In the 1930s, six right-wing oligarchs used the US’s and UK’s largest newspapers to spout sensationalist xenophobia, and at times even boost fascist propaganda. Today, Fox News and other right-wing mass media outlets are using the very same blueprint.
Source: Fascist-Sympathizing Newspaper Barons Were the Blueprint for Today’s Right-Wing Media
3h ·
“Wait a Minute, Succession Is Real!”: CNN’s Long-Awaited Murdoch Saga Is Finally Getting Its Network Debut (By Joe Pompeo and Vanity Fair)
Once slated for CNN…
I asked the duo what they think viewers will take away from Empire of Influence that they haven’t already seen or heard or read in the prolific canon of Murdochology. “It really braids the story of the family and the story of the empire into a single narrative,” said Mahler. “I also think it gives you a unique sense of the global sweep of the empire and its influence. There have been plenty of stories about phone hacking, the Murdochs’ influence in Australia and the UK, and of course Fox News. But to have them all stitched together into one big, sweeping narrative—you’re seeing how he accumulates power, and you’re watching him wield that power to accumulate more power. Seeing that gives it a different kind of force.”
Not condoning Putin however:
In an article on May 13, 2014 in The Guardian, republished here, John Pilger warned the “U.S. is threatening to take the world to war” over Ukraine, words that have taken on new meaning.
Source: John Pilger’s 2014 Warning About Ukraine – Consortium News
The Israel Files:
WikiLeaks Docs Show Top Hollywood Producers Working With Israel To Defend Its War Crimes The Israel Files is a new MintPress series exploring and highlighting the many revelations about the Israeli occupation of Palestine that WikiLeaks documents disclosed. It hopes to shed light on many of the most important and underreported revelations the publishing group exposed.
Scott Morrison has copied Donald Trump’s corruption strategy by claiming he has the power to declare documents and meetings classified by “waving a magic wand and just saying it’s so”. While on the flip side Donald Trump, who is currently under investigation by the FBI for stealing classified documents, claims he declassified the documents in his head which is almost identical to Scott Morrison’s magic wand trick.
Because of key decisions by the court equating money with free speech, our political system is now overrun with grifters, con artists, and career criminals.Informed
The Australian Liberal Party has gone down the same rabbit hole due to their lack of imagination,and desperation to hold on to power. The LNP, ACL,IPA, News Corp and extreme right fruitcakes have become bedfellows. Dutton even flew to America of all places to take advice and raise the funding Pauline Hanson tried to do but got caught doing it. Unlike America Australians have simply sat back and watched the LNP destroy itself.
Corn continues,
“Both Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert were QAnoners before they were elected to Congress in the last election. But perhaps of greater concern is that the entire GOP, which has supported Trump’s authoritarian Big Lie crusade, is now willing to follow Trump further into the depths of fearmongering and madness.”
Lets’ not forget that Scott Morrison’s “besties” were QAnon, and he modelled himself on Trump and a media ratings chase. While secrecy was his hidden weapon of choice. Denial of everything factual was fake news to such an extent that he became unbelievable.
Many liberal commentaries are viewing Trump’s recent active embrace of QAnon as the ploy of a man who is trying to increase his following and cling to relevance in the face of unfavorable polls (a one and a half year low of a 34 percent approval rating) and a barrage of legal threats. At the same time, no one should underestimate the potential for Trump-spawned QAnon violence. The Atlantic’s Kayyem finds a possible grain of hope: “I don’t know how the decay of our democracy ends. And I do not want to minimize the danger inherent in Trump’s adoption of QAnon. Yet his decision is encouraging in at least one way: By throwing in his lot with a bizarre cult, he is also inadvertently showing the limits of his appeal.”
Source: TRUMPAnon: Is Trump’s Embrace of QAnon the ‘Last Act of a Desperate Man’? | The Smirking Chimp
Reports that Labor is in talks with Peter Dutton over the looming Federal Integrity Commission laws have spread alarm Anthony Albanese might walk back on his pledge for a credible anti-corruption body. Callum Foote reports on the timing, the critical detail, the delays and the latest scare.
