Labor has labelled its changes to the safeguard mechanism as the best chance in a decade to cut emissions from big polluters as the government continues on a collision course with the Greens over new fossil fuel projects.
Source: Safeguard a ‘once in a decade’ chance to cut emissions - Michael West
The government has “significantly underestimated” coal and gas emissions in its Safeguard Mechanism to curb big carbon polluters, according to new analysis by Climate Analytics. Callum Foote reports.
Source: New Report: coal and gas emissions “set to soar” under Safeguard Mechanism - Michael West
Murdoch propaganda in your face
It was the scare campaign of the week. Treasurer Jim Chalmers suggested a few superannuation tweaks might be in order and the backlash in corporate media was savage. What’s the scam?
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s brothers are still fugitives in hiding from a corruption inquiry and the NSW Liberal Party still has 20 seats to fill with candidates with the state election only 4 weeks away on the 25th of March.
The latest prison figures show state and federal government departments are still failing First Australians, as Alan Austin reports.
Source: Prisoner numbers declining but Indigenous people still overrepresented
Settlers are the only means in not watching Israel depopulate. Give away free land to people with nothing first steal the land.
a new study led by Assaf Hochmann at Hebrew University, finding that extreme heat waves in Israel will increase 600% over the next 80 years. Not only will this change strike Israel but also Egypt, Syria, Jordan and southern Turkiye, with the potential for thousands of deaths annually from heat stroke among those countries. Heat waves have already become seven times more frequent and are now longer, since 1960. Schuster notes that the Levant basically had no winter season this year.
Informed Comment
Former American envoy to Tel Aviv Daniel Kurtzer also called Israel’s move to legalize settler outposts a “significant violation of a commitment that the Israeli government made in writing” to dismantle “illegal settlements.”
Source: Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community | Common Dreams
In his new book Mute Compulsion, Søren Mau argues that to understand and end capitalism, we need to analyze how it not only subordinates the poor to the rich but in fact exerts economic power over everyone — including capitalists themselves.
Source: Capitalism Makes Everyone Bend to Its Will, Rich and Poor Alike
It’s the job of Andrew Bolt et al but it’s not working down under
Carlson’s job is to make money for Fox, not tell the truth.
Source: Tucker Carlson Deserves a Raise for His Shameless Lies
China isn’t Murdoch Media
China called for an immediate cease-fire in Ukraine so that negotiations can begin for peace and rebuilding. It called for respect for sovereign borders – which seemed like advice to Russia to withdraw.
Source: China releases 12-point plan for peace in Ukraine - Pearls and Irritations
The lies told proved
( Middle East Monitor) - Israeli occupation authorities have submitted plans to build 7,157 new settlement units in the E1 area that would bisect Palestinian contiguity in the occupied West Bank, Israeli media reported on Thursday. This is part of the annexation pledges made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his far-right partners in the government coalition. Israel demolishes Palestinian homes and approves new Israeli settlement homes – Cartoon According to The Times of Israel, the Civil Administration High Planning Subcommittee convened for the first time on Wednesday and Thursday since the establishment of the new government, advancing the
Source: Israel submits Plans for 7,000 new Squatter-Settlement Units in Palestinian West Bank
From African gang violence to persecuted white South African farmers, Peter Dutton has history when it comes to race-baiting and the craziest of claims. And ones, I suspect, that are baseless.
Source: Making stuff up - » The Australian Independent Media Network
In the world of Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, the Albanese Government’s ‘Voice’ process is a stunt to get re-elected. This is the same Susan Ley that added the extra ’s’ to her name in her 20s because
“I read about this numerology theory that if you add the numbers that match the letters in your name you can change your personality,” she told The Australian.
“I worked out that if you added an ‘s’ I would have an incredibly exciting, interesting life and nothing would every be boring. It’s that simple.
“And once I’d added the ‘s’ it was really hard to take it away.”
In the Morrison Government, as the Environment Minister
Ley approved a Coalition decision to scrap 176 out of 185 recovery plans designed to prevent the extinction of threatened species and habitats, including the Tasmanian devil. This was despite a government call for feedback, which received 6701 responses, all disagreeing with the proposed removal of the recovery plans.
Source: Negative nellies - » The Australian Independent Media Network
Brockovich’s Friday night Town Hall filled the auditorium and also two overflow rooms at East Palestine High School
Source: Activist Erin Brockovich Leads East Palestine Residents in Town Hall Meeting
Indigenous held forests absorb carbon; non-Indigenous held forests produce carbon. Chicken and pig farms bad for the animals and the climate.
