With Scott Morrison’s exit from politics, his legacy includes the very expensive and useless AUKUS deal, dubbed the ‘worst deal in all history’. Dr John Jiggens writes.
The Morrison Gift to Australia
Scott Morrison’s great legacy will be that he encouraged more Australians to vote for independent candidates then probably any other Prime Minister and the destruction of the Liberal Party which will likely never recover from his leadership.
Source: Scott Morrison, the coin-operated Prime Minister Australia had to haveKangaroo Court of Australia
With a final, characteristically cringe-worthy valedictory speech in Parliament, Morrison leaves behind a trail of destruction and a political career devoid of anything even slightly resembling leadership.
Source: The cook from Cook, the thief, his wife and the party leftovers
AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL CITIES are set to swelter through twice as many days above 35°C by the end of the century, a detailed analysis from the Climate Council has found.
“There is an anger across this nation that we choose not to acknowledge.
It is an anger fuelled by racism, prejudice, discrimination and poverty. A distressed discontent that is growing, not just here but around the world. But under anger is always grief…
Source: Cognitive Bias – » The Australian Independent Media Network
For over three months, members of the Labor Government, including Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, have held the line that “Australia is not sending weapons to Israel and has not done so for the past five years”. This claim by Labor MPs has also been proliferating through a social media campaign allegedly combatting ‘disinformation’.
Source: Truth or Lies? The facts on Australia’s weapons exports to Israel … and the risk – Michael West
There’s division in the house The Jewish Council rejects Sky News and Peter Dutton’s political abuse of Palestinian asylum seekers. However, one might consider their acceptance is what Israel wants the world to take on as Palestinians in Palestine will by birthrate coupled with migration of Israelis Jews will soon be the minority population in the region, and their Apartheid no longer denied
The Jewish Council rejects the assertion that Australia accepting Palestinians fleeing unprecedented violence is in any way a threat to the safety of Jewish people. Many Jewish people have a deep understanding of fleeing persecution and many Jews have deep and meaningful relationships with Palestinians, including those from Gaza.
Did the loss of the Yes campaign scare the shit out of the ALP?
It must be regarded as one of the most despicable and morally repugnant actions ever taken by an Australian parliament since 1901 when, in the first week of February this year, it refused by a huge majority to demand a ceasefire in Gaza as Israel prepared for a military assault on Rafah, where they had forcibly massed an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians in what can only be described as a massive concentration camp.
Source: The Australian Parliament besmirches us all by refusing Gaza ceasefire – Pearls and Irritations
Children are being killed by the thousands in Gaza. Both our role as educators and the Jewish values we were raised with demand that we support a cease-fire.
Source: We Are American Jewish Educators, and We Demand a Cease-Fire
The Israeli government is on the brink of a long-feared military offensive against the town of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinian civilians have taken shelter from the Israeli campaign in Gaza. An attack on Rafah could trigger the worst humanitarian catastrophe of the war so far, including a potential ethnic cleansing of Gaza as Palestinians are pushed into Egypt. This week on Intercepted, hosts Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain discuss the current state of the war as well as the ongoing Palestinian campaign for political unity with Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a physician and general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative. Barghouti speaks about the current humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the role of the U.S. in facilitating the war, and his own political future and that of the Palestinian national movement in the wake of this crisis.
Source: Intercepted: Mustafa Barghouti on Struggle for Future Amid Gaza Genocide
“There needs to be independent, international journalism happening inside Gaza right now, and it’s not.”
Norway’s recent divestment from Israel Bonds is the latest piece of bad news for an Israeli economy that has nosedived during the war on Gaza — creating a huge opening for other divestment campaigns to hit Israel where it hurts and bring the war to an end.
Dutton regularly proclaims what he opposes, but what he will do in terms of new policies mostly remains a mystery or alternatively will not work.
