The MAGA agenda would make nearly every aspect of your life more expensive, while making the richest Americans even richer.
Teddy Roosevelt’s economic plan was called the Square Deal. Franklin Roosevelt’s was the New Deal.
What Trump is offering is simply a Raw Deal.
If Americans were actually in charge, there would be some option available to them to end the Israeli genocide in Gaza. But when it comes to matters of such importance, they never get a vote.
Trump’s defenders argue that there’s no valid comparison between Trumpism and Nazism, yet Trump and his campaign continue to invite the comparison.
I don’t believe the Monday post was a mistake. I believe Trump is now moving to openly signal his embrace of fascism.
What do you think?
Source: But Seriously, Is Trump Now Openly Embracing Fascism? | The Smirking Chimp
Hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to flee, once again, after more than half of Gaza’s population took sanctuary in the border town of Rafah. This is part of Israel’s sadistic playbook.
Zaslav came along at a time of establishment confusion over whether the old political center would return after Trump. America’s business establishment hoped it would. But that proved a pipe dream. The division between authoritarianism and democracy is now too deep. If anyone had any doubts, CNN’s disastrous Trump town hall should have erased them.
What seems to have confused Zaslav was the difference between being politically partisan, and standing up against authoritarian demagogues. He assumed that holding Trump accountable for what he did (and continues to do) was inconsistent with so-called “balanced journalism.”
Wrong. It is not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy. That’s where CNN’s audience wanted — and presumably still wants — CNN to be.
Source: How To Make $50 Million a Year While Your Corporation Goes Down the Tubes | The Smirking Chimp
Professor Mearsheimer deep dives into each war: he explains why the US tanked Ukraine’s peace talks to further instigate Russia and what he would do now if he was in Biden’s or Putin’s position. He also delves into the influence of the Israel lobby and how Biden has given impunity to Israel’s killing Gaza killing spree.
Everything’s for sale.
When Trump sat down with some of America’s top oil executives last month at Mar-a-Lago, according to the The Washington Post, they complained of burdensome environmental regulations, despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year.
Trump’s response? He would offer them a better deal.
He told them to raise $1 billion to return him to the White House and he’d reverse dozens of Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted (according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation).
The $1 billion “deal” would more than pay for itself, Trump told the oil executives, because of the taxes and regulations they would avoid thanks to him.
Source: With Trump, Everything’s for Sale | The Smirking Chimp
He believed what he was doing was lawful because he was acting in the public interest.
Source: Do a soldier’s orders trump a lawyer’s public duty? David McBride sentencing reserved – Michael West
In his 2021 annual threat assessment, the director-general of ASIO, the Australian domestic intelligence service, pointed to an active spy ring operating in the country, or what he chose to call a “nest of spies”. The obvious conclusion drawn by information-starved pundits was that the nest was filled with the eggs and fledglings of Chinese intelligence or Russian troublemakers. How awkward then, for the revelations to be focused on another country, one Australia is ingratiatingly disposed to in its efforts to keep China in its place.
Source: Nesting in Australia: Indian Spy Rings Take Root – » The Australian Independent Media Network
It all began with the LNP and Abbott government
“serious questions about command, leadership and management all the way to the top of the defence force and government.”
Source: A third Australian General referred to the NACC. What’s the scam? – Michael West
The university should, as part of its humane intellectual mission, divest from the military-industrial complex in totality. But it will help to see the books and investment returns, the unveiling, as it were, of the endowments of some of the richest universities on the planet. Follow the money; the picture is bound to be an ugly one.
From the perspective of lusty warmongers, UNRWA remains an obstacle, a nuisance, a nightmare of reminder to those wishing to be done with the Palestinian issue once and for all. May it continue to thrive, and, more ever, may its funders finally wise up to the fact that in the viciousness of conflict, civilians should never have to pay the price for military actions undertaken by others. Unfortunately, three months after, and a human-confected famine ravaging Gaza even as the killings continue, various donor countries such as the United States, Germany and the UK are still minding their wallets.
