If Australia wants to welcome Chinese students and the world back, it needs to reflect on the climate into which it is bringing them
Month: June 2020
The national broadcaster has faced savage budget cuts every year since 2013. Its operations are now threatened by further cuts and at least 200 job losses. Dr Martin Hirst discusses whether it’s too late to save the ABC.
We need to get Aunty out of that abusive relationship. Guaranteed funding that the government can’t interfere with is a step in that direction.
Finally, we need to protect the ABC and defend it because privatising it is on the IPA’s “to do” list and they must be stopped at all costs.
As much as the ABC annoys me, I am committed to defending it and fighting for it to have an increased budget. The question is: How do we go about defending the ABC when it won’t defend itself?
Is branch stacking illegal?
No, it is not illegal.
Fighting Fake News with REAL 16/6/20; 70 CH9 Jounalists petitioned aganst this; Branch Stacking isn’t illegal; Secret Tapes and Ch9’s Coverage and the LNP dirt brigade is;
Trump the American role model of irresponsibility (ODT)
But the decision to pull the trigger now was driven, in large part, by the mass anti-racism protests that
via Donald Trump rally a ‘dangerous move’ as coronavirus cases spike in US
Personal trainer Patrick Hutchinson was pictured rescuing an injured man during clashes at a far-right protest in central London on Saturday.
American Economy is in Intensive Care (ODT)
But with rates now at zero, money printing — or quantitative easing as it is called in polite circles — is all they have left.
It’s cash that’s being created out of thin air.
And a huge portion of it is being poured straight into stock markets regardless of what is happening out there in the real world.
The graph above tells the story. In the past few months, America’s central bank has bought more than $US3 trillion ($4.37 trillion) worth of “assets”.
These include US government debt, mortgage debt and other debt securities, using cash it has generated out of thin air, simultaneously driving interest rates down and flooding the economy with cash.
It has spent more than double the amount outlaid at the height of the global financial crisis. And, it appears, we’ve only just begun.
The biggest side effect, however, is that wealth becomes more concentrated among the already wealthy.
If you own a house or stocks or bonds, you’ve become rich without even trying.
via The secret behind the booming stock market in the face of the coronavirus crisis – ABC News
The LNP Piss UP sponsored by CH9 needs to be taken off the front pages (ODT)
It’s not easy being a politician. Every day there are challenges that the average punter doesn’t have to face.
Just take the dilemma that Stuart Robert, Dan Tehan and Simon Birmingham had to face last year when deciding whether to go from Canberra to Sydney for a Liberal Party piss up. They had booked their flights and had their staffers book them into an upmarket Sydney hotel when some pesky intern in the minister’s office had the temerity to ask “but who’s going to pay?”
via Heads they win, Tails you lose! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
On the other hand, as China increasingly looks to be more self-sufficient in food and raw materials, Australia will be first in line to disappear from China’s supply chain.
Australia is a country which has little interest in being an independent nation and therefore is in a paralysed state of infantile dependence, incapable of looking after itself.
“Constructive discussions” with Trump is a moronic concept, if not oxymoronic
via Trump and Morrison: A love affair imperiling Australia’s future
Who is leading who by the nose? (ODT)
So, what is the average American citizen to do confronted by an avalanche of Congressional action benefitting Israel while the United States is going through its most trying time since the Great Depression? Israeli lobbying groups like AIPAC, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) have large budgets, hundreds of staff and full and immediate access to Congressional offices. They even write the legislation that is then rubber stamped by the House and Senate, and although they are clearly agents of Israel, they are never required to register as such under Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
There is no defense treaty with Israel and the Jewish state is no ally, much less a “greatest ally.” It is, in fact, a major strategic liability, involving Americans in regional wars that need not be fought and demonstrating to all the world the risible reality of a military and economic superpower that is being led to perdition during a time of crisis by a ruthless and irresponsible client state.
Tucker Carlson interviewed Major Travis Yates of the Tulsa, Oklahoma police department.
Earlier this week, Yates had said in a radio interview that he does not believe systematic racism exists; he also claimed in that interview that Black people “probably ought to be” shot more by police. The Tulsa police department has subsequently opened an investigation into Yates.
The shit Fox puts out for Trump doesn’t match the shit Trump puts out himself (ODT)
Joe Biden discussed this phenomenon at a Thursday event, saying that because technological advances allowed millions of Americans to see Floyd’s killing on their phones, his death had a greater worldwide impact than that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Over the hours that followed, Biden’s comment was ripped from its context and spun with fake outrage by pro-Trump right-wing activists and trolls, leading to a Fox & Friends segment Friday in which a Fox contributor falsely claimed that Biden had said Floyd “may have been a greater civil rights leader” than King.
How the pro-Trump outrage sausage is made | Media Matters for America
Restaurant (UPDATE)
Police shot and killed Rayshard Brooks, 27, after they responded to a call about someone sleeping in a car. Video shows Brooks running away before he was shot.
Trump pisses off his allies too(ODT)
Although this is not the first time an unarmed Black person has been killed by the police, yet the protests this time are very different. In the past, it used to be mostly a Black versus White affair. However, this time many diverse forces have joined the protests. In some places, even the police and parts of establishment have joined the protests. There is dissent at the highest levels, particularly to the idea that the US Army should be called to deal with the protestors. This poses a very serious challenge for the establishment. This raises the possibility of a fundamental change in the American system. Maybe the Blacks and all other people besides the rich and the powerful will also matter and they all can breathe.
