via Scott Morrison is being transparently political in targeting climate groups
Category: Uncategorized
Republicans and even Trump was wrong in thanking Tim Morrison (ODT)
With US President Donald Trump touting the completion of a trade deal, China has won the World Trade Organization’s permission to impose $3.6 billion worth of retaliatory sanctions against the US.
The WTO ruling may give Beijing some clout. The organization’s appeals judges agreed that the US was not in full compliance with a WTO ruling after Washington placed tariffs on Chinese solar panels, steel cylinders and wind towers.
In China’s big win, the WTO is allowing the country to impose higher tariffs than currently allowed by the global trade body, as well as giving China more freedom to target US products and sectors of its own choosing.
China’s willingness to seek approval from the WTO, rather than impose such sanctions on its own terms, shows that Beijing is willing to take a measured approach to resolution. Trump has previously threatened to withdraw from the WTO if the organization doesn’t “shape up.”
The ultimate American Trumplican “Sales Pitch”(ODT)
Something you don’t hear every day but it’s very Trump and very the USA (ODT)
It has been suggested there is a video showing this same officer more than enthusiastically beating a defenceless protestor with his baton for little or no cause. If this is the case is he the role model for the new recruitment campaign for 3000 more in Victoria? (ODT
via Police officer faces disciplinary action over crude ‘EAD Hippy’ sticker
It takes some chutzpah to stand up with a straight face and deliver a speech foreshadowing a government crackdown on protest activity while in the same breath declaring that a new insidious form of progressivism is intent on denying the liberties of Australians.
But Scott Morrison has never lacked confidence.
In a political world full of harmful ideologies, Kyle Mervin explains how to spin them to the masses and make them work.
Lie number one: Make out that you are more popular than you are
Lie number two: If you don’t have an actual enemy, you have to create one
Lie number three: Create your enemy’s arguments for them
Lie number four: If you do find yourself under attack for your ideas, guide your argument away from the detail and argue your right to say it
America protects its drug business in Aghanistan which began in the 70s could one imagine the profits made over that period. budget The global monetary value of the heroin market is of the same order of magnitude as the defense budget of the USA $717 billion .
Needless to say, the Pentagon not to mention the CIA which launched the opium economy in Afghanistan in the late 1970s are intent upon protecting this multibillion dollar industry. The proceeds of the Afghan drug trade were initially used to finance the recruitment of Al Qaeda Mujahideen mercenaries to fight in the Soviet-Afghan war.
Israel doesn’t care what your religion is if your not Jewish or Palestinian. (ODT)
via The Israeli Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinian Christians that nobody is talking about
The current drought in Eastern Australia has focused the attention of all Australians on water but effective policy responses are missing in action. Isn’t it time to call it a water emergency? Quentin Grafton and John Williams report.
via Declaring a water emergency means putting people before profit – Michael West
If you encourage the banning of branded opioids or benzo you might be prosecuted under Morrison’s new laws. BDS, Sleeping Giants calling for a boycott on Helloworld will be made illegal. Encouraging boycotts against Israeli settlement goods, Alan Jones or Sky News after dark could land you in jail. The government wants to become an open and visible arm of Corporations Mussolini would be pleased. You can’t boycott News Corp (ODT)
The witness, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, is a decorated Iraq War veteran who advises the National Security Council on Ukraine and Russia. According to his prepared testimony, Vindman notified White House lawyers on two occasions in July that President Donald Trump and his aides had politicized aid to Ukraine, by pressing Ukraine’s president to help smear Democrats in return for nearly $400 million in security assistance.
While Republicans leaned in to the anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty, framing Vindman in a manner once used to attack the French army captain Alfred Dreyfus — a Jewish French army officer falsely accused and convicted of spying for Germany in 1894 — the colonel told the House inquiry that he had a refugee’s “deep appreciation for American values and ideals and the power of freedom.”
via Republicans Accuse Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman of Dual Loyalty
The Liberal senator James McGrath and the former Liberal candidate Jacinta Price have fronted an Institute of Public Affairs advertisement attacking any proposal for an Indigenous voice to parliament, claiming it will divide Australians by race.
The inflammatory intervention comes just a day after the minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, launched a co-design process with Indigenous people on the voice to parliament.
The negative advertising suggests the rightwing thinktank and aligned Coalition conservatives will continue to campaign against a voice despite the government’s repeated efforts to signal that the First Nations representative body will be legislated rather than enshrined in the constitution.
