Author: peterimrich

Julian Assange

After CIA Plot Revealed, Press Freedom Coalition Says DOJ Must Drop Assange Case

Demonstrators demand the release of Julian Assange

“We appreciate that the government has a legitimate interest in protecting bona fide national security interests, but the proceedings against Mr. Assange jeopardize journalism that is crucial to democracy,” wrote the organizations.

“In our view, a precedent created by prosecuting Assange could be used against publishers and journalists alike, chilling their work and undermining freedom of the press.”

 As Common Dreams reported last month, under former President Donald Trump, the CIA reportedly discussed kidnapping or assassinating Assange, who is currently imprisoned in London’s maximum-security Belmarsh prison.

“The actions laid out in the indictment are virtually indistinguishable from common practices in newspapers around the country.”

Yahoo News first reported the revelations that officials at the “highest levels” of the agency considered attacking Assange, as well as “extensive spying on WikiLeaks associates, sowing discord among the group’s members, and stealing their electronic devices.” “In February, members of this coalition wrote to the Acting Attorney General, urging that the criminal charges against Mr. Assange be dropped,” the groups said. “We now renew that request

Source: After CIA Plot Revealed, Press Freedom Coalition Says DOJ Must Drop Assange Case

Trump

Trump Sues Jan. 6 Committee To Block Archived Presidential Documents | HuffPost Latest News

The former president tried citing executive privilege in his attempt to keep information out of the hands of those investigating the insurrection.

Source: Trump Sues Jan. 6 Committee To Block Archived Presidential Documents | HuffPost Latest News

Trump

Trump’s Suicidal Gut Instinct at Work: “Fix Those ‘Rigged’ Elections or We Won’t Vote.” | The Smirking Chimp

Beware billionaire control freaks Though not all that exceptional for egocentric billionaires, every one a self-declared know-it-all, Trump cannot abide that the populace, especially disreputable, undeserving minorities, can determine where he lives, what he does, and whom he abuses. Like other Robber Barons, Trump has the snobbish mania to make himself an entitled aristocrat, a master of the universe whose only complaint is why it took so long to award him the emperor’s throne. Like irrational anti-vaxxers, he can’t stand being told what to do – stopped only when richer, higher powers he can’t intimidate dismiss his arrogance, “We won’t remain winners if we back your serial bad investments, appalling staff choices, and vulgar, infinite presumptions.”

Source: Trump’s Suicidal Gut Instinct at Work: “Fix Those ‘Rigged’ Elections or We Won’t Vote.” | The Smirking Chimp

Fight against Fake News, Fighting Fake News

Old Dog Thought- We are traveling down this road to nowhere when we just sit in silence behind America and jump to please. Biden didn’t even know Morrison’s name

Fighting Fake News with REAL 19/10/21; Grumpy Geezer; WOW Wrap, Are we becoming Political Trump’s?

Informed Comment

Informed Comment- Ben Davison’s Week on Wednesday Wrap

Weekend Wrap 17 Oct 21: COVID updates as Vic and NSW head out of lockdown, Whats Josh Frydenberg‘s problem? And Morrison is finally off to Glasgow

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/weekend-wrap-17-oct-21-covid-updates-as-vic-and-nsw/id1528299411?i=1000538801550

Informed Comment

Eight years, 20 policies: how Australia’s leaders have fumbled and dithered on climate | Australian politics | The Guardian

Power lines in early morning fog

We voted for them and this is what they delivered NOTHING

In the last eight years of Coalition rule, there have been more than 20 different climate and energy policies, which have been announced with fanfare before fizzing into the background, or just being trashed altogether. Here’s a short rundown of what the last eight years has looked like.

