As a beverage, coffee has been popular for a long time, with the discovery of the stimulant effect of the plant in Ethiopia early in the 14th century or thereabout, its cultivation in the 15th century in the Arabian Peninsula, from where it spread throughout Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries1.
In June, I wrote a piece which suggested that when Trump sent in the National Guard to Los Angeles, he was hoping that violence would flare up, so that he could use it much as the nazis used the Reichstag Fire in February, 1933. The Nazis used this as an excuse to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree to suspend the right to assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other constitutional protections, including all restraints on police investigations.
Russell Morris is an Australian singer-songwriter who has been composing, recording and performing music since the late 1960s. Some of his songs have been among my favourites since I was in my teens. He has recently completed his final tour, and we went to see his final concert of this last tour at the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House last Sunday1. The concert hall seats 2,600 people and it was booked out.
Having recently written a long piece about the origin of what was termed neoliberal economics and how it inevitably led to a disgraceful, vacuous, malignant narcissist like Trump being elected to the US presidency1, I decided to have a crack at looking at the effects it has had on the UK and the US populace. This is Part 1 and deals with income inequality, wage stagnation, job insecurity and declining union influence.
There are many Americans who have noticed Trump’s swollen ankles, the large bruises on his hands, and his increasingly incoherent speech, and speculate that he is in rapid terminal decline, and will soon die. The White House itself has announced that Trump is suffering from chronic venous insufficiency1.
Again and again the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) refers to what is being perpetrated by Israel on the people of Gaza as a ‘war’1-3. Everybody who has any understanding of what is going on knows this is a genocide.
I wrote a piece about the religious bastardry afoot in the US about 18 months ago which argued the Christian nationalism was a misnomer, and that christofascism was a much more accurate term1.
As a concept, the sovereign citizen movement, individuals identifying as sovereign citizens or something similar have existed in Australia for decades. These beliefs have been manifest in the various ways these people attempt to dissociate themselves from societal structures1.
While so many modern christians are despicable bigots whose main aim in life seems to be to make life miserable for people who are not like them, perhaps one of the worst was a bloke called James Dobson who founded the ultraconservative Christian organisation Focus on the Family in 1977. He died a day or so ago at the age of 89. Born in 1936 in Shreveport, Louisiana, Dobson was initially a child psychologist who launched a radio show to counsel Christians on parenting1.