When Australians are feeling good about themselves the LNP,Dutton, and Murdoch want it stopped and stopped immediately. However, they looks so bad doing it.
The new PM’s visit to war-torn Ukraine was equated with ScoMo taking off to Hawaii, while Peter Dutton continued to dominate media coverage, this week. Managing editor Michelle Pini takes a look at the latest anti-Albo campaign.
Albo’s response is significantly different from that we heard from the LNP and Murdoch Media
Mr Albanese said reducing Australia’s contribution to global climate change was a “long-term solution” the government was pursuing in response to increasingly frequent flooding.
Mr Albanese said climate change was driving the floods. Photo: AAP
“Australia has always been subject of floods, of bushfires, but we know that the science told us if we continued to not take action globally on climate change then these extreme weather events would be more often and more intense,” he said. “What we’re seeing, unfortunately, is that play out.”
Source: Albanese identifies ‘long-term’ solution to relentless floods
Insanity has left the building
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has ordered the Commonwealth to drop the prosecution of lawyer Bernard Collaery, four years after he was charged with leaking classified information about Australia’s alleged spying operation in East Timor.
Source: Mark Dreyfus orders Commonwealth to drop Bernard Collaery East Timor spying charges
Guide Dogs Victoria’s “capital fundraising” boss Paul Wheelton made over $87,000 in donations to the Liberal Party before the Federal Coalition gave millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to his charity.
Source: Guide Dogs scandal deepens with donations to Liberal Party revealed
Regardless of anyone’s views on abortion, the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson took away a reproductive right that a half-century of hard-fought judicial precedent had determined was constitutionally protected.
In doing so, the court set a dangerous precedent — that a person’s rights can be taken away.
Overturning Roe v. Wade was a triumph of politics and ideology over constitutional principles. It diminished the power and equality of women, along with transgender men and non-binary people, to make informed decisions about their own bodies without fear of government intrusion.
The opinion itself fails as an application of long-standing constitutional law. The justices arbitrarily discarded precedents they opposed, like Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, threatening the role of precedent in ensuring legal stability.
They selectively reasoned in Dobbs that abortion law should be left to the states, but conveniently did not grant that same level of deference when they declared a New York law unconstitutional for limiting concealed weapons.
This is hardly the first time that the ideologies of Supreme Court justices have shaped their decisions.
The Australian LNP is up close and personal with the GOP the world’s largest white suprmecist organisation.
The contemporary Republican Party has become the world’s largest white supremacist organization, and now also explicitly supports the use of political violence and terrorism to advance the goal of ending multiracial democracy. Donald Trump’s coup attempt, culminating in the Capitol attack of Jan. 6, 2021, was the literal embodiment of those values, beliefs and goals. World’s largest White Supremicists
Source: “White life” and the fascist movement: Hey, at least they’re being honest | Salon.com
The idea is to distract Americans from details emerging from the congressional hearings on the January 6 Capitol uprising now taking place in Washington.
Charging a presidential candidate with a crime, this logic goes, would be inescapably partisan and fundamentally suspect – even if there’s growing evidence that candidate was trying to foment a violent coup.
Such a prosecution, it follows, would destabilise the very foundations of our democratic institutions – a pretty neat trick coming from a guy who’s never been very big on democratic institutions.
Trump’s other reason for announcing would be to smother potential Republican challengers in their respective cribs, gobble up fundraising dollars and force party leaders to pledge allegiance early.
It’s a nightmare for many Republicans, who were hoping to minimise Trump as they head into what should be a very successful Congressional mid-term election in November.
Source: Why Donald Trump may be about to announce another run for president
Let’s not forget how loud-mouth Andrew Bolt declared he’d take his family and holiday in Chernobyl. Guess with the war on it’s now Fukushima.
The right-wing nutters on Sky-after-Dark are beside themselves with righteous indignation that prime minister Albanese is spending so much time overseas when he should be visiting flood-inundated suburbs in Sydney.
They liken Albanese’s overseas trip to that of Scott Morrison’s family holiday in Hawaii during the 2019 bushfires – a holiday that the opposition knew nothing about and even the Deputy Prime Minister seemed unaware that he was leading the country.
Just how a so-called news organisation can equate a family holiday in Hawaii with a trip to war-torn Ukraine beggars the imagination.
