History tells us these things don’t turn around overnight and go on for longer than is good for anyone.
The Right’s plan to take the presidency in 2024 requires a candidate with a higher-than-average disregard for the truth. That’s why Donald Trump is still their man — a fact that should worry us all.
“He said it, We read it, But didn’t believe it. Until we read it in Rolling Stone”
Is a song that might well be applied to the attempted Pentecostalist takeover of the Australian Government. A takeover that’s been stopped in its tracks for the moment but is not yet guaranteed ended. For them, the separation of powers between religion and the state is an anathema born out of multiculturalism and its attended beliefs that need to be stopped. Conversion and forced assimilation their desired path. Morrison’s second coming of Australia. Even Peter Dutton has taken it on as a core of the LNP’s opposition and strategy to divide the Left. Meanwhile, Scott Morrison is ready to reveal his true affiliation with OAN and its Pizzagate imaginings and origins.
Scott Morrison is continuing the Pentecostal agenda in Opposition, undermining the system of government he is still paid to uphold. Managing editor Michelle Pini takes a look at the former PM’s aggressively expanding cult.
Theory of Citizenship and Humanitarianism ” Can you rely on Governments?” “Sure can’t!!” Australia has no Human Rights Bill! No Yardstick no standard to draw on.
Of course she deals mainly with people who are involved with either welfare support, or child protection issues, maybe housing problems. Read that for ‘the poor’. Those who rely on the government to improve their lives, or to make it at least liveable.
Source: Cynicism wins out over hope – » The Australian Independent Media Network
it remains rather striking that while we are celebrating unemployment figures not seen since the mid-1970s, we are experiencing wage growth we haven’t seen this high since … oh, 2019.
The current circumstances allow us to put to the test a few economic theories.
By all accounts, wages growth should be skyrocketing. There should be a wages breakout due to the demand for workers. If not now, when? Wages are supposed to respond to lower unemployment and higher vacancies.
‘Inflamed: Deep Medicine And The Anatomy Of Injustice’ reveals a critical observation — that inflammation repeatedly connects poor health and structural injustice, writes April M Short.
Source: Why the poor suffer poor health: A capitalist legacy
What Morrison failed to tell us as he cost us $830m in penalties for breaking the contract with France and eloping with the USA and UK. These two lovers are unable to perform. Dutton has signed papers with two limp dicks.
Latest report to US Congress reveals the superpower will struggle to meet its own submarine-building targets for decades
Multinational mining giant Rio Tinto has settled a decade-long tax dispute with the Australian Taxation Office, handing over almost $1 billion in unpaid taxes after an investigation of its Singapore marketing hub.
The settlement is one of the largest in Australian tax history, with the mining giant paying about $1 billion over and above its original tax filings, following in the path of other multinationals forced to pay up.
The company will pay an additional $613 million for unpaid tax between 2010 and 2021, on top of $378 million it has paid back on amended assessments issued by the ATO, including interest and penalties.
The miner was investigated by the ATO’s Tax Avoidance Taskforce for using Singapore as a marketing hub of products, including aluminium and iron ore, to reduce Australian tax bills in a practice known as transfer pricing. ATO
Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Saint said importantly the settlement locks in future tax flows to Australia going forward.
Russia and Iran are both suffering from maximum pressure sanctions by the US, which is attempting to crash their economies and currencies and prevent their oil and gas exports. The two cannot be sanctioned more than they already are, so defying the US to team up makes good economic sense.
We may be seeing the limits of American economic power– trying to take on both Russia and Iran at the same time, plus threatening China, may be classical imperial overstretch.
Source: Russia announces Bn. Investment in Iran Oil & Gas, as Khamenei Supports Putin’s invasion of Ukraine
After Russia invaded Ukraine, the neutral countries of Sweden and Finland filed applications to join NATO in May.In a vote taken by The House, which is mostly symbolic, 394 congresspeople voted to support their induction while a small team of Republicans voted against the two Nordic countries.
