Opinion by William Neuheisel - Responsible Statecraft -- October 18, 2022
The Agency’s carelessness in protecting its own agents reveals the cynicism of the US government’s treatment of whistleblowers.
Reuters recently published new reporting on the story of one of the worst U.S. intelligence failures in decades. From approximately 2010 to 2013, dozens of CIA informants in China, Iran, and elsewhere were rounded up and executed, jailed, or flipped to double agents. In Iran and China, almost the entirety of the CIA’s network in two of its top-priority countries are reported to have been exposed.
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Opinion by Jesselyn Radack, Kathleen McClellan - Salon -- October 20, 2022
Donald Trump has an indisputably delusional view of what it takes to declassify national security secrets, recently claiming that he, as president, could have declassified documents just "by thinking about it." As much as Trump's latest self-serving crazy makes for good late-night comedy fodder, it also reminds us how much absurdity the U.S. government has created in national security litigation. As attorneys for whistleblowers and media sources, our cases have been the breeding ground for abuse of the broken classification system.Beneath the public laugh-fest over Trump's outlandish claims of telepathic declassification powers lies the implication that somewhere, somehow, there is a clear, fair process for doing so.
Imagine a new democracy imposes taxes on itself; the tax-credit is then spent, taxed back, thus provisioning public goods in the process. Not all spending is taxed back, thus the public has savings of tax-credits. Why would it make sense to pay more tax-credits to those holding tax-credits? If for any reason the public decided … Continue reading When are payments to holders of the tax-credit by the state ever a useful policy?
As always, if you find value in this work I do, please consider helping me keep it sustainable by joining my weekly newsletter, Sparky’s List! You can get it in your inbox or read it on Patreon, the content is the same.
There is still no explanation as to why the judge chairman Lady Poole, the lead counsel Douglas Ross KC and three other lawyers have all quit the public inquiry into the handling of Covid in Scotland. This is an astonishing event. The inquiry currently is not happening. But nobody in the media seems particularly to […]
The post Covid Inquiry Mystery appeared first on Craig Murray.
Cross posted from Quillette from 16 Feb 2019, but now behind a paywall. When a conversation is not a conversation: party political discourse in the early 21st century I It looks like liberal democracy is falling apart. The chaos of … Continue reading
New polling reveals the majority of Australians (53%) support a ban on fossil fuel companies sponsoring national sporting teams, with only 32% opposed. The polling also shows three in five Australians (60%) agree fossil fuel sponsorship ‘is the new cigarette advertising’. Key Points: Three in five Australians (60%) agree that fossil fuel sponsorship is the new cigarette sponsorship, more than double
The post Majority Agree with Banning Fossil Fuel Sponsorship in Sport: Research Polling appeared first on The Australia Institute.
Hello and welcome. Today’s essay is about my interest in psychedelic
substances.
The Carmichael Centre at the Centre for Future Work invites applications for the Laurie Carmichael Distinguished Research Fellow position. It's a three-year posting, with awesome potential to explore a range of progressive issues related to unions, collective bargaining, industrial policy, and workers' education.
The post Job Opening: Carmichael Distinguished Research Fellow appeared first on The Australia Institute.
Replacing things that aren’t broken helps push up GDP, but is absurd. Much like Tory economic policy
Continue reading...The government borrows at a price of its choosing. Here’s how.
A new report claims this. But I have doubts about the whole wealth measurement enterprise.
Here is a clip from one of our live songwriting sessions on our Twitch channel. We just turn on the camera and try out ideas and see where they take us.
Here is a clip from one of those sessions we posted to our YouTube Channel.
Play an organ chug (Live Stream Clip)
The band is in the studio during a live-stream songwriting session. I started out with an organ chug idea for lack of a better thing to call it.
It was just a four beat organ chord chug idea and I asked the band to play along to see what they come up with.
I think I liked the guitar strum Eric came up with the most.
-Tom
A comprehensive review of inflation released today by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work reveals that the inflation targeting in place since the early 1990s is not the neutral policy many assume it is. In that time inflation has missed the target more from below than above, and has coincided with a shift of national income away from workers to profits as wages have stagnated.
The post The Reserve Bank needs to acknowledge the failures of the inflation target appeared first on The Australia Institute.
In modern states, demand for currency comes from the ongoing self-imposed liability for the currency. There is no need to pay savers in order for them to desire to hold the currency (interest on sovereign bonds issued for "deficit spending"). Any justification for doing so must rest on some other perceived benefit of paying savers.
How is it that in Australia, one of the richest countries in the world, we have a housing crisis where hundreds of thousands of renters can’t afford a roof over their head? To figure out why rents are soaring, we need to look at the broader political disease: we have spent about two decades trying
The post Australia’s housing crisis is self-inflicted. We need four reforms to reverse it appeared first on The Australia Institute.
"These islands attract millions of visitors a year keen to experience their natural wonders. Yet often this very “ecotourism” is contributing to their degradation."
How does monetary policy affect financial vulnerabilities and, in turn, how does the state of the financial system interact with the maximum employment and price stability goals of monetary policy? These were the key questions covered in the September 30 conference organized by the Federal Reserve System. The conference was co-led by Federal Reserve Board Vice Chair Lael Brainard and Federal Reserve Bank of New York President and CEO John C. Williams, each of whom offered prepared remarks. The program also included a panel of current and former central bank policymakers to explore the themes of the conference, as well as paper presentations with discussants. In this post, we discuss highlights of the conference. The agenda includes links to all of the presentations as well as videos for each session.
Oct 19, 2022ROBERT SKIDELSKY Admired in the West but loathed by his countrymen as a harbinger of Russia’s post-Cold War misfortune, Mikhail Gorbachev fully grasped the immense challenges of reforming the ailing Soviet Union. Today’s Russia largely reflects the anti-Western grievances stemming from his failure. LONDON – Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s last leader, was buried last month … Continue reading Gorbachev’s Tragic Legacy
The genealogical approach has found surprising success in an unlikely genre.
Why is life treated as less valuable than the depiction of life? By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 19th October 2022 What does it take? How far must we go to alert other people to the scale of the crisis we face? Only one answer is clear: further than we have yet gone. We […]
The BBC chatted to Chris Chibnall in the lead up to his final episode as showrunner -here’s what he had to say. Can you tell us what audiences can expect from this special?You can expect a massive all action thrill ride from start to finish. There will be laughter, there will be huge jeopardy, and there will be tears at the departure of the Thirteenth Doctor. It’s the biggest threat the Doctor has ever faced – and that any Doctor has ever faced – to their life or lives.Can you talk a bit about the process in putting this feature… Continue reading