Source: Angst over corruption watchdog, first Queen’s death, now fear of Dutton deal – Michael West
1 Here are a few jaw-droppers that are guaranteed to shock you. They are not of my pen, although I have written about many of them. So, if you thought you knew it all, you didn’t. Indeed, their unworthiness may surprise you to the point of embarrassment. I know the list surprised me, and I like to think I’m on top of this stuff. Revelation is but one step away. Click this link: Achievements of the Coalition Government.
Source: More of the same – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The conservative side of politics may have Australia’s mainstream media on its side but the Andrews Government’s secret weapon is the Victorian Liberal Party Opposition.
Source: Cracked lobster Guy and the Liberals’ crusade against Dan Andrews
Last week, the White House released a proposed framework for the regulation of cryptocurrency. The document gives the green light to regulators to continue crafting rules around the industry, and even explores the creation of a “CBDC”: a central bank digital currency. Actor, writer, and crypto skeptic Ben McKenzie joins Ryan Grim to discuss the framework and the future (or lack thereof) of the crypto industry.
Transcript coming soon.
Boosters of the capitalist system love pointing to statistics suggesting stunning progress in eradicating global poverty. But those metrics set the bar pathetically low — and don’t account for the obscene explosion in global inequality.
Source: Claims That Capitalism Is Eradicating Global Poverty Are Wildly Misleading
There is no Left/Right Equivalence in America. There is only the Radicalisation of the Right. ISIS taught us the means and its being applied by the Christian Far-Right’s Fundamentalism in the USA. It’s reflected in Qanon, Alex Jones, the anti-abortion, anti-education, and pro-Militant MAGA groups like the American -Nazis, Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys all of which are fast becoming a Christian version of an ISIS in America where tolerance is eliminated as dangerous, and a pure Nation state created. ISIS was never simply seen as “Polarisation” but Muslim Radicalisation and the American right-wing admired them Israel, Kim Jong-un Orban and Putin for it.
Many liberal responses to Trumpism lament “polarization” on all sides. But the call to return to a sensible centrism ignores the real crises we face — falsely equating those who want to solve them with a far right who would make them worse.
Source: The Problem Isn’t “Polarization” — It’s Right-Wing Radicalization
Declassified Australia’s Peter Cronau flags and analyzes a report by researchers at Stanford University and Graphika about a massive secret propaganda operation being run out of the U.S. The report, from late August, has been buried by the Western media.
Declassified Australia is publishing here the first detailed analysis of the remarkable report by Stanford University’s Internet Observatory (SIO) and network analysis firm Graphika, released on Aug. 24.
Source: Exposed: Covert Pro-Western Info Op – Consortium News
A new cache of leaked Labour documents shows how Israel lobby operatives worked against former leader Jeremy Corbyn from within the UK’s main opposition party.
Israel lobbyist Luke Akehurst intervened to help save suspended right-wing Labour activist Luke Stanger from expulsion – despite a series of complaints of harassment and intimidation.
The leaked files also detail how Palestine solidarity activists and left-wingers were investigated, suspended and expelled from the party, while right-wing pro-Israel members were protected by senior party figures.
The documents were revealed on Thursday in the first episode of The Labour Files, a new three-part series by Al Jazeera’s investigative unit – the same team behind the 2017 series The Lobby and the censored 2018 series The Lobby – USA.
The Qatar-based satellite channel describes the trove of internal Labour Party materials as “the largest leak of documents in British political history.”
During the Corbyn years, the files show, the generally left-voting city of Brighton became a focus of clashes between the party’s left and right wings.
Another war has been sold to the public thanks to the Establishment media and government talking heads.
Thanks to US media, a very small percentage of Americans know that:
Republicans simply think they can Fool America
House Republican leaders unveiled their “Commitment to America” plan for 2023, which contained, unsurprisingly, an inspirational video full of scenes presented as imagery of America that was stock footage from Russia and Ukraine. The video narrator says that America is “exceptional,” and then shows quite a few photos that were not taken in America.
