The key to clickbait is to give an odd-number, single-digit list of things to confirm prejudices.
Source: Everything you need to ‘No’ for the Voice Referendum
Imagine if the question we will all be asked at the referendum on 14 October was being asked just about you: Would you want to be consulted before decisions were made about your future?
Another LNP King-Pin declares the No Campaign to be “nonsense”
“So for all the nonsense you read at present, if they could do it 130 years ago minus digital media, TV, on the spot interviews … if they could manage that, we could probably manage a minor amendment.”
Source: Voice to parliament: No campaign’s ‘bunkem’ slammed by Tony Nutt
Can you believe this? Lang Hancock (Gina’s Dad) in later years recommended chemically guaranteeing it.
in the early years of federation. Very few people challenged the widespread view that the Aborigines were ‘dying out’. Everyday experience and scientific orthodoxy concurred. In his much applauded 1930 history Australia W.K Hancock wrote:
It might still be possible to save a remnant of the race upon well-policed local reserves in Central and Northern Australia. This would cost hard thought and hard cash.—— From time to time (Australian democracy) remembers the primitive people whom it has dispossessed, and sheds over their predestined passing an economical tear.
I met, on my journey through life, many who were once the enemies of my Sovereign and when times were good, we became friends. It’s funny how you can wake up, feel the rising sun and see the blue skies above and then, in an instant, you find your mind’s eye looking at a cenotaph. If we had all been honest at the start, accepting of the fact that there was no more holy oil that created rulers and that all of this was in essence an arrangement by mutual consent, maybe we could have built farms and houses instead of cenotaphs.
Source: It was all a con – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Australia remains a Colony
Five decades on, some parliamentarians have called for a formal acknowledgement of Canberra’s role in the destruction of a democracy that led to the death and torture of tens of thousands by a brutal military junta. The Greens spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Peace, Senator Jordon Steele-John, stated his party’s position: “50 years on we know Australia was involved, as it worked to support the US national interest. To this day, Australia’s secretive and unaccountable national security apparatus has blocked the release of information and has denied closure for thousands of Chilean-Australians.”
In calling for an apology to the Chilean people, the Greens are also demanding the declassification of any relevant ASIS and ASIO documents that would show support for Pinochet, including implementing “oversight and reform to our intelligence agencies to ensure that this can never happen again.”
Source: Overthrowing Allende: Australia’s special role in destroying a democracy – Pearls and Irritations
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (March 2023) stated that “there are multiple, feasible and effective options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to human-caused climate change, and they are available now.”
However, the gap between ambition and actions, including in our region, does not bode well.
Source: UN Summit: Asia-Pacific greenhouse emissions rising despite lofty ambitions – Michael West
As far as Rowan Dean and Andrew Bolt are concerned this remains a “hoax”
Extreme heat is one of the most direct and measurable shocks from climate change and one of the deadliest, according to the independent Climate Council.
The unseasonably hot and dry conditions are being felt across southern Australia, with temperatures peaking at 8C-16C above average across much of South Australia, NSW and Victoria.
Source: ‘Barrelling towards catastrophe’ as extreme heat flares
What Peter Dutton and the “No” crowd have adopted in Australia
Fired Fox News commentator Tucker Carson, for instance, screeches manically that, because of immigration, “eventually there will be no more native-born Americans.” Immediately following that comment comes former Grand Wizard Duke saying, “We’ve got to start protecting our race.”
Donald Trump is then shown at a rally (with several Black people behind him wearing “Blacks for Trump” T-shirts) saying about Covid treatments, “If you’re white, you have to go to the back of the line. Discriminating against white people!” Again, there’s a cut to Duke stating, “There is racial discrimination going on right now in this country against massive numbers of white Americans.”
All too sadly, it didn’t take much effort then, nor would it now, to demonstrate that the racist “great replacement theory” that contends white Americans are being radically displaced by immigrants underlies an ever-fiercer defense of so-called Christian nationalist identity. And in our time, that defense has been essential to the rise of what has become the Trumpublican Party and the fierce growth of white racism that’s gone with it.
