Cryptocurrency is not merely a bad investment or speculative bubble. It’s worse than that: it’s a full-on fraud.
Author: peterimrich
Every Black member of the Mississippi state Senate walked out of the legislative chamber in protest on Friday as the Republican-led body passed a bill critics say will ban the teaching of critical race theory in public schools, from kindergarten through college.
Source: Black Mississippi State Senators Stage Walkout as Critical Race Theory Ban Passed
If last week was considered Joe Biden’s no-good, very bad week, there’s a case to be made that this week was Donald Trump’s no-good, even worse week.
Source: Trump’s new legal troubles mount — even as Russia probe officially runs out of steam | Salon.com
My thought for the day When a political party deliberately withholds information that the voter needs to make an informed, balanced and reasoned assessment of how it is being governed. It is lying by omission. It is also tantamount to the manipulation of our democracy. ( John Lord )
PS: A comment by Kaye Lee on my last post is well worth repeating: “It’s not the comments that are the problem Scotty… it’s the lack of foresight of the Government in preparing for what would happen when they got rid of basically all restrictions at once and said to the unvaccinated go forth and party.”
Five things Scott Morrison is doing instead of governing Jess Harwood The prime minister’s media strategy: lol
Source: Five things Scott Morrison is doing instead of governing | Jess Harwood | The Guardian
From kids driving forklifts to crippling foreign relations, Scott Morrison has made some truly questionable decisions of late, writes Paul Begley.
Or are they merely escaping the Moronic Morrison Methods for more practical solutions in the face of Covid-19 with OmicronJosh and Scott banging on their door yelling “Open up we’ll keep you safe”
Is a third of the Australian continent planning to stay cut off from the other two-thirds forever. Mark Sawyer ponders the future of the great state of Western Australia.
The Department of Finance was warned by one of its own staffers that waiving a $41,000 debt owed by a senior official was likely illegal but it fully waived the debt anyway.
Source: Treasury salary scandal deepens
Marking the 12th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens United decision, the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness on Friday published a report showing that U.S. billionaires dumped a staggering $1.2 billion into the 2020 elections—a 39-fold increase compared to 2010.
Source: ‘Time for Citizens United to Go’: US Oligarchs Poured $1.2 Billion Into 2020 Elections
Mitch McConnell (R-KY) dismissed the issue, saying that Black people vote “in just as high a percentage as Americans.”
Source: Cable news barely covered Mitch McConnell’s racist slip-up | Media Matters for America
Note Americans still call Murdoch ‘the Australian Billionaire’ not even the Australian-American. He simply isn’t one of them but might as well be a Russian in his support for Trump and the degree of influence he has.
Republican outlets like Politico and Fox and the Wall Street Journal (the latter two echo chambers for reactionary Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch) have been asking whether Biden’s is a failed presidency. The stupid gives me vertigo. After the lunacy Trump put the country through, even if Biden had had fewer successes than he did, he’d have been a roaring success just by not replicating the previous four years of dysfunction.
Morrison wastes $3mill on ads to show Australians domestically that he’s holding his hose.
It sounded a touch desperate – Prime Minister Scott Morrison imploring backpackers to “come on down” to Australia, as the Omicron crisis escalated. “Enjoy a holiday here”, said the one-time managing director of Tourism Australia, and “at the same time join our workforce and help us”. The backpacker flow is slow, so there’ll be a $3 million advertising campaign (minus Lara Bingle) to lure them, and they’ll get a rebate on their visas if they come soon. People were quick to see the irony – while Morrison was spruiking working holidays, travel advice in the US was updated to say “avoid travel to Australia”. “Come on down” wasn’t Morrison’s only trite line.
Source: Grattan on Friday: Scott Morrison’s ministerial team looks far from match-fit | The New Daily
We didn’t do it and we don’t lie!!!!
RAT TRAP Both Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Health Minister Greg Hunt have publicly denied this is the case. A spokesperson from Mr Hunt’s office informed IA that the Minister for Health categorically denies mandatorily requisitioning, redistributing or otherwise appropriating stocks meant for retailers.
Source: EXCLUSIVE: Morrison and Hunt’s tricky denial of RAT requisitions
Any wonder Greg Hunt is getting out of Politics. His electorate is much wiser.
