“The benefit is simple in that it is very large-scale base load [continuous] energy production, with zero greenhouse gas emissions and no long-life radioactive waste.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-15/china-attempts-to-create-an-artificial-sun/10495536
Israel appears to be going to early elections. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Wednesday announced that he is resigning from his post, and that his party, Yisrael Beytenu, will leave the ruling coalition over what he called Netanyahu’s “surrender to terrorism.” The surprise resignation came just a day after Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire, ending the most violent flare-up the Gaza border has seen since the 2014 war.
https://972mag.com/israel-goes-elections-will-much-violence-used-palestinians/138659/
As if on brilliant cue, Shire Ali, like Malaspina, had been a blessing, giving Morrison a chance to scold imams into a greater state of vigilance even as he extolled the inner Melburnian spirit.
Elevate the standing of the slain common man; berate the state of the corrupted accused. Shire Ali’s mental health was of little consequence to finding a suitably political description for him, one that could be marketed. “Of course issues of mental health and all these other things are important,” he told Network Ten, but the assailant “was a terrorist” with the blood of Islamic State coursing through him. “He was a radical extremist terrorist who took a knife to another Australian because he had been radicalised in this country.”
“We’ve been doing whatever we can in our capacity to eradicate extreme thoughts and potential acts of terror.”
The Australian National Imams Council secretary, Sheikh Moustapha, took issue with that stance, telling ABC Radio Melbourne that:
Even by Wall Street standards of gouging customers this was one hell of a skim.
In 2012 and 2013, the Malaysian government was raising $6.5bn (£5bn) from investors to establish a sovereign wealth fund and finance various domestic infrastructure investment projects. And the cut for Goldman Sachs – the most prestigious investment bank in the world – for arranging the fundraising from the global capital markets? Ten per cent, or $600m.
▼Please click the pla
The consensus on election night seemed clear: although Democrats regained the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years, no blue wave had materialised.
A week later, the steady trickle of further gains in late results appear to reveal a far more positive picture for the party,
The Democrats have now picked up at least 32 seats in the House and are on course for four more, in addition to flipping seven governorships and eight state legislative chambers.
It means the overall results in the first nationwide election of Donald Trump’s presidency represent the Democrats’ best midterm performance since 1974, a vote which came in the wake of Watergate and Richard Nixon’s resignation.
“He’s just a bull carrying his own china shop with him wherever he travels the world,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said.
via Five days of fury: Inside Trump’s Paris temper, election woes and staff upheaval
Key points:
Trump the Diplomat from a distance
US President Donald Trump has attacked his French counterpart in a series of tweets just two days after returning from commemorations to mark 100 years since the end of World War I in Paris.
Mr Trump lashed out over Mr Macron’s suggestion Europe should build up militaries
He also complained about tariffs on US wine and attacked Mr Macron’s popularity
The complaints struck a nerve in France on the anniversary of the Paris terror attacks
IPA AUSTRALIA (ODT)
Think tanks are increasingly taking advantage of tight news budgets to influence the press agenda in favour of their sponsors.
Decades ago, these outfits generally operated as policy advisories. Although, some were comfortably enumerated ‘retirement homes’ for distinguished public servants or intellectuals. However, in modern times, they have become indistinguishable from lobbying firms. With the budgets to match.
On the Russia (and broader Eastern European) beat, think tank influence is becoming increasingly dangerous and malign. And it’s leading to a crisis in journalistic standards which nobody wants to acknowledge.
via Dirty little secret: ‘Think tanks’ are among top culprits in media disinformation crisis — RT Op-ed
Following another act of fatal violence in Melbourne’s CBD last Friday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison dismissed claims the perpetrator, Hassan Khalif Shire Ali, had a mental illness. He said this was a “lame excuse”, saying he wanted imams and the Muslim community to pay greater attention to people at risk of radicalisation.
via The link between terrorism and mental illness is complicated, and vilifying communities doesn’t help
Continually fighting against things has drained both the government and the people. We need leaders who can explain why we should do things, not why we shouldn’t.
via Reasons not to – » The Australian Independent Media Network
There is a groundswell in Warringah and – worryingly for Abbott – the disparate groups are coordinating
If the posters popping up around Manly and sales of anti–Tony Abbott T-shirts are any gauge, the member for Warringah has a fight on his hands.“There’s a huge amount of grassroots activity. Organisations are popping out of the ground everywhere. And we are finding each other,” says Louise Hislop, the convenor of Voices of Warringah.