Source: Eight years, 20 policies: how Australia’s leaders have fumbled and dithered on climate | Australian politics | The Guardian

The National Party

Barnaby Joyce has refused to support doubling Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction targets – but we could get there so cheaply and easily

As Prime Minister Scott Morrison tries to land a Coalition climate policy deal ahead of the international COP26 summit in Glasgow, Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce on Sunday ruled out supporting more ambitious 2030 targets. The current 2030 target aims to cut emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels, and has been criticised by scientists and the international community as far too weak. But ahead of a Nationals party room meeting on Sunday to discuss changes to national climate policy, Joyce declared it “highly unlikely” he would support a doubling of the 2030 target, according to ABC reports.

Source: Barnaby Joyce has refused to support doubling Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction targets – but we could get there so cheaply and easily

Uncategorized

It’s another girl! NSW premier announces seventh child on the way

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has announced that he and his wife Helen are expecting their seventh child. In a post on Facebook on Sunday night the premier said he had “exciting family news”. The conservative Catholic already has five daughters and one son.

Source: It’s another girl! NSW premier announces seventh child on the way

Informed Comment

Hey, hey, it’s Perrottet. Can Morrison survive? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

“It’s not just a health crisis, it’s an economic crisis.” Dominic Francis Perrottet, a gangly colt by Gordon Gecko out of Margaret Thatcher in party apparatchik’s blue tie saddle-cloth, a heavily tipped favourite, but up in class, easily beats his lunchtime jogging pal, Planning Minister, pious Anglican and fellow anti-abortionist, Rob Stokes to the winning post in NSW’s forty-sixth premier stakes. It’s a rigged ballot, after much horse-trading, yet a novelty in a party which hasn’t voted for a leader since 2002. NSW prefers, like La Cosa Nostra, to keep its succession planning simple. Gladys is a no-show. Is she in witness protection already? Scuttlebutt from “senior Liberals” is that she’ll be parachuted into a safe federal Liberal seat. If ICAC doesn’t send her to jail.

“Privatize everything. Abolish help for the weak, the solitary, the sick and the unemployed. Abolish all aid for everyone except the banks. Don’t look after the poor; let the elderly die. Reduce the wages of the poor but reduce the taxes of the rich. Make everyone work until they are ninety. Only teach mathematics to traders, reading to big property-owners and history to on-duty ideologues.” And the execution of these commands will in fact ruin the life of millions of people,” writes Alain Badiou in Capitalism Today, (2012, 13).

“It could be a page from Dom’s secret diary. It certainly fits federal Coalition “policy”.

Source: Hey, hey, it’s Perrottet. Can Morrison survive? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

LNP

Australia needs an ICAC, but also mandatory gaol sentences

Who is Morrison intent on protecting?

Without severe penalties, political corruption in Australia will continue to flourish, writes Alan Austin.

Source: Australia needs an ICAC, but also mandatory gaol sentences

Electricity

Germany: Tesla’s Electric Car sales overtake leading domestic automakers in September

Tesla is flying high in Germany: In September, more electric Tesla Model 3s were registered in the country than leading domestic models, such as the BMW 3 Series, Audi A4 and Mercedes C-Class combined, business news magazine WirtschaftsWoche reports, citing data from the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA).

Source: Germany: Tesla’s Electric Car sales overtake leading domestic automakers in September

Australia

Today’s Evangelicalism Was Forged in the Fight Against Communism and Feminism

To some, it seemed hypocritical for evangelicals to support Donald Trump — not exactly a Christian-family-values figure. But his strong evangelical support was the culmination of the embattled cultural politics that gave rise to the modern evangelical movement.

THE ELECT

Evangelicals’ identities are rooted in their calling, their task, which is to return America to its Christian origins, because only then will God give this nation his blessing. Evangelicalism, remember, has been this way since World War II. They’ve always had this special mission.

Of course, they will never achieve their task, because their version of America was never real to begin with. But it is an incredibly powerful way to rally the troops, mobilize conservatives, and make them feel like they have lost something that is rightfully theirs — that this is our country, we were once at the center of things, and what needs to happen is that we need to be back in charge because then we can Make America Great Again.

