At least 13 former Liberal MPs and political staffers have been appointed to plum federal government jobs since the start of the year, including a former deputy mayor given a 26-year-long, $10 million post at the Fair Work Commission.
Source: ‘Year of the mate’: At least 13 former Liberal MPs, staffers given plum jobs
Though he is unsparing in his accounts of colonial violence, Peck’s endgame is not to make white viewers wallow in lonely self-hatred; it’s to encourage change. Citing Rwanda, he argues that the conditions that enabled the Holocaust were not unique, and that humanity will keep committing atrocities until we take a stark look at our history and choose not to repeat it. No wonder Peck feels an affinity for Baldwin, who framed white America’s repressed guilt over centuries of cruelty to Black America as the root of both groups’ misery. “To accept one’s past—one’s history—is not the same thing as drowning in it,” he wrote, “it is learning how to use it.” To that end, Exterminate All the Brutes makes an electrifying instruction manual.
Source: HBO’s ‘Exterminate All the Brutes’ Is a Masterpiece | Time
and
Everything We Learned From Raoul Peck’s ‘Exterminate All The Brutes’ Documentary
“…because Rudy’s an idiot,” Cohen said. “And that’s the problem — Rudy drinks too much. Rudy behaves in such an erratic manner that who knows what’s on those cellphones or what’s on those computers.”
For sixty years the US punishment policy has been inflicted on Cuba, a small Caribbean island some 90 miles from Florida which has been malevolently victimised by successive administrations — bar one — in Washington.
Source: Why Does Washington Keep Punishing Cuba? | The Smirking Chimp
Amid this heartbreaking, senseless ruination of so many human lives, it’s understandable that readers may have missed some other big stories. Namely, that some conservative male commentators simultaneously complained, in national media: “Who’d want to be a young bloke these days?” Sexual consent education is too important to become a schoolyard joke Read more The reason why this is, truly, big news is that it reveals someone in the past has invented a time machine, and it’s catapulted two men from the last century into today. They’ve landed on to media platforms with their dated understanding of the world intact. How else to explain that someone would put their face to a present-day article with the heading “Tough Times for Men”?
Scott Morrison is getting worse. The hubris and hypocrisy is flowing at every turn. Our Prime Minister believes he was given “a sign” by God in the shape of a picture of an eagle which he read as divine endorsement for his elevation to the top job. Being the “chosen one” confers some sort of infallibility to one’s decision-making. It implies motives are pure. Morality is unquestioned. Outcomes are ordained.
Source: Hubris and hypocrisy – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has hit out at right-wing media outlets and former coalition colleagues for their advocacy for the fossil fuel sector, accusing them of fetishising coal.
Source: Malcolm Turnbull lashes out at right-wing media over coal advocacy
And in true Orwellian Doublespeak, Prime Minister Scott Morrison used the war footing to paint himself as the champion of peace. Michael Tanner reports. It’s been a while since the government actually announced a policy and that drought looks set to continue. Because even though there was blanket media coverage of the fact that the federal government is planning a big budget spend, the government once again delivered that announcement via “a cosy briefing to a tight crew of chosen Canberra-based journalists“. And the cosy crew dutifully did their bit, with near-identical articles posted almost simultaneously late on Wednesday night, each regurgitating Josh Frydenberg’s draft speech, with reports of what the Treasurer “will say” littered throughout their publications. The only difference this time from previous drops was that the circle has expanded beyond The Australian, The Australian Financial Review, The Age/SMH, The Conversation, ABC and The Guardian. Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids are now also getting looped in, with The Adelaide Advertiser, The Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun and The Courier Mail all getting the drops, all running segments of the Treasurer’s upcoming speech,
“Equally, that should not come at the expense of dishonouring our Western heritage, which has made us the liberal democracy that we are today. We have to get the balance right and I’m concerned that we haven’t in the draft that’s been put out.” Under the proposed changes, unveiled by the national curriculum authority on Thursday, children will be taught that First Nations’ people experienced British colonisation “as invasion and dispossession of land, sea and sky”. References to Australia’s “Christian heritage” were also removed out of the civics and citizenship syllabus in favour of terms such as secular and multi-faith.
