A former adviser to Malcolm Turnbull who was challenging Tony Abbott in his blue-ribbon Sydney seat of Warringah has pulled out of the contest and thrown her support behind a campaign by world champion athlete Zali Steggall to take down the former prime minister.
via Malcolm Turnbull’s former staffer pulls out of Warringah contest to back Zali Steggall
Which is pretty cute, coming from the first government in this country’s history to have comprehensively betrayed Australia and its people. Think Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison; think destruction of the environment, the unprecedented damage done to the country’s essential river systems. Think the results of a Banking Royal Commission whose findings are apparently so dire that Morrison refuses to release them until he and his criminal spivs have had an extra three days to spin the story they will try to put to the population.
Think the decline of living standards for ordinary Australians as wages flatline and fail to keep up with rising prices and costs of living; think the huge increase of labour-hire companies who seem to prefer to have foreign visa-holders on their books instead of locals; think the sacking of Australian seafarers who have been replaced by cheap labour from overseas, and finally think the rhetoric around job creation in a landscape where anyone who works just one hour per week is considered ’employed’.
They never understood it, this mob. Worse, they never understood the difference between truth and untruth, or even why there ought to be any difference.
via The LNP can’t see the difference – » The Australian Independent Media Network
It looks as if our border protection officials are working hard to shield us against the threat emanating from Tamil toddlers, Kurdish rape victims and mayors of small Slovenian towns, however, when it comes to the real monsters they don’t seem up to the job as has been proven by the growing number of suspected war criminals found living in our suburbs, writes Branko Miletic.
via Welcome to Australia: Beautiful one day, full of war criminals the next
Remember Howard, Bush and Blair (ODT)
via Trump Explodes at CIA over Iran: “Naive and Passive,” “Go Back to School!”
Royal Commissions into Australian Financial Sector and the Murray Darling have shone a spotlight on Corporate Crime and political corruption. Morrison is concerned not about the criminality referred to but the rash response to it. No such concerns for Indigenous Australians who are jailed for not paying their bills or any similar concern for Asylum Seekers or African Immigrants is there. Will anyone be charged over the fact that politics protects and is entrenched in the inherent corruption of a sick system? Who is going to be charged? (ODT)
Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission slams authority for ‘maladministration’
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the Australian economy faces “significant consequences” if the banking royal commission triggers a credit crunch, while warning an election contest over which party is tougher on the beleaguered financial services industry risks undermining the system.
Scott Morrison warns against rash response to banking royal commission
From the man who doesn’t read or take advice (ODT)
Many of the intelligence chiefs’ findings have been interpreted as contradicting Trump’s foreign policy positions – including their view that North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear stockpiles and that the Islamic State remains a serious threat in Syria.
“The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran,” Trump said in a tweet on Wednesday morning. “They are wrong!”
‘Go back to school’: Trump lashes out at US intelligence chiefs
and
On December 11, 1981 in El Salvador, a Salvadoran military unit created and trained by the U.S. Army began slaughtering everyone they could find in a remote village called El Mozote. Before murdering the women and girls, the soldiers raped them repeatedly, including some as young as 10 years old, and joked that their favorites were the 12-year-olds. One witness described a soldier tossing a 3-year-old child into the air and impaling him with his bayonet. The final death toll was over 800 people.
The next day, December 12, was the first day on the job for Elliott Abrams as assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs in the Reagan administration. Abrams snapped into action, helping to lead a cover-up of the massacre. News reports of what had happened, Abrams told the Senate, were “not credible,” and the whole thing was being “significantly misused” as propaganda by anti-government guerillas.
This past Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo named Abrams as America’s special envoy for Venezuela. According to Pompeo, Abrams “will have responsibility for all things related to our efforts to restore democracy” in the oil-rich nation.
Elliott Abrams Isn’t Going to Bring “Democracy” to Venezuela
US President Donald Trump has capitulated to his Democratic opponents by agreeing to re-open the US government without securing any money for a wall on the border with Mexico.
Just a day after vowing he would not cave in to demands that he end the government shutdown, Trump announced he would re-open the government for three weeks of negotiations on border security.
A new poll by The Washington Post and ABC found that Trump’s popularity had weakened during the shutdown, with 37 per cent of the public approving of his job performance and 58 per cent disapproving.
