How was it allowed to get to @#@$#@ this?
Business is calling for urgent government intervention to address crippling shortages of Lamborghinis on the East Coast of Australia, according to an exclusive report in the Australian Financial Review. Michael West reports.
Lamborghini Crisis: Australia crippled by critical shortage of Lamborghinis – Michael West
China begins ‘illegitimate, irresponsible’ live-fire military drills near Taiwan, following Pelosi visit – ABC News
China begins ‘illegitimate, irresponsible’ live-fire military drills near Taiwan, following Pelosi visit – ABC News
Is there a lesson for Putin in Hitler’s disastrous invasion of the Soviet Union? You bet there is — and it’s one every Russian should know.Advertisement:
Winter is coming: Vladimir Putin faces his “Hitler moment” | Salon.com
According to several websites that cited tax experts, the Trump family’s choice of his National Golf Club in Bedminster for Ivana Trump’s last resting place on July 20 was a financial maneuver to gain tax benefits, by granting the golf course a gravesite status, and consequently, fall under cemetery regulations in the state of New Jersey, according to which it gets an exemption from taxes.
Donald Trump Buried Ex-wife in His Golf Club for a Reason | Al Bawaba
Sue the bastards
Defamation law may turn out to be America’s most important weapon against rightwing media lies.
On Friday, Infowars star Alex Jones’ parent media company, Free Speech Systems, filed for bankruptcy in the midst of a defamation damages trial underway in Austin, Texas.
How To Stop Rightwing Media Lies? | The Smirking Chimp
Matthew Guy does what Matthew Guy does best.
On Tuesday afternoon, O’Brien tweeted: “Sick of dodgy politics? So am I. It’s why I’ll fight for more power and more funding for our anti-corruption watchdogs.
”Coalition MPs expressed nervousness about the potential political damage that could be caused by the episode. In particular, they were worried that Guy was susceptible to attacks on political integrity because of the “lobster with a mobster” dinner, where he dined with an alleged mafia boss, and scandals as a planning minister in the Baillieu-Napthine government.
Federal Liberals were also worried if Guy could withstand any further revelations about his involvement in the proposed arrangement with Catlin.
Minister’s letter reveals details of allegations against opposition leader
My thought for the day
Nothing matters more in life as to live it decently. And you don’t need any form of religious belief or political allegiance to do so. Be as humane as you can possibly be.( John Lord )
In Fleet Street they used to call it the Reverse Ferret, to say one thing one day then take entirely the opposite editorial stance the next. And so it is with Nine, News Corp and Anthony Albanese. Michael West on media, government and neo-liberalism.
Source: Capital v labour: where is the poll on neo-liberalism? – Michael West
A want for a Christian ISIS State has always threatened America’s Democracy and it’s reared it’s head against the separation of powers and Secularism in the USA
Following the Supreme Court’s elimination of the federal right to abortion in June, conservatives have taken aim at other fundamental protections, such as same-sex marriage and access to contraception. But some on the right are resurfacing a different, long-simmering project: stigmatizing divorce, including, in some instances, attacking no-fault divorce laws.
No-fault divorce in the U.S. was first adopted in California in 1969, and New York was the last state in the country to pass a no-fault divorce law, which it did in 2010. Although state laws differ, in general no-fault divorce means that one party can successfully dissolve a marriage without needing to first prove wrongdoing by the other partner – including adultery, abuse, or desertion.
After Roe, conservatives set their sights on ending no-fault divorce laws | Media Matters for America
As regulator ACCC warns the gas cartel is sending companies to the wall, Rex Patrick demands transparency from government on gas trigger
Source: Gas crisis really a transparency crisis, says architect of the “Trigger” Rex Patrick – Michael West
Forcing companies that extract gas from Australian waters to pay royalties and a tax upon their surging profits would comfortably add $60 billion to the budget bottom line in coming years, independent modelling finds.
