The experience left Fox feeling like she had been ‘physically assaulted’. Photograph: Sydney Writers Festival
Credit: Guardian
The Australian children’s book author Mem Fox has suggested she might never return to the US after she was detained and insulted by border control agents at Los Angeles airport.
Fox, who is famous worldwide for her best-selling books including Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes and Possum Magic, was en route to a conference in Milwaukee earlier this month when she was stopped.
She told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation she was questioned by border agents for two hours in front of a room full of people – an experience that left her feeling like she had been physically assaulted.
“I have never in my life been spoken to with such insolence, treated with such disdain, with so […]
President Trump’s travel ban targeting nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries may not have held up in court, but it appears quite successful at keeping plenty of other people out of the United States.
Trump’s order brought with it a swift decline in the number of worldwide tourists and travelers looking to visit the United States, say people in the tourism industry. Some say it could be as damaging to the US tourism sector as the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Online booking websites reported that flight searches from international points of origin to the United States were down anywhere from 6 percent to 17 percent since Trump signed the executive order on Jan. 27. But experts say what’s more alarming is the icy message it sends to the world.
“The US is in danger of taking the same path it took after Sept. 11, which led to a decade of economic stagnation in the travel and tourism sector,” said David Scowsill, president and CEO of the World Travel & Tourism Council. “Strict visa policies and inward-looking sentiment led to a $600 billion loss in tourism revenues in the decade post 9/11.
A panel from Sintesi Fascista by Alessandro Bruschetti
Fascism begins as something in the air. Stealthy as smoke in the darkness, easier to smell than to see. Fascism sets out an ethos, not a set of policies; appeals to emotion, not fact. It begins as a pose, often a deceptive one. It likes propaganda, dislikes truth, and invests heavily in performance. Untroubled by its own incoherence, it is anti-intellectual and yet contemptuous of the populace even as it exploits the crowd mentality. Fascism is accented differently in different countries, and uses the materials – and the media – of the times.
Fascism is hostile to egalitarianism and loathes liberalism. It champions ‘might is right’, a Darwinian survival of the nastiest, and detests vulnerability: the sight of weakness brings out the jackboot in the fascist mind, which then blames the victim for encouraging the kick. Fascism not only promotes violence but relishes it, viscerally so. It cherishes audacity, bravado and superbia, promotes charismatic leaders, demagogues and ‘strong men’, and seeks to flood or control the media. Even as […]
White House Press Briefing Room
The White House blocked a number of news outlets from covering spokesman Sean Spicer’s question-and-answer session on Friday afternoon.
Spicer decided to hold an off-camera “gaggle” with reporters inside his West Wing office instead of the traditional on-camera briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room.
Among the outlets not permitted to cover the gaggle were news organizations President Trump has singled out for criticism, including CNN.
The New York Times, The Hill, Politico, BuzzFeed, the Daily Mail, BBC, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Daily News were among the other news organizations not permitted to attend.
Journalists from several right-leaning outlets were allowed into Spicer’s office, including Breitbart, the Washington Times and One America News Network.
A number of major news organizations were also let in to cover the gaggle. That group included ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Reuters, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and McClatchy.
Reporters from The Associated Press and Time magazine were allowed into the gaggle but refused to attend.
“AP believes the public should have as much access […]
The Colorado River running through the Grand Canyon.
Credit: istock
The south-western United States is almost certain to experience a “megadrought” lasting decades if global warming continues unchecked, researchers have warned.
The once-mighty Colorado river, which has regularly failed to reach the ocean since the 1960s, is already in the grip of the worst 15-year drought on record with the flow of water in the 21st century nearly a fifth lower than the 20th-century average, a new study found.
And scientists warned the river could be reduced by anything from 35 to 55 per cent by the end of this century if nothing is done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Rising temperatures cause increased evaporation from the river, but also prompt plants to use more water.
A paper about the study in the journal Water Resources Research said: “With continued anthropogenic [human-caused] warming, the risk of multi-decadal megadrought in the Southwest increases to over 90 per cent over this century if there is no increase in mean […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
