“Punching down” is more than being mean, rude, or vulgar. It’s the intentional act of attacking those in powerless positions. Going after the people who are most vulnerable. A specific type of cruelty and cowardice.
Source: I’m a Professional Comedy Writer — The GOP Has a ‘Punching Down’ Problem | The Smirking Chimp
Despite Donald Trump facing a slew of legal problems, there is still a slight chance of the former President posing a threat to American democracy, writes George Grundy.
Part 111
Capitalism and “liberal democracy” are failing and destroying our world. In this, the third in a three-part series, I explore how Australia must embrace a new future by emphasising trade and cultural relationships in foreign policy, managing mass media concentration and the military/industrial complex, and addressing social inequality. We have the means. Do we have the will?
David Milner has already labelled 2022 “annus stupidus”, but 2022 was also a turning point. From Scott Morrison to Christian Porter to Elon Musk, so much stupid was met with so much comeuppance. And for that, we should be thankful. Here are 2022’s top shit-heels getting exactly what they deserve.
If you’re thinking, ‘well he lost his job, that’s great, let’s move on’, sadly, we can’t just move on until we unpack all the shit that happened along the way.
Source: Chris Smith and the way people downplay, excuse and protect predatory scum | The Shot
We are being led in our anti-China hysteria by the United States which is not concerned that China will attack us, or even the United States, but is concerned that its world hegemony is being challenged.
Source: Best of 2022: China has neither the intent nor the capability to attack us – Pearls and Irritations
Netanyahu is systematically undermining Israel: on the ideological level, the judicial level, the parliamentary level, the governance level, the military level, the security level, the foreign affairs level, the economic level and the social level.
Source: Will electing the most Far Right Extremist Government Ever cost Israel International Support?
A dedicated fascist Despite the sympathetic treatment she has received this year from the same Western media that valorized the Azov Nazis, Yulia Fedosiuk too, is an active part of the Ukrainian far-right. “One of my best friends, he is a Jew and he is in Azov,” Fedosiuk claimed in a Times of Israel interview this week. Samoilenko made similar claims in his Haaretz interview, an assertion which the paper noted he was “unable to back up immediately by providing names.”
Source: Israel helps Ukraine whitewash its Nazis | The Electronic Intifada
President Vladimir Putin has given a strong signal the war in Ukraine could continue long into 2023, with a New Year warning that the “fate of Russia” depends on victory.
Source: Foreboding as Putin signals ‘fate of Russia’ depends on war
Donald Trump knowingly committed dozens of brazen tax frauds during the six years when he ran for office and was President. Trump biographer and tax avoidance expert David Cay Johnston reports. Sociopath,
Source: A lifetime of fraud: Donald Trump’s blatant tax swindles unveiled – Michael West
The countdown is over! In proving that satire and a good laugh can lift our spirits in the darkest of political times, Number 1 goes to Rossleigh for this article from February.Media
Actions in 2022 by NewsGuard and PayPal and inquiries by a British official proved that powerful establishment actors oppose Consortium News. Help us show them they are wrong. By Joe Lauria Special to Consortium News For Consortium News the year 2022 was marked by notable achievements,
In June, The GrayZone reported on leaked emails which showed that a British Foreign Office official had contacted Nina Jankowicz, who at the time was heading the Biden administration’s now disbanded Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Homeland Security. In an email, the official said he would look into CN‘s editor. He said Jankowicz told him she would “ask around” about Consortium News.
It is not clear who she asked, whether in or out of government. But Jankowicz told the official she thinks CN was not being funded, presumably by a foreign power such as Russia, but instead were just being “useful idiots.”
This year Twitter permanently banned two of our regular contributors, Scott Ritter and Patrick Lawrence.
In 2020, the Canadian electronic intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) falsely accused Consortium News of being in the forefront of a Russian cyber attack.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt said about his fiercest right-wing critics: “They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.” We welcome the Establishment’s hatred too. We also welcome all the support you can give us to help us continually beat them.
Indian police are investigating the death of a Russian sausage tycoon, who died just days after another wealthy compatriot – the latest in a worrying long line of rich Russians to die in mysterious circumstances this year.
The British East India Company set the framework for corporate influence.
Both alarm and concern were expressed Saturday in response to new reporting about a charitable group with close ties to the U.S. Supreme Court that has been soliciting and accepting donations from corporate interests and far-right activists with cases before the court.
