Kevin Rudd’s call to shun the REA Group wouldn’t raise a blip on Rupert Murdoch’s screen. But there’d be massive shock waves if Disney went broke
How to hurt Murdoch: boycott Mickey Mouse, Marvel and all Disney
Author: peterimrich
Executive bonuses inflated by JobKeeper, rising property and share prices, tax cuts for the wealthy. What’s not to like about 2020 for the top end of town? Tasha May takes a closer look at how the pandemic is exacerbating wealth inequality in Australia.
Vintage year for the wealthy: COVID-19 widens gap between rich and poor – Michael West
The Morrison government has proposed sweeping changes to Australian labor laws intended to cut wages, entrench precarious work, and cripple unions. The proposed changes would sweep away the remnants of collective bargaining and hand dictatorial power to bosses.
Scott Morrison’s Industrial Relations Laws Are a Kick in the Teeth for Australian Workers
“How come?” with almost three terms of pathetic governance is the Morrison government able to maintain such a lead in the polls?
How come a pathetic government leads in the polls? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Daniel Mercer at the Australian Broadcasting Company reports that the newest coal-fired power plant in the country, the 10-year-old, nearly $1 bn. USD Bluewater facility, has been written off as worthless by its investors. Southwestern Australia has so much cheap solar energy that the coal plant’s prospects cratered, especially once it faced some supply problems. Mercer reports that financial analysts are predicting that there is going to be a lot of this sort of thing. In fact, if any of you has coal stocks in your retirement portfolio, I’d drop them like a hot potato.
Solar just made Banks write off a Solar just made Banks write off a $1 bn. Australian Coal Plant as Worthless; What’s in Your Retirement Portfolio? bn. Australian Coal Plant as Worthless; What’s in Your Retirement Portfolio?
Despite the fact that herd immunity failed in Sweden and the hospitals are now unable to cope. Trump wants chaos th reign and COVID-19 is a perfect ploy. (ODT)
Trump appointee at HHS, Paul Alexander, urged other health officials to “flood the zone” with coronavirus and infect “kids and young people” in order to develop herd immunity.
Trump HHS Official Admits ‘We Want Them Infected’ With COVID-19 | Crooks and Liars
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“two Trump appointees at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) who witnessed “the White House’s slow suffocation of the agency’s voice, the meddling in its messages and the siphoning of its budget.”
Trump appointees protest politicization of the pandemic now — but the GOP has long distorted science | Salon.com
I have reported a number of wars. I have seen the remains of children and women and the elderly bombed and burned to death — their villages laid to waste, their petrified trees festooned with human parts. And much else. Perhaps that is why I reserve a specific contempt for those who promote the crime of rapacious war, who beckon it with bad faith and profanities, having never experienced it themselves. Their monopoly must be broken.
JOHN PILGER: The most lethal virus is not COVID-19 — it’s war
As cannabis growth accelerates in North America, so has consolidation. While Canadian firms had an initial advantage given pot’s legal status there, their US peers have recently gotten a boost as states move steadily toward legalising recreational use. The incoming administration of President-Elect Joe Biden is also seen as improving the likelihood that the US will legalise on the federal level and give US companies that already operate in multiple states a larger market
Aphria, Tilray merger creates the world’s biggest cannabis company
Families who lost loved ones to COVID-19 in Victorian aged care homes say it’s “unacceptable” the federal government has kept them in the dark about an inquiry into the outbreak. It comes amid revelations the Morrison government is a month behind schedule and won’t be publicly releasing a report into the handling of the virus until Christmas.
St Basil’s families in dark amid Morrison government aged care delays
Angus Taylor’s rescue package for the oil industry is a testament to the ability of large corporations to game governments. The latest Tax Office transparency data shows that oil and gas juggernauts are, again, Australia’s biggest tax cheats, yet are demanding and getting more public subsidies to prop up their oil refineries. Michael West reports on the good and the bad in multinational tax dodging land.