Source: Israel’s Anti-UNRWA Campaign Falls Flat – » The Australian Independent Media Network
We generally assume words carry the same meaning in the mind of speaker and listener. This enables meaningful communication and common understanding. Sometimes however words are given a specific meaning which completely changes their original intent. The words become weapons. This has happened with the word antisemitism and the word terrorist.
Source: When words cease being words: and become weapons – Pearls and Irritations
Respected journalist Quentin Dempster and former Ambassador to Palestine, Ali Kazak discuss the situation in Palestine and how the Australian governments reticence to recognise the State of Palestine is overdue and would be a positive action in support of peace.
Can he overcome his acute unlikability? If he is to have any chance of winning the next election, he must undertake a personality makeover. The only state that shows any endorsement of him is Queensland. That’s understandable, given his petulance of the authoritarian leader. It’s a Trump style that Australian conservatives seem to be adopting en-mass.
There are many shameful periods in American history. The genocide we carried out against indigenous peoples. Slavery. The violent suppression of the labor movement that saw hundreds of workers killed. Lynching. Jim and Jane Crow. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya.
The genocide in Gaza, which we fund and support, is of such monstrous proportions that it will achieve a prominent place in this pantheon of crimes.
History will not be kind to most of us. But it will bless and revere these students.
The age of the internet and the world wide web is something to admire and loathe. Surveillance capitalism is very much of the loathsome, sinister variety. But ASIO, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Government and other agencies do not give a fig about that.
Source: War of censorship escalates as Elon Musk fires shots at Australia
Hamas has never operated outside Palestine. It was elected, in free and fair elections, by the Palestinian people in 2006. Comparisons with ISIS are nonsense and merely police state rhetoric. If anyone is responsible for ISIS and Al Qaeda it is the United States. There was no ISIS before the invasion of Iraq and there was no Al Qaeda before the West began funding Islamic fundamentalist groups in Afghanistan in order to overthrow the secular pro-Soviet government there.
During the 1980s the Israeli government was instrumental in creating Hamas, for similar reasons. It wanted a Palestinian counterweight to secular Palestinian nationalism.
Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)
“The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.
Source: Tony Greenstein’s Blog
It is only through the meeting of detached cruelty and monumental ineptitude that Seven and NewsCorp defied such excellent odds and backed one of the one percent of rapists that didn’t get away with it.
Can we be clear about a few things? Protesting this slaughter is not expressing antisemitism. It is not engaging in hate speech. It is not endangering Jewish students. It is doing what should be done on a college campus — taking a stand against a perceived wrong, at least provoking discussion and debate.
Source: The Most Important Thing I Teach My Students | The Smirking Chimp
The Australian public has bought a big-long gas pipeline from foreign tax cheats – but there’s no gas. It’s a white elephant! Jemena and sleepy regulators AEMC are the culprits. Energy consumers and taxpayers the victims.
Throughout history, military empires have reduced their victims, their subjugated, and their abducted to a state of “The Others.”The political and mass media institutions usually follow suit by supporting their empire’s predatory policies with slanted coverage.
Such is the case with the U.S. global and the Israeli regional empires. The U.S. federal government and the mainstream media often move in lockstep.
Source: Ralph Nader: Palestinians as “The Others” – ScheerPost
Rupert Murdoch is now a shadow director of the ABC, and has been for quite a while, with the proof being his propagandists are on most, if not all, ABC news and current affairs shows pushing his lies for his own financial benefit.
In 2013, I wrote a piece titled, “Climate Change: A Layperson’s Dilemma” in which I pointed out the debunked theories of people like Andrew Bolt, Prof Ian Plimer, Tony Abbott, Alan Jones, Barnaby Joyce, Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts, and others who insisted that climate change did not exist.
Science won the day, proving beyond doubt that it indeed did.
Source: Nuclear Energy: A Layperson’s Dilemma – » The Australian Independent Media Network
News Corp was at the centre of the media campaign against the Voice. While the organisation claimed to be explaining both sides…
We are talking about what is supposed to be a fundamental protection for victims of rape and sexual assault who choose to make a complaint to police, being used by the perpetrator, or someone who has privileged access to the police brief, to intimidate, harass, and humiliate complainants. It is astounding that this abuse of the legal system has not received anything like the attention it deserves. It is one more obstacle in a field filled with obstacles that can and do deter women from seeking justice after enduring rape and sexual assault.