Threatening Australian councils does Peter Dutton ever stop? He sees himself as the exemplary defender of the Liberal Right one day to the dumb ass goofball of boom gate offering to resign the next. (ODT)
Dutton threatens councils over Australia Day date change | SBS News
Turbull is a citizen Abbott is still there that’s a big difference. Murdoch is the head of a mega media org News Corp beyond just influencers and is a member of the IPA an even bigger difference (ODT)
Malcolm Turnbull has challenged his Liberal enemies to reveal why they “blew up the government” in the move against him 11 weeks ago, naming the plotters in an interview that shed new light on the chaotic leadership spill.
Mr Turnbull also relayed an extraordinary statement from News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch that “Malcolm’s got to go” and backed claims that MPs were bullied and intimidated to vote for the change.
The insurgency was led by Peter Dutton, was obviously strongly supported by Tony Abbott and others. Scott did not support it and he’s said that publicly,” he said.
He named Mr Dutton, Mr Abbott, Mathias Cormann, Mitch Fifield, Michaelia Cash, Greg Hunt, Steve Ciobo, Michael Keenan and Angus Taylor for the spill.
via ‘Blew up the government’: Malcolm Turnbull challenges plotters in defence of his government
Meanwhile the IPA is doing business as usual. The Falnski complaint is rather a Falski one (ODT)
“When was the last time we had a business leader come out on tax issues, or regulation issues, or industrial relations issues?”
Apparently, Mr Falnski has missed every business leader, every time they speak publicly, calling for lower taxes and less regulation. Perhaps he is unaware that business lobby groups make submissions to the Fair Work Commission on all industrial relations matters.
via It isn’t business that lacks leadership, Jason – » The Australian Independent Media Network
We live on the precipice, the eve of the deluge. Past civilizations have crumbled in the same way, although as Hegel understood, the only thing we learn from history is “that people and governments never have learned anything from history.” We will not arrest the decline if the Democrats regain control of the House. At best we will briefly slow it. The corporate engines of pillage, oppression, ecocide and endless war are untouchable. Corporate power will do its dirty work regardless of which face—the friendly fascist face of the Democrats or the demented visage of the Trump Republicans—is pushed out front. If you want real change, change that means something, then mobilize, mobilize, mobilize, not for one of the two political parties but to rise up and destroy the corporate structures that ensure our doom.
via Scum vs. Scum
When the LNP show themselves to be the Nationalists they are. Helping to Militarize Australia. (ODT)
These midterms have seen a surge in female candidates as women rail against their president – including in Iowa’s prairie country, where being “nice” has its limits.
By Matthew Knott
via “I realised I had been sleepwalking”: the women pushing back against Trump
It’s the type of place that you can imagine Bruce Springsteen working into a song and, indeed, he did: 2007’s Last to Die (“We took the highway till the road went black/ We marked Truth or Consequences on our map”).
A few doors down from the Grapevine Bistro, Bret Berman, a cartoonist and musician, is working at Xochi’s, a second-hand bookstore. There are some local history books for sale but he doesn’t recommend them.
They are sanitised, he says; not a word in them about the brothels, gambling dens and saloons that powered the town’s economy in its early days.
“If you told the true story of this place someone would burn a cross on your front lawn,” Berman says.
“These extremely poor and vulnerable people are desperate for peace. Who among us would walk a thousand miles with only the clothes on our back without great cause?”