Source: Airbus Albo ! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
“Marxist” teachers are teaching our kids “absolute leftwing rubbish”. NSW Senator, Hollie Hughes, Shadow Minister for denying climate change and promoting fossil fuels, moonlighting as Opposition national curriculum cop, reads from the Republican playbook’s false alarmism about critical race theory and gender whispering being taught in schools. The Coalition sideshow is pumping now Dutton’s obsessed with vetting what goes on in the classroom because it works for right-wing politicians in the US. Marx?
No-one’s sure if she’s talking about Groucho, Harpo or Karl. Having lost the plot long before it lost power, the opposition will struggle to hold Labour, or anyone else to account, but at least it can do some public good by holding itself up to ridicule.
Dutton’s Quadrella worst Health, Immigration, Defence Ministers now vying to be the worst Opposition Leader
Places in the Skilled Independent category have been steadily reduced since 2013-14 when 44,984 Skilled Independent visas were granted to a planned low of 6,500 Skilled Independent visas in 2021-22.
The reduction started when Opposition Leader Peter Dutton unilaterally cut the overall size of the program in 2017-18 (without Cabinet authority).
Source: Skilled Independent visa category set for rapid growth
Because they have no political influence they are left behind
“We’ve [heard] reports of people self-harming just to get into hospitals, just so they can see a psychiatrist because they can’t get in any other way,” he said.
Source: People from diverse backgrounds struggle to find adequate mental health support – ABC News
LONDON (AP) — Two of Britain’s most senior Cabinet ministers resigned on Tuesday, a move that could spell the end of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s leadership after months of scandals.
Source: 2 Key UK Cabinet Ministers Quit As Boris Johnson’s Government Teeters | HuffPost Latest News
Last week, the International Engagement Committee of the 1.2-million-strong Presbyterian Church passed a resolution entitled, ‘On Recognition That Israel’s Laws, Policies, and Practices Constitute Apartheid Against the Palestinian People.’ There are roughly 75 million Presbyterians around the world, and it has a strong presence in Africa, with 3.4 million members there. The development came in the same month that the seven million US Lutherans came to a similar conclusion. Eric Ledermann and Greg Brekke writing in the Presbyterian Outlook quote commissioner Leslie Latham as saying that she was initially reluctant to use the word Apartheid,
That’s rich. Bezos of all people should know that a major reason prices are rising is hugely profitable corporations like his Amazon have been using inflation as cover to raise price even further.
Source: Bezos’s Inflation Idiocy | The Smirking ChimpInflation, Corporate driven,
Rightwing networks Fox News, OAN and Newsmax could be found liable in cases brought by voting machine company Dominion
In the months following the 2020 US presidential election, rightwing TV news in America was a wild west, an apparently lawless free-for-all where conspiracy theories about voting machines, ballot-stuffed suitcases and dead Venezuelan leaders were repeated to viewers around the clock.
There seemed to be little consequence for peddling the most outrageous ideas on primetime.
But now, unfortunately for Fox News, One America News Network (OAN), and Newsmax, it turns out that this brave, new world wasn’t free from legal jurisdiction – with the three networks now facing billion-dollar lawsuits as a result of their baseless accusations.
After Cassidy Hutchinson, there’s not much doubt: Federal charges will happen — but Georgia may get there first
Trump is a veritable Houdini of white-collar crime, a master of lawlessness and impunity. Not only has he never been convicted of any crime, he has never even been charged with a felony..
As a litigator, Trump is in a league of his own. Since 1973 he has been involved in more than 4,000 lawsuits, and in some 60 percent of those as the suing plaintiff.
Until now, his litigation has almost always been about attracting attention and wearing down opponents. As the great litigator James D. Zirin, author of “Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits,” wrote of Trump: “What was important was to use the lawsuit to attract attention, to exert economic pressure, and to prove he was the kid on the block not to be messed with.”
The impending criminal charges to be filed against Donald Trump by the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, and the U.S. Department of Justice are both very different from the thousands of previous lawsuits in Trump’s career. Those civil cases, both past and present, have always been about money. The soon-to-be criminal cases will be about Trump’s personal freedom — and whether he will be wearing an orange jumpsuit for the next several years.