18 Republicans Joined With Putin Against Sweden, Finland Joining NATO | Crooks and Liars
Russia’s military “tasks” will no longer target “only” the east of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s Foreign Minister says, as the United States pledges more weapons for defending forces.
Since 1910, non-Labor governments have governed for two-thirds of the time and Labor for one-third.
In their governance, the right has attracted a proliferation of odd xenophobic people who have sought to plaster their thoughts on every parliament wall, from religious extremism to coal is good.
The true Liberalism of Menzies is now dead and buried and has been replaced by a brand of Conservatism unique to American politics. The Liberal party exists in name only.
The Morrison Government made great strides in politicizing the APS by appointing their choice as heads of departments on politics rather than merit now AG Dreyfus is confronted with the consequences of that.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has moved quickly to set up a task force to get Labor’s federal anti-corruption body off the ground, but the staff selection process for his pilot taskforce has raised…
So, the Taskforce set to design the NACC will come from the same set of people the NACC will be tasked to investigate. With not even one person coming from outside the APS to provide a check or balance.
And forget about appealing, the AGP told Dr Holt, you can’t:
‘I note that you have requested to appeal the decisions regarding the appointments made to the NACC taskforce. As these appointments were transfers of current APS employees at their substantive levels, this is not an appealable process.’
It is probably worth noting that recruitment is not likely something attended to by the Minister, but rather by the public service. The secretary of the Attorney-General’s Department is Katherine Jones, one of three Morrison Government appointments of three key public service heads, made by Scott Morrison just under a year ago, on 22 July 2021. The appointments were not without controversy,
Source: Labor moves quickly on anti-corruption body, but who’s watching the watchers?
Australia is a different place politically, and so is Canberra. Scott Morrison is no longer a one-man employment agency, and ex-Coalition staffers are scrambling for new jobs. (Stephanie Tran).
There’s nothing more ex than an ex, as the old saying goes, but there are ways of landing on your feet after being dumped.
Sure, Scott Morrison has is already enjoying the perks of life as an ex-prime minister, turning up in Seoul last week to hobnob with other has-beens such as former US vice-president Mike Pence and former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad and has-been / possible future star Michelle Obama. And on the weekend he was warning congregants at Margaret Court’s church in Perth of Satan’s plan.
It’s a less settled path for the lower orders, and an even less settled path for their staff. But there are some options for those political exes facing an existential crisis.
Source: The Ex-Files: where is the life for discards of the parliamentary bubble? – Michael West
He’s extremely generous in not mentioning Dutch participation in “Judeocide” as more aggressive than even German. Only 16% of Dutch Jews survived. Aalsmeer was famous for being the most anti-Jewish town in Europe and from where Andrew Bolt’s family originated. Bolt never speaks of his roots in those terms.
Hamburger notes that Zionism started as a form of emancipation for Jews in central and eastern Europe, especially Ukraine and Russia. But the moment that movement came to Palestine to colonize it – and perhaps from its inception – Zionism became a movement of oppression.“It all strengthens my belief that there is something terribly rotten in the state of Israel,”
Source: Don’t single out Jews in the fight against bigotry | The Electronic Intifada
A Jerusalem conference showcases the Israeli right’s embrace of American-style culture wars, nationalist populism, and cults of personality.
While diplomats, politicians, and think tank experts make empty platitudes about some future Palestinian state, the binational reality on the ground continues to take shape, and the right has correctly identified that whatever gains Jews make in this moment can and will be used as leverage in any future arrangement, or simply kept in Jewish hands. Contemporary American right-wing thought — manifested by different forms of anti-wokeism, irony, and so-called freedom of thought, undergirded by white nationalism, and translated and adjusted to the Israeli context — seems like the perfect vehicle for this project.
