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Sergio Correia, Stephan Luck, and Emil Verner

Republicans have control of the Senate, possibly the House of Representatives too and, backed by his handpicked Supreme Court, Trump can enact his plans to further undermine American democracy with almost unchecked power.

Australians would be naive to think the same toxic currents and ambitions can’t be harnessed here.

Vice-President Kamala Harris called Trump the day after the election to congratulate him, concede defeat and assure him of a peaceful transfer of power.

It’s in stark contrast to the violent insurrection Trump instigated last election, that saw his supporters storm the Capitol building and threaten to hang vice-president Mike Pence for refusing to overturn the election results and declare Trump the victor.

That this man, who is on tape asking Georgia’s top election official to find enough votes to reverse his election defeat, has been re-elected as president is an indictment of US democracy and its political institutions.
Yes, Trump was democratically elected, decisively so, but that does not diminish the threat he poses to democracy. Trump won not only the electoral college vote by sweeping the swing states, but the popular vote too. That does not automatically make his policies democratic. Trump plans to be a dictator “on day one”, beginning mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, as well as sacking thousands of independent public servants and replacing them with political appointees who are loyal to him.

If Trump is re-elected, how does Australia engage with such a powerful ally led by such an authoritarian and unstable leader? More importantly, how can Australia prevent the same slide toward authoritarianism happening in our own democracy?

Comparing a politician to Hitler used to be seen as the quickest way to lose an argument, but this week Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, former US Marine Corps general and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, told multiple news outlets that Trump liked “the dictator approach” to running a country and meets the definition of a fascist. Mr Kelly told The Atlantic, in a conversation confirmed by two sources, that Trump said: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had”.

In any functional democracy, a former White House chief-of-staff going on the record to reveal these comments would represent the end of Trump’s political career. But for Trump that was just Tuesday. Let’s be clear: racism and extremism have always been part of US politics. The late Molly Ivins, a Texan journalist and columnist, once observed that “It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America”. But politics in the United States is less a contest between two rational political parties who disagree on policy issues, than a pitched battle between democracy and authoritarianism.

You don’t have to be David Attenborough to know that coal mines are “nature positive” in the same way as asbestos is lung positive. The timing of the approvals was egregious, but as an example of governments’ fundamentally dishonest approach to halting and reversing biodiversity and habitat loss, it was entirely on brand.

What does nature positive even mean? Well, it actually means that governments have committed to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030. Only if governments said that plainly, it might encourage expectations to stop things that destroy nature, like new coal mines and native forest logging.

But nature positive is a nice euphemism that allows environment departments to talk about restoring nature in their PR pamphlets, while the resources departments keep up a pipeline of projects that are destroying nature in real life.

Nature is in decline. Logging, land-clearing, invasive species and climate change are devastating threatened species and the habitats they live in. In Australia alone, the Black Summer bushfires killed or displaced nearly three billion animals – mammals, reptiles, birds and frogs – almost triple the original estimate, according to scientists commissioned by the World Wide Fund for Nature.

There are many uplifting, hopeful reasons for trans people to carry on fighting. Riley Silverman brings us some of the other ones.

In times of crisis, there are research backed methods to help you get through it.

Assigned Media wants you to live! And, what keeps us steadfast and ready to meet the moment is the example of other members of our community who refuse to let fear or hopelessness keep them from their good work. Whether they’re inspiring us through their advocacy, their creativity, or their humor, these essays by prominent trans writers give us heart.

In the face of this high stakes election, Jay Edidin shares why he chooses to survive.

In the midst of these hard times, Erin Reed and Zooey Zephyr fight for you. Just as the trailblazers of the past fought for all of us to have a better world, they’re fighting for the trans community and for the soul of the country today.

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Any technology created by the US military industrial complex and adopted by the general public was always bound to come with a caveat. To most, the internet, GPS, touch screen and other ubiquitous technologies are ordinary tools of the modern world. Yet in reality, these technologies serve “dual-uses”; while they convenience typical people, they also enable the mass coercion, surveillance and control of those very same people at the hands of the corporate and military state.

