I am sure some or all of these following conclusions will come over bitterly among some readers, but here are mine. I do not want those waging war by rhetoric and display to win. I do not want the war waged by fanatical neoconservative ideologues to win. I do not want the imperium to win. I do not want the West to win so long as it insists intolerantly that the rest of the world observe its diktats.
Source: Patrick Lawrence: A War of Rhetoric & Reality – scheerpost.com
It’s a post-Christmas feast. We are serving up the Top 40 Tax Dodgers, the crème de la crème of Australia’s biggest and meanest tax tricksters. Callum Foote reports.
Source: Foreign fossil fuel juggernauts dominate the annual MWM Top 40 Tax Dodgers chart – Michael West
The PR firm advising the UN on climate change campaigns has been accused by US lawmakers of helping BP “greenwash” its fossil fuel investments, openDemocracy can reveal.
Exclusive: US Inquiry unearths pro-Gas PR Strategy produced by Firm “At Core of global Climate Effort”
Internal BP documents released to the US House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee and published last week show Brunswick created a strategy in 2017 or 2018 to help “reframe the conversation on gas”, “protect BP’s ‘advantaged gas position’” and “secure support for gas as a natural low carbon fuel”.
The news has sparked fresh concerns over Brunswick’s work for both Big Oil and the UN, which openDemocracy revealed this month.
Source: Secret Files reveal how UN Climate Advisers ‘greenwashed’ for BP
The hearing ended a half hour later. I survived. Flashbulbs exploded all around. I could see my burly chief interrogator across the hearing room. He was beaming. I couldn’t reach him in the crowd, but our eyes met. He pointed his thumb straight upward.
Source: How To Survive a Senate Confirmation (Part III: The Hearing) | The Smirking Chimp
The rescue of hundreds of Rohingya refugees by fishers and local authorities in Indonesia’s Aceh province was praised Tuesday as “an act of humanity” by United Nations officials, while relatives of around 180 Rohingya on another vessel that’s been missing for weeks feared that all aboard had perished
Tun Khin, a Rohingya activist and refugee who now heads the Burmese Rohingya Organization U.K., took aim at regional power Australia, which has been criticized for decades over its abuse of desperate seaborne asylum-seekers, nearly all of whom are sent to dirty, crowded offshore processing centers on Manus Island and Nauru to await their fate.
“Australia has too often set a shameful example for the region through its treatment of refugees,” he told the Morning Herald.
“These people are facing genocide in Burma,” Khin added, using the former official name of Myanmar. “It is a hopeless situation for them in Bangladesh, there is no dignity of life there.”
Source: ‘A Sigh of Relief’ as Hundreds of Rohingya Refugees Rescued After Harrowing Sea Journeys
WEST BANK INVASION AND COLONISATION ISRAEL’S PRIORITY
Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming hardline government has put West Bank settlement expansion at the top of its list of priorities a day before it is set to be sworn into office.
Source: West Bank settlements top agenda for Benjamin Netanyahu
Why is this such a regular consequence for those joining America’s and the Wests fight for “freedom and democracy”? AlQaeda, ISIS, and now Afghani Allies were all once America’s allies and are now prepared to join forces to fight against America who simply shrugged turned their backs and walked away
Many ex-Afghan security personnel accuse the United States of abandoning them after the Taliban regained power last year. They also say poverty and security concerns are factoring into their decisions to take a private Russian mercenary group up on its recruitment offers.
Source: U.S.-Trained Afghan Soldiers Angry Over Their Plight Are Ready To Join Russia’s War Against Ukraine
So what’s next for mushrooms in the new year? There aren’t any signs that the fungi’s surging popularity will slow down.
While the road to psilocybin legalization promises to be a long and uncertain one, and while the co-opting of mushrooms by the wellness industry could turn some consumers off from the ingredient due to its potential ubiquity, both the aesthetic and culinary attributes of mushrooms are undeniable.
For those reasons, IMARC, a market research firm, anticipates that the global mushroom market, which was valued at $58.8 billion last year will reach an estimated $86.5 billion by 2027.
From the couture runway to home kitchens, all things fungus are having a moment
Source: Year of the mushroom: Why 2022 was defined by fungi | Salon.com
My thought for the day
Life is about doing things, not having things (but it’s probably too late now). ( John Lord )
This submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Regional Newspapers by Broome journalist Andrew Chambers was rejected by the Committee for containing content “adverse” to another party so we published it here.
