“Yes we can. Yes we did.” But did he?
Barack Obama bowed out in fine style, with tears and soaring rhetoric, while the Twittersphere went nuts asking, Where’s Sasha? For reasons unexplained his younger daughter was absent.
He was a good man, who served with dignity, diligence, honour, integrity and intelligence. We will all miss him. Continue reading Barack Obama bows out
US intelligence agencies have briefed both President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump that the Russians may well have information that compromises Trump. They don’t have anything they know directly, but they have information from a credible intelligence source which says that the Russians have information about his finances and about himself personally which would compromise him if released.
This may be why they wanted Trump rather than Hillary Clinton. Perhaps they didn’t have anything really damaging on her. They wanted what they call a “useful idiot” to win. Continue reading Trump compromised?
As people most likely know, from 1 January 2017 some 327,000 pensioners have had their pensions adversely affected by changes in the assets test with around 100,000 losing their pensions entirely. Around 50,000 more will have their pensions increased to receive the full pension. The government is doing this to save $2.4 billion over four years, and, they say, to make the pension system more fair and sustainable.
Unfortunately proponents of the changes are framing this as about wealth, whereas it is actually about income. They are also saying that the changes are progressive, whereas the wealthy go completely free and the ones hit are actually hovering close to poverty, when you consider their income. Continue reading ‘Wealthy’ pensioners pinged
Richard Dennis says that the government should be a model litigant, but if a company did what it is doing to recover Centrelink ‘overpayments’ it would be fraud. Continue reading Saturday salon 7/1
Wallerstein usually doesn’t make short-term predictions, but has made an exception in the case of Trump. He says:
Continue reading Wallerstein looks at the world in the era of Trump
Start stopping now, is the short answer. No new coal mines, oil wells or gas fields, and start decommissioning existing ones now. “Managed decline” is the new imperative.
The New Scientist has predicted the 10 biggest and most important science stories for 2017 (pay-walled) in their bumper three weeks in one Christmas and New Year special issue. Here are some of them.
In March last year Google-owned firm DeepMind developed the AlphaGo system which defeated one of the world’s best Go players, Lee Sedol. Continue reading Science stories for 2017
Every year 20 million people move from the country to the city in China. Within that group is an urban wealthy class, some 5% of the population, and growing, who are responsible for 19% of household emissions. They want to live in big houses, drive 4x4s and adopt a Western life-style.
The very rich generate 6.4 tons of CO2 per capita per year − nearly four times the national average of 1.7 tons. Costa Rica and Thailand are mentioned as countries at a similar level of development, with only one tonne per capita. Continue reading Climate clippings 195
I had a look at the archive, and last January we were confronted with the question One-third of Australian pensioners live in poverty?, an overheating planet, and groups of men humiliating, sexually assaulting and robbing women around the main railway station in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.
A year later it has become clear that opportunistic, small-scale acts of terrorism are going to be with us for a very long time.
Meanwhile Britain voted to leave the EU, Americans shocked the world by electing Donald Trump, and after eight excruciating weeks of campaigning, Malcolm Turnbull fell over the line, and with a dummy spit on election night, and as one Coalition insider said, “with his authority diminished and his judgment is being questioned on multiple levels”, proceeded to try to govern with a polyglot senate. Continue reading Goodbye 2016, hello 2017
