As cannabis growth accelerates in North America, so has consolidation. While Canadian firms had an initial advantage given pot’s legal status there, their US peers have recently gotten a boost as states move steadily toward legalising recreational use. The incoming administration of President-Elect Joe Biden is also seen as improving the likelihood that the US will legalise on the federal level and give US companies that already operate in multiple states a larger market
“[I]t’s not over. We keep going and we’re going to continue to go forward. We have numerous local cases,” Trump told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade before his campaign filed its latest lawsuit.
Klux Klan “Grand Klaliff” Chester Doles, a longtime fixture in the north Georgia white supremacist movement. Doles posted the selfie with Loeffler on VK, a Russian social media site (the pre-Parler stomping grounds of the white supremacist right) over the weekend. Doles — who spent years in jail after beating a Black man nearly to death as part of his white nationalist activism — has been trying to legitimize his “America Patriots USA” group for the last few years, with little success. And here he is. With one hand, Loeffler is claiming that her well-staffed campaign didn’t know who he was when they approached her. Georgians might find that hard to believe; Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon-supporting incoming congresswoman from North Georgia, threw Doles out of a joint rally with Loeffler a month ago.
Bezos, as well as every major employer in America, can easily afford to protect their workers. And as Mitch McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans should know, the richest nation in the world can easily afford to provide every American adequate income support during this national emergency.
That they’re not doing so is disgraceful.
So when Smit was killed in June 2019, some people saw the case as evidence of targeted attacks against white farmers, a rallying point among white minority rights groups and their allies in the US who claim that white farmers are killed at higher rates than other South Africans. That narrative has been upended in this case, after the arrest of three people on murder charges, including Zurenah Smit, 54, Smit’s second wife. Advertisement
For Australia, lessons can be learned from Japan. New Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga used his first overseas trip to visit Indonesia and Vietnam. Suga signed a defence export deal with Hanoi and provided a $670 million low-interest loan to Jakarta. Suga also deepened security relations with Australia through a defence pact.
Suga is making clear and systematic moves to diversify relations and contain Chinese expansion, yet is doing so without the belligerent bluster and crude diplomatic noise found in Morrison’s public displays. Japan has ongoing disputes with China over the South China Sea and tensions remain over Japan’s security arrangements with the United States, yet the two maintain productive and mutually beneficial trade and diplomatic relations.
Former Prime Minister and specialist in Sino-Australia relations, Kevin Rudd, has described Japan’s approach as “do more, talk less”. For attention-hungry Morrison, such a strategy is inconceivable.
Around 200 members of the Proud Boys, a violent far-right group, had joined the marches earlier on Saturday near the Trump hotel. Many wore combat fatigues, black and yellow shirts and ballistic vests, carried helmets and flashed hand signals used by white nationalists. Advertisement
My thought for the day The pedlars of verbal violence and dishonesty are the most vigorous defenders of free speech because it gives their vitriolic nonsense legitimacy. With the use of free speech, the bigots and hate-mongers seek to influence those in the community who are susceptible or like-minded.
Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell on Friday charged that some of his Republican colleagues shouldn’t be sworn in for the next session of Congress, accusing them of violating the U.S. Constitution and attempting to “demolish democracy” by backing President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the November election, which he lost to President-elect Joe Biden.
Suddenly Rush Limbaugh doubts two different outlooks can exist in the same country while ignoring that he has stoked the fires of hate and division for decades. By Karoli Kuns
By embracing a Texas lawsuit to cancel results form Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia, the president pushes the ultimate voter suppression.
“It’s time we address the structural inequalities in our economy that the pandemic has laid bare,” President-elect Joe Biden said last week, as he introduced his economic team.
Of course, not all of them are silent. A group of House Republicans, led by Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mo Brooks of Alabama, are publicly calling on Trump to continue fighting even after the Electoral College legally certifies the election for Biden next week. There has been no rebuke from the Republican leadership to these extremists, not even from leaders who hail from the states where Trump is trying to have legal votes thrown out. The Republican stance, on both the state and federal level, is clear: They wish they could help Trump overturn the election, but they just don’t see a path forward. They were prepared to abuse their power as far as they could to help him, and have hit the wall Unfortunately for Trump, time has run out. Tuesday is the deadline for states to certify their results, and next Monday the Electoral College will finally make Biden’s win official. The results are clear, not because Republican leaders have any integrity, but because voters showed up in large enough numbers to render all these shenanigans effectively moot. Trump will leave office on Jan. 20, and the only people who deserve credit for that are Democratic voters and organizers, who made sure Biden’s win was big enough that it couldn’t be stolen away.
