After another harrowing day in court that revealed yet more horrific detail about his time in the Middle East, former Aussie soldier and all-round family man Ben Roberts-Smith remembered that he was actually the fucking idiot who started all of this.
Source: Ben Roberts-Smith Suddenly Remembers He Initiated This Fucking Trial — The Shovel
Ambulance Chasers pretending to be Galahad
Johnson & Johnson pelvic mesh victims have expressed dismay at efforts by their law firm, Shine Justice, to stiff them with exorbitant finance costs. Callum Foote investigates.
Source: Shine Justice to offload heavy finance costs onto pelvic mesh victims? – Michael West
Australians are tired of neoliberalism. We are sick of that much talked about and ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots.
Victoria became the most privatised of states after former Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett sold everything except the site on which the Victorian Parliament sits — though given time, this too may have been on the cards.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media’s most hated state leader, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, has enjoyed a 6.5 per cent increase in support since the 2022 State Election, while the Liberal Opposition is down 6.5 per cent. It is not too much of a stretch to posit that the decision by the Andrews Government to restore the State Electricity Commission in Victoria has contributed to voter trust in his Government.
While the hunters are in full tally-ho mode pursuing the PwC fox finally flushed out of the Canberra thicket, there is a whole colony of rabbits quivering in the long grass, awaiting dogs picking up their scent.
Source: Michael Pascoe: Waiting for other PwC shoes to drop in Canberra
Intentional confusion on the part of the fearmongering LNP seems to have gained some traction in Australia as far as the First Nation Peoples are concerned. Australia remains unique and behind the rest of the world in its resistance to what other nations have regarded as common sense for generations.
According to the latest Resolve Strategic poll for Nine media, support for a Yes vote in the upcoming referendum has fallen to 44%. Opposition has climbed eight points to 39%, while 18% are undecided.
A critical difference
Source: (1) A critical… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
, Democratic lawmakers and the Biden administration should seek legislation that puts more of the onus of fighting inflation on big corporations. Such legislation would:
— Allow the Justice Department to bust up monopolies (and prevent further consolidation through mergers and acquisitions) when three or fewer corporations have more than half the sales of a particular market.
— Direct the Federal Trade Commission to find that any such corporation has engaged in unlawful price gouging whenever it has raised prices higher than the rate of inflation, and impose a fine that would claw back those unlawful gains.
— Permit the Treasury Department to impose a windfall profits tax on large corporations, above a specific reasonable rate of return or profit margin.
If Republicans won’t go along, Biden and the Democrats should make this a major campaign issue for 2024.
They should ask the public: Do you want more jobs and higher wages, or do you want large corporations making fatter profits by raising prices?
In The Palestine Laboratory, Loewenstein does not merely indict Israel for its failure to live up to the promise of its founding principles and its leading role in the supply, sustainment and normalisation of a border-industrial complex. He also condemns Europe, the US, Australia and the West for their politicisation of fear of the outsider, their receptiveness to divisive demagoguery, and their moral complicity in the immiseration of millions who live under occupation and oppression, and the millions more who roam the Earth in search of safe harbour. Israel may have lost its way, but once-civilised nations seem to be following it into the darkness.
Source: The Harvard of anti-terrorism: how Israel’s military-industrial complex feeds the global arms trade
Following in Victor Orbán’s neo-fascist goose-steps, Trump, DeSantis, and the GOP are imposing his Hungarian brand of Christian nationalism on America. In power since 2010, Orbán — now a fabulously wealthy kleptocrat — turned Hungary from a functioning democracy into a corrupt, single-party, authoritarian oligarchy and provided a beacon for the MAGA Republican sedition caucus.
Source: Why are U.S. Republicans Importing an Alien Fascist Christian Nationalism from Orbán’s Hungary?
“If The Voice Loses It Will Be Albanese’s Fault!”
