The Great Divider knows how to pit native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, whites against blacks and Latinos, evangelicals against secularists, keeping almost everyone stirred up by vilifying, disparaging, denouncing, defaming and accusing others of the worst. Trump thrives off disruption and division.
But that begs the question of why we have been so ready to be divided by Trump. The answer derives in large part from what has happened to wealth and power.
via Why Democrats share the blame for the rise of Donald Trump | Robert Reich | Opinion | The Guardian
He remains in the Oval Office because almost every Republican senator preferred being in power to upholding the democratic principles upon which the US was founded.
In his letter to the Auditor General, Lawrence Gibbons said: “The establishment of a $48 million fund to assist local publishers was promising, but the allocation of funds into coalition-held seats in another blatant display of pork barreling was greatly troubling. Local media outlets are a vital cornerstone to a functioning democracy. They deserve better than to be treated with outright contempt and disregard.”
Former Senator Mitch Fifield is now Australia’s Ambassador to the UN. He did not respond to a request for comment.
via Press Rorts: media grants target Coalition seats – Michael West
So Clive James had various ways to attack the notion of Climate Change. He would deride and belittle those who speak up about IPCC science. He used bon mots or clever twists in language to make jokes about his opponents, who may not be more than political opponents. He approved of those who claim to be experts in scepticism, without bothering to verify them any more than he checked the claims of IPCC science. He asserted claims which were already debunked numerous times. He peppered his writing with historical names as if their name proves something. Far from affirming science, he affirmed denial.
via More Clive James: Climate Change Sceptic (Part 2) – » The Australian Independent Media Network
LNP Economic Management
In addition to some very serious problems with progress with the SEA 1000 program, there are some more fundamental questions to be addressed in the longer term. The first of these is whether the Attack class will embody the technologies required to be successful in its operations in the mid-2030s and beyond. In other words, will it be fit for purpose? An associated question is around the submarine’s cost effectiveness. The escalating cost of this acquisition means that the opportunity cost is also going up. With the submarines being designed mainly for joint operations with the US Navy, there are also significant risks in the future around whether a continuing US presence can be assumed.
via Scrap submarines project before it’s too late says former public service boss – Michael West
The government should also ban video surveillance analytics in publicly accessible spaces, perhaps with exceptions for rare cases such as the detection of bodies on train tracks. Such a ban would disincentivize mass camera deployments because video analytics is needed to analyze large volumes of footage. Courts should urgently reconsider the scope of the Fourth Amendment and expand our right to privacy in public.
Another bet from a famous conservative caught my eye last week. The Times of London, owned by Rupert Murdoch, announced plans to launch a radio station. It seems likely that Murdoch, whose new station will “target those disenfranchised” by the BBC, is continuing to bet heavily on political polarisation as a major force in media.
It’s also a bet on radio and a prediction that the conservative government will not be kind to the national broadcaster. (It will be interesting to see if Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison follows British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on this, though the ABC’s coverage of the bushfires has made that harder.)
It’s simply a case of giving the rich mo0ney and having the poor pay (ODT)
Standing next to Trump was Israel’s beaming Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who just got more land than his far-right, expansionist coalition had even dreamed of. It was not a coincidence that Trump had recently been accused of high crimes by the US House, while his buddy ‘Bibi’ had just been indicted for low crimes by Israel’s attorney general.
However, the real godfather in this historic theft was sitting almost unnoticed by media next to the presidential podium, looking very much the proverbial cat that swallowed the canary. Billionaire gambling mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife beamed as their ‘boys’, Trump and Bibi, proclaimed their newly configured Mideast.
Close by was Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a friend of the Netanyahu clan. Kushner’s father, Charles, served 14 months in federal prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. Such is the milieu from which real estate developer Trump emerged.
via Trump/Bibi/Adelson Buy the Senate, by Eric Margolis – The Unz Review
How can Republicans pretend to the world that their vision of America – where a president can happily use military aid to coerce a foreign government to smear his political rival in an election – is the model for democracy?
