In a statement, Fitch cited three reasons for downgrading the US rating: concerns the US economy is going to deteriorate over the next three years; a high national debt; and repeated political standoffs over managing the country’s finances (specifically, brinksmanship over the country’s self-imposed debt limit, the cap on how much to US can borrow to pay its bills).
Emphasis mine. This honestly makes a lot of sense. This is not something a rational, credible actor does.
People were freaking out about a possible default.
Exactly. It’s not that they think the US can’t pay it’s debts, it’s that they think politicians might throw a tantrum and refuse to. All the talk about financial data is missing the point.
In 2016 a lot of folks were saying we should let Trump win and burn it all to the ground. Everyone always underestimates the stupidity of the masses, and the cult mentality of following someone who is taking away everything you have so they can get richer, so now we have someone who was absolutely the worst candidate with no ability to represent anything but his own desires, and all these people think he’s their new god.
Does anyone remember all the Republicans crying about how Obama was going to declare himself “dictator for life” so he didn’t have to leave the Whitehouse? Isn’t it interesting how every time they raise a ruckus about the other party doing something, it turns out to be just a cover for things their own party is already doing, or in this case was about to do?
There used to be these black guys with posters of obama with a hitler mustache standing somewhere the university I worked at. They would not do anything but stand around with the sign. I assumed someone paid them to create some sort of atmosphere or to get people thinking in a certain way.
There were many ‘opinion’ and general trash journalism articles about Obama using the military to have a coup and stay in power or “hand the US over to the UN” (never even figured out wtf that even meant) and Fox has removed all of them from their site. The only evidence of them is responses from other news articles, like the thread that remains after a user deletes their comment.
Fox News lumped together with trash journalism? I’m shocked!!! Oh wait, it was just gas, carry on.
What I find absolutely hilarious about your comment is that around that time I told my friend (a Trump supporter, but still) that he needed to stop getting his information from Fox, and he expressed outrage that I would think he didn’t research his information. He’s literally the first person who told me of this conspiracy theory, and I had no idea Fox was one of the sources pushing this crazy. So much for his ‘research’.
The idea that drinking bleach has health benefits has been around for a while. There are facebook and youtube “influencers” that peddle this shit in the usual “big pharma doesn’t want you to know this” format.
Internet Comment Etiquette made video making fun of them.
The defense minister closed with an ultimatum: “I call on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a decision and declare that Israel will not establish civilian control over the Gaza Strip, that Israel will not establish military governance in the Gaza Strip, and that a governing alternative to Hamas in the Gaza Strip will be raised immediately.” With these words, the Israeli defense establishment effectively launched a revolt against the Netanyahu government—and the dreams of its far-right flank to flood Gaza with Israeli settlers.
Gallant is far from the only person to press Netanyahu on this matter. For months, President Joe Biden and his administration have called for Israel to work with the Palestinian Authority—the Hamas rival that governs the West Bank—to establish a new administration in Gaza. Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, two former IDF chiefs turned opposition politicians, joined Netanyahu’s government after October 7 on the condition that a committee be created to formulate a Gaza exit strategy. But despite all of this external and internal pressure, no such plan has materialized—for a very straightforward reason: Netanyahu cannot publicly commit to a postwar plan for Gaza that includes Palestinians, because the day-after plan of his far-right partners is to get rid of those Palestinians.
Yesterday, standing at a lectern emblazoned with the words settlement in gaza will bring security, the far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir told a rally of thousands that the only way to defeat Hamas is to “return home” to Gaza and encourage “voluntary emigration” of its Palestinian population—a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. “Tell them,” Ben-Gvir declared, “‘Go to your homes, go to your countries. This is ours now and forever.’” Shlomo Karhi, a hard-right member of Netanyahu’s faction, offered similar sentiments. “In order to preserve the security achievements for which so many of our troops gave up their lives,” he said, “we must settle Gaza, with security forces and with settlers.”
These paragraphs are a decent snapshot of what’s happening politically in Israel if you don’t want to read the whole thing
far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir told a rally of thousands that the only way to defeat Hamas is to “return home” to Gaza and encourage “voluntary emigration” of its Palestinian population—a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.
And “ethnic cleansing” is in turn a euphemism for genocide. Netanyahu and his government’s plan for Palestine is simply genocide.
I disagree that it’s a euphemism. It’s a term with a specific meaning
Ethnic cleansing has been described as part of a continuum of violence whose most extreme form is genocide. Ethnic cleansing is similar to forced deportation or population transfer. While ethnic cleansing and genocide may share the same goal and methods (e.g., forced displacement), ethnic cleansing is intended to displace a persecuted population from a given territory, while genocide is intended to destroy a group.
The Personal Status Law [in Saudi Arabia] requires women to obtain a male guardian’s permission to marry, codifying the country’s longstanding practice. Married women are required to obey their husbands in a “reasonable manner.” The law further states that neither spouse may abstain from sexual relations or cohabitation without the other spouse’s consent, implying a marital right to intercourse.
While a husband can unilaterally divorce his wife, a woman can only petition a court to dissolve their marriage contract on limited grounds and must “establish [the] harm” that makes the continuation of marriage “impossible” within those grounds. The law does not specify what constitutes “harm” or what evidence can be submitted to support a case, leaving judges wide discretion in the law’s interpretation and enforcement to maintain the status quo.
Fathers remain the default guardians of their children, limiting a mother’s ability to participate fully in decisions related to her child’s social and financial well-being. A mother may not act as her child’s guardian unless a court appoints her, and she will otherwise have limited authority to make decisions for her child’s well-being, even in cases where the parents do not live together and judicial authorities decide that the child should live with the mother.