Source: The Rise of White Nationalism Alongside the Second Coming of Trump | The Smirking Chimp
Does this remind you of anyone? “No Australia” you should feel ashamed for yelling “Reverse Racism” It simply doesn’t exist.
Donald Trump is then shown at a rally (with several Black people behind him wearing “Blacks for Trump” T-shirts) saying about Covid treatments, “If you’re white, you have to go to the back of the line. Discriminating against white people!” Again, there’s a cut to Duke stating, “There is racial discrimination going on right now in this country against massive numbers of white Americans.”
Source: The Republican Party has a White Nationalism Problem that Isn’t Going Away
She has 2 ears and only one mouth and only uses one.
So then there’s the people who are in-between. Most of the time, nobody cares about their skin colour. They might or might not be marked as Aboriginal for the purposes of discrimination. They may or may not have been raised in households of intergenerational trauma and poverty caused by the destruction of their originating culture. Should they tick the box or not? I’d say it’s up to them.
It’s certainly not up to you or me, Pauline.
Source: An open letter to Pauline Hanson – » The Australian Independent Media Network
THE PRELIMINARY ESTIMATE of net migration in calendar 2022 hit a new record of 386,970. In the 12 months to March 2023, another new record was set at 454,400. Media commentary criticising the Albanese Government for allowing this level of net migration is currently focused on the impact on the housing crisis and on a per capita recession.
Can Corporate suppliers be trusted?
Hydrogen is being increasingly used as leverage to reignite the Australian gas network, with industry leaders attacking reforms reducing production and consumption. Rosco Jones reports.
One of the biggest gas infrastructure owners, the Australian Gas Infrastructure Group has come out against Victoria’s recent banning of gas lines to new homes as being inhibitive to renewable uptake, with the CEO of AGIG, Craig de Laine, expressing his opposition to the ban on new gas:
“The investment has already been made in the gas networks – it makes good sense for taxpayers to get the value from that investment and that asset, and continue to use it for decades to come.”
Evidence is building, both in Australia and overseas, that any hydrogen may not be the answer for a clean future.
Source: Cancellation in WA, an end to gas blending in Victoria. Is hydrogen the answer? – Michael West
TORONTO (AP) — Canada said it was expelling a top Indian diplomat Monday as it investigates what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called credible allegations that India’s government may have had links to the assassination in Canada of a Sikh activist.
Source: Canada Expels Top Indian Diplomat As It Probes Sikh Activist’s Killing | HuffPost Latest News
The pendulum, it would seem, is again swinging away from the left. The shadow cast by the legacy of the military junta has grown thicker. As it does so, the Pinochet defenders, beneficiaries of economic policies that were prosecuted alongside murderous ones against critics, remain noisy and grotesquely at large.
Source: Brief for Murder: Pinochet’s Apologists Five Decades On – » The Australian Independent Media Network
In a statement, the Jordan-run Islamic Waqf Department said Israeli forces had emptied the Al-Aqsa complex from Palestinian worshippers before allowing settlers in.
According to the statement, Palestinians under 50 years old were prevented from entering the site.
A number of Palestinians were arrested by Israeli forces from inside the complex, local sources said.
There was no comment from the Israeli authorities on the report.
Source: Israeli Squatter-Settlers storm 3rd Holiest Site in Islam to mark Jewish New Year
If Indigenous people no longer exist as Jacinta Price maintains her job is redundant. However not according to the LNP and Peter Dutton. They certainly see her as Black and use her and Warren Mundine that way.
In a week when Professor Marcia Langton has been demonised for making the straightforward point that the basic arguments of the No campaign always resolve into racism, Price’s remarks demonstrate that the No campaign in the end rejects as either non-existent or irrelevant the impact of the invasion and colonisation of Australia on First Peoples. Her particular version is one of extreme assimilation: Indigenous peoples now have running water and food, colonisation had a positive impact, and the Indigenous Affairs portfolio that she herself holds should be dissolved.