Americans have become the doormats of their executive (ODT)
Grow Up Australia Wake Up! (ODT)
January 26 – ‘Australia Day’ – is a political project forced upon the nation by born-to-rulers. They want consensus for the wealth amassed through theft of Aboriginal peoples’ land and resources, and through the convict transportation system of slave labour. We will hear stories of triumphant ‘discovery’, and ‘progress’, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
So decrepit was the first New South Wales colony that the military controlled all economic activity (the Rum Corps) – a beacon of reaction against even liberal capitalists across the world.
Why on earth did the flatpack colony set up here? Eight years prior to the Fleet’s arrival Captain Cook (the bloke we have memorials for across the country) was given urgent orders by London to find suitable land to establish a penal colony. After hundreds of years of wreaking absolute havoc on the peoples of England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, British prisons were bursting at the seams.
Crime was a construction of the empire – a new and experimental time for creating systems of control. Political dissidents, peasants and workers attempting to defend themselves since the Enclosures and now facing violent industrialisation, were locked up in their thousands for crimes of theft, treason, riot, incitement, seditious libel and more.
via We’ll Never Advance Australia Fair Until We Face Our Black Past – New Matilda
Back to the days of cutting pigtails and yelling Two Wongs don’t make a White. We haven’t moved very far. (ODT)
Racial remarks, misinformation and fearmongering in workplaces, on public transport, and on social media.
via Chinese-Australians Facing Racism After Coronavirus Outbreak | HuffPost Australia
So don’t let the government get away with claiming that it can’t afford to pay for these services. Don’t allow it to laud the efforts of well-meaning, altruistic Australians without demanding an explanation of why the private altruism was necessary. We have a government for the purposes of providing healthcare, emergency management, social welfare and a host of other social provisions that we can’t do on our own. We expect our government to provide these services without fear or favour, to the needy regardless of how loud or visible they are.
If our government is not doing these things, it is not fit for purpose. So why exactly does it exist?
via Doing it for ourselves – » The Australian Independent Media Network
You can blame the LNP for denying what has come to pass (ODT)
Any notion of power for the Common Good has been tossed. (ODT)
The cynical logic goes like this: it’s in the country’s interest that you stay in power, so any means to achieve that end is justified
This makes it hard to believe that the scolding from Alexander and his acolytes will matter a great deal, but it’s also hard to believe that anyone expected more. Alexander is not the hero that the impeachment process needed, nor perhaps even the one it deserved. But he is as close as anyone was going to get.
via Lamar Alexander Just Gave Democrats What They Wanted – The Atlantic
Australia’s answer to Margaret Thatcher. Appointing Anne Ruston as Families and Social Services Minister is up there with the sickest of cruel jokes.
At a forum with single mothers discussing being pushed into poverty, Senator Ruston dismissed the idea of raising Newstart in the most callous of ways.
“We can’t just keep on adding money to this bucket, because we’re not making a difference,” she said. “Giving (people) more money would do absolutely nothing … probably all it would do is give drug dealers more money and give pubs more money.”
“We’ve got to be fair to the people who pay for it.”
Holy shit Batman. Did she not realise who she was talking to?
via Anne Ruston – what a shocker – » The Australian Independent Media Network
LNP Management has increased surveillance in Australia X10 yet they are unable to collect taxes from Australia’s wealthiest and greatest avoiders. The smell of dead fish isn’t a stench coming from the Murray Darling alone it’s much closer to the ACT. (ODT)
In high school science you may have been taught that Earth is just a rock made out of nickel, iron, magnesium, potassium and silicon.
What they didn’t tell you is that at its core, the most common element is bullshit.
via Massacre of the English language in the name of jargon has a dark side
He’s certainly not Trumpish and he may be Populist but it’s when Socialism and Populism merge and are not just a Circus performance to entertain and divide the working class. (ODT)
via With Bernie Sanders Now a Frontrunner, Corporate Media Smears Him as Trump-ish | The Smirking Chimp
But Bernie is the only internationalist in the race. He’s been outspoken in criticizing the US war machine, working across party lines to end the war in Yemen and even criticizing past US interventions in Latin America. Though he hasn’t been as radical on immigration as some supporters would like, he’s articulated a clear critique of Trump’s cruel policies. Compared to 2016, he has been far bolder about identifying as a person from a working-class immigrant family, raised by people who faced genocide abroad as well as poverty and discrimination in their chosen country.
