“I will do everything in my power to enable Australia to be restored to responsible government.”
That is a big ask for an individual, but I know I am not alone.
My New Year Resolution: Goodbye, Morrison – » The Australian Independent Media Network
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.
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 have’s ensure the have nots are either blocked or have to pay for the excessive indulgences of the haves (ODT)
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
The Federal Government’s protection of “a few big interests” was on show last week when it voted against accountability proposals from the Royal Commission into Aged Care. Public health researcher, Dr Sarah Russell, reports.
Deadspin (where, interest declared, my amazing colleague Tommy Craggs was once editor-in-chief), was a lot of what journalism should be: a thorn in the side of the smug, self-righteous, and overly comfortable. The story of its demise is the story of a news industry bleeding from a thousand cuts—litigation, the collapse of advertising revenue, platform changes, political point-scoring, and rapacious and/or incompetent owners.
At Mother Jones, we’ve encountered a lot of the same challenges Deadspin and so many other organizations have. We fought a massive lawsuit from a conservative billionaire. We’re regularly attacked by everyone from members of Congress to Twitter trolls. We lost advertising revenue with the flick of a switch at Facebook.
But here’s the difference: Our owners have a deep commitment to journalistic independence and fearlessness. They are smart, funny, and exceptionally good-looking. They are…you.
As catastrophe engulfs us, what is our government doing?
Union-bashing.
Refugee-bashing.
Labor-bashing.
Decimating the public service.
“Refusing to apologise” for blatant misdeeds by Angus Taylor.
It’s business as usual for the do-nothing Coalition sticking to their age-old ideological vendettas.
via Ensuring there will be no integrity – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Canada, one of its two closest neighbours and largest trading partner. Britain, with which it enjoyed the heralded special relationship.
And France, whose Marquis de Lafayette was instrumental in the American Revolution of the late 1700s.
Who could have anticipated that an American president would have been the subject of mocking among their leaders?
And worse, that one of those allies would tangle with him publicly under a global spotlight?
That’s what happened this week at the summit of NATO countries in London.
Whether Donald Trump was embarrassed, upset or simply tired from recent travels, he packed up early and went home to Washington — an even more hostile place, given that impeachment proceedings are swirling.
What sort of democracy are we? We are not allowed to know about the Lambie secret deal or the content of the Taylor emails; nor the circumstances of the secret trial jailing or witness J or the contents of an AFP report about George Christensen; and we are not allowed to know why Pastor Houston isn’t allowed into the White House. Why?
This government takes our right to know what they are doing very lightly.
Amid the squabbling over audit standards and the fineries of interpretation, it is always open to government to simply insist all companies over a certain size report fully and uniformly. This might do the Big Four out of some business but it would bring the tax dollars in. After all, if business people wish to enjoy the protection of the corporate veil, with that should come accountability and transparency. Otherwise, just don’t incorporate.
Uppercut: call for violence at Parliamentary Inquiry into accountants – Michael West
a former senior official in the Department of Justice and a constitutional scholar has identified 12 impeachable offences committed by Donald Trump. But, as he notes, many of these constitutional violations are not unique to the Trump administration. They have been normalized by Democratic and Republican administrations. These long-standing violations are, for this reason, ignored by Democratic Party leaders seeking to impeach the president. They have chosen to focus exclusively on Trump’s attempt to get the Ukrainian president to open an investigation of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in exchange for $400 million in U.S. military aid and a visit by the Ukrainian leader to the White House. Ignoring these institutionalized violations during the impeachment inquiry, Fein fears, would legitimate them and lead to the death of democracy.
On other matters, I have to say that I was gobsmacked by the story about China trying to get someone elected to Chisholm. All I can say is thank God we got Gladys who assured us that she was never a member of all those Communist Party groups and thank God that we have Scott who told the media that they take these allegations seriously, because I find it pretty hard to take anything coming out of Canberra seriously these days!
Isn’t this what Trump is doing currently and is going to do in 2020 along with the Russians, Nth Koreans and any other donations he can muster. Fox has a Quid pro Quo arrangement withhim under the guise of “news” and “opinion” Trump has excluded other media agency access to the White House even cancelling subscriptions. Is domestic Quid pro Quo not required to be declared as a political donation? (ODT)
“If you pay them, Facebook will run any ‘political’ ad you want, even if it’s a lie. And they’ll even help you micro target those lies to their users for maximum effect,” he said.
“Under this twisted logic, if Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads on his ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem’.”
You will never hear a Coalition politician say we caused this problem, we must fix it. You will never hear them say this approach hasn’t worked, we must change it.
Since John Howard unexpectedly won the 2001 election, wedge politics is the Coalition MO and Scott Morrison is a devotee.
But when you use that approach, you can never take responsibility for anything, as demonstrated so pitiably by the climate change debacle.
Yesterday, Scott Morrison trotted out this old chestnut.
“To suggest that with just 1.3 per cent of global emissions that Australia doing something differently, more or less, would have changed the fire outcome this season, I don’t think that stands up to any credible scientific evidence at all. If anything Australia is an over-achiever on global commitments.”
How Morrison can continue to make this claim flabbergasts me.
via Man up, Morrison – » The Australian Independent Media Network
To be honest, I struggle sometimes these days to understand why we elect and pay politicians, because it is increasingly hard to find any benefits to the general population of such work as the politicians might do to justify the level of benefits they claim!
via Money and power completely out of balance – » The Australian Independent Media Network
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