turgidity...

I’m impressed with federal Education Minister Alan Tudge’s contribution to the national curriculum debate (“Tudge push on history ‘plays politics with children’,” October 23-24). The minister’s farcical statement: “Our society is the wealthiest, most liberal, most egalitarian and most tolerant society that has ever existed in all of humankind” is so facile and biased I suggest it has a place as a discussion proposition in upcoming HSC history exams. This would provide a broad platform for students to discuss their understanding of nuance, perspective and complexity when analysing the impacts of significant events in Australian history.

- Adrian Brown, Cammeray

 

 

gnats

Consistency, persistence and stubbornness. They can be tremendous virtues, so long as you are sure you are right.

And, if you're not, then as economist John Maynard Keynes is said to have stated: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"

National Party leader Barnaby Joyce and his key lieutenants may finally have capitulated after months of internal bickering over whether to endorse a carbon emissions reduction target at the upcoming climate summit in Glasgow.

The last-minute deal was short on detail, with vague mentions of regional jobs and uranium but nothing on renewables.

wheelFrom bikes to booze, the global supply chain is on its knees

 

The integration of the global supply chain has served the world well for years. However, it’s now under pressure just as the economy recovers.

 

By Shane Wright and Nick Bonyhady

 

Before a new bicycle hits the road or a mountain trail, it has usually already travelled thousands of kilometres.

malcolm...Barbados Elects Its First Head of State, Replacing Queen Elizabeth

 

The country’s Parliament chose Sandra Mason, the governor general, to assume the symbolic title, a decisive move to distance itself from Barbados’s colonial past.

 

The island nation of Barbados has elected a female former jurist to become its next head of state, a symbolic position held since the 1950s by Queen Elizabeth II, as the country takes another step toward casting off its colonial past.

orstraya

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the rest of the world usually pays very little attention to Australia.

Sometimes we're mixed up with Austria. Sometimes, the US president appears to momentarily forget the prime minister's name. 

new cars

If you ask Scott Morrison about electric vehicles he throws poor, and inaccurate, marketing lines at you, such as they will “end the weekend”, they “won’t tow your trailer – it’s not going to tow your boat”, as he did when former Labor leader Bill Shorten backed fairly modest objectives concerning the electrification of our vehicle fleet in the run-up to the last election.

Our nation drifts further and further behind the world on electric vehicles, or as Volkswagen puts it, Australia is becoming “an automotive Third World”.

merdier

The European Union has postponed the next round of free trade talks with Australia for a second time amid simmering anger over Canberra's decision to cancel a $90 billion submarine contract with France.

rich

At a recent IMF event on recovering nations from the coronavirus pandemic, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that the COVID-19 coronavirus plunged over 100 million people into poverty, with over 4 billion people with little or no social support. 

rat...

Matt Canavan’s attempt to force the government to release the modelling on its net-zero plan was a transparent attempt to further scorn the emissions cuts he abhors.

 

The government’s refusal to do so, defying a Senate order, capped off another unedifying week for accountability and openness in government.

The week-long charade of the Nationals’ ham-fisted negotiations over net zero was what dominated headlines, with both Coalition parties extracting what they wanted from the drawn-out drama.

 

But it was some complicated parliamentary parlour games that eminent barrister and anti-corruption advocate Geoffrey Watson described as having “trashed integrity” and “a new low”.

 

piggies

How to justify making grants not recommended by the relevant department? Easy – just say you do.

That’s what is disclosed by Freedom of Information requests into the wealth of federal government not-recommended-but-given grants.

And when National Party ministers get their hands on a pork barrel, public servants’ analysis of projects’ suitability and priority seems to matter particularly little.

targetsMedicare cuts prove the Coalition is bad for our health

 

By Michelle Pini | 21 October 2021, 7:00am |  37 comments |  951 | 

(Cartoon by Mark David / @MDavidCartoons)

 

diet

'Who the Hell Shrunk Mike and Why?' Twitter Explodes Over Pompeo's Dramatic Weight Loss...

 

Two months ago, Pompeo joined Sean Hannity on Fox News to rip into the Joe Biden administration over its "panicked" tactics in Afghanistan. However, all Twitter was obsessed with was his slimmer looks.Ex-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has left the public curious following his appearance on Fox News this week, as many social media users noticed he'd lost a staggering amount of weight.

 

will...

As the Taliban rapidly crushed US-backed Afghan forces, many politicians, pundits, and military leaders expressed surprise at having overestimated an ally’s will to fight and underestimated the enemy’s. Similarly in 2014, after the Islamic State (ISIS) routed US-backed Iraqi forces, President Obama endorsed the intelligence assessment that “predicting the will to fight…is an imponderable.” 

 

That attitude reflects political and military leaders’ continual discounting of research, supported and known by many of those leaders, on the importance of sacred values and spiritual strength to the will to fight. It may remain “imponderable”—and attendant security challenges seemingly intractable—so long as it continues to be viewed through a narrow lens of instrumental, utilitarian rationality.

 

 

psaki

Earlier this week, the New York Post reported that at least 2,000 migrant children and teens might have been taken to suburban New York since 8 August. 

Netizens have trolled White House press secretary Jen Psaki after she appeared to have tried to make a joke when responding to a reporter's question on migrants.

The journalist said he wondered why the Biden administration is reportedly flying "thousands of migrants from the border" to Florida and suburban New York "in the middle of the night".

game...

Russia previously announced the suspension of operations of its permanent mission in NATO, as well as the activities of the alliance's military liaison mission and NATO information office in Moscow. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has stated that it was NATO, who "buried" the idea of consultations with Moscow. He added that the Kremlin and the western alliance hadn't had exchanges for a long time ahead of Russia deciding to pull the plug on bilateral communications on 18 October.