Fox News host Tucker Carlson has spent years telling his audience that white supremacists do not pose a serious threat to the public. Even as Americans motivated by racist ideologies committed acts of domestic terror — including the January 6 sacking of the U.S. Capitol — he was quick to scoff, arguing that Democrats and the press were exaggerating the threat for political gain. So after FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress the exact opposite on Tuesday, Carlson was left with three choices — admit that he was wrong, lie about what happened, or ignore it. He chose the latter path, preferring to devote his show to issues he apparently considered more pressing, like the purported cancellation of Dr. Seuss.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday strongly pushed back against a move by Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden to further restrict the number of people who will receive direct payments under the emerging coronavirus aid package, warning the new eligibility structure would deny direct relief to people who received checks during Donald Trump’s presidency.
administration is being asked to punish Hungary, Colombia, Chile, and other countries for seeking to ramp up the production of Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics without express permission from pharmaceutical companies. The sanctions are being urged by the drug industry, which has filed hundreds of pages of documents to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative outlining the alleged threat posed by any effort to challenge “basic intellectual property protections” in the response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Angus Campbell isn’t a bad man. The vast majority of Australian men aren’t ‘bad’ men. But they still seem to think it is a woman’s fault if she gets raped. Don’t be out after midnight. Don’t drink. Don’t be alone. Don’t look attractive. Or you risk becoming ‘prey’? Do men feel that way? If a man goes out with his mates and gets pissed, does that make him a likely target for anal rape?
Christian Porter is responsible for serial breaches of the law, as documented here last year. These revelations alone should be enough to see Porter removed from official duties but his relentless persecution of Witness K and Bernard Collaery – both denied natural justice and prosecuted in secret – are hardly the stuff of a model litigant. Yet now the besieged Attorney-General calls for rule of law to apply in respect of the rape allegations against him. Elizabeth Minter reports.
One of the problems with politics was best expressed when a Liberal politician was attacking a policy that she thought was Labor’s, only to be told midway that it was, in fact, Cormann who said it. Suddenly it became good policy. I always try to separate the person from the politics but that’s not always easy. Just like when Andrew Bolt says something you agree with, you wonder whether you should reassess your views or your whole life.
Millions in JobKeeper subsidies and rent waivers has helped struggling department store Myer grow its profits by 8 per cent for the first half of the financial year despite a plunge in sales.
Contemporary conservatism has fallen into the seven deadly sins of pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. This listing of faults originated with Evagrius the Solitary, a fourth-century monk from what is now Turkey. His original list had eight sins, but both pride and vainglory were on it, and subsequent authors collapsed them into seven.
Which brings us to the present, where the bastards have metastasized and proliferated until the whole country is threatened. The cancerous growth on the dark side of our politics and the mean and brutish side of our natures has swollen to monstrous size.
After he texted his brother about his accomplishments on that day, his brother shot back, “What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”, later telling a friend about his brother’s stupidity. The friend later tipped off the FBI.
The FBI’s Christopher Wray testified to the Senate earlier today that there is no evidence that Antifa or fake Trump supporters were part of the insurrection against the U.S. government on January 6th.
The Coalition could have saved the country billions if it had stuck to Labor’s original NBN plans and adjusted them with new technologies, Paul Budde reports.
In the book 25 years of Mushroom Records, published in 1998, Michael Gudinski described himself as “Chairman, Mushroom Group of Companies and music fan”. There could be no better description of Gudinski, an icon of the Australian popular music industry, who has died at the age of 68.
He could have had a quiet, prosperous life in the family business, but just before his HSC he dropped out of school to put up posters and book suburban dances. He was immediately thrown out of home.
As the Trump Party takes over the GOP, anti-Trump Republicans are abandoning the party in droves – thereby weakening it for general elections while simultaneously strengthening Trump’s hand inside it. It’s great news for Democrats and Joe Biden.