On this episode of Follow the Money, Walkley Award-winning journalist Stephen Long joins Alice Grundy to discuss climate change, skyrocketing premiums and serious impact they’re having on inequality.

This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 13 November 2024 and things may have changed since recording.

Pre-order What’s the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website.

Guest: Stephen Long, Senior Fellow and Contributing Editor, the Australia Institute // @StephenLongAus

Host: Alice Grundy, Research Manager, Anne Kantor Fellows, the Australia Institute // @alicektg

Show notes:

Premium price: The impact of climate change on insurance costs, the Australia Institute (November 2024)

Theme music: Pulse and Thrum; additional music by Blue Dot Sessions

Today the Equal Pay Alliance has written to the government ministers and leaders within our political parties responsible for equalities to call for real action to close the pay gaps for racialised people, women, and people with disabilities. At the current rate of progress, it will take hundreds of years to reach a point where […]

The post Equal Pay Alliance Calls for Action on Pay Gaps appeared first on Equality Trust.

Introduction

This is a write-up from an event from the Leading Change Network’s (LCN) Learning Series on Organizing for Liberation: Hope & Solidarity in Global Student Movements for Palestine that took place online on the 12th August, 2024.

Over 60 people from 14 countries joined to hear stories from frontline student organizers in the U.S., Canada, and France. It was moderated by Besan Jaber (activist, researcher, and analyst at Georgetown University) and the panel featured these diverse speakers:

• Corinne Shanahan, student organizer, Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, US
• Ryna Workman, NYU Palestine Solidarity Coalition, US
• Sara Rasikh, U of T Occupy for Palestine, Canada
• Khaled Abu-Qare, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Sciences Po, France

We explored key themes around hope, resilience, and community building that have kept the momentum going.

An Ohio senate bill for access to college credits gets a transgender bathroom ban stapled to it last minute.

Technical issues that took significantly greater time to work out than I expected caused the delay of this database — but I’m proud to release it today. I would like to thank John Jay student Josie-Grace Valerius for her invaluable yeoman’s work helping to construct a usable and organized database from this mass of meetings

For the past year and a half I’ve increasingly focused on using FOIA to scrutinize the Federal Reserve. Before I unveil the crown jewel of what I’ve accomplished so far, I think it's worth stepping back and saying why I’ve undertaken such a broad project. The Federal Reserve is a massive and extremely significant institution. While the basics of monetary policy reach the headlines, it's also a financial regulator, payments provider, and enforcer of a myriad of national security laws, regulations and executive orders. The fact that it is not subject to annual congressional appropriations gives it unique powers and ability to act. The Fed also has significant and unique immunities to the public accountability laws of this country. 

Digital Rights Watch welcomes OAIC landmark determination that Bunnings breached Australians’ privacy with facial recognition

Digital Rights Watch welcomes the determination from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner today on Bunnings’ use of dangerous and invasive facial surveillance technology. This represents a landmark decision and corporate Australia should take as a warning about the use of this technology.

Digital Rights Watch is pleased by the outcome of the OAIC investigation. It represents a far-reaching and significant determination on the legality of facial recognition technology in Australia, clearly setting the rules for all businesses and organisations using or considering using the technology.

Facial recognition technology as used by Bunnings collects sensitive biometric information that can uniquely identify you, similar to your fingerprint. The huge public outcry at the time of the CHOICE investigation showed that Australians are deeply concerned about the use of this invasive tech. Our friends at CHOICE should be commended for their groundbreaking investigation and for tireless advocacy to hold Bunnings to account.

Covert use of facial recognition technology in retail settings and in public spaces impinges on our human right to privacy and normalises surveillance. The technology is prone to inaccuracies and bias, with higher rates of false identification for people with darker skin leading to discrimination.

Introduction

A round up of some of the best articles and guides to help you process the 2024 US election outcome, consider options for moving forward, work with others, and take strategic action. If you have a resource you’d like us to include on this page contact the Commons Librarians.

Riki Wilchins offers some post-election trans polling analysis. 

