America’s Grifter in Chief. How to make it appear you have won when you’ve gained nothing. (ODT)
He did not cite examples of reporting that had angered him, but in the afternoon the Times cited “officials from both countries who are familiar with the negotiations” when it said Mexico agreed the steps contained in the deal “months earlier” in meetings with former homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
Trump, who spent the day at his golf course in Virginia, did not immediately respond to a report which also said it was unclear if he “believed that the agreement truly represented new and broader concessions, or whether the president understood the limits of the deal but accepted it as a face-saving way to escape from the political and economic consequences of imposing tariffs on Mexico”.
I keep hearing a lot about “socialism” these days, mainly from Donald Trump and Fox News, trying to scare Americans about initiatives like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, universal child care, free public higher education, and higher taxes on the super-wealthy to pay for these.
Well, I’m here to ask you to ignore the scaremongering.
via The Same Old Scare Tactic about Socialism | The Smirking Chimp
Minister for Hot Air
Angus Taylor’s handling of the latest emissions data is a lesson in spinThe emissions report was eventually released to the general public yesterday, and Taylor appeared on RN Breakfast this morning to continue making the case that up was down and down was up when it comes to Australia’s emissions. Furthermore, what was important, he said, was that the LNG and coal industries were creating jobs and investment opportunities.
Taylor, like his Coalition colleagues, is happy to count the earnings from resource companies, but refuses to calculate the cost of rising emissions and the effects of climate change on every other sector of the economy. The minister for energy and emissions reduction has a long history of promoting fossil-fuel industries and opposing support for renewables. He also has an ongoing scepticism of emissions reduction schemes generally, which, to be blunt, is probably why he was appointed to his current role.
MURDOCHIAN SPIN
Here’s the first paragraph, published in yesterday’s paper: “Australia is not given sufficient credit internationally for the carbon dioxide savings it helps other nations achieve, Energy Minister Angus Taylor says.”
Only in the fifth paragraph did Lloyd mention that Australia’s emissions were “0.8 per cent higher than the previous quarter and 0.7 per cent higher than last year”.
Angus Taylor’s claim LNG exports reduce global emissions ‘likely wrong’ – climate expert
Bill Hare says claim by emissions reduction minister is ‘grossly exaggerated’
The Australian federal police is losing its independence and integrity and must be separated from Peter Dutton’s home affairs portfolio, police union leaders have warned.
The AFP was subsumed into the behemoth home affairs portfolio in late 2017, placing it under Dutton’s direct responsibility.
But the Australian Federal Police Association, which represents 6,500 AFP members, now wants the change reversed, saying it has compromised the AFP’s organisational integrity and its ability to carry out investigations without government influence.
Australia has a habit of shaming itself on the world stage generally at the hands of the LNP. Kevin Andrews did it Tony Abbott made us a laughing stock and now Peter Dutton’s defence of the AFP raids on the Press have convinced the world we too are like Turkey and Bangladesh. (ODT)Key points:
Australian Industry Group chief says the AFP raids “set back Australia’s reputation internationally”
He is concerned the precedent set by the raids could extend to business
He says the AFP’s reputation has also been damaged
It laughs at Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s claim in the April budget – and Scott Morrison’s claim in the election campaign – to have returned the economy to “strong growth”, which will roll on for a decade without missing a beat.
Why is the immediate outlook for the economy so weak and uncertain? Not primarily because of any great threat from abroad – though a flare-up in Donald Trump’s trade war with China could certainly make things worse – but primarily because of one big and well-known problem inside our economy: five years of weak growth in wages.
