In two month’s time, 10 years would have passed since the Robodebt scheme was introduced into Australia via a flawed cabinet submission in April 2015 and the federal budget of that year. Robodebt was described in a 2023 BBC article as a “costly failure of public administration” within which “extensive, devastating and continuing” wrongdoing was Continue reading »
Will Australia’s Paris Agreement emissions reduction target for 2035 be consistent with a 1.5oC-world? The US wants a fossil fuel future; China wants renewables. Whatever … coal consumption is still rising. Australia’s contribution to a 1.5oC world Along with all the other nations that are signed up to the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, Continue reading »
Since the beginning of the genocide in the Gaza Strip, numerous scenes have repeatedly appeared before cameras and the eyes of the entire world, depicting blatant assaults on humanity and constituting brutal crimes that are unforgivable under any law, jurisdiction, or pretext. These scenes include attacks on defenceless children, medical teams, women, and the elderly. Continue reading »
In recent decades, the West has witnessed a growing trend among increasingly hubristic US leaders to proclaim the United States as “indispensable.” This rhetoric reflects a mindset often seen in declining empires: the belief that their peak is yet to come, despite mounting evidence of decay. To counter such self-deception, ancient Roman leaders employed a Continue reading »
When Donald Trump proposed recently to “clean out” Gaza of its entire population, you might have thought what you heard was a plan to “ethnically cleanse” Palestinians from their lands – I mean, it’s right there in that word. But not according to most of the media. An analysis of the Dow Jones database of Continue reading »
Ridicule is a tonic these days 🚨 BREAKING NEWS: Illinois Governor JB Pritzker says he’s going to rename Lake Michigan to “Lake Illinois.” Donald Trump is going to go nuts. Lmao!!! 🤣 pic.twitter.com/2BGI4NFiXh — CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) February 7, 2025 What would I do without Mike Luckovich?
Right whales get their rights back, abortion providers are handed a shield, Trump has an antitrust moment, and a tractor company is told to repair its values.
Break, throw, kick, scream As Paul Krugman said Friday, what the Musk and Trump are attempting is a self-coup with “the full support of every Republican in the House and the Senate.” “The president is openly violating the law and Constitution on a daily basis,” Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, told The New York Times: “We’re talking about the idea of whether the president has to follow the law at all,” Nyhan said. “That’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to say about the United States, but here we are.” The GOP has not only rejected democracy, as David Frum predicted tardily six years ago., but the American experiment itself. The very idea of it. All that’s left of the Republican Party is crumpled bunting. It’s not clear if their goal now is the return of the monarchy or feudalism. Oligarchy is too soft a term. Trump wants to be king. He’s always wanted to be king. But Musk? He and his Silicon Valley chums want to be gods. Ill-tempered ones at that. And a large faction of our neighbors, both the complacent and the violent, are prepared to allow it.
Palestinians from Gaza responded with outrage to Trump’s proposal to expel them from their homes.
The post “You Don’t Own Gaza, Donald Trump”: Palestinians Vow to Remain and Rebuild appeared first on The Intercept.
Yanis Varoufakis joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to explain how capitalism is dead and a new form of capital, the title of his new book, “Technofeudalism,” has arisen and holds power akin to the feudal lords of medieval times.
The post Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism | On The Chris Hedges Report appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.
For most of the Gaza “war” official civilian casualty numbers were in the mid tens of thousands. They rose quickly at first, then they rose slowly, which was odd, because as time went by there were fewer and fewer hospitals, less food, less clean water, less medicine and less of Gaza that wasn’t rubble. There was every reason to expect the death toll to accelerate.
It now seems like the death toll is around four hundred thousand, perhaps higher, out of an initial population of 2.2 to 2.3 million.
The official numbers were offered by Hamas and they were obviously wrong, on the face of it. I don’t entirely know why, but there are some likely possibilities:
As Trump attacks foreign spending on “woke” initiatives, a GOP-aligned outfit has largely escaped scrutiny, despite using taxpayer funds to sponsor “transgender dance performances” and what it called the “largest published survey of LGBTI people in Bangladesh.” According to documents obtained by The Grayzone, the US-funded International Republican Institute sees gay and transgender people as uniquely disruptive actors who can be deployed to manipulate political realities overseas, stating, “LGBTI people tend to participate in social change activities to eventually bring […]
The post Why did Republicans fund ‘transgender dance’ in Bangladesh? first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post Why did Republicans fund ‘transgender dance’ in Bangladesh? appeared first on The Grayzone.
The Oregon Zoo has an adorable new baby: The long wait is over. After more than 20 months of pregnancy, Rose-Tu, a 30-year-old Asian elephant at the Oregon Zoo, gave birth at 4:29 p.m. Saturday afternoon. Staff are keeping their distance to give the pair time to bond, but the calf appears to be a healthy, strong female, weighing in the vicinity of 200 pounds. “We couldn’t be happier with how everything is going so far,” said Steve Lefave, who oversees the zoo’s elephant program. “This was one of the smoothest births I’ve ever seen. Rose knew just what to do. She helped her baby up right away. The kid was standing on her own within 15 minutes and took her first steps soon after that.” Zoo staff had been on baby watch since Jan. 29, when Rose-Tu’s progesterone levels dropped to near zero, indicating labor should begin soon. Rose experienced early labor throughout the day on Feb. 1 and began showing signs of active labor a little after 3 p.m. Veterinary staff have yet to conduct their first check-up, but once Rose and her calf are ready, they’ll weigh the baby and confirm its sex.
Adventure therapy takes on the challenge of helping war-torn families
The post Ukrainian War Widows on the Edge appeared first on Nautilus.
There are many pleasures for students of the Catholic Church in Conclave—which recently received eight...
Tax cuts, what else? Yesterday Trump unveiled his priorities for his tax bill. Everyone needs to understand what’s going on here. It’s a massive tax giveaway to the rich and powerful, financed by deadly cuts to programs like Medicare and the ACA that help regular people. I explain it here — Chris Murphy Yesterday Trump unveiled his priorities for his tax bill. Everyone needs to understand what's going on here. It's a massive tax giveaway to the rich and powerful, financed by deadly cuts to programs like Medicare and the ACA that help regular people. I explain it here. pic.twitter.com/DmZ5undJF0 — Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 7, 2025 This is why they need to eradicate as much government spending as they can. Musk and the boys need their tax cuts and Trump wants to deliver on his promises: Obviously, this is just a wingnuts wet dream. But you can bet that the tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporations will go through on a party line vote no matter what. They always do. The big question is how much they’re going to take out of the hides of the rest of us to make it happen.
The bay where kelp gulls are killing off baby whales
The post Death by a Thousand Pecks appeared first on Nautilus.
Surprise! Now why do you think they’d do that? On Wednesday evening, one day into her tenure as U.S. attorney general, Pam Bondi announced the end of the Kleptocracy Initiative, launched by the Justice Department in 2010 to battle high-level corruption worldwide and return ill-gotten funds to victims of financial crimes. The former Florida attorney general and legal counsel to President Trump during his first impeachment trial, who spent the last several years as a corporate lobbyist, also closed the KleptoCapture task force, created under AG Merrick Garland in 2022 to target Russian oligarchs violating U.S. economic sanctions imposed because of Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine. Through the initiative, the DOJ has prosecuted frauds worth billions, recovering embezzled funds and seizing assets like megayachts and luxury condos.