Though Netanyahu has rejected the ICJ’s ruling, he needs to take account of the views of his Western supporters who place high value on the role of the court.
There were six principal reasons why the “No” campaign triumphed.
The first was its shameful, morally bankrupt slogan: “If you don’t know, vote ‘No’.” The “No” campaign essentially argued “Why bother? Nothing to do with you. Don’t bother to find out. If you know nothing, welcome aboard the ‘No’ campaign.” Many “No” voters never understood what the referendum was about, and there was no imagination, sympathy or understanding.
The second boon for the “No” campaign was its public faces: Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine to the right, Lidia Thorpe to the left. They gave a leave pass to the unsure and disengaged, promoting uncertainty and confusion. The argument for these people was: “If the Aboriginal community is divided about the Voice, how can I make a judgement?”
The third key point for “No” was its exploitation of the idea of “division”. This masterstroke was Trumpian. Words were taken and turned to mean their opposite. “Yes” became characterised as a vote for division and “No” was a vote for unity. It did not matter that the inverse was true.
Price and Mundine argued the Voice would entrench division along racial lines, giving privileges to First Nations people that would be denied to other Australians. “Division” became the central theme of the “No” case and proved to be a winner.
Price exploited the “unity” issue relentlessly. If she saw a conflagration in the distance, she was eager to help by bringing more petrol. She said the Australian Electoral Commission had interfered with the referendum process and insisted most First Nations people in the Northern Territory were opposed to the Voice. Many believed her, but polling on October 14 indicated remote communities voted “Yes” at a rate of more than 70 per cent.
Fourth among the factors that favoured “No” was Australia’s curious relationship with the Constitution. This document, unread and unrecognisable in the context of constitutional practice as it has evolved, was invoked during the campaign as a Holy Grail – revered, unknowable, untouchable. Each assertion by the “No” campaign that the Voice would be “risky” was demonstrably false, but the country’s worship of its ill-understood Constitution was enough to scare people away from change.
Fifth, the government and Yes23 were very vague about the structure and powers of the Voice itself, even in broad outline, and that looked shifty, although it followed normal practice in referendums.
Finally, the media overall played a shameful role. This was a campaign defined by Murdoch and Musk. The lies circulated on social media were strategically targeted: First Nations people would be given free houses, free cars, free education at private schools. The “Yes” campaign was allegedly being run by the United Nations, or by Jews, or by condescending urban elites. The Voice would apparently push millions of people off their land. Taxes would rise exponentially to pay for Aboriginal welfare and the country itself would be forced to adopt an Indigenous name.
The government and the “Yes” campaign failed to attack these lies head on. The ABC was overly cautious and News Corp was brutal.
One of the great claims for representative democracy and federations is that they provide a uniquely successful way of dynamically negotiating, rather than suppressing, social differences and tensions. So, when it appears to be failing to do that in one of the world’s oldest and most successful democracies it is worth asking “why has this happened”?
The most active Twitter accounts opposing the Indigenous Voice to parliament are people using false identities who are stoking an increasingly divisive online campaign, rather than computerised “bots”, an analysis reveals.
But Australia has been thought to be a less equal society than many European ones, sitting somewhere in the middle between the United States and countries such as France.
Middle East Eye analyses figures of record Israeli violence in 2022 in which the majority of victims were civilians, including children and journalists.
Women’s right. Personal responsibility. Personal freedom. Equality. The role of the Supreme Court. Roe v Wade wraps all those issues into one. And like the frequent but unexpected tornadoes the locals have learnt to live with, it swept through US politics this week – showing the power of voters galvanised by a single issue.
This submission proposes that China is not a military threat. It argues that the defence strategic review should be a multi-faceted review of our China policy, including diplomatic, cultural, and domestic affairs policies, and should aim for outcomes that will benefit the whole nation.
A genuine threat to Australia’s basic security interests would demand preparedness for war. Threats can be either military or non-military, but only a military threat will lead to war. Australia, like every other country, has problems and disputes with other countries, and economic difficulties and natural disasters that require humanitarian solutions. These non-military threats, even if defence forces are called in to help, should not be treated as military threats. I argue that there is no military threat from China.
