Some Islamic State inmates have already escaped
One doctor says prisoners are dying at a rate of about one each day
There are at least seven Australian IS suspects in Kurdish prisons
LNP have been slashing the ABC funding for the past 6 years never promised at an election and always called something other than what it is. Death of the ABC will be the death of Democracy in Australia and the growth of Murdoch media whose profits are heavily entrenched supporting those that will have the money to pay at elections. $90 million vs $18 million tells the tale of modern politics and the media. A David and Goliath tale where Goliath has had his achillies cut and tongue cut out. (ODT)
Key points:
Mr Anderson did not say how many staff or from where in the ABC the jobs would be cut He told Senate Estimates consideration would be given to keeping regional and remote jobs The Government has frozen the ABC’s budget for three years, at a cost of $83.7 million
cost savings to bringing the troops home, but he put up spending on the Department of Defense $130 billion a year. The 2015 Defense budget was $586 billion and that in 2019 was $716 billion.
Sure, Trump is being impeached, Brexit is a mess, and the far right in Austria and Italy have suffered recent setbacks. Still, looking at the bigger picture, it’s hard not to conclude that such extremists have acquired the sort of mainstream legitimacy across the planet that they haven’t enjoyed in nearly a century.
Clive Palmer’s Waratah Coal has applied for a mining lease and environmental assessment to build a coalmine four times the size of Adani’s Carmichael mine in the Queensland Galilee Basin, reports Guardian Australia. If burned, coal in the west Queensland seam alone could shift the earth’s climate a third of the way to 2 degrees of warming. Palmer, who spent upwards of $60m in political advertising in the run up to the federal election, is also planning to build a coal-fired power station in the state. The news comes as Senator Malcolm Roberts accuses the Bureau of Meteorology of removing a graph that “goes against the narrative of the climate extremists” in a Senate estimates hearing. In the hearing Greens Senator Hanson-Young asked if the Morrison government had been briefed regarding “the climate emergency”. Climate Change and Energy Innovation deputy secretary Jo Evans replied that she does not use such terminology, preferring to “stick to a factual description”.
A gaunt, hesitant and apparently confused Julian Assange has told a London judge he is in an inequitable fight against a superpower which has been spying on his “interior life” and on confidential meetings with his legal team.
The WikiLeaks founder is trying to avoid extradition to the US to face 17 espionage charges and one computer hacking charge.
His legal team revealed on Monday they want to deal a knockout blow to the case against him, by establishing that the charges are a “political offence” for which extradition cannot be granted.
Trump, meanwhile, said it was a foregone conclusion that the Democratic-led US House of Representatives will vote to impeach him over his request that Ukraine investigate a political rival as he exhorted his fellow Republicans to rally to his defense.
Donald Trump Jr. attempted to put pressure on Republicans who haven’t signed onto an effort to censure Schiff.
The president’s eldest son retweeted a list of 23 House Republicans who are not backing the resolution as co-sponsors. The Twitter thread urged Trump supporters to “Check if your Representative is on this list and call them NOW!”
“I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the Pre-sident of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. … The President’ s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.”“I am also concerned that these actions pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine the U.S. Government’s efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S. elections.”“[S]enior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call… the trans-cript was loaded into a separate electronic system… used to store and handle clas-sified information of an especially sensitive nature.” “One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic systembecause the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.”#
Whether it be Qantas, or any large company that employs Australians, anger at growing executive wages seems to be met with a standard response – you need to pay these rates to attract the best people. But are they worth it? A review of the performance of Qantas over time may break down some of the misconceptions shared by those defending their own salary packages.
I am proud of her willingness to be active in highlighting the failure of governments to accept the fact of the climate emergency and take action – for a start in Australia by setting a carbon price! – to ensure that our grandchildren have a viable world to enjoy.
Conservatism puts a brake on progress and, at this point in history, the only brake we need is on global warming.
One of Joe Hockey’s first acts as Treasurer in 2013 was to gift the RBA $8.8 billion. The main reason for this was to make Labor’s deficit look bigger. As a side bonus, it allowed the RBA to invest in the forex market, banking on the Australian dollar losing value as the mining boom subsided.
And that is exactly what happened allowing the government to draw…wait for it…$8.8 billion in dividends over the last six years. That’s all very well (if we ignore how the Coalition screamed like stuck pigs when Labor took a one-off dividend of $500 million in 2013) except Hockey borrowed the $8.8 billion so we are still paying interest on it.
