Tag: Fiction

Trump

A Ghost in the Machine – » The Australian Independent Media Network

The infection, nonetheless, continues to spread through the American body politic. Down in Arizona, a former TV news reader who is running for the U.S. Senate, told a rally crowd the “next six months will be intense” and we need to “strap on a Glock,” an automatic weapon that can kill with great proficiency. A stylish celebrity, she sounds like the former president but with different hormones and an even more refined disregard for facts. Her politics were formulated by searching for the shortest line to public office and the radical right was dramatically lacking in gender diversity. The language spreading across the right has not stopped suggesting that violence will be essential to win elections and take offices. The Arizona TV lady clearly does not care what happens as long as she gets attention and glory and money and public office. None of her thinking is original and comes from the Adderall addled mind of a future Riker’s Island inmate. Global geopolitics, meanwhile, are on a knife edge and Americans are fixated on a low-intellect ex-president on trial for money and sexual promiscuity.

Our future may be as uncertain as his.

Source: A Ghost in the Machine – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Media

The New York Times Has an Ugly Anti-Palestinian Bias

The fact that the New York Times assigned its investigation of October 7 sexual assault claims to Anat Schwartz, a non-journalist with anti-Palestinian beliefs and ties to the Israeli military, is an extreme reflection of the paper’s unflagging pro-Israel bias.

Beneath these surface layers of anti-Palestinian bias, though, there may be a deeper and simpler issue. As Noam Chomsky and his late coauthor Edward Herman argued in Manufacturing Consent, one of the defining biases of mainstream media in general — of which the New York Times was emblematic long before the beginning of these dramatic recent conflicts of interest — has been a deep deference to and ideological affinity with the US national security state.

That was true of how they covered the Vietnam War when Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon were carpet-bombing that country to crush a peasant revolution. That was true of the Iraq War when the Times uncritically published the George W. Bush administration’s lies about “weapons of mass destruction.” We should not be surprised to discover that it’s true about Gaza, where the mass slaughter and displacement of civilians is being carried out with American funds and American weapons.

 

Source: The New York Times Has an Ugly Anti-Palestinian Bias

LNP, LNP Economic Management, LNP Government

Election 2022: Fact checking budget claims made by Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese during leaders’ debate

FACT CHECK 1: “In the last 12 months, the budget has turned around by over $100 billion. That is the single biggest turnaround in a budget in 70 years. And the reason for that is we’ve got people into work, off welfare and into work.” Prime Minister Scott Morrison, leaders’ debate, April 20.

On the face of it, this does represent an improvement of “more than $100 billion”. The trouble is, the biggest deficit year – 2021-22 – has dropped out of the latest budget period.  Put another way, a big part of the improvement referred to by Morrison happened simply because of the end of the pandemic.

not because of Morrison’s “perfect management”

FACT CHECK 2: “It’s important to remember that they [the Coalition] had already doubled the debt before the pandemic had hit.” Labor leader Anthony Albanese.

When the Coalition came to power in September 2013, gross debt (mostly in the form of Treasury bonds) was about $280.3 billion,

By the time the pandemic hit, around January 2020, gross debt was about $568.1 billion. This was, as Albanese said, about double the level of gross debt prevailing when the Coalition was elected.

According to the federal budget papers, by June 2014, about nine months after Tony Abbott won the 2013 election, the ratio of net debt to GDP was 13.1 per cent.

By June 2019, on the eve of the pandemic, it had risen to 19.2 per cent.

A rise in which Morrison leadership was very much involved .

Source: Election 2022: Fact checking budget claims made by Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese during leaders’ debate

LNP Government, Uncategorized

I am proud to be a Socialist – » The Australian Independent Media Network

When you look back through the ignominious history of the Republican movement and the LNP, there isn’t a single right-wing MP worth a dime. Every commitment made to a vile, nasty off-shore war (such as Korea, Vietnam and the horrendous genocidal Iraqi war) has been under a Republican/LNP government who consistently use war, terror, hatred and fear to divide nations. When things look bleak in the polls, the war-mongering right-wing are always prepared to stoop to using war as the last resort to cling onto power with bloodstained fingers – ready and willing to sacrifice millions of lives and spend billions to distract focus from their horrendous policies and/or use hatred and division for their own political agenda. It is always a hate-filled, xenophobic right wing government that drags us into war and it always takes a left-wing, socialist government to get us out of it!

I am proud to be a Socialist – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Fight against Fake News, Uncategorized

Old Dog Thoughts – Murdoch’s and the Right’s Toxic Voice

Andrew Bolt’s Blog 23/3/19; Sociopathy of the Right Murdoch’s toxic media voice permeates Australia; Morrison’s low shots against Islam can’t begin to compare with Andrew Bolt’s; Truth the difference matters facts and fiction News Corpse is killing the difference;