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As Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Beijing in an attempt to improve relations, Elena Collinson warned that untangling Australia- China relations from China- U.S. relations would be difficult. Indeed, Australia–China relations remain deeply troubled. Because the dynamics and dangers in the relationship are still the same, it is worth revisiting a piece I wrote Continue reading »

In her first report in October 2022, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese recommended that UN member states develop “a plan to end the Israeli settler-colonial occupation and apartheid regime”. What message will she now bring to Australia? Readers might recall that on Continue reading »

The Zionist slogan….A land without a people for a people without land…has led to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestine people. Continue reading »

Mandatory immigration detention is a policy that has caused indiscriminate harm, including death, and permanent incapacity. It has been rightly described as our national shame. On Wednesday November 8, the High Court of Australia found indefinite immigration detention constitutes punishment, making the relevant legislation unconstitutional. Led by Chief Justice Gageler, with freshly invested Justice Beech Continue reading »

In July 1975, Malcolm Fraser spoke to US Ambassador Marshall Green about the Labor government’s alleged “desire for a ‘non-aligned position in world affairs’”. In fact, he added, ‘Whitlam and others may be trying to cause the US to take the lead in abandoning ANZUS’.” Source: James Curran, Unholy Fury In late 1974, the US Continue reading »

I was wondering what was taking prominent Christian Zionists so long to visit Israel. And then I saw him…Scott Morrison landing with the arrogance of someone totally convinced he’s betting on the winning horse. Morrison has never shied away from his Christian Zionist beliefs, and nor should he…in private. But when he had the power…in Continue reading »

The bravery of those who dare to resist has allowed many of us, who might despair, to understand the real meaning of a resistance we all share if we want to prevent the conquest of us, our conscience, and our self-respect if we prefer freedom and decency to compliance and collusion. In this, we are all Spartacus.

The post John Pilger: We are Spartacus appeared first on MintPress News.

For those who have been following it, the saga of the banned drag show fundraiser...

The polls are driving them crazy but the performance on Tuesday should make them keep their heads down, do the work and recognize they have a good argument and all the other side has is hate. Ron Brownstein on the election this week and what it means for Democrats: Democrats yesterday continued to perform better at the polls than in the polls. Even as many Democrats have been driven to a near panic by a succession of recent polls showing President Joe Biden’s extreme vulnerability, the party in yesterday’s elections swept almost all the most closely watched contests. Democrats won the Kentucky governorship by a comfortable margin, romped to a lopsided victory in an Ohio ballot initiative ensuring abortion rights,and easily captured an open Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat. Most impressive, Democratsheld the Virginia state Senate and were projected to regain control of the Virginia state House, despite an all-out campaign from Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin to win both chambers.Among the major contests, Democrats fell short only in the governor’s race in Mississippi.

2024 REPUBLICAN
3RD GOP PRIMARY DEBATE
MIAMI, FLORIDA
NOVEMBER 8, 2023

8:01 PM: The debate begins with a more somber tone than previous debates, as the hot dog vendors and T-shirt cannons have been confined to the lobby and bathrooms. The moderators, Lester Holt, Kristen Welker, and Hugh Hewitt explain the rules for the evening: This will be a serious debate, none of that asshole stuff from last time. Invoking a candidate’s name does not mean that person is entitled to a response—no matter what Drake says about rap beefs. Interruptions may result in a loss of additional questions, while repeated interruptions may result in having to spend an hour locked in a room alone with Vivek Ramaswamy (or, in Ramaswamy’s case, with Andrew Yang).

Responding to a question about Donald Trump’s business dealings, Ms. Trump said, “I’m sorry. I’m not familiar with that person.”

By Dave Rollo

The transition to a steady state economy—in which humans, their operations, and their artifacts are nested harmoniously within the economy of nature—is fundamentally about reconciling human needs with the needs of nature. Leaving space for habitat and the functioning of natural systems is critical to our survival and  the survival of myriad other organisms.

Natural and traditional agricultural ecosystems are autotrophic (‘self-feeding’), meaning they are capable of regenerating resources and assimilating wastes.

The post The Imperative—and Peril—of Density appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

Prima facie modular systems seem very special. But a number of authors suppose that modularity is the hallmark of causality … I have two objections to the usual claims about modularity. First, it is not a hallmark of causality. Recall the Phillips curve, a canonical example of a non-modular causal connection – one that, à […]

By hook and by crook It’s not clear sometines whether the beleaguered 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) is as dead as a Norwegian Blue or just resting. The Act, explains Democracy Docket, was not just intended to address open discrimination, but the subtle kind as well, as Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in 1969. Chief Justice John Roberts will go down in history for eviscerating and/or weakening VRA provisions. Even then, The VRA is not quite dead yet: Over the past few months, pro-voting forces have brought a series of lawsuits under lesser known and rarely litigated provisions of the VRA that seek to combat some of the more “subtle” — but nevertheless pernicious — voting laws that disenfranchise citizens across the country. From Washington to North Carolina and other states in between, these lawsuits are tapping into more obscure portions of the VRA in order to protect voting rights.  You go to war with the VRA provisions you have.

Some of the power of math lies in the very fact that it’s made up.

The post We’re All Math People appeared first on Nautilus.

The special challenge of presenting a poet whose work is neither new nor widely known.

On September 23rd, at about 2:30 a.m., a Border Patrol surveillance camera captured two people crossing the international boundary between Mexico and the United States on the outskirts of Nogales, Arizona. A Border Patrol vehicle arrived quickly, but not before one of them had fled back into Mexico. When an armed agent stepped out, dressed in a forest-green uniform, he found a 16-year-old girl from Mexico softly crying, while holding her month-old baby swaddled in a blanket. The agent commanded her to get in the vehicle. As they then drove to the Nogales Border Patrol station, the girl, he later reported, tried to speak to him in Spanish through the security partition that separated them. Her tiny daughter, she was... Read more

Source: Biden’s Border appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

“When in the history of the world have the people banning books been the good guys?” Erin Reed (Erin in the Morning) posts on Threads: This story got drowned out by the elections yesterday, but I want to make it clear to everyone. A decent sized city in Tennessee has banned public homosexuality. This is the kind of law we have not seen since the 70s. It’s straight out of Orbán and Putin’s government. Now Murfreesboro has moved on to local libraries “where at least four books, all containing LGBTQ+ themes, have been pulled from the shelves,” Reed writes, describing the ordinance. “Following that, the [city] council moved to enact a tiered library card system, where most nonfiction content will be gated behind the adult-only library card. This system will go into effect in 2024.” Where have we seen that before? Reed continues: On Monday, however, the county steering committee met to discuss a new resolution: the removal of all books in the library that could possibly violate the Murfreesboro ordinance.