via Marvellous Mirvac: $8 billion property developer rorts JobKeeper scheme – Michael West
Category: Uncategorized
During Tuesday night’s prime-time Fox News schedule, hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham all bashed Dr. Anthony Fauci.
You knew this was coming after Dr. Fauci slapped around Sen. Rand Paul during yesterday’s Senate hearing.
It’s been a constant refrain from Fox News lately to make Dr. Fauci the fall guy for Donald Trump’s ineptitude and unconscionable lack of action when the outbreak was first discovered.
via Tucker, Hannity, Ingraham Bash Dr. Fauci In Scripted, Coordinated Attack | Crooks and Liars
Trump has already succeeded in his goal of running for president twice without disclosing basic financial information. He has already succeeded in using the office of the president to shield himself from potential prosecution of his suspected financial crimes. Trump has already won. The only question now is how much the rest of us will lose.
We should expect decisions on these two cases in late June. The Supreme Court will then tell us how much more of our democracy must be sacrificed in the service of Donald Trump.
via SCOTUS May Have Just Decided to Exempt Trump From the Rule of Law | The Nation
Right now the US can still print enough dollars to maintain Israel afloat, but we already know that while throwing cheap money at a problem is often very tempting, this does not constitute a sustainable strategy, especially when the actual military capabilities of both the US and Israelis are rapidly degrading. Right now, nobody knows how much longer the last openly racist regime on the planet will last, but it is exceedingly unlikely that the Zionist entity will be able to survive without the Empire to prop it up. In other words, sooner rather than later, the “Jewish state of Israel” will have no better chances of survival than, say, the “Independent State of Kosovo” or, for that matter, the “Independent Ukraine”: they are all the ugly metastases of the Empire which by themselves are simply not viable.
via What does the Empire’s agony mean for the “Jewish state of Israel”?, by The Saker – The Unz Review
Sunday night, right-wing media misinformation about the coronavirus’s origins — the idea that it originated in an infectious disease research laboratory in Wuhan, China — has even resulted in the Trump administration shutting down funding for actual pandemic research.
President Donald Trump’s incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic is not only exacerbating the death and destruction caused by the virus in the US. It is also crippling the global response to the crisis, and the costs could be even deadlier.
Being a socialist won’t stop being hard anytime soon. But if we want to start winning, socialists need to study the recent defeats of Syriza in Greece, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, and Bernie Sanders in the US, along with the failures of twentieth-century social democracy and the declining relevance of Leninism.
In the interests of length I have omitted Angus Taylor’s alleged Cayman Island company, Peter Dutton failing to register one of his companies, and George Christensen summoning the Chinese Ambassador before a Senate Committee.
via Please, won’t you just say it as it is? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
1) Why is there even a plea necessary?
2) Is Israel’s exceptionalism such a stand out they just might be as guilty as?
via ICC rejects Morrison Gov’t plea for Israeli exemption from war crimes prosecution
If there is one thing – and only one thing – that we can take out of the LNP’s win in the 2019 election is that conservative governments are a boon for independent media sites. Particularly so in Australia, where the mainstream media becomes more and more the mouthpiece for the conservatives.
To survive another year and beyond would only require a hundred people signing up to contribute $5 a month. That at least would cover our monthly web hosting and designer costs. More would give us the opportunity to take on a bit of help for our already flat-out team.
I know that The AIMN means a lot to many, many people, Carol and I included. And without the efforts of so many tireless authors we would not be one of the leading independents sites in this country. Carol and I are proud of our standing, and proud of every one of you – authors, admins, commenters and readers – who have been in the engine room of this great site.
via Is this the end of the road? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Pell’s offending against the surviving boy (Witness J) goes back to the 1990s. At his trial at the end of 2018, the judge advised the jury that, if they believed the victim, they must convict. After they did, a suppression order restricted reporting on Pell. But his intimidatory, bullying manners are recorded. While his defence before the High Court stressed the unreasonableness of his alleged behaviour in the busy Sunday sacristy, it is possible that such normalities could have been outweighed by his “staggering arrogance” and ‘sense of impunity’. The times are different, in Australia as in Ireland. The quest for justice is strengthened by the Commission’s findings.