Yep, I saw that on the front page of “The Australian” a few days ago and I was tempted to steal the paper but then I remembered that theft is one of those Ten Commandment things that still gets enforced by law and, more frightening than any jail term is the fear that I could go down in history as someone who thought that one of Murdoch’s papers was worse stealing.
Source: “If The Voice Loses It Will Be Albanese’s Fault!” – » The Australian Independent Media Network
One of the attractions of paying outside consultants for advice is that, to ensure repeat business, they tend to tell you what they think you want to hear. Whether in auditing or consulting, the notion that anyone can buy genuinely independent advice is a delusion.
Somehow or other, the “smaller government” policies of recent decades have left many businesses believing they are no longer required to obey the law.
Source: PwC Scandal: Accountants used to be boring, then the government asked them to do its job
According to Dowling- What do you think?
Detective Superintendent Scott Moller has blatantly committed perjury at the ACT Police Corruption Inquiry when he gave evidence on Tuesday the 23rd of May and the 2 key witnesses are Bruce Lehrmann’s barristers Steve Whybrow and John Korn.
Ch9 and it’s stable of journalists have been sorted OUT
Yet from Nine Entertainment’s chairman down to senior editors though this is an organisation of yes-men and yes-women. The likes of yours truly, Michael Pascoe, Mike Carleton, John Hewson – just to name a few – have been weeded out for failing to cower sufficiently to Nine’s advertisers and assorted corporate and political agendas.
Descending the greasy pole all the way down from Liberal Party heavyweight and fundraiser Peter Costello, we have Editorial Director James Chessell (who is an ex-Liberal staffer for Joe Hockey), his 2IC Tory Maguire (whose husband is a Liberal Party linked lobbyist), Editor in Chief of the AFR Michael Stutchbury, a true believer in the virtue of big business whose ideology is to the right of the Liberal Party.
On the radio front, it’s no accident that Nine owns 2GB and 3AW. On the TV front, it’s no accident Nine Network is now framing The Voice as “The Divisive Voice to Parliament“. This is unambiguous Coalition messaging.
Source: On captured media: we respond to Nine Entertainment and the AFR’s tepid hit-job – Michael West
The ABC and NewsCorp are locked in a co-dependent abusive relationship. As Dr Martin Hirst writes, part of the problem is the revolving door between their respective newsrooms.
So that’s what we’re up against. There’s a failure to appreciate just how pervasive and powerful the empire’s propaganda machine is, even among those who are very critical of empire, because propaganda in our society is like water for fish — we’re swimming in it constantly, so we don’t see it. You have to step way, way back and begin examining our situation from its most basic foundations to get any perspective on how all-encompassing it really is.
Finding your way out of the propaganda matrix takes a lot of diligent work, tons of curiosity, the humility to admit you’ve been completely wrong about everything, and more than a little plain dumb luck. But if you keep hacking away at it eventually you get there, and then you can help others get there too. It’s a hard slog, but if our chains are psychological that means they’re ultimately only made of dream stuff. All that needs to happen is for enough of us to wake up.
Source: Most propaganda looks nothing like this – Pearls and Irritations
When News Corp sponsors a conference for the Arms Industry and Dutton is a featured guest speaker how can we expect our mainstream media to “focus on peace”? Did anyone see this reported in the mainstream?
The fact that Australia is sleepwalking towards a catastrophic war against China has received very welcome and responsible coverage in Pearls and Irritations and other non-mainstream media. The head-in-the-sand stance adopted by much of the mainstream media stands in stark contrast. The most recent example of the latter was a 15-page supplement in The Canberra Times (CT) on 17 May – ‘Our Next Steps’, on the Defence Strategic Review. It was a most shameful collection of war-mongering articles and images.
Source: Mainstream media need to focus on peace – Pearls and Irritations
Only Jews can save Israel
“I think Israel is in the process of implosion.” Chazan accused Netanyahu of trying to simultaneously control the three branches of government, which she said was “nothing short of an authoritarian coup”.