Health Minister Greg Hunt has accused businesses of lying about desperately needed supplies of rapid COVID tests being seized by the federal government. There have been multiple claims from Australian businesses that they have been told by wholesalers that orders of rapid tests for workplaces have been diverted to fulfil government orders. On Wednesday, the South Australian government also said it had asked regulators to investigate reports of its RATs had been improperly diverted to other states. But in Canberra on Thursday Mr Hunt emphatically denied suppliers’ claims that orders of the scarce tests were being requisitioned by the government. “They are lying. That is why I am reporting them to the ACCC,” he said.
Source: Businesses ‘lying’ about missing RAT orders: Greg Hunt
After being told he was wrong months ago and after witnessing what was happening elsewhere in the UK, EU and USA Morrison says he was “blindsided”… Not his fault
It’s alarming enough that the Prime Minister believes “admitting” wilful ignorance is a reasonable political strategy. What he’s actually admitting is that he lives in a bubble of protection from global events, medical and scientific research, and any information that does not coincide with the stories he tells himself which must be right, according to his reasoning, because God chose him to tell them.
No the Armed Forces can’t help logistically by cooking and doing the heavy menial lifting in the Aged-Care or the Health Sectors. The overworked exhausted depleted medical staff have to do it according to Captain Benny Hill Morrison. OMG how dare we ask!!
Faced with a labour shortage he helped create, Scott Morrison will ask the national cabinet if kids can legally drive forklifts.
Source: What the dickens? Morrison wants kids driving forklifts – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Whilst Labor’s policies are preferable to the Coalition’s, they fall far short of what must be done. We cannot afford the timidity shown by the two major parties who bow to pressure from vested interests and are paralysed by fear of reprisal from their colleagues as much as from the electorate. Nor can we afford the denial from Barnaby’s mob and the Pauline and Clive cults. When Labor form government, the necessity for action will only be greater and the voices demanding it even louder. I hope they are ready.
Alex Hawke tidying up Morrison’s failure to act when necessary. How will Australia settle Afghans they simply left behind. Australia’s shameful claim was “they didn’t have the papers”? The very papers this government withheld in the face of an emergency they knew that was coming.
Australia will prioritise more than 15,000 Afghan refugees through its humanitarian and family reunion programs over the next four years amid claims it has been “dishonourable” by leaving hundreds of interpreters and other citizens at high risk of brutal reprisals from the Taliban.Federal Immigration Minister Alex Hawke said on Friday the government would resettle Afghans with links to Australia as either former locally engaged employees or employees of Australian non-government organisations as well as women and girls, ethnic minorities and LGBTQI+ citizens.
Source: Australia opens more places for Afghan refugees after scathing report
We’re not facing the end of work, but we are facing the end of work as we know it. It’s about time.
From Ukraine to Georgia USA all my calls were “Perfect”
He released the statement after it was reported that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis requested the formation of a special grand jury to help her office with its ongoing investigation into whether Trump’s efforts to pressure Raffensperger constituted criminal conduct. Prosecutors found “possible criminal disruptions … to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections in this state,” Willis’ office said in its letter to a judge requesting the special grand jury. In his phone call to Raffensperger on January 2, 2021, Trump repeatedly asked the secretary of state to “find” an additional 11, 780 votes — one more than the number of votes Joe Biden won Georgia by in the 2020 election — to swing the state’s election results in Trump’s favor. “The people of Georgia are angry — the people in the country are angry,” Trump said during the call, which was first reported on by The Washington Post. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”
In among a string of election campaign failures, Morrison had a regular habit of leaving or being pushed out of jobs before his contracts were finished.There were two stints that have, perhaps understandably, been scrubbed from his Wikipedia page.
The first was a period at big four consulting group KPMG in 2000, where he was attempting to start up a tourism practice.
The second was an ill-fated turn as the strategic director for the campaign of New South Wales Liberal leader Peter Debnam during his failed 2007 election bid.A self-styled “marketer” (he actually has a Bachelor of Science in applied economic geography from UNSW) Morrison instead hired others to do the marketing work, according to a number of people that worked with him in his various tourism jobs, while he focused largely on the networking.
This networking brought him into contact with Liberal grandees who promoted him ever higher, until he landed in — or rather was parachuted into — federal parliament in 2007.
Source: A closer look at Scott Morrison’s career before parliament – Crikey
LNP Protectors or Bullies True colors revealed
Hello – Now the NSW government and Health resort to excessive measures and bullying, showing their true colours. Not grateful or supportive of nurses at all, but then we knew that already since they had to repeat it every day to the press in public briefings to convince themselves with their own lies, deceit and denials. NSW Health clearly is buckling and the government resorts to further excessive force on its own long–suffering workforce. So tell us where are those tens of thousands of nurses promised by Greg Hunt yesterday from the private sector? Where are they? Don’t these Liberal governments talk to each other at all? Would that not be supportive? Is that too hard for Mr Hazzard and Perrottet?