In 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion gutting Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required that states with a long history of discrimination had to approve their voting changes with the federal government. That ruling led to a wave of new voter suppression laws in states including Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas.
An international survey conducted by the University of Cambridge and YouGov ahead of this November’s COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference, and published on Monday, found overwhelming support around the world for governments taking more robust action to protect the environment amid the worsening climate crisis.
Too often we say that someone was cleared of an offence when it was simply that there wasn’t enough proof to convict. O.J. Simpson was found “Not guilty” but I’d suggest that nobody would be prepared to say categorically that he was innocent of the crime. So with no complainant and the police unlikely to proceed, exactly what can happen from here? Mm, well I’m pretty sure the police won’t be proceeding, so we’re left with the Monopoly card. If nobody’s convicted then everyone’s not guilty and entitled to the presumption of innocence and that’s the way it should be, because under this government unless it’s a hanging offence you don’t resign – unless you’re a woman. And the PM asked the alleged man and he allegedly rejected the accusation and that should be enough. I look forward to Martin Bryant’s release any day now…
The Australian Federal Police have no authority to investigate an alleged crime of sexual assault that was allegedly committed in NSW. The Prime Minister must know this. If he doesn’t, he should perhaps seek advice from his Attorney General, Christian Porter, who would certainly be aware of this. Either mistakenly or deliberately the Prime Minister is not observing the “rule of law” in referring the allegations to the Federal Police. He should have referred them to the NSW Police. He should still refer them to the NSW Police if he is interested in respecting the rule of law and intends to continue to claim he is abiding by that rule. Morrison has done nothing by referring the matter to the AFP other than provide a smokescreen, and some breathing space for himself and the alleged rapist in his cabinet.
The Morrison Government’s eye-watering stimulus package has little to show in the way of long-term benefit for the majority of Australians. Tarric Brooker reports. AS THE BULK of the Morrison Government’s coronavirus stimulus package draws to a close, one can’t help but be reminded of a quote from wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”
On both the criminal and civil litigation fronts, former President Donald Trump faces a bevy of lawsuits and investigations, with more cases likely to follow. Some are civil suits stemming from his pre-presidential business dealings. Others are defamation claims from women he allegedly assaulted. More still are criminal probes and civil actions that scrutinize his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The Chart below tracks all these cases. It will be continually updated as major legal developments occur.
But not everyone supported Mr Trump. A separate question on the poll asked whether Mr Trump should run again in 2024 – getting a mixed result, with 68 per cent saying he should run and 32 per cent opposed or having no opinion.
Trump repeated a bunch of other false claims we regularly heard from him as president, on subjects ranging from trade with China to his stance on the war in Iraq. He also offered up some new false claims about President Joe Biden’s early days in office. We are still going through the transcript of Trump’s remarks, but here is an initial breakdown of some of the things he said.
From its radical roots in the 1970s, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras has gradually been captured by conservative, pro-corporate interests. The festival should be more than a corporate street party: it needs to recover its original spirit by empowering Mardi Gras members.
The Government touts gas as being a key plank of JobMaker, its Covid-19 recession recovery plan. To help “support jobs” the government has given the gas industry $300 million of taxpayers’ money in subsidies. In return, the industry has cut about 3000 workers, more than 10% of it workforce, in a boom production year. Mark Ogge and Elizabeth Minter report.
When Young Liberals in Chris Hartcher’s Terrigal electorate were inspired by Brad Pitt’s Fight Club to head out late at night on what they called “Black Ops” to tear down opposition election posters, one could perhaps, despite the illegality, dismiss this as kids going a bit too far. The fact that Liberal hopeful Aaron Henry signed his email call-to-action as ”Tyler Durden” (Brad Pitt’s character) shows just how juvenile this crowd were. But when one of them then tried to destroy the career of Sydney Water chief Dr Kerry Schott via an anonymous email detailing a false complaint to the NSW ICAC, they moved from silly kids to dangerous. Carrying on in the same vein, there is a parliamentary group who call themselves the “Wolverines”, a nod to the 1984 Hollywood film Red Dawn, about a team of high school football jocks thwarting a Soviet invasion of the United States.
