Author: peterimrich
@0% of Americans a wsimply waste product in Trumps America. Unwanted surplus of a failing Capitalist State where 20% own 96% of the nations wealth and 80% share 4%. Where are the consumers necessary to keep this market going before it fails? So now Trump has turned to cutting Welfare, Increased Military spending, Increased policing Security and surviellance and Immigration scapegoating to save his and 1 % ‘s ass. As for the Budget well he’s doing a little rocket man manoevour ask for a lot get a little and claim a win. (ODT)
“The Trump budget is an immoral document. It is a budget that takes our collective resources and hands them to the wealthiest families and largest corporations in this country and ignores the needs of the most vulnerable among us.”
—Sen. Bernie Sanders
NATO since Trump the unwinding of an alliance (ODT)
The increasing surveillance by government paranoia to the failing systems of control (ODT)
The probe by the court, the Audiencia Nacional, into the activities of UC Global, along with leaked videos, statements, documents and reports published by the Spanish newspaper El País as well as the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, offers a window into the new global security state. Here the rule of law is irrelevant. Here privacy and attorney-client privilege do not exist. Here people live under 24-hour-a-day surveillance. Here all who attempt to expose the crimes of tyrannical power will be hunted down, kidnapped, imprisoned and broken. This global security state is a terrifying melding of the corporate and the public. And what it has done to Assange it will soon do to the rest of us.
via What Is Happening to Assange Will Happen to the Rest of Us | The Smirking Chimp
”Unprecedented” is the word that keeps being tied to the apocalyptic weather Australia has faced over the past few months.
Trump easily avoided a guilty verdict in his Senate trial for abuse of power and obstruction of justice and, in the same week, was praised by Republicans for a State of the Union address in which he didn’t fall off the stage. Dr Martin Hirst reports.
What’s more, as unnervingly extremist as both Leaders were in their initial, democratic pursuit of power, both played down the ultimates of their extremism before the dupes of democracy, lest they frighten away even these blockheads. Once self-secured in power, however, measure by measure the full horror of their madness would come to light.
As one of the three world powers who vanquished Hitler and Hitlerism three-quarters of a century ago, we seem, by permitting our own poisonous snake in the grass to retain and enhance his power, to have learned nothing.
Reinforcing what Fox Corp is and what it isn’t (ODT)
Fox doesn’t have much in the way of ethical standards, and the ones it has don’t apply to everyone. Just ask Hannity.
In Australia, telling the truth is now a crime. At least four Australians who did so face secretive trials in the coming weeks, three of them in Canberra. Another is imprisoned in the ACT without you knowing what for or at whose orders. You aren’t allowed to know his name, nor the name of Witness K. You are familiar with the other two: Bernard Collaery, K’s lawyer, and Annika Smethurst, a Newscorp journalist whose home was raided by police last July.
The fourth Australian is in pre-extradition detention in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison, also for telling the truth. Evidently, this is now a crime in your allies’ system as well, even though the U.S. has its First Amendment and the UK has a Bill of Rights.
via Assange, Collaery, Snowden, Smethurst: criminalising truth
“We are in a moment where billionaires control not only our economy but our political process.”
—Sen. Bernie Sanders
Republicans have willingly embraced and enshrined Trump’s desire to be above the law. We are now a constitutional monarchy.
The Day America Became a Constitutional Monarchy | The Smirking Chimp
American Occupation of Iraq (ODT)
Hassan al-Kaabi, the deputy speaker of the Iraqi parliament, called on Washington Thursday to accelerate its preparations to pull US troops out of Iraq, and to leave Iraq’s affairs to the Iraqis. Al-Kaabi was nominated to his position by the Sairun Party of prominent Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Al-Kaabi’s ire against the US was further provoked by secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s condemnation of the Iraqi security forces for violently repressing a demonstration in the holy city of Najaf on Wednesday, leaving dozens wounded and some dead.
via Has Trump lost Iraq to Russia over his Drone Strike on Baghdad Airport?
Canada and NZ show us what Australia isn’t. So what’s the difference the Government and who in particular Abbott, Morrison and Dutton crafted a viscious difference based on irrational FEAR for little more than 30 pieces of political gold (ODT)
The family are now permanent residents in Canada, welcomed under a Canadian government sponsorship system which is increasingly becoming the final life raft for the refugees left in the limbo of Australia’s infamous offshore processing system.
