Amazon is seeing record profits — but little trickles down to the ground-level workers who keep the online giant running.
Amazon Workers Seek to Unite in Global Struggle
Author: peterimrich
The commissioners confirmed the convicted terrorist behind the attack that killed 51 people had been active in Australian extremist groups before moving to New Zealand.
Far-right groups have used COVID to expand their footprint in Australia. Here are the ones you need to know about
Yet on Saturday, The Washington Post reported that of the 249 Republicans in the House and the Senate, only 27 acknowledged Joe Biden won the election.
The dangerous toll of entrenched belief – » The Australian Independent Media Network
My thought for the day People need to wake up to the fact that government affects every part of their life and should be more interested. But there is a deep-seated political malaise. ( John Lord)
My view of the year that was: A year of scandal and corruption – » The Australian Independent Media Network
“Texas’s effort to get this Court to pick the next President has no basis in law or fact. The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated,” Pennsylvania’s brief stated.
Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Authoritarian Bid To Hijack The Presidency | HuffPost Australia
Sedition is a serious charge, but it’s the right word. Most House Republicans and 17 state attorneys general are standing against the right of Americans to choose their own leaders. As elected officials, they are using the power granted to them by the people to declare that the people should not have such power. Even if they lose this case, this time around, the fact that so many traitors hold elected office in America is a major crisis all by itself.
Republicans want more than a coup: Trump’s loyalty test exposes their hatred for democracy | Salon.com
Congress may be close to a deal on another coronavirus bailout, but Senate Republican demands for liability protections for businesses remain a major obstacle.
McConnell was holding up Stimulus over Shielding Businesses from Coronavirus Liability — A Very Bad Idea
Even as Fox continues to attract significantly more viewers than Newsmax overall, its rival’s growth is bad news for the network. Since the election, CNN has pulled ahead of Fox in the cable news ratings for the first time in decades – a reflection of the splintering of the conservative audience and unhappiness with the election outcome among Trump supporters.
Donald Trump fans get fix of unreality on extremist networks OANN and Newsmax
Director Redfield broke the law when he tried to cover up requests from the White House to lie to the public about COVID.
CDC Director Illegally Orders Trump Administration Email Deleted | Crooks and Liars
What these folks are experiencing is actually more psychological than political. Their identities have been built on a foundation of supremacy—which is on a collision course with change. Unless they find it within themselves to adapt, a crash is inevitable. In fact, it is already underway.
Status Anxiety on the Right | Washington Monthly
Union membership has hit record lows as fewer young people join up despite the labour movement’s high-profile co-operation with government to help keep workers employed during the coronavirus pandemic. Only 14.3 per cent of the Australian workforce, or 1.5 million people, were part of a union in August, down from 14.6 per cent last time the Australian Bureau of Statistics ran the numbers in 2018.
Union membership dips again but members earn much more
News Corp retains its crown as a champion tax rorter, yet again paying next to nothing in tax despite billions in revenue.
Tax dodging News Corp continues to rip Australia off
The federal government’s industrial relations “reform” bill offers a new definition of “casual” employment that creates more problems than it solves. It effectively defines a casual job as anything described that way by the employer at the time a job commences, so long as the employer initially makes “no firm advance commitment to continuing and indefinite work”. Anyone defined as such loses any entitlement to leave they might otherwise have got through two recent Federal Court decisions. Fair enough, you might think. Casual jobs are meant to be flexible. There can’t be an ongoing commitment.
The truth about much ‘casual’ work: it’s really about permanent insecurity
Seventeen American states, all run by Republicans, have decided to join Texas in its seditious and frivolous quest to have the U.S. Supreme Court throw out the votes of 81,282,896 citizens and declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election. Those states: Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.
From Frivolous to Frightening: 17 Republicans States Join Texas, Ask the Supreme Court for a Coup | The Smirking Chimp
Months ago Trump bragged and promised all Americans would get the ‘miracle’ treatment he recieved. He “promised” and it would be done and free. The reality it was a lie and even now doctor’s silence is the priority. They have had a gun held to their heads ever since. Even the reelected New Hampshire Republican died. Guess he recieved Trump’s other cure?
Trump’s Elite Strike Force Attorney gets all the experimental advanced treatment for COVID unavailable to ordinary Americans. Did his doctors have to sign a non-disclosure agreement, too?
The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allegedly ordered agency staff to delete an email sent by a political appointee of President Donald Trump seeking to alter a scientific report on corovanirus health risks in children, a CDC official told Congress this week.
CDC Official Says She Was Told to Delete Email on Kids’ Covid-19 Risk to Match Trump’s School Reopening Message | Common Dreams News
Suddenly Rush Limbaugh doubts two different outlooks can exist in the same country while ignoring that he has stoked the fires of hate and division for decades. By Karoli Kuns
Rush Limbaugh Argues For Secession: ‘There Cannot Be A Peaceful Coexistence’ | Crooks and Liars
The results of the study, for which Lee and other epidemiologists enlisted the help of an engineer who specialises in aerodynamics, were published last week in the Journal of Korean Medical Science. The conclusions raised concerns that the widely accepted standard of two metres of social distance might not be far enough to keep people safe.