A trickle of misinformation about Labor policy became a torrent on Facebook as the campaign unfolded. A Guardian investigation has tracked the course of the death tax scare, revealing alarming implications for Australian democracy
Lenore Taylor: It’s not 2007 any more. We need new tools to fight election lies
Australia’s Shame
Workers penalities cut, benfits,cut, all by “independant” bodies. Billionaire’s wealth gain in 2019 up 20%. Australian labour is still waiting for a 3% lift. The Highest paid OECD leader is Morrison and gets $11,000 more for managing 24 mill people with an economy that’s tanking but telling us “the fundamentals are good”. They justify their wage boost on the basis of attracting the most “talented”. The most “talented” were Abbott, Dutton, Joyce, Cash, Abetz, Christenson, Andrews, Hansen, etc etc etc. In Australia’s recent past the most” talented” have been recognized not by people in the country but outside Wayne Swan was the current government has been bagging him ever since. Why is that? The ALP is challenging them to boost now not 2022 or 2024. Whose a manager of reality and whose a manager of fairy floss. Australia you’ve been scammed (ODT)
Key points:
Minimum pay for federal politicians set to surpass $211,000 thanks to 2 per cent increase
Scott Morrison’s prime ministerial pay to grow $11,000 to more than $549,000
New Labor leader Anthony Albanese will take home around $390,000
Only one-eyed Coalition supporters could construe the deteriorating state of our economy as somehow acceptable, as having nothing to do with the stewardship of the government. Instead, they will likely insist that the Coalition knows what it’s doing, has everything under control, and that we’re all doing fine. They will extract any morsel of ‘good news’ from the economic data to bolster their conclusions.
They will go on insisting that ‘The Coalition is the superior economic manager’, although the evidence inexorably leads to the conclusion: The Coalition can’t manage money.
via The Coalition can’t manage money – » The Australian Independent Media Network
44 years later, after six years of calamitous Tory incompetence and nastiness and following their campaign of lies and misinformation, there is no way I will accept this current claque as legitimate and I will not be nice to those who do
“She already told me that she doesn’t have to be nice, so why do I? Because my mother raised me right? That’s why wolves always win. Because the rest of us mind our manners and get devoured for our efforts.”
― Sheryl J. Anderson, Killer CocktailTo reflect Ms Anderson’s sentiments – fuck you, Fauxmo; and the donkeys you rode in on!
For six years the L/NP dodged scrutiny with its “look, it’s Labor” dissembling and obfuscation – taking their behaviour as an Opposition into Government. A complacent and compliant media went along for the ride giving a free pass to a declining economy, corporate crime, a degraded environment and social disharmony.
The ABC was cowed into submission by constant attacks, becoming a timorous shadow of the once honourable organisation that held governments to account.
And in a truly ironic case of misplaced schadenfreude a journalist from the L/NP propaganda machine Newscorpse was raided by the Australian Federal Police Farce – the Gestapo of Spud’s private legion of spooks and door-breakers. The indignation of News’ L/NP groupies provided a level of grim lampoonery.
The goon squad trading as the AFP has all of the credibility of the Keystone Cops. A bought and paid for apparatus of the Lib surveillance state they somehow managed to lose the paperwork when “investigating” Michaelia Carcrash on the AWU raids tip-off. In raiding the ABC and a News journalists they are complying with standard practice – hounding sources of information that embarrass the conservative Government, intimidating potential whistle-blowers and keeping the L/NP free from scrutiny.
Dutton, ex-copper from Queensland, is resurrecting the Bjelke-Petersen-era police state cheered on by the Party nutters who’ve slipped through the crazy filter. Bullies are cowards and this platoon of poltroons is scared of accountability. Their incompetence and failures and their lack of courage is supplemented by their conviction that they have a right to rule and no obligation to serve.
A compliant and complicit mainstream media has gotten a loud wake-up call. Will they respond or will they hit the snooze button? Will a complacent public shrug this off? I’m betting they will and I will not be polite in calling out those of that kind of my acquaintance, and in less than courteous terms. This is a government for gormless dullards, the tremulous, the authoritarians, the weak of mind and dull of eye, the indifferent and the stupid.
It’s not my government. Fuck that!
Nearly half of all released prisoners are back in jail, accused or found guilty, within two years. Prison doesn’t reduce crime
Are we Turkey down under? We allowed this to escallate in the last 6 years creating laws against “public interest” laws against “whistleblowing” laws that assume the police in applying them aren’t acting with any “political interest”. Keep on dreaming Australia. It’s a “police state” and it’s open to abuse. The greatest threat is to our ABC which has been increasingly emasculated under this government and will continue to be for asking the hard questions. (ODT)
Domestic Politics comes first over any International event (ODT)
The ceremony that commemorates the 75th anniversary of D-Day was all set to go at 11 AM local time in France but was pushed back 15 minutes because Trump just had to give another fluff and negative interview to a Fox news host.