Source: Israel ‘in the process of implosion’ as democracy faces massive test: Naomi Chazan
“The Land of Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people and no other people. Because God promised all this land to us and only us …. (W)e must strengthen the national rights of the Jews in their homeland. Only affirmative action which gives Jews an advantage in employment and academia will guarantee the preservation of our social and economic superiority…….
“Decreasing the non-Jewish birth rate in Israel is the only way to guarantee our demographic majority.
“Because in the land of the Jews, equality is for Jews alone. Non-Jews are only guests here. And guests must behave appropriately. And if they do not behave appropriately, we will not hesitate to expel them by force”.
Source: Australia and apartheid Israel: “not to act is to condone” – Pearls and Irritations
How many of these strategies has Australia’s LNP adopted?
In short, the LNP is American GOP in disguise and even Trumpster MAGA without a charismatic head
Republican leaders have mastered the art of manufacturing crises to divert the public’s attention from the real crisis of our era — the siphoning off of income, wealth, and power by a small group at the top. Consider the fake fears they’ve been whipping up:
How American does Australia want to be?
horrors are reappearing.
The number of kids employed in direct violation of existing child labor laws, the Economic Policy Institute reported this year, has soared 283 percent since 2015 — and 37 percent in just the last year alone.
More recently there was the alarming news that three Kentucky-based McDonald’s franchising companies had kids as young as 10 working at 62 stores across Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland, and Ohio. Some children were working as late as 2 a.m.
Source: The Return of GOP-backed Child Labor is another Good Reason to Tax the Rich
The most active Twitter accounts opposing the Indigenous Voice to parliament are people using false identities who are stoking an increasingly divisive online campaign, rather than computerised “bots”, an analysis reveals.
Source: Labor True Believers, Political Analysis and Satire | Facebook
Greed is not good, and it has harmful effects for all of us. It is a sick disease that needs full medical attention and needs to stay outside of policy making. What is the point of fighting if we don’t know what we’re fighting for? I’m not advocating for a communist revolution by any means, but a total rethink is needed in day-to-day life and economically. We can’t keep going the way we are with endless pollution, increasing population, and spending resources we just don’t have. We need to conserve our resources for tomorrow and future generations. Or else there is no future not just for the labour movement but all of us.
Source: We need to change how we think and act – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Australia’s biggest four banks have been accused of pouring more than $7 billion into the expansion of fossil fuels in the past two years despite backing the Paris climate goals.
Source: Big banks lending billions to coal, oil, gas companies – Michael West
A new investigation into Chevron’s climate pledge has found the fossil-fuel company relies on “junk” carbon offsets and “unviable” technologies, which do little to offset its vast greenhouse gas emissions and in some cases may actually be causing communities harm.
And from the Western progressive public, we only need one thing – stop helping Putin with your conciliatory and ambiguous statements. The more often such statements are made, the greater will be the confidence of officials, deputies and policemen that the current order can continue to exist with the silent support or hypocritical grumbling of the West. Every conciliatory statement made by liberal intellectuals in America results in more arrests, fines, and searches of democratic activists and just plain people here in Russia.
California Flooding State Farm Insurance has announced it will no longer offer new home insurance policies in California due to rising wildfire risks and construction costs.
Source: State Farm Halts New Homeowner Insurance In California Due To Wildfires | HuffPost Latest News
Australia’s elections showed just what Blue Teal independents were able to do and how weak Morrison’s Pentecostalism was.
However, the election in Turkey was far from fair.
1) Ekrem Imamoglu, was sentenced in December to more than two years in prison on a charge of “insulting public figures”.
2) Erdogan also has an almost ubiquitous grip over the Turkish media, His family ran the media
3) the non-transparent way the election results are processed.
4) Erdogan was viewed in an almost mythical fashion by conservative and religious voters. For them, Erdogan is a religious hero and saviour. Turkye isn’t a Liberal Secular Democracy
Lachlan Murdoch blows it again.
