Oh Tony Abbott will be disappointed!! He wanted us to be ever so British and an honarary member of NATO and a leading member of the global Coalition. The LNP wante to even be world Arms Dealer and not just a buyer. It seems his and the LNP thought bubble have been well and truley popped. (ODT)
As with climate policy, Australia’s leadership is too close to America, too close to Rupert Murdoch and too weak to secure the country from future military threats. This is the second in the “Second Rate Leadership”, series by former public service chief Jon Stanford.
Category: Uncategorized
Speaking of urgency, how long do you think it’ll take for that report on whether Bridget McKenzie breached ministerial standards to reach the PM’s desk? It’s been a week and nothing yet. I mean, it’s not like they need to wait for DNA samples to come back from the lab.
But I guess it’s hard to convince someone to take one for the team when everyone else is playing for themselves.
via Scott Morrison Dazzles At The National Press Club… – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The old man the young with heart love and they along with Women and Black Americans have the capacity to change America’s Direction (ODT)
“Sanders is a movement candidate — who will be accountable to our generation,” Carney replied. “He has proven that he is aligned with the version of the world that we want to create. And since before our generation was born, he was fighting the injustices that we are fighting today.”
New Hampshire Youth Movement is a natural ally of the Bernie 2020 campaign, as the organization’s website makes clear:
via Bernie Sanders and His Movement Are on the Verge of History
Quid Pro Quo there is nothing more certain than Trump expects a return from Israel.(ODT)
Palestinians have an opportunity to stop annexation. But it may mean taking drastic steps, such as dismantling the Palestinian Authority and putting an end to security coordination with Israel.
via Trump just green-lit annexation. Here’s how Palestinians can stop it – +972 Magazine
Advertisers are it seems thin on the ground when searching for arenas of truth (ODT)
In 2007, after Fox & Friends promoted a quickly debunked report that then-Sen. Barack Obama had gone to school at an extremist Islamic madrassa as a child, a top Fox News executive issued a truly startling internal memo to the network’s newsroom. “For the record,” then-Vice President of News John Moody wrote, “seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC.”
Thirteen years later, Facebook has reportedly named Jennifer Williams, who was a Fox & Friends senior producer at the time that memo was sent, to head video strategy for the social media giant’s forthcoming Facebook News,
Rather than practicing unquestioning allegiance, Chomsky recommends active questioning, telling Scheer, “You don’t love a state and follow its policies. … You criticize what’s wrong, try to change the policies, expose them; criticize it, change it.”
Chomsky was referring to Israel, but he could just as easily be talking about America, or even Americans’ attitude toward their preferred candidates. For his clear-eyed analysis of America under Trump, his decades-strong willingness to challenge authority and admit uncomfortable truths, and boundless intellectual energy, Noam Chomsky is our Truthdigger of the month.
the best evidence indicates that the wishes of ordinary Americans [have] little or no impact on the making of federal government policy. Wealthy individuals and organized interest groups—especially business corporations—have … much more political clout. … [T]he general public [is] … virtually powerless. … The will of majorities is … thwarted by the affluent and the well-organized, who block popular policy proposals and enact special favors for themselves. … Majorities of Americans favor specific policies designed to deal with such problems as climate change, gun violence, an untenable immigration system, inadequate public schools, and crumbling bridges and highways. … Large majorities of America favor various programs to help provide jobs, increase wages, help the unemployed, provide universal medical insurance, ensure decent retirement pensions, and pay for such programs with progressive taxes. Most Americans also want to cut “corporate welfare.” Yet the wealthy, business groups, and structural gridlock have mostly blocked such new policies. …
Murdoch is the proxy State Media for the LNP government “No questions asked” as long as you slash the funding to the ABC. Today our public media has been reduced ti the equivalent funding it had in 1984. This Government rode into power on the promis of No Cuts to the ABC. (ODT)
Any decent journalist would have asked basic questions such as:
How and when did the extraordinary surge in asylum seekers come about?
How big is the problem, really, given the Government is saying it is no big deal?
Is the Government really getting on top of the problem or are they just spinning a line?
What is the surge costing the economy and the budget?’
Does the Government actually have an effective plan to get on top of the problem?’But no, Chambers and Kelly just happily ignore such basic questions.
via ‘The Australian’ falls for Government spin on asylum seekers — again
“Does the minister agree that, whatever debate there may be concerning the principle of ministerial responsibility, the practice has almost invariably been that a minister resigns when his or her continued presence is causing damage and embarrassment to that government?” John Howard
While Australia bleeds, corporate multi-nationals are ripping us off blind, none more so than the major accounting firms.
