Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi’s conviction for criminal defamation is the latest sign that India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is moving toward Hindu nationalist authoritarianism.
Source: Who Can Stop Modi and His Authoritarian Vision for India?
In a nation where walls have ears parents must be careful what they say in front of their children because it might be taken to school and reflected in their show and tell. When citizens can’t speak as freely Australians must seem naive. You can be sure Russians are great whisperers and fucking great listeners. Unfortunately great, reporters and dobbers as well. East Germany the CFSR were once much the same when politics was never openly discussed. During the Spanish Inquisition there was the “accusation box’. Sadly India seems to be drifting in the same direction with the jailing of Raul Gandhi for 2 years.
For this awful crime of discrediting the Russian army, Alexei Moskalev was sentenced to two years for bringing up his daughter in the wrong way. The single father has since fled his home and authorities don’t know where he is. His daughter, then 12 at the time of the offensive drawing occurred, was sent to a children’s home.
Source: Russian Father Sentenced To Two Years For Child’s Drawing | Crooks and Liars
Is Chris Hedges siding with Trump and saying the charges against him are all “political? That both Dems and GOP moderates are out to get rid of him? Is Trump really the victim he says he is?
Chris Hedges: The Donald Trump Problem Donald Trump is not being targeted for the misdemeanors and serious felonies he appears to have committed but for discrediting and undermining the entrenched power of the ruling duopoly.
Source: Chris Hedges: The Donald Trump Problem – scheerpost.com
GOP REP. SHRUGS OFF SLAUGHTER: ‘WE’RE NOT GOING TO FIX IT’
He added that his philosophy was influenced by his father, who told him, “Buddy, if somebody wants to take you out and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.”
Source: GOP Rep Admits ‘We’re Not Going To Fix’ School Shootings | HuffPost Latest News
On March 13th, the Pentagon rolled out its proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2024. The results were — or at least should have been — stunning, even by the standards of a department that’s used to getting what it wants when it wants it.
Source: Congress Has Been Captured by the Arms Industry – CounterPunch.org
The Murdochs’ local business model increasingly is that of its American Fox News organ, playing to a conservative audience and in the process pushing its political arm further to the right.
Source: How News Corp damages Liberal Party, and Australian democracy
The Murdoch media drives resentment with propaganda as constant as drums of war. The pounding message for its audience is that every development is a zero-sum game, one that only defrauds this “conservative” base.
Progressive economist Yanis Varoufakis recently gave a talk in Geneva on ways to improve the global economy in the face of growing crises. Dr Jerca Legan reports.
The Opposition Leader has revealed his thoughts on Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, saying the Russian author was being tricky with the reading public by only publishing 1,225 pages of detail on the impact of the Napoleonic era on early 19th Century Tsarist Russia.
Source: Peter Dutton’s review of War & Peace: “Needs more detail” | The Shovel
Our mainstream media puts wind in the sails of hate
In this article from 2021, Tom Tanuki outlined how the mainstream media gave racial extremists such as Tom Sewell a platform to spread his message of hatred to potential recruits.
Source: Uncovering the plans of Australian White supremacists: FLASHBACK 2021
Should they be taking them? Ukraine is desperate for any bit of warring materiel its armed forces can lay their hands on, but depleted uranium shells would surely not be a model example of use. And yet, the UK, in an act of killing with kindness, is happy to fork them out to aid the cause against the Russians, despite the scandals, the alleged illnesses, and environmental harms.
There is a fundamental human right and it differs from wrong. Politeness isn’t the distinguisher it’s merely an error in equivalence.
On some level, it is straightforward for a Neo-Nazi protest to be easy for police to handle. As we saw on the streets of Melbourne last weekend, and repeatedly over recent years, a high five for white supremacist protesters is an easy gesture for some police officers.
When anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull visited Australia recently, most media outlets refused to give her hate speech a platform, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.
Gandhi, 52, lost his seat on Friday, a day after a court in the western state of Gujarat convicted him and sentenced him to two years in jail for a defamatory comment he made during an election campaign rally in 2019.
A panel of Sky News commentators says that Labor’s victory in NSW is proof that Australians are leaning more to the right.
Following Saturday’s NSW election, News Corp broadsheet The Australian has updated its political map of the country, noting that mainland Australia is now entirely Coalition-led. -Advertisement-
“Only the small island above Tasmania now has a Labor government, meaning its wall-to-wall blue everywhere else,” the paper’s editorial read.
Source: The Australian has released an updated political map of nation | The Shovel
The secretive Future Fund’s chairman Peter Costello might not like it, but Freedom of Information requests are peeling back the lid on the Fund’s weighty overseas investments. Philip Dorling and Rex Patrick report the more controversial ones.
