a note to Australian politicians – get out of the gutter, discuss your policies and plans for the future then genuinely accept and act on ideas that come from others outside your tent if you are fortunate enough to win power. We’re all fed up to the back teeth with character assassination, put-downs for the sake of putting someone down and not genuinely considering advice.
Source: Get out of the gutter – » The Australian Independent Media Network
According to Peter Dutton she should count herself lucky she’s not in a country where she could have been shot
If you are seeing this campaign, then I have been sentenced to prison for peaceful environmental protest. On April 14, I stopped a truck on the Harbour Bridge with my firefighter friend to draw attention to the climate and ecological emergency, and to the fact our firefighters do not have the tools they need to protect us.
Source: Deanna ‘Violet’ Coco on her arrest and why she protested
I would love to know how much she has tried to help the prosecution case with tips. I guess we will never know.
Money-laundering whistleblower Troy Stolz is in court this week against pokies lobby group ClubsNSW. Whistleblowers David McBride and Jeff Morris were there to support him. Callum Foote reports.
Provocation for domestic politics “it has to be Barnaby Joyce”
A delegation of MPs visiting Taiwan are “casting a shadow” on Australia’s improving relationship with China.
Source: China warns Australia ‘playing with fire’ as MPs visit Taiwan
America believes that it should run the world unchallenged in all dimensions of statehood.
Known as AUSMIN, the high-level talks between the United States and Australia are now underway in Washington on foreign policy and defence. Held annually since 1985 they are the cement which binds this habit of our being allies.
It is time to talk frankly about the big picture behind these talks and understand that our independence is no longer welcome within them. Friends need to be candid.
Source: We are useful idiots for the US war industry and its followers in Australia – Pearls and Irritations
Distraction provides cover for Israeli crimes
The European Union has expressed its profound concern about the rash of extra-judicial killings by Israel of Palestinian young men, with ten having been killed recently. This year alone, some 207 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces. The new extremist government of Binyamin Netanyahu and his fascist partners in ‘Religious Zionism’ is suspected of having more Palestinians killed since October. Although a ‘shoot to kill policy’ has been on the books for many years, Some observers fear that the new far right government may be resorting to it more often.
Source: Spike in Extrajudicial Executions by Israeli Police of Palestinian Youth
Viktor Sevalnev was recruited by the Wagner group and made commander of his company after the previous commander died in combat. According to the Russian site, The Insider, he was allegedly executed after his men deserted from the front.
Source: Russia Executes Company Commander After His Men Desert | Crooks and Liars
While I had been warned about Melbourne’s unpredictable weather, no one warned me about the warmth of Melburnians. Just like the charm of the city’s secret laneways, Melbourne’s friendliness is available for those willing to open their hearts.
Anthony Albanese has been revealed as Labor’s most popular leader since Kevin Rudd while Scott Morrison was so disliked he rated below Greens leader Adam Bandt.
Source: Australia’s least popular leader amid seismic shift in voting
The latest Newspoll has delivered good news for federal Labor and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Labor’s primary vote has lifted a point to 39 per cent while the Coalition remains unchanged on 35 per cent, according to the final Newspoll survey for the year.
Mr Albanese also enjoyed a surge in support as preferred prime minister, the poll conducted for The Australian newspaper shows.
The result for Labor is is more than six points stronger than its election result of 32.6 per cent, while the Coalition’s result is almost a point down on its election tally of 35.7 per cent.
Source: Newspoll shows lift for Labor and Albanese – Michael West
Tony Abbott handed Turnbull the poison chalice he filled to guarantee its failure. More important to Abbott was the threat Turnbull posed to his leadership. The failure of the NBN was Abbott’s scheme to cement his position. It failed on all counts but also damaged Turnbull and his legacy. Abbott’s Frankenstein NBN has since been branded as Turnbull’s.
The previous Coalition Government under the Minister for Communication Malcolm Turnbull promised: ’a cheaper, good quality NBN, faster delivered’. It failed on all counts.