Source: Environment: humans must care for our travelling companions: earth’s animals, plants and ecosystems
(The Conversation) – About a decade ago, the world’s biggest economies agreed to crack down on multinational corporations’ abusive use of tax havens. This resulted in a 15-point action plan that aimed to curb practices that shielded a large chunk of corporate profits from tax authorities.
But, according to our estimates, it hasn’t worked. Instead of reining in the use of tax havens – countries such as the Bahamas and Cayman Islands with very low or no effective tax rates – the problem has only gotten worse.
A recent meeting of ministers generated a swag of the usual cliched statements, but also some hope of strengthening our relationship with our closest neighbour. But there are obstacles on both sides of the Timor Sea, reports Duncan Graham from Indonesia.
Source: AUKUS and B-52’s stand in the way of a treaty with Indonesia - Michael West
Cuba is a 45-minute flight from Miami. American Airlines flies there six times a day. I urge all of you to make the trip, if you are able. I’ve been to 70 countries around the world. But rarely have I had my eyes opened, rarely have I been so enlightened, like on this trip to Cuba. Go to Cuba. Experience the culture, the music, the poetry, and the history. Learn how the Cuban people live and see how resilient they are.
Our government is simply wrong on Cuba. We would benefit from full diplomatic relations right now. We would benefit from a close working relationship with the Cuban government and the Cuban people. The Cuban people love Americans. Almost everybody in the country, literally, has a relative living and working in the United States. It’ll be a lot of work, but it can be done. And we would all be better off for it.
Russia’s attempt to blackmail Germany and the rest of Europe into giving up its support of Ukraine by cutting energy supplies has failed, chancellor Olaf Scholz has said on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion attempt of its western neighbour. “Those who look at the past year will see: the Russian president has failed,” Scholz said in a statement.
America has arrived in Australia in the form of the LNP
A group of conservative Liberals are war-gaming to roll party president Greg Mirabella and the more moderate members of the powerful administrative committee, prompting fears of a conservative takeover of the Victorian division.
Source: Victorian politics: Conservative Liberals plan to roll party president Greg Mirabella
So now that there are rumours that there may be some changes to the taxation benefits to people with superannuation balances of over $3 million, it’s Labor who’ve run out money and not the Liberals who doubled the debt BEFORE Covid hit and tripled it after. No, Labor have run out of money and they’re looking to raise revenue to balance the budget! Outrageous. The Liberals never worry about balancing it; they just tell us that they intend to because that’s what good housekeepers do.
Greg Sheridan, in his opinion piece of Tuesday 21 February, provides yet another display of his spiteful, vacuous journalism – his erroneous claims that I am not the progenitor of the APEC Leaders’ Meeting, and that my views on Australian strategic policy are eccentric and at odds with the US alliance. PJ Keating reply to Greg Sheridan – The Australian, 21 February
Source: The “little Americans” that populate Australia - Pearls and Irritations
People across the world have watched the thousands of Israelis demonstrating against their government with at least some bemusement. After 75 years of Israel denying its own agency in the terrible catastrophe it has inflicted on the Palestinians, its new government is now blamed for doing something most Israeli governments have never done – openly discussing the aim of controlling the whole of Palestine through an exclusive Jewish apartheid state.
Source: The illusion of Israeli democracy has been shattered | The Electronic Intifada
Tens of thousands of Israelis have filled the streets of major cities in recent weeks to protest significant judicial reforms that the new far-right Israeli government, elected late last year, is seeking to ram through the Knesset with a narrow majority. These developments have been framed as a major constitutional crisis and have brought on talk of an Israeli “civil war” and drawn the intervention of concerned outsiders. This crisis, however, is not about diverging from the essence of the Israeli political system, but rather about continuing it. To understand why, one must look at the origins of Israel’s constitutional crisis, which was and continues to be shaped by the state’s desire to prioritize settler colonialism over liberal governance.
Source: The settler-colonial origins of Israel’s constitutional crisis
Recent court disclosures prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt: Fox News knowingly lies to its audiences. But corporate media is fundamentally a vehicle for profit-making, which means that both right-wing and liberal outlets have an incentive to lie.