People with type 1 diabetes are dependent on insulin — but it doesn’t follow that we should be dependent on corporate insulin manufacturers. We need a new model of insulin manufacturing, one that puts lives before profits.
Source: Insulin Should Be Produced for Our Health, Not Their Profits
Pesutto is not the leader of this Party
Mr Pesutto had refused to entertain whether he would step down if he lost Monday’s vote.
Source: More division for Vic Libs as contentious MP survives expulsion bid
So climate protesters, LGBTQI+ protesters, refugee activists – all will be deeply passionate and frightened about very real and immediate harms.
By contrast Neo Nazis are there as much for the banter and the chance to intimidate those they define as weak. Both can be deployed to recruit new young men (and sycophantic women). There is no downside for them in these protests so far. A bit of a joke with some sympathetic police officers is a given. The jokes that make them easy work for the police act as recruitment.
Source: Why do police high five Neo-Nazis? – Pearls and Irritations
The earnest voices warning that a Trump conviction will end civilisation as we know it are mistaken. There is only one extraordinary thing about the current unfolding judicial saga, but it is not what the commentators think. In fact, it has already come and gone.
Source: Nothing strange or dangerous about Trump’s next criminal convictions
Since late January, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been loudly protesting an impending judicial overhaul by the nation’s new right-wing government. The most controversial part of the proposal gives the Knesset, Israeli’s parliament, the power to overrule supreme court decisions with a simple majority vote, which means the nation’s top court would be unable to strike down objectionable laws. It would effectively, as one Israeli news report put it, “neuter” the court.
Opponents say the changes, if allowed, will “endanger the entire legal system” and cement the power grip of the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces a corruption charge. (The Knesset already has approved another rule stating that a prime minister may only be removed from office for physical or mental unfitness.) Since the changes were proposed, Israelis have taken to the streets en masse to register their displeasure.
Source: 20 Striking Images of Protest Against Israeli Democracy Under Siege – Mother Jones
Share to WhatsApp (JTA) — Asaf Zamir, Israel’s consul general to New York, resigned within hours of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu firing his defense minister, the latest salvo in the political crisis besetting Israel over Netanyahu’s planned radical changes to the judiciary.
When Netanyahu proposed a reform to allow parliament to overturn Israel’s Supreme Court, liberals feared it would lead to the end of the rule of law in Israel. But Israel has never respected the rule of law, and liberals within the country ensured this.
Source: Israel’s Violations of International Law Are Bigger Than Netanyahu
Anxiety that automation is coming for workers’ jobs has reached a fever pitch. But talk of robots replacing humans often conceals a less complicated reality: management uses technology to undemocratically reorganize and intensify labor.
Source: The Weakness of Labor, Not Automation, Is the Greatest Challenge Facing Workers
South Australians gather in the heart of the Adelaide’s CBD to watch history being made as the First Nations Voice to Parliament bill is passed.
Why on earth would any ALP leader give Costello or Murdoch their plans to distort. It’s time Australia turned their backs on them rather than accepting them as a “normal” part of our media landscape.
Note the most significant uplifting thing today was South Australia leaders in providing the First Nations people with a Voice to the SA parliament. Do we hear either the Murdoch or Costello organizations celebrating the ” uniting event”?
Labor has united the country while the LNP has done everything to divide it for the duration of this century.
Andrews leaves for the four-day tour on Monday afternoon, which will make the first leader of an Australian government to visit China since the beginning of the pandemic. The plan to visit was first reported by The Age on Saturday.
Source: Coalition tells Andrews to stay in his lane, be more transparent on China trip
Stuart Robert proves himself to be Peter Dutton’s challeger to being the worst Minister ever appointed to an Australian government
“People pay their taxes in good faith to Canberra, they do not expect to have substandard procurement arrangements and no conflicts of interest declared or disclosed.” Shorten said the government would consider the report, and called on Robert to explain why certain contracts failed to meet the standards. Dr Ian Watt, the former head of the public service, completed the review and looked at contracts awarded from 2015 onwards.
By Kevin Anderson, University of Manchester | – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) synthesis report recently landed with an authoritative thump, giving voice to hundreds of scientists endeavouring to understand the unfolding calamity of global heating. What’s changed since the last one in 2014? Well, we’ve dumped an additional third of a trillion tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere, primarily from burning fossil fuels. While world leaders promised to cut global emissions, they have presided over a 5% rise. The new report evokes a mild sense of urgency, calling on governments to mobilise finance to accelerate the uptake
Source: IPCC’s Conservative Nature masks true Scale of Action needed to avert Catastrophic Climate Change
“He had a new style of politics, he wasn’t into playing games, he wasn’t negative. A fresh start, he said let’s put some policies out,” he said. The Labor leader joined elite company in the state party by winning from opposition. Only Neville Wran (1976) and Bob Car (1995) had done so since World War II.
