February 7 saw the first AUKUS meeting held between officials of the Trump administration and their Australian servitors since the changing of the guard in the White House. In attendance was the US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and his unbearably compliant Australian counterpart Richard Marles. From all general appearances, the sense was that a change Continue reading »
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Before the 18th century Enlightenment, church and state in Europe were one. In Indonesia, fears that Islam will infiltrate civic affairs go back to the founding of the Republic. Instead, the threats are not from the mosques, but the military. The nation with more Muslims than any other state is constitutionally secular, but it’s heading Continue reading »
Do Democrats even have “game”? A few “Democrats concede they are losing an asymmetrical battle with the president and his MAGA allies,” Politico reports. But there is no agreement on how to mount an effective, attention-getting rapid-response: “Republicans are running circles around Democrats for how to connect to the culture today,” said John Della Volpe, director of Harvard University’s youth poll and an expert on Gen Z. “People are still asking me in these post-election meetings, ‘Who is Theo Von?’ Even if they had the best message, you can’t connect if you’re not part of modern American culture, if you’re not injecting yourself into these spaces where people already are.” It’s not just the leadership’s overdependence on traditional media, although that’s part of it. A majority of “swing voters” identified by Navigator Research got their political news “primarily from social media and alternative sources, like podcasts,” while Kamala Harris voters relied on broadcast TV. The GOP is winning the fight for attention.
The government is picking fights with our allies and icing out consumer protections, plus more from The Lever this week.
Use it now. Before you lose it. “Repetition is really important. And so is repetition” is a message to take to heart. You will be seeing more of it here in coming months. Like this example from Friday: A commentator the other day said that there are only two guardrails left against Musk-Trump’s predations, meaning Congress and the courts. He was wrong. There is a third: Americans in the streets. Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance offers some analysis on the status of the many of court cases filed to slow Musk-Trump’s rolling coup. It’s just that right now what we have are a series of temporary restraining orders (TROs) Musk-Trump will resist, ignore, and surely appeal, as is Trump’s wont. “There are limits to how much the courts can or will do, even at the TRO stage,” Vance cautions before confirming what I wrote on Friday: That’s not to say I don’t have confidence in the courts, because I do, and I think some progress will be made there, although as we know far too well, it may be very slow. But the courts aren’t the calvary. We are. We have to be in this fight for ourselves. We can’t get complacent.
And that’s how he wants to keep it, his executive orders and memos from Attorney General Pam Bondi show.
The post Trump Is Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud: Federal Prisons Are Purposely Inhumane appeared first on The Intercept.
And that’s how he wants to keep it, his executive orders and memos from Attorney General Pam Bondi show.
The post Trump Is Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud: Federal Prisons Are Purposely Inhumane appeared first on The Intercept.
One of the biggest triumphs of the modern political right has been to close the space in which nuance and ambiguity can even sit, writes Hardeep Matharu
How a simple numerical concept exerts outsized influence over institutional operations and economic thought.
If one had to choose one reason for why things are not going well in academic life, the managerial, top-down style of governance that reigns in many universities would be a top candidate (with budget cuts as a close competitor). But what is a better way of running universities? For me, this is a question […]
WOOLGOOLGA has been named the top beach on the Australian mainland in Tourism Australia’s official 2025 Best Australian Beaches list. The top spot nationwide went to the Bay of Fires in Tasmania. 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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WELL known Coffs Harbour resident Ron Powell passed away Thursday, 30 January 2025, aged 94. Ron was a senior area manager with the Waltons chain when he planned, purchased space and built a Coffs Harbour store in the early 1970s – managing it for many years. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth...
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COFFS Harbour Chamber of Commerce members met on Thursday 13 February to hear from several prominent local speakers, including a keynote speech by Mayor Nikki Williams. Opening the breakfast-time meeting, Chamber President Ray Smith welcomed attendees and introduced Coffs Harbour MP Gurmesh Singh to the stage. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth...
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WOOLGOOLGA day and evening VIEW clubs are hosting a combined International Women’s Day event at the C.ex Club. Taking place on Friday 7 March, the fundraising event supports The Smith Family Learning for Life Program. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it for your business. Message us. Phone us – (02) 4981...