Gas leak: The massive cost of not taxing companies revealed
British energy giant BP’s earnings have tripled in the second quarter as the company profited from oil and natural gas prices that soared after Russia invaded Ukraine.
London-based BP said on Tuesday that underlying replacement cost profit, which excludes one-time items and fluctuations in the value of inventories, jumped to $US8.45 billion ($A12.21 billion) from $US2.8 billion ($A4 billion) in the same period a year earlier.
The soaring earnings allowed BP to return billions of dollars to shareholders, with the company boosting its dividend by 10 per cent and announcing it would buy back $US3.5 billion ($A5.1 billion) in shares.
BP earnings triple on rising energy prices – Michael West
It is useful to think of capitalism as a robotic savant, spectacularly gifted at doing one thing and cripplingly blind to everything else. Global capitalism is an incredible machine for extracting fossil fuels from our planet, refining them, shipping them to every corner of the Earth and making staggering amounts of money doing so. The humming of this machine, the fuel and the money that it spits out, has powered a century of unprecedented production and consumption by the Earth’s first-world nations. Unfortunately the machine is also poisoning us all. But one of its exquisitely evolved functions is to make it almost impossible to turn it off.
The world is ablaze and the oil industry just posted record profits. It’s us or them | Hamilton Nolan | The Guardian
The current state of inflation is not domestic. It’s not wages, It’s global and driven by energy pricing greed. It’s Capitalist profit taking advantage and it needs to be stopped in it’s tracks. If the fossil fuel companies had been taxed and profits shared via royalties and higher wages inflation wouldn’t seem such a problem. The Reserve Bank raising interest rates won’t stop it. It’s global and Multinational Global Corporations are causing the price tsunami for their benefit alone.
If you own a car, pay energy bills, or buy groceries, then you have probably noticed that prices are soaring. The cost of food is up 10% and the cost of a gallon of gas is up 50% from a year ago. And in May this year, median monthly rent hit a record high at $2,002. We’re experiencing the highest levels of inflation in 40 years, which is taking a particularly harsh toll on low-income households.
The Fed Should Not Punish Working People for Inflation Driven by Big Oil’s Greed | The Smirking Chimp
According to the The Age. Matthew Guy’s judgement has fallen short when chosing his staff.
Opposition Leader Matthew Guy’s chief of staff asked a wealthy Liberal Party donor to make more than $100,000 in payments to his private marketing business, in addition to his taxpayer-funded salary.
Matthew Guy’s chief of staff Mitch Catlin asked wealthy Liberal Party donor for payments
Will Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s shiny “gentler, kinder politics” break News Corp? Or will News Corp, once again, triumph over the paradigm of nice? For the incoming government, it’s political. For News Corp, it’s existential.
Every day, News Corp (and its Fox sibling) makes its money out of the outrage story of the moment. Now, it’s confronting a new narrative: an election read as a direct repudiation equally of the News Corp business model and of the Liberal-National post-Tampa political strategy.
The Germans, as ever, have a word for it (or, in this case, a post-punk song lyric): “Angst, Hass, Titten und dem Wetterbericht” (“Fear, hate, titties and the weather report”). It captures the past two decades of News Corp’s and Australia’s conservative parties. Hate of political opponents and cultural dissidents, fear of the other from asylum seekers to African gangs, sexualised and homophobic panic, climate denial and obstruction.
Can Albanese’s politics of ‘nice’ break News Corp’s outrage machine?
America listens to an Australia’s PM not being lobbied or supported by the NRA
25By John Amato — August 1, 2022Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told CNN that, sadly, every mass shooting that occurs on US soil has reinforced their commitment to the gun control measures they implemented in 1996.
Australian PM: Every US Mass Shooting Has Justified Our Gun Control Measures | Crooks and Liars
Is News Corp America taking note of their massive fail in Australia to heart? Are they focusing away from Trump in order to save the same embarassment in the November Midterms they experienced here if they focus on Trump in ther un up. The Democrats would dearly love to see Trump the Nth Korean Russian, Saudi despot loving crime boss center stage supporting his crew of crony GOP sycophants leading up to November. His White Nationalist evangelical camp followers would turn their backs as would the party moderates jump ship.