Source: NBN write-down confirms its national importance and Coalition failure – Pearls and Irritations
Fighting the System is far more effective than simply another case heard and judged.
Brittany Higgins has vowed to fight for a better justice system after reports she plans to launch a compensation claim against her former employer and a Coalition minister.
Source: Brittany Higgins looks to fresh legal action after trial dropped
The mainstream media’s desperate bid to disgrace Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has revealed the absolute lunatic depths News Corp will sink to, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.
Source: Murdoch’s power eroded by Victorian Election cooker conspiracies
How quid pro quo works, and donations remain unrecorded. The ALP on the other hand suffers the slings and arrows of private mainstream corporate media. The ABC was exclused.
Josh Frydenberg sallied forth with a fulsome pat on the back this week … for himself.
“The Coalition’s ‘world-first’ Media Bargaining Code was a ‘success’,” pronounced the former Treasurer. A success indeed; a terrific success for the Coalition’s media mates Rupert Murdoch, Peter Costello and Kerry Stokes.
To be fair to Josh, he was only repeating what was in the press. Josh’s “media reforms” had forced Google and Facebook to pay millions in cash (secretly) to Big Media. In return, the News Corp, Nine, Guardian Australia and so forth sang the praises of Josh’s “world-first”. Manufacturing consent is a breeze, you just have to pay people.
Cuba’s poverty isn’t the fault of its political system but rather the 65-year trade embargo placed on it by America. The embargo has failed to destroy the nation’s resilience.
Coming from the fundamentally undemocratic US Empire, it was the first time that many participants saw a functional electoral system in which the masses actually participate, and in which the majority truly rules.
Source: US Youth Observe Cuba’s Elections—and Learn About ‘Real Democracy’ – scheerpost.com
Below is an interview I recorded with war crimes whistleblower and lawyer David McBride on Friday (2/12/22) discussing the failings of the National Anti-Corruption Commission legislation which passed parliament this week.
The Whitlam Government’s economic performance was certainly not perfect, but it deserves a better reputation than it has, writes John Hawkins.
Source: Gough Whitlam’s enthusiasm for reform has left a lasting legacy
What’s your list?
Every decade, the British Film Institute releases their 100 greatest films of all time. Here’s who made the cut.
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles – Chantal Akerman’s 1975 hypnotic study of a mother performing domestic chores in microscopic detail – has just been crowned the “greatest film of all time” in Sight and Sound’s prestigious poll.
It is only the fourth film to have topped the list since polling began, and the first directed by a woman.
The full list of 100 films was published today, with the top ten:
If you are looking for a crash-course in film history, this is not a bad place to start.
Conservation biology finds itself in a terrifying place today, witness to mass extinction, helpless to stop the march of industrial Homo sapiens, the pillage of habitat, the loss of wildlands, and the impoverishment of ecosystems. Many of its leading figures are in despair. “I’m 40 years into conservation biology and I can tell you we are losing badly, getting our asses kicked,” Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President Barack Obama, told me recently. “There are almost no reasons to be optimistic.”
Ashe suggests that conservation biologists cease the empty claims about “saving the planet” with climate mitigation and start speaking truth: There is at present no plan, in any country, anywhere, on a global or national scale, to address extinctions, biodiversity crash, and habitat loss. The dismal reality is that with a green build-out, we will be saving not the complex web of life on Earth but the particular way of life of one privileged domineering species that depends for its success on a nature-ravaging network of technological marvels. Only once this truth is understood can honest decisions be made about what kind of world humanity wishes to inhabit in the age of ecological disorder.
Source: Addressing Climate Change Will Not “Save the Planet”
China’s “zero Covid” policy has sparked rare protests across the nation of nearly a billion and a half people. Which led me to think about our very own failed “zero” policy here in the United States. Zero corporate tax. To be fair, it’s not a policy per se, but is clearly an aspiration that has been achieved.
Scores of huge corporations — which have been enjoying record profits — have paid nothing in federal income tax over the past few years. Never mind the bargain basement rates of 30% or even 15%, these multibillion dollar corporations are paying 0%, or even a negative rate (which of course translates to a refund).
