Coalition’s push for secret trials: behaviour of a tin-pot dictatorship – Michael West
Claims that the release of information poses a risk to national security can be used to avoid legitimate scrutiny of conduct. If ever there were reasons to suspect a cover-up by this government, the Bernard Collaery and Witness K court cases are prime examples, writes Ian Cunliffe.
Coalition’s push for secret trials: behaviour of a tin-pot dictatorship – Michael West
The future energy market can serve consumers well without big government subsidies despite the unprecedented disruption in the shift to renewables, said Energy Security Board (ESB) chair Dr Kerry Schott. The ESB is proposing a range of market reforms in a new study released for consultation on Monday.
Coal’s rapid decline won’t cripple future energy grid: COAG study
President Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen, alleges in a new book that Trump made “overt and covert attempts to get Russia to interfere in the 2016 election” and that the future commander in chief was also well aware of Cohen’s hush-money payoff to adult-film star Stormy Daniels during that campaign.
Trump a ‘cheat’ who idolised Putin, mocked Nelson Mandela: Cohen book
President Donald Trump is no stranger to conspiracy-mongering. He’s pushed wild birther theories about his predecessor, Barack Obama, suggested windmills cause cancer and claimed climate change is a hoax manufactured by the Chinese, among other bizarre assertions.
10 Of The Wildest And Wackiest Conspiracy Theories Pushed By Trump This Week | HuffPost Australia
Warning of the very real chance of a “nightmare scenario” in which President Donald Trump misleads the American people over the results of the November election—or refuses to leave office voluntarily if voted out—Sen. Bernie Sanders is raising the alarm and mobilizing his army of supporters to be aware of just how dangerous a game the president is now playing.
‘Nightmare Scenario’: Sanders Warns Nation That Trump Is Laying Groundwork for Election Result Mayhem | Common Dreams News
Our former PM has not only made deeply sexist remarks, he’s also inept – and unsuited to be anyone’s trade envoy
Brits, take it from an Aussie: If Tony Abbott is your solution, you’ve got big problems | Van Badham | Opinion | The Guardian
What Sky News pundits don’t report the Workers Strike strike at Spotless (ODT)
At the Spotless Laundry in Melbourne’s southeast, employers demanded that work continue despite escalating numbers of COVID-19 cases. The workers refused to allow the company’s profit to be placed above their safety — and won.
Melbourne’s Spotless Laundry Workers Went on Strike to Stop COVID-19
https://youtu.be/KJXBvpMpIjUKJXBvpMpIjU
The former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has said politicians need to balance allowing more elderly Covid patients to die with the economic cost of an extreme lockdown. Speaking at the Policy Exchange thinktank in London, Abbott, tipped to become a UK trade envoy, said not enough politicians were ‘behaving like health economists, trained to pose uncomfortable questions about the level of deaths we might have to live with’
Hard questions needed on cost of keeping all Covid patients alive, says Tony Abbott – video | Australia news | The Guardian
Paul Keating was on Fran Kelly’s ABC radio show on Friday. He’d picked up a peculiar thing from the GDP release. The headline number was horrific. Australia’s economic growth had shrunk by 7%, the largest drop on record, wiping out four years of growth and sinking the nation, officially, into its first recession in 29 years. Keating seized on the bright spot though, or at least what he thought was a bright spot. Buried in the National Accounts data and apparently picked up by nobody, yet, were the figures for GDP per hour worked. It was an increase. Yes, an increase, and not a trifling increase either. Growth in GDP per hour worked was up from 0.6% – the average over four previous quarters – to 4.1%. It represents a fantastical rise in productivity – a seven-fold surge in productivity. Businesses have shed millions of workers so wage costs plummeted by 9.3% and wages are usually the highest cost in a business.
What Covid Plan? Paul Keating seizes on the “good news” but Australia’s economy is changing for good – Michael West
My thought for the day We can sometimes become so engrossed in our own problems that we can easily overlook the enormity of the suffering of others. (John Lord)
A damming report on aged care the government cannot ignore – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Hunting for a Knighthood? A way back? (ODT)
Labor has demanded the Morrison government explain how former prime minister Tony Abbott will manage conflicts of interest as he advises the United Kingdom on trade deals with countries including Australia. Mr Abbott confirmed his appointment as an unpaid adviser to the UK Board of Trade on Saturday morning after a firestorm of criticism over his past comments on women and gay people.
