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CARRIED unanimously, Councillor Tony’s Judge’s motion to protect the iconic poinciana trees in Woolgoolga’s town centre sailed through City of Coffs Harbour’s council meeting on Thursday 9 May 2024. Importantly, point four of the motion provides longevity to the decision to protect the trees and requires transparency regarding any future proposals to remove the trees....

The post Council votes to protect Woolgoolga town centre’s iconic poinciana trees appeared first on News Of The Area.

The ironic result of the triumph of the machine may be the creation of an ecosystem in which supra-rational gnostic appeals flourish.

James Fallows has a fascinating analysis of that weird rally last Saturday: Among Donald Trump’s virtues is that he does not drink. That is useful to remember in considering his current speaking style. On Saturday night Deb and I sat through the nearly two-hour entirety of his rally performance at Wildwood, on the Jersey shore, as televised by Fox. The whole thing is archived here, courtesy of Right Side Broadcasting. To me this version of Trump sounded genuinely different from the crowd-pleasing showman who rode televised rallies to success (and big audiences for the cable outlets) in 2015 and 2016. Maybe it’s just that his material is now so familiar and tired. Maybe it’s that Trump has nearly exhausted the “what will he say next??” Evel Knievel-style suspense and excitement of his live shows. Maybe it’s that he goes on at such length. Whatever: the result is less “outrageous” than … boring. It could also be that there is something more visibly wrong with him.

Whether there’s something in my teeth.

Whether my breath smells like fish after eating fish, or whether it smells like fish anyway.

Whether I look older now than I do in any given picture.

Whether my stomach is sticking out.

Whether I’m yelling.

Whether there is a slight chance someone may discover that I’m wearing underwear.

Which shirts make me look wide.

When anything jiggles.

Whether I should just give up.

Frances Coppola looks at the rise of Global and reveals that much of the UK’s radio network is controlled by an opaque offshore entity

The Bulwark is featuring a fascinating piece today about Trump and fascism, a very urgent topic: IN THE INITIAL, HEADY DAYS after Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over Donald Trump, many public commentators played down Trump’s threats of not leaving the White House quietly, with some outright dismissing concerns about his electoral lies. Others, though, saw Trump for exactly who he was—and his actions for exactly what they were, even from the outset. One of those discerning voices was Federico Finchelstein, a professor at the New School who studies the history and dissemination of fascism. Just a few days into Trump’s refusal to concede, Finchelstein authored an op-ed in the Washington Post linking Trump directly to a series of previous authoritarians who clung to power, helping introduce Americans to the term auto-golpe (self-coup). It was one of the most prescient pieces of analysis of America’s post-election troubles—vindicated especially on January 6th, when Trump helped sic insurrectionists set on violently overturning the election results.

Life will stand a better chance against climate change if we mix big- and small-picture thinking.

The post The Case for Scientific Transculturalism appeared first on Nautilus.

“Why Hannibal Lecter?” And has a thing for “the late, great Hannibal Lecter,” a “wonderful man.” What a catch! Cohen will be back to testify before this goes live, so I’m bailing. Enjoy. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

I’ve spent most of my life as an advocate for a more peaceful world. In recent years, I’ve been focused on promoting diplomacy over war and exposing the role of giant weapons companies like Lockheed Martin and its allies in Congress and at the Pentagon as they push for a “military-first” foreign policy. I’ve worked at an alphabet soup of think tanks: the Council on Economic Priorities (CEP), the World Policy Institute (WPI), the New America Foundation, the Center for International Policy (CIP), and my current institutional home, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft (QI). Most of what I’ve done in my career is firmly rooted in my college experience. I got a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Columbia University,... Read more

Source: Reflections on Student Activism appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Who do we wish to be? In conversation at The Ink, Eddie Glaude, Jr., Princeton professor of African American studies, ponders, in essence, “Who do we take ourselves to be?” in the wake of 50 years of Reaganism, Thatcherism, neoliberalism. That framework is collapsing. What kind of society have we created? Madison and others insisted on the importance of character, that we had to be certain kinds of persons in order for democracy to work. And this 50-year run has exacerbated some of the distortions in what makes us who we are. We’ve always dealt with the dangerous and disfiguring effects of white supremacy, of patriarchy, of class ideology. But over the last 50 years, they’ve congealed in a particular sort of way. For democracy to work, we have to admit that we have to become better people. If we are the leaders that we’ve been looking for, then we have to become better people. And if we’re going to be better people, we have to build a more just world, because the world as it’s currently organized actually distorts our sense of self, our relationship with each other.