Source: Euphoria and relief as Chris Minns leads Labor to win – Michael West
I guess that I should be impressed by the fact that the speaker had the intelligence to use the word “if”. After all, various media outlets were telling us that the election was “neck and neck” and that there was a real question about whether Labor would be able to form government, even as a minority. Nobody was pointing out that the Perrottet government was already in minority, had a series of scandals apart from Gladys, as well as a series of questionable decisions such as knocking down stadiums and trains that didn’t fit in the tunnels.
Source: NSW Election: Too Close To Make Any Conclusions – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Abby Grossberg who works for Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News in the US has filed 2 proceedings against Fox, one in Delaware and one in New York, claiming “Fox’s legal team coerced, intimidated, and misinformed Ms. Grossberg as they “prepared” her in connection” with giving evidence in the Dominion defamation claim against Fox.
The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reported her as writing, “You have contravened the Supreme Court’s decision, according to which, as a prime minister charged with criminal offenses, you must refrain from taking steps that raise a reasonable suspicion of a conflict of interest. Amending the law on removal does not relieve you of this obligation.”
She added, “The judicial situation is clear, and you should refrain from any dealings with initiatives to make changes in the judiciary, including the composition of the Committee for the Appointment of Judges, because dealing with them is an act that involves a conflict of interests.”
Amid his relentless all-caps attacks on Bragg, Trump shared an article from the far-right outlet National File that included an image of Trump holding a baseball bat next to an image of Bragg’s head.
Trump isn’t writing his own scripts while eating burgers,watching TV and playing golf.
Holding his first rally near the site of an infamous federal raid could be seen as “a coded message to those on the extreme.” Mike Giglio
The High Court will be put in no doubt that parliament retains its supremacy if the Indigenous voice referendum is carried, a key figure in its design says.
Source: Voice role and function in hands of parliament: expert – Michael West
Hartcher in typical Conservative fashion takes us down the descriptive road of what should never have happened in the first place. His apparent neutrality is in fact the opposite. History shows Australia to be the only British settler colony that never bothered about a treaty with the first owners of this land. Treating what has happened as if was normal,not wrong and that the past is way too difficult to change.
Surely if the history of the damage done was rewritten and taught in schools as has been done in Germany post WW2 any changes to our Constitution would be easy and seen as a necessary conclusion rather than the “fait a accompli” Hartcher describes. But the Conservative’s primary goal is to not change Australian or even British history as we know it because with it comes guilt, shame and an Inglorious past.
It’s a brave prime minister who tries to change the constitution without the support of the opposition. No constitutional referendum in Australia’s history has succeeded without agreement of both major parties.
Source: Voice to parliament: Dutton walked out of the Apology. Now he’ll walk out on the Voice
“The metamorphosis of BJP’s vindictive politics into autocracy is happening at an alarming pace,” one Indian state’s chief minister said in response to the parliamentary expulsion and criminal sentencing of Rahul Gandhi.
Source: ‘Scorched-Earth Politics’: Indian MP Ousted, Sentenced to 2 Years Over Modi Insult
America is a precarious democracy, hardly able to manage its affairs, let alone anyone else’s.
America may be the most advanced technological nation on earth. However, its social progress on matters of great moral importance is still fighting its way out of the dark ages when mysticism was rampant.
If we had been trying to enrich our thinking and diplomacy with China instead of pandering to the United States, we might have been in a better strategic position.
Moreover, we wouldn’t be facing the conundrum we now are.
Source: China, the United States, and us – » The Australian Independent Media Network
America’s biggest threat isn’t China
I don’t want to make light of the challenge China represents to the United States, but the greatest danger America faces today is not coming from China. It is our drift toward proto-fascism. We must take care not to demonize China so much that we generate paranoia that further distorts our priorities, fuels American nativism and xenophobia, and encourages authoritarianism at home.
Source: Distinguishing Between a Chinese Challenge and a Chinese Enemy | The Smirking Chimp
In another sign of Moscow’s punishing crackdown on those who question its war in Ukraine, the 69-year-old veteran human rights campaigner Oleg Orlov was detained this week on charges of “repeatedly discrediting the armed forces”.
An Extortionist Threatens Action
Former US president Donald Trump warned of potential “death & destruction” if he faces criminal charges, hours after New York prosecutors probing his hush-money payment to adult entertainer Stormy Daniels said they would not be intimidated.
Source: Trump warns of ‘death and destruction’ if he is charged with a crime – Gulf Times
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