“When the government equips police departments like they’re equipping the military, we undermine healthy relationships between the police and the community,” explains Equal Justice Initiative director Bryan Stevenson. “We have created a culture where police officers think of themselves as warriors, not guardians.”
via How the Police and the Pentagon Are Bringing Our Wars Home
Nothing left but to be the leader that DIVIDES the nation; (ODT)
“Instead of living up to the most basic responsibilities of his office this Independence Day, Donald Trump is still downplaying the virus, calling for a slowdown of testing, bucking social distancing guidelines, and showing Americans why we can’t afford four more years of him in the White House,” the DNC said ahead of the trip on Thursday.
Trump will hold another celebration for the July Fourth holiday on Saturday in Washington.
via Trump Visits Mount Rushmore Amid Controversy, Coronavirus Concerns | HuffPost
Tommy Fisher has received $1.7 billion in federal contracts for his Fisher Sand & Gravel construction company to build sections of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border by appealing directly to Trump in appearances on his favorite network, Fox News. But the privately funded “showcase piece” of wall that his firm constructed along the Rio Grande earlier this year is already at risk of falling down, according to a new report from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.
The Government and its Covid Commission are pushing a $6 billion gas pipeline while new energy regulator, Clare Savage, calls into question the future of the gas networks. Meanwhile Australians still pay more for gas than customers overseas pay for Australian gas. Michael West reports on the momentous upheaval in energy.
It is one short sentence but a sentence with remarkable implications for the nation:
“If not, the economic life of the assets could be limited.”
The new chair of the Australian Energy Regulator, Clare Savage, is saying that if the gas transmission networks do not convert to hydrogen, these assets may be stranded; that’s many billions of dollars in gas pipelines stranded.
“She is calling time on a multi-billion dollar industry,” says energy analyst Bruce Robertson.
The candid assessment from Clare Savage is even more remarkable considering the Government, with the connivance of its Covid-19 Commission, is pushing plans to build a $6 billion gas pipeline from Western Australia to the East Coast.
via A Savage Call: energy tsar calls time on Australia’s gas cartel – Michael West
ACT remote weapons systems manufacturer, Electro Optic Systems Holdings, which has hitched its wagon to countries known to be engaged in gross violations of human rights and likely war crimes, wins big from the Coalition’s weapons announcement on eve of by-election, writes Michelle Fahy.
The Coalition Government’s announcement of the purchase of 251 more remote weapons systems manufactured by the Canberra and Queanbeyan-based Electro Optic Systems (EOS) Pty Ltd was a nice “announceable” on the eve of the crucial Eden-Monaro by-election and gave welcome media coverage to EOS.
EOS was in the headlines last year for a very different reason: it supplies the same weapon systems to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two countries that are waging war in Yemen, and in the process creating the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe, including the mass starvation of children.
The company has justified its exports (it exports 90-95% of its weapons systems) saying,
“Foreign sales significantly reduce the cost of development, acquisition and support for Australia for defence technology. This is the principal reason why Australian industry participates in international sales.”
via Pork Missile: Government fires cash at weapons-maker EOS in Battle for Eden-Monaro – Michael West
Why isn’t this on the front pages of Australian MSM? (ODT)
Trump “look what I’ve started mum” He’s Your President America!
An article published on Pew’s website this week explains: “Roughly seven in ten white evangelical Protestants, 72%, say they approve of the way Trump is handling his job, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted June 16-22. That is a 6 percentage point drop from 78% recorded in April, in line with the 5-point drop during that period among U.S. adults overall. The share of white evangelicals who say they ‘very strongly’ approve of Trump’s performance is now at 59%, down 8 points from 67% in April.”
Is it any wonder Trump needs the judges onside?(ODT)
THE AUSTRALIAN misled its readers this week when it carried a major article purporting to be written by a climate activist who was, as it turned out, admitting climate science was bunkum.
Andrew Bolt was certainly promoting it, Like Trum he doesn’t read either (ODT)
via Murdoch press supports ‘reformed climate activist’ Michael Shellenberger
Westpac will pay $8 million to 8000 staff who were underpaid their long-service leave entitlements, in the latest case of underpayment by one of Australia’s biggest companies.
via Westpac joins underpayments scandal with 8000 staff short-changed
Funded by the Department of Defence, the Australia Strategic Policy Institute collects millions more as it drives the “China threat” narrative. As Marcus Reubenstein reports, while ASPI is the media’s go-to experts for public comment, ASPI is remarkably coy about revealing all its funding sources.
Australia’s seen enough shut shops and Centrelink queues to disbelieve the old beat-ups. So why is the prime minister restarting them?
Economists are calling the impact of coronavirus a “depression-level crisis”; it is stunning to consider the Liberal government refusing to remember the lessons of the Depression. Pandemic or not, sacked workers cannot furnish markets with spending, and neither can the workers without jobs to go back to when jobseeker payments are halved and jobkeeper taken away – scheduled for September. They won’t be spending big in the Laundy family’s 30 pubs.
They’ll be fighting to keep their families together – nursing a bitter awareness of just who abandoned them, and for how little.
and
Already, Fox News is spinning for Trump on this point, with Fox & Friends co-hosts claiming, “All presidents don’t read all of their briefings,” and adding, “It might have been printed in it, it doesn’t mean that he actually heard about it.”
