By undermining humanities education, the Morrison Government is helping create a superficial society, which opens the door to far-Right extremism, writes Alex Hipgrave. AS STUDENTS across Australia begin a new academic year, it may be apt to re-examine the role of our schooling system in shaping societal attitudes and how capitalism undermines education.
Neo-fascism on the rise as critical thinking dissolves
Australia’s pension funds control nearly $3 trillion of workers’ capital, but they’re currently dominated by corporate interests. The labor movement should take back control over them from bankers and use the funds to build a better future.
Workers Should Take Back Control of Their Pension Funds
Last year public servant Josh Krook wrote a blog post in which he argued that Covid-19 benefitted big tech because forced social isolation would drive people to online platforms. He worked for the Commonwealth Industry Department that deals extensively with tech companies; he was fired because he refused to delete the post. This follows the firing of Immigration Department employee Michaela Banerji, who was dismissed over a series of Tweets, among other things, that were critical of Australia’s treatment of refugees. Banerji made 9,000 posts, mostly sent from her personal device outside of work hours. The High Court ruled Banerji’s dismissal was warranted because she had breached the Australian Public Service Code of Conduct which stipulates that public servants must act impartially and are prohibited from engaging in any forms of “harassment”. The 2019 High Court ruling (Comcare v Banerji) effectively said public servants could be sacked for comments they make on social media. And then we come to Geoff Philip Wade, a public servant employed by the Department of Parliamentary Services. Wade, who works as a researcher in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library, is one of Australia’s most prolific anti-China Twitter users. Wade has made 42,000 posts, nearly five times that of Banerji, a great number of which appear to have been sent from inside Parliament House. Often during his “working day” he will send out Tweets every five or 10 minutes. He has published photos, phone numbers and personal email addresses of people whose only crime is being Chinese or advancing views contrary to his own. The Department of Parliamentary Services refused to answer questions about Wade’s use of social media during taxpayer-funded work hours. A spokesperson cited “privacy considerations”.
Free speech for the Public Service? Friends only, foes face prosecution – Michael West
Journalist: A second woman has been raped. Prime Minister: I don’t need to know who that is. Imagine for one moment the tremendous privilege Mr Morrison enjoys that allows him to choose not to know. By any measure this is a bizarre reaction to such news, and one wonders why the Prime Minister felt compelled to let everyone know that he doesn’t know the name of the second victim, and, even more oddly, that he does not need to know.
“Don’t tell me her name…” – » The Australian Independent Media Network
THERE WAS NO question which the world’s most admired country in 2011. Australia’s achievements included: The world’s highest median wealth, according to Credit Suisse; The greatest economic freedom in the OECD, according to the Heritage Foundation; 20 years of continuous GDP growth, alone in the developed world; Triple A credit ratings with all three global agencies for the first time in history; A jobless rate down to 4.92% in June, among the lowest five in the OECD and a level not achieved since; The Australian dollar hit a 30-year high of 1.095 U.S. dollars; The world’s best Treasurer, according to other global finance ministers; Australia’s first carbon pricing scheme was enacted, thereby joining the world on climate action; Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s speech to the U.S. Congress was interrupted six times for standing ovations, ten times for seated applause and received a record three-minute standing ovation at the end; and Australia was nominated at the 2011 G20 leaders’ summit to chair the G20. That’s the top ten. There were plenty more. ANU astrophysicist Brian Schmidt won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics; Samantha Stosur won the U.S. Open; and Sally Pearson was named IAAF world athlete of the year. It was a great year for global recognition. It’s a pity that so few successes were reported in Australia. Fast forward one decade and Australia is now condemned globally for its abject failures on more than ten substantial issues.
Australia slides from world’s greatest country to pariah – in just ten years
Laughing Stock: Australia’s new media code rivals our climate policy for absurdity – Michael West
Google good, Facebook bad. That sums up mainstream media coverage of the Coalition government’s bizarre new media code. That’s because Google paid up, Facebook decided it was extortion and called Josh Frydenberg’s bluff, banning Australian news. Kim Wingerei and Michael West report on the corruption of mainstream media. As if Rupert Murdoch and the Coalition had not already flubbed Australia’s credibility around the world for their failure on climate change, now we look like we don’t know how the internet works.
Laughing Stock: Australia’s new media code rivals our climate policy for absurdity – Michael West
by James Cargas February 20, 2021 Politics 
Carlos Mandez waits in line to fill his propane tanks Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2021, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
New resilient and sustainable technologies are coming online, and regulatory and market changes can always stand to be tweaked. But the most immediate and impactful change must come from new energy leadership in Texas.