via Cardinal George Pell and the Victims of Child Sexual Abuse in Victoria. – CounterPunch.org
HE’S YOUR PRESIDENT AMERICA (ODT)
“We have developed a testing capacity unmatched and unrivaled anywhere in the world,” he said. While the United States has in fact done the highest raw number of coronavirus tests of any country, its per capita testing rate is still behind several other countries’:
via Trump Claims the US Has “Prevailed” on Testing, Then Storms Out of the Rose Garden – Mother Jones
Against all of this background, are you now convinced about the dangerous mental state of the POTUS? What is the Trump Dx? Have recent events been a ‘clincher’ for you too?
If you still harbour doubts, read this article in Salon. Are you alarmed? Is the whole world in peril with this man at the helm?
What can be done?
via The Trump Dx – Have we seen the clincher? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
and
Our legal system purports to place no person above the law. The court’s decision on Trump’s tax returns will tell us whether that principle stands strong — or is just so many empty words.
via The stakes of Trump’s tax return case couldn’t be higher (opinion) – CNN
They tell others to do what they don’t (ODT)
Fox News hosts from Tucker Carlson to Laura Ingraham have used their platforms to celebrate the anti-government protesters, some of whom attend rallies bearing guns. At an “American Patriots” rally in Michigan earlier this month, a group of militia members in military-style getups blocked the office of Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer after armed protesters entered the state capitol building.
Commercial Espionage it’s not China (ODT)
And where to go from here? Friedman opines that “the equation of U.S.-Israel relations needs to be flipped. Rather than Americans seeing themselves as helping Israel, they must realize how much Israel can do for the U.S. – for example, by putting groundbreaking Israeli innovations on the market in the U.S. first.” Sure, steal the technology, re-engineer it, and then quietly arrange sweetheart trade deals through one’s co-religionists to sell it back to the suckers in the United States.
via Israel To Annex the United States, by Philip Giraldi – The Unz Review
Some Unions are part of the problem (ODT)
Insecure, underpaid, and often dangerous work is not just a feature of the global health crisis — it’s built into Australian capitalism. Illegal underpayment of workers is a business model for many employers.
Retail and fast food workers face an additional challenge. Unlike the other workforces who can turn to their unions for protection, the largest union that purports to represent workers in these sectors is an active collaborator in their exploitation.
via Australia’s Youngest Union Is Organizing Retail and Fast-Food Workers
POLITICAL ATTACKS on investigative journalism by the Morrison Government pose a significant threat to Australia’s democracy.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is shrinking – Facebook is now 60 times the size – yet its political clout still has Australia’s politicians entranced. When will its hold over politicians fade?
News Corp is just not that big any more. Google is worth $US946 billion on the sharemarket and Apple $US1.3 trillion while the American media mogul Rupert Murdoch presides over an empire in decay. News is valued by the sharemarket at a piddling $9.5 billion.
We say piddling with tongue firmly planted in cheek. It is still enormous but it is shrinking. Having just posted a billion-dollar loss for the March quarter, News and its rival Nine continue to flog assets to raise cash.
A Noisy Stub: Rupert Murdoch’s Australian news assets valued at zip
My generation grew up without vaccines and without all of the associated illnesses associated with vaccines among the over-vaccinated youth of today. Today vaccinations begin at birth and increase into high numbers. Does the natural immune system ever develop?
That is an irrelevant question. The driving force behind vaccination is profit, not health. If we want a health system instead of a death system, Big Pharma must be nationalized and run by scientists on salaries without patent rights and “performance bonuses.”
What scientists might learn from such studies, like the new contact-tracing one in Massachusetts, remains to be seen, but surely one inescapable conclusion is that this virus is smarter, more agile, and faster on its feet than any of its associates we’ve met before or, for that matter, than most of our public officials, from a failed president on down. And for any readers who believe in politics more than science, let me just say that without science, you won’t even know what hit you.