“The distraction to our company, the distraction to our growth plans — our management — would have been extraordinarily costly, which is why we decided to settle,” Lachlan Murdoch said at an investment conference this month.
Source: Mistakes and miscalculations: How the Murdochs and Fox got it so wrong
The more Republican opponents Trump has the better for him. He could sponsor more himself to win the Republican nomination or even not turn up.
Republicans once warned about a repeat of 2016, when the sprawling GOP field failed to coalesce around a Trump alternative, giving him the nomination. But much of the urgency that once existed among Trump’s GOP rivals to limit the field has faded in recent months.
Source: Trump’s 2024 Calculus: The More GOP Rivals, The Better For Him | HuffPost Latest News
The governments which best safeguarded the material well-being of their people were generally those which prioritised care for low-income earners and welfare recipients, maintained adequate tax collections from corporations and the top end, and allocated public funds to social housing and infrastructure. Like that amazing tunnel in Denmark.
Source: Economic recovery: Many economies now booming post-COVID
Predatory capitalism has become visible across the world as neo-liberalism becomes fully transnational. Consultancies working to authoritarian rules have consumed big business by making executives richer. They may be set to engulf governments and even entire societies.
This litany of world-wide probity scandals suggests something more sinister, more frightening. This interlocking network of advisors provides group-thinking to business and government executives worldwide, the advice is accepted and practiced everywhere. ‘Best practice’ it seems is ‘make as much money as fast as possible, regardless of consequences. Highly intelligent people run international business, yet they act as if the planet is a Monopoly™ game.
Is there a world government of big business? Probably not, but the big consultancies with such international influence must be candidates, coordinating common attitudes and practices. Where does tax avoidance and tax havens and the growing disparity between the few very rich and the numerous poor of the planet fit with this scenario? – right in the middle of course – with 1 trillion dollars moved annually into tax havens with little international regulation.
As citizens we must wonder – over 50 years of scientific evidence of global warming still strenuously denied, seen in the failure of industry and governments to seriously combat it. Why do so few leaders act to stop all CO2 emissions? Do business consultants provide ethical climate advice to address accelerating emissions? – I fear they don’t. If business and governments have but one view, where then is democracy heading? We must first be rid of their pernicious neo-liberal ideology.
Source: The swarm: International consultancies – Pearls and Irritations
According to analysis this week, PwC and other “big four” firms — Deloitte, EY and KPMG — have brought in about $4 billion in government contracts and paid out over $4 million in party donations over the past decade.
PwC is also the auditor for the federal police – the accountant that signs off on its finances as being legally compliant.
To rip off a bit from the Roman poet, Juvenal: Who will audit the auditors?
Source: Labor True Believers, Political Analysis and Satire | Facebook
About $375 million in contracts have been subject to scrutiny, all won by clients of a company part-owned by his friend and former fundraiser, Synergy 360, which lobbied on behalf of multinationals looking to win Australian government tenders.
Mr Robert opened doors for their clients and gave advice to them while serving as an MP, an arrangement that first drew calls for Mr Dutton to relieve him of his frontbench duties months ago.
Source: National Times – With Robodebt report looming, Dutton prepares for… | Facebook
Woohoo! Two of the biggest tax cheats, ExxonMobil and Chevron (auditors for both are PwC) have finally begun to pay a mite of income tax in Australia but they also ripped out more than $13bn in dividends and returns of capital last year. Michael West reports their latest financials.
How the rise of China changed America – and not for the better
Source: National Times – Alan Kohler: How the rise of China changed… | Facebook
If you think things can’t get worse… Think Again!!
But with the recent firing of Carlson, who raked in millions of views, Fox’s recent ratings have slumped and its grip on the Republican base is slipping, presenting a ripe opportunity for another platform to surpass the network’s reign.