Texas Blackout of 2021 Was Primarily a Human Failure | Washington Monthly
“There is no anti-pipeline movement in Kansas in particular, and there’s never been any kind of protest or civil disobedience at any kind of fossil fuel site,” said Rabbi Moti Rieber, executive director of the Kansas Interfaith Action, a religious coalition that advocates for climate action in the state. “So this is a bill that addresses a problem that doesn’t exist.”
4 More States Propose Harsh New Penalties For Protesting Fossil Fuels | HuffPost Australia
Pravda means “Truth” this certainly is a case of people in glass houses throwing stones. Russian girls will go anywhere to work. The mafia run whore houses in Goa were filled with them. International “organized crime” sex trafficking the Russians are the biggest. Indirectly of course it no doubt helped build Putin’s Porno Palace.
How long will Germany remain Europe’s “brothel”? The answer is very simple, but German politicians and news hounds will not like it.
Is there a place for morality in ‘brothely’ places where US soldiers stay?
‘Like vacation, sex and arts – it’s a work-life balance thing’: Columbia professor defends heroin habit, sparking drug debate — RT USA News
A Columbia professor has gone public with his affinity for heroin, claiming his drug habit has made him a better person. But social media is divided over his unabashed substance-snorting.
‘Like vacation, sex and arts – it’s a work-life balance thing’: Columbia professor defends heroin habit, sparking drug debate — RT USA News
Half a century of occupation is ample time for powerful states like Germany to learn that rhetoric without action simply reinforces Israeli impunity.
Israel doesn’t need ‘advice’ against annexation — it needs consequences – +972 Magazine
Britain is in the grip of an assault on its public sphere by the state of Israel and its advocates.
We must resist Israel’s war on British universities | The Electronic Intifada
Australians have benefitted profoundly for nearly three decades, as has the rest of the world from the internet – freedom of information, knowledge and choice to communicate and share, which strikes at the heart of the human condition and the founding egalitarian principles of the web. But Morrison and the Liberals with guzzling greed and the architecture of Murdoch and News Corp want to change all that for profit and power in the hands of the elite and super wealthy few – to control these golden ribbons of information… just links
Morrison and Murdoch taking it all down – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Google was prepared to pay these “premiums” to make sure that its business model would still survive. It is the company’s advertising business model that it was keen to protect and for that reason, it was prepared to pay off the news companies. So nothing fundamental has been solved by the Australian Government through its media code. It is now simply waiting for the next battle and the regulator (ACCC) has also already foreshadowed that it will concentrate on that advertising business model. This will be a much tougher battle that Australia will not be able to win on its own. Google will use its full legal power with gigantic financial resources to defend their business.
Facebook is right to call the Australian Government bluff
Another thought At some time in the human narrative… in our history, 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 )
A tale of two wrongs: A rape and the Prime Minister’s response – » The Australian Independent Media Network
As Sen. Ted Cruz rushed back to Texas on Thursday after coming under fire for fleeing to Cancún while his constituents faced devastating power outages, water disruptions, and food shortages, an out-of-state Democratic lawmaker teamed up with a coalition of local organizations to raise money to provide direct relief for people in desperate need. Announced on Twitter early Thursday evening by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the grassroots fundraising campaign brought in more than $1 million in a matter of hours—all of which, according to the New York Democrat, will go to The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center, Ending Community Homeless Coalition (ECHO), Family Eldercare, Houston Food Bank, Feeding Texas, and other local groups assisting Texans during the ongoing emergency.
AOC Raises $1M For Texas In One Day. Where Are Republicans? | Crooks and Liars
During Friday’s edition of Fox News’ Outnumbered, the panelists repeated a number of false claims about the ongoing blackouts in Texas, both in an attempt to cover up negligence by the state government and private power utilities and to deny the role of climate change in severe weather events. Fox has been waging a sustained propaganda campaign attempting to blame renewable energy sources for the state’s crisis. By contrast, local media outlets in Texas have done a much better job at explaining how the breakdowns across all energy sources — including from fossil fuels, which still normally provide a majority of the state’s electricity — are the result of the state’s failure to adequately winterize its infrastructure, even after prior blackout events. But these facts were entirely left out of the conversation on Outnumbered.
Fox’s Outnumbered lies about role of climate change in Texas and state’s record on winter blackouts | Media Matters for America
The state’s energy crisis didn’t come out of nowhere: It took decades of deregulation to make it happen.