Zoë Garbett on a tense London mayoral race, how the Greens plan to push Sadiq Khan, and how she got her seat

For this week's upcoming Doctor Who adventure, former showrunner Steven Moffat regenerates into a freelancer to write the episode "Boom."

On 12 October, as Israel indiscriminately bombed Gaza, the French police fired tear gas and water cannons at protestors gathered in Paris. Days earlier, the country’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin had called for local authorities to ban pro-Palestine demonstrations, citing supposed threats to public order. The Hamas attack on 7 October was treated in France […]

Hi there, just stopping by to thank you for your loyalty. It’s flattering, really, how you find a way to wedge me into every email, team meeting, and LinkedIn post.

Look, you and I both know why I’m summoned so frequently. I am to vocabulary what a vintage wine is to a dinner party—a not-so-subtle attempt to impress. Like a bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild, I am plucked from the linguistic cellar and dusted off to add sophistication and depth to any conversation.

After all, why settle for the tragically impotent verb “use” when you can utilize “utilize” to showcase your rock-hard lexical prowess?

With me, you’re rising above the plebs. You’re parading your intellect down the boulevard of erudite elitism, waving at the adoring masses who marvel at your linguistic finery.

You know, there’s a reason why my nickname is The Architect. I transform your ideas into such lofty cathedrals of thought that your audience can’t help but gaze upwards, awestruck by the towering complexity of your language and superior cognition. Hope they have a good chiropractor for that neck strain!

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Frasier, Community, IWTV, The Boys, Doctor Who, Creature Commandos, The Walking Dead Universe, Agatha & more!

Tenants are paying fees to have their credit scores lowered, among other dubious services.

Given its intimacy with the body and deep play on form and function, furniture is a ripely ambiguous artform of its own

- by Emma Crichton Miller

Read at Aeon

For someone who’s endured trauma, an eating disorder might be one of the aftereffects. That should inform their recovery

- by Giulia Suro

Read at Psyche

An analysis examines the continuing rise in U.S. credit card delinquency through the share of people late on their payments and the share of debt that’s past due.

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Broadcasters and politicians say they fear her "abrupt" exit from the station means "excellent journalists are at risk for simply doing their job and asking robust questions".

The Grayzone has obtained a dossier detailing the identities of the Zionist hooligans who assaulted UCLA anti-genocide student protesters. It was sent to LA police, but no arrests have been made. And the cops still can’t explain why they disappeared for hours during the mob attack. On April 30, thirty people were injured when a mob of Zionist hooligans savagely assaulted the pro-Palestine UCLA encampment shortly before midnight. For over three hours, local and campus police stood down as the […]

The post UCLA attackers exposed: meet the violent Zionist agitators LA police haven’t arrested first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post UCLA attackers exposed: meet the violent Zionist agitators LA police haven’t arrested appeared first on The Grayzone.

Aussie intel cutout Omni Executive accused of leveraging ties to abusive units in Afghanistan to rake in massive contracts. The firm allegedly inked the no-bid deals while conducting warrantless domestic spying ops. A whistleblower complaint obtained by The Grayzone alleges industrial scale corruption by three former SAS operatives linked to a private firm, which operates as a “front company…for deployable, offshore covert or clandestine intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities” on behalf of the Australian government. The document, submitted anonymously by […]

The post Corrupt Australian firm busted as intelligence front first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Corrupt Australian firm busted as intelligence front appeared first on The Grayzone.