Source: What does Dutton stand for? – Pearls and Irritations
(The Conversation) – As the climate crisis escalates, there are urgent and difficult choices that need to be made to drastically reduce our carbon emissions before more irreparable damage is done. Many have argued the energy industry needs to change to reduce carbon emissions, but one concern that remains is the consequence this will have on economic prosperity. Discussions vary across interest groups. Do we need to outright replace the fossil fuel industry with the renewable energy industry as soon as possible? Should we slowly phase out fossil fuels while making
Source: How Renewable Energy Innovation Makes us Richer while Saving the Planet
Member states on the Council can authorise, almost tyrannically, the use of force. They can impose sanctions, create ad hoc tribunals to try war crimes, and set up bodies of their own wish and design. But the supreme power of the Security Council granted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter has its own, self-stalling measure. One might even call it retarding, a limitation that makes deliberations often look carnivalesque. The main participants in the carnival are always the permanent five (P5): the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China. Their continued relevance lies in their unaccountable exercise of the veto, an aborting device that kills off a resolution with swiftness and finality. And only one of them need exercise it, whatever other Council Members think.
As a signatory to the Genocide Convention, Australia is obliged to prevent any action that further risks the survival of the Palestinian people and failure to do so risks complicity in genocide. In the absence of a response from the Australian government to the ICJ ruling, at least 81 groups representing civil society are observing with concern Australia’s failure to act to prevent genocide in Gaza, and have made the following submission to the International Court of Justice.
One analyst argued that opponents of Israel’s occupation “demolished” the arguments of its few supporters.
Source: US, UK, Fiji, and Hungary Only Nations to Defend Israeli Occupation at ICJ
Propaganda is real and one side is dominant
Israeli media has debunked the ultra-Orthodox group’s stories, but the New York Times won’t say so.
Source: Israelis Debunked Zaka October 7 Stories, but U.S. Press Ignored
Israel propaganda tells us 200 trucks a day is a feast. Previously there were 500 trucks and Gaza’s farmers where fully operational. There is no farming and only 57 trucks were getting through. The Goebellian voices of Israel were saying It’s not our fault the “aid agencies are all Hamas”
“How many days, hours, seconds, do we need to wait to provide those people with the services and aid they need? Do we need to lose all the people in north Gaza? What are we waiting for? We need to convince the world to care about this issue,” he said.
Our expectation is that the assault on Gaza will be stopped by the global voices of humanity and that our universities have a critical role in strengthening and hastening this movement. Universities must take a stand against the mass suffering of Palestinians, particularly women and children. We urge our universities to act on this matter urgently and uphold principles of justice, human rights, and the rule of international law.
Source: A call for university action against Israeli scholasticide – Pearls and Irritations
There is no such thing as freedom of thought in Israeli Academia or it’s Tertiary Institutions. They are Operating as a mirror of German Institutions in WW2
Not one Israeli university administration has called on the Israeli government to cease the bombing of Palestinian universities.
Source: Israel’s Universities Are a Key Part of Its Apartheid Regime
Long ago, I came to believe that being a Jew, even a secular one like me, entailed certain responsibilities. A people who had suffered so much yet survived were obligated, if not honored, to serve as witnesses and supporters of other oppressed people and to live in the public interest, to model ethical lives. Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, and Sandy Koufax all made me proud, while I felt ashamed of Roy Cohn, Alan Dershowitz, and Henry Kissinger.
I accepted his offer to meet and talk. We became friends. Over more than 40 years he’s joined Rabbi Landman as my spiritual advisor, officiating at my wedding, while offering rational possibilities in chaotic times. Of course, given the world we’re in, we’ve been talking far more urgently of late. Yes, Hamas are thugs and vandals, but how is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu any different in his behavior?
The truth is we shouldn’t have to choose between them. It’s important to get rid of them both, while, at least in our thinking, separating two power-mad and murderous ruling bodies from their people, most of whom just want peace. How can we use the “ethical monotheism” of Judaism to find common ground and a country for each? We don’t have that answer and don’t even know if it’s possible, but at least we should know what the only true goal is: to end the present horror. And that would be good for the Jews, with or without God.