Award for making Australia lag behind the rest of the world and proud of it. That’s a business leader in this country
“We were doing sustainable development long before Wall Street discovered ESG,” mining legend Mitch Hooke says.
The veteran of political and industry battlegrounds starred at a recent mining conference where executives debated what other letter should go into the “E” for environmental, “S” for social and “G” for governance equation.
“And I’m sitting there screaming economic,” he told international delegates in Sydney.
“You cannot be in the pink – for social – or the green – for environmental – if you’re not in the black, and that’s what sustainable development gives you.”
Once head of the powerful Minerals Council of Australia, striding the corridors of Parliament House to advise governments, he led the campaign more than 10 years ago against a mining super profits tax.
In Kevin Rudd’s words, Mr Hooke has also been “one of the most destructive voices in Australian national climate change action”.
Accepting the Legend in Mining Award at a glittering industry dinner, Mr Hooke says the Australian mining industry took on board the commitment to sustainable development decades ago and “set up a whole stack of standards”.
“If you look back at where we were in 2002, we have a lot to be proud of,” he says, to a round of applause.
Source: ESG investing in the pink, green and black – Michael West
Within the wheels of the company, blissful ignorance reigned. Rio Tinto’s head of corporate relations, Simone Niven, was not only based in London but had little idea about the significance of the Juukan Gorge caves. Relations could hardly be counted as her strong suit.
Conforming to previous instances of such vandalism, penalties are being called for regarding the perpetrators of the graffiti. Under the legal regime, damaging such sites can carry a fine of $A10,000 or six months in prison. But the harm has been done; again, history has been left poorer, and the dreams worse than ever.
This contentious February story on the Ukraine War by one of IA’s biggest stars was extremely popular with readers.
Source: #9 TOP IA STORY OF 2022: John Pilger – War in Europe and the rise of raw propaganda
Because Capitalism is Debt Creation, Not Loan Creation,
Apologists for capitalist globalization claim that global value chains spread prosperity around the world. In reality, they allow firms like Apple to maximize labor exploitation while keeping workers chained to poverty.
Source: Global Capitalism Will Never Lift Workers Out of Poverty
PSYOPS is REAL and DIMINISHES DEMOCRACY
“Newly declassified documents from the Reagan presidential library help explain how the U.S. government developed its sophisticated psychological operations capabilities that – over the past three decades – have created an alternative reality both for people in targeted countries and for American citizens, a structure that expanded U.S. influence abroad and quieted dissent at home.
The documents reveal the formation of a psyops bureaucracy under the direction of Walter Raymond Jr., a senior CIA covert operations specialist who was assigned to President Reagan’s National Security Council staff to enhance the importance of propaganda and psyops in undermining U.S. adversaries around the world and ensuring sufficient public support for foreign policies inside the United States.”
Source: Fighting the ‘Psyopcracy’
“Mr. Reich, you’ve had absolutely no experience managing a big organization, have you?”
“Mr. Reich, do you believe that employers should have the right to permanently replace striking workers?”
“Mr. Reich, are you a socialist?”
Source: How To Survive a Senate Confirmation (Part II) | The Smirking Chimp
If a prize was to be awarded for the most important yet least reported story in the media in 2022, it might well go to the news outlets that failed to report on the escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians, which is now combining with the likely impact of the incoming far-right government in Israel.
The explanation for the neglect is domination of the news agenda by the war in Ukraine and, more culpably, fear by part of the media that any criticism of Israel will be attacked as anti-Semitic. This attitude is more common today in Britain than the US, while the reverse used to be the case.
The latest grim episode in this extremist shift in Israel came this week when prime minister designate Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded in forming a governing coalition in which many senior posts will be filled by religious and ethno-nationalist zealots.
It seems pretty obvious that William M. is being treated with kid gloves by the French authorities and that if he were Muslim they wouldn’t be interested in whether he had psychological problems, and he would be in pre-trial detention.
Source: The Unbearable Whiteness of Being French: Murderer of Kurds ‘William M.’ Treated with kid Gloves
This is America Democracy’s global role model
Santos’ eight-point victory over Democrat Robert Zimmerman—someone who actually graduated from college and is Jewish—may partially be attributed to how he misrepresented his background. But winning a Congressional race also takes money, and one of the lingering questions is where Santos got his. Financial disclosure forms reveal that by 2022, Santos loaned his new congressional campaign and political action committee at least $600,000. (His disclosure forms from his first Congressional bid in 2020 said he earned just $55,000 per year.)
