Category: Uncategorized
The decision to blacklist Airbnb had immediate impact. The University of Texas said no employee could use state funds to rent on Airbnb. Abbott similarly ordered that no public worker use Airbnb. Then, in April, Airbnb reversed the decision to remove its listings in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and in May was taken off the Texas comptroller’s list.
“The decision to stand up for human rights should have been applauded by state lawmakers,” said Meera Shah, a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal, a group that defends the speech rights of Palestinian rights advocates. “Instead, they elected to punish the company and force its hand and force it to walk back that decision.”
I will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments – that there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American. Thank you
via Robert Mueller Statement Transcript: If we had Found Trump Innocent, We would Have Said So
Fast becoming one of the hated. Must be doing something good. (ODT)
Morrison Lied about this emissions have only come down under Labor. they started rising again in 2013 (ODT)
via Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions up for four years in a row
Former foreign minister Alexander Downer has ridiculed the idea he was sent to spy on a junior Donald Trump campaign aide as part of an international conspiracy to kickstart the FBI’s Russia probe.
via Alexander Downer laughs off Donald Trump’s Russian probe conspiracy theory
Special counsel Robert Mueller has spoken publicly for the first time about his investigation into Russian election interference, using the occasion to emphasise he did not exonerate President Donald Trump of a crime.
via Robert Mueller breaks his silence on Russia probe in shock press conference
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Having been unable to secure one single global financial institution to invest in its Carmichael proposal, Adani has turned to self-financing the project because it has guaranteed returns from the poor people of India thanks to these government deals.
via The Fix Is In: Adani hooks India’s poor and Australia’s taxpayers – Michael West
Although my sectarian great aunts would never vote Labor as it was too “Catholic”, most of the rest of those I knew regarded Menzies as an enemy. The aunts only changed once the DLP split occurred and the Labor Party became less “Roman”.
Menzies Liberals They loved censorship. Under the Attorney Generalship and then the Prime Ministership of Menzies, in the 1930s, some 5,000 books were banned, including many left-wing works. Australia ranked as the most repressive English speaking nation.
The Menzies years were a time which many of us with long memories do not want to see repeated — despite the best efforts of the Murdoch media.
via The Liberal Party, scare campaigns and Menzies-style conservatism
If as I do, you believe that Jesus was the world’s first socialist then you would find it extremely difficult to accept the Pentecostal/charismatic church’s adoption of conservative political and social values.
In particular its adherence to “prosperity theology“, which links any scripture that suggests that God wants the very best financial success for his followers to you personally.
The Prime Minister will be taking a great risk if he chooses to unite his Christian beliefs with his political philosophy. Australians have never liked “Bible Bashers.”
My thought for the day
When asked as to my belief or otherwise in religion, or indeed my tendency toward a continuous search for truth. I can only say that I am in a perpetual state of observation which is the very basis of science or fact.
via Trying to juggle religion with politics in Australia – » The Australian Independent Media Network
“If you’re constantly winding up audiences and telling them that all of their troubles are a result of this other group that is literally Hitler, that they’re literally Nazis, they’re literally Stalin, sooner or later some people are going to start picking up weapons and do something crazy,” Taibbi said. “This is why people are correctly upset about Fox News. But they should also be concerned about other forms of media. The formula is similar across the board.”
“Our system of bubble economics is going to produce some kind of a catastrophe at some point,” Taibbi, the author of one of the finest books on the 2008 financial crash, “Griftopia,” concluded. “At which point, if you tell people often enough that their next-door neighbor is literally in the league with Nazis or terrorists or whatever it is—of course Fox pioneered this, going back to the Iraq War, when we were told liberals were terrorist supporters—sooner or later, there’s going to be violence. The inability of society to agree on a common set of facts means the media has failed already. It means we’re just not reaching people. [In this atmosphere] we will never be able to work things out in a civil way.”
via The Mass Media Is Poisoning Us With Hate | The Smirking Chimp
Labor’s short-lived carbon price raised $15.4 billion in revenue from polluters which was passed on to the public via a large increase in the tax-free threshold and additional payments to welfare recipients and families with school-aged children. Trade-exposed industries also received assistance to transition and had incentive to invest in more sustainable practice.
Conversely, the Coalition have spent billions of public money on their Direct Action strategy only to see emissions rise again.