To Trump, his state-sponsored propaganda network (Fox News) is more important than honoring the sacrifices that were made by the men and women in World War II. The RNC chair has confirmed that the priority of this trip is to honor Donald J. Trump.
via Donald Delays Normandy Ceremony To Smear Americans On Fox News | Crooks and Liars
In recent months, Fox Nation hosts have participated in multiple campaign activities for Republican groups, including starring in campaign videos and headlining party fundraisers. Fox News has previously claimed that Fox “talent” are prohibited from participating in campaign events
Three long years, three crazy weeks, nine national disasters
The Government has turned to do what Wayne Swann did to fight the GST handed out money but not quite as universally across the board. More to those that don’t need it and less to those that do. Ins some cases over x10 times more to those at the top and they refuse to budge saying it’s all or nothing rigid management. Blame the opposition as Tony Abbott did (ODT)
The national accounts released on Wednesday were, by any measure, poor. A 0.4 per cent lift in the March quarter, half of which was statistical noise, took annual growth to its lowest level since the GFC.
Yet Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg cannot show any sign of panic given just three weeks ago they were telling voters the economy’s fundamentals were sound under their watch.
Hope households use their engorged tax refund cheques and the cut in interest rates to spend up, pumping money into the economy.
Scott Morrison’s economic plan may need revising as the economy tanks
The biggest lie during the election campaign was that the economy was strong. Now we know how bad things really are
via The government has run the economy into the ground | Greg Jericho | Business | The Guardian
There is no point pretending it is going to be OK it is not going to be OK
One of the most disturbing outcomes is not prosecutions or even the raids themselves, but the chilling of public interest journalism. Sources are less likely to come forward, facing risk to themselves and a high likelihood of identification by government agencies. And journalists are less likely to run stories, knowing the risks posed to their sources and perhaps even to themselves.
via Why the raids on Australian media present a clear threat to democracy
My guess is News Corp was a False Flag the ABC was the real Target (ODT)
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, when pressed about Smethurst’s case, was untroubled. Having played the role of fatherly minder of the Australian nation, he was not going to let any alleged breach of security go by. Currently on a visit to the United Kingdom, he expressed little concern about the morning raid on a journalist’s home: “it never troubles me that our laws are being upheld.”
While News Corp has its demonic familiars (Rupert Murdoch’s influence hangs heavily), it was hard to disagree with the premise advanced by a spokesperson. “This raid demonstrates a dangerous act of intimidation towards those committed to telling uncomfortable truths. The raid was outrageous and heavy handed.”
The Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery, voicing agreement, considered the police raid “an outrageous move that should concern all Australians who value their freedom in an open society.” With confidence, the statement asserted that it was “in the public interest for us to know of any plan for greater powers to monitor our messages.”
Chris Merritt, legal affairs editor of The Australian, saw the raid as an ominous signal to all investigative scribblers. “Welcome to modern Australia – a nation where police raid journalists in order to track down and punish the exposure of leaks inside the federal government.” But such an Australia was also chugging along merrily before the raid on Smethurst’s home. (Like the unsuspecting priest living in a dystopian surveillance state, the police finally came for them).
Should Assange ever make a return to the country of his birth, he is unlikely to find peace in this US satellite state, with its flimsy public disclosure and whistle-blowing laws, its mirage-like protections. Hunting publishers, journalists and their sources is de rigueur down under.
Well, it’s quite simple. Let’s imagine for a moment that I’m working for a highly sensitive department… Say something to do with stopping the boats. As we all know, “on water” matters are highly confidential… Or at least they became highly confidential after Scott Morrison became Immigration Monster; before that, everyone was free to publicise any information at all about boats arriving whether they were real or only imagined. Anyway, let’s imagine that I’m working in the department that’s in charge of stopping the boats and I discover that, in fact, the boats haven’t stopped and that there are boats arriving, sometimes carrying as many as twenty people. I quickly work out the realm is under threat because the government is secretly sneaking these so-called asylum seekers into the community and nobody has noticed even though we know have as many as three or four hundred happily minding their own business and enjoying their new life in Australia.