 

Source: Today’s Evangelicalism Was Forged in the Fight Against Communism and Feminism

Australia's Shame

Britain’s Guantanamo: is Julian Assange a terrorist? – Michael West Media

Julian Assange, Wikileaks

As Julian Assange prepares to face a British court for possibly the last time, threatened with up to 175 years detention in a US supermax prison, his biographer, journalist Gary Lord, explores the latest bizarre twists in the US effort to extradite the Wikileaks founder and the silence of global media.

Source: Britain’s Guantanamo: is Julian Assange a terrorist? – Michael West Media

Fight against Fake News, Fighting Fake News

Old Dog Thought- Extreme religious believers, generally respect the seperation of powers and don’t seek public office due to inevitable contradictions with democracy. History has shown us what can result, the Inqisition, Saudi Arabia etc. So why now do we witness the rise of the zealots?
Julian Assange, Wikileaks

Fighting Fake News with REAL 18/10/21;Satirical ads mocking Australia’s climate stance in Times Square; Seperation of Powers the Dangerous intersection; ICAC Who is Morrison Protecting?;

Informed Comment

Cheap Grace and Climate Change: Australia and COP26 – » The Australian Independent Media Network

It was not for everybody, but the shock advertising tactics of the Australian comedian Dan Ilic made an appropriate point. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a famed coal hugger, has vacillated about whether to even go to the climate conference in Glasgow. Having himself turned the country’s prime ministerial office into an extended advertising agency, Ilic was speaking his language. The language was promoted through sponsored imagery in Times Square, New York, with advertising space purchased by a crowdfunding campaign of considerable success. Billboards featured the prime minister as a “Coal-o-phile Dundee,” mercilessly mocked Australia’s climate policies and responses to the murderously scorching bushfires of 2020.

Source: Cheap Grace and Climate Change: Australia and COP26 – » The Australian Independent Media Network

LNP, LNP Economic Management, LNP Government

Yes, Australia can beat its 2030 emissions target. But the Morrison government barely lifted a finger

Federal policies remain firmly fixed on keeping fossil fuels in the energy mix and expanding coal and gas production. It recently approved several new coal mines and announced subsidised and expanded gas production. Gas is a fossil fuel that also needs to be phased out if we’re to have any chance of keeping warming to 1.5℃. The Morrison government is also increasing funding for carbon capture and storage, a policy aimed at continuing the use of fossil fuels. This is despite the country’s largest such project, the Gorgon venture off Western Australia, failing to reduce and store carbon emissions at the rate originally promised. The annual Climate Transparency analysis, released on Wednesday, shows Australia has some of the G20’s highest per capita emissions. It is the only developed country in the G20 with no price on carbon, yet ranks the fourth highest for risk of economic losses from climate impacts.

Source: Yes, Australia can beat its 2030 emissions target. But the Morrison government barely lifted a finger

Filed under:
LNP, LNP Economic Management, LNP Government

Business whispers: how Treasurer Josh Frydenberg squandered $40bn on JobKeeper – Michael West Media

Treasury, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg

Kooyong’s own Harvard wiz-kid needs to go.

It turns out the very business lobbyists who stood to benefit most from JobKeeper were regularly advising the Government on JobKeeper. Callum Foote and Michael West report how $40bn was squandered and the role of corporate spinners Business Council of Australia and AI Group.

Source: Business whispers: how Treasurer Josh Frydenberg squandered $40bn on JobKeeper – Michael West Media

Public Health

Portugal Is the World’s Most Vaccinated Country Because Its Population Trusts Its Free Health Care System

This article could once have been about Australia if it weren’t for the LNP

Portugal has the world’s highest COVID-19 vaccination rate, with 85 percent of the population fully vaccinated. Its success drew on a strong public information campaign — but it couldn’t have done it without a free national health care system that has won massive popular trust.

Source: Portugal Is the World’s Most Vaccinated Country Because Its Population Trusts Its Free Health Care System

Israel

Lies Are Being Told About Sally Rooney Because She Refuses to Ignore Israeli Apartheid

Baseless claims of anti-Semitism and allegations of hypocrisy have been leveled for decades at anyone who rejects the fiction that Israel is a normal state.

