Since international borders re-opened, asylum applications at the primary stage steadily grew from a low of around 618 in February 2022 to 1,786 in March 2023. While this was well below the peak in 2017-18 of around 2,500 per month, it would have been worrying the Albanese Government given the entry of the Coalition and Continue reading »
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It has been obvious for many years that our health system needs a radical, evidence based, redesign if it is ever to meet the oft spoken goals of equality and cost-effectiveness, with a focus on prevention and timely availability of care based on need, not financial wellbeing. Ours is a country where, despite politicians’ pre-election Continue reading »
The inadequate if not negligent response of governments around Australia to the critical issue of Aboriginal housing—perhaps the country’s biggest policy failure—puts into sharp focus why a Voice to Parliament may help elevate the case for urgent action. Governments have moved away from specific programs to address the acute housing needs of First Peoples, even Continue reading »
There are distinct parallels between I F Stones’ exposé of the ongoing Korean War and both the Ukraine War and preparations for a second war with China. Izzy Stone did not travel to war zones like the intrepid Wilfred Burchett, nor had he the whistleblowing ‘sources’ that Sy Hersh uses. His approach is different and Continue reading »
The situation in the South China Sea is on the verge of becoming a game of chicken between the U.S. and China with the Philippines in the middle. This would be very dangerous and could cause China to miscalculate. Either one blinks or they clash. More than 60 years ago, the U.S. claimed that on Continue reading »
This piece in the Guardian by Moira Donegal nails it: On Monday, Jim Pillen, the Republican governor of Nebraska, signed a law that bans abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy and restricts gender-affirming care for anyone under 19. The ban on trans medical care takes effect in October and the abortion ban goes into effect immediately. And so Nebraska has become the latest state to determine through law what might have once been determined by the more pliable tools of custom or imagination: the way that the sexed body a person is born with shapes the kind of life they can live. Be it through forced pregnancy or prohibited transition, the state of Nebraska now claims the right to determine what its citizens will do with their sexed bodies – what those bodies will look like, how they will function and what they will mean. It is a part of the right’s ongoing project to roll back the victories of the feminist and gay rights movements, to re-establish the dominance of men in public life, to narrow possibilities for difference and expression and to inscribe in law a firm definition and hierarchy of gender: that people are either men or women and that men are better.
Chris Christie running for president! (Again!)
“I could be wrong, but I vaguely remember that he was maybe this guy lying down on a beach?” a resident of Phoenix said.
Industry donations flowed to key Dem senators just before a major pipeline approval was slipped into the debt ceiling bill.
My spouse Robin and I start our morning by enjoying a well-balanced breakfast of cereal, a glass of milk, and a backup glass of milk. While we eat, I glance at our framed “LOVE WAITS!” purity pledges on the dining room wall, which we enforced until we’d been married for a year, just to be on the safe side. I still admire Robin’s impeccable cursive, which comes in handy every day.
I grab a russet potato out of our pantry and jam it into the engine compartment of my Ford Escape. Thank goodness I haven’t misplaced my alligator clips again, or else my battery wouldn’t start, and I’d be late for work. Today is already shaping up to be stressful, as the diorama my team has been working on for all of Q3 is finally due.
In college, I double-majored in my passions: Reading Interesting Books and Doodling. This landed me my dream job, a vague corporate thing where I was offered a $150K salary as soon as I whispered the words “bachelor’s degree” at a recruiter. My friend who went to trade school is super jealous.
A historic drought, floods, and a widening war with al-Shabab have displaced more than a million people this year.
The post Climate Change and Conflict Are Wreaking Havoc in Somalia appeared first on The Intercept.