Source: “Jacinta… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
Warren Mudine says he represents Indigenous Australians but doesn’t name any of them nor do you ever see him with an Indigenous crowd standing behind him when speaking. Then he goes on to say if Yes wins he will jump ship and “try” to be elected to represent Indigenous Australians while also trying to get preelected by the No Voter’s LNP Senate ticket. Meanwhile, Mundine is a foundation member and the spokesperson for Advance otherwise known as Fair Australia funded by non-other than the American, ultra Right-wing, anti- Climate Change group, the Heritage Foundation who make the KKK, neo-Nazis and Christian Nationalists look like political amateurs when it comes to influencing global politics.
Warren Mundine is the ex-president of the ALP we know only too well that he’s an ambitious self-interested operator cut from the same cloth as Scott Morrison who currently supports his preselection for that Senate seat. Mundine worked for Murdoch’s Sky News for heaven’s sake with a $300K+ grant from the LNP. The man chases money and power and has the political integrity of a yo-yo. He’s currently advocating anything and everything in order not to entirely destroy his opportunities post-October 14th.. The man is a Golem and in my view that only represents himself. He’s a “Coconut” to many indigenous Australians who it’s said divorced his wife because she was too black.
Mass marches have taken place across the nation, with Indigenous leaders calling for those who support a constitutionally enshrined advisory body to cut through disinformation they say is being spread by the ‘no’ side.
Source: Yes rallies issue calls to cut through Voice falsehoods
We can start by supporting the Voice Referendum. Giving our First Nations people input into decisions that affect their lives is logical because we all know that imposing economic solutions hasn’t worked for over 200 years. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the next referendum was to revoke the Voice to Parliament because there was essentially equity in lifespans and opportunities between all who choose to live in this country?
We have the means and ability to help people rather than ideology on October 14 – don’t waste it.
Source: Your choice – people or ideology. – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Andrew Bolt “Country Boy” once bragged how he had a “bestie” Aboriginal friend at school. I’m not sure but Alan might have been his name. Anyway, its obviously unimportant because, he certainly doesn’t give a shit about him now. ” It must now be crushed: Andrew Bolt says Voice to Parliament is ‘dead’ but a narrow defeat would be a ‘disaster'( Andrew Bolt)
So I’m voting Yes for Jake. And the tens of thousands like him.
Source: I’m doing it for Jake – » The Australian Independent Media Network
This is a story of what a voice can achieve and how easily it is undone by external forces.
The indigenous voice has always been there, sometimes weak, sometimes strong, but rarely listened to for any length of time. Australia has a sad record of taking indigenous programs that work, and defunding them. The Canberra and NT bureaucracy, despite their best intentions, simply do not listen, or provide funding certainty, to the multiple voices that are already in place in health, education, alcohol and domestic violence management. Or they are constrained in what they can do by a raft of ‘white tape’ like Sydney design and environmental planning standards for a family home to suit 3.5 residents instead of 10 to 15.
Source: Smothered indigenous voices – Pearls and Irritations
The latest official data confirms the Albanese Government is achieving sound economic outcomes and also fixing entrenched injustices, Alan Austin reports.
Source: Australia rewards its workers and rejoins the growth economies
These are Voices to Parliament listened to. These Donations are seen as real “Money from the Heart Statements”
The business forums of both major parties sell political access to corporate Australia, and they make a pretty penny doing so. Many of Australia’s largest companies are members and their events can raise hundreds of thousands in one night. Zacharias Szumer investigates.
Source: Who’s at the party? The thriving business of corporate access to politicians – Michael West
Australia’s LNP denial of the nation’s racism is a denial of our Europhile history. Let’s remind ourselves of the shame buried beneath our racist denials
and is perhaps not far distant, when the European observer will look around to see the globe girdled with a continuous zone of the black and yellow races, no longer too weak for aggression or under tutelage, but independent, or practically so, in government, monopolising the trade of their own regions, and circumscribing the industry of the European.
Invited to ‘international conferences, and welcomed as allies in the quarrels of the civilised world’, the rise of China as a global power meant that white man’s ‘pride of place’ would be ‘humiliated’.
“It’s time for Biden to declare a climate emergency and phase out the fossil fuels killing people and wildlife around the world.”
Source: Demanding an End to ‘Deadly Fossil Fuels,’ Tens of Thousands Take the Streets in NYC
So far, this year is the second-warmest on record behind 2016, when global temperatures soared during an El Nino event.