His 2022 financial disclosure forms showed more than $1 million in income coming from a company he started called the Devolder Organization LLC. But that math doesn’t add up: the Washington Post reported that as of July 2022, Devolder’s revenue was less than $50,000, according to data modeling from the financial data company Dun & Bradstreet.
It’s difficult to decipher what exactly Santos’ actual biography is; sometime between December 25 and December 27, he deleted the entire “about” section from his campaign website. But Santos did clear the air about something. When the 118th Congress begins on January 3, his dubious history will not be a problem. “I will be sworn in,” he assured WABC. “I will take office.”
Source: The George Santos Apology Tour for Lying Doesn’t Explain the Biggest Mystery of All – Mother Jones
Bringing in experienced women, almost by definition, more expert in sexual assault, would be a useful antidote to the fact that the senior ACT supervisors, who plainly took the lead in trying to stymie any prosecution, were all men. People who formed a collective view – which in police hierarchies almost invariably means from the top down. Views characterised by the DPP as not being any sort of objective briefing but “a clear and overt attempt to use loaded characterisations of some very select evidence in an attempt to get me to agree with a position the police had clearly adopted”. At further meetings, police were said to have cherry-picked selective evidence, with “blatant misrepresentations of evidence” claimed to be damaging to the complainant.
Introducing the professional views, actual expertise and experience of women, whether as police investigators or as prosecutors with a working knowledge of a credible case, might be the novel ingredient this melodrama has so far missed.
Killing chickens to show monkeys: why it’s vital to protect whistleblowers, not persecute them
Source: Michael West Media – investigative journalists – always independent
The extreme weather Sky News calls “normal”,
The death toll has soared from a severe winter storm that has put much of America into a deep freeze and turned one of the worst-hit US cities into a “war zone”.
Source: Death toll soars as winter blizzard turns city into ‘war zone’
My host leaned toward me. “You’ll have your work cut out for you.” He pointed to the label on the side of the black binder: Critics of Reich, Volume I.
Source: How To Survive a Senate Confirmation (Part I) | The Smirking Chimp
News Corp was a key supporter of the Iraq War — the Murdoch War. Of the 173 Murdoch papers worldwide only one, The Hobart Mercury opposed the war. Murdoch told us in 2003: ‘I think Bush acted very morally, very correctly. US troops will soon be welcomed as liberators’. His foreign editor on The Australian, Greg Sheridan, could not contain himself. ‘The bold eagle of American power is aloft, high above the humble earth. For as it soars and sweeps it sees victory, power and opportunity’. He is still in his job. Murdoch prefers loyalty to competence in all those around him, including his family.
Even some of the legacy media apologised for their support of the illegal war in Iraq. But never Murdoch nor for that matter John Howard.
News Corp in Australia for over a decade has also led the campaign of denial on climate change.
The US military/business/security complex exercises destructive and pervasive power. Legacy media supplies a favourable frame for that complex.
Our derivative media ties us to the white legacy media of the North Atlantic. It frames our view of the world.
Most political colonies have come to an end. But a colonial mind set continues in the media and promotes a ‘colonisation of the mind’.
entire right-wing worldview is like how Donald Trump lies. He doesn’t usually do it in big strategic ways. He doesn’t think ahead. He doesn’t care if he gets caught. He’s just looking to control a specific moment, gain dominance of an interaction, and then move on and dismiss as irrelevant whatever it was he said in pursuit of that. Yes, it’s a completely bankrupt worldview. Of course it is. But to fight it, we need to be clear about what it is we’re watching in action.
Source: Right-wing hypocrisy is never hypocrisy. It’s a coherent belief system
Here’s the thing about sexual assault: it is usually a dirty little secret. A dirty little secret that emboldens perpetrators, disempowers victims and allows the whole sordid business to continue on repeat. And so it goes.
Source: #10 TOP IA STORY OF 2022: Dirty little secrets exposed in Higgins’ case against Lehrmann
Self-rule, according to Netanyahu, has nothing to do with geography. It is a matter of “Palestinian demography”. Wherever there are gatherings of the Palestinian population, they can manage their own affairs, and their “affairs” here are limited to services such as health, education and transportation, although Israel will continue to haunt them in their school curricula and classroom programmes, and in everything related to their public space.