The Usual Suspects: oil and gas majors star in Australian tax heist – Michael West
The term “offshore processing” suggests something industrial, mechanistic. In the field of refugee and asylum seeker policy, it involves detaining humans, their dehumanisation and the vast, prohibitive expenditure of funds from the public purse. As a model, one country has sold it with unshakeable conviction and aplomb: Australia.
Selling Australia’s offshore detention regime to the world
Wedged between the recent passage of legislation expanding Australia’s spy agency’s powers and a date for a Senate inquiry into press freedom after the New Year, Attorney-General Christian Porter and the Morrison government announced on Wednesday a range of measures aimed at enhancing public interest journalism and the protection of whistle-blowers. However, both the Greens and the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) have criticised the government’s announcement, claiming it doesn’t go far enough to prevent the persecution of journalists and others acting in the public interest. And those bodies collectively warn that such persecution can ultimately lead to prosecutions unless further revisions are taken.
ASIO bill reforms aren’t enough, say MEAA and Greens – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The progressive New York congresswoman tweeted that instead of publishing a salacious article suggesting the woman isn’t adhering to “standards of personal ethics” while naming both her and her employer—reportedly against her wishes—the newspaper should have focused on “the actual scandalous headline…’Medics in the United States need two jobs to survive.'”
AOC’s Perfect Slam At NY Post For Outing Paramedic Whose Side Hustle Is Nude Modeling | Crooks and Liars
This treason must not be allowed to prosper, and those 126 servants to Trump’s authoritarian binge vocally and proudly committed treason to serve his various shabby ends. They have no business in the House of Representatives or in any office that serves the public they sold out on the cheap. There must be a reckoning, and this must be a small yet vital part of it.
The 126 GOP House Reps Who Tried to Overthrow Democracy Must Not Be Seated | The Smirking Chimp
“[I]t’s not over. We keep going and we’re going to continue to go forward. We have numerous local cases,” Trump told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade before his campaign filed its latest lawsuit.
Trump sues New Mexico in continued election challenge as Electoral College affirms Joe Biden’s win | Salon.com
Defending democracy is part of a journalist’s job
Never let Trump’s accomplices live down their attacks on democracy | Media Matters for America
Senator Kelly Loeffler is doing damage control after a photo surfaced of her posing with former KKK Leader
Loeffler’s Attacks on Warnock in Georgia Runoff Are Racist Dog Whistles
Klux Klan “Grand Klaliff” Chester Doles, a longtime fixture in the north Georgia white supremacist movement. Doles posted the selfie with Loeffler on VK, a Russian social media site (the pre-Parler stomping grounds of the white supremacist right) over the weekend. Doles — who spent years in jail after beating a Black man nearly to death as part of his white nationalist activism — has been trying to legitimize his “America Patriots USA” group for the last few years, with little success. And here he is. With one hand, Loeffler is claiming that her well-staffed campaign didn’t know who he was when they approached her. Georgians might find that hard to believe; Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon-supporting incoming congresswoman from North Georgia, threw Doles out of a joint rally with Loeffler a month ago.
Loeffler’s Attacks on Warnock in Georgia Runoff Are Racist Dog Whistles
“It is equal to a 9/11 attack every day for more than 100 days.”
COVID death toll reaches 300,000 under Trump
Look at the statistics: At the time of publication, this is the stark situation worldwide: Cases: 72 million Recovered: 47 million Deaths: 1.6 million In the US alone, the figures are startling: Cases: 16.3 million Deaths: 300,000, equivalent to the entire population of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. The US now records more daily deaths from COVID-19 than occurred on the day of that infamous terrorist assault on the US – September 11, 2001.
Vale 2020 – » The Australian Independent Media Network
In disregard for political precedent or basic humanity, Trump has fast-tracked federal executions before Biden takes office
Trump is spending the last days of his presidency on a literal killing spree | Donald Trump | The Guardian
Bezos, as well as every major employer in America, can easily afford to protect their workers. And as Mitch McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans should know, the richest nation in the world can easily afford to provide every American adequate income support during this national emergency. That they’re not doing so is disgraceful.
