Letter from Colin Cook (SA) Re: Finding the tools to end the cost-of-living crisis [ERA Review Jan/Feb 2024] Towards the end of 2020 there was…
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It’s the vaccines Trump has downplayed his role in the vaccines ever since that incident even though he is dying to take credit for them. He impulsively waded into this again after the State of the Union address and it didn’t go well at all: All hell broke loose: It went on and on and on. There is obviously a group of anti-vax MAGAs who feel so strongly about this they are even willing to defy Dear Leader. Aaron Blake at the Washington Post reports on a new poll about this question: A Monmouth University poll Monday initially asked voters whether they would consider voting for Kennedy. Democrats were slightly more likely than Republicans to say they were. But then the poll asked people whether they were aware that Kennedy “claims that autism is linked to vaccines” and that he has floated a theory that covid was targeted at certain races. (Neither claim is based in fact.) About half of Republicans said they were aware of this; about 6 in 10 Democrats said they were.
The Opposition’s shadow minister for home and foreign affairs, Barnaby Joyce, has put out a statement to reassure the Nation’s female folk that he is a lover not a fighter. ”It is a tough time for women right now,” said... Read More ›
He composed on a computer in a dangerous time. His echo is still heard today.
The post The Soviet Rebel of Music appeared first on Nautilus.
“Trump appears to have fallen asleep while listening to testimony — at times appearing to stir and then falling back to sleep. Trump’s eyes were closed for extended periods and his head has at times jerked in a way consistent with sleeping.” Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers, at his instruction no doubt, refused to stipulate that certain tapes and testimony are admissible. So this is what the prosecution had to do: They had to get the owner of the transcription service in the Carroll trial to testify too. Here’s one of the CSPAN tapes they want admitted. If this trial proves nothing else it shows his performative lies in living color. Just look at how adamantly he denies knowing these women. The trial proves he did.
At the April 17th House Education Committee hearing on Columbia University’s response to antisemitism on...
Scientific research, academic knowledge production, and higher education are under an obscene and direct attack today in Argentina. Milei’s attack is not an isolated case. To a certain extent, it is part of a global phenomenon, i.e. the rampant anti-intellectualism of the “new” right-wing movements and governments, which has certainly accelerated its spread with the […]
Paul Krugman with a trip down memory lane: You probably remember [the 1990s] as a time of prosperity — low unemployment and rapid economic growth combined with low inflation — marred by irrational exuberance in the stock market. Pets.com anyone? What you might not realize is how closely the economy of early 2024 resembles that of the late Clinton years. People might not be feeling the prosperity — or at least they say they aren’t feeling it, because there’s a huge gap between Americans’ positive assessment of their personal financial situation and their negative assessments of the economy. But by the numbers, things look pretty good. Notably, unemployment is actually a bit lower now than it was at the end of the roaring ’90s. He notes that inflation spiked in 2021-22 but that according to one good measure it’s actually come down to a level that’s barely above the Fed’s target rate. What about interest rates? Well, people have forgotten that interest rates were higher during the 90s and mortgage rates were even higher than they are now: Needless to say, the stock market was soaring as it is today.
Weekend rallies highlighted the anger and fear of thousands of women and men about the ongoing violence against Australian women. It is a crisis, and it is occurring day and night in homes and suburbs across the country where police are struggling to keep up with reporting of male violence and too many offenders avoid Continue reading »
Israel’s crimes against humanity, war crimes and its acts of genocide against the Palestinian people are, without a doubt, the most horrific acts committed by a ‘democracy’ since the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War. Yet despite this fact the Australian government refuses to warn or investigate whether any Australian citizens or companies are Continue reading »
Thanks to Anthony Albanese’s prolonged refusal to change the Morrison government’s damaging policies that he has endorsed, Labor is struggling to stay around 30% in the opinion polls for the next election. One upshot is the latest OECD figures show low and middle income workers in Australia had the highest increase in personal income taxes Continue reading »
The ‘National Defence Strategy’ is not a strategy. It is an ideology. An ideology that firmly ties Australia’s future to that of the United States. A horrifying thought. Australia apparently faces the ‘most complex and challenging strategic environment since the Second World War’. From the perspective of the underpinnings of Australian defence policy for many Continue reading »
It is sometimes said that America bombs while China builds. What’s the evidence, and where are the statistics? Let’s examine the origin and nature of the broad global footprints of America and China which are evident across the world today. The US grew to become a world-striding superpower over 100 years ago. Three hundred years Continue reading »
In a failing quest to maintain its ‘primacy’, the US has cast China, Russia and Iran as global villains. The US intelligence community recently released its annual threat assessment, which focuses on worldwide threats to the country’s national security. The document reflects the collective analyses and insights of the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Continue reading »
The UK’s Thames Water – infamous for pumping raw sewage into waterways – parent company has now defaulted on its debt. Why should the failure of a UK water company be of interest to Australia and Australians? First, because it illustrates the failure of many privatisations to improve service and performance. Second, because it is Continue reading »
I remember watching a timid singer walk on stage and when he opened his mouth to introduce himself, out came a French accent. The audience mewed and cooed in awe. The next contestant tenuously stepped onto the stage and started to speak. Her accent was Chinese. The audience’s reaction was completely different. Racism manifests in Continue reading »
Here’s one: Thanks to a provision in the Secure 2.0 Act, legislation aimed at improving retirement benefits nationwide, in 2024 employers will be able to start counting student loan payments as qualifying contributions toward retirement matching programs. That means if your employer offers to match your 401(k) contributions, you could get that matched money without ever depositing funds in your retirement account. Instead, your monthly student loan payments would count as your “contribution.” The benefit could be especially significant for recent graduates, who often have moderate incomes ($58,000 to start, on average) and high levels of debt (an average of $33,000 for federal borrowers aged 25 to 35). Does anyone know about this? I hope so. The Biden administration has created an unprecedented number of programs to help average people, increase manufacturing and jobs and generally expand the economy from the bottom up. And yet, most people are either unaware of it or frankly, don’t care. And yet all the polling says they do care about it and think Donald Trump is the guy who will give them the things that Biden has already done.
I was having a quiet evening at home when, suddenly, I received a text. It was my friend Laura, asking if I was free Friday. But I already had plans to get dinner with a different friend—a woman Laura had never met, named Erica.
I yearned to invite Laura along but knew, sadly, that I couldn’t. The laws of friendship dictate that getting dinner with two friends who don’t know each other is impossible, as they come from different, parallel universes.
To bring Erica and Laura to the same dimension—eating dinner with me at an Italian restaurant in the East Village, on the same night, at 7 p.m.—could be disastrous, shattering the friendship multiverse and generating awkwardness at unprecedented levels, with pauses in conversation so long, so vacuous, they’d fill with dark matter, sucking us into a void.
Open Rights Group welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Information Commissioner’s Office consultation on the “consent or pay” model, which is or could be relied upon for processing personal data on the basis of consent. ‘Consent or Pay’ and Data Protection Interferences with our right to privacy and data protection are admissible only and […]