Tony Abbott: Labor questions former PM’s conflict of interest in new UK trade role
Donald Trump knows he is unlikely to win a fair election in 2020. But his strategies to cheat are so numerous and scattershot — did you catch that story about how acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf blocked a report about Russian propaganda? — that it’s tempting to take comfort in the hope that he has no overarching strategy to fake or steal a second term.
Trump Has a Plan to Steal the Election — in Fact, He Has a Bunch of Them | The Smirking Chimp
Trump dodged the draft ever since he’s disparaged the Military to boost his own ego Dr Mary Trump hit the nail on the head. (ODT)
In formed observers, like the Washington Post’s Paul Sonne, pointed out that the president included defunding Stars and Stripes in the proposed budget he presented to Congress earlier this year.
Not ‘Under My Watch’ Claims Trump After Pentagon Push to Destroy Stars and Stripes Happened… Under His Watch | Common Dreams News
The new bombshell report from The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, reporting that President Donald Trump had repeatedly disparaged fallen U.S. troops as “losers” and “suckers,” has now been confirmed by a rather unexpected media voice: Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin. This latest confirmation comes after Fox’s previous coverage of the story continually backed Trump’s denials.
A Fox News reporter confirmed The Atlantic’s story about Trump insulting fallen troops. Fox hosts are still calling it a hoax. | Media Matters for America
PHOENIX – For more than three decades, André House just west of downtown has provided food, showers, temporary housing and other services to Arizonans experiencing homelessness or poverty. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of families seeking such services has almost doubled, said Ash Uss, the faith-based nonprofit’s coordinator of advocacy and partnerships. “We have had families who show up and say, ‘I was just evicted,’ or ‘I’m about to be evicted,’ or ‘We’re living out of our car,’” Uss said. “The need is greater than it ever was.”
Fears Pandemic could Spur Dramatic Spike in Homelessness
Five years later, the rhetoric often struggles to match the reality. The United States-Mexico border spans about 3145 kilometres, and about a third of it contains walls erected by successive governments over several decades. Today, most of the barriers Trump claims to have built have merely replaced fencing that was previously installed by his predecessors. Furthermore, Americans – not Mexicans – are footing the bill.
US Election 2020: Fresh Texas battle looms over Trump’s border wall
The Trump administration has raised concerns with Australia’s competition regulator about proposed legislation that would force powerful US tech companies Google and Facebook to pay publishers for news.
Trump administration concerned about Australia’s tech giant crackdown
Back to the future of the 50s and 60s turn on tune in and change. A time that saw politicians freak out and ban the use of psychodelics for fear that a generation might drop out. The drying up of research funds stalled investigation for half a century. (ODT)
The controversial use of psychedelics as an alternative method of psychology is advocated by some medical professionals, writes Gilchrist Clendinnen.
AFTER DECADES of being largely ignored, mainstream medicine appears to be taking an interest in the healing potential of psychedelics. This year, Saint Vincent’s Hospital is working on two trials using psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. The first is using psilocybin to treat anxiety in people in palliative care and the second will be working with people who have treatment-resistant depression.
The potential benefits of psychedelic therapy
PRIME MINISTER: Well the bus is going all the way up to Rockie and that’s where it was always planning to go. I mean, it’s a big state and I need to cover as much of it in four days as I can. So we were never planning to take the bus to Townsville, we’d always planned to take that last leg up to Townsville by plane because that was the most effective way to get there and to spend the most time there with people on the ground. I mean, these visits aren’t about sitting on a bus. They’re about actually engaging with small businesses and our supporters and the people of Queensland and listening to them.
JOURNALIST: Then why have the bus?
PRIME MINISTER: Because it gets me from A to B.
JOURNALIST: Will you be taking the bus to Rockhampton from here?
PRIME MINISTER: Yes. The bus will be going to Rockhampton from here. That’s right.
JOURNALIST: With you on it? PRIME MINISTER: I’ve got to get there earlier than the bus tonight.
The Important Thing Says Scotty Is That The Wheels on The Bus Go Round And Round… – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The Police didn’t notice his Ethnicity when calling him a “Black Cunt”
An Aboriginal man says police officers threw him off his bicycle, pinned him to the ground and called him a “black c—” while he was riding to work at dawn without his bike lights on. Korey Penny, who works on Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel project, said he wanted Victoria Police to be held accountable for the incident that hospitalised him, which he said would never have happened to “white guy in a suit”.
Aboriginal man accuses police of violent assault and racist abuse
“Defamatory BS from a repeat offender” she said. “Tony Abbott should consult a lawyer. These unfounded slurs, pushed by his loony Left political opponents, are stated as fact by ‘journalists’ in the UK.”