Friedman’s overarching theme, though not presented as such, is to narrate the accelerated expulsion, dispossession, and violent repression of Palestinians as an extended moment of American, Israeli, and Jewish self-actualization. And in that, “Sledgehammer” — both by omission and inclusion — says as much about the administration Friedman officially represented, and its still-unfolding legacy, as it does about the man himself
Friedman’s hyperbolic recounting of his exploits in biblical terms take on their true significance: yes, the egotism and disconnection from reality they display are ripe for ridicule, but their absurdity does not diminish the callousness and violence inherent in casting racist repression as mythos..
Critics of Marx have accused him of imposing a European model of historical development on the rest of the world. But the real Marx rejected Eurocentric thinking and developed a sophisticated view of world history in all its diversity and complexity.
Here’s a reason not to “take the money” If Trump had not been the failed businessman he is, he’d have $12 B just from investing his father’s gift conservatively when he first started. Today he has $2B and 4000 court cases in his wake. Hardly a person to take business advice from.
‘If you don’t take the money now, you will get nothing after the merger takes place, and only say how smart the original signees were.’ Donald Trump
Brits have been warned to stay indoors as ‘ferocious’ and life-threatening ‘day and night’ temperatures are due to blast the UK for the first time in history
Source: Met Office says UK heatwave could hit 43C tomorrow – with hottest area NOT in South – Mirror Online
Ten years ago, Australia’s then-prime minister, Julia Gillard, gave a speech in parliament that would echo long after her leadership came to an end.
“I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not,” said Gillard, in response to the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, accusing her of sexism.
“And the government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever.”
Just another day in paradise
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s political honeymoon draws to an end this week as Parliament resumes and Labor collides with the Greens over carbon emissions. Michael West on Albo’s first two months in office and the looming climate clash.
Source: Albanese returns from his honeymoon, bumps into Adam Bandt – Michael West
While we have managed to elect a new government, we are still stuck with the same old media who cannot or will not imagine a non-toxic politics. This will likely not be the last time the Albanese government may have to change its position. Any government must be granted the space in which to reverse bad decisions without enduring toxic criticism from toxic media who are more interested in furthering discord than they are in facilitating positive change.
The Global Oceanic Environmental Survey, led by Edinburgh University marine biologist Howard Dryden at the university Roslin Innovation Centre had estimated that the plankton in the oceans had been halved in the past 40 years, and that all of it could be gone by 2040. Dryden and GOES were off by twenty years. Plankton is a blanket term for the billions of tiny sea organisms living close to the surface of the oceans, which are eaten by krill,
Source: Climate: Scientists Stunned to Find Atlantic Plankton 90% Gone; Marine Life, our Oxygen Imperiled
Socialising the losses and the profits
Private ownership of essential services has been proven to be worse than public ownership, as the owners’ real customers are their shareholders – not our society. The costs for the ultimate customer haven’t gone down, the service hasn’t improved and the management of the private companies are required by law to maximise the shareholder’s profit. And as we’ve recently seen with power generators, we subsidise the private owners of essential assets if economic conditions change! If we privatise the profits, why do we accept socialisation of the losses?
Source: Privatise the profits – » The Australian Independent Media Network
When people protest and the cause is obvious governments capitulate or are overrun. Vietnam, Apartheid, Sri Lanka, Climate,
With anti-protest laws on the rise as our climate crisis worsens, activists are fighting back to raise awareness, writes Claire Burgess.
Source: Climate protesters criminalised as climate crisis escalates
Wake Up Australia
Tax is a ‘no-brainer’ after companies’ huge profits during Covid but corporate influence makes it ‘politically difficult’, Stiglitz says
US and EU officials recently suggested targeting livestock and agriculture in Asia and Africa to reduce methane emissions. Far more emissions, however, come from oil and gas production in the U
Source: To Reduce Methane Emissions, Take on the Oil and Gas Companies
Three chief authors of the State of the Environment Report provide its key findings. While it’s a sobering read, there are a few bright spots.
Morrison’s Miracle revealed the Vanishing Report
The gang-gang cockatoo is among the more than 200 plants and animals that have been added to the threatened species list. Here are the other grim findings.