The US wants all nations worldwide colonized, their resources looted, their people exploited as serfs, including ordinary Americans.
Humanitarian intervention, responsibility to protect, and democracy building are code words by both right wings of America’s war party for wanting fascist tyranny replacing governance of, by, and for everyone equitably everywhere – legitimate governments replaced by US-controlled puppet ones.
Post-9/11 alone, the US orchestrated coups in Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay, Brazil, Ukraine, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East.
The so-called Arab spring was made in the USA. Uprisings were orchestrated. Nothing was spontaneous. CIA dirty hands were involved in replacing unpopular regimes with despotic ones considered more reliable.
It’s the first time China has finished ahead of Australia.
This Don is more Mafia than POTUS (ODT)
Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, will not testify before Congress next month, one of his attorneys said on Wednesday.
Lanny Davis, an attorney for Cohen, said in a statement: “Due to ongoing threats against his family from President Trump and Mr. [Rudolph] Giuliani, as recently as this weekend, as well as Mr. Cohen’s continued cooperation with ongoing investigations, by advice of counsel, Mr. Cohen’s appearance will be postponed to a later date.”
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Gold Coast developer mayor Tom Tate has brazenly lied about his longstanding business relationship with alleged fraudster Frank Kovacevic — and the local News Corp scandal sheet has let him get away with it.
News recently emerged that Kovacevic has been attempting to offload the Picasso sketch he, with the assistance of the colourful mayor, allegedly cheated from prominent Flamenco guitarist Fernando da Costa several years ago.
And while the Gold Coast Bulletin reported some of the details of this scam, this News Corp publication allowed Tate to claim in its pages this month, unchallenged, that Kovacevic had never been his “business associate”.
As Independent Australia readers would be well aware from our meticulous investigations into the colourful exploits of Tom Tate and “Frankie Four-names” Kovacevic, this is an outright, brazen, lie.
Tate’s decades long business relationship with Kovacevic documented comprehensively in IA, but it has also been affirmed under oath by numerous parties, including Tate and Kovacevic, both inside and outside court.
via EDITORIAL: Sketchy GC Mayor Tom Tate lies — local Murdoch rag covers it up
As Linda Burney MP put it: “Leadership in an Aboriginal cultural context is not given or measured by how much media you get or if you earn big money. True Aboriginal leadership does not come from high-level appointments or board membership. It doesn’t come from and cannot be given by white constructs. Leadership is earned; it is given when you have proven you can deal with responsibility and you understand that responsibility’.”
Aboriginal people are not one homogenous mob and we must listen to different ideas but ignoring root causes and suggesting that Aboriginal culture itself is to blame is a cop out.
The preselection of Warren Mundine and Jacinta Price is a reward for their advocacy of “old white fella” policies.
They have chosen the comfort and support that comes from aligning yourself with those who hold and wield the power whilst seemingly blaming Aboriginal people for their own oppression.
Whilst they might speak about issues affecting Aboriginal communities like domestic violence and unemployment, I have yet to hear either of them offer any recognition of how the past has influenced the present let alone any positive suggestions on how to create change for the future.
via A pat on the head for Mundine and Price – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The very nature of this Potus is to hand his media to Murdoch and Fox News. Will Sanders be seconded to Fox-White House News ? (ODT)
The president of the White House Correspondents’ Association says the apparent end of the daily White House press briefing “sets a terrible precedent”.
US President Donald Trump tweeted on Tuesday that he told White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders “not to bother” with the daily briefing.
Trump tells press secretary ‘not to bother’ with White House press briefings
Four women were found guilty of misdemeanours and are facing possible prison time for leaving jugs of water and canned food in the Arizona desert for migrants braving the scorching triple-digit temperatures during the summer of 2017.
Brian Colaneri, 20, Andrew Crysel, 18, and Vincent Vetromile, 19, face weapons and conspiracy charges. A 16-year-old student at Odyssey Academy, a school in Greece, New York, was charged with the same offences but was not identified due to his age.
Islamberg was founded more than three decades ago by a group of black Muslims who follow the teachings of Pakistani Sufi scholar Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani.