Deconstructed: The Roots of the Texas Energy Crisis
They are among the right-wing figures behind the latest right-wing media lie that wind energy is the main culprit for Texas’ blackouts
What do The Wall Street Journal, Tucker Carlson, Rep. Lauren Boebert, Steve Bannon, and an online troll called “Catturd” all have in common? | Media Matters for America
Chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission Dr Dvir Abramovich has long campaigned against Facebook allowing hate speech on its platform. “For too long, Facebook has allowed the most base impulses that lurk at the fringes of our society to find a large audience and to enter into the bloodstream of too many people,” he said. “Bigots do not deserve a microphone.”
Facebook’s news purge shows it could do the same with hate speech
The pathetic Morrison government protecting media monopoly against free circulation! Ah ha ha! Crumple. Back and forth, unable to know who to hate more. The government’s News Corp tax has turned a rich tangle of contradictions into a political event. The pleasure of watching the Morrison government’s face change as it slowly realises it might have bitten off more than it can chew is only mitigated by the haunting feeling that we will all lose whatever happens. At the topmost level is the most obvious political political advantaging of News Corp, by the government, requested or otherwise. News Corp may have said nothing explicit to Scott Morrison’s government but it didn’t need to; it’s been campaigning against tech/social media on its front pages for years. This global historical moment in tech v old media — the producers of Succession must be furiously rewriting episode nine of the coming season as we speak — has come about in Australia because we’re the “weak link” in the sham idea of a free press and democracy. We’re a Murdochracy, bought and sold, especially, but not only, when the Coalition is in power.
Government serves old capital, Facebook wields new. Who to hate more?
The only comparison that can be made is that like Murdoch’s NewsCorp, Google and Facebook do not pay taxes – see Crikey’s article – “Tax dodging News Corp continues to rip Australia off – and is subsidised by taxpayers to do so“. Unfortunately, for verification purposes one of the many consequences of the Government’s pernicious agenda to undermine public interest journalism being shared on Facebook is I am unable to share the link to Crikey.
Travesty – a false or distorted misrepresentation of something – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Wren’s Week: Alleged rape cover-up and Facebook ban should sink PM Morrison
Morrison should not survive the alleged rape cover-up. His deplorable actions are beyond any sense of morality and justice. It should be the straw that broke the camel’s back after many years of flagrant corruption. If he does survive, our democracy is dead — and you can largely thank our appalling media for that.
Wren’s Week: Alleged rape cover-up and Facebook ban should sink PM Morrison
You wouldn’t necessarily know it from a media obsessed with posturing about Facebook, but it’s hard to overstate just what a disastrous week Scott Morrison and the rotten — in all senses of the adjective — government he leads has just had. Overlooked this week in the focus on Brittany Higgins and the implosion of the news media bargaining code was how deeply and bitterly divided the Coalition is. Scott Morrison was forced into the humiliating position of withdrawing a key bill — his legislation to push the Clean Energy Finance Corporation into funding gas projects — because his own backbenchers, led by former cabinet ministers Barnaby Joyce and Matt Canavan, intended to make it a vehicle for government funding of coal-fired power stations.
From parliamentary rape allegation to energy policy: Morrison’s bad week
“Dear centrist Democrats, you couldn’t even get 10 GOP votes to convict the guy who sent a mob to kill you all. You think you can get them to vote on issues like immigration/climate? Come on,” immigrant rights activist Erika Andiola has tweeted. “You have to end the filibuster and use every tool at your disposal to get things done.” It’s a good point, but why not think big? What about eliminating the Senate altogether?
The U.S. Senate Is a Global Problem | The Smirking Chimp
It’s also a glaring example of the inequities of U.S. democracy, with the two senators from Wyoming (population: 578,000) wielding the same power as the two senators from California (population: 39 million). Senate elections have tilted U.S. politics in favor of rural, predominantly white, and increasingly conservative voters by a factor of two or three over urban voters. Like the Electoral College, the Senate makes a mockery of the “one person one vote” principle by effectively giving some voters much greater power than others.
‘An Obstructive Body’ and ‘menace to liberties’: How the U.S. Senate is a Global Problem
But Campbell was also, despite a slew of death threats he received from white segregationists, an unofficial chaplain to the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. He denounced and publicly fought the Klan’s racism, acts of terror and violence and marched with Black civil rights protesters in his native Mississippi, but he steadfastly refused to “cancel” white racists out of his life. He refused to demonize them as less than human. He insisted that this form of racism, while evil, was not as insidious as a capitalist system that perpetuated the economic misery and instability that pushed whites into the ranks of violent, racist organizations.