E.H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939), has a well-deserved reputation as a classic text that helped launch the academic discipline of International Relations (IR). Not only did Carr identify and dissect what would emerge as the two leading schools of thought in IR—utopianism and realism—he also applied a keen eye to the tumultuous decades after the Great War, when efforts to re-establish a functioning international political system foundered on a fundamental disruption to its most important operating principles. Carr framed these in terms of the relationship between power and morality, arguing that the latter had ultimately to accommodate itself to the changing dynamics of the former. Subsequent IR scholarship has mostly located Carr in the realist tradition of the discipline, concerned primarily with the balance of power and pursuit of national interest.¹

Sydney Environment Institute presents

Strategies for a just and democratic climate economy

The economy is an increasingly significant terrain of climate politics. The climate debate has moved on from carbon pricing as the cornerstone of climate economics and is now focused on how climate change is, or should be, reshaping markets, industries and statecraft. However, existing climate agendas have placed significant faith in private capital to lead the transition, failed to wind down the fossil economy, and are becoming ever more entangled with geopolitical tensions and interests.

In this context, debt, equity and insurance markets, the global asset management industry, state industrial and trade policy, ‘critical’ sectors and infrastructures, and international financial institutions and architectures, have become key sites of climate activism. Social movements are developing new and creative strategies to end public and private finance for fossil fuels and combine demands for expanded climate mitigation and adaptation with goals including Indigenous self-determination, workers’ rights, environmental protection and international solidarity. These strategies stretch from pushing existing market and policy structures in a more progressive direction to visions that use climate change as a basis to create a more just and democratic economy.

Introduction

The Commons librarians have put together a handout of recommended resources for the upcoming Degrowth Festival held in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia on the 30 November 2024.

This festival is held by

• Degrowth Network Australia
• Brunswick Tool Library
• Sustain: The Australian Food Network.

More information and free registration here.

Degrowth is an idea that critiques the global capitalist system which pursues economic growth at all costs, causing human exploitation and environmental destruction… Degrowth means transforming societies to ensure environmental justice and a good life for all within planetary boundaries. – From www.degrowth.info

List of Resources

Follow the links below to access each resource.

Subscribe now

Text Originally published Oct. 30, 2024

This article can also be found, in slightly different form, on the Strong Towns Langley Substack. It is shared here with permission. All images were provided by the author.

Beverly Hirtle and Anna Kovner

Fruit pickers and meat workers who fill chronic labour shortages in Australia are being overtaxed and exploited, new research from The Australia Institute has found.

Workers holding Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) visas can be the difference between fruit being harvested or left to rot on the vine.

But, in return for the critical work they do to keep some sectors of our agriculture industry afloat, PALM visa holders pay more tax than Australians doing the same work and find it almost impossible to access their superannuation.

One week contestant of The Bachelorette, Josh Seiter, who faked his own death last year and came out as trans in May has revealed that his non-transition was a “social experiment,” in a stunning display of Hollow Skull Syndrome. But does this weirdly committed vitriolic act against trans people stem from a more intimate source… ?

Australians like to think that we live in a very equal society – where because of Medicare, unlike in the USA, wherever you live you can expect the same level of healthcare.  Unfortunately the data shows the lie to this belief.

Healthcare should be universal, but your postcode has a big impact on life expectancy. People who live in inner metropolitan electorates (the inner parts of Australia’s capital cities) live almost a year (0.8) longer than people in outer metropolitan electorates (the edges of Australia’s capital cities).

But life expectancy falls even more for people who live in electorates outside the capital cities. In electorates where the majority of people live in major regional cities life expectancy falls by more than a year (1.1) compared with outer metro electorates. In rural electorates the results are even worse. Almost half a year (0.4) lower than provincial electorates.

This means that those in inner metro electorates can expect to live on average 2.3 years longer than there fellow Australians in rural electorates.

But this is more than just about the distance from healthcare services. This is about rich and poor. In South Australia the relatively wealthy rural electorate of Mayo has an average life expectancy of 84.5 years, while the relatively poor outer metro electorate of Spence has a life expectancy 4 years lower than that at 80.5 years.

Assigned Media interviews Jack Turban, Director of the Gender Psychiatry Program at the University of California.