1% of the attention Murdoch gave to Hilary is being given to Trump’s multiple on multiple crimes currently being revealed by the investigations federal congress and states are presently running. Where and when will Murdoch find another Trump the gift that once kept giving and giving and now isn’t?
The rise of community independents is the standout story of the weekend elections. But it has been accompanied by another major story: the failure of News Corp’s national and capital city outlets to keep the Morrison government in power.
Just how badly did News Corp’s attacks fail? We count the ways
Earlier prime ministers have heralded false dawns promising First Nations people they would receive the recognition and respect so long denied them.
Paul Bongiorno: Righting wrongs puts Voice referendum in the box seat
While the Coalition probably aren’t wishing for a long period on the Opposition Benches in Parliament House, their behaviour so far suggests a different outcome. If your criticism of the government reminds the public why they voted against you in the first place, you’re on a hiding to nothing. While some are offering valuable input and suggestions, including state governments, minor party and independent MPs and sections of the media, the Coalition is fast fading into irrelevance brought about by its own behaviour. We all deserve better.
The Real Opposition – » The Australian Independent Media Network
I’m no economist but neither am I a fool. When somebody tells me that inflation has taken off in Australia and that the cause is largely due to an escalation in the prices of goods and services driven by wage and salary increases and the costs of production I start to take interest.
For a start it can’t be spiralling wages as they have been stuck in the doldrums for years while corporate profits have surged and executive bonuses have ballooned. So we need to look elsewhere.
Inflation! Or is somebody having a lend of us? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Much of corporate Australia is outdoing the government on climate ambition but some have little more than motherhood statements and no firm plan to achieve net zero, a business forum has been told.
Corporate chiefs warn net zero laggards – Michael West
Famously, Australian ice skater Stephen Bradbury won the speed skating gold medal at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics when his four fancied rivals all fell just before the finishing line. So it was yesterday that the ACCC did a Reverse Bradbury and fell at the finishing line, letting the four gouging champions of Australia’s gas cartel through for a knife-edge victory.
The Reverse Bradbury: your electricity bill and the ACCC’s gas report – Michael West
The oil and gas industry’s plan to convince the world to switch from natural gas to hydrogen made from natural gas is being upended by an unexpected cause: economics.As the climate emergency has gotten more and more impossible to ignore and the world has started moving away from natural gas, the industry has hyped a new technology: so-called blue hydrogen. Blue hydrogen produces no carbon emissions when burned or converted into electricity, but the main component in producing blue hydrogen is methane, the most potent greenhouse gas.
Oil and Gas’s Pivot to Blue Hydrogen Is Falling Through
In the week after news broke of the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation of former President Donald Trump’s role in the January 6 riot, the top five national newspapers quickly moved on from news: Only 3 newspapers put the story on their front pages, and only The New York Times followed up with another front-page story a couple of days later. This coverage is in stark contrast to the 46 front-page stories these papers printed over a 7-day period in 2016 about the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server — a far less serious story.
Top national newspapers quickly drop front-page story of DOJ probe into Trump’s January 6 role | Media Matters for America
The Albanese government is moving ahead with plans to hold a first-term referendum on a First Nations Voice. The Prime Minister has attended the annual Garma Festival in northeast Arnhem Land, where the Voice was a key focus.
What can history teach us to ensure a successful referendum for A First Nations Voice to parliament?
Murdoch’s Pollster Newspoll gives Albanese the thumbs up. Does that mean Murdoch Media support him the reverse can be argued against the belief Murdoch has switched away from Trump in America. He hasn’t.
Anthony Albanese has recorded the highest satisfaction rating of any new prime minister, according to a new poll in The Australian. And the ACCC has warned that Australia faces an “alarming” shortage of gas next year.