Source: ‘Why Are These Conflicts Allowed?’ Corporate Giving to Group Tied to Supreme Court Sparks Concern
When it comes to Ukraine the US Germany and the UK sing an embarrassingly different tune and Israel abstains any vote against Russia
“The time has come for Israel to be a state subject to law,” said a spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority, “and to be held accountable for its ongoing crimes against our people.”
The General Assembly of the United Nations on Friday approved a resolution that asks the International Court of Justice to issue an opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories.
The resolution passed with a final vote of 87 in favor, 26 opposed, and 53 nations abstaining. Among those opposed to the measure were the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
Specifically, the resolution asks the ICJ to provide the United Nations with an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s ongoing “occupation, settlement and annexation” of the Occupied Territories, “including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures.”
Source: US, Israel Vote No as UN Approves World Court Resolution on Illegal Occupation
A former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, himself a man of the old secular Israel Right — a man who launched the ruinous 2006 Lebanon war — was horrified at the hordes of misogynists, homophobes, and homicidal maniacs that fills Binyamin Netanyahu’s cabinet in his sixth government. Olmert to his credit did support withdrawing from Gaza and from most of the Palestinian West Bank, things that Netanyahu has vociferously opposed ever since the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993– which Netanyahu bears some responsibility for derailing.
One man stands alone and for himself fuck everybody else
Former President Donald Trump has appeared to float the idea of running a third-party campaign if increasingly disgruntled Republican leaders don’t get behind his 2024 run for the presidency.
Source: Trump Appears To Float Third-Party Threat If GOP Won’t Back Him | HuffPost Latest News
So it is across most of the GOP leadership. The ever-nastier behavior we saw after the 2022 midterms wasn’t a show performed for the benefit of the Fox News-drunk base, or at least not entirely. That’s just who these people are: privileged bullies who can’t stand the idea of treating people different than themselves as equals. The more they come face to face with clear evidence that they’re losing the battle for hearts and minds, the more they’ll use the authority they still possess — which is a lot — to enforce ever more baroque punishments on the most vulnerable people in our society, out of their misbegotten desire for revenge.
Nominating those most worthy of their fall under the 2022 karma bus provides both a shortlist for fuck-knuckle of the year (FOTY) and solid evidence that the human species is at an evolutionary dead end when such bilge is the best we can come up with to run the world. It’s also a somewhat cathartic end to the year to call out these cockwombles, and it holds out some small hope for a better 2023.
Source: Fact hunt – the worst person of 2022 – » The Australian Independent Media Network
We continue the countdown to our Top 5 most viewed articles in 2022. Number 2 goes to Alan Austin for this piece from April.
Last Friday morning, just as Scott Morrison was spruiking his credentials on 3AW, Treasury updated Australia’s gross debt – a thumping $874.2 billion. The Coalition has now added a neat $600 billion to the nation’s debt.
In defence of reporting facts and critical thinking for the benefit of a Nation mislead
NewsGuard is a government-affiliated organization judging Consortium News, which is totally independent of government or corporations. NewsGuard acknowledges CN‘s independence in its judgment.
NewsGuard’s ties to the U.S. government suggests that its role is to uphold government narratives and to fend off evidence that challenges it, at the risk of undermining its own position.
If CN were really an “anti-U.S.” website it would be happy to let things in the U.S. run its course towards steep decline. It would welcome rather than criticize foreign and domestic policy decisions by U.S. leaders that are harming the nation.
Because CN argues for a more equitable society and an end to U.S. aggression in pursuit of dominating the world, it wants the U.S. to improve the treatment of its citizens and to become a more responsible citizen abroad. Performing journalism’s supreme function of critically analyzing government does not make one “anti-U.S.”
The first thing I asked myself before commencing this piece was, does conservatism have a future? By conservatism, in this instance, I refer to the philosophy practised by the LNP over the last decade or so. ( John Lord )
Capitalism and “liberal democracy” are failing and destroying our world. In this, the second in a three-part series, we explore how Australia can halt the decline by reversing privatisation of public utilities and embracing a foreign policy based on neutrality.
Corporations have no bodies or souls to punish their influence over politicians’ campaigns ensuring they are the purveyors of interests for a price. America’s largest corporations form a queue to buy that influence.
While the industry reaped record profits, Fox painted oil companies as the victim of a fake war on fossil fuels
Source: Fox has shamelessly spent 2022 bootlicking the fossil fuel industry | Media Matters for America
Yes the dirty shareholders profited in 2022
Public subsidies for coal plants are merely the icing on the cake of a triumphant year for multinational fossil fuel corporations operating in this country. Michael West and Callum Foote report on Fossocracy Australia.
