In a world of simultaneous military and environmental crises our capacity to finance both has become unsustainable. Globally, military expenditure over the past decade has been rising at double that of GDP reaching an all-time high of $2.4 trillion in 2023. Continue reading »
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Pretty soon we’ll be approaching the 40th anniversary of the December 1984 snap Federal Election that Bob Hawke called, just over 18 months after Labor’s historic win in early 1983 had ousted Malcolm Fraser’s government. Hawke was enjoying very high popularity (75% approval rating in ACNielson polls) and he thought this was a smart tactical Continue reading »
Owner corporations have recently come under attack for their dodgy practices. An overhaul of strata committees of management is also long overdue. Continue reading »
Peter Job’s article in P&I, ‘Palestine – The Lessons of East Timor’, is an interesting foray into the link between international law and moral condemnation as offering a possible insight into the future of Palestine. As Job argues, one generally does need international law to be on one’s side if a just resolution is to Continue reading »
Newsweek has recently (Oct 7) reported that Russian mobile nuclear missile launchers have been placed on combat alert. This could mean nothing – Russian mobile missile launchers do regularly go on patrol, both for scheduled alerts and for training purposes. However, the way in which the move has been telegraphed does suggest that Russia means Continue reading »
“This complaint is not only the largest ever submitted to the ICC, but it is also a milestone in documenting Israeli war crimes for future generations.” A Belgium-based advocacy group on Tuesday announced it “filed an unprecedented and historic complaint with the International Criminal Court against 1,000 Israeli occupation forces soldiers for war crimes, crimes Continue reading »
Today‘s news over Labour’s workers’ rights proposals have got some sections of the media screaming. The Daily Mail — once the chief cheerleader of Liz Truss and her ‘true Tory budget’ — have laughably claimed that legislation to protect workers will damage the country, and that laws that will bring us into line with most […]
Gallup measured some attitudes: Perceptions of Trump are similar to what Gallup found at the same time in 2020, except voters are now slightly more likely to believe he would display good judgment in a crisis, up six percentage points to 52%. (How soon they forget…) Here’s why she doesn’t get points for being a strong and decisive leader: It’s the sexism, stupid, (although why anyone thinks that the guy who wears more make-up and hairspray that last year’s winner of RuPaul’s Drag race and whines like a little bitch 24/7 is some kind of alpha male, I’ll never understand.) As for Trump being able to get things done … lol. They clearly haven’t looked at his record from 2017-2021. How gullible Americans are, how pathetically eager they are to be conned. Trump’s rating for being honest and trustworthy is higher now than his 38% rating in 2016 when he won the election. However, even at that lower level, Trump’s honesty rating exceeded Hillary Clinton’s, at 31%. This changed in 2020 when, despite seeing his “honest” score improve to 41%, Trump trailed Joe Biden by 11 points on this character dimension.
At oral arguments Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito appeared indifferent to the state AG’s insistence that Glossip’s conviction is unconstitutional.
The post The Supreme Court May Force Oklahoma to Kill Richard Glossip appeared first on The Intercept.
A good friend recently told me about Google’s NotebookLM. To test it, yours truly uploaded one of his articles from this blog, and out came a four-minute rather insightful discussion about the content. Pretty cool!
Can I still pay my union dues by sacrificing goats, bartering homemade macramé, or offering to house-sit while the high priestess is on vacation in Tulum?
The Topeka Coven has long accepted sacrificial gifts to our dark lord, in-kind bartering, and occasional house-sitting as payment for dues and services rendered. This will continue to be true after unionization and all suggestions made by Kathy that the coven will be moving to a hard currency-only system are false.
I’ve heard rumors from Kathy that unionizing might stifle spell-casting innovation. Will spells be standardized and/or require union approval moving forward?
No. Under union leadership, you will still be able to cast individualized spells against anyone and everyone in your orbit—from your HOA president to your mother-in-law—but now you will be eligible for exclusive discounts at Costco, Lowes, and Walmart.
Doctor Who spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea welcomes Adrian Lukis, Patrick Baladi, Vincent Franklin, Francesca Corney & Mei Mac.
Those of you who read this blog know very well what Trump’s obsession is all about and it’s eugenics, not “genes and genetics” and it’s Nazi stuff. What in the world is going on there? They are producing some of the best work ever, like the Trump and Putin story I wrote about yesterday. And then there’s this. It’s mystifying. It’s not as if they don’t know the stakes: How to explain this????
The Conservative leadership hopeful has received large donations from Quantum Pacific corporation, which is owned by Idan Ofer who featured in an earlier lobbying scandal involving the MP
Without massive, unconditional U.S. military subsidies, Israel would have had to practice diplomacy with their neighbors years ago.
The post U.S. Foreign Policy Has Created a Genocidal Israel appeared first on The Intercept.
Trump has “a woman problem” And worker problem (The New Republic): It turns out that some of the people wearing “Auto Workers for Trump” shirts at J.D. Vance’s rally in Detroit Tuesday weren’t autoworkers at all. The Detroit News’s Craig Mauger covered the rally and spoke to some of the more than dozen people wearing the shirts. Six of the people wearing the shirts told the newspaper that they didn’t work in the automobile industry. It’s not a surprise, as the Trump campaign has a long history of faking support from certain groups in desperate attempts to attract more voters. This isn’t even the first instance of Trump faking support from auto industry workers, either. One year ago, the former president made a big show of reaching out to union autoworkers at a campaign event in Michigan, but it was held at a nonunion factory, and it wasn’t clear how many of the people attending were even employed in the industry. Trump’s entire M.O. has been fake it till you fail at it and Daddy bails you out. But Daddy Fred is long gone. Trump plans to steal this election when he fails to win again.
If I have to stand on my own two feet, epistemically, how can I be sure that my knowledge really is knowledge?
Considered Angola’s crown jewel by many, Lobito is a colorful port city on the country’s scenic Atlantic coast where a nearly five-kilometer strip of land creates a natural harbor. Its white sand beaches, vibrant blue waters, and mild tropical climate have made Lobito a tourist destination in recent years. Yet under its shiny new facade is a history fraught with colonial violence and exploitation. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to lay claim to Angola in the late sixteenth century. For nearly four centuries, they didn’t relent until a bloody, 27-year civil war with anticolonial guerillas (aided by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces) and bolstered by a leftist coup in distant Lisbon, Portugal’s capital, overthrew that colonial regime in 1974.... Read more
Source: The Cash Will Soon Flow appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
MTG’s space lasers misfire President Joe Biden hit back at MAGA misinformation on Wednesday (TPM): “But now I want to be clear about something. Over the last few weeks, there’s been a reckless, irresponsible and relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies that are disturbing people,” Biden said. “It’s undermining confidence in the incredible rescue and recovery work that has already been taken and will continue to be taken. It’s harmful to those who need help the most. There is simply no place for this to happen.” But he saved his most biting remarks for Greene, who has been spreading the lie that the federal government (??) geo-engineered (??) Hurricane Helene in order to seize control of lithium deposits (??) in a certain area of North Carolina, called Chimney Rock. “Now the claims are getting even more bizarre. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congresswoman from Georgia, is now saying the federal government is literally controlling the weather. We’re controlling the weather,” Biden said. “It’s beyond ridiculous. It’s got to stop.