Why would Republicans, supposedly “America first” adherents, want to prevent Americans from knowing about foreign interference in our presidential election – unless they have something to hide?
via Senate Republicans Make Sure Trump Can Hide Offers Of Foreign Election Help | Crooks and Liars
Trump’s Disposables…poor and black (ODT)
Fears of China buying up the country run deep, with opportunistic politicians and commentators long showing a willingness to not let “facts” get in the way of the truth. And the facts are that: China’s land interests are predominantly leasehold, it owns just 2% of foreign investment stock and is subject to a much lower threshold test. With the Australia-China relationship at a low ebb, it is time to call out this destructive tactic, writes James Laurenceson.
via Wilful ignorance of facts on Chinese investment is cheap politics – Michael West
But Morrison went further. He presented his disdain for summitry not only as a personal foible but also as a reflection of his worldview – his belief that international bodies and gatherings should be mistrusted and that they threaten to undercut the nation’s independence and interests. Morrison rejected what he labelled “negative globalism” and warned that Australia must tread warily to avoid being dictated to by an “unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy”.
AdvertisementBut this was before the Covid-19 pandemic. Never mind Climate Change
America is the New China and China is rapidly becoming the New America (ODT)
Assange’s stance on information, and his encouragement to the young to rush into the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency, is taken as an exhortation of bad faith, encouraging the theft of classified information and the ruination of secrecy. A better reading of this, urges Gosztola, is to see this as a call “to young people to help the public address a crisis of corruption in government by forcing transparency at a time when the government abuses the classified information system to conceal waste, fraud, abuse, and other illegal actions.”
The new indictment has made something of a mockery of the London extradition proceedings. Judge Vanessa Baraitser conceded to being informed of the superseding document by email, but still awaits its official receipt. Prosecution barrister Joel Smith merely remarked that both parties were still pouring over its contents and implications. “If we need to involve the court … then we will inform the court at the appropriate time.” Summers was less sanguine, suggesting that the expansive larding of the new indictment would affect future management hearings. “This shows,” stated Hrafnsson, “how they are abusing due process in the UK and flaunting the legal system’s rules.”
After an initial $60 billion bungle, the JobKeeper figures still don’t seem to be adding up. Tarric Brooker reports.
AS THE CLOCK ticks down toward the conclusion of the Morrison Government’s JobKeeper program – now less than three months away – figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) have raised further questions about how many workers are actually being covered by the policy.
The male version of Sarah Palin has arrived (ODT)
John Bolton’s absurd, self-aggrandizing new book reveals a shocking secret: Donald Trump knows next to nothing about Africa. The continent is better off without his ignorant meddling.
This is precisely right. The country has been deliberately plunged into another Great Depression with the clear intention of imposing harsh austerity measures that will eviscerate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and any other social safteynet programs that benefit ordinary working people, retirees, or anyone else for that matter. None of it is random, spontaneous or spur-of-the-moment policymaking. It’s all drawn from a centuries-old Imperial Playbook that’s being used by scheming elites to implement their final plan for America: Tear down the statues, destroy the icons and symbols, rewrite the history, crush the populist resistance, create a permanent underclass that will work for pennies on the dollar, pit one group against the other by inciting racial hatred, political polarization and fratricidal warfare, promote the vandals who burn and loot our cities, attack anyone who speaks the truth, and offer unlimited support to the party that has aligned itself with the corrupt Intel agencies, the traitorous media, the sinister deep state, and the tyrannical elites who are determined to control the all the levers of state power and crush anyone who gets in their way.
Trumpism and the drag on a nation(ODT
According to commander of US Naval Forces in Europe, Africa, and NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command Admiral James Foggo:
“NATO can no longer ignore China’s activities in Europe.” Citing no credible evidence, he falsely claimed Beijing aims to undermine the international rules-based order.
Claiming as well that it maintained peace throughout the post-WW II era ignored endless US preemptive wars against invented enemies.
Is US conflict with China inevitable — given the country’s growing prominence on the world stage while the US declines?
China pursues cooperative relations with other countries. So do Russia, Iran, and other nations the US is hostile toward.
Washington’s drive for unchallenged dominance risks unthinkable nuclear war if it pushes things too far against nations able to hit back hard in self-defense if attacked.
via Delisting Chinese Firms From US Exchanges – Stephen Lendman
The outrage over the brutal police killing propelled millions of people to the streets. The mood has been truly rebellious, revolutionary, geared for big changes.
But then, nothing!
Revolution is being postponed. Opportunities lost. Postpone by how many years?
The truth is – there are no shortcuts. Those who sincerely want to change the United States will have to follow the revolutionary formula from other countries. The formula is mainly based on education, knowledge, and determined, selfless work for the country and the world, called “internationalism.”
Unless the US comes up with an absolutely new strategy, formula, but right now, frankly, it seems to be extremely far from coming up with it!
via Why is this ongoing American ‘revolution’ bound to fail?
![US House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, wears a mask as he leaves following a press conference in Washington, DC, the United States [File: Saul Loeb, AFP]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2020/6/29/727e9f7fe1e14cb9b3aa974f30197d53_18.jpg "US Republicans begin to break ranks with Trump on face mask issue")
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