Source: The Root of Fake News Is the Corporate Lust for Profit in Media
Right-wing figures agreed with Greene’s sentiment that political differences between the left and right have made a national divorce inevitable
From his bed in the Hospice Jimmy Carter has grown and stands taller than Presidents who followed him
Carter’s prescient 2006 book Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid elicited a storm of criticism from many Jewish organizations and leaders. It prompted condemnation from the powerful lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Council (AIPAC), and leaders such as Alan Dershowitz, who outrageously branded Carter’s judicious book “a foray into bigotry.” Carter has been the only American president with the candor to call out Israel for mirroring apartheid policies of South Africa. So it’s timely to revisit the message, consequences and reactions to that book, as his passing approaches. Since AIPAC and Dershowitz have lost the credibility they once had, their branding and character assassination of Carter doesn’t reflect so badly on him, when you consider the source.
The McCarthy-Trump-Fox complex is internally consistent — connecting authoritarianism, right-wing Republican hackery, GOP political fundraising, Trump-boosting ratings outrage, and greed. It’s a vicious cycle designed to sow anger and distrust while advancing the power and wealth of McCarthy, Greene, Trump, Carlson, and Fox News.
This is the same combination that fueled Trump’s presidency and led to his first attempted coup. Will it lead to a second?
Source: A Second Attempted Coup? The McCarthy-Trump-Fox-Complex | The Smirking Chimp
In the past year, additional proof has emerged proving the West’s provocation of Russia to give it its “Vietnam” in Ukraine.
Consortium News on Feb. 4, 2022 warned that the U.S. was setting a trap for Russia in Ukraine, as it had in Afghanistan in 1979 and Iraq in 1990, to provoke Russia to invade Ukraine to provide the pretext to launch an economic, information and proxy war designed to weaken Russia and bring down its government — in other words, to give Russia its “Vietnam.” Twenty days later Russia invaded.
Source: More Evidence Emerges That US Wanted Russia to Invade
Did you hear QANTAS made a “record profit”? Did you hear Joyce tell you the price won’t come down to where it was pre-Covid? Did you hear QANTAS was a “superior product”? Currently, all corporations seem to be singing the same song. Banks, Mining, Gas and Oil.
It costs you over $1000 to disconnect your gas isn’t that legalised extortion? It costs to change your bank loans. It “costs” your spending isn’t driving inflation corporate profiteering is.
New research points the finger at excess corporate profits as a core driver of inflation and says there’s scant evidence of a wage-price spiral in the Australian economy.
Source: Corporate profits fuelling inflation, research finds - Michael West
Despite the grilling he got in two separate parliamentary hearings last week, Reserve Bank governor Dr Philip Lowe’s explanation of why he was preparing mortgage borrowers for yet further interest rate increases didn’t quite add up. There seemed to be something he wasn’t telling us – and I think I know what it was.
Source: Lowe’s secret inflation fear: big companies’ price-setting power - Pearls and Irritations
When banks go bust who pays?
The question is whether the Fed would see depositors as “systemically important,” but the rush to compete for deposits shows that they are. Arguably deposits are the people’s weapons of mass destruction: pull them and the banks go down. The banks need our deposits; and we need the sort of self-sustaining financial system in which money, credit and banks are treated as public utilities, accessible by and accountable to the people whose full faith and credit backs them.
Source: What Will Happen When Banks Go Bust? Bank Runs, Bail-Ins and Systemic Risk - scheerpost.com
IA applauds the Palaszczuk Queensland Labor Government’s new stance on drug law enforcement, sensibly stating that drug use is primarily a health issue, not one of criminal justice.
Source: The Qld end to the beginning for the failed War on Drugs?
Walk into a Bank or BHP and you won’t find Democracy or individuals but we nevertheless support them.
By design, the corporation is not a democratic enterprise. Its management is hierarchical, its imperatives are growth and profit, and its structure is a de facto class system of owners, managers, and workers. You could argue that in the earliest days of capitalism, something like the concept of free enterprise actually existed: firms of various sizes competed, with even the largest dwarfed in both size and influence by most nation states. Today, the world’s biggest companies not only wield monopolistic power and exert considerable political influence, but in many cases have market capitalizations exceeding the GDPs of entire countries.
Source: The Capitalist Road to Serfdom
Emails and text messages showing Fox News executives and hosts dismissing the same election conspiracy theories they aired improved the chances that Dominion Voting Systems will win their case against the network, legal experts say.