The town in Delaware County has been targeted in the past. Two years ago, a Tennessee man was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison for plotting to attack the enclave.
via Four arrested for plotting to bomb New York Muslim community | News | Al Jazeera
In the last nine months of 2018, according to the United Nations, Palestinians – many of them children – were killed at the rate of around one a day while taking part in protests along Israel’s perimeter fence with Gaza about their right to return to ancestral homes. They included medics and journalists. Most of the dead were unarmed and posed no danger to anyone, with little more than rocks in their hands and slogans on their lips. Yet Israel continued with an immoral and unlawful policy that sees soldiers of its military, which is under democratic civilian control, shoot, gas, shell and kill protesters, including those who pose no credible threat.
Hospitals in Gaza, which already struggle under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade, have been stretched to breaking point in dealing with the flood of patients ferried in from the protests. In its defence, Israel’s diplomats cast Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, as terrorists who are organising demonstrations in “a war zone”. It would appear, sadly, that Israel wishes to conduct a war over the airwaves, as well as one on the ground, against the Palestinians. This blatant disregard for Gazan lives and the lack of accountability is underpinned by a politics of resentment and dissembling that has profound repercussions for Israel. If one can kill with impunity, then can one lie without consequence?
The novelist Amos Oz’s words that “even unavoidable occupation is a corrupting occupation” have been ignored for too long. Mr Netanyahu’s nearest rival brags that he sent parts of Gaza “back to the stone age” when in the military. Mr Netanyahu would dismiss Oz’s warnings; but perhaps he ought to take heed of the recent spat between the historian Benny Morris and the writer Gideon Levy. The former, who made his name by lifting the veil on the ethnic cleansings on which Israel was founded, but drifted rightwards to say that these heinous crimes did not go far enough, and the latter, a leftwing columnist, agree that the two-state solution is a fading prospect. Mr Netanyahu lulls the public with the notion that a two-state solution will wait until Israel deems the conditions to be ripe. He hints that new friends in Washington, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi will come up with a proposal the Palestinians will swallow. This is pure cynicism. There is no new plan – just a rebranding of the status quo, maintained by force by Israel, and with Palestinians within and without Israel’s borders subjugated and dependent. Israelis must turn away from the occupation, which is debasing their society and suffocating the Palestinians.
Enemies of the State of Israel who says Israel State sponsored summary execution. (ODT)
Israeli Snipers Killed 180, Injured 23,000 Gaza Protesters with Live Fire since March
If there is one famous quote that could embrace the entire Barbarian Intellectualism ethos and moral direction, it would have to be that ghastly logic from the Vietnam War, where one “ … must destroy the village to save the village.” And we have seen just how far such insane logic has taken the governance of this once well-administered country .
The social-suicidal implementation of the IPA “wish list” has driven both the object and the integrity of conversation in this country to a depth never before plumbed. To have to listen to the childish babbling of its creators is to give too much valued-time to too little thought. The influence of such puerile philosophy on the ministers of the current LNP government demonstrates the even lower level of capable discourse amongst the front bench of that government.
What constitutes an advanced society Is it the one who uses its developed technology to invade, subjugate, desecrate and finally, perhaps, annihilate that very environment it relies upon for it’s life … or is it the other who, with astute observation recognises a “line” between sustainability and destruction, and by managing it’s population, refuses to be tempted by the possibility of a gluttony of temporary riches and maintains a judicious, salubrious lifestyle and culture for many thousands of years, visiting the same locations for food, clothing, shelter without desecration nor selfish accumulation?
So you tell me: Who has the most “advanced society”?
via The Advanced Society / Barbarian Intellectualism – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Abbott, the Pillock of the Pacific destroyed Radio Australia with his cuts to the ABC. Radio Australia was the heart beat in the Pacific for over 75 years. Now they want it back and handballing it to the likes of Murdoch or any other commercial enterprise none of who want it or understand what to do about it. (ODT)
The Morrison government is set to hand $17.1m to the commercial networks to provide TV programming to Pacific nations but the TV industry says it did not seek the funds and does not know what content to provide.
It is the duty of a journalist to tell the truth and to listen and read more than (s)he speaks or writes until (s)he is aware that what is being divulged is the real story and not some fabrication to smear a person or a country to garner support for a policy.