Sky falls on Tony Abbott as News Corp columnist urges him to sue for defamation | The Weekly Beast | Media | The Guardian
The Government’s high-tech contact tracing app COVID-Safe has alerted officials to a potential outbreak at a quarantine hotel in Melbourne four months ago.
JUST IN: The COVIDSafe App has identified there was an outbreak at Melbourne’s Rydges Hotel in May | The Shovel
Republican senators, governors, captains of industry, elders, and others who once had power, prominence, some prestige, and maybe even a little pride now meekly wear Trump’s collar and kowtow to his conceits, leaving an entire party with a sole operating principle: “What he said” — even when they can’t figure out what he’s actually saying, or why, or what it means for the U.S. and its people. That’s not a party, it’s a national embarrassment.
There’s nothing left of the Republican Party but Trump’s Maniacal Cackle
US deaths from the coronavirus will reach 410,000 by the end of the year, more than double the current death toll, and deaths could soar to 3000 per day in December, the University of Washington’s health institute has forecast.
Coronavirus: US COVID-19 deaths projected to more than double to 410,000 by end of year
Biden Had 2 sons that served not a single Trump has ever served for his country. Trump turned his back on the Kurds a proud act of a leader and chief took their oil and left the troops in place. (ODT)
US President Donald Trump confronted a crisis on Friday that could undercut badly needed support in the military community for his re-election campaign as he sought to dispute a report that he privately referred to US soldiers killed in combat as “losers” and “suckers”.
US election 2020: Trump angrily denies report he called fallen soldiers ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’
Unlike Heather Heyer’s killer, Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teenager who allegedly crossed state lines with an assault rifle to confront Black Lives Matter protesters in Wisconsin and shot three people, has become a conservative celebrity. Tucker Carlson praised him as a patriot willing to stand up where Democratic cities wouldn’t—“17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would,” he said. An incoming Republican member of Congress shared a meme hailing Rittenhouse for having “fought back.” A Christian fundraising site raised a quarter of a million dollars for Rittenhouse’s legal defense. And on Monday, Trump broke his silence on the episode by asserting that Rittenhouse had acted in self-defense. “He was in very big trouble,” Trump said. “He probably would have been killed.” This time, he didn’t equivocate; the very fine people are only on his side now.
Donald Trump and His Allies Are Trying to Rewrite the History of Charlottesville – Mother Jones
We need high-quality, entertaining class-struggle television. The BBC’s period drama The Mill, which was ahead of its time when it debuted in 2013, shows us how it’s done.
Jacobin
1 Sir Robert Menzies and Tony Abbott remain the only two Prime Ministers who one could argue were more British than the British
Tony Abbott still makes me feel sick in the pit of my stomach – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck says he is confused by the growing number of people who seem to think he should be in some way accountable for issues relating to aged care.
Aged Care Minister Wondering Why People Keep Thinking He’s Responsible For Aged Care | The Shovel
Saying they had warned Australians all along that this would happen if a Labor Government was voted in, Josh Frydenberg and Scott Morrison have confirmed that Australia has gone into a recession for the first time in 30 years.
‘We told you Labor would wreck the economy’, Frydenberg says, announcing Australia officially in recession | The Shovel
Amazon was recently busted hiring intelligence experts to spy on Amazon workers. The practice is unfortunately common — most major multinational corporations have surveillance divisions which overlap with government intelligence agencies, creating a single, powerful security apparatus at the disposal of both the federal government and private corporations to use against workers.
Corporations Like Amazon Hire Union-Busting Labor Spies All the Time
Trump is the Swamp. He’s Quick Sand (ODT)
That is the big picture that we have to keep in mind because, as we approach the November election, we’re getting into extremely dangerous territory when a sitting president is willing to corrupt the entire federal bureaucracy to assist him in getting reelected.
Trump Is Corrupting the Entire Federal Government to Help His Reelection | Washington Monthly
After Jacob Blake was shot several times in the back by Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer Rusten Shesky, and was lying paralyzed from the waist down and handcuffed to a hospital bed, right-wing media, conservatives, and the usual crowd of other assorted racists were searching for a justification for what seemed to the rest of the world as an unprovoked assault. Some said that Blake was reaching for a knife. Others insisted he was resisting arrest.
There Are No Black Victims in Donald Trump’s America – Mother Jones
“I think there are some situations where statistics would suggest that they are treated differently, but I don’t think that that’s necessarily racism,” Barr said.