Fanning and Rapone urged soldiers to disavow the president’s racist attempts to portray migrants as dangerous in order to galvanize his base ahead of the elections, and work together to show Trump that they will not participate in criminalizing and endangering the lives of asylum-seekers.
“the right-wing media and the Republican Party started to fuse into this single entity.” In 2016, Fox helped make Trump, Ailes’s longtime friend, president of the United States. Sherman says “there’s almost no daylight now between the agenda of the White House and the agenda of Fox News. … Trump is the logical conclusion of entertainment and right-wing media taking over the Republican Party.” President George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum has concluded that “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox.”
Or as Max Boot, another disillusioned conservative, writes, “The frightening thing is that the right-wing media will be here long after Trump and the current crop of Republican politicians are gone.” And hence eruptions of random, terrifying reactionary violence will endure as long as Fox and its friends do.
Fox News Incites Domestic Political Violence More Than Trump
A man executed two black people at a grocery store, but didn’t engage a white man outside because “whites don’t shoot whites.” A Donald Trump supporter and apparent anti-Semite who looked up to white supremacists sent bombs in the mail to the president’s opposition. An avowed anti-Semite walked into a synagogue and killed 11 people after screaming, “All Jews must die!”
it was given tacit endorsement through violent rhetoric coming from our pundits and our president; and it had a strong community in which to fester and grow. His act capped off a week in which hate showed what it is truly capable of in America.
This was one week in American hate.
via A Week Of American Hate: Bombs Mailed, Black People Executed, Jews Slaughtered | HuffPost
and
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Ian Warden has written a thought-provoking article in the SMH titled Dreaming of a heartfelt apology.
If he is expecting the publicly-expressed remorse to translate into us being better at caring for kids, I’d have to tell him he’s still dreamin’.
A report published recently by Swiss bank UBS shows the world’s wealthiest are now worth $9.1 trillion, enough to spend $1 million per day for 30,000 years.
In 2017, more than 2,000 billionaires around the world became even wealthier, pushing their collective fortunes to historic levels. According to a report recently published by Swiss bank UBS and accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), no other year in recorded history, including the industrial revolution and the Gilded Age, has seen such a massive increase in wealth of the global elite.
Just over 2,150 people have seen their wealth increase by 20 percent, many doing so through various forms of inheritance and asset transfers.
A landmark study has found a silent underclass of vulnerable Australian workers is owed an estimated billion dollars with almost a third paid $12 per hour or less – almost half of their legal entitlements.
The University of NSW (UNSW) and Univerity of Technology Sydney (UTS) research found that fewer than one in ten migrant workers has taken action to recover unpaid wages, even though they know they are being underpaid. The remaining nine in ten suffered wage theft in silence.
“When electricity has been cut to five hours a day, when safe drinking water has almost disappeared, and when its economy is cratering before our eyes, then the state of unlivability is upon us, and the international community must insist that all parties, and particularly Israel, the occupying power, bring an immediate end to this humanitarian disaster.”
Lynk, who is prevented by Israel from accessing the occupied Palestinian territories, said that the “international community … has to insist” that the 11-year air, sea and land blockade on Gaza come to an end.
Even the IDF have warned the Israeli Minister
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that military officers “warned that cutting off the fuel supply would trigger a countdown to war because soon Gaza would have no power.”
via Israeli forces kill 5 as Gaza teeters on brink of war | The Electronic Intifada
When the President of the United States Donald Trump is the greatest danger to National Security. A proud Nationalist, Pro guns, anti- refugees, enabler of violence whose rallies are broadcast by Murdoch media across America a resounding call to Trumpsters to arm hate and show themselves. (ODT)
A social media post by Bowers said a Jewish refugee organisation, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
Trump told reporters later that the killings might have been prevented if there had been an armed guard in the building.
“If they had some kind of a protection inside the temple maybe it could have been a much more different situation, they didn’t,” he said when asked about a possible link to US gun laws.
In the United States that year, a white supremacist murdered nine African Americans during a prayer service in Charleston, South Carolina.