“Putin’s options for the future are bleak, particularly as he increasingly feels the heat of domestic opposition,” the first intelligence official said. Per Arkin, the official also noted “the impact of 60,000-plus Russian casualties and as well as the bite of sanctions and the controls on travel as challenges to Putin.”
Indeed, the two threats – one, from an increasingly authoritarian-fascist Republican Party; the second, from ever-larger amounts of corporate and billionaire money in our campaigns and elections – are two sides of the same coin. Americans who know the system is rigged against them and in favor of the moneyed interests, are more likely to give up on democracy and embrace an authoritarian fascist demagogue who pretends to be on “their side.”The battle to preserve and protect American democracy is the most important battle of our lifetimes. If we win, there is nothing we cannot achieve. If we lose, there is nothing we can achieve
LAST WEDNESDAY’S national accounts confirm what voters have apparently already decided — that the Morrison Government was not that great at economic management after all.
New Liberal Leader Peter Dutton has a history of cruelty and corruption, despite the mainstream media telling us we should give him a chance, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.
Unless the self-proclaimed “fixer” Prime Minister actually fixes the election, the chances of a Morrison Government being returned on Saturday appear slim.
“Fossil fuels are the currency of despots, dictators, and warmongers. Our global reliance on oil and gas is not only killing our planet but also making the world a less safe and equal place.”
To have these federally funded bodies respond to these emergencies far faster than this government and ADF have reacted to people in need in Lismore, Coraki, Girards Hill, Southgate, Mullumbimby, Picton and many others, we need one more change. We need a federal government that will not simply announce its intentions without any measurable, functional outcomes or run off overseas or hide from public scrutiny, but act promptly to produce results in infrastructure and finance in the towns that will preserve our communities. But, unfortunately, that government is not our current incumbent, whose leader only now, weeks after the start of the floods, while visiting Lismore, indicated an “intention” to declare a “State of Emergency”.
As many of my social media friends and Twitter followers know, I have written a book about the cause of media bias – explaining media inequality. The book is done so it’s time to find a publisher. To help with this journey, your sharing of this post would be appreciated. Thank you! The book is written for news audiences. It traces many recent and historical cases of media bias; it is cathartic in highlighting and explaining reasons for media inequality, making sense of mass audience exasperation. It is also for journalists who want to improve their work.
Another piece of crap due to Tony Abbott’s political determination to block anything Labor for whatever the cost. (ODT)
It has taken several years for a clearer picture to emerge, but we now know the decision to change to the MTM was thoroughly flawed – and the network performance and NBN Co’s financials demonstrate this. The MTM network costs more and does less.
The nation will be bearing the consequences of that decision for years to come in an area that is critical to its long-term future.
Betting tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on a myopic, expensive and backward-looking network based on copper, as the Coalition has done – while the world was moving away from copper and embracing optical fibre – was a huge miscalculation. It was not driven by a sophisticated analysis of the best technology choices for Australia’s NBN, but by ideology and politics. As Paddy Manning observed in his 2015 biography of Turnbull, Tony Abbott was intent on killing off the NBN if the Coalition won government in 2013, and Turnbull believed the Labor plan for the NBN was flying in the face of 30 years of governments exiting from operating businesses.
The fact that such a huge amount of money has been invested in performance-limited MTM technologies means that a writedown of these investments is almost a certainty.
Economic Facts put Australian History into perspective when LNP want to reward the rich with 12.5 bill in tax cuts (ODT)
In 1989, there was one billionaire. In 2002, it reached ten. There were 29 in 2010. Today, it is 76. In 2017, the wealth of the richest 200 grew by about $50 billion or 21% to $282.7 billion. This 21% growth is ten times the growth of wages.
By contrast, between 1989 and 2016 average weekly wages have grown threefold, or thereabouts, over the same period of time.
It is time for workers to reclaim their unions, and to strike for big wage increases and a fair and just society. That and that alone will wipe the smile off the faces of the rich-listers, and begin the process of redistributing the wealth back to those who create it — workers.
an estimated minimum 100,000 of First Nations people having been to prison. In comparing global data, it is the highest rate of racialised incarceration in the world.
olddogthoughts 
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