“A trial without evidence is not a trial. It’s a cover-up,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a floor speech before voting began on the issues.
Republicans Block Request For New Evidence In Senate Impeachment Trial | HuffPost Australia
“If the president is so confident in his case, if Leader McConnell is so confident the president did nothing wrong, why don’t they want the case to be presented in broad daylight?”
For Indigenous Australians, colonisation meant their sovereignty over the land was never recognised. It meant they were not acknowledged in the constitution and still aren’t. It meant murders, being pushed off their land, racism and institutionalising whole generations of children to “breed out the colour.” It meant that every year for 232 years, on the anniversary of the day Sir Arthur Phillip stuck a flagpole in the sand at Sydney’s Woolloomooloo, Australians would celebrate the colony while Indigenous Australians were made to remember a history that brutalised their culture.
via Six Things Indigenous People Want You To Know This Survival Day | HuffPost Australia
I don’t see myself as being particularly gifted in prophetic wisdom, but on at least three occasions in 2019 I said that it would take an event of catastrophic proportion to wake the Australian population from its malaise over climate heating.
That it has happened gives no pleasure to my words. That they make for a catalyst for action does.
The unsurprising drop in Scott Morrison’s approval rating confirms my prediction that the public mood for action is as hot as the flames that have caused so much devastation.
via As prophetic as I may be – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The Morrison Government has failed to release its own integrity commission legislation for consultation. They continue to stall. Revelations of $100 million of sports grants targeting marginal seats show why a Federal ICAC is needed, perhaps also a special prosecutor. Independent MP Zali Steggall has joined the many voices calling for a Federal ICAC. How many more are needed before those with entitlement respond?
Plato understood democracy but even he could not have foreseen the age of political entitlement. We need to return democracy to the voters.
Socialism is working in the Scandanavian Countries (ODT)
Chinese drivers are earning well above average income while Aussie Uber drivers can’t make minimum wage. Marcus Reubenstein reports.
Source: China’s ridesharing giant DiDi makes Uber look like a driver sweat shop – Michael West
How slow we are to notice like Climate Change we have been telling you this for 2 decades. (ODT)
National elections will be held this year in Hong Kong, Singapore, Jordan, Iran, New Zealand, Croatia, Greece, Iceland, Lithuania, Ireland, Poland, Romania, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, the USA and several smaller states in Africa and elsewhere. So plenty of theatres of potentially intriguing political contest.
Do these raise hopes for the future?
Yes, says Charles Richardson:
‘Anti-democratic forces remain firmly in control in much of the world. Recovering from the losses of the last few years is going to be a long haul. But as Angela Merkel would say, “Wir schaffen das” [We will get there]. But it’s not going to be easy.’
Are we expected to protect the unprofitable? Was the ‘free market ever really ‘free’ or rigged to trickle up ? Suddenly the term Socialism for the rich comes into focus. How about mobilising forces for clean energy? Are ordinary Australians expected to insure the profits of the extraordinary few? Particularly those who continue to invest in the unwanted? We have done that for the past 20 years and flatlined wages, issued company tax cuts and a variety of other economic decisions favouring the ever growing unequal share of GDP in this country. Particularly clean air, water and public health. We have seen the family of one working to survive become two, three and even families merging to survive.
The cry to “mobilise” forces has always been at the expense of “work forces”. Insurance companies are about to take a hit Scott is about to insure all Australia is to bear the cost easing the burden on the only “some”. Needless to say who will benefit the most. (ODT)
The Reserve Bank has been warned it may have to buy up coal mines and fossil-fuel power stations as part of extraordinary actions to save the economy from climate change-induced financial disaster.
The BIS said climate change events that severely affected the financial health of the banking and insurance sectors could force central banks to intervene and “buy a large set of carbon-intensive assets”.
via RBA told to ‘mobilise all forces’ to save the economy from climate change
Here we see the LNP Treasurer quoting Wayne Swan when the LNP tore into him for saying this same thing back in 2008 and saved us from the GFC. How hypocritical are these jerks claiming “saving the country” is ok for them when it wasn’t ok for the ALP. Back then The Australian and News Corp didn’t give the government support but just criticism. Andre (ODT)
“Let me make it very clear on the budget that we believe the budget in surplus is important because we believe it gives the nation the opportunity to respond to circumstances like these when they arise,” he said.
“And [while] we do believe that these are exceptional circumstances and why we would love to see the budget in surplus, we would not like to see it in surplus at the expense of these local communities.”
via Australia fires: Treasurer warns surplus at risk as economy hit
Oh you mean like when Labor steered us through the Global Financial Crisis emerging as the strongest economy in the world?
His advice came from Roskam and the IPA. Someone has told him the next election is 2 years away. (ODT)
Under the Trump regime, historical amnesia is used as a weapon of (mis)education, politics, and power. The notion that the past is a burden that must be forgotten is a centerpiece of authoritarian regimes, one that allows public memory to wither and the threads of fascism to become normalized. While some critics eschew the comparison of Trump with the Nazi era, it is crucial to recognize the alarming signs in this administration that echo a fascist politics of the past. As Jonathan Freedland points out, “the signs are there, if only we can bear to look.” Rejecting the Trump-Nazi comparison makes it easier to believe that we have nothing to learn from history and to take comfort in the assumption that it cannot happen once again. No democracy can survive without an informed and educated citizenry.
and
We pick up with Mr. Albanese and the trained monkey already in…
The Big Four banks and Macquarie, big Liberal Party donors all, have received over $2.3 billion in taxpayer-backed funds from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. That is almost one-third of every dollar ever invested by Australia’s green bank. Anthony Klan investigates dramatic rise in CEFC funds to the Big End of Town, particularly Macquarie, which coincides with a sudden rise in affection from Prime Minister Scott Morrison. This is Part II.
via Green Bank Besieged: CEFC, coal and the Giant Vampire Kangaroo – Michael West
The first thing to understand is that it is not a trade deal. It is Trump backing off his tariffs when he discovered that the tariffs fall on US goods and American consumers, not on China. Trump is covering his retraction by calling it a trade deal. China’s part of the deal is to agree to purchase the US goods that it already intended to purchase.