Bezos, McConnell, and COVID Capitalism | The Smirking Chimp
Covid-19 goes to show just how irrelevant Australia and Morrison have been to the rest of the world’s attention (ODT)
Greater London and parts of Essex and Hertfordshire will be placed under Tier 3 restrictions from Wednesday Pubs and restaurants will be forced to close unless they offer takeaway or delivery It was also announced a new strain of coronavirus had been identified in England
London to go into strictest restrictions as new variant of COVID-19 identified – ABC News
So when Smit was killed in June 2019, some people saw the case as evidence of targeted attacks against white farmers, a rallying point among white minority rights groups and their allies in the US who claim that white farmers are killed at higher rates than other South Africans. That narrative has been upended in this case, after the arrest of three people on murder charges, including Zurenah Smit, 54, Smit’s second wife. Advertisement
A white farmer’s murder was deemed a racial issue. Then police arrested his widow
But now real meat made (almost) without killing is here. The lab-grown chicken nuggets produced by US company Eat Just come from chicken cells taken in a biopsy and grown in a bioreactor with the aid of plant-based nutrients. They look and taste like chicken, because they are chicken. Just produced without a chicken brain or nervous system or the need for pain. (The one remaining issue for vegetarians is the need to use low levels of foetal bovine serum as a growth accelerant, with much research focusing on this.)
Lab-grown meat ethos reveals nuggets of wisdom
La Trobe, Swinburne, Murdoch and Western Sydney University. These are some of the Australian universities considering axing various Indo-Pacific language programs from Indonesian to Hindi. It’s feared other universities may follow suit.
Dumb and dumber: language cuts risk Australia’s regional relationships
All foreign investment bids for Australian assets must be screened by the Foreign Investment Review Board From December 31, foreign buyers will face even more scrutiny when bidding for sensitive assets Experts say restrictions are being used to screen out bids by Chinese companies and are counterproductive to trade relations
Foreign investment clampdown prompts claims of Chinese buyers being ‘frozen out’ – ABC News
For Australia, lessons can be learned from Japan. New Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga used his first overseas trip to visit Indonesia and Vietnam. Suga signed a defence export deal with Hanoi and provided a $670 million low-interest loan to Jakarta. Suga also deepened security relations with Australia through a defence pact. Suga is making clear and systematic moves to diversify relations and contain Chinese expansion, yet is doing so without the belligerent bluster and crude diplomatic noise found in Morrison’s public displays. Japan has ongoing disputes with China over the South China Sea and tensions remain over Japan’s security arrangements with the United States, yet the two maintain productive and mutually beneficial trade and diplomatic relations. Former Prime Minister and specialist in Sino-Australia relations, Kevin Rudd, has described Japan’s approach as “do more, talk less”. For attention-hungry Morrison, such a strategy is inconceivable.
The global context of China’s assault on Australian trade and diplomacy
When one-third of casuals work full-time hours, almost 60% have been with their employer for more than a year, and more than half cannot choose the days they work, is the “flexibility” of a casual job really for the benefit of employees? Professor David Peetz reports.
Bad Gig: industrial relations “reform” bill delivers flexibility … for employers – Michael West
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or talk up a storm about the minimum wage, healthcare and the existential struggle for democracy.
AOC’s cooking live streams perfect the recipe for making politics palatable | Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez | The Guardian
Alexander also argued that “the president’s conduct, his behaviour, plus the difficulty of governing the country during a pandemic, are the two reasons that he will have lost on Monday if the electors vote for Biden.” While some high-profile Republicans like Alexander have criticised the president’s behaviour since losing the election, many have stood by the president, including more than 60 per cent of House Republicans who supported Trump’s most recent failed effort at the Supreme Court.
Republican Senator says Trump must ‘put country first’ and concede to Biden
That’s the death spiral McConnell seems to be egging on. A destroyed economy will hurt Joe Biden’s presidency. It might help Republican prospects in 2022 and 2024. That’s all that matters to the Grim Reaper.