That’s the trick of American violence: It’s labeled so only when it threatens to upset the violence of America’s white supremacist hierarchical order. For those of us who care to see real progress, that means not being fooled by the term “violence” yet again.
via The Violence Didn’t Start With the Protests | The Nation
In the defence of Tucker Carlson his rent boy Striker complains (ODT)
America’s most watched cable news show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, is on the brink of being canceled.
One does not have to spend long in the US or the Caribbean without discovering that the deep wells of hatred and fear created by slavery have not disappeared over the years. In the US, this is reinforced by the legacy of the Civil War which still divides the country to an extraordinary extent, underpinning racism and de facto segregation. More surprising is the fact that in the years since black people supposedly won civil rights in the 1960s, the rest of America has become more like the South in its political culture than vice versa. President Johnson had promised not just “equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and a result,” but the results never came.
President Trump differs from other recent presidents in being a fairly open racist and supporter of violence by a militarised police force. Protesters are denounced as “terrorist” much as they are in Turkey, Egypt, Sri Lanka and other authoritarian states. Once the US was the sheet anchor stabilising governments and regimes, but now it is the turmoil in the US that is sending waves of instability across the world. This is not the way it worked in the 1960s. As Britain slides out of the EU under a right-wing government it will have nowhere else to turn but the US and potentially share in its turbulence. Quips about Stonehenge and the Roman Empire show how far the ruling party in Britain is from understanding that it is only experiencing the first tremors from the US meltdown.
via British leaders have no idea how bad slavery was, by Patrick Cockburn – The Unz Review
The American Coup in Bolivia (ODT)
Pompeo, in January of this year, visited OAS’s Washington office and heaped praise on the organization for the role its audit played in forcing Morales from the country — a move which Pompeo heralded by invoking the long Orwellian U.S. tradition of depicting pro-U.S. military coups as “pro-democracy”:
America’s efforts against Venezuela are buoyed by their success in Bolivia (ODT)
via “Defenders of Democracy” Aren’t Bothered by Its End in Bolivia
In Australia, our education system MUST incorporate the history of our First Nations if we hope to change our attitudes to any significant extent. We need to consult community leaders and involve them in decision making and we need to stop allowing mining companies from destroying heritage treasures tens of thousands of years old.
If we stopped worshipping money, just think how much better our world might be!
We cannot change the past but we can and should make a real effort to ensure our behaviour in the future leaves a history which does not make our descendants ashamed of their ancestors.
And if we are to have a future, we need to start listening to the experts in all of the sciences, not just health!
Britains Ministry of laughter demand all jokes attempts at mockery and irony be submitted for approval before release.(ODT)
“Over the last two weeks, support for Black Lives Matter increased by nearly as much as it had over the previous two years, according to data from Civiqs, an online survey research firm,” Cohn and Quealy wrote. “By a 28-point margin, Civiqs finds that a majority of American voters support the movement, up from a 17-point margin before the most recent wave of protests began.”
“Public opinion didn’t even shift this fast in support of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s,” noted Luntz.
There are also clear signs Trump isn’t handling the moment well. His approval rating has fallen since the protests began. And Joe Biden’s lead over the president in head-to-head polls has increased over the same period. Meanwhile, 67 percent of Americans say that Trump has increased racial tensions, according to a poll from NPR, PBS, and Marist
Trump has attacked the UN, WHO now the ICC insistin America is a law unto it’s ow with no International responsibilities. He Trule is modeling America on Nth Korea (ODT)
The Trump administration is launching an economic and legal offensive on the international criminal court in response to the court’s decision to open an investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan carried out by all sides, including the US.
It got really serious for FOX/TRUMP 5 months out. Trump’s looking for another Breitbart will we see the return of Bannon?9ODT)
via Fox News reportedly launches covert anti-Media Matters effort | Media Matters for America
Transparency out the door (ODT)
“looting is a major problem in America”—just not in the way that the issue has been presented by President Donald Trump and the corporate media, who have spotlighted the property destruction and the stealing of goods that have occurred alongside the demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism over past few weeks.
Scapegoating China for the loss of coal contracts (ODT)
We have to prepare for this shift and our policymakers need to stop misleading coalmining communities on the outlook
via Australia cannot expect China to import and burn coal it no longer needs | Coal | The Guardian
Scott Morrison says protesters should be ‘honest about our history’ but the truth about slavery in Australia is commonly misunderstood
The plight of Indigenous Australians is demonstrated by the light sentencing of the two accused murderers of Lynette Daley, writes Rosemary Joiner.
via The Lynette Daley story: A failure in the justice system for Indigenous Australians
Acts classed as “criminal” have historically provided marginalized people with economic and political power. This is, in part, why they were criminalized to begin with. Income inequality in the United States is the highest it’s been since the Census Bureau began tracking it 50 years ago. In light of the economic deprivation experienced by large portions of the population, the vandalizing of property and the theft of goods could just as easily be framed as the enforcement of a moral economy—the rightful reappropriation of stolen wealth. The historian E.P. Thompson has argued that the periodic bread riots that punctuated a nascent industrial society in Britain were not spontaneous outbursts, but rather a way for people to intervene in and regulate unjust distribution.
r his bigoted rants about police brutality marches, Tucker Carlson has lost four major advertisers | Media Matters for America
Why doesn’t this distress us? Why do we see this as “normal? (ODT)
olddogthoughts 
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