It wasn’t so long ago we said this about millionaires how the fuck did we come to this so quickly? Whatsmore why the fuck did we make Trump President?
Worse, billionaire giving is subsidized by ordinary taxpayers. Under current policy, only the roughly 10 percent of Americans who itemize deductions on their state and federal tax returns—as almost every wealthy family does—get to deduct charitable donations from their taxable income. So when a billionaire with a 20 percent effective tax rate gives $100 million to his own foundation, or makes a huge donation to Harvard—as Jared Kushner’s daddy did to help him get in—or bankrolls “charities” that spread hate and misinformation (because eligibility rules for tax-exempt nonprofits are shamefully lax), that donation costs the US Treasury $20 million.
Without all the perks and subsidies afforded to super-rich Americans, billionaires might never have emerged in the first place, or at least we’d have a great deal fewer of them. Kill those perks—the tax favoritism, the pay-to-play, the cheating, legacy admissions, self-interested philanthropy, retirement subsidies, the Walton GRATs and all the rest, and maybe those undeserving billionaires will one day fade away.
“As long as Germany declares the Jews to be an inferior race, poisoning and persecuting them, decent, self-respecting Jews cannot deal with Germany in any way, buy or sell or maintain any manner of commerce with Germany or travel on German Boats.”
With this clarion call born of principle and necessity, a respected Rabbi and leader of the American Jewish community of the early 1930’s called for an absolute boycott of German goods as the “duty of all self-respecting Jews.”
He urged the boycott not because German’s were white, or Christian, or blonde haired and blue eyed. And few if any in the United States accused him of any such mindless targeted hate. The boycott, which was fundamentally rooted in human rights, was necessary in an effort to try to stem the growing odium and bloodletting sure and soon to follow.
Boycotts have bequeathed an essential and lasting international footprint in the chase of justice and equality, a battle that knows not the limitation of any given time, place or party. As noted by T’ruah, in its amicus (friend of the court) brief on behalf of more than 2,000 Jewish clergy in opposition to the anti-BDS effort framed in Arkansas Times v. Waldrip, as long ago as 1770 a colonial boycott was called for by a legislative resolution of Virginia against British and European goods.
Source: Seeking Justice in the Name of Hate: In Defense of BDS – CounterPunch.org
Convenient News spread faster than any truth and it’s defended as Freedom of Speech
Disinformation is an old Russian government tactic. But this time Russia had help. Within days, Chinese officials and media outlets had picked up the lies and were amplifying and expanding on the biolabs yarn. The Chinese Communist Party tabloid Global Times created two splashy spreads, one sourced in part to Sputnik News, the other featuring a quote from Russian President Vladimir Putin. “What is the U.S. hiding in the biolabs discovered in Ukraine?” it screamed.
“China jumped on the biolabs conspiracy theory,” said Katja Drinhausen, an analyst with the Mercator Institute of China Studies in Berlin. Chinese officials and media outlets had spent the preceding months pushing the notion that the pandemic might have originated in a lab accident outside China. “It was like, here’s the perfect conspiracy theory coming out of Russia to support our ‘everywhere but China’ main talking point of the last year,” she said.
Source: Hacked Russian Files Reveal Propaganda Accord With China
The model dates back to EIC or The British East India Company the first speculative share-for-profit company formed to commercialise war. Within 50 years it had grown, controlled and taken the wealth of nations. India and China constituted well over 25% of the world’s trade, At one time the company even had 25% of British MPs in its pocket.
When almost bankrupt after failing to pay taxes, it was the first organisation deemed too big to fail, so it became a government-owned public/private partnership under the protection of the British government. India’s famine and the opium wars with China required EIC to look for new territories to plunder and rapaciously profit from. So it turned its eye to the Americas where it had been slave trading. However, the multicultural colonies wouldn’t have a bar of what had been done to India and fought for and won their Independence from the British effort and Company. The East India Company gave us the birth to and the model of the systemic structure called the Corporation. It had set the standard of a system of no physical body or soul to punish With no identifiable owner only an office and shareholder list they were free to do what they wanted and did.
Corporations regularly outspend labor unions and public interest groups during election years. And too many politicians in Washington represent the interests of corporations — not their constituents. As a result, corporate taxes have been cut, loopholes widened, and regulations gutted.
Source: Opinion | How the Corporate Takeover of American Politics Began | Common Dreams
In establishing the neocon playbook as Putin’s blueprint, the goal is not to absolve his criminal regime of guilt by childishly pointing to other crimes against humanity carried out by the US. It is instead intended to establish Putin’s move into Ukraine as being rooted in a precedent established by the US and its imperial junior partners.