Teenage Swedish activist against climate change, Greta Thunberg has managed in the most vigorous and loud way to pass the debate over this huge problem, by the heads of state and government and public dialogue, in society and in the friendly discussions, mobilising millions of people around the world, especially young people, who began to demonstrate demanding by governments the immediate taking of measures for the confrontation of climate change.
Swedish MPs rightly suggested her for the Nobel Peace Prize. And of course, Greta Thunberg is right when she says that the measures are being taken to reduce greenhouse gases and, above all, carbon dioxide are not sufficient.
So, what are the appropriate measures to be taken without delay to effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and keep the temperature at + 1.5°C?
The basic policies for mitigating the problem consists in promoting and utilising renewable energy sources (wind, solar, biomass, etc.), enhancing energy efficiency, the drastic reduction of the exploitation of oil and gas deposits and the imposition of carbon taxes in order that to limit the use of fossil fuels and thereby to reduce significantly carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and eliminate them by 2050 at the latest, the rapid reduction of emissions of methane, carbon black and other short-lived pollutants that burden the climate, the restoration and protection of ecosystems and, above all, forests.
via Climate change: A major global threat – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Sports rorts. Unlawful robo-debts. More than $80m in election donations. Is this the governance we want?
Of course when I say that the Australian Federal Police found no evidence of the existence of Malcolm Roberts, I have to be fair and point out that they didn’t look for any. As with the Angus Taylor case, they saw no need to waste valuable resources when there was very little likelihood of finding any evidence. And there was obvioulsy almost no chance of finding any evidence because they weren’t going to look.
via AFP Finds No Evidence That Malcolm Roberts Exists – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Disinformation is the mother of Mexocan wrestling and Trump Politics. America openened her doors and accepted her pregnancy before Democracy and Truth and Murdoch media was the hormone needed to accelerate their birth (ODT)
both the just-concluded impeachment trial and the ongoing election are tests of whether the American political system can adequately handle and reject Trump’s never-ending and pervasive disinformation.
In the most showbiz-iest speech of his presidency, Trump drew heavily on his experience in reality-TV, a medium that, despite its moniker, is predicated on the falsification of reality.
LNP Shame up close and personal with the USA and down distant and who gives a fuck with it’s citizens. America constructed crimes to fit Assange and our LNP has done nothing but applaud. (ODT)
IN A WATERSHED CASE for journalistic freedom, the hearing for Julian Assange’s extradition to the U.S. begins in London on 24 February 2020. If extradited to the U.S., Assange will face 18 charges under the 1917 Espionage Act and a potential sentence of 175 years in prison for “crimes” that include some of the greatest pieces of citizen journalism of the 21st century: the Iraq War Logs, the Afghan War Logs, Cablegate and the famous collateral murder video.
What we need it would seem is not a Sovereign Fund but a Global one.(ODT)
When BHP calls nickel a once in a lifetime investment opportunity, it pays to take notice. At stake is the future of mining in Australia. So, it’s time to learn from history, writes Tosh Szatow. Let’s not squander the next boom, electrification, like the last, a minerals boom whose profits were whisked offshore by a cabal of multinational tax avoiders.
Failed Health Minister keeps his track record and Fails again and again and again (ODT)
This computerized debacle also deepens concerns about the DNC’s apparent digital incompetence in the face of the extremely sophisticated, hugely funded online campaign already underway from Trump and his high-tech backers.
Iowa 2020 is the ultimate early warning: We can do better. With Donald Trump ready for another apocalyptic term, our survival depends on it.
via Iowa Should Be a Warning — It’s Time to Switch to Paper Ballots | The Smirking Chimp
Donald Trump’s short but indelible political career has been based around the principle of divide-and-fool. His acquittal in the impeachment trial by the US Senate will further fan the flames of the most profound national split since the Vietnam war, perhaps even the civil war.
First, expect Trump to be cocky and take a victory lap, falsely claiming “exoneration” just as he did after special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation left him bruised but unbowed. A day after Mueller’s leaden testimony to Congress, the president felt able to act with such impunity that he made his bullying phone call to the leader of Ukraine.
The Fantasy of the once Common Good (ODT)
via One Per Cent: how a few big companies shape the laws – Michael West
The attitude of European institutions is changing after years of silence. In this case, it was Andrej Hunko and Gianni Marilotti that convinced the European Assembly to speak up.
The moment that press freedom advocates have been waiting for so long has finally arrived. The European institutions are starting to officially state that they don’t want Julian Assange to be extradited to the U.S.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has become the first one to step in and call for Assange’s immediate release, joining the call of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, who some months ago clearly stated that Assange should walk free.
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.