In recent times my own positive feelings towards the Greens have been eroded when they have chosen to align themselves with the coalition and One Nation to thwart government (usually Labor) policy. It may well be that the Greens were seeking the perfect in their policies and in their opposition to the ALP but be assured that the coalition and One Nation had no higher ambition than opposing for the sake of opposing.
Source: Don’t Give Up on Labor or forget the Independents ! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
One needs to ask whether or not this was or is “Equivalent” “Sports Rorts” or “Solar Rorts”. Sorry Rex I don’t think they’re the same. Why do you?
Every properly organized taxpayer-funded rort has a spreadsheet. And this one does too. With new FOI documents to hand, Rex Patrick looks at how ‘Solar Rorts’ came about.
Source: Labor’s Solar Rorts unveiled – replete with colour spreadsheet! – Michael West
When the ABC dares “Bothside” what is occurring in our media it’s called “biased”
ABC’s Media Watch has stirred controversy by bothsiding the fight for trans rights, claiming the importance of reporting differing points of view. Dr Victoria Fielding reports.
Source: Media Watch faces backlash for supporting transphobia
“Almost one in two young Australians in their 20s have a university degree but only seven per cent of young Indigenous Australians do,” chief executive Catriona Jackson said.
“Successive governments have tried to close the Indigenous education gap, yet they are still massively under-represented in our universities.”
Source: Universities Australia pushes to remove caps on places for Indigenous people | The New Daily
Abbott and Downer Shame us
Since 2022, Rwanda has been very much on the mind of British policy makers, a dark option of retreat from the irritating intrusions of international refugee law. The English Channel has become something of a polemical resource, with those seeking to cross it demonised as undermining Britannia’s sacred sovereignty.
Giddy with the dusty advice of Australian advisors – the crude offerings of wisdom from former foreign minister Alexander Downer, and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott stand out – respective Tory governments have been pondering how to stem the arrival of irregular migrants and asylum seekers.
The use of third states as a means of deferring obligations of protection towards refugees has become an attractive, brutal way of snuffing out the right to asylum. The UN Refugee Convention of 1951 is treated as a dead letter, and options such as the “Australian model” in repelling unwanted arrivals thrill populist politicians.
Source: Cruel Arrangements: The UK-Rwanda Refugee Deal Falters – » The Australian Independent Media Network
There are those who believe Blinken’s visit has kept alive the hope that China-US relations can return to normal. I have my doubts – though a still-naive part of me hopes the US will learn to match its deeds to its words.
The Ghaith family, living in Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter since 1945, has been fighting forced eviction from their home for four decades. Israeli settler organizations persist in their efforts to displace them and seize their home for Jewish settlement. The recent court ruling favored the settler group and left the family unprotected.
Source: Palestinians battle for their homes in East Jerusalem
An Indigenous fact that speaks to Power : “I wasn’t born in Australia. Australia was born on our land!”
The colonial state treated indigenous populations as either less than human or as incapable of owning property privately.
The idea that indigenous peoples do not cultivate their land — going back to that Lockean fantasy that America existed as this uncultivated wild — is a racial trope
Interview
https://play.acast.com/s/jacobin-radio/dig-colonial-lives-of-property-w-brenna-bhandar
Transcript
Australia believes it’s Colorblind but the facts prove otherwise.
Those defenders of slavery and segregation would be thrilled with the efforts of Roberts and his cabal to rewrite the history of the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection of the laws” clause of the Reconstruction era that is the core of American democracy. And their frontal assault on the goal of a multi-racial society premised on diversity, equity, and inclusion that is so feared by the ghosts of the plantation class ideologues and their descendants longing for a return to those days past.
If this has become the ” American Normal ” What would the “exceptional” be? Any real effort to prevent this repeating itself over and over again,
An 18-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man were killed and 28 others wounded, totaling 30 people shot at a Baltimore block party.