Another parallel of the Black Death is worthy of note. The plague was so disruptive as to cause its own alterations of the feudal order. The wealthy might have scurried to their places of ornate and padded seclusion, but they were by no means guaranteed survival. Around them, aggressive depopulation fed the fulcrum of change. It emboldened the peasantry, resulting in a range of riots and a challenge to social and economic circumstances. The likes of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have yet to see a modern version of a peasant insurrection. Perhaps it’s time they did.
Source: Arise, Pandemic Profiteers – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Morrison is grateful
“Our objective in the last election was to ensure Bill Shorten did not become prime minister,” he said when asked about the point of spending so much money on a seemingly doomed ambition.
Source: Unvaxxed billionaire Clive Palmer promises most expensive election campaign ever
The Federal Government has spent billions on defence equipment, ignoring issues such as the climate crisis and pandemic, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.
Source: Peter Dutton’s war machine cult
Screen Australia, the federal government’s key funding body for Australian TV and movie productions, has awarded over $2 million in funding to a company owned by a “clearer upper” for Harvey Weinstein. Callum Foote reports.
Source: Screen Australia awards grant to former Harvey Weinstein associate for Gender Matters’ initiative
According to Jillian York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the rigidity of Facebook’s DIO roster risks causing what she described as “cultural and historical erasure,” a status quo under which one can’t publicly and freely discuss a group designated as an enemy by the U.S., even after that enemy ceases to exist. “We’ve seen this with some groups in Latin America that are still on the U.S. [terror] list, like FARC,” the Colombian guerrilla army that dissolved in 2017 but remains banned from free discussion under Facebook policy. “At some point, you have to be able to talk about these things.”
Source: Facebook’s Tamil Censorship Highlights Risks to Everyone
In the face of Cuban humanitarian efforts
“A European bank, established in the Netherlands, has decided to put the interests of the U.S. government above the lives of millions of people.”
Source: Bank Blocks Donations Supporting Cuban Effort to Vaccinate World
The charitable organization Oxfam reports this week that 160 million people fell into poverty during the past two years of pandemic, while the richest 10 men in the world doubled their wealth from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion. The authors of the report argued that this is not simply a matter of wealth inequality, but that the extreme wealth of the few is actually killing the poor. The United Nations defines poverty as living on less than about $2 a day and suffering from “hunger and malnutrition, limited access to education and other basic services, social discrimination and exclusion, as well as the lack of participation in decision-making.” Here are some of Oxfam’s findings by the numbers:
Twitter Reddit Email save A member of the Oath Keepers returned to the Capitol a day after the deadly Jan. 6 riot for “recon” as the group, which had stocked up a cache of weapons and ammunition, plotted to battle authorities for weeks, prosecutors said in a court filing. Ed Vallejo, a 63-year-old Arizona man who was one of 11 Oath Keepers charged last week with seditious conspiracy and other crimes for their alleged efforts to use a campaign of violence to prevent President Biden from taking office, messaged his alleged co-conspirators after the Jan. 6 riot was dispersed to declare “we’ll be back at 6 am to do it again,” according to prosecutors. He returned to the Capitol on Jan. 7 and told others he was “waiting for orders from [Oath Keeper founder] Stewart Rhodes,” who was also indicted last week. “We are going to probe their defense line right now 6 am they should let us in. We’ll see,” Vallejo said in a Signal message to other members, according to the court filing.
Former President Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 500 times over the course of a six-hour deposition to avoid answering questions as part of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ ongoing civil probe of the Trump Organization.
Source: Eric Trump’s Deposition? He Pleaded The Fifth 500 Times | Crooks and Liars
This could be a chapter out of a John Grisham novel. Will American justice ever be served or will the legal industry simply prefer to profit from a never-ending game? Will Trump ever pay his lawyers? No doubt the public purse is paying the investigators and the N.Y AG and the judges. How can Trump even be allowed to run for a 2nd term when he hasn’t fulfilled the obligations of his first. Tax returns have yet to be submitted a requirement of all eligible Presidents.
Only three of more than 5 million documents the company handed over in the two years since were actually produced by Trump, according to James’ office. Trump led the company for decades before his presidential inauguration in January 2017.