We cannot forget a community that is suffering from an illegal occupation, a community that is resisting, a community that is seeing its rights and dignity violated every day,” Chile’s leftist president said. Brett Wilkins Dec 23, 2022
Source: Boric Says Chile Will Open Embassy in Occupied Palestine
The great rapist lie: I’ll put it in a little bit if it hurts I’ll take it out
Now I am surrounded by forest, I see flames as the death of trees and all the living creatures that depend on them.
Source: Witness to Paradise Lost: My Year in the Dying Amazon – Mother Jones
Will he go the way of Weinstein, Capone or simply the first corrupt President who stole secret documents? Or will he go as all three?
Former President Donald Trump will likely be indicted and spend the rest of his life “behind bars,” Representative Jamie Raskin said Saturday.
Source: Trump Likely to Be Indicted, Will End Life ‘Behind Bars,’ Congressman Says
Congratulations to everyone who worked to move the country and the world towards greater equity in 2022. Herewith are 10 of the most inspiring economic inequality victories of the year.
Source: Top 10 Inequality Victories of 2022 – scheerpost.com
Capitalism has truly perfected the creation of wants and left needs behind
Source: Merry Christmas! We’re All Being Murdered by Capitalism.
Josh Frydenberg as treasurer and Scott Morrison as secret treasurer made a motza for foreign vulture funds in last year’s takeover boom and mega-sell-off of Australian assets. Who knew what when, and why are we flogging essential monopoly services to cuff-linked tax crooks? Callum Foote and Michael West report.
Source: Josh and Scott deliver Goldman Sachs the giant vampire squid a giant quid – Michael West
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — A battering winter storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across the United States on Saturday, left millions more to worry about the prospect of further outages and crippled emergency response efforts and an airport in snowbound New York state.
Source: Winter Storm Batters US Power, Snarling Christmas Travel | HuffPost Latest News
The Wagner Group has been called everything from “Putin’s ghost army” to “hired killers”.
But perhaps the most brutal description comes from Ukraine’s Ambassador to Australia: “Wagner can be considered the gangster contract killers of Putin’s mafia state.”
The ambassador, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, does not hold back: “Justice awaits Wagner if its members survive the battlefield.”
These days few subjects will elicit as strong a response from Ukrainians as the Wagner Group — Russia’s mercenary group which does things that even the feared Russian special forces, the Spetsnaz, won’t do.
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For them, and for everyone who still regards them as heroes, there is no morality in business or economics. The winnings go to the most ruthless
Source: Trump, Bankman-Fried and Musk are the monsters of American capitalism | Robert Reich | The Guardian
In a deep dive into how things are going for Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential run as he skips holding his rallies and holes up at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Olivia Nuzzi notes that things are not well at all — and his advisers are admitting they are witnessing a downward spiral.
So, this hardworking team – officially known as the Bi-Annual Liberal Strategy and Campaigning Secretariat (BALSACS) – is currently meeting in Biarritz to develop new and innovative strategies to promote Peter Dutton and the Liberal Party.
Source: It’s beginning to look a lot like rictus ─ for Dutton’s Coalition
Howard started the ball rolling chasing money held by the religious right.
The results of the ANU’s 2022 Australian Election Study confirm that the Coalition was undone by the pandemic, the economy, and a highly unpopular Prime Minister. However, they also suggest that the Liberal Party’s ‘broad church’ is an increasingly untenable edifice.
Source: The Liberal Party – a broad church or a house divided? – Pearls and Irritations
The review is strong on how internal party processes went wrong but its push for change is not sufficient
The Liberals consistently overlook the fact that their views on a number of issues are inconsistent with the majority. They’ve been elected on a number of occasions because of their perceived ability to manage the economy. This is like when your hairdresser gives you a running commentary that you ignore because you like the way he cuts your hair and the rest of it doesn’t seem important enough to find a new one. However, with their inability to actually deliver the Budget surplus they promised and the blowout in government debt to triple what it was when it was an emergency have left people feeling like they’ve been given a mullet they didn’t ask for.
It’s all very well to blame Labor, the pandemic and various other things, but if Labor do actually balance the budget the Coalition will have a long road back to government.
The member for Calare, who will now sit as an independent, said he ‘fundamentally disagreed’ with party’s position
olddogthoughts 
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