Source: At Least 30 Shot, With Two Dead In The Latest Mass Shooting | Crooks and Liars
The American model of Democracy is to expand and consolidate, consolidate power and privilege with birthright from the top down and let the rest battle seemingly as individuals in the Coliseum of Capitalism so well depicted in the Hunger Games.
In reference to the affirmative action ruling, Trump rattled off a statement to Truth Social on Friday calling it, “A great day for America.”
Source: Trump thrilled with his appointed Supreme Court Justices — calls them “gold” | Salon.com
The failure of the major parties to become more democratic in recent decades has seen a turnout for people to vote for Independents, Teals, Greens on the Left and more extreme options on the right with the likes of Hansonism resurging in some areas of the country. Much is the case of Trump in the US, Brexit in the UK and everywhere else where democracy is struggling in the world today.
Source: Saving DEMOCRACY within the Labour Movement – » The Australian Independent Media Network
It was a murder that shocked the nation and left a man in jail with no hope of parole. Innocent or guilty, that man, Phoung Ngo, deserves to be pardoned, writes Mac Halliday
The West has been manipulating global information and spreading disinformation for decades. It is time for the world to also listen to the voices of China and other developing nations, many of which were once brutally colonised by the West.
Source: West can no longer twist information or disseminate disinformation – Pearls and Irritations
Meanwhile, Australia insists on forgetting rather than reinterpreting the past
Dutch King Willem-Alexander has apologised for the Netherlands’ historical involvement in slavery and the effects that it still has today.
The king was speaking at a ceremony marking the 160th anniversary of the legal abolition of slavery in the Netherlands, including its former colonies in the Caribbean.
“On this day that we remember the Dutch history of slavery, I ask forgiveness for this crime against humanity,” he said.
He said racism in Dutch society remains a problem and not everyone would support his apology.
What was labeled a “revolt” and a “mutiny” wasn’t. It was a protest against Putin’s Double Cross and the broken promise by a private and independent group of mercenaries he hired. They were being hijacked into Vlad’s Army and at a far, far cheaper rate than previously negotiated. Vlad the Don finally reminded them it was an offer they couldn’t refuse when he reminded them ” we have your families”!
“Sixteen months ago, Russian forces were . . . thinking they would erase Ukraine from the map as an independent country,” Blinken said. “Now, over the weekend they’ve had to defend Moscow, Russia’s capital, against mercenaries of Putin’s own making. . . It was a direct challenge to Putin’s authority. . . It shows real cracks.”
In August 2019, Modi’s government revoked the semi-autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir. That was followed by a crackdown. Political activity was banned, politicians were placed under house arrest and the internet was choked. Meanwhile, the Indian army posts photos of its soldiers in yoga poses, and we are told that China is all bad and India is all good.
Source: “Om-washing” sanitises India’s brutal track record in Kashmir – Pearls and Irritations
Israeli settlers use guns, fire bombs and don’t simply throw rocks. Their aim is to kill with intent, destroy property and drive Palestinian villagers from their homes and territory. All this in the West Bank Palestinian land. Their intent is to take over every inch of Palestine
If Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, can find excuses for the hilltop youth’s colonial violence, how much more is the concept of settler-colonial presence as a form of violence normalised?
Source: Israeli Officials Now Promoting Impunity for Settler-Colonial Violence
The Conversation reached out to three legal scholars to explain what the decision means for students, colleges and universities, and ultimately the nation’s future.
The military is not the only place where the court has noted that security interests can justify use of race. The court also cited a 2005 ruling, Johnson v. California, where the justices held that prison officials could temporarily segregate prisoners by race to prevent violence.
It seems that the court is willing to uphold use of race when government power is at stake – as with the military and law enforcement. But it will not do so for the education of America’s citizenry.
Trump has most certainly been told by his personal attorneys to be quiet. Trump has also received the same advice, publicly and for free, from other attorneys and experts in the law. It would appear, however, that Donald Trump lacks the ability to be quiet.
We didn’t know about this one, probably because there was no tape.