History has proven – going back decades – that the LNP are a pack of arrogant, self-appointed megalomaniacal narcissists who absolutely thrive on hate, division, conflict, fear and war! The LNP have dragged Australia back to the middle ages as a nation struggling under the jackboot of the absolute worst, most regressive, dangerously undemocratic and corrupt regime in our history! The Howard, Abbott and Morrison regimes have proven themselves to be nothing more than despicable, self-serving elitists who have not achieved a single thing that provides any benefit whatsoever to the lives of ordinary working- and middle-class Australians; a government whose only “talent” is their ability to lie, lie and attempt to deceive anyone and everyone – even lying about their lies – in order to maintain their grip on autocratic power.
Source: Distraction: It’s Morrison’s only policy – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Peter Costello’s Ch9 seemed to have selected a poll that reports differently to others why is that? Because Resolve show a softer verion of the results and less damning of the LNP and therefore a less seemingly negative image of Morrison’s actual CV.
In the first national poll of the new year, a Resolve survey for the Nine newspapers, Labor had 35% of the primary vote (up three percentage points since November), the Coalition 34% (down five), the Greens 11% (steady), One Nation 3% (steady) and independents 11% (up two). This is the first time since Resolve began doing its monthly surveys last April that Labor has been ahead of the Coalition on primary votes. In late 2021, Resolve showed better results for the Coalition than other polls conducted at about the same time.
Source: Coalition slumps in first poll of 2022 as voters lose confidence in Morrison’s handling of pandemic
Djokovic was silent but kicked out of the country. Christensen is vocal but untouched and allowed to play. That shows the quality of Morrison’s leadership
Rogue Coalition backbencher George Christensen has again intentionally undermined his government’s vaccination campaign, ignoring medical experts and stoking further outrage by saying parents should not get their children immunised against COVID. Health Minister Greg Hunt said anti-vaxxers had “lost the debate” in Australia, saying he disagreed with such sentiment even when it existed “in our own movement” in the Coalition. But Mr Christensen’s latest baseless claims may see him yet again escape any punishment from Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce. “Scott Morrison needs to put an end to this and take responsibility for the actions of his backbenchers,” tweeted Labor’s shadow health minister Mark Butler.
Source: George Christensen sparks further outrage over anti-vaccine comments
When Barnaby Joyce regained the leadership of the Nationals in June last year, no-one could have been happier than his dear friend and supporter, Gina Rinehart. She immediately offered to host a party for him. Those VIPs lucky enough to secure an invitation to spend an evening with Barnaby and Gina at her palatial coastal hideaway in Noosa could secure their spot for a mere $10,000 a head. At a fundraiser for Wide Bay MP Llew O’Brien shortly after their soiree, Barnaby sang Gina’s praises, which Ms Rinehart has graciously shared with us on her website. Mr Joyce spoke of the LNP’s belief in the importance of the individual to be master of their own game as opposed to being controlled by the state. He praised the efforts of his long-time “mate”, mining magnate Gina Rinehart, who attended the event. “Gina is one of the most powerful women in the world,” he said. “If we had more Gina’s we’d have a more powerful nation,” he said.
Emissions targets are dead. Corrupt governments in hock to their corporate donors are accelerating fossil fuel projects despite international condemnation, economic logic and the future of the planet. Michael West reports on Kurri Kurri gas plant and the slew of new projects.
We don’t get this News in our MSM
James Murray at BusinessGreen reports that 17 new massive offshore wind projects have been authorized off Scotland that collectively would generate 25 gigawatts of power. Note that the total offshore wind capacity as of 2020 in the whole world was only 35 gigawatts, so this one set of “ScotWind” projects will almost double the global total. Some 75 percent of offshore wind-driven electricity is presently generated by the UK, China and Germany. England itself has many gigawatts of offshore wind capacity in the pipeline, and just one of the planned projects will generate five percent of the country’s electricity needs.
Source: Scotland alone to nearly Double all the Offshore Wind in the World with new ScotWind Facilities
Israel wants a “closer relationship” with Australia’s defense. It already has a very close relationship unbeknown to many nations that have purchased Pegasus spyware. Mossad operates freely amongst friends and enemies alike assassinating, kidnapping spying and influencing everyone in it’s favour and shares very little of it’s own secrets. Mainstream medias are very much propagandist for Israel. Murdoch media has always promoted positive news about the nation. After all Murdoch is heavily invested in Genie Oil in the occupied Syrian territories of the Golan Heights.