Source: Indictments are coming: At long last, criminal justice will catch up with Donald Trump | Salon.com
But we are not actually going back to the eighteenth century, since “originalism” is a scam. We are being delivered into the hands of high-tech, 21st century authoritarians who have invented the personhood of the blastocyte and are using it for the purposes of neo-patriarchy. In that regard, this Evangelical dictatorship has some firm resemblances to the Taliban in Afghanistan, who are not “medieval” either, but very much a movement of contemporary counter-modernity. Ironically, Muslims in general have, and all along had, much more liberal views on abortion than the American Religious Right.
America is in trouble. But that’s not because too many foreigners are crossing our borders, or we’re losing our whiteness or our dominant religion, or we’re not standing for the national anthem or celebrating our history. We’re not in trouble because of voter fraud. We’re in trouble because we are losing the true understanding of what patriotism requires from all of us.
Source: On This July 4: The True Meaning of Patriotism | The Smirking Chimp
The conservative media might be critical but the world and Australians are applauding.
But John Blaxland, a professor of international security and intelligence at the Australian National University, said that Mr Albanese appeared to be distinguishing himself by marrying international engagements with more immediate national interests.
Source: Albanese’s foreign policy takes off in spite of critics
The Greens have urged the South Australian government to introduce a tax on vacant residential properties after reports thousands are empty across the state.
Source: SA Greens push for new vacant property tax – Michael West
Australia’s net-zero commitment has always just been a matter of us doing our part of the global effort.. But that global effort is now in tatters.
On Thursday last week – June 30 – two documents were published here and in Washington DC that together present Australia with a horrible, very expensive problem.
They were the Australian Energy Market Operator’s new Integrated System Plan and the US Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia versus the Environmental Protection Agency.
In essence the two documents tell us that Australia will fork out hundreds of billions of dollars to transition the electricity system to near-100 per cent renewables to no avail, and we’ll end up paying even more to deal with the effects of global warming.
With slightly more than one per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, Australia’s commitment to have net-zero emissions by 2050 has always just been a matter of us doing our part of the global effort – as we should.
But that global effort is in tatters because the Supreme Court has taken America out of the game. Keeping global warming to less than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures, and therefore something less than catastrophic, now looks impossible.
That means it is now more important for the Albanese government to develop strategies and allocate funds to deal with impact of climate change than it is to cut emissions, as promised, by 43 per cent by 2030 and to net zero by 2050, as important as those targets still are politically and morally.
It’s now likely that both costs will have to be paid.
Source: Alan Kohler: Australia’s expensive climate change double whammy
Callum Foote examines the dodgy and contradictory reporting frameworks in Australia around carbon offsets.
Out for the count: ‘Carbon Offsets’ are not actually carbon offsets – Michael West
A Victorian burger chain will offer staff a portion of profits in an effort to retain them during the cost of living crisis and tight labour market.
Vic burger chain shares profits with staff – Michael West
The task of socialists in 2022 is the same as it’s always been, says sociologist Vivek Chibber: to build working-class organization. That requires clarity about the central political role of the working class.
Along with the Bible he’s argued to be the most read in the world
In 1845, Karl Marx declared: “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it”.
Change it he did.
Political movements representing masses of new industrial workers, many inspired by his thought, reshaped the world in the 19th and 20th centuries through revolution and reform. His work influenced unions, labour parties and social democratic parties, and helped spark revolution via communist parties in Europe and beyond.
Around the world, “Marxist” governments were formed, who claimed to be committed to his principles, and who upheld dogmatic versions of his thought as part of their official doctrine.
Marx’s thought was groundbreaking. It came to stimulate arguments in every major language, in philosophy, history, politics and economics. It even helped to found the discipline of sociology.
Although his influence in the social sciences and humanities is not what it once was, his work continues to help theorists make sense of the complex social structures that shape our lives.
Because Ms Abu Akleh was inconsiderate enough to damage the bullet that killed her no definitive conclusions could be drawn about who fired the shot or what their intent and orders were. Had Ms. Akleh survived the same would have applied, and if nobody was shot no conclusions would have been demanded. Any inconsideration, therefore, lies with the dead journalist who needs to apologize for the fuss she has caused the Israelis.
As with the Israeli IDF, the verdict on Gravity is still out on whether or not an invisible force made the apple fall because nobody saw Gravity do it, or knows its intent.