When more people voted for Labor and the Greens, to claim a mandate for the Coalition’s inaction on climate change is beyond despicable.
You can’t have a mandate for a lie.
via You can’t have a mandate for a lie – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Can anyone trust theis man of False Faith (ODT)
For example, the projected real growth of the health budget from 2019-20 to 2022-23 is only 1.8 per cent. Yet the average cost of private health insurance premiums has risen on average 5.07 per cent per year since 2013, while inflation as measured in the cost price index has remained under 2 per cent.
Australia has 16 extra billionaires this year, taking the total to a record 76, with carboard and recycling magnate Anthony Pratt again topping the list of the nation’s wealthiest.
The nation’s richest 200 people, as calculated by the Financial Review, held a record $283 billion in wealth, up 21 per cent on last year.
It took a personal fortune of $387 million to make the list this year, up significantly from $341 million last year.
But the average wealth of Australia’s 200 richest people was $1.41 billion.
Apartment developer Harry Triguboff ($12.8 billion) and Gina Rinehart ($12.7 billion) were just behind Mr Pratt, with Hong Kong-based property magnate Hui Wing Mau ($9.1 billion) and Westfield shopping centre billionaire Frank Lowy ($8.4 billion) rounding out the top five richest Australians.
The chief economist at left-leaning think tank The Australia Institute, Richard Denniss, said it is no surprise that the number and wealth of billionaires has surged.
“It’s a good time to be a billionaire in Australia,” he said.
Veterans for Peace also drew attention to war’s devastation
“Our message for Memorial Day is to remember all who have died in war and to understand that no one wins,” said Michael McPhearson, the organization’s executive director.
“There are people who profit from war, mainly those who invest in the defense industry or possibly the oil sector. But the veterans and civilians who survive war suffer for the rest of their lives,” said McPhearson. “And the entire society is robbed of billions of tax dollars which could be spent on jobs, education, healthcare, infrastructure and sustainable energy.”
Sadly, the lesson for Labor is that policy formulation in advance of an election is a recipe for failure and it seems that the road to electoral success in this country is a bit like reality show, Married at First Sight ; you scheme, tell lies, defame and revile your opposition and pout a lot. If you can also rely on organised persuasive communication from a compliant media you are almost home. But, under our preferential system, you also need as many dodgy preference swap deals as your conscience will permit.
via Who Needs Policies ? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Fi
Scott Morrison voted against the Royal Commission into Banks 26 times. He continued to do little or nothing since, and even after the release of the Panama Papers were banks were found to be party to money laundering and tax evasion. He’s allowed the banks to to create an industry that simply ran riot over the Australian public farming profits for itself with little and no service provided in return,and now he’s allowing that system to continue. Australia has slid 6 places on the global corruption index since 2013 (ODT)
Five of the biggest investment banks in the world, including UBS, Barclays and Citibank, have been accused in an Australian class action lawsuit of operating a foreign exchange cartel using secret chat rooms titled “the Cartel”, “the Bandits Club” and “the Mafia”.
The banks, including JPMorgan and Royal Bank of Scotland subsidiary NatWest, have been accused of colluding to fix interest rates to the financial benefit of their own banks and to the detriment of other market participants including individual investors and businesses.
via Hunting ‘the Mafia’: Big investment banks face Australian cartel claim
Yet governments have been indifferent. During the eleven years of the Howard government, there was no major anti-corruption initiative. No federal whistleblowing legislation, no federal integrity commission, no false claims Act, no foreign corrupt practices act.
Australia could not have a Mueller-type inquiry because we don’t have the mechanism.
Not surprisingly Australia has been sliding down Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index for some time. Over the last six years, we have dropped six more places.
Last November, 34 former judges including former justices of the High Court, wrote a letter to Scott Morrison calling for the immediate establishment of a national integrity commission to restore trust in our democracy.
via Rewarding rorting and bad behaviour: Why many LNP politicians were re-elected
The real danger of the white supremacist fanatics to the Muslim community, stimulated by this exploitation of fear, has not yet been recognised by the authorities.
The New York Times reported that:
There were five white extremist attacks in Australia from 2011 through 2017, all of which were attacks on mosques and Islamic centers.