Source: State of Environment report 2022: Five graphics explained
The Abbott/Morrison legacy will be found in the UK deliveries of Asylum Seekers to Rawanda
“Given the lessons of the Australian experience, this carries a significant reputational risk for the UK.”
The UK Home Affairs select committee report into channel crossing, migration and asylum..
Source: UK warned it faces Australian-like reputation damage over asylum seeker plan
Australia we deserve the “good”, the real “good”. Next time those in charge try telling us that “good” isn’t possible, tell them to shove it and come back with the “good”. Because longer we wait for the “good’, the longer those in need suffer the consequences. Stop letting the powerful weaponise a quote from a revolutionary against the masses and let’s demand this allegedly progressive party prove they are progressive. Don’t let the Cowards be the enemy of the Progress You Deserve!
Source: What does it mean to be “good” in modern politics? | The Shot
Foreign gas giants Shell, Chevron, Exxon are enjoying an explosion in revenue while paying virtually no income tax and forking out just spare change in royalties. What’s the scam?
Source: Robbing Australia: profits soar for gas giants, royalties and tax languish – Michael West
The inflation crisis is squeezing workers. And the only way out of it that is acceptable to capitalists is to squeeze workers even harder.
Source: Defeating Inflation Doesn’t Have to Mean Harming Workers
One in five lucrative and powerful federal government board positions have been handed to politically connected individuals, according to a new report warning Australia has developed an “insidious jobs-for-mates culture”.
Christian Porter, on Thursday (14/7/22), lost his appeal in a unanimous decision against Jo Dyer in relation to having his barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC restrained from representing him at his 2021 defamation case against the ABC and journalist Louise Milligan.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has issued executive orders dismissing the state security service chief and the prosecutor-general.
Meanwhile, Murdoch’s little Rowan Dean the unmade bed still keeps telling us it’s cold and wet outside.
The scorching temperatures have reached as far north as the UK, where its Met Office weather agency has issued its first-ever “red warning” of extreme heat for Monday and Tuesday, when temperatures in southern England may reach 40 degrees for the first time. That will still be relatively bearable compared with the 47 degrees recorded in Portugal’s northern town of Pinhao on Wednesday, establishing a new national record.
Source: Heatwave-related deaths soar in Europe amid France, Spain wildfires
American teachers are celebrating the brief opportunity to teach classes without having to whisper in terrified huddles.
Source: The Ferguson Report: US goes entire school day without mass shooting
On his trip to the Middle East, Joe Biden’s efforts to paper over nominal allies’ atrocities against Americans sends a message of impunity.
Source: Biden to Saudi Arabia and Israel: Sure, Kill Our Journalists
Rising profits levels among the Australian corporate sector have been identified as one of the key causes for increasing inflation levels across the country, a new report has shown.
Source: Companies not workers to blame for rising prices – Michael West
Morrison’s Social Welfare system in place.
While there is a pause on welfare penalties until 1 August, jobseekers who do not attend their appointments have their benefits temporarily suspended for failing to meet their mutual obligations.
Koalas and greater gliders lost vast swathes of habitat during the Black Summer bushfires but their slide further towards extinction has not halted logging
Source: ‘We’ll lose this species’: The fight to save koalas and greater gliders
Young, single Indians make up the second-biggest market of dating app users globally – and it’s revolutionising how people think of love and marriage.
When Rohini Ramnathan’s husband passed away unexpectedly in 2017, the 37-year-old thought she’d never find love again.
But two years later, Ramnathan downloaded a dating app on her phone for the first time and started swiping on potential matches.
“My first impression was, ‘Wow, there are so many people and they’re all single’,” she says.
“And then I thought, ‘Wow, there are so many good-looking people’.”
Ramnathan, a radio presenter who lives in Mumbai, says dating apps have helped her to understand and explore “the casualness of dating” in India.
Source: From arranged matches to Tinder hook-ups: How the apps changed dating in India – ABC News
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