Baptists voted in Australia, Pentecostalists divide the LNP, Australia gave them the finger in the last 2 elections and the Nation turned Left
But
The embrace of Christofascism is nothing new in our history. Some of its loudest proponents: Father Charles Coughlin and Henry Ford, and such movements as the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Legion, Crusaders for America, and the Knights of the White Camelia, and the William Dudley Pelley Silver Shirts, flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. With Donald Trump, Josh Hawley, the Proud Boys, and Oath Keepers, echoes of those past leaders and movements resonated on January 6 and beyond.
Source: Christian Nationalists Embracing Christofascism | The Smirking Chimp
Israel wants Trump FU America
The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that that Binyamin Netanyahu’s far right Likud Party concluded a coalition agreement with the extremist right-wing Religious Zionism bloc on Thursday, defying the warnings by the Biden administration that unilateral Israeli steps in the Palestinian West Bank would harm security between Washington and Tel Aviv.
The guilty verdict against Stewart Rhodes, head of the militia, and one of his subordinates effectively established that there was an illegal plot to keep president Donald Trump in power despite his defeat in the 2020 election, whether Trump was directly involved or simply inspired it through the lies he spread.
Trump called for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” in order to place him back in the White House.
Will Trump be charged with sedition over this latest statement? He will not. Odds are good that not one Sunday morning talk show will even ask their Republican “guests” about the this latest demand for a monarchy.
Source: Trump calls for a ‘termination of all rules … even the Constitution’ to install him as dictator
After decades of stagnant wage growth and the collapse of enterprise bargaining, Australia is in crying need of industrial relations reform. The Labor Party’s Secure Jobs, Better Pay Act promises this — the question is whether it can actually deliver it.
Source: Australia’s New Industrial Relations Bill Could Be Good News for Unions
The National Party refused to support even the most modest climate goals that Scott Morrison took to COP 26 in Glasgow, unless it was bought off with a range of expensive rorts. Far from leading on climate change to help farmers the National party is a laggard.
The Nationals’ announcement that it will oppose the Indigenous Voice is all about pathetic internal Coalition politics and a whole lot more
It is possible the National Party’s sudden announcement that it will oppose the Indigenous Voice is primarily about pathetic internal Coalition politics, as the ABC’s David Speers has reported.
But there is a deeper, darker reason the Nationals were always going to oppose the Voice: The inability of much of their country base to come to terms with their heritage, with their families’ pasts, with the source of their wealth.
The psychology of denial runs very deep. Odds are there are National Party Boomer elders whose grandparents were involved in “dispersal” – the euphemism for genocide in Queensland and throughout Northern Australia. If not grandparents, then certainly great-grandparents.
Those forebears had to inculcate values in their children that justified massacres, theft and dispossession. Who wants to be proud of what they’ve built when it has been built on murder?
Source: The Nationals’ guilt-edged reason to oppose the Voice
Peter Costello’s CH9 and The Age tried to make out the ALP’s “political machine” won them the election in Victoria. It’s a total distraction from the fact that the LNP were never fit for the job either Federally or State wise and that will be proved in the next NSW election when the voters yet again won’t be manipulated but will choose who they want to employ as their next government.
The Liberals seem to talk to themselves, about themselves, and defend their actions rather than face reality, Julia Banks writes.
Scott Morrison’s historic censure over his multiple ministries and his ‘sorry not sorry’ defence speech played out this week on the back of a disastrous Victorian election result for the Liberal Party.
Morrison’s speech will be an endpoint of his legacy – a trail of destruction of the party forever linked to a man who abused his power and undermined our democracy.
Almost a year to the day after the Commonwealth Ombudsman requested a review – and following repeated inquiries from The Klaxon – the nation’s most powerful department says it has found seven officials who may have been illegally paid for holding two jobs.
Source: PM&C officials who oversaw alleged illegal payments told to lawyer up
A Call for women to defend the indefensible is just that, and will continue to be no matter who is asked.
