Reading

For weeks encampment protests in universities have been occurring throughout Australia. Media coverage has to a significant extent been adverse, and undeservedly so. The public record suggests the protestors have been overwhelmingly well-behaved. And yet, Vice-Chancellors are said to have been pressed to stop the protests. There has even been conjecture that offending students might Continue reading »

Home Affairs Minister James Paterson has recently been extolling Peter Dutton’s record on immigration integrity and dealing with foreign criminals. So let’s just test those claims. Labour trafficking abusing the asylum system A key responsibility of any immigration minister is to prevent the system being exploited by labour traffickers. Attempts by labour traffickers to exploit Continue reading »

The recent public uproar about the comments made by ABC journalist Laura Tingle, where she stated that in her view Australia ‘Australia is a racist country’, demonstrates how, as a society, we are still incapable of having a nuanced, mature and respectful conversation about a wicked social problem that continues to be a blight on Continue reading »

At last the crime of coercive control in marriages and partnerships has been recognised and criminalised in Australia. This is a crime that can remain invisible for years, concealed behind the image of a fine, friendly man whose wife has problems. Once exposed, the victim’s bruises — or worse — make us ashamed of our Continue reading »

It has always seemed to me that the Northern Territory, and especially its Indigenous peoples, have been Australia’s ‘poor relation.’ Out of sight, inaccessible, incomprehensible, hostile, threatening. From the birth of what became a Nation, the vast expanses of the Northern Territory, and its unfamiliar peoples, were unwanted, bumped from one State to another, then Continue reading »

Since October 2023, much has been said about what Jewish Australians think about Israel’s war in Gaza. If you’ve been reading the statistics quoted in media articles, you can be forgiven for thinking that the vast majority of Australian Jews support Israel’s war in Gaza and believe that the student protests on Australian University campuses constitute antisemitism Continue reading »

Each winter the surface of the sea freezes around Antarctica, over a vast area, mostly to a depth of about one metre. But this is starting to change. Last year, the sea ice reached an unprecedentedly low maximum extent of only 17 million square kilometres. Why aren’t we talking about sea ice? Perhaps it’s because Continue reading »

Tucker Carlson interviews Jeffrey Sachs on the Untold History of the Cold War and the war in Ukraine. Continue reading »

‘Honestly I’m so shocked right now, to be treated this badly,’ said a visibly shaken Faiza Shaheen, on the verge of tears last night. She was on Newsnight, describing how she’d been sent an email an hour earlier telling her she was being deselected as the Labour candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green. Shaheen, a […]

I’ve been belatedly listening to the Rachel Maddow podcast “Ultra” which is about a far right, Nazi-sympathizing, authoritarian plot to overthrow the FDR administration during the late 30s and early 40s. I knew about the German Bund, of course, and I’ve written about the big Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. But I confess I was not aware of the massive investigation and trial to put Nazi spies and collaborators on trial. The echoes of today are overwhelming which is why Maddow dug into the story, I assume. (She never mentions it in the podcast, though, which is very effective.) Being in that mindset, I guess it’s not surprising that I love the lede of this piece in The New Republic: In his book In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, Erik Larson cites a cable sent to the State Department in June 1933 by a U.S. diplomat posted in Germany that provided a far more candid assessment of the Nazi leadership than the one that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration was then conveying to the public.

Trump’s campaign thinks he wins whether he’s found guilty or not: Donald Trump’s pollsters have been tracking the impact of his indictments throughout his first trial and, moving to get ahead of events, are arguing that regardless of the verdict in the New York hush-money case, they can spin it in his favor. In the campaign’s internal polling, two-thirds of respondents say politics played a role in his criminal indictments.That is at odds with public polling, which has found that somewhere between a plurality and a majority of Americans believe the case has been handled fairly, with a sharp partisan split. Some 60 percent of voters have said they think the charges are very or somewhat serious. Even 6 percent of Trump voters say they would be less likely to back him if convicted. But the Trump campaign’s interpretation of its own polling suggests what its strategy might be for dealing with a guilty verdict. Trump’s advisers and allies say the public, which has largely tuned out the trial, may have already factored the possibility of a conviction into how it sees Trump.

PARENT 1: Welcome home!

CHILD: Manipulative!

PARENT 1: Wait. What?

CHILD: Toxic!

PARENT 1: Who? Me?

CHILD: Narcissist!

PARENT 1: You keep saying words, but without verbs.

CHILD: Gaslighting!

PARENT 1: I’m just thinking that if you put these words into a sentence, I might get a better sense of what’s on your mind.

CHILD: You’re a manipulative, toxic narcissist!

PARENT 1: Me? How?

CHILD: Ah! See? Gaslighting!

PARENT 1: Okay, I feel like you’ve learned some new words at school, and now you’re just cycling through them without any context or evidence. Maybe you’re hungry. Would you like a sandwich? I’m making sandwiches.

CHILD: Manipulative! Toxic! Gaslight!

PARENT 1: You forgot narcissist.

Check out a new sneak preview for Showrunner Russell T. Davies and stars Ncuti Gatwa & Millie Gibson's Doctor Who Ep. 5: "Dot and Bubble."

The Conservatives said they had no idea a UK-backed Georgian communications unit was using trolls to attack opponents and spread anti-Western disinformation. A source claims the former Foreign Secretary was informed last March

Ramzy Baroud exposes the double standards in Western justice as the ICC moves to hold Israeli officials accountable, marking a significant step towards equality in international law.

The post Challenging Western Hypocrisy: ICC Targets Israeli Leaders for War Crimes appeared first on MintPress News.

A cure for Turnout Terror On Wednesday, I pointed to a posting at The Ink calling for Democrats to tell a better story. Facts without context aren’t as “sticky” as a good story. Facts matter. College graduates, children of the Enlightenment, built their educations and their livelihoods around them. But like your SAT or GRE scores, nobody gives a damn about them later in life. What does your job experience say about you? What story does it tell? The play’s the thing that will catch the conscience of disaffected voters, writes Michael Podhorzer at Weekend Reading. A key point in Part I of his analysis:  Disaffected voters cast ballots when they believe that if the other party wins, they will lose the freedoms they now take for granted – whether it’s the freedom to own an AR-15 or to have access to reproductive health services.  Podhorzer addresses presidential polling showing “young voters and voters of color” moving away from Biden: That has led to what I’ll call “turnout terror,” the idea that high turnout levels in November will spell doom for Biden.

The Government has spent £310 million on the Rwanda scheme - and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says there will be no flights before polling day - meaning they may never happen

Labour said Byline Times' findings suggested claims Hussain was not linked to the Tory Party were a “lie”