Does he even know China exists and is delivering a 97% cures Freezing not required to 17 countries as he speaks
Donald Trump’s days in the White House are numbered, but that has not stopped him from advancing his administration’s ‘America First’ approach. The outgoing President wants to limit the world’s access to a coronavirus vaccine so that Americans take priority and are first in line to get the jab. He held a vaccine summit at the White House on Wednesday morning (Australian time) and signed an executive order. It was to ensure “Americans have first priority to receive American vaccines”, Mr Trump said.
After decades of chalking up record profits, Australian universities are now mired in a deep crisis. But if we’re going to defend — let alone rebuild — the sector, its champions have to reject the subordination of education to the bottom line.
At least one person has died and more than 450 others have been hospitalised due to a mystery illness that has broken out in southeastern India.
Indian health authorities are baffled by the reason behind why large numbers of residents in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh are collapsing and experiencing seizures and nausea.
Widespread water contamination and COVID-19 have been ruled out as the cause.
If education is nothing but a provider of the “human capital” that will help students get a job, the argument to privatize public education will be far too convincing. Instead, we should look at our schools as institutions to educate kids to be citizens in a democracy with expectations for better lives.
If one were to get into the head of Australian government MP Andrew Hastie, a security tangle of woe would no doubt await. Having been a captain with the Special Air Services and having also served in Afghanistan, he has been none too thrilled by the publicity soldiers he served with have received. The report by New South Wales Court of Appeal Justice Paul Brereton has now been mandatory reading (or skimming) for political and military watchers. Known rather dully as the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan Inquiry Report, it makes the claim that 39 alleged murders were inflicted on non-combatants by Australian special service units when operating in Afghanistan.
Hastie’s speech has a throbbing subtext: containment. Despite professing a belief in the rule of law and transparency, the overwhelming sense from the politician who chairs the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security is that the Inquiry should have been kept indoors. Such bloodied laundry should never have been aired. That, at the very least, would have avoided public discussions about the egregious methods of Australia’s elite warriors, and the decisions behind deploying them in the first place.
Oil giants Shell, Santos, Woodside and Chevron finance the Bureau of Meteorology. Sandi Keane investigates the influence of the influence of the fossil fuel sector over the Bureau’s public documentation.
Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley is asking Australian Border Force and authorities in New South Wales to explain how two international travellers managed to bypass quarantine in Sydney. The pair few into the Harbour city before boarding a domestic flight to Melbourne yesterday. The breach was detected, and they are now in mandatory quarantine in Victoria.
As President Donald Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the presidential election continue to implode, some of his supporters are now endorsing a military coup.
Today loyalist William Barr, Trump’s Attorney General, admitted that the Department of Justice has not found any evidence of widespread voter fraud that would mean Trump won the election. Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis promptly issued a statement saying “With the greatest respect to the Attorney General, his opinion appears to be without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud.” Trump allies told PBS NewsHour correspondent Yamiche Alcindor that Barr’s statement was a “complete betrayal.”
There are voluntary redundancies going on left right and centre. For people who rely on research funding, I think this is the final straw.” University of Western Australia genetic disease researcher Dr Gina Ravenscroft found herself shaking as she read the grant results, on which the employment of her colleagues depended. “It is not a way to live, where you are so worked up and stressed about whether or not you’re going to be able to keep employing people,” she said. “There is just no way that is a sustainable way to fund research.”
The ABC’s charter is to be a critical and questioning voice of government no matter the persuasion. In that capacity it’s never really just a supporting voice of government which Murdoch media tends to be. So to say you won’t find a conservative voice at the ABC is in fact acknowledging the service it is intended to do on behalf of the Australian public. Governments of all persuasions don’t court Murdoch Media because it’s clearly known that it’s far from stable ground. On some occasions Murdoch media courts the left and is made use of in politics but this century those occasions have been rare indeed. (ODT)
“We run news programming during the day and at night we run opinion-based news programming that often shines a light on areas that our competitors either refuse to discuss or worse pretend don’t exist,” Mr Whittaker said. “I would argue that Sky has a much greater diversity of voices than the public broadcaster, for example, where you would struggle to find a conservative news point. “This is our brand value proposition that separates us from the dominance of voices on the left of Australian media.”
The federal Health Department has learnt a thing or two from Scotty from Marketing. It has just announced version seven of the aged care pandemic plan. Never mind that the previous six versions never existed. Expecting accountability from the Coalition government is mere tilting at windmills, writes Dr Sarah Russell.