McConnell Is Doing a Really Good Job of Completely Wrecking the Economy for Biden Presidency | The Smirking Chimp
But just a few remote control clicks away at OANN and Newsmax, the presenters have had no qualms about presenting this alternative reality to their viewers. On these networks, the prospect of Trump being inaugurated for a second term on January 20 appears to be very much alive. Of the two insurgent networks, OANN is the least-watched and the most extreme. The network was founded in 2013 by California businessman Robert Herring, and was explicitly intended to serve as a far-right alternative to Fox. OANN does not release its ratings figures publicly, a tell-tale sign that its viewer numbers are low, but Herring has claimed the network received a big bounce after the election.
Donald Trump fans get fix of unreality on extremist networks OANN and Newsmax
Around 200 members of the Proud Boys, a violent far-right group, had joined the marches earlier on Saturday near the Trump hotel. Many wore combat fatigues, black and yellow shirts and ballistic vests, carried helmets and flashed hand signals used by white nationalists. Advertisement
Violent clashes as Trump supporters rally in denial of election result
At least four people were stabbed Saturday as supporters of President Donald Trump, including maskless Proud Boys in helmets and bulletproof vests, descended on the nation’s capital and clashed with counterprotesters—violence that some critics tied to the president’s pre-election directive to the self-described “western chauvinists.”
“In Case There Was Any Doubt Regarding ‘Stand By'”: Four People Stabbed After Pro-Trump DC Rally | Common Dreams News
With the cost of energy generated from wind and solar now less than coal, the share of Australia’s electricity coming from renewables has reached 23%. The federal government projects the share will reach 50% by 2030. It is at this point that integrating renewables into the energy system becomes more costly. We can add wind and solar farms at little extra cost when their share is low and other sources – such as coal and gas generators now – can compensate for their variability. At a certain point, however, there comes a need to invest in supporting infrastructure to ensure supply from mostly renewable generation can meet demand.
Up to 90% of electricity from solar and wind the cheapest option by 2030: CSIRO analysis
My thought for the day The pedlars of verbal violence and dishonesty are the most vigorous defenders of free speech because it gives their vitriolic nonsense legitimacy. With the use of free speech, the bigots and hate-mongers seek to influence those in the community who are susceptible or like-minded.
A considered reflection – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Rumours are flying thick and fast over Scott Morrison’s impending ministerial reshuffle this week, but one particularly spicy one lasted barely minutes before being seemingly shut down.
Cabinet reshuffle: Rumours and daggers surround Scott Morrison’s line-up
The Democratic congresswoman told reporters on Wednesday: “You have an individual appointment here, an individual appointment there. We can wrestle about whether they are bold enough or ambitious enough, especially given the uncertainty and what kind of Senate we’re going to have.” Ocasio-Cortez continued: “But aside from that, I think one of the things I’m looking for when I see all of these picks put together is: What is the agenda? What is this overall vision going to be?” “And to me, I think that’s a little hazy,” she added.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls Joe Biden’s agenda ‘a little hazy’ and criticises his Cabinet picks as lacking an ‘overall vision’ | Business Insider
This is extraordinary: a group of Republicans are asking the court to disenfranchise millions of Americans, just so their guy can stay put
Republicans are trying to get the supreme court to overturn democracy itself | US elections 2020 | The Guardian
Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell on Friday charged that some of his Republican colleagues shouldn’t be sworn in for the next session of Congress, accusing them of violating the U.S. Constitution and attempting to “demolish democracy” by backing President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the November election, which he lost to President-elect Joe Biden.
Citing 14th Amendment, Pascrell Says These GOP House Members Shouldn’t Even Be Sworn In | Common Dreams News
No president has so many close associates from his election campaign and his administration tried in the federal criminal courts—and convicted or pleaded guilty—than Donald J. Trump did in his lone term. Score big points for the U.S. federal courts’ judicial independence for that alone.
How and Why the American Judicial System Saved the U.S.A. from Trumpism
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