AN ALLEGATION OF the brutal anal rape of a child in 1988 has been made against an unnamed minister in the Federal Government Cabinet. The victim took her own life in June 2020. NSW Police have confirmed that a criminal investigation into the allegation dies with the victim.
An allegation of the brutal anal rape of a child in 1988 has been made against an un-named minister in Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s cabinet. The victim took her own life in June 2020. NSW police have confirmed that a criminal investigation into the allegation dies with the victim. Despite their knowledge that police will not investigate because the complainant is dead, government ministers and some journalists continue to claim that the matter must be left to the police. All of them are wrong, according to police.
“Walmart, the largest employer in America, is owned by the richest family in America. Their wealth has gone up $50 billion during the pandemic, and they spend millions on themselves. But the company they own starts workers off at $11 an hour. That is outrageous.”
The For the People Act, numbered in Congress as H.R. 1 and S. 1, would provide for automatic voter registration across the country and would require paper ballots. It would require that early voting be made available, and would expand mail-in voting. It would authorize $1 billion for upgrades to state voting systems. Polling by Data for Progress and Vote Save America shows that the principles in H.R. 1 are very popular, across parties. Sixty-eight percent of Americans approve of the reforms in the bill. Sixteen percent oppose the measure. The items within the bill are also popular. Eighty-six percent of Americans support a plan to prevent foreign interference in our elections; 7% oppose it. Eighty-five percent of us want to limit the amount of politics; 8% oppose that idea. Eighty-four percent of us want more election security; 8 percent do not. Seventy-four percent of us want to see nonpartisan redistricting; 11% do not. Sixty-eight percent want to see 15 days of early voting; 19% do not. Sixty percent want same-day voter registration; 29% do not. Fifty-nine percent want automatic voter registration; 29% do not. Even with the Republican attacks on mail-in voting, fifty-eight percent of us want to be able to vote by mail; 35% do not. Democrats passed a version of H.R. 1 in the previous Congress, but then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to take it up. Now, every House Democrat supports the bill, while Republican lawmakers oppose it.
It’s unconfirmed yet whether it was intentional or an unfortunate coincidence, but it seems at least symbolic that even the CPAC stage itself is shaped like a symbol adopted by Nazis and subsequent white supremacist movements.
All of it points to a grim future for the country if the movement currently animating the conservative movement holds majority power over the next decade. Defeat has not chastened the movement, but rather emboldened it. And if CPAC is the predictor it normally is, the next incarnation of Republican power will be even more aggressively racist and authoritarian than its predecessor.
But CPAC isn’t a sideshow. It’s the main stage of the conservative movement, predicting its future behavior in an era of widening asymmetric polarization. CPAC presaged the rise of the Party of Reagan over that of Gerald Ford and Dwight Eisenhower. It heralded the scorched-earth confrontational politics of Newt Gingrich in the Bill Clinton era. It elevated George W. Bush at a time when the mainstream GOP still saw itself more in the mold of John McCain. It celebrated the Tea Party before GOP legislators had fully embraced it. And it promoted openly racist birthers and conspiracy theorists like Donald Trump at a time when the the mainline GOP was producing superficially anti-racist autopsies and promoting candidates like Marco Rubio and Spanish-speaking Jeb Bush. So if we want to know where the Republican Party is heading today, we should pay close attention to CPAC. So what’s the theme now? Where is it going? The answer seems to be doubling down on Donald Trump, white supremacy, insurrection and conspiracy theories. One theme of CPAC this year is unwavering loyalty to Donald Trump, and an insistence that not only is there no conflict within the party over Trump, but anyone who suggests otherwise is a has-been or fifth-columnist attempting to subvert the movement:
The spread of COVID-19 anywhere on the planet threatens us all, yet Big Pharma’s monopoly on the vaccine supply ensures that people in most of the world aren’t getting inoculated. In this appeal, left-wing figures like Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Rafael Correa, and former Brazilian president Lula call on governments to lift the patents and ensure vaccines are distributed as cheaply and quickly as possible.