Andrew Bolt with his close family connections to Aalsmere the notorious historic pro Nazi town of WW2 is today a grand, loud but questionable supporter of the right-wing apartheid State. More so than even the Jewish diaspora that is increasinly ashamed. Israel is today the proud ally and supplier of military hardware and spyware to many of the worlds dictators in the Middle East, Africa and has a history of involvement in maintaining a division among any formation of a pan Arabic state.
Dozens of women journalists and human rights defenders in Bahrain and Jordan have had their phones hacked using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, according to a report by Front Line Defenders and Access Now. The report adds to a growing public record of Pegasus misuse globally, including against dissidents, reporters, diplomats, and members of the clergy. It also threatens to increase pressure on the Israel-based NSO Group, which in November was placed on a U.S. trade blacklist.
Moscow: Russia is a sending an unspecified number of troops from the country’s far east to Belarus for major war games, officials said on Wednesday (AEST), a deployment that will further beef up Russian military assets near Ukraine amid Western fears of a planned invasion. Amid the soaring tensions, the White House warned that Russia could attack its neighbour at “any point,” while the UK delivered a batch of anti-tank weapons to Ukraine. Russia’s Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin said the joint drills with Belarus would involve practising a joint response to external threats.
Source: Russia-Ukraine: Troops sent to Belarus for war games as Ukraine invasion fears grow
To put it bluntly, Biden is in deep trouble. So is America. How can Biden regain momentum? Here are ten steps he should take, starting this week:
Source: The Week Ahead: How Biden Can Get His Mojo Back | The Smirking Chimp
The failings of the Coalition Government have finally dented its support among its core constituencies that are crucial to its re-election efforts, writes Andrew P Street. SAY WHAT YOU WILL will about notoriously inactive Prime Minister Scott Morrison: when he does finally make a move, he has a magnificent instinct for turning a single problem into a majestically cascading series of catastrophes.
Source: How Scott Morrison lost three core voting blocs in a week
I’m a White, Christian, Male and PM Ben, I don’t Lie. Ask Peter Costello at Ch9, your paymaster Ben. Besides The Age says their poll also implies Australians think I’m still more trusted than Albo. (Morrison)
Human rights advocates have criticised the prime minister, Scott Morrison, after he wrongly claimed those held in detention in Australia for as long as eight years had not been recognised as refugees
Morrison was asked by presenter Ben Fordham how it was “acceptable” that refugees in the same hotel as Djokovic had been detained for almost nine years with taxpayers spending millions of dollars “to keep them in limbo.” In response, Morrison suggested the detainees were not refugees. “Well, the specific cases, Ben, I mean, it’s not clear that to my information that someone in that case is actually a refugee,” he said. “They may havesought asylum and been found not to be a refugee and have chosen not to return, and … that happens in this country, people aren’t found to be refugees and they won’t return.”
But Elaine Pearson, the Australia director of Human Rights Watch, told the Guardian that most of those held in the Park hotel had been granted refugee status.
“It’s an outright lie to say that these people are not refugees, when most of them have had their refugee status formally recognised for years,” Pearson said.
“They’ve been through that process and it is established that they simply can’t return to their country.”
Peter Costello tries to boost Morrison by telling us “what we think” in The Age poll.
However:
The rising death toll and explosion in infections are a direct result of the failure to provide adequate safeguards to cope with these new “freedoms”. Experts warned exceptionally high vaccination rates by world standards would not be enough. Instead, we were given the mantra of “getting the government off people’s backs and out of their lives”. It was a stark dereliction of a government’s public health responsibilities. The failure to provide self-administered rapid antigen tests (RATs) as an essential tool in keeping the country functioning is a major contributor to the deep malaise we are now experiencing. Empty supermarket shelves are the most eloquent witnesses to this reckless wishful thinking. The situation has become so dire even Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s critics are giving him a serious second look.
Source: Paul Bongiorno: Summer of our discontent changes political calculus
A drastic slide in home ownership, mirrored by an equally dramatic rise in mortgage debt and renting, is a direct result of failed government policy. Spiralling inequality in the “Land of the Fair Go can be addressed, ironically, by stronger lending standards. Economist and The New Liberals candidate Steve Keen on the crisis in affordable housing. At the 1998 Census, 43% of Australians owned their houses outright, 29% had a mortgage, 18% rented from private landlords, and 6% from the government (the remainder were in hotels, homeless, etc). Twenty years later, only 30% owned their houses outright, 37% had a mortgage, while 27% rented from landlords and 3% from the government. And yet the objective of housing policy, under both Liberal and Labor governments, was to increase home ownership.
Source: Housing affordability plunge: radical policy the only answer – Michael West Media
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