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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on track to win India’s upcoming election, giving him a third term in office and allowing him to cement his reactionary and racist agenda.

The post Modi’s Islamophobia on full display as India faces election first appeared on Solidarity Online.

When I was in London recently, I caught up with my good friend Carlos García Hernández, who is a Spanish radical and has a book publishing business – Lola Books – in Berlin, which publishes in English, German, Spanish and Italian. He gave me a copy of his own recently published book (2023) – Fiat…

This paper explores the merits of introducing a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) in Australia, focusing on the extent to which consumers would value having access to a digital form of money that is even safer and potentially more private than commercial bank deposits. To conduct our exploration we run a discrete choice experiment, which is a technique designed specifically for assessing public valuations of goods without markets. The results suggest that the average consumer attaches no value to the added safety of a CBDC. This is consistent with bank deposits in Australia already being perceived as a safe form of money, and physical cash issued by the Reserve Bank of Australia continuing to be available as an alternative option. Privacy settings of a CBDC, which can take various forms, look more consequential for the CBDC value proposition. We find no clear relationship between safety or privacy valuations and the degree of consumers' cash use.

Iran threatens to attack the U.S. if it assists Israel in defending against any Damascus retaliation.

The post Biden Administration Fears Iran Might Target U.S. Forces Over Israel Strike appeared first on The Intercept.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

The GOP establishment is pathetic: A Pulitzer Prize-winning political photographer resigned Tuesday from the board of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, blasting the group for cowardice in rejecting Trump critic Liz Cheney as the recipient of its top yearly award. David Hume Kennerly claimed in a letter to fellow trustees that Cheney’s nomination for the Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service was nixed largely out of fear that Trump would retaliate against the organization if he’s reelected. Cheney, herself a trustee, was rejected three separate times, Kennerly wrote, as other potential honorees declined the award. Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels will receive the 2024 medal in June, according to an email that Gleaves Whitney, the foundation’s executive director, sent to trustees Wednesday, after POLITICO broke news of Kennerly’s resignation. Whitney said in a statement sent ahead of the Daniels announcement that the foundation’s executive committee, guided by legal counsel, believed it was not “prudent” to give the medal to Cheney given her flirtations with a presidential run.

Would he? (Of course he would.) Trump’s allies are trying to reassure the Supreme Court that if you give Trump total immunity he would never order an enemy to be killed as was posited in the appeals court hearing. And anyway, even if he did, nobody would carry it out. So it’s all good. It is not: As the Supreme Court gets ready to hear oral arguments in Donald Trump’s presidential immunity case, the former president’s allies are working to tamp down any concerns the justices might have about one of the more absurd and disconcerting arguments offered by any Trump lawyer ever: that a president would have to be impeached and convicted before he could be prosecuted if he were to, hypothetically, order the assassination of a political rival. The America First Policy Institute, a think tank led by former top Trump advisers and allies, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court last month arguing that the justices should not consider this hypothetical in their decision, because the military would never follow such a command.

Property developers in Brisbane have bandied together to purchase the property owned by the Heeler family as featured in the Sylvania waters style reality tv series, Bluey. With plans afoot to knock down the property and turn it into a... Read More ›

What a missing element can teach us about the universe.

The post Lithium, the Elemental Rebel appeared first on Nautilus.

The Hill reports: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Tuesday interview that he does not need “primitive” ideas from former President Trump on ways to resolve the war with Russia. In an interview with Axel Springer media outlets, including Politico, Zelensky said he was open to hearing Trump’s proposals for the war, but, he said, “If the deal is that we just give up our territories, and that’s the idea behind it, then it’s a very primitive idea.” “I need very strong arguments. I don’t need a fantastic idea. I need a real idea because people’s lives are at stake,” Zelensky added. The interview comes after The Washington Post reported this weekend that Trump has privately said his plan to end the war in Ukraine would include pressuring the war-torn country to give up territory, including Crimea and the Donbas border region, to Russia. That’s actually a nice way of putting it. The more precise word is “stupid.” I don’t know if Trump thinks he can just tell Ukraine what to do but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Despite what many in the MSM are saying There was quite a bit of punditry yesterday suggesting that despite the shock of the Arizona ruling reinstating a civil war era abortion ban the issue just doesn’t have salience to swing voters. The NY Times published this earlier today: Sigh. They spoke with 3 voters, two of whom are Trump voters. So, whatever. The Washington Post had a much better analysis: A near-total abortion ban slated to go into effect in the coming weeks in Arizona is expected to have a seismic impact on the politics of the battleground state, testing the limits of Republican support for abortion restrictions and putting the issue front and center in November’s election. Arizona’s conservative Supreme Court on Tuesday revived a near-total ban on abortion, invoking an 1864 law that forbids the procedure except to save a mother’s life and punishes providers with prison time. The decision supersedes Arizona’s previous rule, which permitted abortions up to 15 weeks. The developments in Arizona are part of a wave of state actions to reckon with the future of access to reproductive care after the U.S.

I support recognition of a Palestinian state, in the UN context, as an affirmation that our values apply in our approach to dealings between states as well as within states. It should be a lower order of priority for Australia than seeking an immediate and durable end to the conflict in Gaza, and the return Continue reading »

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“LIFE won’t come to you, you’ve got to go out and get it,” is a long-held mantra that motivates Coffs Harbour’s new Seniors Local Achievement Award winner, Phyllis Taylor. Recognised for her valuable contributions to our community, Phyllis received the award as part of the 2024 NSW Seniors Festival. Advertise with News of The Area...

The post Phyllis Taylor awarded Coffs Harbour’s Seniors Achievement Award appeared first on News Of The Area.

The Jewish Council of Australia today welcomed Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Senator Penny Wong’s speech overnight which signaled a shift in the Australian Government’s otherwise steadfast support for Israel and its actions. The Jewish Council of Australia today welcomed Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Senator Penny Wong’s speech overnight which signaled a shift in the Australian Continue reading »

Who would not condemn the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 when hundreds of Israeli civilians, as well as hundreds of military and security personnel were killed? Why then is Hamas so popular amongst Palestinians and in the wider Muslim world? March 2024 polling by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) shows Continue reading »

For every thousand tonnes of fossil fuels mined, one person dies. As climate science provides increasing evidence of accelerating warming, we must recognise that gas is our main threat and stop producing it. Gas is 84 times more potent then carbon dioxide. In the next two critical decades there is justifiable concern that climate change Continue reading »