As the nation watches its environment undergo perhaps the worst hit to its resilience with ongoing water shortages, a bushfire catastrophe, accompanied by declines in our gross domestic product (GDP) through unprecedented losses to agriculture, tourism, business, biodiversity and timber resources, major accounting firms are reaping the benefit of our privatised public sector to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
via ‘Unaccountable’: Accounting firms secure lucrative government contracts
The Trump administration did not consult the Palestinians in drawing up the plan, which gives away East Jerusalem and 30% of the Palestinian West Bank to Israel. The Palestinians may as well, Palestine foreign minister Saeb Erekat said, just withdraw from the 1995 Interim Agreement on Oslo.
Trump appears to have decided to unveil the Israel-Palestine plan on Tuesday to take the pressure off from his Senate impeachment trial and to shore up his support from the Jewish and evangelical communities. A majority of Americans in polls say they want Trump impeached and removed from office.
Morrison’s It’s all too much Australia pray! Frydenbergs resilient Nation is waiting for the NBN to kick in while the world passes by. (ODT)
No action from Morrison Government as NBN continues downward trend
Tony Abbott tried to set up a Climate Council within our Universities with the cheap $4million Bribe and Dr Bjorn Blomborg sold to us by News Corp as the world’s foremost intellect on Climate Change why? So Abbott could control “his” argument on Climate. Abbott did much the same supporting the Ramsay Foundation’s bribe of Universities to control our Culture and History. Again with the full backing and sale by News Corp The Spectator and Quadrant.
Twiggy Forrest is doing an Abbott controlling his Philanthropic Grant to consolidate his and Mining’s message on Climate. This isn’t generosity driven by any means but rather a bribe and grab for power and the privatisation of the Science much the same as when big Tobacco and Big Pharma wanted to control the research and thus the message vitally needed to serve their interests rather than the Common Good . Forrest is a Miner afterall. (ODT)
What Andrew Forest does is avoid paying tax and instead makes donations, so that he gets to control who and how the money is used, while also building up his reputation as a good Aussie bloke.
Not one Australian has voted for Twiggy and yet he helps set government policy, along with his profiteering climate change denier mates.
A true philanthropist is one that gives; not one who seeks fame and glory or the power to control how their gift is used.
It’s likely that Andrew Twiggy Forest is far from a true philanthropist.
Dutton is keeping up his reputation from the worst Minister for Health ever to the worst Homeland Minister. He simply doesn’t no what he’s doing. (ODT)
There are possible explanations for Dutton’s and Pezzullo’s failure in the bushfire emergency.
The first is sheer incompetence and the collapsed morale in the Department of Home Affairs. Abul Rizvi has cited numerous examples of just that.
The second explanation is, as an insider in Emergency Management Australia (EMA) told me, the focus in EMA has been the possible threat of terrorism to the neglect of other threats like bushfires. Presumably, this focus has been at the direction of Dutton and Pezzullo. This is consistent with the way we know that Dutton and Pezzullo have operated for many years — frighten us about the threat of terrorism because that delivers more political dividends.
Or is there just confusion in the Government about who is responsible? Is there shared responsibility with the Minister for Agriculture and Water David Littleproud?
At least one thing is very clear and that is the responsibility of the Department of Home Affairs for Commonwealth Emergency Management. It has failed in that responsibility.
Momentum is growing to call witnesses to Donald Trump’s impeachment trial after it was revealed his former national security advisor has written a book manuscript saying Trump directly tied military aid to Ukraine to politically-motivated investigations.
The revelations about John Bolton’s forthcoming book have shaken up the Senate impeachment trial, which appeared to be moving toward a speedy acquittal for Trump as early as the end of the week.
via ‘This is a game-changer’: John Bolton revelations upend Trump’s impeachment trial
Is Trump’s Impeachment raising Bernie? (ODT)
According to a Media Matters review Fox News prime-time hosts completely ignored the devastating bushfires raging across Australia during the first three months of the crisis It was only after a Rupert Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper started pushing a misleading talking point about arson that Fox’s Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham picked up the story to distract from the role of climate change in accelerating the crisis.
Members of Trump’s impeachment team have been fixtures on cable news, primarily Fox
Conservatives complaining about NPR’s government funding is nothing new. In his budget proposals, Trump has repeatedly signaled a desire to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes government funds to public TV and radio stations. So far, that hasn’t happened.