Albanese records highest satisfaction rating of any new PM
While Australia has reported 9,225,519 cases since early 2020, 96% have been this year. This has led to Australia’s global ranking of cases, hospitalisations and deaths being among the highest in the world. – Michael Toole Associate Principal Research Fellow, Burnet Institute, Brendan Crabb Director and CEO, Burnet Institute.
We’re not special, of course. Omicron and its friendly little sub-variants are everywhere. But it feels like we’ve just given up here, even on the basics. Nobody is calling for lockdowns.
They really do want to kill him. Perhaps it is high time that his detractors and sceptics, proven wrong essentially from the outset, admit that the US imperium, along with its client states, is willing to see Julian Assange perish in prison. The locality and venue, for the purposes of this exercise, are not relevant. Like the Inquisition, the Catholic Church was never keen on soiling its hands, preferring the employ of non-church figures to torture their victims.
Penal Assassination: The Gradual Effort to Kill Assange – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Not everyone on the Left of center politics agrees with the Albanese/ALP. Nor the belief in bipartisan politics. Many believe the rot set in with Hawke.
Labor’s climate bill is little more than symbolism. With escalating climate disasters and soaring inflation, it’s bad policy and even worse politics.
The Australian Labor Party’s Climate Bill Is Empty Symbolism
PR companies working for the fossil fuel industry are appropriating language from within the climate movement, using it to perpetuate climate denial, writes Stella Levantesi.
Don’t be fooled by fossil fuel industry’s ‘green’ word salads
Fight Corporation price gouging, tax super profits and the wealthy.
Economic Update: Battle Inflation by Fighting Corporations, Not Working People | The Smirking Chimp
Economic Update: Battle Inflation by Fighting Corporations, Not Working People | The Smirking Chimp
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When President Biden met with caretaker Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid, the two issued a joint statement that rejected ‘Apartheid’ as a descriptor for Israel. In contrast, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, and the UN Rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories, Michael Lynk, have all concluded in the past year or so, despite a previous reluctance, that the situation in Israel and Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories fits the definition of Apartheid in international law (such as the Rome Statute that underpins the International Criminal Court). The allegation is not that the situation precisely resembles that in Apartheid South Africa in all particulars. The word is now a term of art in international law and refers to the systematic disadvantaging of one ethnic group, on the basis of their ethnicity, by another.
One of the hallmarks of regimes of Apartheid (including Jim Crow in the United States) is coercive residential segregation.
So it is ominous that according to Or Kashti at Haaretz, a poll by the Israeli Institute for Democracy this spring found that 60% of Israeli Jews believe that Jews and “Arabs” (i.e. Israelis of Palestinian heritage, what I call Palestinian-Israelis) should “live apart.”
Despite Biden’s Rejection of Israeli ‘Apartheid’ Characterization, 60% of Israeli Jews support Segregation of Palestinian-Israelis
Despite Biden’s Rejection of Israeli ‘Apartheid’ Characterization, 60% of Israeli Jews support Segregation of Palestinian-Israelis
Home to Africa’s oldest synagogue, Djerba celebrates its Jewish roots annually
To this day, and despite their not very large number, Jewish Tunisians continue to hold an important place in Djerbian society and are, like their non-Jewish neighbors, active in the island’s tourism industry.
How this Tunisian Island brings Muslims and Jews Together
In a 24/7 news cycle this isn’t abandonment the reality will be closer to truth after the mid terms. Conservative America fears Trump will announce his hand before the up and coming elections. Murdoch hate backing losers and he’s simply laying the path for a Trump return. post November.
Powerful media owner Rupert Murdoch is no longer supporting Donald Trump as the next president of the USA, as Alan Austin reports.
Rupert Murdoch abandons Trump — here’s why it matters
Why Murdoch looks to be swinging against Trump pre November is he’s a threat to the GOP controlled Senate
The prospect for Democrats holding a filibuster-proof Senate after the 2022 midterm elections keeps getting better. That’s not conventional wisdom, nor a mainstream media narrative.