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QUALITY Hotel City Centre in Coffs Harbour has been named a 2024 Gold Award winner by leading hotel franchise group Choice Hotels Asia-Pac. These annual awards recognise exceptional performance and an unmatched dedication to the guest experience across properties in Australia and New Zealand. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it for...
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I know …Valentine’s Day was yesterday. But at least I remembered. OK, I’m on the couch. Anyway. I’ve combed through my review archives of the last decade or so and assembled a “top 10 list” of romantic comedies that may not have set the box office on fire, but are definitely worth seeking out. You may even fall in love with a few of these. Alphabetically: Blind Date – Is there a level of humor below “deadpan”? If so, I’d say that this film from Georgian director Levan Koguashvili has it in spades. A minimalist meditation on the state of modern love in Tbilisi (in case you’d been wondering), the story focuses on the romantic travails of a sad sack Everyman named Sandro (Andro Sakhvarelidze), a 40-ish schoolteacher who still lives with his parents. Sandro and his best bud (Archil Kikodze) spend their spare time arranging double dates via singles websites, with underwhelming results. Then it happens…Sandro meets his dream woman (Ia Sukhitashvili). There’s a mutual attraction, but one catch. Her husband’s getting out of jail…very soon.
Snake oil freak RFK Jr was confirmed this week and has laid out his first 100 days: Hours after being confirmed as Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. issued a statement that laid out sweeping plans for his first 100 days in office. Chief among his goals, he wrote, was to combat what he called a “growing health crisis” of chronic disease. The document called for the federal government to investigate the “root causes” of a broad range of conditions, including autism, ADHD, asthma, obesity, multiple sclerosis, and psoriasis. Conspicuously absent was any explicit mention of childhood vaccines, which Kennedy has long railed against as the head of the anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense. But the document did zero in on another one of his fixations: a class of widely prescribed drugs that treat depression, anxiety, and mood disorders.
Newly-leaked documents reveal a crew of military academics pitching the US National Security Council a series of extreme strategies for Ukraine, from IED’s inspired by Iraqi insurgents to sabotaging Russia’s infrastructure to propaganda “from ISIS’ playbook.” Conceived under the auspices of the UK’s University of St. Andrews, the plans were outsourced through third parties to ensure “plausible deniability.” Explosive leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone show how a shady transatlantic collective of academics and military-intelligence operatives conceived schemes which would […]
The post Secret terror blueprints for US NSC to ‘help Ukraine resist’ exposed first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post Secret terror blueprints for US NSC to ‘help Ukraine resist’ exposed appeared first on The Grayzone.
Grocery prices are going up, we may be dealing with another pandemic, Trump is threatening draconian tariffs and we’re on the verge of deporting the vast majority of the agriculture workforce. So the economy is getting more fragile by the day. One of Trump’s answer to all that is “drill, baby, drill.” Krugman takes a look at that in his newsletter today: Basically, any large decline in energy prices would lead to a fall in production, driving prices right back up. In today’s world, U.S. shale oil drillers are the marginal producers — the producers whose decisions set both a floor and a ceiling on overall oil prices. As I write this, the benchmark price of U.S. crude oil — the West Texas Intermediate price — is just over $70 a barrel. And here’s the thing: any substantial decline in prices from this point would make drilling new wells unprofitable in many U.S. oilfields: This doesn’t mean that production would stagnate; it would decline, as older fields get exhausted.
“We knew they were going to do this. They get the one starving kid in Sudan that isn’t going to have a USAID bottle, and they make everything DOGE has done about the starving kid in Sudan.” He seems nice. And frankly, it’s clear they don’t give a damn about starving kids in Scranton or Birmingham either. In fact, I think they’re getting off on it. Trump said last week that he campaigned on this. He did not. He would mention “waste and fraud in passing but his pitch was all about “growth” and tariffs taking care of deficits. He ostentatiously ran away from Project 2025 which is the exact blueprint they are following for firing massive numbers of federal workers. It was a bait and switch. So far it doesn’t seem to be bothering the non-MAGA cult members who voted for Trump and the Republicans too much. I guess nothing’s happened to them personally yet. If it’s just some starving kid in Sudan it’s no biggie, amirite?