As a patriotic Australian, I’m outraged. I make copies of the necessary evidence and I smuggle it home where I… suddenly remember the AFP raids. And then it hits me. I can’t go to the media because I’ll almost certainly be exposed. No, I decide. I can’t take the personal risk.
See, it’s not the press that will have the problems. It’s the whistleblowers themselves. There’s no need for concern because in the future, the press won’t get the information so we won’t know whatever it is the we should be concerned about so we can all just keep going in blissful ignorance, happy that the government knows best and is having a go and helping me with my aspirations.
How good is Australia, eh?
*Just for clarification, AFP stands for Australian Federal Police and not Anti-Free Press.
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Let’s Stop The Hysteria, The Press Are Still Free! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
LNP policy of JOBS & GROWTH seems little more than a scammers slogan (ODT)
But I got up from a sick bed, less than a week after being operated upon for a perforated appendix that came close to killing me. A grumpy French surgeon, a speedy (and vastly cheaper operation than I could have had at home) have kept me alive and now well enough to crawl to my keyboard to share the opinion that Donald (“the Dotard,” the Dullard, the Graceless, the Corpulent, the Revolting, the Pussy Grabber, the Thief, the Prevaricator) Trump may be the most appropriate symbol for my country in these times remotely imaginable.
The revulsion I have for this man isn’t likely to be news to anyone who has consulted this blogsite over the past few years. In fact, I’ve repeated myself endlessly on the subject in an ongoing fit of sputtering consternation. But I don’t recall writing about how much Trump seems like the spitting image image of what our country has become.
via TRUMP: A Perfect Symbol of What We Have Become | The Smirking Chimp
The worlds top polluter Trump uses are the Queens English. He tries to tell Charles Science is Fake. He’s not only embarassing himself but he’s been so used to that playing the fake CEO role in The Apprentice for ten years he’s trying to tell Prince Charles he;s fired!! (ODT)
Prince Charles spent 75 minutes longer than scheduled trying to convince Donald Trump of the dangers of global heating, but the president still insisted the US was “clean” and blamed other nations for the crisis.
Donald Trump tells Prince Charles US has ‘clean climate’ | US news | The Guardian
100% Tariff on Cuba’s Tourism Hit the American cruise Industry. Protectin Big Pharma and the US Health and Entertainment Industries (ODT)
The US weaponizes sanctions to wage war by other means against nations unwilling to bend to its will. Virtually always they’re unjustifiably justified by Big Lies and deception.
Sanctions are imposed for political, economic, financial, and/or military reasons. They include prohibitions on the import or export of designated commercial goods, products and services related to technology, arms and munitions, restrictions on loans and credit, asset freezes, travel bans, and for other purposes.
US imposed sanctions have nothing to do with changing undesirable behavior, everything to do with pressuring, bullying, threatening, and intimidating other nations to subordinate their sovereign rights to its interests.
They haven’t worked for over half a century against Cuba and North Korea, not for nearly 40 years against Iran, or shorter periods against other targeted countries.
History most often shows when nations are threatened by hostile forces, popular support for their ruling authorities increases.
It was true for Libya under Gaddafi, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Iran now, their ruling authorities prime US targets for regime change. America is at WAR
In a statement, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross added: “Cuba remains communist, and the United States, under the previous administration, made too many concessions to one of our historically most aggressive adversaries.”
Media caption Life after Castro – ‘We have to continue the revolution’Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, who travelled to Washington in 2015 to re-open the Cuban embassy, criticised the latest move as “an attack on international law”, adding that it was “aimed at suffocating” the country’s economy.
The White House announced in April that Cuban-Americans and US businesses could sue companies who use or own property that was seized from Americans during the 1959 Cuban Revolution.The US is the most aggressive Country on the planet with a military presance in 164 different nations. It has a secret deployment of 59,000 troops being paid but unaccounted for in places unknown. Currently it’s cosing up to far greater and mor serious dictatorships both Right and left far more aggresive than CUBA. Nth Korea Saudi Arabia Egypt, Ukraine, Hungary Israel etc. American surveillance is the biggest on the planet despite the fact they are the worst. (ODT)
How many does Cuba have other than Doctors, Health professionals and teachers. This is an embargo that has been in effect for over 60 years why. To protect the US Health and Pharma Industries for one. American companies would flood to Cuba if the embargo was lifted along with consumers. (ODT
US bans cruise ship travel to Cuba amid new restrictions – BBC News
The owners of a 70-story Panama City hotel tower formerly managed by President Donald Trump’s companies are accusing them of stiffing the Panamanian government.