We are currently researching anonymous and confidential options for reporting sexual assault in Australia. It is important people know that making a formal complaint to police is not the only avenue. While it is clear the criminal justice current system needs substantial improvement, we also need to identify alternative ways survivors can be heard.
My thought for the day At some time in the human narrative… in our history, the man declared himself superior to women. It must have been an accident, or at least an act of gross stupidity. But that’s men for you. ( John Lord )
When I was younger and in severe financial stress, I observed first hand how people didn’t notice their privilege. When expressing my dissatisfaction with my lack of money, a friend advised me to just forget about it and go out. I reminded her that I just explained that I had no money. “You mean you have NO money?” No, I replied, nothing till I next get paid. Ok, at least I was going to get paid and that would enable me to keep my head above water for long enough to take a breath, so I guess even I had a privilege that I didn’t see. All of which brings me to the recent changes to JobSeeker.
The government earlier this year released a discussion paper exploring how an Indigenous Voice to government might work. The Voice to government is not the same as the Voice to parliament that the Uluru Statement from the Heart proposed in 2017. This is because the government doesn’t support the Uluru idea of a distinctive Indigenous body enshrined in the constitution. Instead, it prefers a body set up by an act of parliament. The government of the day could change its powers, or even abolish it, as it pleases. The powers could be expansive, but equally, they could be meaningless. A Voice established under the constitution, meanwhile, would have the authority of the Australian people. This idea has attracted majority support in public opinion polls.
Some have got off but all to few to call it a trend
Yesterday we kicked off the corporate welfare awards with a round of prizes for some of the most dubious JobKeeper recipients — billionaires, investment bankers and large companies handing out big dividends to shareholders with one hand while taking from the taxpayer with the other. Roll up! The greatest rort on earth is playing out in a company near you Read More Today we continue the theme with another round of accolades for business heavyweights who cashed in on the $100 billion scheme. Some were gracious enough to hand it back — a noble and PR-worthy act. Others couldn’t quite bear to part with the cash. We also give a gong to the little companies that made big profits thanks to the scheme. Here’s hoping they don’t fly under the radar.
Donald Trump’s niece has accused him of trying to dodge accountability for defrauding her out of a multimillion-dollar inheritance by claiming she took too long to sue. Lawyers for Mary L. Trump made the accusation on Friday (Saturday AEDT) in a New York state court in Manhattan, where the 55-year-old psychologist is suing the former president, his sister Maryanne Trump Barry and his late brother Robert’s estate. “The offensiveness of defendants’ past conduct – stealing tens of millions of dollars from their own niece – is perhaps surpassed only by the chutzpah of their current arguments for dismissal,” the lawyers wrote.
This raid appears to be the worse case of mass rape committed by a U.S. ally in Africa in recent years. Over the last decade, the United States aided Cameroon’s security forces to the tune of almost $224 million, according to Security Assistance Monitor, which tracks U.S. security aid and arms sales. Over that same span, U.S. troops trained elite Cameroonian forces and even saw combat alongside them. The U.S. military also built up a network of outposts integral to drone operations in the region.
In 2019, Erik Prince, the founder of the notorious mercenary firm Blackwater and a prominent Donald Trump supporter, aided a plot to move U.S.-made attack helicopters, weapons, and other military equipment from Jordan to a renegade commander fighting for control of war-torn Libya. A team of mercenaries planned to use the aircraft to help the commander, Khalifa Hifter, a U.S. citizen and former CIA asset, defeat Libya’s U.N.-recognized and U.S.-backed government.
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