via A decade in photos: Images from the Middle East that moved the world
Author: peterimrich
MI5 is given Carte Blanche on Mayhem.(ODT)
A breath of fresh air No a cool refreshing storm has swept across American politics…AOC (ODT)
“The undeniable fact is that Ocasio-Cortez has been the rock star of the political left since she pulled off her shock defeat of 10-term incumbent Joseph Crowley.”
—Mehdi Hasan, journalistOcasio-Cortez garnered national media attention in mid-2018 for her landslide victory in a primary race for New York’s solidly blue 14th Congressional District, which ousted longtime Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley. She has since used her national platform to promote progressive policies on key issues such as the climate crisis and healthcare—and support fellow political candidates who share her priorities.
In October, Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Sanders for president. The past couple months, Politico explained, “Ocasio-Cortez has become a supercharged surrogate for Sanders in early-voting and delegate-rich states. As she’s drawn massive crowds alongside the Vermont senator in Iowa, Nevada, California, and New York, progressive insiders and activists are increasingly whispering about Ocasio-Cortez inheriting the movement one day—and running for the White House with it behind her.”
2x Never Trumpers (ODT)
via World’s 500 Richest People Gained $1.2 Trillion in Wealth in 2019: Analysis | Common Dreams News
Digital Literacy
All Left Parties in opposition or in State Power, must make it a priority to encourage or fund digital literacy programs. If they can do neither, the Federal Leadership must be proactive in promoting this via their own channels.
The Labor Party has the power and the technology to create tools to counter claims from all types of propaganda. Speak loud and speak often, via text and video. Importantly, be bold enough to respond to claims made via comments on Social Media. Make it known that truth telling in Democracy is paramount and false claims and misrepresentations will no longer be tolerated by the voting public.
via 2020 How to Kill Propaganda with Three Blows – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Tony Abbott had a list of broken promises Now lets remind ourselves of just how many more there are. (ODT)
But what were the reforms that were promised or proposed which have dropped off the political radar, stalled, or the government is accused of doing too little too late?
Pelosi is right there is no point of a Trial if it’s simply a vote. Trump can call his witnesses and have his lawyers which he’s been demanding. Now he wants no witnesses and no Trial and says its Pelosi’s fault. Sorry who else but Trump? (ODT)
They’d made up their minds to acquit the President of the impeachment charges, in the hope that would exonerate him of any wrongdoing, without the need to risk any new evidence coming to the surface.
But the Speaker of the Democrat controlled House had a Joker up her sleeve.
Nancy Pelosi revealed she was breaking with convention by withholding the impeachment articles, until the House and the Senate could agree on procedures for a “fair trial”.
“The Americans are using ISIS as a scarecrow. They are feeding ISIS, encouraging them, protecting (its) leaders, and helping them move from one area to another,” adding:
“The US policy is aimed at investing into terrorism.”
The US FY 2020 war budget includes a provision to impose sanctions on companies involved in helping Syria rebuild its infrastructure, including its energy sector, Muallem stressing:
“All nations that were victimized by this system need to join forces and resist (illegal US) sanctions.”
In mid-December, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accused the Trump regime of continuing what ISIS began by “stealing and selling” Syrian oil, adding:
US monied interests make policy in the country. “If they have an interest in occupying the oil wells, stealing and selling them one way or another, then this state and this regime will act in favor of these companies, regardless of international law and regardless of American law.”
There are “thousands” of US forces in Syria, he stressed, including private mercenaries like Blackwater, not hundreds as falsely reported.
Syrian oil is smuggled into Turkey for sale on the black market, the Erdogan regime involved.