In a legal filing Monday in an ongoing lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, private equity manager Orestes Fintiklis and the company he leads, Ithaca Capital Partners, claimed that two Trump companies failed to pay Panamanian taxes equal to 12.5% of the management fees they drew from the hotel.
The Trump entities were allegedly supposed to withhold those fees in advance and pay them to the government regardless of whether the property was profitable or not. Instead, the Trump companies simply kept the money, the suit claims, “thus intentionally evading taxes.” That and other financial irregularities exposed Fintiklis and the companies he represents “to millions of dollars in liability,” according to the suit, which also claims Trump companies sought to cover up their actions. The filing does not say whether a tax penalty has been levied by Panamanian authorities.
As Australian Federal Police officers swooped on ABC headquarters at 11.30am on Wednesday morning, the broadcaster’s head of investigative journalism was waiting.
Reaching for his phone, John Lyons would respond to the raid in a uniquely modern way: he live tweeted the whole thing.
‘The AFP have just realised I’m live tweeting’: ABC journalist lays bare police raid
I find it impossible to imagine that the Australian people could be so gullible as to elect for a third term a government that has performed so miserably in the first two and has amongst its members some of the most devious, suspicious and corrupt men and women, but they did.
The aforementioned people exist to make their living as members of the Australian House of Representatives. One would expect to find in such an august chamber only people of the highest calibre and integrity but instead we find a bunch of highly educated self-interested members of the House of Representatives who the Prime Minister thinks are worthy of being in his team.
The national economy has been slowing for the best part of nine months with Wednesday’s national accounts likely to show GDP slipping below 2 per cent for the first time since early 2013.
RBA rate cut won’t fix the economy – it needs help from government
Only Fox could claim an absurdity like this to be true (ODT)
Fox claims “a lot of those demonstrations will also include pro-Trump folks”
and
One of the reasons I write for Pravda.Report is its gracious editors frequently allow me to avoid the esoteric punditry and subdued tone that America’s corporate-controlled media often demand. In that media world, behind every political action or inaction there is supposedly a well thought out “strategy,” and any sense of urgency about the consequences of such actions or inactions is diluted.
I say this to stress that there is nothing esoteric about politics and law in America today, and nothing to justify the current complacency. Trump is a criminal and Barr is a Trump lackey and an unabashed liar, and the United States Congress is allowing both of them to destroy America’s democracy for future generations.
Impeachment is not an “option.” It is a necessity.
Those who doubt this, I close with Amash’s words: “America’s institutions depend on officials to uphold both the rules and spirit of [America’s] constitutional system even when to do so is personally inconvenient or yields a politically unfavorable outcome. [America’s] Constitution is brilliant and awesome; it deserves a government to match it.”
David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor of Pravda.Report
Israel admitted launching hundreds of preemptive strikes on Syrian targets. Former IDF chief General Gadi Eisenhkot earlier said “(w)e struck thousands of targets (in Syria) without claiming responsibility or asking for credit.”
In response to two reported rockets from Syria striking illegally occupied Golan, falling harmlessly, Israeli warplanes terror-bombed Syrian targets pre-dawn Sunday.
Throughout the war, no evidence suggests Syrian forces ever targeted Israeli territory. Clearly they’d be nothing to gain and everything to lose.
Attacking Israel would escalate war Damascus is winning and wants ended. Clearly its forces had nothing to do with striking occupied Golan on June 1.
Most likely, US/Israeli supported terrorists were to blame for the incident, giving the Netanyahu regime a pretext for a terror-bombing attack even though it needs none to do whatever it pleases — with full US support and encouragement, with the UN and world community failing to hold it accountable.
When war is good for business and the US operates to create endless wars with commercial intent. (ODT)
via Israel Terror-Bombs Syria With Impunity – Stephen Lendman
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