The purpose of tariffs is to protect domestic producers from foreign competition by raising the price of imported goods. What Trump, his administration, and the financial press did not understand is that at least half of the US trade deficit with China is the offshored goods produced in China by such corporations as Apple, Nike, and Levi. The offshored production of US global corporations counts as imports when they are brought into the US to be sold to Americans. Thus, the cost of the tariffs were falling on US corporations and US consumers.
via Remarks on the US/China “Trade Deal”, by Paul Craig Roberts – The Unz Review
Trump ( Donny from Marketing) becomes LESS convincing the more he makes up the story of the Assassination of Gen Soleimani and some 7 others in his entourage who he can’t talk about because he doesn’t even know who they were. When he makes an attempt he’s WRONG (ODT)
Notably absent from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago speech was the rationale he and administration officials had previously used in the days after the killing: that Soleimani posed an “imminent threat” against the United States.
Trump backs his Saudi allies to do this (ODT)
via Saudi-Led Coalition, Houthis still Ravaging Yemen with War Crimes: Millions at Risk
Too Embarrassing. Too Dangerous for the GOP. (ODT)
via McConnell Readies Nuclear Option For Shielding Senate Trial From Public View | Crooks and Liars
Back at Trump but with a difference… the Truth (ODT)
Tell me Israel hasn’t adopted WW2 politics once used against them. (ODT)
“If you look at something like the Jewish Nation-State Law, that is absolutely informed by an idea of supremacism,” she continues. “Kahane could have written that law himself. But it wasn’t put forward by Kahanist parties, it was put forward by parties that, yes, are on the right, but we consider absolutely part of the Israeli mainstream and not at all extremist.”
via PODCAST: Does Kahanism expose what Israel tries to hide? – +972 Magazine
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.
Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.”
General Dwight D Eisenhower
Farewell address 1961All the war party needs is a steady supply of foreign villains (preferably Muslims) who can be occasionally bombed back to the early Islamic age. Americans have largely forgotten George W. Bush’s lurid claims that Iraqi drones of death were poised to shower poisons on the sleeping nation. Even the Soviets never ventured so deep into the sea of absurdity.
The more I listen to his words, the more I like Ike.
“It is the job of the National Archives to document history, not alter it to serve the president’s ego.”
“Apologizing is not enough,” she said. “The National Archives must explain to the public why it even took the Orwellian step of trying to rewrite history and erasing women’s bodies from it, as well as who ordered it.”
General trust in news dropped from 50 per cent to 44 per cent in 2019.
Australian Broadcasting Authority found more than 85 per cent of Australians thought commercial sponsors were very influential or somewhat influential in news coverage.
The Free TV Code of Practice currently requires broadcasters to present news fairly and impartially, and to distinguish factual material from commentary and analysis.
In radio, current affairs programs are not required to be impartial but a licensee must provide reasonable opportunities for “significant alternative viewpoints” when dealing with controversial issues of public importance.
In media’s ‘Wild West’, news consumers struggle to find truth, trust and transparency
While LNP policy uncertainty is ensuring investment in the renewable’s boom is down by 56% in Australia and coal subsidies and promotion are up the tide of the free market is running in the opposite direction. The LNP is openly conducting a market manipulation scam the equivalent of an insider trading rort. If Scotty from marketing were the CEO it’s time he got the sack and /or was charged. (ODT)
BlackRock, the world’s biggest fund, is quitting thermal coal. The move by the $10 trillion fund has stunned financial markets. Climate change and coal: while the people protest in the streets, progressive analysts such as IEEFA’s Buckley protest to global finance bosses. Tim Buckley, who had lobbied hard for the BlackRock exit, reports on the revolution in big money.
via Pull out or perish: behind Blackrock’s grand exit from coal – Michael West
Much of the U.S. pressure exerted on Iraq’s government with respect to China has reportedly taken place covertly and behind closed doors, keeping the Trump administration’s concerns over China’s growing ties to Iraq largely out of public view, perhaps over concerns that a public scuffle could exacerbate the U.S.-China “trade war” and endanger efforts to resolve it. Yet, whatever the reasons may be, evidence strongly suggests that the U.S. is equally concerned about China’s presence in Iraq as it is with Iran’s. This is because China has the means and the ability to dramatically undermine not only the U.S.’ control over Iraq’s oil sector but the entire petrodollar system on which the U.S.’ status as both a financial and military superpower directly depends.
A path well travelled by Mussolini, Hitler, Pinochet, Franco, Netanyahu, the de-democratisation of Democracy not by ideology but a pragmatic grab for power & wealth by a single-minded Party of self-interested gangsters with only 30% support of the nation.(ODT)
via The Trump Organized-Crime Style: Bullying Europe, Bullying Iran and Impeached for Bullying Ukraine
The De-Democratisation of the USA under Trump (ODT)
The nonpartisan government oversight group Democracy 21 on Friday filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice against Attorney General William Barr, calling for a formal investigation and “remedial action” over accusations that Barr has failed to comply with “norms, rules and standards of conduct” while overseeing President Donald Trump’s DOJ.
Where’s Dutton he’s on first priority alert (ODT)
Morrison has made International Interest in Australia Spike (ODT)Googl
Bushfire searches were almost twice as popular as the next most-clicked search
Interest in bushfires rose more than 500 per cent over the past three months
Global interest in Australia soared by 340 per cent in the first week of 2020, compared to usual levels
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