Democrats should win big in the Senate thanks to a great map and terrible opponents anointed by Trump – Raw Story – Celebrating 18 Years of Independent Journalism
Whenever the former prime minister paid his respects to Indigenous leaders past, present and emerging, he would include a shout-out to any servicemen and women in the audience. At best, it had been a clumsy attempt by Morrison to drape himself in the Australian flag; at worst, a passive-aggressive reminder that the white man was in charge.
Why the Coalition risks a backlash if it breaks the Voice
Marcia Langton says details on the Voice to Parliament are clear – ABC Radio National
Marcia Langton says details on the Voice to Parliament are clear – ABC Radio National
Musician Archie Roach dies aged 66 – Michael West
The Gunditjmara-Bundjalung elder’s death was confirmed in a statement from his sons Amos and Eban Roach, distributed by the late singer’s management agency the Mushroom Group on Saturday.
Celebrated Aboriginal musician Archie Roach has died in hospital aged 66 after a long battle with illness.
“We are so proud of everything our dad achieved in his remarkable life,” the pair said.
“He was a healer and unifying force. His music brought people together.”
They said their father would want his many fans to know how much he loved them for their support throughout his career.
Musician Archie Roach dies aged 66 – Michael West
Rupert Murdoch has a history of bribing British police for stories which News UK CEO Rebekah Brooks admitted in 2003 as per the below video. So, is Murdoch now bribing Australian police given ABC journalist Mark Reddie has publicly accused the Australian Federal Police of giving special treatment to the News Corp paper Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph?
Is Rupert Murdoch bribing police again for stories given an ABC journalist says the AFP are giving scoops to News Corp?Kangaroo Court of Australia
Rather than be bogged down by the games in Canberra, we need to roll up our sleeves and squeeze the last drops of hope out of our souls. In every walk of life, every profession, every community, there are discussions and decisions and organising we must start doing now that will pay enormous dividends in three years time. We need to put in the hard work so that in the next parliament the political calculations around climate targets are radically different.
It’s not a game anymore | The Shot
It’s not a game anymore | The Shot
It’s a big task. A lot of work. But it’s got to happen. Saving the planet is not a game anymore.
Australians are getting a rude shock as they open their superannuation statements. For most, it was a rare year of losses. Only three funds ended in the black. Callum Foote and Michael West investigate super returns and the best performing fund of them all, Hostplus.
Is Australia’s top performing fund smoke and mirrors? Hostplus, Canva and the year of super losses – Michael West
The very fact the ALP beleves in Democracy, Bi partisan Government, and Government for everyone guarantees there won’t be any clawback from the rich on behalf of the poor. It’s a formula for the ever increasing wealth and income gaps to continue.
Inflation is eroding paychecks and rising interest rates are hurting people with mortgages. Anthony Albanese’s government could defend workers’ living standards by taxing the rich and controlling prices, but Labor’s neoliberal orthodoxy stands in the way.
To Solve Australia’s Cost-of-Living Crisis, Labor Should Tax Superprofits
Inflation in 2022 is being driven by.
Price Gouging at the Pump Results in 235% Profit Jump for Big Oil: Analysis
Price Gouging at the Pump Results in 235% Profit Jump for Big Oil: Analysis
Germany: Löwenbräu, other Beer Brands to be Made with Wind and Solar as Russian Gas Turns Unreliable
Germany: Löwenbräu, other Beer Brands to be Made with Wind and Solar as Russian Gas Turns Unreliable
It has been 113 days since Trump has appeared on Fox News.
Trump hasn’t been on Fox News in a long long time | Salon.com
Trump hasn’t been on Fox News in a long long time | Salon.com
“On April 13, Mr. Trump called into Mr. Hannity’s show and ran through a list of crises he claimed would not be happening ‘had we won this election, which we did.’ He hasn’t been interviewed on the network since,” the newspaper reported.
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