Reading

~ Today's Water Cooler ~

The last few months, culminating in the announcement about the AUKUS agreement and the release of the 2023 IPCC Synthesis Report, have probably crystallised for many Australians a realisation that they are headed towards a future that is truly frightening. Australia along with the rest of the world is facing the prospect of self-harm or Continue reading »

Foreign Minister, Penny Wong has asserted that Australia does not accept that Israel is an apartheid State. Freedom of information (FOI) documents have exposed that this position is not based on DFAT legal advice. The concerns of many Australians that their government, through trade and other dealings, or by even visiting Israel, might be making Continue reading »

Inexorably, the war on Syria is coming to a close. Arab governments that supported the war in 2011 are sending delegations to Damascus, while Syria is sending delegates to Arab capitals, with Bashar al Assad recently visiting Abu Dhabi and Oman. Saudi Arabia and Iran have taken the first steps towards reestablishing diplomatic relations, hastening Continue reading »

At least until the 1964 Freedom Rides, Australia had a Jim Crow system every bit as bad as in the American South. Modern Anglo-Australians sometimes congratulate themselves about that moment in white Australia’s progress to semi-civilisation 56 years ago when Australian voters acknowledged Australia’s original inhabitants, and grudgingly allowed that they could be numbered among Continue reading »

The greatest threat to human health is environmental destruction, primarily due to climate change, and worsened by biodiversity loss and pollution. It needs addressing immediately by cooperative action throughout society. But societal cooperation is severely challenged by gross inequality, confusion from misinformation, and bigotry against certain ‘others’, so that the required climate action has failed Continue reading »

As international tensions rise to a new level, with the Ukraine war passing its first anniversary and the Albanese Government set to announce its commitment of hundreds of billions of dollars to new weaponry, nuclear propelled subs, stealth bombers etc, The Road to War brings into sharp focus why it is not in Australia’s best Continue reading »

This past weekend, Donald Trump proved that he can still draw a crowd after appearing before an estimated crowd of at least 15,000 fans for the first rally of his 2024 campaign. He arrived on “Trump Force One” and circled the event before landing to the strains of “Danger Zone” from “Top Gun.” His entrance to the arena was even more provocative: That song was recorded by the “J6 Choir,” made up of the inmates in the D.C. jail whom the court has deemed too dangerous or too much of a flight risk to be allowed out on bail. Some have already pleaded guilty. That Trump showed up in Waco, Texas, on the 30th anniversary of the 52-day standoff between the FBI and a small religious sect in their remote compound there, and open the event with images of Jan. 6, was described by his staff a a total coincidence. It was just a normal campaign stop, they insisted. (Sure it was.) The opening acts weren’t exactly A-list. He had Ted Nugent demanding his money back because he “didn’t authorize any money to Ukraine, to some homosexual weirdo,” apparently referring to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“A divided House on Friday approved legislation that would mandate that schools make library catalogs and curriculums public, and that they obtain parental consent before honoring a student’s request to change their gender-identifying pronouns, part of a Republican effort to wring political advantage from a raging debate over contentious social issues.” — New York Times

I support the passage of the Parents Bill of Rights because I believe every parent should have the right to be involved in their child’s school, whether through censoring curriculum, banning books, or blocking kids from choosing their own pronouns.

Austerity for ordinary citizens and bank rescues for the affluent is a toxic mix

Not even ChatGPT could dream this up: Fifteen years after the whole world financial system collapsed and barely a decade since we were told the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill fixed the problems in the US system, two major regional banks in the U.S. are down and depositors are fleeing from many, many more.

Well, that didn’t go well. I noted over the weekend that the Israeli defense minister had called for the government to at least postpone its “judicial reforms” because the military was starting to fracture over the issue and it was threat to national security. On Sunday, Prime Minister Netanyahu fired the defense minister — and the country looks like it’s exploding. This Liveblog of the “night of chaos” is stunning. An excerpt: Anti-judicial coup protesters are blocking roads and intersections at multiple locations across Israel on Sunday night to protest Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to fire Defense Minister Gallant. According to police, demonstrations are taking place at over 150 locations. Bibi wants to make these judiciary changes to protect himself from the corruption charges that hang over his head and he has a slim 4 vote majority which he cobbled together by selling his soul to the far right, which wants to hobble the independent judiciary for its own purposes. The systems are very different and it’s not useful to make too many comparisons. But damn, there’s a lot in there that sounds familiar, no?

