Source: Commonwealth Bank earnings top $10 billion as interest rate rises boost profit margins – ABC News
The spiralling cost of our alliance with the United States goes way beyond the $368B AUKUS deal and joined intelligence and communications facilities. Australia is paying the price of reduced independence, as Rex Patrick reports.
attitudes toward China are somewhat rosier in middle-income than high-income countries. Across eight middle-income countries – places Pew Research Center has not surveyed since 2019 due to the challenges of conducting face-to-face interviews during the pandemic – India stands out as the only middle-income country in which a majority has unfavourable views of China. And in three middle-income countries – Kenya, Mexico and Nigeria – a majority even gives China a positive rating.
Source: Of 24 countries, Australia has the most unfavourable view of China – Pearls and Irritations
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – White Power nationalism in South Africa during the Apartheid period from the 1940s until the early 1990s demanded that the 20% of the population that was white control the lives of the 68% of the population that was Black. (Actually, during this era the whites declined to only 13% by 1990, and Blacks increased to 76%). Education was one way that Blacks were kept down. They were, or many were, offered an education, but only one that led to working class status. Maria Lizet Ocampo writes at a Stanford University page, ‘The Apartheid system created
here we have an exact parallel to the South African system. Extremist Bezalel Smotrich, minister of finance, has frozen $680 million in funding earmarked for the development of largely Palestinian East Jerusalem. A portion of this funding was to prepare Palestinian-Israeli students for entry into the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. So reports Gianluca Pacchiani at The Times of Israel.
Smotrich alleged that there was a problem of “Islamic radical cells” in Israeli colleges and universities. Smotrich’s office could not provide any evidence of such cells when the press asked about the issue. (That is because Smotrich made the whole thing up.)
Pacchiani writes, “Smotrich said that the sum will be earmarked for training East Jerusalem Arabs for ‘high-productivity’ professions instead of encouraging their integration into Israeli academia.”
Bingo. That is precisely the program of South African Apartheid in the second half of the twentieth century. Precisely. An exact parallel.
LNP argue for “More of the Same” Are we even at the forefront of the best of all possible worlds? The LNP say “yes vote No”
White Australians like to think of themselves as an egalitarian and frank people, despising pretentiousness, while basking in a reputation for larrikinism and mateship. But this is all a front, papering over a culture that is deeply racist, excessively masculinist, and incorrigibly populist. Indeed, from its very beginnings, white Australia has been a morally backward society. And there are no signs that this is abating. Its moral backwardness is disgustingly on show in the No campaign against the forthcoming referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
Source: White Australia’s moral backwardness – Pearls and Irritations
In the Sofronoff inquiry, Counsel Assisting, Ms Erin Longbottom went straight for the jugular of Shane Drumgold, prosecutor in the Bruce Lehrmann rape trial. She made mincemeat of him. By the end of her display of complete dominance, he was a shattered wreck. He had withdrawn his suggestions of political interference, softened his criticism of police resistance to a prosecution, and admitted that some statements he had made to the presiding judge were not well-phrased. Report summaries of the Sofronoff inquiry into the ACT Justice system suggest Drumgold was entirely to blame. This is tosh, the more so for being completely over the top.
Source: Shane Drumgold, despite his alleged sins, is an unlikely master villain – Pearls and Irritations
The chair of an inquiry into how the justice system handled Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations could be referred to the ACT integrity commission for leaking the final report to two journalists.
Source: Lehrmann inquiry head could face probe over report leak
“Eye-watering”, “fines jump 10,000% in huge crackdown”! The Big 4 crackdown has arrived in the most cracking down fashion. But what is it really? Michael West reports.
Source: Crackdown! Better watch out you Big 4, we’ll wave a stern finger at yers – Michael West
Former cabinet minister Stuart Robert met tech giant Infosys multiple times when the company was seeking lucrative contracts including a deal it won to build a government payment system later scrapped at a cost of $191 million.