Source: Surprise! GOP’s ‘Commitment To America’ Video Features Images Of Russia | Crooks and Liars
A history professor who has predicted every presidential election correctly since 1984 said that he believes former President Donald Trump is “done” in politics and may not escape jail time after he was sued in New York for alleged real estate fraud.
Source: Trump Is ‘Done,’ Says Presidential Historian | Crooks and Liars
Fossil fuel giant Koch Industries has poured over $1m into backing – directly and indirectly – dozens of House and Senate candidates who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s win on 6 January 2021.
Koch, which is controlled by multibillionaire Charles Koch, boasts a corporate Pac that has donated $607,000 to the campaigns or leadership Pacs of 52 election deniers since January 2021, making Koch’s Pac the top corporate funder of members who opposed the election results, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign spending.
Source: Alarm as Koch bankrolls dozens of election denier candidates | US elections 2020 | The Guardian
Privatisation, corporatisation of, and debt creation in Australian tertiary institutes have accelerated cheating on a scale that has become the new norm. However, despite the cheating, and a degree there’s always been a far more influential alternative to success. Who you know is by far the easier path far easier than what you know or merit, and that has been clear. Its effect is an influence way before the entrance to a university. Simply take a statistical look around you. 50 k untenured, educated higher degree staff suffering short hours wage theft are employed to teach each new crop of suckers chasing a false promise. Simply ask taxi and uber drivers what they do for a living and don’t be surprised that they’re looking for a “real” job having got a degree and now doing an MBA. Meanwhile, Lachlan Murdoch, James Packer, and the Trumps having squandered billions sit at the top of the tree by no means self-made.
A PROBLEM LABELLED “industrial scale cheating” is presenting a mortal threat to universities with students now routinely commissioning a proliferating range of online services to do their assignments. Has it yet got bad enough to jeopardise learning and standards, the quality of research and ultimately knowledge itself?
Source: Industrial scale cheating taking over from learning in Australian universities
Most former prime ministers made it back to Canberra for the tribute. Scott Morrison, John Howard and Paul Keating were all there. There were apologies of absence from Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull who are in New York, and Julia Gillard in London.
So where was Australia’s arch monarchist Tony Abbott? The man who destroyed his whole prime ministership over an attempt to give Prince Philip a knighthood appeared to have skipped Thursday’s solemnities.
Shut your mouth you’re committing an offence in the UK
This is hardly a satisfactory state of affairs, showing, yet again, that the Sceptred Isle can hardly be counted as an impregnable bastion of free speech and public dissent. “If people are not allowed to quietly, if offensively, protest against the proclamation of a king,” reflects O’Neill, “then clearly our country is not as free as we thought.”
On a recent interview with the Useful Idiots podcast, Noam Chomsky repeated his argument that the only reason we hear the word “unprovoked” every time anyone mentions Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the mainstream news media is because it absolutely was provoked, and they know it.
After Putin announced mandatory military service, demonstrators called the mobilization a “burialization” — and more than 1,000 were arrested in cities across Russia.
Source: Russians Return to Streets to Protest Widening of Putin’s War on Ukraine
Ray McGovern reviews key pieces of background that — thanks to the media — few Americans know about the widest war in 77 years that is now on our doorstep.
Putin’s supporters running from the front to the back of the line and beyond
The son of a top Kremlin official revealed in a prank call that he had no intention of being called up for Vladimir Putin’s war mobilisation.
Nikolay Peskov, 32, son of the president’s spin-doctor and war spokesman Dmitry Peskov, believed he was talking to a military call-up officer.
He fell for the phone sting and made clear he would pull strings in the Kremlin so he did not have to obey the mobilisation order.
The call evidently showed that the entitled sons of the Russian political elite do not expect to be sent to the front, unlike hundreds of thousands of other Russians from ordinary backgrounds who will get no exemptions.