Coronavirus: Infected after five minutes, from six metres away: study shows COVID-19’s spread indoors
The best interests of older people are not uppermost in this government’s thinking. Referring to older people requiring care as “consumers”, describing the transfer of residents to hospital as “decanting”, talk of “cohorting” residents into specific sections of a home and other dehumanising language set the scene for its priorities. Using aged care homes as a dumping ground to provide work for people who are unemployed is just the latest ploy, writes Dr Sarah Russell.
El Cheapo Aged Care: why the Coalition’s make-work schemes won’t work – Michael West
The hysteria over the Victorian government’s MoU with China’s Belt and Road Initiative shows a disturbing lack of understanding of the project by media commentators, academics and some MPs, writes Colin Heseltine.
Australia pays high price for megaphone diplomacy – Michael West
The government’s Cashless Debit Card almost fell apart on Wednesday night. Senator Rex Patrick’s refusal to support the government’s plans to make the scheme permanent gave some hope that this expensive, ideological and cruel policy would end.
Who’s really behaving badly? Confronting Australia’s cashless welfare card
By embracing a Texas lawsuit to cancel results form Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia, the president pushes the ultimate voter suppression.
Trump’s Last Gasp Is a Scheme to Disenfranchise 20,756,421 American Voters—and He’s Getting Help | The Nation
A significant epidemiological and statistical analysis shows a major factor in liklihood of death among the 300,000 that have died and contracted COVID-19 is 1) Race and 2) Postcode. and Trump thinks that’s just TERRIFIC
Donald Trump has said it is “terrific” that nearly 15 per cent of Americans have contracted the coronavirus since the outbreak began in the US, citing the “powerful vaccine” of herd immunity.
‘Powerful vaccine in itself’: Trump says it’s ‘terrific’ that nearly 15 per cent of Americans got Covid | The Independent
The president’s ‘vaccine summit’ was notable for its absentees amid revelations that he had spent $14bn on insufficient doses
Only in Trump’s Operation Warped Reality is his vaccine leadership a success | Donald Trump | The Guardian
We need an informed public that sees through the poisonous myth billionaires want us to believe: that income is a measure of your market worth
To reverse inequality, we need to expose the myth of the ‘free market’ | Opinion | The Guardian
Ordinary common media provide the sound bytes that radicalize. In Australia that 66% ++ media concentration lies with Murdoch Media and it’s commentary and opinion providers that do not rely on facts for news.(ODT)
“The individual claimed that he was not a frequent commenter on extreme right-wing sites and that YouTube was, for him, a far more significant source of information and inspiration. Although he did frequent extreme right-wing discussion boards such as those on 4chan and 8chan, the evidence we have seen is indicative of more substantial use of YouTube and is therefore consistent with what he told us.”
NZ’s Arden: Mosque Massacre was Enabled by ignoring White Supremacist Terror Threat and YouTube Radicalization
“I think if the Australian government was sensible, it would bite the bullet and allow the people who are in Australia to stay,” Thom says, describing it as the most obvious solution – particularly in light of the halt to migration caused by Covid-19. “But given Australia has a policy of never allowing these people to stay permanently, then it has to accept other offers that are being made in good faith, like the New Zealand offer.” The home affairs department says Australia remains committed to its regional processing policy and is establishing an enduring regional processing capability in Nauru. “The Australian government’s policy remains steadfast: no one under regional processing arrangements will be settled in Australia,” it says.
Lives in limbo: more than 1,500 asylum seekers still face uncertain future | Australia news | The Guardian
In fact, Sally McManus, the national secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), has applied the blowtorch to the government – in the hottest of acetylene fashions, yet in her characteristic calm, measured delivery – in claiming that all of the hard work of the previous five months of industrial relations reform negotiations has been undone.
Unflappable unions remain focused versus IR reform bills – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The one difference in this country, the massive difference between the Labor Party and the Liberal Party, is energy policy.”
Murdoch and the Nationals join forces against NSW and ‘renewable energy stuff’
In days gone by, government ministers never survived misleading parliament, for example. But Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s offensive, bellicose ramblings about former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Monday (7 December), provide another case study in how to avoid scrutiny. Morrison was asked by Deputy Opposition Leader Richard Marles in Parliament: “Why have Tony Abbott and Alexander Downer been able to leave and re-enter Australia multiple times this year when there are thousands of vulnerable, stranded Australians who haven’t been able to get home once?” Morrison replied by alleging Rudd had also obtained privileged travel exemptions. Except Rudd hadn’t.
Morrison’s Anti-Accountability vaccine gets L-NP off Scott-free
Porter’s attack on workers will do something else as well. It is workers and households that have been the heroes of the recovery. While business has hidden in its bunker, Australians have endured lockdown, complied with often draconian restrictions on their freedom, then emerged to get back to work and start spending in exactly the way the government has urged them to. Their reward for that? Workchoices 2.0, designed to undermine their wages and further tilt the industrial relations playing field in favour of employers. It’s vicious, ideological and idiotically self-defeating.