Source: Climate change sparks earth’s hottest three-month span
Scott Denning, Colorado State University | – Summer 2023 has been the hottest on record by a huge margin. Hundreds of millions of people suffered as heat waves cooked Europe, Japan, Texas and the Southwestern U.S. Phoenix hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) for a record 54 days, including a 31-day streak in July. Large parts of Canada were on fire. Lahaina, Hawaii, burned to the ground. As an atmospheric scientist, I get asked at least once a week if the wild weather we’ve been having is “caused” by climate change. This question reflects a misunderstanding of the difference
Craig Murray is the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, a whistleblower, journalist and one of the leading voices for the freedom of Julian Assange. In this wide-randing interview with The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal, Murray takes aim at the US and UK’s claims to uphold democracy while jailing dissidents – including Murray himself – for protesting and exposing their crimes.
Source: Ex-UK Amb. Craig Murray: “The US Has Completely Ceased to be a Democracy” – scheerpost.com
I’ve said “Sorry”. But being white, raised, socialized, and immersed in Australian culture I found myself on the racist spectrum, a continuum call it what you like I’m part unintentionally racist. I’ve ignorantly absorbed some of the cultural myths that have given rise to and supported institutionalized patterns of racist behavior and taken them on board through ignorance and disregard, have accepted them as normal. I need to do battle with the errors in my social psychology and just saying sorry isn’t good enough and needs to be joined with a resounding YES for change in the way this nation does things. Change that says “I’ve listened and I’ve heard you” and “You’re right and my doing it is the beginning of a better Australia”
I spent a short time in Kunanarra my motel room was directly in front of the Primary school’s basketball courts. It was recess and what I witnessed was young kids interacting seemingly without any racial division. In my minds eye the kids were playing without prejudice the scene seemed colorless and it stood out. By the time I had driven about the town I had witnessed the harsh reality of two cities whose biggest buildings were occupied by major government Institutions. the Police Station, the Welfare Dept, and the supermarket a complete shadow cast over what I’d always been told was the “Lucky Country”.
I was gobsmacked when I overheard a retailer ring the police requesting they remove the “flower pots” from his very large shaded verandah. Those “pots” were some half-dozed aged indigenous Aussies looking for the cover,for shade from the intense heat of the Kimberly sun. On the fringe of Kunnarra, I saw the worst communal poverty I’d ever seen in Australia totally black. It spoke to the division that those young children I saw would come to expect as normal as time passed and inevitably be blamed on them as a “lifestyle choice” “the poverty of their culture” by a Racist Australia still saying ” Vote No today after 240 years of shame” simply because that’s the way history told us it’s always been. Yes is a first step my Australia needs to take to accept a Universal Bill of Human Rights sorely lacking in this country and with an LNP who wants to rid us of even the United Nations Australian Human Rights Commission and the Racial Discrimination Act.
Racism comes in as many forms as there are people to both carry it out, whether knowingly or not, and to experience it.
I’m no longer five years old and subject to the blows that were doled out then. So, how is it that I, a middle-aged woman with career success living a life far more secure than that of many, can be feeling so reduced to nothingness when I have not been targeted as others have?
My colleague Stan Grant, the formidable Professor Marcia Langton, and of course, the great Adam Goodes, just to name a few whose stories we’ve heard.
Discussion of the tenure of senior officials in the Australian public service continues in P&I, with some former officials recently pointing to the difficulty of giving the fabled “frank and fearless” advice when contracts may not be renewed.
Justice Kelly Rees issued an arrest warrant, 2 years ago, for journalist Shane Dowling (me) to serve 10 months jail for contempt of court on the instructions of Kerry Strokes’ Channel Seven and its parent company Seven West Media. The arrest warrant was issued at the Supreme Court of NSW on the 3rd of September 2021.
Big banks claiming to be ‘carbon neutral’ are anything but. The big four banks in Australia only account for a fraction of their emissions, with CBA offsetting just 4%. Callum Foote investigates.