Source: Entitled Son Of Putin’s Press Secretary Pranked By Fake Mobilization Call | Crooks and Liars
Trump actually did the interview at a time when he should be exercising his right to remain silent. It has been only a few days since Trump’s legal team said that they wouldn’t provide any specific details because they anticipate Trump will be criminally indicted over the stolen documents.
“If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking it,” Mr Trump told Fox News on Wednesday.
If you are a political fanatic, you’ve surely heard the old saying that when fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. That’s been proven true in this fraught year of 2022 as Christian nationalism rises to our extreme right, but no one predicted this:
That U.S. authoritarianism would also come with a bat-guano crazy musical soundtrack—music that sounds like a Bible Belt altar riff but is actually tied to the weirdly popular QAnon conspiracy theory whose legion of followers believe there’s an elite global cabal of child-trafficking, baby-blood-drinking liberal politicians and movie stars.
This terrifying crossing of some kind of autocratic Rubicon happened—where else?—at a Donald Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Saturday night.
The Australian Wars is a new three-part TV series directed and produced by Arrernte and Kalkadoon nations filmmaker Rachel Perkins.
Perkins travels across vast territory to capture key aspects of a war that lasted more than 100 years, from the landing of the First Fleet in 1788 until the 1920s.
The series traces some of the key phases, sites and underlying features of frontier wars here on home soil.
Source: In The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses with the myth Aboriginal people didn’t fight back
But it yet has to pledge a Bill of Human Rights
Morrison government refused to sign Leaders’ Pledge for Nature in 2020 but Anthony Albanese signals environment is back as priority
The Australian Energy Market Operator is not the right organisation to be conducting the dramatic overhaul required for the economy, writes Zacharias Szumer.
Source: Zero sum game: questions surround Australia’s electricity transition – Michael West
Amini, 22, a Kurdish young woman visiting Tehran who was arrested for imperfect veiling. Her father said her corpse showed bruising on her legs. Some women have burned their veils in protest. College campuses around the country have seen unrest, but also civil spaces in thirteen cities around the country. Hackers claimed to have gotten hold of her hospital x-rays, showing skull fractures.
Just like that Putin has rewritten the history of the war. How easy it is to become the victim of Ukraine aggression.
On Wednesday in Moscow President Vladimir Putin announced that referenda to decide whether to join Russia would be held in those four places from this Friday until next Wednesday. After that, the Russian Duma must decide whether to accept the results and formally annex those territories into Russia.
All that is expected to happen, and once it does the game on the battlefield will change dramatically. From Russia’s point of view, it will no longer be assisting the militia of independent republics with Russian regular units against attacks by Ukraine. It will now be defending Russian territory, against attacks by Ukraine.
What do you call a country where nearly one in 10 adults have medical debts and a broken bone can boot you into bankruptcy? A country where a city of more than 160,000 residents recently had no safe drinking water for weeks? A country where life expectancy has dropped for the second year in a row and poor people sell their blood plasma in order to make ends meet? A country where the maternal mortality rate of black women in the capital is nearly twice as high as for women in Syria?
You call it one of the richest countries in the world.
Donald Trump and his adult children have been sued for fraud by New York state’s attorney general, who for more than three years has conducted a civil investigation into the former US president’s business practices, court records show.
Source: Donald Trump and children sued in US over fraud allegations
AG Letitia James’ entire press conference read like a criminal’s grocery list from the Trump family.
“Mr. Trump also blatantly ignored legal restrictions at Mar-A-Lago. Mar-A-Lago was valued on the false premise that it sat on unrestricted property and could be developed for residential use. however, Mr. Trump knew that Mar-A-Lago was subject to a host of onerous restrictions and limitations,” James stated..
“Despite these significant restrictions,Mr. Trump valued the property based on the false premise that it was an unrestricted 18-acre plot of land that could be sold and used as a private home,” she said.
“The valuations represent that these restrictions don’t even exist. The club generated annual revenue of less than $25 million and should have been valued at more than — valued about $75 million. However, Mar-A-Lago was valued as high as $739 million,” James said.