Religion and patriarchal control and oppression of women pretty much anywhere in the world is like white on rice.
Obscene oil wealth that swallows up any attempts to focus on the regimes across the board human rights abuses. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which oversees about $650 billion in assets invests in US and global markets, in twitter, banks, in global sports, in US weapons, in surveillance, in wars… Saudi golf takeover is blueprint for what they want to do everywhere else
Oh yeah, its his party, he's just the face.
It's the offshoot of the same party that led Albert Einstein to distance himself from the concept of Israel back in the late 1940s.
Also, allegedly that most of the reason Hamas got to execute their October 7th plot in the first place was that Bibi had all of those soldiers off intimidating the judges that were overseeing his multiple criminal trials
How much time have you got? I guess the biggest factor is that referendums are hard to pass in Australia, especially when the campaign becomes partisan. And this one was VERY partisan. But also Australia has a particular type of racist ignorance when it comes to our First Nations Peoples and our colonial history in general. We’re now currently the only settler colonial nation that has not recognised its First Nations Peoples in their constitution. Settler colonialism is not a competition, but if it was Australia kind of wins the gold. I say that as a white Australian.
I’m Norwegian and even though the Saami have their own government within the nation state of Norway there are still plenty of people in denial of the apartheid that was done against them.
Then again, nationalism and intellectual suicide go hand in hand.
Racism and lack of bipartisan support were likely huge factors as other commenters said. There was also division between Indigenous people regarding the efficacy of the Voice to Parliament. Some saw it as a great step forward, others saw it as toothless or symbolic, others still believed it would delegitimise their sovereignty over the land. The Opposition latched onto this for their own gains I believe. Together with Fair Australia (conservative lobbying group) they dealed in fear, misinformation and distrust. They absolutely dominated over social media and took control of the narrative very quickly. This became a lot easier for them due to the cost of living crisis. Take a White Australian in the outer suburbs or rural areas, tell them to care about this thing they don’t understand instead of their rising mortgage payments and cost of groceries, when the Opposition is feeding into their latent ignorance and distrust of First Nations people that all Australians have, and you’ve lost them already.
This reads eerily similar, so basically the same parallel that the U.S. and Australia have been struggling with together for the last 20 years (and assuredly before then).
There’s a lot of different views, many with some truths to it. I’ll try to give an answer but please take into account my answer is quite bias too.
The question, unlike the title of the article, the actual vote is on
whether the Constitution should be changed to include a recognition of the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
The problem is, how exactly or what exactly is an Aboriginal/Torres strait Islander voice. It’s not like Australia is voting to not give these groups voting rights like many articles seem to suggest.
It’s about what does this voice mean, do they have the power over government, can they stop laws, does it even help, whose even in it?
And there is no answer real answer, most answers I see are “it’s about creating a voice” or “we want to see Aus support before putting into action” etc (this may have changed later but that was the initial info I was getting), so you basically asked the Australian people to vote into changing the consitution on a potential something? Which for many feels like a permanent change or an unknown thing.
So all the no side had to do was be like “oh if you don’t know, then best to err on the safe side and vote no”. “Who knows what this could do”. “You can always wait and change it later”.
Imo the votes would have been very different if it instead just asked “would you like to see an Aboriginal / Torres strait Islander voice in government” and not touched the constitution. Or if they just made the voice/team/group and showed Aus how helpful it was before asking them to change the consitution.
And (I’m prob showing more bias here) if the yes side didn’t just call everyone racist who looked at the no vote (which I believe many are swing voters), it couldve provided enough time/listening to make changes to the argument that would change the voters. For example if they made it clear that it would just be used to support better decision making and help understanding etc. Though I can’t be too harsh when many of the no side arguments felt objectively like lies.
The same can be said of all the paper/cardboard being used in the food industry - paper straws, cardboard takeaway containers etc are all lined with PFAS and other “forever” chemicals that leach into your food. We really need a law to force companies to disclose the composition of products that come in contact with food.
Disclosure is nice, but it probably won’t change the outcome. As long as things are disposable and cheaper, those things will be used. As always money talks. Instead taxes related to expected lifetime (one use only should be really expensive) and environmental impact (that one is probably impossible to realize) might actually help, but yeah, that in itself cannot be realized without knowing composition.
As a Brit who is old enough to remember the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy/mad cow disease) epidemic, this is astonishingly reckless and dangerous. This is how you get prion diseases. And you don’t necessarily know you have a build-up of deformed prions until decades later.
Hahaha no problem! I appreciate you doing what you do! I love your little updates. It brings me joy each time I see one of the cases progress to the next step
As bad as it is, let’s hope the Situations in Greece and Italy give some real change in climate politics. The fires hit much more people on a personal level as well as the tourism industry compared to the droughts.
In the USA and Canada the right wing responded to the biggest forest fires ever by accusing their opponents of lighting fires to trick people into believing in the climate change hoax. This took down my faith in humanity another notch or two. Greece and Italy both have a strong far-right presence so it wouldn’t be surprising were this same conspiracy theory to emerge there too.
We're all on this bus that's going 150mph towards the edge of a cliff. I know it can be stopped, but the people driving are talking about 'slowing to 120mph by 2050' (but breaking at this pace we will be like 135mph by then) and these armed thugs are protecting them so no other can get up and take the wheel. Call me a doomer all you want but we're fucked.
Accepting this notion I feel like the best thing to do is to harden and make more resilient our ability to survive the extreme weather and tenperatures coming. If we can survive on Mars or whatever we can survive on a warmer Earth.
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