Source: Lies Are Being Told About Sally Rooney Because She Refuses to Ignore Israeli Apartheid

Israel, Israel Crimes

Band of 30 militant Israeli Squatters attack Palestinian Farmers, Steal Olive Harvest in continued Sabotage that has seen 1 mn Olive Trees destroyed by Israelis since 1967

On Friday, some thirty militant Israeli squatters on Palestinian land in the West Bank attacked Palestinian farmers harvesting olives from their orchards at Salfit. At the same time the Israeli occupation army blocked other farmers from reaching their olive orchards near the large squatter settlement of Ariel, built on land stolen from Palestinian families. So reports al-Quds [Jerusalem] and the Associated Press. Fall is harvest time for Palestinian olive growers. Murad Ishtiwi, a Palestinian activist against the Israeli government project of settling squatters on other people’s private property, told al-Quds that the Occupation forces attempted to stop the farmers from the hamlet of Yasuf near Salfit when they sought to reach their land near to an Israeli squatter outpost. They were shocked that a large band of squatters from Rahalim, allegedly abetted by the Israeli army, attacked and beat the farmers, injuring four of them. The Israelis then made off with the olive harvest.

Source: Band of 30 militant Israeli Squatters attack Palestinian Farmers, Steal Olive Harvest in continued Sabotage that has seen 1 mn Olive Trees destroyed by Israelis since 1967

Trump's Opinion

Trump is a snake — and he’s poisoning the Republican Party: CNN’s Jim Acosta – Raw Story – Celebrating 17 Years of Independent Journalism

 

Trump is a snake — and he’s poisoning the Republican Party: CNN’s Jim Acosta
Narcissism is extreme self-involvement to the degree that it makes a person ignore the needs of those around them.

Trump’s Narcissistic Personality Disorder on full show  “it’s all about me” statement

“If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24. It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do,” Trump argued.

Source: Trump is a snake — and he’s poisoning the Republican Party: CNN’s Jim Acosta – Raw Story – Celebrating 17 Years of Independent Journalism

Trump

Crybaby Trump Demands He Be Given Arizona Win | Crooks and Liars

Crybaby Trump Demands He Be Given Arizona Win

Trump has taken Goebbels to a whole other level of lying.

Source: Crybaby Trump Demands He Be Given Arizona Win | Crooks and Liars

Fight against Fake News, Fighting Fake News

Old Dog Thought- How is it Morrison’s and Barnaby Joyce’s LNP are not about preserving Fossil Fuels but expanding their extraction by an increasingly automated industry intent on saving costs and maximizing profits by minimizing jobs and most cases leaving a trashed landscape behind on our ONE PLANET

Fighting Fake News with REAL 17/10/21; Biodiversity; Frydenberg, Exclusive Brethren;

Scott Morrison

The most abject failure of leadership in living memory

Laura Tingle

There’s so much to contemplate in this development: the humiliation – if the federal government was apt to feel such a thing – of a state government appearing to unilaterally end quarantine arrangements (the responsibility of the federal government) and overseas arrivals caps for starters It looked for all the world as if the state government was running the joint. Perrottet the premier of Australia. Just as Scott Morrison has been dubbed the prime minister for NSW. Before Perrottet’s announcement, we had heard nothing this week from the PM since Monday – when he emerged out of The Lodge to once again try to share in the joy of (and credit for) the end of lockdown in NSW.

Source: The most abject failure of leadership in living memory

Inconvenient truth, Truth in Humor, Truth not found in media

Truth in Humour
Inconvenient truth, Truth in Humor, Truth not found in media

“Challenge Accepted!” Says PM After Reserve Bank Says He Cannot Hide From A Net Zero Future — The Betoota Advocate

The Reserve Bank of Australia has declared that the Government cannot hide from a net zero future today as state and territory governments around the country make plans without Federal guidance. In response, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has told journalists that he has accepted the RBA’s challenge and looks forward to showing the country he can and will hide from it. “Right now, my cabinet is looking for a dead cat,” he said.