And there will be a next time By the time you read this, it’s possible that the debt ceiling saga will finally be over. Senate leaders have said they have the votes to pass it and as of this writing, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is set to call for a vote on the package immediately — and unless he is completely inept (which is very possible), that means he knows he has the votes. Of course, anything can happen with this volatile, slim GOP House majority, as we learned during the epic speaker vote back in January. They like the drama and we may get some yet. But at this moment it appears that the deal struck by McCarthy and President Biden over the weekend is likely going to pass on a bipartisan basis over the objections of some on both the left and right, avoiding a default and any ensuing economic catastrophe. This agreement has left a sour taste in the mouths of progressives who were led to believe that the Democratic leadership in Congress and the White House had learned their lesson from past debt ceiling showdowns and were not going to engage this time.
“I somehow thought (the war) was far away” At least eight drones hit Moscow on Tuesday, leaving only minor damage to two residential buildings and minor injuries but also uneasiness in Russia. The Guardian reports: There has been no suggestion that US-made drones or munitions were used in the attacks on Moscow. There has been speculation that at least one of the drones involved was a UJ-22 produced by a Ukrainian company. Another Guardian report on the attacks: According to Russian authorities and media, eight drones were involved in the attack, with five shot down or otherwise disabled with jamming technology. Russian media close to the security services said the number was many times higher, with more than 30 drones participating in the attack. […] The attacks seem designed to bring the war home to Russia’s capital, underlying both the fact that Ukraine is capable of skirting Russian air defences repeatedly and that it has the capacity to strike deep inside Russia. Axios reports: Podolyak posted to WhatsApp that “Ukraine is not directly connected to the nighttime drone attack in Moscow.
Kids in one of London’s poorest boroughs, Newham, are struggling to breathe. So why is the London Mayor pushing ahead with a new road tunnel that could make the situation even worse?
And it doesn’t always stick “WTF?!” a niece’s glance shot my way from down the pew. Graduation ceremonies at her cousin’s Christian high school followed the Pledge of Allegiance with a second pledge, this time to the Christian flag. Wait. What? There’s a Christian flag? It was a suburban church school, not the home-schools of the Washington Post profile, “The revolt of the Christian home-schoolers.” But it was a subculture related to the one Christina and Aaron Beall grew up in: Aaron and Christina had never attended school when they were children. Until a few days earlier, when Round Hill Elementary held a back-to-school open house, they had rarely set foot inside a school building. Both had been raised to believe that public schools were tools of a demonic social order, government “indoctrination camps” devoted to the propagation of lies and the subversion of Christian families. At a time when home education was still a fringe phenomenon, the Bealls had grown up in the most powerful and ideologically committed faction of the modern home-schooling movement.
“Why,” asks Katie Farris in the title poem of her new book’s opening poem, “write love poetry in a burning world?” Except that in her title there’s no question mark. And the poem that follows is not so much a revelation but a proposal, to the self, that the difficult work—the work of writing, reading, surviving, living in these times—is both self-evident and in regular need of restatement.
In a 1980 interview, C. L. R. James stated that he wanted to be remembered above all for his serious contributions to Marxism. In Making the Black Jacobins: C, L. R. James and the Drama of History, Rachel Douglas explores the many facets of the Trinidadian author and offers a fresh interpretation of his unique brand […]
WHITMAN: Are you the new person drawn toward me?
SWIFT: Saw you there and I thought, “Oh, my God, look at that face. You look like my next mistake.”
WHITMAN: To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different than what you suppose.
SWIFT: You’re the “kind of reckless that should send me running,” but I kinda know that I won’t get far.
WHITMAN: Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
SWIFT: I knew you were trouble when you walked in.
WHITMAN: Do you think it is so easy to have me become your lover?
‘Sneaky, cheating bastards’ – Josiah Mortimer reports on a peer leading the charge against the Government's fresh protest clampdown
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Riverdale, The Flash, LOST, TWD: Dead City, X-Men '97, Doctor Who, Justified, Star Trek: SNW, and more!
A new report reveals that the Ministry of Defence has made no real progress on reducing the carbon footprint of its military bases in the UK
David speaks with U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy about social media’s harmful effects on kids, and the debt ceiling deal.
Most freelancers do not report abuse within the industry due to a fear of reputational damage, says the national secretary of the broadcasting and entertainment union