Category: Informed Comment
As an over-arching statement … there is no place for inequality and violence in the world of men and men, or in the world of women and women, but it concerns me that there is still such a predominant amount of inequality and violence in the world that exists between men and women here in Australia. It is going to take all our combined efforts to stop it.
“Kelly’s family furniture business went belly-up. Whilst this loud-mouth ignorant bully continues to exert influence via threats to colleagues and an inflated media presence, his appalling lack of judgement risks doing the same to the country.”
via Craig Kelly, the ultimate hypocritical NIMBY – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Hidden History of the cost lives LNP (ODT)
Whilst the government repeats slogans like “in a canter” and the Murdoch press continues its misinformation campaign, the rest of the world regards us as pusillanimous liars and cheats, more interested in keeping our advantage than in helping with the heavy lifting.
Much to my shame, they are right.
via Pusillanimous liars and cheats – » The Australian Independent Media Network
People with psychosis don’t realize that they’re in a psychological crisis. America has similarly lost touch with reality. Much of the country doesn’t even realize that there’s a problem.
The election of Donald Trump was a stark reminder of all that is going wrong in the United States. Perhaps his defeat in the 2020 election, if the majority can once again make its voice heard, will be the first step in acknowledging the problem and beginning a much-delayed recovery.
Switch off the electronic images. Ignore the media burlesque. The endless political shows, which turn presidential campaigns into mind-numbing, two-year-long marathons, are entertainment. Do not trust anyone in power. We will save ourselves by building mass movements to overthrow corporate power. I am not certain we will succeed. But I am certain that if we fail, we are doomed.
Australians in their somewhat laconic fashion voted to give arguably the worst government in its history another term in office. Little did they know that it would continue carrying its baggage around with it like lost passengers at a domestic baggage terminal.
When you take a look at the current load of baggage it is carrying you realise that nothing has changed. Their propensity for stuffing things up compares with not being able to find one’s car at the Melbourne airport and then not being able to afford the car parking.
via The weight of so much baggage – » The Australian Independent Media Network
BRITAIN NOW HAS the most far-Right Government in its history with the ascension of Boris Johnson to Prime Minister. Johnson is the epitome of a Monty Python, upper-class twit but with more than a touch of thuggish bully. The UK press has given Johnson the moniker “BoJo” which is frighteningly similar to the moniker given to our very own far-Right ScoMo.
However, the similarities between Morrison and Johnson’s rise to the top go a lot further — both are part of a drive to install far-Right governments to advance the interests of U.S. imperialism. In both cases, the Murdoch press played a significant role in destabilising their predecessors.
Journalist Anthony Hilton claims Murdoch explained he was so opposed to the EU because:
“When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.”
A faction of the U.S. ruling class has decided the answer to the connected crisis of a struggling economy and rising social inequality domestically and declining power abroad is fascism. They are now attempting to reorganise the world to achieve this goal.
via ScoMo to BoJo — how the U.S. far Right is reshaping the world
The “why” of it tells me that a long time ago the right to bear arms was given because at the time, lawlessness ran rampart.
It may well have been justified in the early 1800s, however, to justify the need today is to also suggest that law enforcement in the greatest country in the world has made no progress.
The word greatest doesn’t belong here. Nor does vengeance beside it.(John Lord)
via And the dead are many – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Friday’s (2 August) Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) retail sales figures confirm Australia is enduring its worst retail trade period on record.
Why? Because Australian citizens no longer have the discretionary spending power they have long enjoyed. That this is happening during an extraordinary worldwide boom in investment, jobs, growth and profits is a damning indictment of the Morrison Government’s economic management. Another one.
Conclusion: The Way Forward
You can see the problem and its solution coming, can you not? The issue is corruption: money in politics. Corporations would never have been granted the degree of influence they have were it not for our corrupt politicians. The deregulation and increasingly fascist relationship between corporations and government would never have been allowed to happen if it were not for corruption.
The purpose of this piece has been to outline three main industries were profits are determined by negatively impacting people’s lives: health, prison and armed combat. As long as these facets of society remain subject to the rationales of private industry (profit at all costs) there can, and will, be no progress.
To end, two quotes from people who get it
Jailing people, really, when you think about it, turned out to be a for-profit industry. I don’t know how we didn’t see it all these years
Bill Maher
But my favourite has to be Star Trek DS9’s Quark, who said
No-one ever went broke selling weapons
via Problem Industries and The Way Forward – » The Australian Independent Media Network
My thought for the day
To those who think they can win a debate by being loud and crass. I say be quiet. To those who think they can win with a perceived superior intellect I say be humble. Discourse requires civility in order to produce reasoned outcomes.( John Lord)
via Reforming question time: A few less mouths that roar – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Next week, Australia will host its first Australian Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. The organiser says the event will “not be a one-off” and that its US backers, the American Conservative Union (ACU), had committed to holding the event long-term.