He will come home but not on Dutton’s watch (ODT)
Mr Bridgeman, who used to live at Toowoomba, has vehemently denied having joined a terror organisation.
The gang Murdoch’s News Corp tends to protect. In many cases it’s not juniors that are the aggressors but senior members regarded as role models. (ODT)
Thrown, punched in the head: Doctor who tried to help bleeding man claims police turned on her
Is there a day on the calendar that draws as much debate as January 26? While a large proportion of Australians celebrate this as Australia Day, there is a growing number who refuse to celebrate what they refer to as ‘Invasion Day’. On January 26, 1788 the Union Jack was raised on our shores, and Aboriginal ownership of the land was usurped.
The call to change the date of Australia Day from January 26 has been growing louder each year, to one where all Australians could feel included. January 26 does not offer this to the First Australians. The obvious choice espoused by many is January 1, which celebrates our federation in 1901. But history reminds us that this is as equally insulting to the First Australians as January 26.
via January 1: Exclusion and the White Australia Policy – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Another Liberal Party democratic decision. Failing Democracy is the Liberal Party. (ODT)
Prime Minister Scott Morrison will today install former Labor Party president Warren Mundine as the Liberal candidate in the knife-edge seat of Gilmore, ousting the man who had already been preselected by local members.
via Gilmore seat to be contested by former Labor boss Warren Mundine
“And we may not pull it off. But you know what will be better than seeing Dutton in the opposition benches? Not seeing Dutton across the benches at all. And best of all, it will be for no other reason than he did it himself.”
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What the rats on the SS Liberal Party want for the rats to take the ship (ODT)
Liberals fear former minister Craig Laundy will be the next Coalition federal MP to quit politics ahead of the election, as questions linger over a number of senior figures in the wake of a likely election loss.
Jobs Minister Kelly O’Dwyer’s shock resignation at the weekend has strengthened expectations of further departures, particularly by marginal seat holders and allies of dumped prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Fears of mass exodus: Liberals brace for more MPs to quit before election
Out of the closet Israel admits it’s always been a defacto airforce supporting Syrian rebels and terrorists and supported by none other than the USA Australia and other coalition forces. Secrets well kept and more often denied by these governments. Israel has been a silent aggressor in the Middle East for years. (ODT)
Since the 80s and 90s Israel has had an active plan to prevent any formation of a Pan Arabic union which has meant the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Syria and any Arabic state capable of developing an army and uniting tribal forces against it. Israel however couldn’t be seen in the eys of the world to be an active aggressor in this. Instead it copted and supported those with the same mindset allies or superficial enemies it didn’t matter. Trump for personal domestic political reasons has forced Israel out of the closet. (ODT)
Unusual Israeli confirmation of military action comes as Syria says most missiles were shot down by its air defences.
via Israeli army says it hit Iranian targets in Syria | News | Al Jazeera
The real Israel (ODT)
via Crimes against Humanity: Israeli Snipers have shot down 45 Child Gaza Protesters
Washington, DCI am very pleased to be able to meet with you on this, the first day of a week–long examination of relations between our country and the Arab world. I have been asked to speak about American foreign policy as it bears on this topic.
The causes of Arab and Muslim alienation from the United States are not hard to discern and describe. They are policies that have demonstrably served our interests no better than theirs, or for that matter, Israel’s:
American Foreign Policy and the Arab World | Middle East Policy Council
So, as “The Financial Review” warns Bill Shorten about class warfare and the politics of envy, I have to laugh. Yes, its readers will all tut-tut and tell themselves that it’s big business that creates wealth and taxation is theft so shouldn’t we get a refund on the tax we don’t pay, the people struggling with their bills have already decided that something needs to change. Labor aren’t starting a class war; they’re simply describing it and suggesting that maybe we need to start looking after some of the wounded who’ve been ignored till now.
It is not just governments or private businesses that undermine free speech. There is, for example, a vast army of people who blame the current societal problems on “the other” — the other being people like asylum seekers and refugees, or immigrants, or Indigenous Australians, or Muslims. When the great uniformity of their ideas is challenged, they go into overdrive to shut down dissident views.