This time is different. But is it?

“On the 16^th of March, a major bank narrowly avoids bankruptcy by its sale to a former rival at the shockingly low price.”

Sound familiar? The March in question was March 2008, the bank was Bear Sterns, and the rescuing firm was J.P. Morgan Chase, which acquired Bear at $2 per share in one of the opening acts of what became the global financial crisis of 2008.

Fifteen years later, markets are once again rattled by fears of contagion. In just a few days, three regional lenders failed in the US, as the contagion spread to systemically important banks in Europe. Credit Suisse had to be taken over by its rival UBS during the weekend of 18-19 of March 2023. Days later, markets started turning on Deutsche Bank, as the SEC issued a warning about a hedge fund.

Kit Klarnberg reveals the industrial-scale corruption which allowed billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to flow into Afghanistan without supervision and for weaponry and aid to be misused, stolen or illegally sold off by Afghans, U.S. personnel and Pentagon contractors alike.

The post Two Decades and $90 Billion US Dollars Later: Dissecting The Afghan Military’s Total Collapse appeared first on MintPress News.

I climbed inside a giant robotic parking garage

Monday morning geek-out Reflecting on the studies E.J. Dionne referenced (post below), let’s consider where Democrats can narrow their vote margins and perhaps turn losses into wins. The key to Democrats winning in 2024 and beyond could lie in turning out more independent voters in precincts where they lean Democrat. My focus at the moment is how independent voters swing, especially in evenly divided states like North Carolina. (Donald Trump won the state in 2020 by under 1.5 points.) “Unaffiliated” voters (UNAs) here are the largest tranche of state registrants (36 percent in 2022), meaning Democrats must turn out D-leaners to win. Except UNAs statewide voted only 42 percent for the Democrat at the top of the November ticket in the last two general elections. That performance, however, varies wildly by precinct. In mine, four out of five UNAs voted for Joe Biden.* In some of North Carolina’s largest counties, UNAs split as much as 60 percent for Democrats. But take note.

Israelis are calling for democracy. Privileged citizens that denied democracy to Palestinians fear that their democracy is in danger. This is not a new phenomenon; we have seen this in the US, in Australia, and other settler colonial states.

The post For Israelis, Ethnic Cleansing Palestinians is Fine, But Judicial Reform is a Red Line appeared first on MintPress News.

This video is worth watching, though I have no idea whether the bit about dead cops is true:

The post Above the Law and Beyond Contempt appeared first on scheerpost.com.

After censoring experts who found that the victims in Douma could not have been killed by chlorine gas, the OPCW’s new IIT report continues the cover-up and baselessly accuses the Syrian government. [Note: this article contains graphic images.] On April 7th 2018, gruesome images of an alleged chemical attack emerged from the Syrian town of Douma. Dozens of dead bodies, including children and infants, appeared heaped in piles inside of an apartment building. Others lay on the street in front […]

The post Burying key evidence, new OPCW report covers up Douma’s unsolved deaths appeared first on The Grayzone.

The record-breaking roundups of iconic Western mustangs are a gift to ranching and mining interests.

The post Biden Is Fulfilling Trump’s Cruel Policy on Wild Horses appeared first on The Intercept.

Tapping the American id A second look at Abraham Josephine Riesman’s Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, this time by John Hendrickson in The Atlantic, contemplates how watching a “good guy” wrestler like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson deliver “‘the people’s elbow’ to a bullying foe” is cathartic for professional wrestling fans. They pay good money for it. WWE’s McMahon “tapped into the American id,” made a fortune by it, and drew Donald Trump a roadmap to the White House. A technology and science fiction writer I know online commented Saturday night on how Generative AI “will turn civilization upside down” in ways hard to predict. For better or worse, Pandora’s Box is open and will never be closed, she wrote. That’s how technology works. Similarly, who could have predicted that professional wrestling and McMahon “could have such a profound influence on American culture and politics,” Hendrickson writes. McMahon’s pal Donald has changed American political culture and the party he leads by dint of throwing elbows at people his fans love to jeer.

It took the roiling events of 1963 to open the ears and hearts of the American public to the Beatles.