I Left Norway’s Lockdown for the US. The Difference Is Shocking. | The Nation
What the LNP call “casual work” is actually “precarious”. With the destruction of unions a priority work became increasingly “precarious ” or “insecure”. How did it get this way when Royal Commissions found trade unions to be basically honest and Banks and Business callous and corrupt. Where was the ALP during all of this?(ODT)
Australians deserve better than a post-crisis “snapback” to an economy in which workers worry about job insecurity while jobseekers are relegated to poverty, Anthony Albanese will declare on Monday.
In his latest “headland” speech, the Labor leader will sharpen his message that the public is looking for a recovery “in which no one is left behind” and will not accept a return to “the law of the jungle and unfettered market forces”.
News Corporation is the latest international media company to reveal that it has been hit hard by COVID-19, with third-quarter accounts showing a $US1 billion ($1.5 billion) loss.It is a setback that spurred Rupert Murdoch to join the growing list of senior executives forgoing their bonuses for this year.
But while the US, like the rest of the world, is feeling the heat from COVID-19, much of News Corp’s pain came from Australia.
As the owner of 65 per cent of pay TV operator Foxtel, News Corp’s accounts give an insight into how Foxtel is travelling.
Coronavirus update: Follow all the latest news in our daily wrapAnd it’s not pretty.
“In one, two, three years, then either they totally change their business model and become like another Netflix, or, you know, another model that they may think of, otherwise I don’t think they will survive for much longer.”
As Virgin Australia found out a few weeks ago, when shareholders stop stumping up the cash for a loss-making business, the consequences are dire.
It beggars the question of just how many more $1 billion-plus writedowns Mr Murdoch is prepared to tolerate
Coronavirus losses may force Newscorp and Rupert Murdoch to rethink Foxtel business model – ABC News
This is symbolic of the REAL America today being led into the darkness by Trump (ODT)
A company that offered to make life-saving protective masks as the coronavirus began its spread across the U.S. in January was snubbed by government officials.
Michael Bowen, the owner of medical supply company Prestige Ameritech, told the Department of Health and Human Services that he could begin producing 1.7 million N95 masks a week, only to be denied, The Washington Post first reported.
“We still have four like-new N95 manufacturing lines,” Bowen emailed a top HHS official on Jan. 22, the day the first coronavirus case was detected in the country. “Reactivating these machines would be very difficult and very expensive but could be achieved in a dire situation.”
Laura Wolf, director of the agency’s Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection, responded that the government wasn’t “anywhere near answering those questions for you yet” in response to Bowen’s offer.
“We are the last major domestic mask company,” Bowen emailed the next day. “My phones are ringing now, so I don’t ‘need’ government business. I’m just letting you know that I can help you preserve our infrastructure if things ever get really bad. I’m a patriot first, businessman second.”
The new revelation is part of an 89-page whistleblower complaint from former federal vaccine chief Rick Bright, who alleges he was removed from his position as retaliation for his early warnings about the pandemic and his refusal to make “potentially harmful drugs” to combat the virus.
In the past, the Pentagon suggested that it does not have the resources to conduct on-the-ground investigations in cases in which civilians are alleged to have been killed. Recently, reports surfaced that the military has begun requesting more funds to help track civilian deaths. But independent researchers and nongovernmental organizations have already been carrying out such investigations for years, with far few resources than the Pentagon — with its vast budget — has at its disposal. All this raises the question of who exactly the military has been killing over nearly two decades of war.
via Pentagon Releases a Rosy Report on Civilian Casualties in Foreign Wars
US Military is in Colombia. The US is sanctioning Venezuela. The US wants Exxon to control the oil as they do in Iraq and Syria. Why Green Solar and Wind energy is essential (ODT)
Liberate citizens from the centrally controlled fossil fuel industries. Expand opportunities for work and self determination from the grass roots up transition to not from new opportunities. (ODT
Just as we’re remembering to wash our hands more than we used to, coming out of the pandemic, it will pay to be more attentive about remembering to choose the zero-emissions option at every step.
We stand at a crossroads. If government stimulus packages around the world favour carbon-intensive practices and miss the moment to modernise and decarbonise, we will lock ourselves into a warming future.
If, however, we rise to the challenge, we can use the recovery from one crisis to simultaneously address another.The Conversation
via Why it doesn’t make Economic Sense to Ignore Climate Change in our Recovery from the Epidemic
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