The Trump regime wants Damascus deprived of revenues to rebuild the country US, NATO, and Israeli aggression destroyed.
via War Criminal Trump an International Thief, Supporter of Terrorism – Stephen Lendman
The Washington Post reported over a year ago that the CIA had concluded, on evidence that included intercepted phone calls, that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman ordered the killing. His close friendship with Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner has certainly contributed to the impunity he has so far enjoyed. One way to punish Saudi Arabia is through sanctions and denial of military aid — options that were open until just last week, when Congress passed, and sent to the White House for Trump’s signature, the $738 billion 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. Sen. Bernie Sanders and California Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna issued a joint statement calling the NDAA “a bill of astonishing moral cowardice,” in part for failing to deny aid to Saudi Arabia.
via Let 2020 Be the Year of a Truly Free Press | The Smirking Chimp
Israeli politicians, civil servants, generals and soldiers should have to think twice before they participate in these crimes, knowing that by doing so there is a very real chance they could end up in a prison cell in The Hague.
via Israeli leaders must know they can go to prison | The Electronic Intifada
Politicising Cricket will it get anybody’s attention? (ODT)
Australia’s Republican style LNP Government has resorted to Political Stunts rather than blame themselves they are turning to blame the States.(ODT)
Mr Littleproud declined to respond when asked this week why the current inquiry maintained a focus on state jurisdictions, despite the advice of a previous committee.
Wilderness Society policy director Tim Beshara called the inquiry a “political stunt” and said it was the reason the “public don’t trust the government to review their own performance or to learn from their failings”.
via Australia fires: Morrison government launches bushfire inquiry to probe state policy
He’s broken 20,000 by Xmas surely (ODT)
via Tracking all of President Trump’s false or misleading claims – Washington Post
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski also said she remained undecided on how she would vote in the president’s Senate impeachment trial, according to KTUU.
A self-styled jailhouse lawyer who provided advice to some of Australia’s most notorious criminals will be deported in a matter of days after consenting to an order by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton cancelling his permanent residency on character grounds.
When you work for the Common Good (ODT)
Scientists round the world are looking aghast at the politics of climate change in Australia.
It’s one of the most vulnerable countries on the planet to rising temperatures, yet there is still denial about the impacts of rising CO2 levels on events like the current wildfires.
There is no serious doubt among scientific institutions that rising global temperatures are leading to record heat.
The heatwaves are driven by a natural phenomenon but they are adding to an already over-heated planet.
In the election, the victorious Liberal (conservative) Party categorised climate change as a metropolitan fad for urban professionals, and gained support for the world’s biggest coal mine.
Coal is the dirtiest fuel and scientists say we shouldn’t be building more coal-fired power stations if we want to stabilise the climate.
There is no difference, the Afghanistan Papers make clear, in the mendacity and incompetence of the policymaking apparatus no matter who controls Congress or the White House. No party or elected official dares defy the military-industrial complex or other titans of the deep state. The Democrats through impeachment have no intention of restoring constitutional rights that would curb the power of the deep state and protect democracy. The deep state funds them. It sustains them in office. The Democrats are seeking to replace the inept and vulgar face of empire that is Trump with the benign and decorous face of empire that is Joe Biden. What the Democrats, and the deep state that has allied itself with the Democratic Party, object to is the mask, not what is behind it. If you doubt me, read the six-part series on Afghanistan in the Post.
No accident that this type of relationship was born in Australia as far back as the 1970’s with the destruction of Whitlam’s ALP. Rupert Murdoch went to America where he knew there was better ground on which it could flourish. From there he consolidated and refined his corrupt business plan and took it to the rest of the English speaking world. We can see him losing money in Australia. We saw him do an Alan Bond in the UK but America restored him and from there he prospers to the detriment of the notion of any COMMON GOOD> (ODT)
Trump sustained his well-documented fixation on the network, continuing his practices of giving the vast majority of his national televised interviews to Fox hosts, maintaining a revolving door between his administration and the company, and relying on Fox personalities for private counsel. He kept watching hours of daily programming from Fox News and its sister network, Fox Business, basking in sycophantic coverage from shows like Fox & Friends, Lou Dobbs Tonight, and Hannity. And continuing the Trump-Fox feedback loop, he maintained his habit of firing off hyperaggressive tweets in response to what he saw on those networks, sending 613 such live tweets this year through December 17.