The company revealed the 11 meetings in answers to a parliamentary inquiry that is examining the close ties between Robert and his consultant friend, David Milo, whose firm Synergy 360 asked companies for “success fees” to line up contracts in Canberra
Source: Stuart Robert met Infosys 11 times before $191m deal
Will this bring on a Royal Commission the likes of the one held in the UK to determine if News Corp is fit to retain their license? It’s a question China had no trouble awnsering.
Murdoch media is to face scrutiny as Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission (AFMRC) works with expert researchers to monitor News Corp’s Voice Referendum coverage. Leading researcher for the project, Dr Victoria Fielding reports.
Source: News Corp bullies to be held accountable over one-sided Voice coverage
Really, is it any wonder that we’re struggling to find the political drive and commitment to finally come to grips with the catastrophic problems that threaten the viability of this planet? Only the evangelists are smiling – they have the Rapture to look forward to! But only in their own deluded psychopathic minds, that is!
Source: Psychopathic link to Climate Denial – » The Australian Independent Media Network
If we let the current situation persist — if we let those with control maintain that control — we doom ourselves to death on a dying planet. And our children will curse us indeed for doing it.
Source: The Later We Stop, The Worse the Result | The Smirking Chimp
Aside from the devastating loss of human life, the attack on Ukraine by Russian forces has resulted in a massive environmental catastrophe, writes Sue Arnold.
Source: Russia’s attack on Ukraine leaving catastrophic toll on environment
The Israeli Jews are rejecting the creation of a unitary executive chosen by those in power. Goodbye to the Separation of Powers.
The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that on Friday evening, Israeli squatters in the Palestinian West Bank went wilding at a nearby Palestinian hamlet, Burqa, in the northwest of Nablus governorate, attacking the Palestinian inhabitants as Israeli troops gave them cover. We might note that the settling of Israelis in a militarily occupied territory is grossly illegal in international law and is the sort of thing Nazi Germany did to Poland, and that these squatters had no business being there at all, and certainly had no business rampaging into a Palestinian hamlet.
Apparently, in America, you can walk into a bank and yell “This is a hold-up ” according to Trump. You’re protected under the First Amendment’s and “free speech” protection.
Prosecutors on Friday had asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan for a protective order limiting how evidence from the trial may be handled. That filing pointed to a post from Trump on his Truth Social site that said, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
One might well ask why Stuart Robert has never been charged with corruption after the number of times he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar?
That’s what the rule of law is all about. At this moment, 400,000 criminal defendants in the United States are awaiting trial in jail because they didn’t meet a condition of their release.
Source: Will Donald Trump Go to Jail Before His Trial Even Begins? | The Smirking Chimp
Clearly, the near-empty chamber at the beginning of the week was no harbinger of a change of the Liberal leader’s ( Peter Dutton’s) heart.”
Source: “For a… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
Walter Sofronoff has gone into hiding after illegally leaking the ACT Inquiry Report to Bruce Lehrmann’s favourite propagandist at News Corp’s The Australian Janet Albrechtsen and the ABC even before he handed the Report to the ACT government.
Consulting giant KPMG has been accused by whistleblowers of wasting public money, submitting inflated invoices and billing the Department of Defence for hours never worked.
…… and the graft goes on. Think Deloitte, KMPG, and Ernst Young along with etc etc etc,
Scale Facilitation is in default in its takeover of Britishvolt. After a crime taskforce raid in Australia and failures to pay staff in the US, its chief executive David A. Collard remains defiant. Sean Johnson of Open Politics questions why PwC is getting paid when staff and creditors have been missing out.
Source: Is PwC caught up in Scale Facilitation’s alleged $150 million tax fraud? – Michael West
All in the face of a concentrated media, 60% plus owned by Rupert Murdoch, who denies there is any crisis impending us or the rest of the planet.
Extreme climate impacts are exploding in this year’s Northern Hemisphere summer. We urgently need to understand how climate disruption will affect Australians: their safety and well-being in the face of ever-more-extreme climate events, the viability of public and private infrastructure, communications and logistical systems, challenges to food security, and much more.