Source: Alan Tudge ‘concerned’ about colonisation emphasis in proposed curriculum changes
Fox is obsessed with the “crisis” at the border and Black Lives Matter demonstrators. Never mind that BLM protests and other urban demonstrations over the past three years have been overwhelmingly peaceful, which is a little fact that Fox somehow fails to share. Analyzing over 7,000 protests between 2017 and 2020, researchers at Harvard University and the University of Connecticut found that 3.7 percent of the demonstrations—that is, fewer than 1 in 25—involved property damage or vandalism. Protesters or bystanders were injured in 1.6 percent of the protests, or less than 1 in 50. Yet Fox makes you think that the exceptions are the rule, by recycling video of demonstrators burning police cars and looting stores. Did that mayhem occur? Of course, and we should all condemn it. But it’s pure demagoguery to replay the same violent clips, when the vast majority of protests looked nothing like that. Similarly, Fox is rife with stories of undocumented immigrants from Latin America who commit crimes. And, yes, that happens as well. But immigration has declined overall, and not just because of Trump’s wall. According to the first results of the 2020 census, which were released on Monday,
Source: Our Divisions Are Worse Than You Think | Washington Monthly
According to the FBI, a former GA sheriff’s deputy bragged in text messages with members of an alleged extremist group that he planned to charge Black Georgians with felonies to keep them from voting. He also bragged to the group that he beat a Black man who was in custody, but the incident apparently never happened. Via the Belleville News-Democrat:
Source: FBI: White Extremist GA Cop Planned To Frame Black People For Felonies | Crooks and Liars
Pro-gun media outlets and figures have been silent after the recent release of old footage from National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s botched elephant hunt, during which he shot an animal four times before managing to kill it.
Never apologize is Murdoch’s Motto unless they want to take your licence away
Over the weekend, two sensational fake stories — a Fox Business Network segment about President Joe Biden’s supposed plans to impose strict beef rations on Americans and a New York Post news article claiming Vice President Kamala Harris’s book was being distributed to migrant children in shelters — spread rapidly through right wing social media after being injected into the bloodstream by outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch and his family. Both stories were eventually corrected — Fox on air, and the Post in two separate, corrected articles — after being debunked by fact-checkers. In both cases, however, it’s highly unlikely that corrections will ever penetrate the consciousness of the average person who shared straight-faced posts referencing these fake stories on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or the other social media sites. On the contrary, you’ll probably be hearing right wing relatives griping about Harris using her book to indoctrinate migrant children and “jokes” about Biden’s burgers for years to come.
The holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan began Monday, April 12, and for the succeeding week and a half there was trouble at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate. Muslim youth were used to gathering in the square in front of the the gate, which had been built by the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent. This year, in their ceaseless quest to impose their security presence on every inch of the city, the Israeli police decided to try to interfere with these gatherings by putting up iron railings and harassing the youth.
The horrific COVID crisis in India isn’t just the result of rich countries’ criminal hoarding of vaccines and intellectual property — it’s the fault of Narendra Modi’s far-right government, which has prioritized private profits over public health.
Source: India Is In a Horrendous COVID Crisis. It’s Modi’s Fault.
Tips for allies: make educating yourself your own responsibility; do not discredit people’s feelings and experiences of racism based on your (in)experience of it as an ally; challenge the status quo every time you can; racism is systemic, it does not rest, Black people are black 24/7, an ally should be one 24/7; be loud about your allyship and make sure your actions match your words; and last, but not least, understand you are not a hero for being an ally; you are just a human doing the right, decent thing.
The Federal Government secretly deleted from the “independent review” into the corporate regulator three-quarters of the findings into $118,557 the regulator’s boss James Shipton charged taxpayers for his personal “tax advice”.
Source: Josh Frydenberg secretly deletes ASIC corruption findings
Results from opinion polls are regularly accorded more weight than they deserve, particularly given that their methodology is not transparent; their language can shape answers; and only a small percentage of those contacted respond. Yet polls may also independently shape voting choices. Michael Tanner reports.
Source: Numbers can lie: the science behind opinion polls – Michael West
The most systematic white-collar crime of Australian banks against borrowers is still ignored by those in authority and by the media, writes Dr Evan Jones.