Source: Post: Trump Tried To Get AZ Gov To Overturn Election Results | Crooks and Liars
the Greens are not in this to win the approval of the political classes. They’re in it to achieve bold, Whitlamesque, reform. So it’s an issue that Max Chandler-Mather is going to continue to pursue, no matter how many times he gets told he’s behaving like a brat. Because the Greens know the issue is an electoral killer. It has the capacity to completely reshape the voting patterns that the Labor party has relied on for the past fifty years.
Most renters vote Labor. At the moment. There is no reason that will be the case forever.
Gladys Berejiklian’s friends, sympathetic followers and sundry political flunkies are unhappy the ICAC found she engaged in “serious corrupt conduct” – but consider for a moment the counterfactual: What message would have been sent if she had been cleared?
The great shame is that there are Australians like this. Our great pride is they remain ignored by the majority. The great pity while moving left from this minority we encounter and have to endure first One Nation and then Peter Dutton’s LNP before we eventually arrive at the first signs of representative politics in Australia the ALP. It at least realizes the need to rule for all Australians not just those that voted for them. Then moving further left there is a voice that even protests that Albo’s government isn’t progressive enough and needs to do more but the ALP isn’t listening.
There is no equivalence between the regression of the far-right and the protest & demand for progression in either our ideas or actions by these two extremes. They are polar opposites.
The Australian Far-Right recently targeted an LGBTQ-inclusive Rainbow Storytime event. However, this time, tactics of issuing threats until the event was cancelled didn’t work, writes Tom Tanuki.
Source: Far-Right fails to shut down Rainbow Storytime event
Why did the Government proceed with the scheme after finding it illegal? That is the big question. Who was responsible? Let’s hope Catherine Ena Holmes, AC SC, will provide the answers.
The Great Putin Double Cross
1 Hire Mercenaries to do your recruiting and fighting “at a price” and a “promise”
2 Double Cross and cancel that contract and absorb them into your Army at far cheaper rates
3 Kill, imprison or exile their leaders and those that protest and call them “mutineers”. They can’t be any of those they were “free guns for hire” not “mutineers” not a “coup” but a Black Birding effort to recruit the Wagner mercenaries into the Russian army at a cheaper rate. Simply Threaten retaliation on their families like a mafia boss that might guarantee a favorable response.
Mr Prigozhin, 62, a former Putin ally and ex-convict whose forces have fought the bloodiest battles of the 16-month war in Ukraine, defied orders this month to place his troops under Defence Ministry command. He complained on Monday about a military order that all volunteer units including Wagner are meant to sign by July 1 placing themselves under the control of Russia’s Defence Ministry.
Source: Labor True Believers, Political Analysis and Satire | Facebook
Sports stars are making a heated rush for it, cresting on the money wave, and finding sanctuary in Mammon’s big breasted glory. And that wave is coming, oddly enough, from a desert country, alien to such matters till recent decades, when oil came with blessings and political power. After colonising international golf with a throat…
Source: The Saudi Football Seizure – » The Australian Independent Media Network
When the rest of the world focuses on other things. Israel does it’s worst.
Settler groups — or, more accurately named, Israeli nationalist terrorist groups — have been running rampages across the West Bank alongside the Israeli armed forces, killing Palestinians at will to sow fear in this part of Palestine and urging further ethnic cleansing, euphemistically referred to as “demographic engineering.”
Source: Israel Cannot Rebut Apartheid
American Regression
The Supreme Court had the chance to preserve two tools that could offer a path forward on this persistent problem, and a greater chance to equalize educational opportunity and financial security for all. Instead, the court’s conservatives chose neither—opting, instead, to uphold the myth that society is already equal enough.
Source: The Supreme Court Made It Even Harder to Close the Racial Wealth Gap – Mother Jones
Conservatives in the United States have a stealth function of supporting white supremacy, even if they deny it. Maybe some do not even realize that is what they are doing. People focus on process and not outcomes when thinking of fairness, but what they think of as fair processes don’t guarantee fair outcomes. Nothing is more threatening to white supremacy than affirmative action, which holds that the government and social institutions can reshape American society toward greater racial equality. Hence, the Federalist Society’s corrupt SCOTUS struck down affirmative action in college and university admissions nationwide.
