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Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro agrees with me: Josh Shapiro isn’t yet worried about President Joe Biden’s standing. Rather, the governor of Pennsylvania attributes Biden’s recent polling slide behind former President Donald Trump to voter “brain fog” that he thinks will clear once the general election cycle kicks into gear. “I’m not sure folks remember just how chaotic it was, how divisive it was, how he was just in your face in your living room every day,” Shapiro said, referring to Trump. “I don’t think people want to go back to that.” […] “As people are reminded of what it was like and they are forced to tune back in and listen to that during the course of a presidential race, they’re going to reject his extremism, his chaos and his danger,” he said of Trump. I think he’s right. (I hope he’s right?) But it’s going to take effort to remind people about what it was really like. There is a lot to work with so there’s no excuse for failing to do it.
Imagine this: humanity in its time on Earth has already come up with two distinct ways of destroying this planet and everything on it. The first is, of course, nuclear weapons, which once again surfaced in the ongoing nightmare in the Middle East. (An Israeli minister recently threatened to nuke Gaza.) The second, you won’t be surprised to learn, is what we’ve come to call “climate change” or “global warming” — the burning, that is, of fossil fuels to desperately overheat our already flaming world. In its own fashion, that could be considered a slow-motion version of the nuking of the planet. Put another way, in some grim sense, all of us now live in Gaza. (Most of us just... Read more
Source: A Slow-Motion Gaza appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
They got power… This interview with Tim Alberta is riveting. Highly recommend: This is one of the most disturbing stories in American politics and there are a lot of them. We need to pay attention.
Australia’s favourite billionaire, according to low rating news channel Sky News Australia, Gina Rinehart, has booked the Federal court for her families Christmas lunch. ”The Federal court is a wonderful place to hold an event,” said a friend of the... Read More ›
“Let’s face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and chaotic. It is dynamic. It spends its time in transient behavior on its way to somewhere else, not …
The post The empire of lies (and its consequences) appeared first on The Gower Initiative for Modern Money Studies.
The influential Spanish language broadcaster isn’t kowtowing to the boss or to Trump The Washington Post reports: The most prominent U.S. journalist at Univision, the country’s largest Spanish-language network, wrote Saturday that reporters had a moral obligation to ask hard questions of Donald Trump during his campaign to retake the White House. Jorge Ramos devoted his weekly column to making that case in the wake of his network’s recent friendly interview with Trump, which was attended by three senior executives at Univision’s relatively new parent company. Ramos wrote that it had “put in doubt the independence of our news department.” The column by Ramos, an influential anchor of Univision News since 1986, goes to 40 U.S. and Latin American newspapers, and he speaks on Univision Radio and other television shows. His most recent column, headlined “The Danger of Not Confronting Trump,” addressed the recent interview and recounted the ex-president’s separation of immigrant families and lies, including that he won the 2020 election.
This is just ridiculous: Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie on Sunday sought to play down the potential consequences if rival Donald Trump loses the 2024 primary race but refuses to concede — or even keeps running as a third-party candidate. “No one will expect him to concede. He hasn’t conceded the 2020 election. Who cares,” Christie, a former governor of New Jersey and a Trump supporter-turned-critic, told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl. While Trump maintains a huge lead in national polling of Republican primary voters, he is in a slightly weaker front-runner position according to surveys in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states to vote, where Christie and other challengers are hoping for an upset. Pressed by Karl on how Trump’s continued presence in the race could be an ongoing problem if he loses — like if he contests the results or runs third-party — Christie dismissed that notion, arguing that at that point, “the public en masse will begin to ignore” the former president because of his repeated defeats at the ballot box.