Source: The Harman Undertaking – » The Australian Independent Media Network
on The Chris Hedges Report: Hamas: How Israel Created Its Own Nemesis
By shutting the door to any peaceful resolution and leaving no other option for Palestinians, Israel created its own nemesis in Hamas.
Should the government decide what news is appropriate, and what is not, for its people? “The sirens should be going off”. Binoy Kampmark on the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill.
Source: Censors Enthroned: the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill – Michael West
Biden and the Democrats must say this loudly and clearly, and tell the public what they are doing — and will do — to stop corporate monopolies and price gouging.
Source: Record Corporate Profits From Your Thinning Wallets | The Smirking Chimp
My thought for the day
Just because we were governed by clowns it doesn’t mean Labor can be complacent. (John Lord )
The US government has been given till April 16 to file assurances addressing the three grounds, with further written submissions in response to be filed by April 30 by Assange’s team, and May 14 by the Home Secretary. Another leave of appeal will be entertained on May 20. If the DOJ does not provide any assurances, then leave to appeal will be granted. The accretions of obscenity in the Assange saga are set to continue.
Source: Purgatorial Torments: Assange and theUK High Court – » The Australian Independent Media Network
BE WARY OF what Washington offers in negotiations at the best of times. The empire gives and takes when it can; the hegemon proffers in equal measure and withdraws offers it deems fit. This is all well known to the legal team of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, who, the Wall Street Journal “exclusively” reveals, is in ongoing negotiations with U.S. Justice Department officials on a possible plea deal.
We must speak to the people who require assistance and listen to their needs instead of speaking over them. In the case of Australia’s refugee policy, we wasted billions on toxic cruelty when we could have done much better in ways that cooperated internationally and supported people humanely.
Source: Human potential is crushed by disaster capitalism – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Trump Republicans want us to be discouraged. They want us to despair. That’s part of their strategy. They figure that if we’re pessimistic enough, we won’t even fight — and they’ll win everything.
But I believe their backlash is doomed. The Republican Party has become a regressive cesspool, headed by increasingly unmoored people who are utterly out of touch with the dominant and emerging values of America. And most Americans are catching on.
I don’t mean to be a Pollyanna. We’re in the fight of our lives. It will demand a great deal of our energy, our time, and our courage. But this fight is critical and noble. It will set the course for America and the world for decades. And it is winnable.
The point is: It’s appropriate to be nauseously optimistic.
At the end of its first full year, the economic data confirms Labor is again emerging as a financial global leader through effective management of the economy, reports Alan Austin.
THE PICTURE OF LIFE in Australia
Source: Despite media frenzy, Labor continues to lead economic metrics worldwide
Unfortunately, without Peter Dutton’s cooperation, we can expect more of the same. Without it, constitutional changes and an Australian Head of State are just fantasies.
The Liberal Party has been replaced by a neo-conservative one, actively supporting rich individual identities against a collective one, and old-style Liberalism no longer has a voice.
Labor, as is usual, has come to power during a crisis and is managing its wimpy grip on power, unable to make the hard decisions it knows it promised less Dutton denies his support yet again. There is little or no difference between the Liberals and the National Party, who seem irrelevant as a political force in doing anything that benefits our democracy.
The was also a concerted campaign by a conservative activist group Advance, who according to Crikey, introduced a ‘new, nastier brand of politics’ in an attempt to win the Dunkley by-election for the opposition.
Source: The biggest loser – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Qantas appears to be jacking up the price of fares to pay for a time-limited promotion. That is illegal under the Consumer & Competition Act.
Source: Qantas gets customers to pay surcharge during promo. What’s the scam? – Michael West
In recent years, we have witnessed three individual politicians who have used the techniques of the authoritarian leader, fear, negativity, misinformation and lies. I refer to Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and the now opposition leader Peter Dutton. All have used the methods of an authoritarian ruler.
With a final, characteristically cringe-worthy valedictory speech in Parliament, Morrison leaves behind a trail of destruction and a political career devoid of anything even slightly resembling leadership.
Source: The cook from Cook, the thief, his wife and the party leftovers
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