In 2012, a neo-Nazi gunman with white supremacist ties walked into a Sikh gurdwara – or house of worship – in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and murdered six Sikh Americans.
Pittsburgh synagogue shooting leaves several dead, official says
and
Tony Abbott proves himself yet again he’s not to be the brightest pick of the bunch. .(ODT)
Mr Abbott’s meeting with Mr Johnson, kept secret by both parties until now, has been exposed by a Labour MP whom Tony Abbott confided in, not realising he was a Labour and not a Tory MP.
Stephen Doughty told The Sun-Herald he was in Oxford on October 4 when he bumped into Mr Abbott in the street. The former prime minister told him he had just had some “good meetings” with “your man Boris”, not realising Mr Doughty is a strong remainer and campaigning for a second referendum.
He’s been this way for years. Like a kid playing a violent video game such as Call Of Duty, he has aimed his high-powered rocket at his opponents, forcing them to duck or blowing them to smithereens, destroying them utterly. And then he claps his little hands in delight. Destructiveness has consistently been his modus operandi. He has no equal in Australian political history.
The result of his destructiveness is writ large in the outcome of the Wentworth by-election. Although there were many factors that led to this disastrous result for the Coalition, there is no escaping the naked truth that behind this calamity was the phantom of the nation’s most destructive politician, Anthony John Abbott.
via Well done, Tony – now you’ve destroyed the Coalition – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Does money takes over planning and votes? Whenit does who pays?(ODT)
Mr Woodman is a multi-millionaire planning consultant, developer, and head of Mornington-based consultancy Watsons. His who’s who client list has included, or includes, the Fox, Ansett and Baillieu-Myer clans, as well as Tony Madafferi, the man police have alleged to be Melbourne’s mafia boss.
And at the last state election, Mr Woodman was the single biggest property industry donor to the Liberal Party.
via Casey council, where riches are made with the stroke of a pen
In this extract from his book On Patriotism, Paul Daley traces the arc of a once quiet and dignified commemoration to a modern sound-and-light show
Tax havens — the most significant include Ireland, Singapore, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, and Bermuda — serve two purposes.
The first is tax evasion by individuals, which is illegal. Think of Russian or Nigerian plutocrats transferring their assets to small Caribbean nations with strict banking secrecy laws, freeing them from the dreary necessity of paying taxes in their home countries.
The second is tax avoidance by huge multinational corporations, which — as long as the lawyers are doing their jobs — is perfectly legal. Here imagine Apple using various forms of accounting chicanery to claim that tens of billions of its profits generated in countries with normal corporate tax rates were actually all made in Ireland, where Apple had negotiated a special 2 percent tax rate for itself. (Apple has on occasion gone even further, asserting that some of its profits were made, for the purposes of taxation, in no country at all.)
Zucman conservatively estimated in his book that tax avoidance and evasion translate into hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes every year — money that, for the most part, ends up in the pockets of the world’s wealthiest people.
via Tax Havens and Other Tricks Let U.S. Firms Steal $180 Billion
Australia wants to be a manufacturer of Weapons of war like big big brother USA. Where is the LNP,IPA,and Ncorp leading us? (ODT)
As America enters the 18th year of its war in Afghanistan and its 16th in Iraq, the war on terror continues in Yemen, Syria, and parts of Africa, including Libya,Niger, and Somalia. Meanwhile, the Trump administration threatens yet more war, this time with Iran. (And given these last years, just how do you imagine that’s likely to turn out?) Honestly, isn’t it time Americans gave a little more thought to why their leaders persist in waging losing wars across significant parts of the planet? So consider the rest of this piece my attempt to do just that.
via All America’s Quagmires: Why We’re still at War in so Many Countries
The Migrant Caravan of some 3000 people in Southern Mexico. Tcaravan Trump calls an invasion: Trump claimed “Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in.” migrant caravan,When challenged by a reporter for evidence, he flippantly replied, “There’s no proof of anything.”