Source: “Challenge Accepted!” Says PM After Reserve Bank Says He Cannot Hide From A Net Zero Future — The Betoota Advocate

LNP, LNP Government, Social Welfare under LNP

Why is our government holding us back? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Australia is both one of the wealthiest and – in too many ways – one of the most backward countries in the world. We have manufacturing facilities which could be revived to build EVs and the knowledge to ensure that re-charging is readily available. We also have a Coalition government which appears to lack any ability to plan for a viable future. Today, schoolchildren are demanding that governments take action as a matter of urgency, as their whole future is at stake. In the very near future the existing government will draw on the selfish instincts of the electorate to seek a further term in office. I am deeply unenamoured with the alternative government, but would still rather vote them in, than risk seeing the future for my grandchildren and their children destroyed by the selfishness of those currently at the helm.

Source: Why is our government holding us back? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Informed Comment

Pro-vax, pro-union, anti-fascist: Three things to be proud of

Don’t sleepwalk into a fascist Australia

We need to be vigilant, active and politically switched-on if we are to avoid scenes like those in Rome recently where fascist mobs ransacked a union headquarters and terrorised working-class and diverse communities. We had a taste in Melbourne with the attack on the CMFEU headquarters and violent rampages around the city. Now the mobs are planning another street rally in late November. We have to fight back, or they will overrun our city.

Source: Pro-vax, pro-union, anti-fascist: Three things to be proud of

LNP, LNP Economic Management, LNP Government

Victoria’s COVID-19 quarantine centre: Is the Mickleham quarantine facility a $200 million white elephant?

Construction on the Mickleham quarantine facility on Thursday.

This was part and parcel of Morrison’s National Quarantine Plan which he financed to be placed with the cooperation of Dan Andrews. Now Josh Frydenberg seems to be saying Victoria is the uncooperative outlier. How incompetent are these clowns as leaders and negotiators.?

Morrison capitulates to the Queens demands and Frydenberg declares it’s proof of Australia’s goodwill in cooperating at COP26. If the media doesn’t criticize this bullshit we are expected to believe it’s true when it’s patently not what happened. Did Frydenberg bullshit his way through Harvard too?

Victoria’s purpose-built $200 million quarantine facility still has a role to play in the pandemic, experts say, however it won’t be as crucial as anticipated due to high case numbers and vaccination rates.The Mickleham “centre for national resilience” for incoming travellers won’t be ready until the end of the year, however there is a risk it may become a white elephant if Victoria relaxes quarantine rules.NSW’s move to effectively end quarantine for most travellers by opening international borders to those who are vaccinated from November 1 has raised questions over the purpose of the facility being built in Melbourne’s north.

Source: Victoria’s COVID-19 quarantine centre: Is the Mickleham quarantine facility a $200 million white elephant?

Murdoch Media

‘Why Aussies are misinformed on Climate Change?’ – Top 10 answers for Sky News’ question | The Chaser

As much as it pains me and no doubt Andrew Bolt he’s only runner up to the worst of the worst at Sky. He never seems to get a gong for anything. The 80-year-old from Sydney beat him by lengths and Rown Dean was also near to making him an also-ran.

Sky News has just spent the Day 2 of News Corp’s climate action campaign showing worrying statistics that suggest an alarming number of Australians are misinformed on climate change and the facts regarding the importance of climate action, leading to the network asking how the so many Aussies could be so misinformed on such a serious issue?We know it could be hard for Sky News to find these since they have scrubbed the pushback against climate action from the transcripts of their coverage, here are our picks of some of the best possible culprits to blame for this situation.

