Author: peterimrich
Would you could you get an American visa? ODT
Punishing foreign film-makers and other visa applicants with needless social media surveillance is not just another instance of the government’s dim view of our interconnected world. The registration requirement violates our core constitutional commitment to freedom of expression. The state department should abandon it; otherwise, the courts must invalidate it.
67 Votes away from yet another record Mr President. (ODT)
But if the Republican president is hoping for a public backlash like the one against the 1998 impeachment of Democratic President Bill Clinton, it has so far not worked out that way, Reuters/Ipsos polling data over the past few months shows.
via Trump campaign says impeachment backfiring. Not really, polls suggest
How many times have we heard this? Year in year out particularly since 2013 yet we voted them in Australia. It’s our money. Does it really only take $100,000 donation that allows you to avoid millions? (ODT)
via The corporations making big money, paying no tax and laughing at us
Albo is sitting on his hands why? The public certainly don like it. (ODT)
via Australia is on fire, the economy is tanking and Labor is still losing in the polls
Smoke and the figures in short cook the climate books do nothing cook the MYEFO and do nothing (ODT)
via A couple of quick take-outs from MYEFO – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Frydenberg is blaming everyone else for Australia’s economic slump but fails to explain why we are sliding backwards faster than others in the downturn. Trump certainly isn’t admitting his woes so publicly. (ODT)
Yes, yes, I know: the rule of law reflects the interests of the powerful. That principle was certainly on display in Brazil. But the rule of law also protects the weak against the predations of the strong. And in this brave new world that Trump presides over, this latter understanding of the rule of law is under siege. It can be seen in how the Trumps of the world are attacking the courts, attempting to roll back the gains of social movements in the area of human rights, and undermining a range of watchdog institutions.
If Trump wins in the Senate and then at the polls in 2020, he won’t just beat the impeachment rap. Like Putin in Russia, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, and (so far) Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, he’ll have successfully destroyed the mechanisms that stand in the way of his absolutism.
via A Coup against Trump? Or Trump’s Coup against the Rule of Law?
Yet the real reason the response has been so muted is that Americans have come to expect their government will lie to them about just about anything. It’s an expectation that has fundamentally remade American politics over the past 40 years, one that helped give rise to Trump and one that ensures political turmoil will continue long after he leaves the national stage.
Source: Afghanistan war lies reveal a crisis of faith in democracy
These developments do not bode well for the continued unity of the United Kingdom. There have already been demands in Northern Ireland for a referendum to decide whether it should maintain its union with the United Kingdom or join the South, thus remaining in the EU. Opinion polls show a majority in favor of remaining in the EU.
In Peter Dutton’s Australia your guilty even if you’ve proved your innocent (ODT)
An Ethiopian couple suspected of incest by the Australian government have been told their visa case cannot be reviewed despite fresh DNA evidence that scuttles the claim.
via New DNA evidence rejects incest claim but couple’s visa nightmare goes on
SGS Economics and Planning found that during 2018-19, the Melbourne economy alone accounted for 40 per cent of Australia’s total growth. Melbourne gross domestic product reached $369 billion compared with regional Victoria’s $76 billion.
Australian GDP expanded by 1.9 per cent but Melbourne’s own GDP lifted by 4 per cent. Sydney GDP at $461 billion grew by 2.6 per cent, its lowest rate since 2012-13, to account for a third of national growth.
Source: Melbourne closes on Sydney as nation’s economic powerhouse
The LNP in Australia is trying to Americanise us. (ODT)
Drugs, Guns, and Despair: How America Is Killing Americans | The Smirking Chimp
The civil society groups’ joint statement noted that in the final hours of the summit, “it is not too late for developing countries to stand strong, to resolutely refuse the agenda of polluters.”
“From the Amazon to the Arctic, our world is on fire,” the statement read. “Allowing expansion of coal, oil and gas production at this moment of history is throwing gasoline on the fire.”
“There are no climate change deniers around I can assure you,” Rupert Murdoch said last month at News Corp’s annual general meeting.
His declaration that the publisher of the Daily Telegraph, the Australian and owner of Sky News was free of climate deniers was widely greeted with mirth.
The next day the geologist Ian Plimer proved Murdoch’s doubters correct when he published an opinion piece in the Australian claiming the major pollution in western nations was “the polluting of minds about the role of carbon dioxide”.
“There are no carbon emissions,” he wrote. “If there were, we could not see because most carbon is black. Such terms are deliberately misleading, as are many claims.”
That piece of commentary attracted the usual round of applause from pundits certain they knew better than climate scientists. Where once ignoring scientists and experts would result in a failing subject grade, in some sectors it’s now considered an “opt-in” belief.
Morrison needs a distraction from a burning country Terrorism and China don’t cut it. News Corp calling this Normal doesn’t either. (ODT)
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