The treatment of Channel Nine reporter Brooke Boney is an example. Brooke is a Gamilaroi woman. When interviewed recently about Australia Day, she had this to say:
‘… I can’t separate the 26th of January from the fact that my brothers are more likely to go to gaol than they are to go to school. Or that my little sisters and my mum are more likely to be beaten and raped than anyone else’s sisters or mum.’
She went on to make clear that this began because of the invasion that started on 26 January:
‘And that started from that day. So for me, that’s a difficult day and I don’t want to celebrate it… That’s the day it changed for us. That’s the beginning of what some people would say is the end. That’s the turning point.’
The “thought uniformists” responded, both in the media and online. The Daily Mail, for example, called it called it ‘an astonishing Australia Day rant’. Failed Labor leader and wannabe One Nation NSW Legislative Council member Mark Latham described Boney’s comments as “victimology” and “absurd“.
Even worse were the responses from many ordinary Australians, many of whom have been force fed and accepting of commercial TV propaganda for years. The backlash included hate speech and racism.
The aim of those who want everyone to bow before the flag – dressed according to Scott Morrison’s uniform standards – and stand when the band plays ‘God Save the Queen’, or ‘Advance Australia Fair’ or whatever, is to shut the rest of us up. They want to marginalise those who disagree with the deeply ingrained racism and xenophobia in Australia, let alone raise questions about the nature of society.
As in the 1930s we have been witnessing for some time now in Australia how easy is it for these forces to normalise brutality towards vulnerable people, and how those same forces are deliberately creating a society of increasing inequality, distrust and fear of ‘otherness’, through racist dog-whistling about immigration and multiculturalism.
Just as in the 1930s Australian conservatives are again ideologically aligned with fascism. We need to remember the story of Lt-Col Scott of Gull Force, for his contemptuous and contemptible attitude to the fate of his own men is ultimately a classic example of the character and values of fascism in practice.
“This is Uberification of education and there are plans to scale it up in the global north,” he says.
“These staff are not trained teachers. They are high school graduates who instruct kids for a fraction of the price that it costs to employ a qualified teacher.
“By and large, teachers make up about 70 per cent of a school budget. If you want to make money, you hire fewer teachers or unqualified staff.”
A new American documentary called Backpack Full of Cash shows how children who attend “virtual” charter schools can now do all their schooling from home without the need for any physical interaction with teachers or other students. That includes dissecting a frog on their computer at home.
via The ‘Uberfication’ of education: warning about commercial operators
Catholic Americans show what they are made of (ODT)
In them, a Native American man steadily beats his drum at the end of an Indigenous Peoples March on Friday while singing a song of unity for indigenous people to “be strong” in the face of the ravages of colonialism that now include police brutality, poor access to health care and the ill effects of climate change on reservations.
Surrounding him is a throng of young, mostly white teenage boys, several wearing Make America Great Again caps, with one standing about 30 centimetres from the drummer’s face also wearing a relentless smirk.
Native American Indian elder Nathan Phillips is taunted by Covington Catholic High School students wearing Make America Great Again caps near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.Native American Indian elder Nathan Phillips is taunted by Covington Catholic High School students wearing Make America Great Again caps near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Credit:Twitter
Nathan Phillips, a veteran in the indigenous rights movement, was that man in the middle.
AdvertisementPhillips, 64, said on Saturday he felt threatened by the teens and that they suddenly swarmed around him as he and other activists were wrapping up the march and preparing to leave.
Phillips, who was singing the American Indian Movement song of unity that serves as a ceremony to send the spirits home, said he noticed tensions beginning to escalate when the teens and other apparent participants from the nearby March for Life rally began taunting the dispersing indigenous crowd.
via It was getting ugly: the Native American who faced down his tormentors
![Vincent Vetromile, left, Brian Colaneri, centre, Andrew Crysel, right, face weapons and conspiracy charges [Greece New York Police Department/Handout via Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2019/1/23/cc99c8007190420bbd15c9f34088f148_18.jpg "Four arrested for plotting to bomb New York Muslim community")
![Syrian air defenses intercepted Israeli missiles targeting an area in Damascus [Youssef Badawi/EPA]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2019/1/21/146f7eda0c80450a9eeed0fb870e45c9_18.jpg "Israeli army says it hit Iranian targets in Syria")
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