While Pentagon reports identify climate change as a major threat to national security in the 21st century, Trump calls it a hoax perpetrated by China to hurt the U.S. economy.
Rather than denounce the murder immediately, Trump declared he would await Saudi Arabia’s investigation of itself, but would not cut record weapons sales to the kingdom. Saudi Arabia is waging a war on Yemen, and its relentless, U.S.-backed bombing has driven at least half of the Yemeni population to the brink of famine.
President Trump held a rally in Montana praising a congress member who pleaded guilty to criminally assaulting a reporter.
To the shock of many, at another rally this week, Trump officially declared himself a nationalist — a label long associated with white supremacy and Nazism.
On Saturday, he announced he is pulling the United States out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty,
As Trump campaigns around the country, he gins up fears of foreign enemies attacking the United States. But he has shown again and again, through his words and deeds, that the greatest threat to U.S. national security is Trump himself.
Rita Katz, director of SITE Intelligence Group, said a review of social media pages didn’t indicate affiliation with far-right extremist organisations but show “an intense support” for Trump as well as Islamophobic sentiments and the promotion of conspiracy theories
Cesar Sayoc jnr.Shortly after the arrest, Trump called the suspected mail bombs “terrorising acts” and praised law enforcement officers.
“We will prosecute them, him, her, whoever it may be, to the fullest extent of the law,” he said at a White House event. “We must never allow political violence to take root in America and I’m committed to doing everything in my power as president to stop it and stop it now.”
However, just before Sayoc was taken into custody, Trump posted a tweet that seemed to question the timing and veracity of the bomb scares.
via Man taken into custody as US enters fifth day of bomb scares
Twisting twisting twisting the night away (ODT)
Supporters at a campaign rally in North Carolina suspect a liberal hoax as police hold avowed Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc
via ‘I bet $500 they are lying’: Trump fans sceptical about pipe bomb arrest | US news | The Guardian
The mass right wing parties of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s were led by charismatic leaders who whipped up the hatreds of mobs by denouncing immigrants and ethnic and religious groups as threats to the nation and as terrorists and saboteurs.
Somehow when politicians set such a tone, in which alternative political leaders and movements are not just seen as a legitimate loyal opposition, but are depicted as criminal traitors who must be locked up, one thing that happens is that bombs start to go off, planted by members of the far Right parties.
If you don’t believe me about the connection, consider a few news articles from the 1920s and early 1930s, as the Fascists came to power in Italy and increasingly agitated in Germany:
via Far right urging of jailing of Political Rivals linked in History with Bombings
For Madlaine Ahmad, born and raised in Doha to Palestinian parents with Jordanian citizenship, the answer to ‘where are you from?’ is never simple, and always seems to be wrong.
via Three generations after the Nakba, still struggling to define home | +972 Magazine
Israeli soldiers resorted, on Friday, to the excessive use of force against the Great Return March Procession in several parts of the Gaza Strip, Friday, killing four Palestinians, and injuring 232 others, including 180 who were shot with live fire.
via » Israeli Army Kills Four Palestinians, Injures 323, In Gaza– IMEMC News
The attack took place late on Friday after five Palestinians were killed by the IDF.
via WATCH dozen of rockets being fired at Israel as IDF responds (VIDEO) — RT World News
Governments must be honest with us about these threats. They must provide us with the most up-to-date information. They must allow us to take part in the decision-making about priorities.
The consequences of their obfuscation and inaction and downright lies are becoming graver by the minute.
The Coalition Government doesn’t seem to be making carbon emission reductions a high priority at a time when it’s needed most, writes Giles Parkinson.
IF THE WENTWORTH and Wagga Wagga by-elections were supposed to send a message to Coalition Governments about the need to act on carbon emissions and embrace renewables, it hasn’t worked.
If anything, it seems the Federal Government has lurched even further to the hard Right, deepened its attachment to coal and declared its outright hostility to making any moves to increase its emissions reduction targets. It has vowed to do all it can to stop Labor from doing just that, should it win power in the next federal poll.