The contradictions of “cancel culture”: Where elite liberalism goes to die | Salon.com
SNAKE ON A PLANE: TED IN FIRESTORM OVER CANCUN CAPER — BLAMES HIS KIDS!
While Texans struggle to keep warm amid power outages caused by historic winter weather, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was spotted Wednesday boarding a plane for Cancun with members of his family.
Ted Cruz Slammed After Photos Show Him Flying To Cancun As Texans Freeze | HuffPost Australia
“I want to be clear. Without nature’s help, we will not thrive or even survive.” —António Guterres
UN Head Decries ‘Senseless and Suicidal’ Destruction of Nature as New Report Urges Systemic Solutions | Common Dreams News
But the 45-year-old taxi driver was forced to abandon his car – his private car – when he was set upon by what he described as a gang of seven settlers. By the time Jaber returned, the men had pummeled his car with rocks and stones and smashed the windows. “Two Israeli soldiers were there watching and didn’t do anything to stop them,” Jaber told The Electronic Intifada.
Spike in settler attacks creates “living hell” for Palestinians | The Electronic Intifada
This video shows Israeli occupation forces celebrating after a sniper shoots and injures a Palestinian protesting the theft of land by settlers in the central occupied West Bank on 27 November.
Israeli soldiers cheer after protester shot | The Electronic Intifada
Thu 18 Feb 2021 18.59 AEDT Last modified on Fri 19 Feb 2021 01.14 AEDT 308 When Facebook removed vast swathes of Australian media from its platform overnight on Wednesday the social media company intended to shock the system of Australian government and media cronyism and send a strong message to regulators everywhere. Instead, Facebook managed to turn attention away from a flawed piece of legislation and on to its own reckless, opaque power.
Even for a company that specialises in PR disasters, Facebook has excelled with its Australian blackout | Facebook | The Guardian
AGL IS ONE OF Australia’s largest energy companies with a marketing budget to match, so that money can be chucked at everything from sports teams to community festivals. But all of the spin and sponsorship hides a grim truth. In the villainous league of Australia’s worst coal-burning polluters, AGL is the number one offender — literally, the worst of the worst.
AGL is leading the way in harmful coal pollution
It’s a win for misinformation because since when has News Corp actually printed News or Information. It’s greater impact being the ABC yet again has been locked out providing News Corp and Ch9 with a far larger playing field of bullshit heading into an election ODT
But its bid to limit news content is a double-edged sword. It may save users from some heated debate, but it also leaves the platform wide open to those who wish to spread false information while restricting fact-checked news content. As Liberal MP Craig Kelly showed before being banned from Facebook for a week, he was able to freely promote his views on treatments for COVID-19 and mask wearing that were at odds with official government and medical advice. He is hardly alone.
Facebook’s news ban is a win for misinformation
Why is this all happening? Our gutless Government is owned lock stock and barrel by conservative media. Our monopoly mainstream media is jousting with the monopoly social media platforms to gouge whatever they can out of each others’ revenue streams. Without the backing of monopoly level conservative media our current Government would have been chucked out long ago. So no surprise that the Coalition is sucking up to Murdoch. Bit trite for our Government to argue on behalf of Murdoch et al about how their revenue streams are being ripped off by the larger social media platforms, when that same Government is flaying the revenue streams of the ABC.
Un-Friending Facebook? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Tony Abbott closed Radio Australia down and let the Chinese in to take that space. Now the Morrison Government is preventing Australian News reaching the Pacific again giving that space to the Chinese while they slash the ABC’s budget instead 0f expanding it to to compete with Facebook. The LNP is supporting Murdoch and Costello’s private interests in exchange for political influence and ensuring fake news is concentrated in their hands. LNP are certainly the Pillocks of the Pacific( ODT)
Facebook’s move has also drawn an angry response from Pacific community groups in Australia. Nai Tuuut from the Pacific Community Council of Far North Queensland said her organisation relied on Facebook to share community news, as well as vital public health information in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Without us being able to share Australian news or even the Queensland Health is unable to post on Facebook, that just makes it extremely hard to keep our community up to date and just aware of what’s going on,” she told the ABC.
Pacific media warns Facebook ban on Australian news could have serious effects in the region – ABC News
Donald Trump has urged Republican senators to dump Mitch McConnell as their leader in the Senate following his withering criticism of the former US president after his impeachment trial.