Source: Are we failing to see the wood for the trees on climate risks? – Pearls and Irritations
Imran Khan was challenged by the current Pakistan government and thrown out of government. He’s been arrested on count after count,53 in fact, and imprisoned just before the nation’s current election. There is no “equivalence” in these cases to Donald Trump who actually should be wearing an orange jumpsuit but isn’t and is claiming martyrdom. There is, in the case of Russia’s Alexei Navalny who just received an extra 19 years imprisonment for his opposition to Putin who tried to have him killed. Strange even Australia’s Julian Assange is more dangerous than Donald Trump who still is walking about scot-free having been charged and is issuing threats publicly.
We recently celebrated the Indian President Narendra Modi declaring we share the same Ideology and do the same with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu who’s Religious dictatorships are the antithesis of our idea of Democracy
“If you’re watching this video,” Khalid said, “it means that I’ve been arrested.”
Source: Umar Khalid Challenged Modi’s Anti-Muslim Agenda. India Locked Him Up.
three myths that stand in the way of understanding ancient slavery and how systems of enslavement have evolved over time.
Source: Dismantling the Myth that Ancient Slavery “Wasn’t that Bad”
It hardly speaks to the truth given the Australian ALP Government’s attitude to the current state of Israel. The Albanese government seems blind to the true face of Israel being revealed and this says a lot about us. There is a disjunct between what Australians believe and the government that represents us to the rest of the world. A government that no longer believes in the UN.
For months, Arabic media in the Middle East has been following the mass protests against the Israeli government and its judicial overhaul with great interest. Many Arab political commentators agree that they are witnessing a moment of unprecedented crisis and division in Israel; some believe that the rise of fascism there is an important development, as it puts the state on a path of self-destruction while revealing its true face to the world.
Source: The Arabic media on Israel’s crisis: Don’t interfere with its implosion
The Israeli military claimed it found an M16 rifle in the car, to back up its assertion that this was a “terrorist cell” on its way to carry out an attack. However, it is unclear why a group of three Palestinian resistance fighters on their way to engage in an operation would be carrying only a single weapon between them.
Defense for Children International-Palestine reported on Sunday evening that the three included a child:
Source: Ben-Gvir praises settlers who killed teen as “heroes” | The Electronic Intifada
Wars the US waged in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan following September 11, 2001 caused at least 4.5 million deaths and displaced 38 to 60 million people, with 7.6 million children starving today, according to studies by Brown University.
We know the current system is not working as it should.
Source: First Nations healthcare is crying out for an Indigenous voice | Georgia Corrie | The Guardian
Little more than a month after they became law, Western Australia is reportedly set to scrap its controversial Indigenous cultural heritage laws.
Due more to the courts than politicians, native forest logging may be nearing an end. Recent court judgements in Victorian Supreme and and Federal courts don’t augur well for the logging industry. Sue Arnold reports.
The world’s oceans hit an average temperature of 20.96°C (69.728°F ) this week, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. It is the highest average ocean temperature ever recorded, beating a previous record from 2016. So reports Rosie Frost at Euronews.
Source: Oceans Hit Hottest Average Temperature ever Recorded, endangering Ecosystems on which We Depend
Bruce Lehrmann has at least 2 other alleged rape victims, but he has not sued them for defamation or sued the media who have published reports about their alleged rapes by Bruce Lehrmann.
The articles are still freely available on the internet, and will likely be there forever, which is very telling given that Bruce Lehrmann is currently suing the media for claiming he raped Brittany Higgins. In fact, the ABC have reported all 3 alleged rapes, but Lehrmann is only suing them for one alleged rape which makes no sense unless the other 2 rapes are true.
Andrew Bolt has always claimed his is the right of “free speech” When Judge Mordecai Bromberg found him guilty he whined like a spoilt child. He still does today yet we continue to let Murdoch Sky News anchors get away with blue murder. Australia doesn’t even have American First Amendment protections. It has prohibitively expensive defamation laws that protect the people that work for Murdoch.