Source: Criminality of Australia’s banking sector going unchecked
Our latest research, published today shows the establishment of populations in every part of this giant continent could have occurred in as little as 5,000 years. And the entire population of Sahul could have been as high as 6.4 million people. This translates to more than 3 million people in the area that is now modern-day Australia, far more than any previous estimat
Source: The First Australians grew to a population of millions, much more than previous estimates
US federal agents have searched the Manhattan home and office of Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump’s attorney, a law enforcement official says. The raid marks an escalation of the investigation into the Ukrainian business dealings of Mr Giuliani. Mr Giuliani’s lawyer, Bob Costello, confirmed search warrants had been executed, and that authorities had seized mobile phones. Mr Giuliani, 76, did not immediately respond to a request for comment as members of the media assembled outside his apartment. The warrants included an allegation that Mr Giuliani failed to register as a foreign agent, a violation of lobbying laws.
Source: US federal officers raid Rudy Giuliani’s home, office
https://theintercept.com/empire-politician/
Source: Empire Politician
A Half-Century of Joe Biden’s Stances on War, Militarism, and the CIA
Garofalo then responded by giving an example while making the case that the “good” side of slavery should be taught in public schools. “If you’re teaching, if you’re having a discussion on, whatever the case may be, on slavery, and you can talk about everything dealing with slavery. The good, the bad, the ugly, the whole …” Garofalo declared, to which Hilferty quickly replied, “There’s no good to slavery, though.”
Raoul Peck’s HBO docuseries Exterminate All the Brutes isn’t easy to watch — but it’s important popular education on the 600-year development of the concept and system of white supremacy associated with colonialism, slavery, and genocide.
Source: Exterminate All the Brutes Exposes the Murderous History of Colonialism
Human Rights Watch has issued a 214-page report concluding that between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean there are 6.8 million Jews and 6.8 million Palestinians, and that the Israeli state systematically privileges the Jews, wherever they are, and disprivileges the Palestinians, on the basis of race.
Source: Israel is an Apartheid State seeking Systemic Domination of Palestinians: Human Rights Watch
The latest News Poll figures that surfaced last week after I had posted The polls are in search of some lasting credibility demonstrated the stability of the Coalition vote. They show you that the Coalition would have to commit a crime of catastrophic proportion to have Newspoll move a few percentage points.
Source: Can Labor win the next election? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
More than 20 of Rupert Murdoch’s regional newspapers – including the 160-year-old Northern Star in Lismore – have quietly been merged with News Corp Australia’s city mastheads. The media giant would not reveal how many regional websites had been absorbed by the Daily Telegraph and the Courier-Mail but Guardian Australia has counted at least 20 by monitoring their subscription pages as they’ve moved over. The strategy follows the company’s decision to stop printing 112 newspapers last year, including 36 which closed and 76 which became stand-alone digital mastheads. Now many of those are being subsumed by their state-based paper, as a raft of South Australian local Messenger papers were last year. Queensland locals who want to read the Noosa News or the Gympie Times, for example, will have to buy a digital subscription to the Courier-Mail, where their local paper will be a tab behind the paywall on the metro paper’s website. ABC says it cannot fill void created by closure of suburban and regional newspapers Read more The titles that still remain independent include the Toowoomba Chronicle, the Cairns Post, the Gold Coast Bulletin and the Townsville Bulletin. In New South Wales
So much for the Secular society and the separation of powers there goes the constitution
Scott Morrison attended a Pentecostal national convention on the Gold Coast last week, at which he shared with those gathered his belief that he and wife Jenny have been “called to do God’s work”.
Source: Messiah Morrison direct messages God via the social media devil
By James Dyke, Robert Watson and Wolfgang Knorr | – Sometimes realisation comes in a blinding flash. Blurred outlines snap into shape and suddenly it all makes sense. Underneath such revelations is typically a much slower-dawning process. Doubts at the back of the mind grow. The sense of confusion that things cannot be made to fit together increases until something clicks. Or perhaps snaps. Collectively we three authors of this article must have spent more than 80 years thinking about climate change. Why has it taken us so long to speak out about the obvious dangers of the concept of
Taiwan actually proposed a South China Sea Peace Initiative in 2015, which included refraining from antagonistic conduct, respect for UNCLOS, maintaining dialogue, creating a code of conduct and developing a mechanism for cooperation for non-traditional security issues like environmental protection and humanitarian assistance.
Source: There is an alternative to war in the South China Sea
In Australia, Indigenous people seek justice through our courts and parliaments in a country that still finds itself unable to speak the truth of history or fully reckon with its great sins. Yet brave people fight on because it is all they have, and savour those precious if too rare victories — those glimpses of justice that the family of George Floyd saw this week. If Martin Luther King and Barack Obama were right that the moral arc of the universe bends to justice, then it is justice a long time coming. For too many people the final words of George Floyd speak to a greater truth: “I can’t breathe.”