Donald Trump urges US Senate Republicans to dump ‘unsmiling political hack’ Mitch McConnell as leader
Trump declared in Helsinki, standing next to Vladimir Putin, that he trusted the Russian leader, but not the American intelligence services. By putting his trust in Putin, a former KGB colonel, saying that he took him at his word when he denied interfering in the 2016 presidential election, Trump reiterated his denunciations of American intelligence services.
Trump intelligence chiefs hid evidence of Russian election interference – Raw Story – Celebrating 16 Years of Independent Journalism
Republicans failed to ensure that the Texas power grid could withstand a cold snap, so the party’s broadcast arm recycled lies about wind energy to deflect blame on to Democrats. Robert MackeyRobert Mackey February 17 2021, 6:50 p.m.
Fox News Recycles Lies About Wind Turbines in Texas
On the February 15 edition of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, the host not only suggested that the freezing temperatures that hit Texas bring into question the very existence of global warming, but he also claimed that the state’s inability to keep the lights on was due to its “reckless reliance on windmills,” which he even acknowledged account for only “a quarter of the energy” makeup in Texas (with the majority of power coming from natural gas and coal). To discuss the outages, host Tucker Carlson invited climate denier and frequent Fox guest Marc Morano, who once claimed CO2 is not pollution because we exhale it.
How Fox News is exploiting Texas’ power outages to fearmonger about clean energy | Media Matters for America
The LNP government is pulling out all stops to help Murdoch and Costello before the next election. If they truly wanted a real diverse information service rather than police Google and Facebook they should have enabled the ABC to develop a public rather than controlled service and invested funds instead of cutting those of the ABC. The ABC has protected us from the absolute crap and propaganda promoted on our privatized MSM. We as tax payers have seen our taxes abused, politicized and promises broken by the LNP at the fastest and most egregious rate in the past 8 years. How can the unions, multicultural, indigenous and critical communities communicate? At election times the LNP certainly doesn’t want them to.
Facebook blocking such a broad range of content will have a disproportionate impact on small community organisations and independent media, and in turn harm marginalised groups who have come to rely on the accessibility and ease of Facebook in accessing critical services and information. The code was never written with these groups in mind.
Facebook news ban: A media bargaining code won’t protect journalism or democracy
“It has left us facing a stark choice: Attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia. With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter.”
In effect News Corp has it’s ability to churn opinion for the LNP boosted. It’s sacked it’s journalists for churnalists just as Google and Facebook have been accused of but with a difference Murdoch has a pact with the LNP. Maybe a exclusivity agreement should be drawn up between the ABC Facebook and Google while they forget News Corp and Ch9.
Facebook announces news content sharing restrictions in Australia
Throwing Linda Reynolds to the wolves could suit Scott ‘I knew nothing’ Morrison right down to the ground.
Reshuffle on the cards as Defence becomes the best form of attack for PM
Former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins on Wednesday accused Scott Morrison of “victim-blaming rhetoric” – as the Prime Minister sought to explain why his own staffer failed to tell him Higgins had alleged she’d been raped. Malcolm Turnbull cast doubt on Morrison’s claim his office only knew of the allegation last week, saying it was “inconceivable” key members of the Prime Minister’s staff did not know earlier. Higgins, who worked for then defence industry minister Linda Reynolds, claims she was raped by a colleague after the two returned to the minister’s Parliament House late one night in March 2019. She has said she was very drunk and the assault occurred when she fell asleep on the minister’s couch. Morrison says he only learned of the rape allegation this week and his office only “became aware of this issue on February 12 of this year.”
Morrison invokes Chinese walls defence on why staffer didn’t tell him of Higgins’ rape allegation
It was no surprise to hear that Morrison’s government paid $190,000 of taxpayer money to an empathy consultant on how best to show drought-stricken farmers they care about them. Scotty doesn’t do empathy unless the focus groups suggest he should pretend to care and someone else explains to him what that looks like.
The daggy dad’s empathy vacuum – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Morrison’s handling of assault case raises old question: can he be trusted?
With his government now engulfed in the scandal of its mishandling of the alleged rape of staffer Brittany Higgins, Scott Morrison faces the consequences of two long-running features of his political persona. There is now an obvious and serious discrepancy between what Higgins has said about the role of the Prime Minister’s Office in the aftermath of her alleged assault in Parliament House, and Morrison’s own claims — reflected in material circulated to journalists — that she is wrong. In short, Higgins says Morrison’s private secretary, former Crosby Textor luminary Yaron Finkelstein, contacted her in relation to the matter. Morrison says it didn’t happen and his office only became aware of the alleged rape last week.
Morrison’s handling of assault case raises old question: can he be trusted?
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