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 26, 2023
by Tony Wikrent
The deep state unleashed oligarchy
Patrick Lawrence: What Died 60 Years Ago? A President and a Nation’s Promise
[Scheerpost, via Naked Capitalism 11-24-2023]
The 2000 residents of Diego Garcia were forcibly removed to make way for a giant US military base. Will the same happen to the Australian residents on the Cocos Islands that lies south of Sumatra in the Indian ocean? When Julia Gillard allowed US marines to be rotated/based in Darwin there was speculation that this was just Continue reading »
Entrepreneurs occupy a pivotal role in bridging the gap between Australia and China, especially when it comes to climate collaboration. Collaboration between Australia and China on solar energy technologies stands as a testament to the potential of entrepreneurship and international partnerships in driving innovation and sustainability. The synergy had led to various successful joint ventures Continue reading »
China’s economy today is around 50 times larger, in real terms, than it was 50 years ago. A World Bank report in 2022 confirmed that during this period, China lifted at least 800 million people out of extreme poverty, contributing close to 75% of the total reduction in extreme poverty, globally. You won’t find these Continue reading »
US Congressional report argues that Australia’s acquisition of nuclear submarines would actually undercut deterrence of China by depleting the US submarine fleet. With the promise of nuclear submarines becoming ever distant, it may be time to reconsider other options. Recent surprising disclosures have revealed that nuclear-powered submarines, which Australia plans to acquire under the trilateral Continue reading »
West Australia’s council elections seem a strange place to pinpoint a warning about American radicalising political games infiltrating the Australian landscape. While it is strange, it is nonetheless important. American conservative and commentator Andrew Breitbart declared a (contested) doctrine that “politics is downstream from culture.” According to his institutional heir, Steve Bannon, this means strategists Continue reading »
Recently, the issue of “Publish-or-Perish” has come back onto the Australian science policy agenda, with the Chief Scientist, Dr Cathy Foley, saying that existing narrow research metrics are creating a “Publish-or-Perish” culture, perversely incentivising researchers to “publish iteratively”, chasing publication volume and citations rather than quality research. Dr Foley was referring to the recent ACOLA Continue reading »
In March 1995, Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting took a bold step by granting a 15-year license to M/s Pay TV to establish a wireless TV network. The intention was clear: to harness the potential of wireless technology for the nation’s development. Years later, we find ourselves at a crossroads, with the promise of Continue reading »
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which spans over seven decades, serves as a potent illustration of the persistent failures of Western nations, particularly the United States, to facilitate an equitable and enduring resolution. Over the past month, the world has been appalled by unprecedented violence which has prompted critical contemplation of the efficacy of international law, the Continue reading »
I don’t know any teacher who doesn’t think they are making classroom education nearly impossible. It is a crisis: Social media, the U.S. surgeon general wrote in an advisory this year, might be linked to the growing mental health crisis among teens. And even if this link turns out to be weaker than some recent research suggests, smartphones are undoubtedly a classroom distraction. Understandably, individual schools and school districts — in Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania and elsewhere — are trying to crack down on smartphones. Students are required to store the devices in backpacks or lockers during classes, or to place them in magnetic locking pouches. In 2024, these efforts should go even further: Impose an outright ban on bringing cellphones to school, which parents should welcome and support. In educational settings, smartphones have an almost entirely negative impact: Educators and students alike note they can fuel cyberbullying and stifle meaningful in-person interaction. A 14-country study cited by UNESCO found that the mere presence of a mobile phone nearby was enough to distract students from learning.
By Tim Cushing: TechDirt.com
After years of continuous, unrepentant abuse of surveillance powers, the FBI is facing the real possibility of seeing Section 702 curtailed, if not scuttled entirely.
Wired.com
A WIRED analysis of leaked police documents verifies that a secretive government program is allowing federal, state, and local law enforcement to access phone records of Americans who are not suspected of a crime.
More than two-thirds of the Palestinians proposed for release by Israel under the truce have not been convicted of any crimes. Most were arrested as children.
The post Israel’s Insidious Narrative About Palestinian Prisoners appeared first on The Intercept.
Last night, I watched the new Doctor Who: The Star Beast, forty-three years after the seven-year-old me read the original comic.
The future is fun! The future is fair! Some of us have learned to refrain from issuing hot takes on developing stories. Yes, sometimes it’s infuriating when the press holds back from stating the obvious. I still recall the hour or more of “we don’t know what happened yet” reporting when the Challenger exploded (1986) shortly after launch, even as TV ran and re-ran footage of the explosion and we watched the detached bosters, still firing, fly wildy across the sky. Other times, as in last week’s Canada/U.S. border crash, there is a race to sensationalize in the absence of facts. Will Bunch opens his Sunday column with an Orwell quote: “There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” — George Orwell, 1984 The lie that the bridge crash was a terrorist attack from Canada spread before the flames from the burning Bentley subsided. First the truth: Here’s what really happened on Wednesday: A 53-year-old couple from Erie County, N.Y.