China’s right to be offended by Australia’s Hypocrisy
Australia has a record of loyal support for Israeli state racism and human rights abuses that puts even the US to shame. In order to change that record, we need to challenge the political forces that have made Australia Israel’s most faithful ally.
When dealing with countries like China and Japan – members of the inscrutable Orient – an issue which must never be forgotten is that of ‘losing face’.
I don’t guess I’m thanking Israel for committing a flagrant act of terrorism. If Israel can murder a scientist in Iran, what is to stop it from murdering people it doesn’t like in other countries, including in the United States? Former director of the CIA, John Brennan, put the reasons for our shocking ingratitude succinctly: This was a criminal act & highly reckless. It risks lethal retaliation & a new round of regional conflict. Iranian leaders would be wise to wait for the return of responsible American leadership on the global stage & to resist the urge to respond against perceived culprits. https://t.co/0uZhyBTM3S
Rupert Murdoch has funnelled Foxtel out of News Corp Australia to a mysterious entity in the secrecy jurisdiction of Delaware. Michael West reports on the secret transactions which appear designed to sell News Corp’s Australian media business.
But there is no great mystery to Trumpian cultism. The answer is as old as human nature itself.
The two philosophies routinely viewed as polar opposites on the political spectrum are communism and fascism. To many, this distinction seems ludicrous given that, under both systems, brutal dictators emerged, millions of people were killed, and fundamental freedoms and human rights were often viciously suppressed.
For four years America teetered on the brink of fascism, and I have no doubt that Trump’s reelection would have pushed it over the edge. I’ll be the first to admit that Biden is no panacea to what ails America, and Congress is still inundated with mendacious and hypocritical Trump sycophants like Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and Mitch McConnell. So, while some may lament that Trump wasn’t given four more years, I still tremble at the thought of what those four more years would have wrought.
Fox and Friends host Will Cain claimed Trump can steal the election from Biden if enough state legislators ignore the 2020 presidential election vote entirely and switch the electors to Trump.
“Life is going to return to normal,” Joe Biden promised Thursday in a Thanksgiving address to the nation. He was talking about life after Covid-13, but you could be forgiven if you thought he was also making a promise about life after Trump.
In a widely publicized article, Jake Smyth and Kenny Graham, two self-styled “Hospo Gurus” from Sydney, derided Australia’s hospitality workers as “whining” and “self-entitled.” Hospitality workers invite these shock jocks to take a look in the mirror.
A number of prominent Trump supporters on social media platforms like Twitter and Parler have called for Republicans to boycott the Georgia runoff elections if the president’s claims of voter fraud are not taken seriously. Lin Wood, a QAnon conspiracy theorist who is leading pro-Trump legal challenges int he state, tweeted last week that “I will NOT vote in GA runoff” if those false allegations of widespread fraud were not resolved by the state’s Republican leadership.
Australia’s prime minister may not want to admit his country’s guilt. Australia’s defence force chief may not want to admit his country’s guilt. Australians may not want to admit their country’s guilt. But admit it, they must.
Homers may have shunned masks because Trump told them too. But if Marges wear them, Homers can too. Homers may parrot “hoax” and “fake news” but if Marges pay attention to facts and science, Homers can be convinced to do the same. Homers may back the blue, but if Marges can weep for George Floyd, Homers can understand that recognising black lives matter is simple human decency. Marge might also help Homer realise that many who claim to represent him are frauds. Those who he has been listening to — Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Rush Limbaugh — make more money in a day than Homers make in a year. These Sideshow Bobs are the true elites. Do Rupert Murdoch and his fellow Mr Burns billionaires give a damn about Homers? When was the last time a Homer was spotted at Mar-a-Lago? Still, most Homers will continue to vote Republican. That’s who they are. But they are not immoral and they have not been lost to Trump’s cult. They backed Trump because he was their candidate. Now the Trump show has been canceled. Sooner or later the repeats will fade away. And the Homers will move on. Many Homers don’t know it yet, but Joe Biden cares more about them than Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz ever will. Some have figured this out already. In time it might dawn on the rest. And when that day comes, they may quote their cartoon namesake: “D’oh!”
Media Matters has compiled a non-exhaustive list of his various deranged election conspiracy theories and has ranked them from “extraordinarily” to “completely.”
![Chief of the Australian Defence Force General Angus Campbell delivers the findings from the inspector general of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan Inquiry, in Canberra on November 19, 2020 [Mick Tsikas/Pool Photo via AP]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/AP_20324032677944.jpg?resize=770%2C513)
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.