The only way we can avoid repeating the experience of Spain, Germany, Hungary, Russia, and Chile (among others) is to overwhelmingly repudiate — defeat — Trump’s and the MAGA Republicans’ movement at the polls.
And the first step to that is to wake up everybody we know. As Leadbelly famously said, “Stay woke!”
Source: What Would America Be Like With a “Dear Leader” in 2024? | The Smirking Chimp
When a member of the IPA becomes a Politician he represents the IPA
The Coalition has used Sky News as a platform to maintain its policy of fearmongering, spouting misinformation and critcising the Labor Government, writes Dr Abul Rizvi.
Source: Coalition and News Corp attempt to keep fear of asylum seekers alive
The past five years of intensive anti-China propaganda, highly aligned as it is with government objectives, have been instrumental in propping up public support for AUKUS and the Australian government’s flawed foreign and defence policies. Why have Australians been so susceptible to the influence of that propaganda?
Source: Why propaganda works so well in Australia – Pearls and Irritations
It’s not really deniable that Western civilization is saturated with domestic propaganda geared toward manipulating the way the public thinks, acts, works, shops and votes.
There are any number of books providing a welter of information on constitutional recognition, but Davis’ essay is a generous, coherent and thorough summary. Available to anyone who honestly wants the information.”
Source: “One of… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
Before I fired my first salvo at the war on drugs, I was captivated by a line from an 1839 essay by British historian Thomas Macaulay: “It is mere foolish cruelty to provide penalties which torment the criminal without preventing the crime.” That line remains the best summary of the folly and inhumanity of criminalizing victimless crimes. As the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia wrote, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”
Carlson is doing a Trump to stay relevant when he never was Murdoch is!
I guess Twitter isn’t the killer app he thought it would be!
Source: Tucker Carlson Lining Up Investors For Fox News Competition | Crooks and Liars
The Supreme Court ruled today in a 6-3 decision that the use of race in college admissions violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and thus is unconstitutional, dealing a serious blow to affirmative action measures used by colleges to create diverse student bodies and remedy past discrimination against minorities.
Source: Supreme Court Strikes Down Universities’ Affirmative Action Programs – Mother Jones
We can expect that actors seeking to maintain white supremacy throughout American society will invoke the majority’s reasoning in a whole host of other policy areas.
Hitler used it. Trump insisted he was conceived in Germany. So why be surprised?
But with all of this ongoing talk about socialism over the years, Republicans had more or less stopped hurling the “commie” tag at their political adversaries. After all, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and China’s entry into the capitalist marketplace, it makes even less sense than it used to.
Yet it’s now suddenly become commonplace.
Source: Republicans reignite the red scare in service of Trump | Salon.com
Peter Dutton will have his corrupt conduct referred to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) next week regarding Dutton’s cover-up of a $39 million dodgy payment when he was Minister for Home Affairs.
When even the LNP’s best are found to have been corrupt what chance do they have to redeem themselves?
Gladys Berejiklian was not unlucky in love. She stuffed up something far more precious.
Source: Michael West Media – investigative journalists – always independent
Like other large public and private sector organisations, universities have now been pervaded by the activities and influence of consultants. This represents a degradation of the social and educational role of the university as well as a determined shift towards the privatisation of knowledge.
Source: The degradation of the University – Pearls and Irritations
This is a stain on Australia’s reputation in the eyes of the rest of the World and says bye-bye to self-promotion of the “The Fair Go” nation.
The last refugee, for now, has left the small, guano-producing state of Nauru. For a decade, the Pacific Island state served as one of Australia’s offshore prisons for refugees and asylum seekers, a cruel deterrent to those daring to exercise their right to seek asylum via the sea.
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.