It’s also important to note that only a small portion of NPR’s funding actually comes from tax dollars. According to its latest financial report, just 1 percent of its annual operating budget consists of “grants from Corporation for Public Broadcasting and federal agencies and departments.” Most of its funding comes from corporate sponsorships and dues paid by member stations across the country. Those member stations in turn receive about 12 percent of their funding from the CPB and other federal, state, and local government sources. Some stations also receive money from colleges and universities.
via Trump Threatens to Cut NPR’s Funding After Pompeo Meltdown – Mother Jones
Scotty from Marketing, as The Betoota Advocate dubs our Schlockmeister of spin, is busier than a one-eyed cat watching two rat-holes. The parliamentary year from hell awaits. After his “miracle victory” pitch, an upset helped hugely by political cane toad, Clive Palmer, and his gift of sixty million dollars of anti-Labor negative advertising plus Scotty’s own campaign of outright lies about Opposition policy and endless defamatory attacks on Bill Shorten’s character, Scotty’s political future is already in extremis.
“PR is the place people end up when all other professional options fail, writer and lawyer Richard Ackland, unerringly, observes, “and now Schmo has failed at the failures’ last resort.”
I knew a toddler once who used to write on his bedroom wall with his own faeces. There’s a future for him with the Murdochracy, I think. (MC)
The Vermont senator is now the first choice of 25% of voters, the New York Times/Siena College survey found, an increase of six points from a similar poll taken in October.
A drop in popularity of Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator, from 22% to 15% accounts for Sanders’ boosted standing, with Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and former vice-president Joe Biden stagnant in second and third place respectively with 18 and 17%.
Sanders, 78, has been “consolidating support from liberals and benefiting from divisions among more moderate presidential candidates who are clustered behind him”, the New York Times article accompanying the poll data claimed.
via Bernie Sanders surges in Iowa poll ahead of caucuses | US news | The Guardian
A full, 80-minute video of President Donald Trump calling for the ambassador of Ukraine to be booted out of her post was released by PBS News on Saturday.
A portion of the recording shows Trump in frame of the video, which was filmed at a private dinner on April 30, 2018, PBS reported. The recording also picked up Trump telling his associates to “get rid” of then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, adding that they needed to “take her out.”
The release of the video recording confirms that Trump indeed called for Yovanovitch’s ouster, as suggested by reports from ABC News and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Friday.
Watch The Full Video Of Trump Ordering For Marie Yovanovitch’s Ouster | HuffPost Australia
Donald Trump Has Been A Strong Witness Against Himself
Trump the Hero of the Middle East (ODT)
via Tens of Thousands of Iraqis mass in Baghdad to Demand Expulsion of US Troops, Hang Trump in Effigy
But most of all, I hate being lied to.
So no, I don’t feel proud today. I feel angry at how a great country is being destroyed by political hacks whose only goal is to keep their nose in the trough.
What mattered, in that it was useful for electoral purposes, is that stigmatising a minority community may gain votes. Race-baiting and dog-whistling are where Australian politics comes from. It has been so for a long time. Whether it was the original invaders treating Indigenous People like value-less fauna, and later on like ‘savages’; the enactment of the Influx of Chinese Restriction Act enacted in New South Wales in 1881, followed in time by other jurisdictions, because of ‘moral panic’ over Chinese miners; the discrimination against Irish because of the ignorant assumption that they were all Catholics and thus potential fifth-columnists; the internment of Germans as ‘enemy aliens’ during the first world war, and of German, Italian and Japanese ‘enemy aliens’ during the second world war; the mind-twisting obsession with ‘Asian crime gangs’ in the 1980s; or the anti-Lebanese and anti-Muslim sentiment which fuelled the Cronulla riots in late 2005, and the present Islamophobia fuelled by another ignorant, Pauline Hanson and her followers and imitators, Australia has wasted most of its historical efforts demonising one group or another.
But there is no improvement on the horizon, and not for want of trying.
via Comedy without art (part 6) – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Given people’s unhappiness, I thought I’d give you my own list.
It’s true Australia is responsible for about 1.2 per cent of global emissions. It’s also true that we contribute a quarter of exports that make up the world’s coal trade and just became the biggest gas exporter.
So what effect does the action we take on climate change within Australia have on cutting emissions? What is our part in solving a problem that is, by its nature, global?
via Australia emits 1.2 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases. So who must act to cut emissions?
As per an analysis by FiveThirtyEight.com, the 3.5% unemployment figure is misleading; only about half of all employable Americans are working full time, 10% are working part time, 2.1% are actively seeking work but are unemployed, and 1.8% are not seeking work but want a job. A whopping 35% are out of the job market and not actively seeking work.
via Trump’s Rosy Economic Outlook Is a Big Lie | The Smirking Chimp
An audio recording reviewed by ABC News captured President Donald Trump demanding the ouster of then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch during a 2018 dinner with a group of associates that included Lev Parnas, the indicted businessman Trump has repeatedly claimed not to know.
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