Experts say the same broad motives are at play whether the target is a mosque in Perth or an asylum seekers’ shelter in Dresden or a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Attackers who identify as white, Christian and culturally European see an attack on their privileged position in the West by immigrants, Muslims and other religious and racial minorities.
via This Election saw the revival of white supremacy, nationalism and exclusion
The miracles that come with Ignorance (ODT)
There’s always going to be a problem with the fact that a large number of people aren’t politically engaged and make their decision based on things like the Clive Palmer ads or what someone posted on Facebook, so maybe there’s no simple answer. But it would certainly help if the media made sure that at least those paying attention weren’t misled by simple slogans that don’t reflect the reality of policy at all.
via Democracy Isn’t The Problem, Ignorance Is! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The combined first preference HoR vote of the four parties who make up the Coalition is, at this point in time, 41.81% of the electorate. Labor and the Greens combined got 43.45% of the first preference vote.
Why isn’t Labor shouting this from the rooftops and putting the Coalition on notice that a greater number of Australian people voted for the progressive parties directly and they are duty bound to represent the people who did so?
via What the hell are you doing, Labor? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The Miracle
The previous election was bought by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull with a $1.7 million personal donation that boosted Coalition election advertising in the campaign’s crucial last fortnight. That now looks like small beer next to the 2019 election’s anti-Labor advertising spending (approximately $80 million when one adds the Coalition’s $20 million spend to the Clive Palmer-United Australia Party spend of $60 million-plus). This is four times the size of Labor’s $20 million ad budget – a huge disparity.
Palmer’s gambit, which creates a friendly environment for him to gain regulatory approval for a Queensland coal mine vastly bigger than Adani’s during this term of parliament, takes Australia into banana republic territory in terms of money politics.
Lesson: Australia already needed campaign finance laws to stop the purchasing of elections. It needs them even more urgently now.
How might Labor win in 2022? The answers can all be found in the lessons of 2019
Hoping for or creating a False Flag (ODT)
The Trump War Party seems to be counting on cult-like Shiite militias in Iraq to do some small katyusha attack so they can blame Iran for it (not all Shiites are on the same team, folks).
So when you look at the geographical spread of US bases in the region, it is impossible to see any point where their security is enhanced by 1,500 troops. It is even hard to imagine how they could be practically deployed for force protection.
the real irony is that the US warmongers are depicting Iran as having an unfair advantage deriving from its geographical proximity to the Gulf and the Fertile Crescent. Iran has been in that area of the Middle East (and often ruled much of the Middle East) since the “Parsumash” people showed up in the 800s BC.
Quite unfairly, they put their country right next to where US bases are.
via No Fair! Iran Puts their Country Right next to US Military Bases in Gulf
Critics of the U.S.-supported bombing of Yemen rebuked the Trump administration on Saturday after it ducked congressional approval by invoking emergency powers to approve billions of dollars in American-made arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
“Selling more weapons to Saudi Arabia doesn’t make America safer or align with our country’s values,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in a tweet. “It only benefits defense contractors and @realDonaldTrump’s alarming desire to sow chaos abroad.”
Not for publication in any Australian MSM service (ODT)
via Is Israel Planning total Annexation of Jerusalem and Jordan Valley of Palestine?
Today the United Kingdom needs to pull together, hold a second referendum this time based on the reality that leaving the EU would spell utter and total disaster by hemorrhaging jobs, destroying the fabric of employment for decades to come and destroying the future of the country’s youth. A societal castrophe would follow an economic collapse. These are the facts and these are the reasons why most Members of Parliament, including Theresa May, backed the Remain campaign in 2016. Why did they not stick to their guns?
The definition of going against common sense is what? Living in cloud cuckoo land.
This all goes to the inexorable transition of power from citizens to multinational corporate interests, from voters to those who don’t vote. It is a global trend but given that Australia is a relatively small market, the concentration of corporate power via monopolies and duopolies is marked.
To borrow from the parlance of the Prime Minister, the big corporations are definitely “having a go to get a go”. Citizens however, briefly, had their go the other day. And, having made their decision in favour of the Coalition, have given a really good go to multinationals.
Large corporations and some wealthy business people, unlike ordinary people, make political donations. They don’t give money to political parties on the expectation of zero return. They have paid their dues, now it’s payback time. The only way to extract this cancer from the body politic is to ban money in politics. Australia is a long way from doing that, and until it comes, public confidence in the system will continue to erode.
olddogthoughts 
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