Because of a corrupt Supreme Court, oligarchs and the corporations that made them rich have taken over the American political system. If we don’t take it back from them soon, the entire experiment of an American democratic republic will come to an end.
via How the Supreme Court and the Morbidly Rich Are Ruining Democracy in America | The Smirking Chimp
Trump still contends that the summary of the July call released by the White House clears him of any wrongdoing, a claim that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has distanced himself from and that acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has effectively contradicted.
via Trump Allies Smear Decorated Veteran Testifying In Impeachment Inquiry | HuffPost Australia
If even Israel cannot count on US help in a fight, what chance does any other US ally have? Trump’s America may defend its own most immediate and most obvious interests. But we are learning that Trump does not include American allies in that definition.
via Trump’s gloating of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s death diminishes trust of allies
Instead of using reason and evidence, perhaps we should start saying things that will split the Coalition. Here’s a list of ten possible ways to wedge the Liberal Party which you could use for Twitter or a letter to the Editor:
Australian lack of education is making us less imaginative (ODT)
Lendlease walked away from its contract to rebuild the Sydney Football Stadium in July, leaving a giant hole in the ground and a state government scrambling to fill the construction void. The contract was worth $729 million but, in a retirement villages tax rort, the company has claimed far more than $729 million. Michael West reports on how Lendlease plays fast and loose with taxpayers.
via Lendlease tax boondoggle bigger than the hole it left in Sydney Football Stadium – Michael West
Footage of the US special forces raid on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Syrian compound reportedly consisted of overhead surveillance footage and no audio, prompting questions over the extent of the dramatic licence taken by Donald Trump in describing the final moments of one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.
US officials who also watched the feed have declined to echo details of Trump’s macabre account of the Isis’s leader death on Saturday, including that Baghdadi was “whimpering, crying and screaming all the way”
The soldiers involved would have been wearing body cameras, but that footage was yet to be given to the White House at the time of Trump’s press conference, the Times report said.
The US defence secretary, Mark Esper, declined to endorse aspects of Trump’s cinematic account in an interview with ABC’s This Week programme on Sunday morning.
“I don’t have those details,” Esper said, when pressed on how Trump knew Baghdadi had whimpered and cried. “The president probably had the opportunity to talk to commanders on the ground.”
via Doubts over Donald Trump’s dramatic account of Baghdadi raid | World news | The Guardian
Essentially, Trump is positioning himself above the law. That’s a position that’s easy to take when walled away from your constituents in the White House, surrounded by enablers and illusions of “fake news,” but less so when confronted with a stadium full of citizens chanting for him to answer for his illegalities.
Essentially, Trump is positioning himself above the law. That’s a position that’s easy to take when walled away from your constituents in the White House, surrounded by enablers and illusions of “fake news,” but less so when confronted with a stadium full of citizens chanting for him to answer for his illegalities.
via Trump’s own rules of civility taught World Series fans to boo and chant, “Lock him up!” | Salon.com
In order to protect our communities, we must deepen solidarity between Jews, immigrants, Muslims, and all groups targeted by white nationalism and the racist rhetoric of the Trump camp. This means engaging with our differences in a shared understanding that it is the right which seeks to exclude and scapegoat our communities and silence our allies. The future of multiracial democracy depends on it.
The GOP has mainstreamed white nationalist anti-Semitism | +972 Magazine
Netanyahu did not criticise Trump or his decision to pull US troops out of Syria in his statement about the Turkish operation, but gradually stopped “name dropping” the US president in his public speeches. He even failed to show up at the UN meeting in New York, where he was expected to meet Trump for a one-on-one meeting and photo opportunity.
Trump is unlikely to abandon Israel anytime soon, but by “betraying” the Kurds he clearly created the perception in Tel Aviv that he could. This will cause new turmoil in an already volatile region, and add to the mounting troubles of the Israeli prime minister.
![File: US President Donald Trump gestures as he and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deliver statements at the White House in Washington, US, March 25, 2019 [Carlos Barria/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2019/10/25/82c3cb4d276e41e09d95e7d19ad7c360_18.jpg "What is behind the Israeli outrage over Turkey's Syria operation?")
via What is behind the Israeli outrage over Turkey’s Syria operation? | USA | Al Jazeera
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