The US and more than a dozen other countries cut off aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, worsening the humanitarian crisis in Gaza based on charges US intelligence has “low confidence” in. It’s as cruel and absurd as this entire war.
Source: The War on UNRWA Is Israel’s Awful, Absurd War in Microcosm
At least 576,000 people in the Gaza Strip – one quarter of the population – are one step away from famine, a senior UN aid official has told the Security Council, warning that widespread famine could be “almost inevitable” without action.
Source: A quarter of Gaza’s people a step away from famine: UN
Until power is distributed equitably through peaceful means; and checks and balances are put in place through common multinational consensus, the problem will continue to plague us. Meanwhile, the problems of climate change and environmental pollution would still have to be solved if our children and grandchildren were to inherit a habitable world.
Source: Curing Australia’s dependent personality disorder – Pearls and Irritations
“The taxpayer is paying almost $700 million per year to a company masquerading as a hospital operator which, at best, can deliver services for 250 public beds, yet the Royal North Shore Hospital, which has about 700 public beds, costs the taxpayer about $700 million a year to run.”
Source: Heat is on to put Sydney’s privatised Cayman Islands hospital back in public hands – Michael West
Feb. 2, signed by more than 800 civil servants from the United States, the European Union and about a dozen European countries, declaring: “It Is Our Duty To Speak Out When Our Governments’ Policies Are Wrong.”
The statement declares the Gaza pummeling “one of the worst human catastrophes of this century.” And it calls on its countries to halt all military support to Israel and use their leverage “to secure a lasting ceasefire and full humanitarian access in Gaza and a safe release of all hostages” and “develop a strategy for lasting peace.”
Source: The War on Gaza: Public Relations vs. Reality – CounterPunch.org
10 Questions
Why is Congress preparing to appropriate over $14 billion to Israel in military and other aid without any public hearings and without any demonstrated fiscal need by Israel, a prosperous economic, technological and military superpower with a social safety net superior to that of the U.S.? USDA just reported over 44 million Americans struggled with hunger in 2022. This, in the midst of a childcare crisis. Should U.S. taxpayers be expected to pay for Netanyahu’s colossal intelligence/military collapse?
Source: What the Mass Media Needs to Cover Re: Israel/Gaza Conflict – CounterPunch.org
A new report by Human Rights Watch accuses the Israeli government of defying the International Court of Justice’s order to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Source: One Month Later, Israel Has ‘Simply Ignored’ ICJ Ruling and Continued to Starve Gazans
Campaigns to discredit news are especially dangerous in a changing media landscape—and as threats within our power to resolve continue to increase, from pandemics to climate disruption to authoritarianism.
Source: Opinion | Independent Journalism Is Vital to Our Future and We Must Help It Thrive | Common Dreams
The deputy chair of the Melbourne writers festival, Leslie Reti, has resigned over a poetry session on Aboriginal and Palestinian solidarity in this year’s program.
More than four months after a crushing defeat in the Voice referendum, and soon after the Closing the Gap report confirmed that there was almost no progress in improving Aboriginal lives last year, Aboriginal players in the yes case are moving towards an inquest into how their case went so terribly wrong.
Source: Australia’s First Nations still looking over the 1788 chasm – Pearls and Irritations
If the best decision of an administration involves the renting of a country’s autonomy, the surrendering of land and facilities to be used by a nuclear-armed goliath, the conversion of an entire state to the status of a garrisoned, forward defence base to police rivals, including one with whom you have no historical animosity with, one is coming very close to confusing patriotic innovation and self-interest with treason.
Source: The despoiling of public life: Scott Morrison and authoritarian paranoia – Pearls and Irritations
You can be sure Dutton’s getting advice from America. Will he be turning to Pentecostalists and the Godbotherers again as they helped Morrison more than Abbott the mad monk but failed Turnbull? If he does will he be offending the Zionist Lobby?