30 journalists have been killed but far more injured by the IDF since 2000
Ms Abu Akleh is not the first journalist to be killed by Israeli forces – the Paris-based organisation Reporters Without Borders claims that more than 30 journalists, including one Briton, have been killed by the IDF since 2000.
About 100 of Australia’s unique land mammals face extinction. Of the many threats contributing to the crisis, certain fire regimes are among the most pervasive.
In a new paper, we reveal how “inappropriate” fire patterns put 88% of Australia’s threatened land mammals at greater risk of extinction – from ground-dwelling bandicoots to tree-climbing possums and high-flying microbats.
Our research also identifies what type of fires are most damaging to threatened mammals, and shows some mammals are suffering due to a lack of fire.
Source: Research reveals fire is pushing 88% of Australia’s threatened land mammals closer to extinction
For tens of thousands of years, First Nations people have addressed changing weather on this continent and successfully applied their knowledges to land management. Their knowledge and contribution deserve full recognition.
Source: Recognising Indigenous knowledges is not just culturally sound, it’s good science
As fossil fuel corporations reap fabulous profits at the expense of Australian gas and electricity customers, the gas lobby is running a propaganda campaign calling for Australia to power the world, help Ukraine, let “the market” do its thing. The reality is there is no properly functioning market and this is all a PR distraction to combat the obvious solution to the crisis, that the government needs to earmark gas supply for East Coast customers. Callum Foote fact-checks the finance press.
Source: Gas Lies: as super profits ramp up so too does the fossil fuel propaganda war – Michael West
When Australia and China remain the best of enemies and will continue to be
China represents the largest market for Australian resource and energy exports, making up 42 per cent of all exports in 2020-21. The next highest share was Japan at 11 per cent.
The IPA Murdoch and the Menzies Institute gave him and then removed his training wheels as they did Tim Wilson and others. More will come as it’s the IPA’s goal to be much more than just a think tank.
How did you get your big break? I’ve had many. Tom Switzer first published me in the Spectator Australia as a university student, which led to Nick Cater inviting me to write for The Australian and John Roskam to hire me at the IPA. They may regret it now but ABC’s The Drum had me on many times when I was first starting out and helped hone my media skills. Then a casual Senate vacancy arose unexpectedly in 2016 when Michael Ronaldson retired from the Senate and 450 Victorian Liberal Party members chose me from a field of nine candidates.
Favourite movie of the past decade?
Top Gun Maverick.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
The good Lord helps those who help themselves.
Source: Quick Q: How the media helped James Paterson get his break in politics
Israel doesn’t just kill, and incarcerate journalists, poets and authors but applies a censorship regimen to all information, and news disseminated in the State. It tries to control it outside its borders as well.
In 2021, the Israeli military censor barred the publication of 129 articles in the media, and interfered with the content of another 1,313, according to data provided by the censor at the request of +972 Magazine and the Movement for Freedom of Information in Israel. This marks the third year in a row that there has been a decline in the military censor’s activity, which is now at an 11-year low (the entire period for which we have data).
All media outlets in Israel, as well as authors and publishers, are required to submit articles relating to security and foreign relations to the IDF chief military censor for review prior to publication, in line with the “emergency regulations” enacted following Israel’s founding, and which remain in place. These regulations allow the censor to fully or partially redact articles submitted to it, as well as those already published without its review. Media outlets are barred from indicating in any way whether the censor has altered a story.
The decline in the censor’s work is a small consolation when considering that it regularly interferes in the news we read without our knowledge.
The link between film and the military-industrial complex has never been more evident than in the ‘Top Gun’ movies— a relentless advertisement for the U.S. defence sector, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.
Source: ‘Top Gun’: The thinly disguised Pentagon recruitment drive
When Politics defies logic
The current epidemic of avoidable gun fatalities in the USA is set to worsen, as Alan Austin reports.
In case America forgets: Mary told you all the time who her uncle really was but you chose not to listen.
As we have learned from the committee hearings, Trump also understood that his Big Lie about election fraud presented him another opportunity for grift. He reportedly brought in some $250 million from his supporters for a nonexistent election defense fund (which was supposed to investigate nonexistent election fraud), emailing his small-dollar donors dozens of times a day.