It’s no surprise that he’s enormously popular among American Muslims and Latinos. While Trump’s war on immigrants is intended to appeal to provincial elites who disdain the global poor, and to divide the white American working class from its immigrant counterparts, Bernie’s support of immigrants represents a genuine socialist solidarity with the international working class.
Of course they do after all you have to have the “Money to buy it” as the song goes. The left is never as coonsolidated as the right is when it comes to money. There’s a queue at GOP and Trump doors ready and waiting to sell them influence at all times. (ODT)
Republicans now say that soliciting or accepting help from foreign governments in U.S. elections is acceptable, after once pushing back on the notion when President Donald Trump floated it in an interview last year.
Democrats have been left “stunned” after Trump’s impeachment defense team suggested during the Q&A portion of the Senate impeachment trial that soliciting or accepting information from foreign governments about one’s political rivals is OK so long as the information is “credible.”
For years Israel has backed itself into a morally and politically unjustifiable position regarding its occupation of the Palestinian territories. Now, Israel is turning to the U.S. to help defend it. The country’s relentless pursuit to settle its Jewish citizens across the West Bank has precluded any chance of partitioning the land into two independent polities, leaving millions of Palestinians stateless and living under an interminable military regime, with no civil or political rights.
Trump’s deal gives Israel a superpower endorsement of apartheid – +972 Magazine
The platypus, a beloved emblem of Australia and a symbol of the strangeness of evolution, is at risk of extinction.
That’s according to a new study published in the February issue of Biological Conservation, which suggests the humble beaked mammal is at greater risk of becoming extinct than previously thought. As the tragic bushfires in Australia blanketed the island continent, the platypuses were “invisible victims,” as Atlas Obscura wrote.
Australia’s Shame…. ” Climate Change is Crap” Australia’s PM Tony Abbott (ODT)
This supposes what Trump a 16,000 + count Fact Check liar since his inaugauration is now being pleaded by his defence for his unbridled honesty. If you believe that then you do believe their are fairies at the end of the garden. (ODT)
The day began with a question from moderate Republican senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.
They asked Trump’s legal defence team whether they had any indication that Trump was concerned about the actions of Joe Biden in Ukraine before Biden became a candidate for president.
Trump’s lawyers could not cite any example of him doing so
“So I can’t point to something in the record that shows President Trump at an earlier time mentioning specifically something related to Joe or Hunter Biden.”
via Trump impeachment: US President’s lawyer Alan Dershowitz stuns with US election campaign defence
In stump speeches made in January, Trump mentioned Sanders’s name — or, as Trump refers to him, “Crazy Bernie” — eight times as often as Biden.
Trump, if he wants to get serious about Sanders, may need to come up with a more effective nickname for the unorthodox independent senator from Vermont. “Crazy Bernie,” like Trump’s “Crazy Nancy” for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is the name Trump resorts to for political rivals he doesn’t know how to handle.
The Right-Wing is turning on itself and it’s not just Fox Media. (ODT)
via Segment Of Trump’s Border Wall Falls Over Into Mexico Due To Wind | HuffPost Australia
Sixteen years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, most Americans understand that it was an illegal war based on lies about non-existent “weapons of mass destruction.” But our government is now threatening to drag us into a war on Iran with a nearly identical “big lie” about a non-existent nuclear weapons program, based on politicized intelligence from the same CIA teams that wove a web of lies to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The U.S. Is Recycling Its Big Lie About Iraq To Target Iran | The Smirking Chimp
Like Dupont Corporations have the power to make the thought of Common Good go away (ODT)
“They are trying to totally destroy me.”
Donziger is not exaggerating. As he was arguing the case against Chevron in Ecuador back in 2009, the company expressly said its long-term strategy was to demonize him. And since then, Chevron has continued its all-out assault on Donziger in what’s become one of the most bitter and drawn-out cases in the history of environmental law. Chevron has hired private investigators to track Donziger, created a publication to smear him, and put together a legal team of hundreds of lawyers from 60 firms, who have successfully pursued an extraordinary campaign against him. As a result, Donziger has been disbarred and his bank accounts have been frozen. He now has a lien on his apartment, faces exorbitant fines, and has been prohibited from earning money. As of August, a court has seized his passport and put him on house arrest. Chevron, which has a market capitalization of $228 billion, has the funds to continue targeting Donziger for as long as it chooses.
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