Australia has spies but is not very good as far as the craft. Even our allies have been known to spy on us. Israel’s Mossad and America’s CIA to name two have been spying on us for years. We on the other hand spied on Timor Leste much to our shame and embarrassment. We got caught and tried to cover it up badly, It’s the very nature of ASIO to keep secrets misinform and practice the art of fakery. So is this what we are seeing being done here in the name of openness? It’s a pity our spy chief bears the name of Burgess another notorious Russian spy in the UK,
A hive of foreign spies busted by Australia’s intelligence agency in the past year was reportedly linked to Russia.
Source: Spy hive uncovered by ASIO reportedly linked to Russia
Their choice has never been free due to the over 60 year blockade by America
Over 220,000 Cubans streamed out of the country toward America, many of them through Nicaragua and then across the Mexican border, a dramatic increase from the 39,000 in 2021. Leading the rush to the exit are young people, who represent the future of the country. It’s not quite as large a demographic drop as in Venezuela, which has lost over a quarter of its population since 2015. But combined with a low birth rate and an aging population, the outflow of Cubans threatens the long-term viability of the country.
Israeli notion of Collateral Damage 11 dead 100 some critically wounded. All for the sake of three alleged now-dead suspects. State-sponsored vigilante mayhem the equivalent of a Nazi or KKK raid condemned by 140 nations and only supported by 25% the likes of Nth Korea, Hungary, the Congo, Australia and the USA among others. Israel hypocritically voted against Russia this week having abstained for the past year. According to Netanyahu there simply is and never was a Palestine so there is no “illegal occupation”. The global Jewish community increasingly disagrees.
A daytime Israeli military raid on Wednesday on an apartment in the Palestinian city of Nablus in the Palestinian West Bank spiraled out of control, with the Israeli troops killing 11 persons and wounding over one hundred civilians with gunshots. Some of the injured are in critical condition. The Israelis say that they were after three young men, two members of the “Lion’s Den” resistance group, and the other a member of “Islamic Jihad.” The three were accused of having carried out attacks against Jewish squatters on Palestinian land. The troops killed all three, apparently by blowing up a building in which they were making a last stand.
As the new right-wing Israeli regime ramps up its oppression of Palestinians, the Biden administration has taken its capitulation to Israel to a new and absurd level. After nominating an independent expert to serve on a human rights commission, the U.S. State Department withdrew the nomination because the expert accurately called Israel an apartheid state. A week later, the United States prevented the United Nations Security Council from voting to condemn Israel’s illegal settlements in Palestinian territory.
Source: Biden Administration Takes Its Capitulation to Israel to an Absurd New Level - scheerpost.com
Since weapons have only just started rolling off production lines to build these stockpiles, the scale of war profits anticipated by the arms industry is best reflected, for now, in the 2022 increases in their stock prices: Lockheed Martin, up 37%; Northrop Grumman, up 41%; Raytheon, up 17%; and General Dynamics, up 19%.
Source: Who’s Winning and Losing the Economic War Over Ukraine? - CounterPunch.org
The ebullience with which Qantas chief Alan Joyce announced the airline’s record half year pre-tax profit of $1.4 billion, underscored the jarring disconnect now at play in the company. Michael Sainsbury reports.
Source: Qantas shareholders re-Joyce, not taxpayers, passengers and staff - Michael West
An explosive legal filing reveals evidence showing the network is crooked from top to bottom.
Source: The Corruption at Fox News Is Worse Than You Assumed – Mother Jones
Murdoch has never been in the News or the Trust business. Ratings ,ratings ratings, just as for Trump, is all that matters as far as their business model goes. Murdoch just happens to be far better at the business than Trump. The defamation case against them must prove “mal-intent” to harm Dominion Voting Systems. Surely even in the US that’s a laydown Misere?
Recently released internal Fox communications don’t just reveal the company’s willingness to amplify lies its leaders knew were toxic to American democracy, the emails and texts also reveal that Fox’s viewers are just like most people – even they don’t trust Fox.
Source: Fox insiders admit even Fox viewers don’t trust Fox | Salon.com
On the 3rd of September 2021, the NSW Supreme Court sentenced Shane Dowling (me) to 10 months jail for contempt of court and issued an arrest warrant but the Queensland Human Rights Act gives the right to a “fair hearing” to every Queenslander which I say was breached.
It’s a “right” that will be tested in court if I am arrested but the right to a “fair hearing” guaranteed by a Human Rights Act is something every Australian should have which they currently don’t.
olddogthoughts 