Source: ‘Why Aussies are misinformed on Climate Change?’ – Top 10 answers for Sky News’ question | The Chaser

Informed Comment

If the Nat’s don’t join Rupert’s crusade, he will finish them – » The Australian Independent Media Network

My thought for the day Lying in the media is wrong at any time however when they do it by deliberate omission it is even more so. Murdoch’s papers seem to do it with impunity. ( John Lord )

Source: If the Nat’s don’t join Rupert’s crusade, he will finish them – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Informed Comment

COP26 Glasgow summit: How Australia’s ‘net’ in net zero emissions offers a huge opportunity to cheat

Cooking with gas - Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce.

Many people fear carbon credits will be used to avoid reductions in the production of fossil fuels. And when you hear Energy Minister Angus Taylor assuring people in the coal, oil and gas industries that they “have a great future”, it makes you think such fears are warranted.

Source: COP26 Glasgow summit: How Australia’s ‘net’ in net zero emissions offers a huge opportunity to cheat

Informed Comment

Why the Hell Are Democrats Keeping Your Drug Prices High? | The Smirking Chimp

something else you can do: If you happen to be a constituent of one of these four Democrats, don’t vote for them when they’re up for reelection. Make sure they’re primaried, and then vote in the Democratic primaries for true public servants — who care more about advancing the public good than protecting private profits.

Source: Why the Hell Are Democrats Keeping Your Drug Prices High? | The Smirking Chimp

Fight against Fake News, Fighting Fake News

Old Dog Thoughts- Why does the LNP rely on so many “private” outsourced contractors to do their bookkeeping their media, and even their public service? Better management and privacy of course. God have mercy on the whistleblowers because the LNP won’t.

Cooking with gas - Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce.

Fighting Fake News with REAL; The great Capitulator; Inequality in Relief, Banksy, How the LNP Cooks the Carbon books;

Education

BratKeeper: profitable private schools purloin JobKeeper, pandemic payments too – Michael West Media

Wesley College, JobKeeper

Blessed are the rich, for theirs are the taxes of the poor! Elite private schools gorged themselves on JobKeeper despite their profits, on top of Pandemic stimulus payments, and as well as trousering a bigger slice of the federal funding pie at the expense of public schools. Trevor Cobbold investigates the latest hand-outs.

Source: BratKeeper: profitable private schools purloin JobKeeper, pandemic payments too – Michael West Media

Informed Comment

EXCLUSIVE: Gun club financial report shows mystery costs to obtain grant

The financial records of the gun club at the centre of an ICAC investigation reveal “significant costs” involved with obtaining its $5.5 million government grant. Anthony Klan reports.

Source: EXCLUSIVE: Gun club financial report shows mystery costs to obtain grant

Media

Lack of perspective on Taiwan-China tensions

As we can see the Chinese planes were undertaking a short flight in a southeast direction going into the bottom corner of what Taiwan has as its air defence identification zone, not its actual sovereign air defence territory. The fight path is clearly not heading towards the Taiwan coast. It has to be taken into account China is surrounded by U.S. military bases in Asia with a 23-kilometre range. U.S. M1 Howitzers are pointed at China on Kinmen Island, just a few kilometres from China’s coastal city of Xiamen. On reflection, it would be highly likely the U.S. would be flying into such an air defence identification zone if China had guns pointed at Long Beach, California, on Catalina Island, which is just 29 kilometres off the Long Beach coast. This is a perspective that is not taken into account. With this latest reporting of the October incident, there seems to be very little perspective. It seeks to paint a picture of Chinese aggression and arguably promotes war-inciting narratives

Source: Lack of perspective on Taiwan-China tensions

Informed Comment

“To Dirty it!” On how For-Profit News Obscured William Shatner’s Climate Emergency Warning after Suborbital Flight

But here’s the crucial takeaway, the last phrase of which is omitted by CNBC: “What I would love to do is communicate as much as possible the jeopardy, the moment you see how vuln– the vulnerability of everything. It so small. This air which is keeping us alive is thinner than your skin. It’s a sliver. It’s immeasurably small when you think in terms of the universe. It’s negligible, this air. Mars doesn’t have it. It’s so thin. And to dirty it…” “The jeopardy . . . And to dirty it!” To fill this precious atmosphere, unique in our solar system, with clouds of burned coal dust and with greenhouse gases, Shatner says, is . . . what? Despicable. Unthinkable.