William Barr Says Police Being Racist Toward Black People Isn’t Racism | HuffPost Australia
Chinais far far more aware that the LNP is doing a Trump in thei Foreign Policy approach to China. We are fast tracking to be the 51st State of America. The problem is that there is far less certainty in our relationship with the current American administration under President Trump. There is an old saying it’s easier to break up a marriage than it is two partners in business making a profit. (ODT)
This week, a piece in China’s state-run tabloid The Global Times opined that Australia risks becoming the “poor white trash of Asia” if policymakers push forward with economic decoupling from China. A man pushes a motorbike past a casino in Bavet in Cambodia. Chinese developers are pumping lots of money into countries like Cambodia.(ABC RN: Antony Funnell) “We are seen in Beijing as the little brother of the US. In Washington, we’re expected to support American initiatives almost reflexively,” Strangio said.
China is ‘unimpeded’ in South-East Asia. Here’s how its influence may shape the region – ABC News
“Doing it Tough”: Defence spending spin belies deluge of dollars for multinational contractors
THE REAL NEWS
Scott Morrison spins defence spending and says contractors are “doing it tough”. The numbers show big dollars going to weapons makers from the US, France and Britain, while locally, lawyers, accountants and management consultants are in the frame. Marcus Reubenstein reports. The Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his Defence Minister Linda Reynolds trumpeted the announcement: “A $1 billion investment package to boost Australia’s defence industry and support thousands of jobs across the country.” As is de rigueur under current government/media arrangements, all the political correspondents of the mainstream media had been handed the story on a platter the day before the announcement. Moreover, the ABC’s report included the inexplicable statement that “Australia’s defence industry was struggling due to the coronavirus pandemic”.
“Doing it Tough”: Defence spending spin belies deluge of dollars for multinational contractors
Privatisation of child care laid bare: women pay high price – Michael West
Why isn’t this a not for profit industry after all it’s a service for our most valuable assets (ODT)
Despite huge government subsidies of more than $8 billion a year, parents still pay an arm and a leg for this essential service. And the women who mostly do the caring and educating receive pittance wages while the landlords, developers and investors make a mint. Lisa Bryant reports.
Privatisation of child care laid bare: women pay high price – Michael West
An overwhelming proportion of scientists now accept that Liberal MP Craig Kelly is a fucking idiot, new analysis shows.
Clear Link Between Craig Kelly And Total Fucking Stupidity, Scientists Claim | The Shovel
Murdoch media globally have tried to deflect this by declaring Biden is senile? What on earth then is Trump’s?
Trump’s “Dark Shadows” interview with Laura Ingraham was scary. Former FBI Agent and nonverbal communications expert Joe Navarro shows why narcissists become even more dangerous when they fail. Navarro is the author of the best seller Dangerous Personalities, about narcissistic personality disorder. According to the former FBI profiler, when the narcissist faces public failure there are fourteen actions we can expect:
Trump’s “Dark Shadows” Comments: Narcissists Become More Dangerous When They Fail | Crooks and Liars
Some of Trump’s responses were so out of bounds that Ingraham appeared to subtly help him rephrase his comments to avoid any controversy that might hurt him in the election.
Trump was so unhinged on Fox News, Laura Ingraham tried (and failed) to coach him through it – GOOD
During an interview aired on Fox News Monday night, Trump told host Laura Ingraham that he knew of a super-scary, extra-secret plot uncovered by “somebody” who saw a plane full of “thugs” traveling from some unknown city to disrupt the Republican National Convention ― which was largely a remote event. “We had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend. And in the plane, it was almost completely loaded with thugs, wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that,” he said.
Trump Repeats Conspiracy Theory About Super-Scary Antifa-Laden Planes | HuffPost Australia
New forms of terrorism rooted in conspiracy theories could emerge after the coronavirus pandemic, the EU’s terror chief has warned.
New forms of terrorism inspired by conspiracy theories may emerge after pandemic, warns EU counter-terror chief | The Independent | Independent
Human rights groups are sounding the alarm over the spread of coronavirus among Palestinians in Israeli jails. At least five Palestinian prisoners have tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19 recently, including a child. They were being held at Ofer military prison near Ramallah, where Israeli occupation forces also detain Palestinian children. Infected prisoners were transferred from Ofer to Hadarim prison, in central Israel.
Israeli neglect fuels virus spread among Palestinian prisoners | The Electronic Intifada
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