Michaela Cash started it and then his behind the White Board. The problem is Privatised Media fails to deliver or even begin to sell this product. Tha ABC is the only media organisation constantly under attack (ODT)
With a media blitz running for weeks, the campaign is unusual in its scale as well as its broad support across the industry from Nine, the ABC, The Guardian, News Corp Australia, Prime Media, Seven West Media, Sky News, SBS, Ten, the WIN Network and others. (Nine owns this masthead.)
Jim Savage, a former state branch president, said party members felt Pauline Hanson should not be both senator and party president
Mr Savage said charging members to attend the meeting was a violation of One Nation’s constitution
Another member, Vivian Schnell, said she could not afford to buy tickets and was unhappy Senator Hanson was running the party
Israel’s solidarity with the Kurds is duplicitous, not only because it also arms one of the Kurdish people’s biggest oppressors, but also because it supports their independence while denying millions of Palestinians that same right.
Trump’s not bringing the troops home. He’s been haphazardly deploying more troops, drones, and dollars abroad, while waging a shadow foreign policy for his own benefit.
Donald Trump loves to talk about ending the endless U.S. wars that he inherited as president. He tweets about it. He endlessly criticizes his predecessors for their martial mistakes.
But like the old saw about the weather, Trump talks a whole lot about endless wars but doesn’t do anything about them.
Many speculate the Illuminati, in concert with several other shadowy groups, were critical in delivering the U.S. presidency to the former reality TV star last year.
This unexpected move by the powerful cult is seen by most commentators as a severe blow to Trump’s chances of re-election in the presidential race next year.
The Kurds have a saying that their only friend is the mountains, and in the past few weeks, US President Donald Trump and his deputy, Mike Pence, have seemed determined to prove them right.
Kurdish forces fought alongside Americans to defeat Islamic State at the cost of 11,000 of their young fighting men and women’s lives. Despite this, almost two weeks ago the United States withdrew the 1000 troops who were keeping the peace along the border with the Kurds’ long-time enemy, Turkey.
Ankara responded almost immediately by invading territory the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces have effectively ruled over for several years.
On top of that, as is his habit, Trump insulted them. Their existential battle with Turkey “has nothing to do with us”, the President said, and Kurds were, by the way, “no angels”.
The Age makes the industry execs sound like bank chiefs all claiming the Sgt Schultz excuse. All they wanted was the chamagne honour and glory without any responsibility for the gory. So kick the can down the road. (ODT)
Trump has bombed his own base lifted all sanctions and surrendered Syria to Turkey. As long as you can keep Americans confused with spin all is better than the reality. ODT)
This is a respite while we surrender to Turkish domination of Northeast Syria.
Finally, what would you like American audiences—our listeners—to keep in mind as they try to get their heads around this ongoing catastrophe?
The part about this that Americans are paying attention to is the ISIS threat, and this is a major concern. These people all breaking out of prison is obviously not going to be good for anybody. At the same time, it’s important for people far away from Syria to understand that this is a part of Syria that has had a relatively normal life. This is a place where children are going to school, families are working, people are meeting in cafes. It is the closest that Syria has had in a very long time to normalcy, and suddenly, people’s live are being ripped apart. People are having to flee, people are being killed. There have been civilians executed on highways or activists being killed. This is being perpetrated by our ally, Turkey. This is a member of NATO. This is not ISIS. These are people that are close to us, that we support.
Listen to the entire interview on The Mother Jones Podcast here:
Despite the odds stacked against them, the Kurdish forces managed to push back the attacks by Islamic State (IS) and other jihadist militias and emerged as the most effective ground force against IS in Syria. The support the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces received from the US and the anti-IS coalition allowed them to expand the areas under their control and build a coalition with other ethnic groups in northeast Syria.
That momentum was lost when US president Donald Trump abruptly declared his intention to withdraw American soldiers from Syria in December 2018. Although that withdrawal was delayed, since then, the long-term fate of the entity the Kurds call the Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria (NES) has been left in the balance, without a clear future strategy in sight.
Despite their battlefield sacrifices in the war against IS, the ongoing Turkish military operation in northeastern Syria has now pushed the Kurds into a corner. They have been left to choose between accepting the authority of Bashar al-Assad or facing a full-scale invasion by Turkey of the territory they control. They chose a deal with Assad.
(“The United States and Italy are bound together by a shared cultural and political heritage dating back thousands of years to Ancient Rome.”)
The face of the interpreter of the white house that must translate to mattarella the words of trump while claiming that the United States and Italy share a cultural legacy that dates back to thousands of years ago, to say, since ancient Rome.
(“The United States and Italy are bound together by a shared cultural and political heritage dating back thousands of years to Ancient Rome.”)
olddogthoughts 
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