Source: “To Dirty it!” On how For-Profit News Obscured William Shatner’s Climate Emergency Warning after Suborbital Flight

Australia's Shame

Australian business talks big on climate, but who’s walking the talk?

At the business end of driving down emissions, who’s walking the talk?

Some Australian companies are at world’s best practice. Medibank, Macquarie, Commonwealth Bank, Cochlear and Brambles are just some of the companies that have emissions per dollar of revenue consistent with the IEA pathway to 1.5 degrees or lower. But, overall, only 24 per cent of Australia’s largest listed companies have emissions consistent with keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees. This compares with 61 per cent of major companies in Britain and 53 per cent in Europe. In other words, three-quarters of Australian companies currently emit at a rate that would lead to temperature increases above 1.5 degrees. And more than a third have emission consistent with a pathway to dangerous levels of warming above 3 degrees.

Source: Australian business talks big on climate, but who’s walking the talk?

Wealth Abyss

The Embarrassment of Riches | The Smirking Chimp

The game is rigged and the room at the top is getting smaller. 90% of that 1% isn’t made up of innovators or genius hard workers it’s made up of inherited wealth handed down through generations. Whose only interest is to maintain it. If for a few years the rest of us believe for a moment we are going up in the world it was to the 1%’s benefit. That however, sure isn’t the case currently and the Global Pandemic is revealing the cracks and inequality once again. While Climate Change is revealing the reality that we are all on this one planet.  Wealth won’t save the hell faced living with a 3 degree plus rise in temperature and the changes that will come with it.

The rich are clearly embarrassed by their riches, so much so that they are going to great lengths to keep their transactions a secret. Now, can we embarrass them even more so that they pay what is necessary to save the planet?

Source: The Embarrassment of Riches | The Smirking Chimp

TAX

Make them Pay Up: Pandora Leaks show that the Super-Rich rob Public of $200 bn a year in lost Tax Revenues

The recently released Pandora Papers, a trove of nearly 12 million documents, shines some light on the mechanisms by which the wealthy squirrel away their gains. One example jumps out: Tony Blair. The former British prime minister and his lawyer wife Cherie purchased a multi-million-dollar townhouse in London as her office but did it in such a way as to avoid paying a tax on the sale. In this offshore financial sleight of hand, they skipped out on paying several hundred thousand dollars to the very government over which Blair once presided. The maneuver, which was perfectly legal, is salient for two reasons. First, Blair himself had initially railed against tax dodges of this nature. “Offshore trusts get tax relief while homeowners pay VAT on insurance premiums,” he said as Labor Party leader. “We will create a tax system that is fair which is related to ability to pay.” Second, Blair celebrated a “third way” that was supposedly an accommodation between socialism and capitalism. When it came to global markets, Blair wanted “to remove regulatory burdens and to untie the hands of business,” as he put it in a celebrated 1999 speech.

Source: Make them Pay Up: Pandora Leaks show that the Super-Rich rob Public of $200 bn a year in lost Tax Revenues

Informed Comment

Noam Chomsky: The GOP Is a “Group of Radical Sadists”

From the debacle in Afghanistan to the ongoing devastation of COVID-19 to the unhinged cruelty of the Republican Party, Noam Chomsky notes, there is plenty of room for despair in America right now. But he insists that, despite it all, we have ample reason for hope.

Source: Noam Chomsky: The GOP Is a “Group of Radical Sadists”

Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon could face criminal charges: Jan. 6 committee moves to hold ex-Trump aide in contempt | Salon.com

Former White House senior counselor to President Donald Trump, Steve Bannon (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Steve Bannon is one step closer to being held in criminal contempt. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot said on Thursday that it plans to vote next week on whether to hold former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in criminal contempt for his refusal to cooperate with the panel’s subpoena.