Andrew Brown Jr., a Black man killed by deputies in North Carolina, was shot five times, including in the back of the head, according to an independent autopsy report released Tuesday by his family’s attorneys. Also Tuesday, the FBI announced a federal civil rights investigation into last week’s shooting of Brown by deputies serving drug-related search and arrest warrants. The developments come amid increasing calls for the release of body camera footage, including formal petitions to make the video public that will be considered by a judge on Wednesday. The autopsy was performed Sunday by a pathologist hired by Brown’s family. The exam noted four wounds to the right arm and one to the head. The state’s autopsy has not been released yet.
Source: North Carolina Deputies Shot Andrew Brown Jr. Five Times, Autopsy Finds | HuffPost
The big takeaway that Republican leaders and conservative pundits clearly got from the Trump era was that the Republican base wants their racism delivered piping hot and with the minimal amount of subtlety. It’s a situation that is likely to get much worse before it gets better.
Advertise with Mother Jones On February 11, Donald Trump Jr. sat in front of his computer for a video deposition. He swore to tell the truth. But documents and a video obtained by Mother Jones—and recent legal filings—indicate that his testimony on key points was not accurate.
The same Republicans now crying for Kerry to step down were silent when Donald Trump really did leak classified information to a visiting Russian delegation, revealing that Israel had placed a spy inside ISIL.
Source: No, Kerry didn’t Leak Israeli strikes to Zarif; but Trump did leak Israeli Intel to Russia
An announcement: Today I handed in my resignation to my editors at the New York Post. The Kamala Harris story — an incorrect story I was ordered to write and which I failed to push back hard enough against — was my breaking point,” she explained.
Menulog won plaudits for its promise to trial an “employment model”, yet in the wake of the Senate inquiry the battle to find consensus over what constitutes fair work in the gig economy remains in full swing. Workers – or “partners” as Uber calls them – still earn less than the minimum wage for employees not covered by an award or registered agreement and they receive no benefits or legal protections. Luke Stacey reports.
It’s not entirely Scott Morrison’s fault that he managed to look like a dissembling idiot at President Joe Biden’s leader’s summit on climate change last week. He probably hasn’t read a word of the science about global warming and the grim future that awaits his children and grandchildren. That’s not an excuse, but it tells us the scientists and bureaucrats who advise him and other politicians have been falling down badly on their jobs. Those people who actually know what’s going on have allowed themselves to be intimidated by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch and their bullies, who in turn have been collaborators in the crime of the century.
Source: Alan Kohler: Scott Morrison, the Murdochs and the crime of the century
Let’s not forget Dutton at Boomgate when exposed he offered to resign. You can malign a pacific nation but not Peter Dutton. He apologized to Tony Abbott for getting caught and not to the people of the Pacific.
Lawyers for a refugee activist being sued by Peter Dutton for labelling him “a rape apologist” say the case has serious implications for freedom of speech, and politicians should be more tolerant of criticism.
Biden made 67 false and misleading statements in his first 100 days in office, according to a report Monday from The Washington Post’s fact checker. That compares to 511 such comments from his predecessor Donald Trump in his first 100 days. The Post’s fact checkers characterized the Biden era as “a return to a more typical pattern when it comes to a commander in chief and his relationship with the facts — one that features frequent spin and obfuscation or exaggeration, with the occasional canard.” The team analyzed Biden’s every speech, interview, tweet or public statement, following the same methodology as the database that tallied more than 30,500 false or misleading claims over the course of Trump’s four years in office.
Source: How Many False Claims Did Biden Make In His First 100 Days Compared To Trump? | HuffPost
“The Republican Accountability Project has created what it’s calling a ‘GOP Democracy Report Card,’ which assigns grades to Republican members of Congress ranging from an ‘A,’ which the group describes as excellent, to an ‘F,’ which it describes as very poor,”
Source: Anti-Trump Republican group begins grading GOP members: Kevin McCarthy gets an F | Salon.com
“My fear is that it’s going to be back to square one as soon as we get another bad president in office,” said the unnamed scientist, who is still awaiting a response to their complaint. “Unless we get some real change, we’ll go right back to the dark ages.”
Source: The Fight to Clean Up the EPA
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