A few more women here, a slightly richer range of cultural backgrounds there, and what would change? Colour, gender, a subdued tolerance for LGBTQI+ will gradually be true for some. But on the most fundamental matters of human dignity and decency for all, or unconditional protection of people and planet before profits, those “conservative” resistances to questioning “culture” will almost certainly remain the same.
Source: Women cannot revive Liberal “appeal” – Pearls and Irritations
A prosecutor’s decision to drop charges against the man accused of raping Brittany Higgins in a parliamentary office has sparked calls for changes to how the justice system supports complainants.
Source: Higgins’ story sparks reform conversation – Michael West
Daryl Maguire “has been charged with criminal conspiracy over allegations he carried out a lucrative cash-for-visas scheme while he was sitting in the NSW parliament.”
LEHRMANN CHARGES TO BE DROPPED
The retrial of Bruce Lehrmann for the alleged rape of former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins will not go ahead, with charges against Lehrmann reportedly to be dropped, according to news.com.au’s Samatha Maiden. She reports new medical evidence showed a second trial would be far too damaging to Higgins’ mental health. ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold will front the media at 10am AEDT — Maiden says he’ll use his prosecutorial discretion to drop the charge against Lehrmann. Drumgold refused to confirm it to the reporter, but news.com.au says it has confirmed it. Former Liberal staffer Lehrmann has always said he is innocent of the rape allegation — his first trial was aborted because a member of the jury did their own research, Guardian Australia reported at the time.
Source: Retrial of Bruce Lehrmann for sexual assault will not go ahead
Embattled former Coalition minister Stuart Robert is facing a new investigation into meetings he took as a minister with a business associate and their Canberra firm who he had previously advised on their bids for IT contracts worth tens of millions of dollars.
The international right is cynical and dangerous. It is crucial we look beyond the surface rhetoric to understand what it represents because Australia is not immune.
Source: The Right is toxic: what next for conservatives? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Ultimately, the Taiwan Strait remains a primary geopolitical flashpoint. But the most avid China-hawks in the US, Taiwan and well beyond will be despondent over this recent hiding handed out to unconcealed China-baiting-politics. Even more gloom-making for such folk, the prospects for maintaining regional peace have also measurably improved.
Source: Divisive China-threat politics deliver defeat in Taiwan – Pearls and Irritations
You can say “But communist regimes are authoritarian blah blah” all you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that capitalism has zero answers for the most important problems facing our species. This still needs to be addressed, and moaning about Mao and Stalin isn’t an answer. Don’t like the iterations of socialism we’ve seen so far? Okay. Then find another answer, and remember we’ve already established that capitalism is not an answer; it cannot address the problems we’ve discussed here. So we need to find an actual answer that does actually work.
Dismantling capitalism, if we ever achieve it, will be the most difficult thing that humanity has ever accomplished. As hard as everyone becoming a buddha, and essentially not much different. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is existentially necessary for us to do so.
We’ll either move from competition-based systems to collaboration-based ones, eliminating all the obstacles necessary for us to do so, or we will go extinct. We are at our adapt-or-die juncture as a species.
The telling question here is whether Albanese will get any purchase with the Washington set. While enjoying a reputation as a pragmatic negotiator able to reach agreements in tight circumstances, the pull of the US national security establishment may prove too strong. “We now get to see Australia’s standing in Washington, valued ally or not,” was the guarded response of Assange’s father John Shipton.
Source: Julian Assange and Albanese’s Intervention – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Kenny MacAskill, a former Scottish justice secretary and the MP who asked questions in parliament, tells Declassified: “This obfuscation and avoidance is, I believe, part of a pattern of a cover up in alliance with US authorities.”
Source: Four British Ministries Refuse To Say if They’ve Discussed Assange With US – scheerpost.com
The wish by Israeli leaders for Palestinians to be eliminated from their ancient homelands is the very antithesis of Isaiah’s original Zionist vision.
Source: Zionist violence against Palestinians is the antithesis of Judaism – Pearls and Irritations
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