But more than ever before, Trump’s Fox fanaticism this year drove the federal policymaking process and political reality, with a tangible impact on the lives of the American public.
via President Trump’s Fox obsession reshaped the political universe in 2019 | Media Matters for America
The place for a TRIAL is the SENATE but the Senate is a Republican Chamber so there will be No Trial, No Witnesses, and a prepped Jury whose decision has already been announced. All this by Senators obliged to swear to objectivity under the American Constitution. What went on in Congress was merely an inquiry which Trump called a trial. It wasn’t in any legal terms more than a question whether the evidence showed he had charges to answer. (ODT)
Instead, responding to the destruction of those towers in Manhattan and part of the Pentagon, the Bush administration essentially launched a war against much of the planet. They soon dubbed it a “Global War on Terror,” or GWOT, and key officials almost instantly claimed it would have more than 60 countries (or terror groups in them) in its sights. Eighteen years later, the U.S. is still at war across a vast swath of the globe, involved in conflict after conflict from the Philippines to Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq to northern Africa and beyond. In the process, that GWOT has produced failed state after failed state and terror group after terror group, enough to make the original al-Qaeda (still going) look like nothing at all. And of course, in all these years, the U.S. military, hailed here as “the finest fighting force that the world has ever known” (and similar formulations), lacks a single decisive (or even modest) victory. Meanwhile, everywhere, yet more towers, real or metaphorical, continue to fall; in fact, whole cities in the Middle East now lie in rubble.
via Gatsbyed Half to Death: Is America’s Trump Gilded Age another 9/11?
The US has been at war since the end of WW2 both physically and with trade sanctions on any companiy that doesn’t play their game. The EU Iran Cuba Venezuela and others have felt their sting. Isn’t it time there really was a free market and not the pretence of one? (ODT)
The angle taken by the European Union, Germany and Russia can hardly surprise. Themes of energy security are reiterated. The Nord Stream 2 consortium makes the claim that, “Completing the project is essential for European supply security.” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova spikily condemned the sanctions measure. “A state with a $22 trillion national debt prohibits creditworthy countries to develop the real sector of their economies!”
For a EU spokesman, this constituted “the imposition of sanctions against EU companies conducting legitimate business.” A German government spokesman suggested that such actions “affect German and other European businesses, and we see the move as meddling in our internal affairs.” Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has sees it as an infringement of sovereignty. “It is up to the companies involved in the construction of the pipeline to take the next decisions.”
Nothing is quite so simple. Gas pipeline politics has always been contentious. One state’s sovereign promise is another’s weakening. Concessions made to corporate monopolies are risky, capable of fostering insecurity as much as reassurance. Those who control the tap control a country’s future.
But the imposition of any sanctions regime signals another bout of economic violence. In the international market, where governments operate as ready gangsters for corporate interests, prompted by such motivations as seeking more natural resources, tools of state become handmaidens of economic self-interest. And in all this, the prospect of ecological devastation remains genuine but an aside to the jabbering disagreement of political interests.
via Sanctions, Security and the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline – » The Australian Independent Media Network
“These are the realities that make me wonder at how corrupt must be the souls of people who have the power to stop this and fail to act.”
via Pouring Coal on the Fires, Aussie PM Rejects Climate Solutions as Country Burns | Common Dreams News
Donald Trump has been on the campaign trail from the day he got elected. He’s been planning nothing but winning in 2020 and beyond. Morrison’s LNP has been doing nothing but much the same wearing baseball caps and being the salesman without a product. (ODT)
Suite of policy measures? A set of trite slogans and a hyper-partisan party stalled in continuous campaign mode is a suite of policies? And it’s back to the old “selling the message”, regardless of how meaningless, or morally bankrupt. “Angus doesn’t have the ability to sell a positive climate change message.”
“This is not normal” says New South Wales Liberal Minister Matt Kean who is vilified The Australian for breaking ranks; noticing that Australia might be in the grip of record drought, heat and catastrophic bushfire.
Kean’s on to something. Voters may, indeed, be expecting the Federal government to do more than send its PM on top secret holidays with his pal Tim. But credibility and sincerity? Morrison’s got no show.
This is not normal, Mr Morrison. – » The Australian Independent Media Network
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