Source: LOL: Trump Claimed Mar-A-Lago Was Worth 739M; It’s Worth 75M | Crooks and Liars
While so many nations since the French Revolution have declared themselves Republics it seems strange that Australia needs to be cautioned. Yes, Australia is unique in as much as has it denied the existence of the Indigenous first peoples here as the owners of this land. They had no rights until just over 30 years ago. The colony denied them citizenship as did the Federation. It ignored any need for treaties or recognition like other colonies had. It’s a country that’s Constitution hasn’t even a Bill of Human Rights. Given it’s a nation so uniquely lacking what other nations take for granted why need we be so careful that consequences must be “considered before moving forward as a Republic?
While much has been discussed about electing an Australian president, more consideration is required before moving forward as a republic, writes Professor John Quiggin.
I was arrested at a visit by then Prince Charles to Alice Springs in 1977 for handing out press statements on Aboriginal living standards. I avoided jail, but the less fortunate Albanese government has been imprisoned by royal protocol and constitutional custom.
Source: Republican Albanese imprisoned by royal protocol – Pearls and Irritations
Prince Charles, now King Charles 111 and King of Australia wrote to Kerr after the dismissal, ‘what you did last year was right and the courageous thing to do’
A gaggle of Royals all collaborated with Kerr in the dismissal of the Whitlam Government-The Queen,Prince Philip,Prince Charles and Earl Mountbatten of Dieppe fame.
Abbott’s single-minded partisan politics of Nope Nope Nope and internal LNP politics of enforcing Abbott’s poisoned NBN chalice on his potential challenger Malcolm Turnbull was a guarantee the new revolutionised Internet infrastructure would fail. The mainstream news and Telcos were behind him in the hope that some positive outcomes would somehow eventuate out of much-needed system change so they remained silent. Murdoch media was a major voice always in support of Abbott no matter his mistakes. The outcome has been a total fail, a waste of money,that left us in a technological backwater. 60th in the world when it came to speed. Finally, an ex-Telstra CEO has the balls to speak out.
My suggestion was to keep the end goal in place, but make changes to the way how to get there. However, with a Prime Minister such as Tony Abbott at the helm, the national interest was replaced with political interest and there was no way for a compromise or for an open discussion on the topic. Reviews were stacked with those supporting the Government.
Source: Former Telstra CEO regrets silence over NBN disaster
Not Such a Medieval List: Seven ‘Deadly Sins’ in The ‘Modern World’
I referenced some examples above, but it is clear that, despite the church losing its power, the concept of the Seven ‘Deadly Sins’ is by no means dead. These actions, and the emotions behind them, are still taboos enforced by the modern priesthood of corporations, Tories and the media. Not all of the originals are still used: some refinement was necessary. But the concept of keeping the peasants in line remains on glaring display. We cannot tax super profits, reform negative gearing, or challenge the status quo in any way without being accused of one of the Seven. So little has changed in the last thousand years.
Source: Modernising The ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ – » The Australian Independent Media Network
It is a feeling of outrage, with a strong sense of déjà-vu. From the vantage point in the United Kingdom — where inequality and social injustice are in particularly sharp focus — we’re on the brink of yet another social and economic crisis. Even more so than in the rest of Europe, energy prices, and the cost of living are rocketing.
But what is happening at the top? What are our leaders doing? Why are some people, yet again, making eye-watering financial gains while others face destitution and a real fear of being cold and hungry this winter?
We’ve watched the attack on workers’ rights and the right to protest being eroded for decades. Jack Munday AO and the BLF in NSW were the first labour activists who fought for Green Bans as far back as the 70s in NSW. We saw John Howard’s intent on reducing the power of unions and the rights of workers to even associate not for their complaints but rather for their ability to unionise, protest and strike. That ability was a direct political threat to the LNP whose support and funding came from a minority of well-organized wealthy associated corporate sectors of Australia with significantly opposite interests to the wider Australian community.
The mounting social inequality is fueling protests around the globe. The global ruling class is determined to prevent these protests from employing the weapon that can bring them down — strikes.
Source: Chris Hedges: Strike, Strike, Strike – scheerpost.com
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