“A person cannot walk into a bank and say, ‘stick ’em up,’ and then cling to the First Amendment’s protections.” Similarly, it’s not “free speech” when Trump told people to commit crimes for him, simply because he used his mouth to do so. Even Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, dismissed this gambit by saying, “free speech doesn’t give you the right to engage in a fraudulent conspiracy.” As Barr pointed out, no conspiracy charge could stick if the “conspiring” part was excluded from evidence.
Source: Trump’s Jan. 6 Defense Strategy: “Flood the Zone With Shit” | The Smirking Chimp
The order, different from a “gag order,” would limit what information Trump and his legal team could share publicly about the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith
Chutkan on Saturday gave Trump’s legal team until 5 p.m. Monday to respond to the government’s request. Trump’s legal team, which has indicated he would look to slow the case down despite prosecutors’ pledge of a speedy trial, then filed a request to extend the response deadline to Thursday and to hold a hearing on the matter, saying it needed more time for discussion.
Chutkan swiftly denied that extension request Saturday evening, reaffirming that Trump must abide by Monday’s deadline.
Protective orders are common in criminal cases, but prosecutors said it’s “particularly important in this case” because Trump has posted on social media about “witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him.”
Prosecutors pointed specifically to a post on Trump’s Truth Social platform from earlier Friday in which Trump wrote, in all capital letters, “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!”
The sole criminal prohibition that would disqualify Trump from the ballot,(is found) under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, where “insurrection,” is made criminal by 18 United States Code Section 2383.
Section 3 categorically disqualifies from public office at any level of government any official who, after having taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, engages in “insurrection” against it.
We urge Special Counsel Jack Smith to unilaterally, or with the approval of Attorney General Garland, return to the federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., and ask for a superseding indictment adding a count for insurrection in violation of Section 2383. Not a single word in the factual narrative of the preceding indictment need be changed.
The future of our Republic is too important to be left to shortchanging the fullest legal case against Trump.
Source: Opinion | Indict Trump for Insurrection, Too | Common Dreams
If anyone else made a threat like that they’d be wearing an orange jump suit.
US prosecutors fear former president Donald Trump may intimidate witnesses after he made a threatening social media post stating: ‘IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU’.
The comment on Mr Trump’s Truth Social site was made a day after he pleaded not guilty on Friday (AEDT) to illegally trying to reverse his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Source: Trump could have ‘harmful chilling effect’ on witnesses: Prosecutors
In the past any accountability has been well after the damage was done, years in fact. This ass-hole has simply been allowed to get away with it even when proven wrong.
Murdoch media is to face scrutiny as Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission (AFMRC) works with leading researchers to monitor its Voice Referendum coverage. Leading researcher for the project, Dr Victoria Fielding reports.
Source: News Corp bullies to be held accountable over one-sided Voice coverage
Andrew Bolt for years insisted that the REAL science showed us the world was cooling from 1998 until 2018. He falsely accredited himself with Adelaide University qualifications when he had none. He was even included in the IPA’s book published at the time of REAL facts and declared a “world expert. Today Mr Bolt is a nobody even in the current decibel output of the News Corp’s new brigade of climate deniers claiming to provide us with the REAL facts. They have all barrelled over the top of Andrew Who? Who has been left behind in their wake.
Given the gravity of climate denialism’s consequences, it should in the future be considered a serious crime. We would not be in this perilous position without it. This isn’t Thought Police shit, calm down Twitter Blue subscriber, this is about perspective, about survival, about punishments fitting the scale of the sin. We lock teenagers up for possessing marijuana; why not CEOs, and politicians and journalists for collaborating with our species’ own demise? At the very least, opinions as thickheaded as these should get you tarred and feathered on the back of a donkey as the village jeers and hurls mud, rotten fruit pelting perpetrators as they begin an exiled existence roaming the ever-warmer desert wastelands at the edge of the known world. We would all be better off for it.