California’s move is an unmistakable sign that the wave of climate lawsuits against Big Oil will keep growing and that these polluters’ days of escaping accountability for their lies are numbered.” Jake Johnson Sep 16, 2023 13
Source: ‘A Watershed Moment’: California Sues Big Oil Over Decades of Climate Destruction
The humiliation of Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers in the occupied city of Al-Khalil (Hebron) on July 10 was not the first such episode. Sadly, it will not be the last.
Source: Humiliating Palestinians is An Actual Israeli Policy | The Smirking Chimp
For the US and its interest in moving to potentially confront China over the Taiwan straits issue, disengage from the Middle East “forever wars,” as a result of the perceived lack of strategic importance, it seems that to not get a deal with Saudi Arabia will cost more economically, politically, and strategically now more than ever.
Source: As US drags out Israel Normalization Deal with Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Drifts toward China
When an Individual’s voice reflects and admits to Reality. This is a Climate Change that is Necessary
Eight generations ago, my dirt-poor Celtic ancestors were colonisers. They logged trees, eroded the land. They brutalised animals. They farmed, fought, bred and built for themselves.
They probably also abused Aboriginal women or stockmen and participated in genocide. The evidence is well hidden but pops up in hints such as Aboriginal families bearing my surname across the rural area where my great-grandfather worked.
This has been minimised by subsequent generations determined to steep their identity in middle-class suburban “niceness”. They claimed to be “self-made” bankers. Land ownership has been an obsession for all of them.
The same Aborigines who were told by my forebears that they didn’t polish the silver properly could not have any level of dominion over their own lives. They were only given the vote in 1967. “Money spent on them was wasted,” said the same patriarchs who stole their wages.
Source: Yes or No or Neutral? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has continued his tradition of exploiting racism for political mileage, further degrading the Liberal Party’s tarnished reputation, writes Belinda Jones.
The fullest acknowledgment of humanity is to say, I see you and I hear you.
Contrary to the constant refrain of the No campaign, this referendum has not divided us. We were already divided. What it has done is exaggerate gaps and fissures that already existed.
If we vote No on October 14, it will not suddenly reveal Australia as a deeply racist nation – all it will do is prove it.
Source: Voiceless – The Shot
A choice to accept what is or move forward as a nation and address the gaps for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. To those who reason, it is not unreasonable. To do this, they simply ask for a say in matters that affect them. A small request.
The Voice will create practical and lasting change.
To refuse these simple requests would dishonour our First Nations people and declare our racism.
Source: A legacy of racism with a grief that lingers on – » The Australian Independent Media Network
All living in a land with increasing income and wealth gaps called Australia’s (Shush) Capitalism built on land where the original owners are the most disadvantaged and have been so for 240 years
1) because they were never meant to be here
2) because they’re noticeably Black and therefore….. simply not equal
3) because when they say “Welcome” Whites don’t believe they mean it
4) It’s been Australia’s Shame since 1788
I’m voting “Yes” as a proud Australian of Aboriginal, European and Middle-eastern ancestry. Australia’s Constitution needs to catch up with the nation we are today. We’re a multicultural superpower and Asia-Pacific democracy, founded on 65,000 years of heritage and culture. Our Constitution needs to reflect that.
Source: “Yes” will say “No” to Trumpism and US-like social disintegration – Pearls and Irritations
Listening is a radical change that’s never been guaranteed by governments for 240 years. It’s Time to say Yes.
Source: The Guardian
There is more to the Snowy Hydro than cost overruns and endless delays. It turns out a noxious fish could bring the project to a permanent stop. So what’s the scam?
Source: The fish that could bring Snowy Hydro to a permanent stop – Michael West
It’s not a “lifestyle” choice as the LNP claim
Poverty is a policy choice. Congress has chosen to have a significant percentage of our population impoverished, including — especially — our nation’s children.
Source: New Proof That Poverty Is a Policy Choice | The Smirking Chimp
There are Tim Gurners everywhere and profit over people is the priority.
“War is good for business,” one defense executive attending the biennial Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEI) conference at ExCel London flat-out toldReuters. “We are extremely busy,” Michael Elmore, head of sales at the U.K.-based armored steelmaker MTL Advanced, told the media agency.
Source: ‘War Is Good for Business,’ Declares Executive at London’s Global Arms Fair
olddogthoughts 
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