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Foreign Minister Penny Wong invoked the power of shared colonial histories in a speech during her recent visit to the United Kingdom. The statement was clearly carefully prepared and framed but, judging from her recorded comments, it seems that she has not thought through the implications of the adoption of radical post-colonial diplomacy. Rather, she Continue reading »

The previous two parts in this series addressed soft power and Australia’s alliances respectively. The focus of Part 3 is hard power and a discussion of self-reliance and Australia’s evolving military strategy. Hard power: Australia’s military strategy In an offensive sense, hard power represents the ability of a nation to coerce another country and bend Continue reading »

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a story Wednesday alleging that the United States was behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline system last year, citing a source “with direct knowledge of the operational planning.” The Biden White House adamantly denied the veteran investigative journalist’s reporting, calling it “complete fiction.” Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative Continue reading »

The Medicare Review contains welcome aspirations, but the instruments to achieve them are poorly delineated. An early statement in the Medicare Review report is challengeable. “Most Australians enjoy ready access to quality Primary Care services and with that good health outcomes”. That is certainly not true for the 33% of Australians who live in rural Continue reading »

Secrets make us paranoid. We should do away with secrets and spies and become a truly open society. We have become so obsessed with the so-called ‘China threat’ that our fears are now totally irrational. The decision by the USA to shoot down a Chinese balloon might have had a strange logic to it, but Continue reading »

At personal, national and international levels, crises provide learning opportunities. How to adapt to loss by seeking change, how to think differently about family, community and nation by, among other things, pondering the meaning of security and sovereignty. Immediate responses to the massive earthquake disasters in Turkey and Syria concern rescue, shelter, food supply, healthcare Continue reading »

Amnesty International just made a submission to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and some of it surprised me. I live in China, I’ve travelled extensively, including many kilometres in Xinjiang. First in 2014 when I cycled from Macau to the Kazakhstan border and again in 2019, I flew to Urumqi and Continue reading »

Sarah Sanders acted like Trumpie didn’t exist and turned that hokey secret Iraq trip into a story about her. It didn’t go over well with some of the MAGAs: Prominent supporters of former President Donald Trump on Wednesday criticized Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. Sanders, who served as Trump’s White House press secretary, delivered a rebuttal to the president’s speech that largely focused on Republican culture war issues and accused Biden of surrendering his presidency to a “woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is.” “Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight. Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols, all while big government colludes with Big Tech to strip away the most American thing there is—your freedom of speech. That’s not normal.

James Wilson is suing James Mendelsohn, Edward Cantor and the late Peter Newbon for libel, misuse of private information, harassment, and breach of data rights. Dr Newbon died in January last year, with right-wing media attempting to blame his death on author Michael Rosen The High Court has today rejected an attempt by the defendants […]

Back in November, as the first round of national strike action by university staff began, an email from the head of the Sheffield Institute of Education appeared to ask students to report striking lecturers. In a tweet, Jo Grady, General Secretary of the University and Colleges Union (UCU), said universities asking students to ‘grass’ on […]

Josiah Mortimer reports on how TalkTV's Piers Morgan Uncensored struggled to get feminists to discuss “has Me Too gone too far” on the day a serial rapist was sentenced

If the diagnosis fits From Hullabaloo’s earliest days, Digby has attributed juvenile behavior on the part of the GOP’s most unwanted to an epidemic of arrested development. “Maybe the only thing we need to know about Trump and his followers is that they are all suffering from arrested development. It really could be just that simple,” she wrote in 2015 as the Trump train picked up steam. One suspects that cultural historians will explain the last couple of decades as a period of mass cultural insanity (my expectation). In the end, Digby’s arrested development take may be more accurate. Speaking of arrested devlopment, if you missed the crackup on the set of Deadline White House on Wednesday (at MTG’s expense), it’s in the first minute. Enjoy.

Letter from RMT head Mick Lynch last month offered talks but TSSA insiders say offer covered up by figures now condemned by Kennedy report on sexual harassment The scandal-hit TSSA union, whose management-backed merger with a right-wing US union fell through last year, has been in talks with another right-run union, the GMB – recently […]

The echoes still linger from that national sigh of relief last month when Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, slammed into cardiac arrest during a game on January 2nd, was declared out of danger. It was a justified sigh. A vibrant young life had been spared. But was that really what the nation was relieved about? If football fans had been so invested in the health and safety of the players, why were some 23.8 million of them watching that game in the first place? By now, everybody should be aware of the incremental deadly damage inflicted on players’ brains in any game, so why will 200 million or more of us be watching the Super Bowl on February 12th? That... Read more

Source: Why Damar Hamlin Didn’t Die for Our Sins appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Though Israeli wars on Gaza are much riskier nowadays compared to the past, a cornered and embattled Netanyahu could still resort to such a scenario if he feels that it could salvage his embattled leadership.

The post Israel’s War on Gaza: From Inhuman Weapon Experiments to Political Experiments on Palestinians appeared first on MintPress News.

Join "Behind The Headlines" host Lee Camp for a full hour interview with James Kennedy, a renowned Welsh singer, songwriter, and producer known for his political activism through music.

The post In Revolutionary Times, Are Art and Music Falling Short? With James Kennedy appeared first on MintPress News.

Time for a cultural reset The problems with U.S. policing date back to slave patrols. Others more versed in policing have pointed to the “warrior cop” ethic taught in some police training, to “warrior cop” culture, and the “officer survival” movement as a source of police violence. Police overreaction and the emphasis on dominating any interactions with civilians keep leading to deaths and more distrust of law enforcement. Are Americans seeking technical and training solutions to what is more a product of police culture? Jill Lepore wrote in The New Yorker in 2020: Modern American policing began in 1909, when August Vollmer became the chief of the police department in Berkeley, California. Vollmer refashioned American police into an American military. He’d served with the Eighth Army Corps in the Philippines in 1898. “For years, ever since Spanish-American War days, I’ve studied military tactics and used them to good effect in rounding up crooks,” he later explained. “After all we’re conducting a war, a war against the enemies of society.” Who were those enemies?

The Helms Amendment turns 50 this year, but the US foreign policy is a neo-colonialist relic that denies women around the world access to their human rights, reports Sian Norris

A judge has ordered full disclosure in a case which deprived 50,000 NHS doctors of legal whistleblowing protection

Links of late…   “If we try to turn our lives into good stories, we may find ourselves making choices that are bad for us” — Amy Berg (Oberlin) on narratives, well-roundedness, and the good life Knowledge, but at what cost? — how should we figure out whether large scale basic science experiments are worth it? “A full development of our humanity requires developing our capacities to care for the world of nature and for the animals in it” — Martha Nussbaum (Chicago) is interviewed by Jeremy Bendik-Keymer (Case Western) at Boston Review Mind-wandering is a thing, but what about extended mind-wandering? And is habitual smartphone use an example of it? — Jelle Bruineberg & Regina Fabry (Macquarie) make the case for it, and other philosophers discuss it A philosopher proposes an “Institute for Ascertaining Scientific Consensus” to determine what we know and to fight misinformation — Can it be done? Should it? UPDATE: There’s an (LLM-based) app for that now: Consensus. It’s not very good… yet. “Can College Level the Playing Field?… No way.

Banco terá que pagar R$ 150 mil por dia se continuar negando informações à Procuradoria-Geral do Trabalho.

The post Santander é condenado por esconder informações do MPT em investigação movida após denúncia do Intercept appeared first on The Intercept.