Source: Donald J. Trump, meanest of mean girls: He so doesn’t want to be our friend anymore | Salon.com
Americanisation of Australian Politics and our Public Service
After 9 years of Coalition rule, a Liberal stampede out of Parliament House means political and social upheaval in the nation’s capital. Out with the old political culture, in with the new. Stephanie Tran reports on the wave of political change.
Once upon a time, a change of government in Australia was an orderly event, at least for public servants. When Gough Whitlam took Labor to power in 1972, he flew from Sydney to Canberra to meet the people known as the ‘’permanent heads’’ of the public service. Men whose names were revered and feared in the national capital: John Bunting, Arthur Tange, Alan Cooley, Keith Waller and Lenox Hewitt. Whitlam had some revolutionary notions for his new government, but he had no intention of challenging those institutions.
Some time in the 50 years since then, the ‘’permanent head’’ has become fiercely aware of his or her (there are women now, unlike in 1972) impermanence as the head of a government department.
Today, the idea that any public servant in the high echelons would have any more permanence than a fleeting political office holder would be seen as laughable. In the case of Gough Whitlam’s top adviser, John Menadue, Menadue even moved seamlessly, despite the drama of The Dismissal, to become Malcolm Fraser’s top aide.
Now, even supposedly independent chiefs in the bureaucracy, let alone politicians’ advisers, are becoming political fodder.
Source: Culture Shock: Liberal exodus from Canberra into lobbyland as Labor staffers flood in – Michael West
Is the ALP government really ABC friendly or just better than the last mob?
In an interview with Guardian Australia on the eve of the ABC’s 90th birthday, Rowland said the Coalition “completely lied” about not cutting ABC funding in 2013 and the broadcaster had been harmed as a result. But she stopped short of agreeing with Kevin Rudd that the ABC had been “tamed” by cuts and incessant attacks.
Australia is at a crossroads. The decade of Coalition government showed how vulnerable our rights and freedoms could be in the face of a political party radicalised by anti-democratic and illiberal ideas. The Republican Party in America is displaying how quickly rights can be destroyed, even after it was removed from government; we need to protect vulnerable groups within our nation from copycat attacks.
Source: Australia needs a Bill of Rights – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Nothing normal.
Misinformation breeds the misconception that our climate isn’t up shit creek which in turn leads to governments not feeling much pressure to actually do something about it. And even ostensibly left-wing governments need to feel pressure on this issue.
This is why activists of the sort that pissed off half of car-owning Sydney this week are so important. They serve as a counter-balance to the mainstream narrative that things are just fine and dandy the way they are. Yes, being late on the road sucks, but you should have seen the traffic in Lismore earlier this year.
Source: If you think traffic jams are inconvenient wait until you hear about the climate crisis | The Shot
AustraliaAustralia is on the precipice of the grim milestone of 10,000 COVID-19 related deaths, with more than 7000 fatal cases reported in the last six months.
Source: COVID is poised to claim its 10,000th Australian life
There’s been a lot of hype around microdosing psychedelics as a potential treatment for depression, anxiety and PTSD — but what does the research actually say about it?
Source: Can microdosing psychedelics improve your mental health? Here’s what the science says – ABC News
“And you would think a reasonable response from a president would be, oh my goodness, let’s make sure the metal detectors are operating properly,” he explained. “He said just the opposite, take them down, let the armed members of the group in, and they can march to the Capitol from there. To do what? To stop the certification of his political opponent’s election win. So in a very real sense, that smoking gun evidence that Donald Trump wanted to lead what we now know is an armed attack on the Capitol. The loaded gun evidence is, the witness tampering information, and you know, witness tampering just strikes at the very heart of the integrity of investigations, whether congressional or criminal.”
1 Apparently, after being soundly defeated at the election, the Coalition still thinks there is mileage in continuing to oppose climate change while supporting coal. This sort of talk takes us back to the Neanderthal age. It’s flat Earth stuff.
Australia’s women are recognized and welcomed around the world. Plibersek and Wong are making a world of difference
French President Emmanuel Macron has singled out Australia’s new environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, in front of a global audience in Portugal, declaring that Australia was back in action on climate change.
Source: Tanya Plibersek, Australia singled out by Emmanuel Macron at Lisbon climate talks
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.