Source: Steve Bannon could face criminal charges: Jan. 6 committee moves to hold ex-Trump aide in contempt | Salon.com

Fight against Fake News, Fighting Fake News

Old Dog Thought- Tudge’s biggest concern, history taught, is a distraction for Frydenberg’s BratKeeper
Wesley College, JobKeeper

Fighting Fake News with REAL; 15/10/21; Mental Health, JobKeeper, BratKeeper, Who pays?

Jan 6th

Evidence of Armed Trump Extremists Continues to Emerge in January 6 Cases – Mother Jones

 

As our recent investigation detailed, law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol testified to Congress that they believed the mob of Trump extremists was far more heavily armed with guns than is definitively known. Internal communications from January 6 among US Park Police and other agencies that have since been made public support that view. The lack of certainty, the officers told lawmakers, was a result of their limited capacity to make arrests that day amid the sheer number of people, compounded by fears that taking more aggressive action could set off perilous violence. A document obtained recently by a government transparency watchdog, Property of the People, contains indications that the FBI had specific intelligence, prior to January 6, about armed people headed for the nation’s capital. According to emails circulated among FBI agents in the bureau’s Seattle field office on January 5, intelligence analysts with the Washington State Fusion Center had specifically noted social media comments suggesting that some residents of the state were “planning to travel armed to Washington D.C. for tomorrow’s protests there.”

Source: Evidence of Armed Trump Extremists Continues to Emerge in January 6 Cases – Mother Jones

Donald Trump

Former President Threatens To Have His Republican Voters Stay Home | Crooks and Liars

Former President Threatens To Have His Republican Voters Stay Home

Psychotic narcissistic baby Trump is threatening to try to keep his supporters home if Republicans across the country don’t uncover enough voter fraud to prove he won the 2020 election.

Source: Former President Threatens To Have His Republican Voters Stay Home | Crooks and Liars

Uncategorized

Peter Ridd loses High Court case over climate scepticism censure

Dr Peter Ridd failed to overturn James Cook University’s decision to sack him.

Days after the PM and the Deputy PM declared Facebook and social media sites will be forced to limit Free Speech the sitting idiot Minister in charge of Education Alan Tudge declares Universities need to be forced to open it up. The Morrison government is certainly not a team that seems to know what it’s doing. They seem more like the Three Stooges.

Peter Ridd was politically financed and supported at great cost to have his dismissal overturned and he failed. Now the government wants to overthrow the Court’s rulings by changing the law because it offends Tudge. There is something very Trumpster about Tudge’s wants, actions, and personal history and it’s not representative of a Democracy that’s for certain.

Universities face the prospect of further rules to protect academics’ free speech after Education Minister Alan Tudge raised concerns about a High Court decision upholding the sacking of marine physicist and climate change sceptic Peter Ridd by James Cook University. The decision ends Dr Ridd’s four-year legal battle with JCU after he was censured and ultimately sacked for challenging his colleagues’ views on climate change and the Great Barrier Reef, along with the university’s attempts to discipline him.

Source: Peter Ridd loses High Court case over climate scepticism censure

TAX

Should a death tax be reintroduced in Australia?

Australia is one of only a few OECD countries without a death duty.

Australia is one of only a handful of developed countries that does not have a death duty but the economic case for redistributing funds from wealthy estates back into public coffers is growing as inequality rises.

Source: Should a death tax be reintroduced in Australia?

Scott Morrison

Waking up to Climate Change Dinosaurs – » The Australian Independent Media Network

As things stand, it is a wonder Prime Minister Scott Morrison is even bothering. The Australian delegation in Glasgow is bound to be poorly briefed, confused and barely able. The coalition government, still weighed down by fossil-fuel fantasists, will continue to be engaged in a battle of such stunning incoherence any undertakings on carbon neutrality and change can only be regarded as unreliable and disingenuous. As McKenzie and a few of her lobotomised colleagues would have you believe, climate change is something that happens to other people. In the meantime, fossil fuel socialists the world over, unite!

Source: Waking up to Climate Change Dinosaurs – » The Australian Independent Media Network