Christian Porter’s new wage growth attack defies Reserve Bank advice
“It’s time we address the structural inequalities in our economy that the pandemic has laid bare,” President-elect Joe Biden said last week, as he introduced his economic team.
Biden Says He’ll Take on Inequality. Good! You Need to Hold Him to It | The Smirking Chimp
Of course, not all of them are silent. A group of House Republicans, led by Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mo Brooks of Alabama, are publicly calling on Trump to continue fighting even after the Electoral College legally certifies the election for Biden next week. There has been no rebuke from the Republican leadership to these extremists, not even from leaders who hail from the states where Trump is trying to have legal votes thrown out. The Republican stance, on both the state and federal level, is clear: They wish they could help Trump overturn the election, but they just don’t see a path forward. They were prepared to abuse their power as far as they could to help him, and have hit the wall Unfortunately for Trump, time has run out. Tuesday is the deadline for states to certify their results, and next Monday the Electoral College will finally make Biden’s win official. The results are clear, not because Republican leaders have any integrity, but because voters showed up in large enough numbers to render all these shenanigans effectively moot. Trump will leave office on Jan. 20, and the only people who deserve credit for that are Democratic voters and organizers, who made sure Biden’s win was big enough that it couldn’t be stolen away.
Republicans want to steal this election for Trump — they just don’t know how | Salon.com
Also: Business experience is suddenly a problem, when it was a virtue before
Fox News celebrated Trump’s cabinet for a lack of qualifications — and now accuses Biden’s nominees of being unqualified | Media Matters for America
Trump is eating dust yet again.
Jakarta: Indonesia’s state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma said on Tuesday that interim data on trials it was conducting on vaccines produced by the Chinese company Sinovac showed up to 97 per cent efficacy. “Our clinical trial team found, within one month, that the interim data shows up to 97 per cent for its efficacy,” said Iwan Setiawan, a spokesman for Bio Farma, at a news conference.
Sinovac vaccine shows up to 97 per cent efficacy in early trials, Bio Farma says
Donald Trump’s days in the White House are numbered, but that has not stopped him from advancing his administration’s ‘America First’ approach. The outgoing President wants to limit the world’s access to a coronavirus vaccine so that Americans take priority and are first in line to get the jab. He held a vaccine summit at the White House on Wednesday morning (Australian time) and signed an executive order. It was to ensure “Americans have first priority to receive American vaccines”, Mr Trump said.
Coronavirus vaccines: How Donald Trump could affect a global rollout
After decades of chalking up record profits, Australian universities are now mired in a deep crisis. But if we’re going to defend — let alone rebuild — the sector, its champions have to reject the subordination of education to the bottom line.
If Australian Universities Are Going To Survive, They Can’t Just Produce “Job-Ready” Graduates
In summary, if Scott Morrison is a prick, how good a prick is he?
Scott Morrison is not a prick
When you look at its economic numbers, China’s having a good pandemic. The boom in demand for personal protective equipment and the impact of lockdowns on purchases of appliances and electronics has produced a surge in China’s exports and a record monthly trade surplus.
China-Australia dispute: Beijing’s record November to further unsettle western world
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Remember the promise of the Casual worker’s bonus for benefit sacrifice that was a Trumpian promise still in waiting.
The government sat on a report into the retirement income system for four months because it was so politically sensitive and then released it on the day the Brereton report into potential war crimes in Afghanistan was released. Harry Chemay looks at what’s at stake in the debate around the rise in superannuation guarantee levy.
Assuming employers will lift wages in place of superannuation levy is a triumph of hope over experience – Michael West
But if we apply their own standards, imagine if a Labor government did this: Promise that we were “back in black” pre-election, only to fail to deliver a budget at the specified time because it’s all too uncertain. Have unemployment jump Preside over the first Australian recession this century Deliver the biggest deficit in our history Borrow more than all the previous Australian governments combined Have no plan to pay it back until some unspecified date when unemployment is less than 6% Destroy our trade with our biggest trading partner by calling for an investigation into Covid-19 which pointed the finger at China
We Have Liberal Leaders In Charge – Thank God! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The only squealing we hear from elected Republicans are those non-congressional types who’ve been targeted by Trump’s vile tactics, such as Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. “He voted for Trump but didn’t like it when Trumpism collided directly into his life,” trenchantly observes Amanda Carpenter (no relation) of the Bulwark. “I remember Trump calling lots of other Americans ‘an enemy of the people’ and putting them in danger before he attached the label” to Raffensperger. Only then did he protest the ugliness. Self-centered, gutless bastards all.
THE Most Gutless Party in U.S. Political History | The Smirking Chimp
Now the stance of the ordinary right-winger is that social responsibility, in and of itself, is a dreadful imposition that must be shunned. “Triggering” liberals is the only value left standing, and it remains the top priority even in the face of mass illness and death.
Trump lost the election — but his legacy of coronavirus denialism is here to stay | Salon.com
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