And so, you see an alternate reality where Ukraine is a Nazi state, where Russian speakers face a genocide, where aggressive war is a preemptive, defensive, “special operation.” But moreover, you see a reality where power reigns supreme over international law. And here, Putin is existing within the neocon-constructed reality, and is now reshaping it in his image.
If Australia was Israel there’d be no referendum about the Voice, and Multiculturalism would be restricted. We’d simply become an Apartheid State
These African-Americans, Latinx people, Asian-Americans and indigenous North Americans will be reminded that settling North America is an exclusively white Christian right.
Source: What would the United States be Like if it was like Israel?
It’s Time Again The new Labor Albanese Government with a two-house majority has an opportunity to pick up the mantle of Whitlam, Hawke and Keating and move Australian society back towards a more equitable and independent position. Let us NOT start another political party! There have been many such attempts before and these have obviously failed. Our best chance this time is to get behind the ALP itself.
Source: Democratic socialism in Australia: why it’s time again – Pearls and Irritations
Morrison is an “arsehole”, just ask his colleagues It seems whatever he does,
Scott Morrison leaves a bevy of disgruntled colleagues in his wake.
An early job was with the Tourism Task Force where he was 2IC. After he jumped ship to join its main rival, Tourism Council Australia run by Bruce Baird, the TTF was unimpressed and changed its employment contracts to prevent others from “doing a Morrison”.
In any case, the Murdochs have inflicted so much racism, sexism, virulent lies, and damage in the USA. This is by no means the case for the USA only. It similarly applies to the UK and Australia.
Nazis had no shame in taking the property of Jews. The State of Israel exhibits no shame in taking over the Palestinian West Bank, or East Jerusalem and announces the right to invade.
An exclusive Jewish right to settle and live in the land implicitly announces that the 6.5 million Palestinians who live on it may have no right to be there at all.
Thousands of Palestinians took out marches across the occupied territories on Tuesday, December 27, demanding that Israel release the bodies of deceased Palestinian freedom fighter Nasser Abu Hmeid and others killed by its forces.
Source: Thousands March in Occupied Territories Demanding Release of Bodies of Palestinians – scheerpost.com
Consider some inconvenient facts that the fawning media, which is essentially the public relations arm of the weapons industry, doesn’t want you to know.
Ukraine will prove a turning point in the dismantling of U.S. hegemony over global affairs that it has enjoyed—and, let’s be honest, often abused–since 1945. The U.S. public is not psychically prepared for such a come down. But that is the cost of living in the fantasy world that the media lavishes up to keep that self-same public ignorant, fearful, confused, entertained, and distracted.
Source: We’ve Reached Peak Zelensky. Now What? | The Smirking Chimp
History and the right of reply
A short history of neo-Nazism in Ukraine in response to NewsGuard’s charge that Consortium News published false content about its extent.
It’s fair to say that the Republican Party of 2022 is a much broader coalition than it used to be. Once upon a time it was defined as the party of Main Street and the country club: white middle-class and upper-middle-class guys in gray flannel suits. But in recent years they’ve opened the doors and invited in a whole bunch of other Americans who don’t fit that mold. Starting in the 1960s they willingly veered into overt racism mantle and with their embrace of the Christian right in the ’80s, all the anti-gay, anti abortion flock began to move their way as well. The new Trump majority within the party captured a chunk of the previously nonvoting public that believes in fringe conspiracy theories and far-right ideologies and worships at the altar of vapid TV celebrity.
That said, the Republican coalition still isn’t very diverse. It’s nearly all white, of course, with only a tiny fraction of racial and ethnic minorities. It’s almost all Christian and most are non-college-educated and rural. And since virtually everyone who now votes Republican is indoctrinated with lies and propaganda, by watching and listening to the same information sources, there isn’t an independent idea to be f
Source: Worst Republicans of 2022: It’s just so hard to choose! | Salon.com
AIM 4th Best article by KAYE LEE
9 things Scott Morrison could have done for the flood emergency — but didn’t When people are sitting on their rooftops and clinging to discarded car tyres to avoid drowning as they watch all their worldly possessions float away in a torrent of devastation, what is the leader of the nation to do?
To keep a good government to account, you need a good opposition. Hopefully The Greens, micro parties and independents are willing to step up to the mark as the Liberal Party haven’t worked out they have internal problems to solve before they represent Australia’s ‘conservative economic and liberal social values’ rather than their own sectional interests. We all deserve better.
Source: Blame them – not us – » The Australian Independent Media Network
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