The extremist Israeli government is preparing a law to dismiss Israeli Arab students who raise the Palestine flag or express their support for Palestinian resistance inside universities, Israel Hayom revealed on Thursday.
Putin’s puppet puts Pressure on,
As Russia moves forward with a decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons there, Belarus says the West has forced it to renege on promises.
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands.” Anthony Bourdain, A Cook’s Tour (2002)
If a heavy resume of crimes is a guarantee of longevity, then surely Henry A. Kissinger (HAK, for short), must count as a good specimen. The list of butcheries attributed to his centurion, direct or otherwise, is extensive, his hand in them, finger fat and busy. There were the murderous meddles in Latin America, the conflicts in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. (The interventions in Laos and Cambodia are said to have left 350,000 Laotians and 600,000 Cambodians dead.) Then came the selective turning of blind eyes in Indonesia and Pakistan, and the ruthless sponsorship of coups in Africa.
Source: HAK Birthdays: Henry Kissinger Turns 100 – » The Australian Independent Media Network
In December 1970, Kissinger passed on the command to bomb Cambodia to General Alexander Haig, which he had received from Nixon. “It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves. You got that?” It is estimated that at least 150,000 civilians were killed in the attacks that Kissinger ordered, and the secret operations were deliberately hidden from the American people through a “conspiracy of cover stories, coded messages, and a dual bookkeeping system that logged airstrikes in Cambodia as occurring in South Vietnam.”
Source: Kissinger vs. ‘The Most Dangerous Man in America’ – scheerpost.com
American Politics PACS and money. Trump’s ransacking the cookie jar,
That Trump uses other people’s money to pay his legal bills is well-established. The Republican National Committee, for instance, footed the legal bills accured as Trump fought off New York investigations into his company’s extensive tax fraud and other economic crimes. Last year, CNN found that over 60% of Trump’s leadership PAC spending was paying his legal bills. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that Trump spent $16 million of his campaign donations on paying legal fees to fend off accountability for his various crimes.
Source: Trump thinks he can MAGA his way out of jail | Salon.com
Instead of wondering what it is about them that has made them a target, we should be wondering what it is about us that we tolerate a mob mentality or, much worse, participate in it.
Source: The Stan Grant pile-on says way more about us than about him
Costello’s headline in the Age attacks Dan with an “If and could” article on Air BnBs. Nothing, in reality, to be seen other than an opportunity to boost the LNP by useful scaremongering. How did mainland Australia become so ALP when 80%+ of our mainstream media concentration is the world’s most Blue? The answer it’s the least trusted. Long Live Independents and the ABC
Capping the number of nights Victorian landlords can list their properties on Airbnb, imposing a “tourist tax” and empowering councils to charge owners higher rates are among the options on the table.
Source: Melbourne house prices: Labor MPs weigh Airbnb crackdown to tackle rental crisis
AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw and former NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller, who now works for PwC, have already had private communication about the PwC tax dodging scandal that is now being investigated by the federal police.
Kershaw and Fuller have a history of working together to cover-up government corruption, but more on that in a minute.
Unaccounted for costs of Corporate mining the mess they just abandon
In addition to harming the climate, fossil fuel corporations such as Woodside are leaving abandoned machinery in our oceans, reports Greenpeace Australia Pacific CEO David Ritter.
Yes a bit more Bollywood the media gave Modi than the reality
With all the fanfare, the stadium event was not all it seemed. One beady-eyed journalist noted that a venue with a seating capacity of 18,500 seemed less than packed. Vivek Astri, covering the visit for The Wire, noted “empty chairs scattered throughout the expansive venue.” It struck him as rather odd, given the fact the tickets had been gratis, with registration noisily promoted through such platforms as WhatsApp months before. “Curiously, there seemed to be a veil of secrecy surrounding the ticket distribution process, lending an air of privacy to the entire event.”
Source: Modi in Australia: Down Under Bliss for Hindutva – » The Australian Independent Media Network
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.