You also get to hear from ACU’s executive director Dan Schneider and their chairman, Trump fundraiser Matt Schlapp, whose wife Mercedes is Trump’s Director of Strategic Communications. In his role as vice president of federal affairs at Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC, Schlapp directed the major federal public policy strategies on anti-environmental and energy policies, financial markets, legal reform, and international and domestic tax issues.
For your entertainment, you can also listen to Nigel Farage – the man who so desperately wanted Brexit and then had no idea what to do with it when he got it.
Home grown contributions will come from luminaries like Craig Kelly, Mark Latham, Tony Abbott and Amanda Stoker as well as Fox News host Jeanine Pirro and sundry kids from the IPA.
The ACU have been involved with some shady fundraising practices in the past. Asked whether they saw an Australian conference as a financial opportunity, Cooper disagreed. “My perception of the ACU is that they are looking to spread their message,” he said. “If anything they are going to be investing in us for a long, long time.”
Considering how the government is going in the US and the UK, I fail to see what advice we could get from this bunch of tossers.
Unless it’s on how to put a fool in power.
via Foreign influence in Australian politics – » The Australian Independent Media Network
There will be no social reform under this government – no Voice for Indigenous people, no help for the unemployed, no fair distribution of the wealth earned from 28 years of economic growth, no action on cutting emissions.
They are paralysed by the bullet lodged in their spine.
via Government paralysis – » The Australian Independent Media Network
If you’re trying to “have a go” in order to put food on the table, don’t expect to “get a go” from this Coalition Government, writes executive editor Michelle Pini.
LET THEM EAT CAKE
And according to the PM, who has actively opposed any suggestion of an increase to the Newstart payment,
“They [Newstart recipients] don’t just live on Newstart alone.”
That’s right! Lucky Newstart recipients also get an “energy supplement” of $4.40 a week!
This, of course, would not buy the lucky ducks dinner at Heston Blumenthal‘s Fat Duck pop-up in Melbourne, where the starting cost per person (excluding wine) was $525 back in 2015. Blumenthal, incidentally, has also struggled to pay his workers according to the law. But this extra government “assistance”, in fact, doesn’t even cover the cost of a weekly Happy Meal, which is currently $5.30.
Let them eat cake, eh, Mr Morrison? Well, probably not cake served in any establishment of the abovementioned restaurateurs.
Newstart is below the poverty line. That is all anyone with a heart or a full stomach needs to know.
If you’re just trying to “have a go” in order to put food on the table, however, don’t expect to be getting a go from this Coalition Government.
The United Kingdom is Europe’s great pacifier, but deserting the EU at the urging of a band of chronic liars, might mean the end of its illustrious tradition as one of the world’s great civilisations.
via Boris’s blonde ambitions – » The Australian Independent Media Network
My thought for the day
Nothing has ever stood in the way of science and technology. Its advancement has been staggering. So why are the conservative political forces so opposed to it? ( John Lord)
Why is this banner so misleading attacking “Science” rather specifically “Medical Research” Which is more often than not tied at the hip to the funding by Big Pharma and Venture Capital. Why isn’t the banner “Capitalism corrupts Scientific research” “Capitalism compromises Medical Research” but No Ch9 has gone the way of the Herald Sun. Sensationalism first news the afterthought if any thought at all but ratings first. (ODT)
via ‘Bad science’: Australian studies found to be unreliable, compromised
Any Australian who has been paying even a bit of attention over the past decade would recognise these slogans. They are a staple of the nativist and racist faction of the conservative side of Australian politics.
Now they have become embedded in American political discourse during a week in which President Trump shamelessly lied about four female members of Congress who are also women of colour and progressive Democrats who came to prominence during the “blue wave” of the 2018 mid-term elections.
These women – who have been given the nickname “the squad” – are a major irritation to Donald Trump. They are smart, they’re fierce, they are also women of colour. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is Hispanic, Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia, Rashida Tlaib’s roots are Palestinian and Ayanna Pressley is African-American.
Tlaib and Omar are also Muslim.
via Trump versus the Democratic ‘squad’: A battle for America’s soul
My thought for the day
Invariably when I read about how successful people are, the measure is always the value of their assets. Why is this so?
via Know your place; we were born to rule (part 1) – » The Australian Independent Media Network
I will make one prediction; after this is published it will be promptly followed by the remnants of the traditional media in furious pursuit of my heresy. Questions will be asked by the fourth estate and high octane derision will issue forth from the climate change actionistas.
via The batshit crazy ramblings of Barnaby Joyce – » The Australian Independent Media Network
I keep hearing that the Democratic party has moved “left” and that Democratic candidates may be “too far left”.
But in an era of unprecedented concentration of wealth and political power at the top, I can’t help wondering what it means to be “left”.A half-century ago, when America had a large and growing middle class, those on the “left” sought stronger social safety nets and more public investment in schools, roads and research. Those on the “right” sought greater reliance on the free market.
But as wealth and power have concentrated at the top, everyone else – whether on the old right or the old left – has become disempowered and less secure.