Source: During Earth’s hottest year, Murdoch’s climate denial is un-fucking-hinged – The Shot
Have you ever asked why so many of the loudest, but aged voices, in media came from country towns or a working-class background? They were apprentices and the local paper in town was a means to not being a farm worker or laborer. They didn’t go to university they were trained in verifying and reporting facts not simply the secondhand fantasies and rumors of who said what to whom. That certainly changed when journalism became a university degree and facts were shown the back door to opinion a commodity in itself to be bought and sold..
It’s not just the obscenely wealthy owners of the mass media who are protecting their class interests — it’s the reporters, editors and pundits as well.
All the most widely amplified voices in our society are the celebrities, journalists, pundits and politicians who’ve proven themselves to be reliable stewards of the matrix of narrative control which keeps the public jacked in to the mainstream worldview.
Is it any wonder, then, that all the sources we’ve been taught to look to for information continually feed us stories which give the impression that the status quo is working fine and this is the only way things can possibly be?
Is it any wonder that the mass media support all U.S. wars and cheerlead all imperial agendas?
This is how things were set up to be. Our media act like propagandists for a tyrannical regime because that’s exactly what they are.
After all the conniving corruption of the Coalition’s Luddite term of office, one might have reasonably concluded that they had drained the swamp of their own making. But more alleged corruption has surfaced from the residue left behind.
There’s something quite terrible about what’s happening in Australia. If I can sum it up it goes something like this:
There’s a suggestion that the Indigenous population will be given a Voice to Parliament but unless I know what they’re going to say I don’t think that they should be allowed to speak.
The gospel of Scott Morrison is his most poisonous legacy
Source: “Even with… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
If U.S. income inequality had remained at its 1975 level through 2018, how much more money would the bottom 90 percent of Americans have made during these 43 years? Put another way, how much additional wealth flowed to the top 10 percent during this time, thanks to increased income equality?
If you have a butt, you should hold onto it, because the answer is 47 TRILLION DOLLARS.
Source: The “Free” Market Myth That Justified History’s Greatest Heist
Israeli MP calls for taking away the rights of its Palestinian citizens.
Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico can’t vote for national offices like president, senator or congressman. That is the point of the Jewish Power proposal– they want to rule over Palestinians but not let them have the vote. But note that Puerto Ricans do vote for a governor of the islands, who serves a four-year term, and a legislature. Again, I doubt Jewish Power would let Palestinians vote for a Palestinian Parliament and Palestinian governor.
Source: Israeli Extremists Shamefully propose “Puerto Rican” Model for Palestinians
However not so trump appointed Judge Cannon
Right-wing media are attacking Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will preside over Donald Trump’s pending criminal case in Washington D.C.
Chutkan was randomly selected to preside over the case. Appointed by former President Obama, she has been described as a “tough Jan. 6 sentencer” of defendants who participated in the insurrection, though she has “avoided some of the most pointed criticisms of Trump that some of her colleagues on the federal bench in D.C. have delivered.”
Media figures on the right have leveled numerous attacks and charges against her, describing her as politically motivated, and calling for her recusal in the case against the former president.
Source: Conservatives bash judge in Trump’s indictment, call for her recusal | Media Matters for America
THE KEY DATE TO KEEP IN MIND is January 20, 2025. Trump’s main legal defense will be to stall the start of any trial until after that date.
If U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan rejects Trump’s motion to delay, his lawyers will appeal her decision to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. If the D.C. Court of Appeals rejects the motion, he’ll appeal to the Supreme Court.
Given the makeup of the current Supreme Court, a majority of the justices are likely to go along with Trump’s argument and stay the commencement of the case until the next president is sworn in. (They will not recuse themselves.)
If the trial nonetheless commences before January 20, 2025, Trump will try to slow it down with procedural motions, which, if denied by Judge Chutkan, will then be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.
Source: Here’s How Trump Will Try To Avoid Jail | The Smirking Chimp
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