, it eventually reaches the Continue reading »
In an era of mis and disinformation and downright propaganda, John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations has gained exceptional traction in Australia and internationally as a forum for fact-based analysis, commentary and reportage. The site has attracted impactful contributions from our most knowledgeable and experienced public and corporate administrators, executives, implementers, and governance and policy specialists Continue reading »