Rasha was 10 years old when she wrote her will. In simple words, she asked that her belongings be given to those in need if she didn’t survive. A child, too young to dream of death, yet old enough to know it was coming. She was killed soon after. Her words remain, a haunting testament Continue reading »
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Last week, the Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW) wrote to Foreign Minister Wong expressing shock and outrage that Australia had not openly protested US President Trump’s 4 February statement of intent to erase Gaza. Despite the plan being illegal and inhumane in the extreme, threatening to grossly destabilise further a whole region, and Continue reading »
Health outcomes are about more than access to healthcare services: they are highly dependent on the social and economic determinants of health. Despite lip service to the importance of these factors and preventive health actions, the Australian healthcare system is relentlessly focused on treating sick people, with subsequent economic and social costs incurred by governments, Continue reading »
This year, more than 400 million people are in search of new homes, of food, water and family security. The first ripples of the human tsunami to come are lapping at the world’s shores, with a population larger than Europe’s or North America’s already on the road. The greatest population displacement in world history is Continue reading »
The president is taking a sledgehammer to the last few remaining vestiges of checks and balances.
JV Last answers a question I’ve wondered about recently. A year ago my neighborhood was inundated with Teslas. California is the biggest US market for EVs and they were everywhere on the westside of LA. It was downright weird. Suddenly, there aren’t so many. There are other EVs but not so many Teslas. Apparently, Tesla’s popularity is in the toilet all over the world. Why? Elon Musk has alienated the very market that was in love with his cars: Elon Musk has made himself very popular with men who drive gas-powered pickup trucks and have no intention of ever buying an EV. Meanwhile, he has made himself toxic to the kinds of people most likely to buy EVs in the coming years. Let’s start with the trade pub Inside EVs, reporting on post-election Tesla sales: Some numbers: This isn’t rocket science: In late 2024 Elon Musk inserted himself into global politics. He was gleefully antagonistic. He played footsie with Nazis. He made it known that he positively hates the woke, educated, “elites.” I have no idea what it will take to seriously put a dent in his fortune.
It’s come to this Google tried to sanewash its map changes: In a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Google said it would be complying with the name change as part of a long-standing practice of adhering to official government names. The move follows President Donald Trump’s executive order to rename the body of water and the federal Board on Geographic Names formally changing it Monday. “We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources,” Google said. But Google made deletions to its Calendar application as well. Among others, Black History Month is gone: “Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world,” the spokesperson said in an email. “We got feedback that some other events and countries were missing — and maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable,” the spokesperson added.
This is a real time petri dish experiment on how to transform Britain's education system, argues Neal Lawson
The world is in danger, mind-numbingly so, from a combination of crises: disease, hunger, mass displacement, racial and economic inequality, war and the threat of more war, a rampaging climate crisis, and an accelerating nuclear arms race (and that’s just for starters) — all occurring in a climate of massive mis- and disinformation that makes it ever harder to build a consensus toward solutions to the multiple problems we face. Words can’t fully express our current predicament. We need other tools and other ways of making sense of the situation we now find ourselves in. This should be a time for action and activism on behalf of our species and our planet. While there’s certainly a fair amount of that... Read more
Source: In Stunningly Bright Colors appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
Not monarchists Arshad Hasan from Democracy for America’s Campaign Academy (back in the day) told us straight away: You are not normal. Normal people do not spend their weekends learning to run political campaigns. Let me extend that: If you read this blog, you are not normal either. Since these are abnormal times, you are in the right place. The lesson Arshad meant to convey was not to talk to normal people like you do to other political geeks. They don’t get worked up by things like, say, a constitutional crisis. Too removed from work, kids and shopping. Not even the collapse of the republic breaks through until tanks are blocking the streets or social security checks stop coming. But for us, the crisis is here. In the course of moving fast and breaking things, Musk-Trump is headed to court(s) over its actions since January 20. At issue is whether the U.S. Supreme Court will sign off on executive overreach (so John Roberts can avoid being ignored) or defy King Donald and actually be ignored. “We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at UC Berkeley tells The New York Times.
Saw my interview on CNN, did you? The one in which I said a functioning state is an impediment to the Great Tribulation that precedes the Rapture? You’re probably wondering why every Republican administration is like turning over a rock and finding a bunch of weird bugs hanging out right underneath the foundations of our government.
Allow me, a proud Weird Bug and member of the House Ways and Means Committee, to explain.
This is who I’ve always been. I made the local news in 1993 for accusing my neighbors of performing animal sacrifice in their basement. Then I ran for office and had to clean it up a bit.
At least, I assumed I had to. The thing is, I didn’t know shit when I was first elected. For example, I had no idea you could just say you wanted children to starve. I thought you had to talk about government waste and the national debt and hope your constituents understood that “waste” meant “anything that might accidentally help an immigrant” and the debt was the excuse for getting rid of those things.
Oversight laws about foreign influence were already limited. Now the Trump administration is shredding them.
The post How Many Trump Officials Have Taken Money From Qatar? appeared first on The Intercept.
- by Berislav Marušić
ICE wants to hire contractors to monitor social media for threats. Those who criticize the agency could be pulled into the dragnet.
The post ICE Wants to Know If You’re Posting Negative Things About It Online appeared first on The Intercept.
- by Ellie Robson
Around 300 pulp and paper workers at the Opal Paper mill in Maryvale, Victoria have been locked out since mid-January.
The post Locked out paper workers fight pay cuts first appeared on Solidarity Online.
If the Government attempts to mimic the anti-migration politics of Reform it will be a recipe for defeat, argues Jennifer Nadel
Up to 400 Jews and supporters joined an anti-Zionist Jewish rally outside the Victorian Parliament in solidarity with Palestine.
The post Anti-Zionist Jews stand in defence of Palestine solidarity first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Ilan Pappe witnessed his face on a target symbol on TV screens at the airport as he returned to Israel. Australia continues to tug on the “forlock of a fading hegemon”. The ABC calls citing international law antisemitic while Amnesty International calls on German authorities to stop the crackdown on freedom of speech. Ilan Pappe Continue reading »
“Vice President JD Vance attempted to defend an employee of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency who made racist posts on social media promoting eugenics… ‘Normalize Indian hate,’ one account associated with the employee said.” — Yahoo News
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Medieval Catholic theology, as developed by luminaries such as Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, offers us the concept of ordo amoris. We are thereby invited to contemplate a moral hierarchy according to which our love for our families precedes our other commitments.
It is precisely because of my abiding love for my Indian American wife and my Indian American children that I bravely forge a world in which we can normalize Indian hate.
He’s licking his chops: On her first day as attorney general, Pam Bondi launched an investigation of the Biden-era investigators of President Donald Trump that will report its progress directly to the White House. It’s a crossing the Rubicon moment for DOJ independence that is compounded by the fact that Trump has made Stephen Miller the point person on the administration-wide effort to exact retribution for the criminal investigations of the president. […] Trump’s executive order also instructed his director of national intelligence to launch a similar investigation of the investigators and report back to his deputy chief of staff for policy, which again is Miller. Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination as DNC is still pending in the Senate, but she is expected to be confirmed after narrowly winning the Senate Intelligence Committee approval this week. “The fact that the DOJ is reporting to someone in the White House itself crosses a rubicon,” noted Gillers, who did not have independent knowledge of Miller’s apparent role. “That’s a major shift.
