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Crikey sets its sights on “human rights abuse” of China’s LGBTQI+ community relying on a single source for its investigation – the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The recent Nine Newspapers “Red Alert” series was lambasted from many quarters, including Crikey whose David Hardaker called the report “alarmist” and an “insight into the kind of pompous, Continue reading »

In the Canberra press gallery, policy analysis takes second place to ephemeral politics, as highlighted by the response to Paul Keating’s criticisms of the AUKUS submarine deal. The former PM’s blistering National Press Club attack on AUKUS – and on journalists for the quality of their questions – provoked a curious Twitter response from Anna Continue reading »

Don’t cut spending, raise taxes; what’s wrong with the government’s carbon credit proposal?; and Stan Grant on the wounds of history. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy. Don’t cut spending, raise taxes Even before AUKUS, and before Continue reading »

But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that he floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying centre of the world. On Wednesday at the National Press Club (NPC), former Labor prime minister, Paul Keating, was invited to speak about the AUKUS submarine deal, and Continue reading »

I was recently sent an interesting article titled “Who Stands for Freedom” by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz. The article is a review of the book “The Big Myth” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. It raised a fundamental question: Does China have more true freedom than the United States? Stiglitz’s message Continue reading »

The augmentation was installed earlier this week in order to give the Governor ample time walking at higher elevation.

The promise—and the threat—of artificial intelligence is that the world as we know it is...

“During an interview on The Hill’s online program ‘Rising,’ conservative author Bethany Mandel was stumped when co-host Briahna Joy Gray pressed her to give a definition of the word ‘woke,’ which has been used incessantly by the right to criticize all things vaguely liberal.” — The Daily Beast

Wait, sorry, I still can’t. Yes, I realize I wrote a book about wokeness, but the purpose of that book was to rile up racists, misogynists, and homophobes who don’t like how unpopular their ideas are anymore. Frankly, the definition isn’t nearly as important as the fear and rage the word arouses among a particular demographic, so it’s fine.

Honestly, stop asking me what that word means. I’m telling you that I can’t define it. All I can tell you is that woke people are destroying the world, and the only people who would even dare ask me what woke is are definitely woke.

MAGA writes a new script on January 6th As the GOP presidential primary campaign gets underway it’s fascinating to see how the Republican Party has changed since Donald Trump descended onto the scene back in 2015. Ever since the successful White House runs of Ronald Reagan, virtually every Republican seeking higher office called themselves “conservative” and hewed to the Reagan revolution ideology — described as a “three-legged stool” — that centers global leadership and a strong national defense, traditional family values, low taxes and small government. Within that framework, there were minor differences on specific issues but generally speaking, in order to win the GOP nomination it was required that Republican candidates adhere to that basic philosophy. In hindsight, it’s clear that this may not have been the huge winner Republicans assumed it to be since the party’s nominee has won the popular vote for president only once in 35 years.

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in paying tribute to the remarkable maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Moyo. It was very thoughtful and thought provoking, and I very much appreciated her reference to me—she will have a great future here. The Budget was crafted in the shadow of disruptive world events over … Continue reading Speech on the Spring Budget Statement 2023

Mike Luckovich is a treasure The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is lucky to have him.

More Medicare "buyer beware" alerts.

Mark Temnycky looks at the turbulence in Tbilisi, Georgians’ desire to join the EU, and the authoritarian drift of the ruling Dream Party

From Doctor Who star David Tennant co-hosting to sketches from Ghosts, The Traitors, and more, here's a rundown of Red Nose Day 2023.

Techies should know that. Should. Believe it or not, a pair of tweets about last Friday’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank are still current. Eugene Robinson writes about those conditionalities this morning: Question: What is a socialist? Answer: A libertarian tech bro who had money in Silicon Valley Bank. There is nothing funny about the second-biggest bank failure in the nation’s history, which has roiled financial markets at a time when the economy is already unsettled. It is richly ironic, though, to hear luminaries of the tech sector, after years of complaining that “big government” was the problem, suddenly clamoring for massive federal intervention and largesse.

After 110 trees were felled overnight in Plymouth, Katherine Denkinson looks at the city's climate-change-sceptic head of Council and his links to the Tufton Street network of lobbyists

This Saint Patrick’s Day, it’s important to remember that my culture is not your costume; it’s my costume.

Before you put on your SHENANIGANS shirt and plastic shot-glass necklace, ask yourself: Are you mindful of their cultural roots? Are you honoring my ancestors who invented them decades ago in Charlestown, Massachusetts?

Everywhere I look, there’s a reductive caricature of Irish culture, and it’s a blatant rip-off of the reductive caricature of Irish culture that my people forged over so many Celtics seasons.

I hear the bagpipes in songs where they obviously don’t belong, a tradition of ours that dates back to the late twentieth-century music of the Dropkick Murphys. I see friends sharing leprechaun imagery when I know they don’t even have a red-headed (though admittedly half-Ashkenazi) cousin who they force into a little green suit every March.

Art by Matt Smith

So this one day, Raven-Floki woke up at home in fuckin’ Nahway n’ he was like, “Shit, I need tah go n’ find that new island that that Gardar guy was talkin’ ’bout ’cause it sounds fuckin’ sweet!” N’ this is on accoun’ah the fact that Gardar’d been blowin’ smoke up evuhryone’s ass ‘bout this damn island. Like, he just couldn’t stop talkin’ ’bout how it’s covah’d in shit-tons’ah top quality lumbah r’n wicked good fahmin’ land too. N’ yah know how Nahwegians ahr, they really get off on tree wood n’ fehrtile fuckin’ soil n’ shit.

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: X-Men '97, Star Trek: Picard, James Gunn/Ben Affleck, Succession, Disney+/Marvel Studios, Doctor Who & more!

 

GOP Speaker finally makes statement during banking system crisis and it’s a post of a old Milton Friedman video…

Reminder: inflation is made in Washington from too much government spending.

It was true when Jimmy Carter was president in 1978, and it's true today. pic.twitter.com/Vq7cJ1tw5x

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) March 16, 2023

Biden people I’m afraid are on their own in trying to fix their own monetarist mess… better not be thinking Congress is  going to help them…

Karl Marx’s funeral was poorly attended. Estimates vary, but it’s unlikely more than two-dozen mourners were present—a modest gathering indeed for the father of historical materialism and prophet of capital’s demise. ‘An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this […]