It’s widely acknowledged that Tony Abbott came to be Prime Minister because he continually listed some ‘critical’ failures of the then Rudd and Gillard Governments using three-word slogans. Current Opposition Leader Dutton seems to be attempting to follow the same strategy however he seems to be having difficulty in finding a line of attack that cannot be easily debunked.
The Albanese Government has demonstrated that substantial policy changes can be made so they are beneficial to a lot more Australians. The political battle can also be won. The more beneficial change that occurs the more evidence there will be that Dutton’s scattergun approach is similar to the boy crying wolf. The ALP has a chance here to embed itself in government for a generation – the question is do they want to take it?
Source: Dutton’s scattergun – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Has the ABC returned to holding governments to account? The LNP wanted to bury them for it. Can the ALP afford to let them do their job and ask the hard questions or have they become supporters of private not public broadcasting?
Through its deceptive ‘fact-checking’ the ABC has continued to spread Coalition disinformation, though help may be on the way, Alan Austin reports.
Source: The ABC continues to falsely trash Labor’s economic credentials
Israelis around the world having been army-trained and have gained a reputation for being greater criminals than any Palestinian families out of Israel. They are often single and known around the world for being involved in varied criminal. Drugs, Prostitution, and simply muscle for hire. But that is something you would never hear from Dutton it would upset the the Israeli (Jewish) Lobby.
With the current arrivals from Gaza – some 340 or so have managed to drip themselves from the Palestinian territories – the bedwetting fantasies of terror being induced by the opposition seem absurd and callous. But absurdity is a proven calculus for electoral success – at least sometimes.
Source: A Copper’s Skewed Logic: Politicising Palestinian Visas – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that the Israeli police dispersed a crowd of demonstrators from a major Tel Aviv thoroughfare, Kaplan Street, after they attempted to block it, and that the police used water cannons on the crowd. At least 21 persons were arrested.
Source: Thousands Protest in Israel, Demand Netanyahu Step Down, new Elections, Hostage Deal
According to Israel, that’s not “Plausible Genocide”? It’s also not the destruction of Hamas,
To put “at the front of people’s minds and on the desks of decision-makers” the human cost of the U.S.-backed Israeli onslaught in Gaza, scientists on Wednesday said an escalation in the bombardment was projected to kill 85,000 Palestinians in the next six months—which would bring the total death toll to more than 114,000 people, or about 5% of Gaza’s population, in less than a year.
An unidentified man in Washington, D.C. was reported to be in critical condition Sunday after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in what may have been a desperate act of protest against the ongoing military assault and humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip
Source: ‘I Will No Longer Be Complicit in Genocide’: Man Sets Himself on Fire Outside Israeli Embassy in DC
Trump proved there’s money in it so they swarmed out into the light and were welcomed
Source: Nazis Swarm Together At CPAC 2024 | Crooks and Liars
Dutton’s Favorite Department Head Ever He Took Him With Him To Home Affairs
The not-so-distinguished service of former Secretary of Home Affairs Mike Pezzullo ended in a blaze of ignominy, and there may be more coming. Rex Patrick and Philip Dorling with the story.
Netanyahu has turned Gaza from a self-managed Concentration Camp to a Transit Detention Center of displaced “illegals”. The next stage will be searching for a home and nations other than Israel to pay.What will Australia’s role be given it lies on the side of Israel?
The ABC reports “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will keep security control over all Palestinian areas and make reconstruction of Gaza dependent on its demilitarisation.” (Click here to read more) In other words, Israel has invaded Gaza and now own it as far as Benjamin Netanyahu is concerned.
Is there such a thing as Liberal Zionism?
Rep. Andy Ogles’s comment that “we should kill them all” in Gaza has drawn little outrage, to say nothing of public censure like what Rep. Rashida Tlaib has faced. That’s because openly calling for genocide of Palestinians has become normalized in America.
Source: US Elected Officials Keep Explicitly Supporting Genocide
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