The most disturbing outcome of Israel’s general election this week was not the fact that an openly fascist party won the third-biggest tally of seats, or that it is about to become the lynchpin of the next government. It is how little will change, in Israel or abroad, as a result.
So much for the Separation of Powers
“We are seeing an inordinate number of elected MPs, particularly in the Liberal Party, who come from Pentecostal backgrounds, who come from Mormon backgrounds, who come from very conservative religious backgrounds,” she said.
“And that is not reflective of where the community stands.
“Those organisations represent a very small percentage of Victorians and Australians, yet they are remarkably, I would say, over represented in Liberal Party preselection.”
John Lord is much too polite in his summary of Andrew Bolt whose career has been built on sensationalism and muddying the waters of real journalism, news, and information while trashing us as a society with a somewhat belief in universal human values and rights for years. Bolt’s even admitted to being a lazy journo and it’s why he became an obit writer. To escape the work and verification involved. Basically, Andrew Bolt has been a privileged a-licker in News Corp’s corporate world and been handed a megaphone to argue he’s “free” to be a shit and citizen who can say and promote whatever he wants in our democratic and civilised society without consequence. Yet in the same breath, he complains he’s been treated unfairly and demonised for being a champion of civilised, mannered and polite debate in leftist boganville. Bolt from his platform of privilege freely spits on Australia’s multiculture, our diversity, and even the means by which we search for truth declaring science simply another fact-less religion.
Bolt has fundamentally made it clear he hates Melbourne and lets us all know he does. Whether its fo for theatrical emphasis, showmanship or money it doesn’t matter does it? The man has spent years complaining us and Melbourne and Australia have returned the feeling. So much so that Bolt hides and even holidays outside of the country whining he and his family walk in fear. He’s living proof that hate begets hate and it shows in his ratings that aren’t really even “his” but are shared ratings with others in the Murdoch stable and they’re either shrinking or small in this land of 25 mill.
Bolt is a self-made idiot. An isolated man who dreams of retiring to an Amsterdam barge one day. There was no mention of his family in that dream. Or the fact it’s a city twice our size and the problems he claims he hates here. Basically, Bolt wants to hide from people and count his money read books written by others look at paintings and listen to opera in the bowels of a boat. It’s a very very individual thing he has going to be paid by a corporation that does much the same globally for money. News Corp has simply abandoned journalism, news and information in exchange for cash for propaganda, influence and putting lipstick on pigs.
My thought for the day
Why do we, as a supposedly enlightened society, need to enshrine in legislation the right to hate each other? That isn’t enlightenment at all. ( John Lord )
Source: Racism and all its ugliness (Part two) – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The recent accusations of racism against the Hawthorn Football Club had the same effect on me as it has on many other occasions. I have experienced it in numerous forms. I love my country, but the truth of it is that racists walk among us.
Source: Racism and all its ugliness (Part 1) – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Text messages described as repugnant and racist were sent by the officer who shot dead an Indigenous man in the Northern Territory.
Text messages described as repugnant and racist were sent by the officer who shot dead an Indigenous man in the Northern Territory.
The messages were retrieved from the phone of Constable Zachary Rolfe, who was initially charged with the murder of 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker during an arrest attempt at Yuendumu in 2019.
Constable Rolfe was later acquitted on all charges after a Supreme Court trial.
At a coronial inquest into Mr Walker’s death on Wednesday, counsel assisting Peggy Dwyer read a number of messages sent some months before the shooting.
In one, Constable Rolfe wrote about being allowed to “towel locals up”.
In another, the officer made reference to a “c—s”, a term Sergeant Anne Jolley, the chief officer at Yuendumu, agreed at the inquest was blatantly racist.
Constable Rolfe also referred to “Neanderthals who drink too much alcohol”, which Sergeant Jolley accepted was disgusting and unacceptable.
Source: Kumanjayi Walker shooting cop sent ‘racist’ messages
In Australia, we saw how it drive Yassmin Abdel Magied out of the country. It was amplified by News Corp against Waleed Aly and his wife. It showed up as Andrew Bolt as the advocate of free speech and recruiter of hate and bigotry around the country. Currently, the LNP and the LNP have voted Peter Dutton in as their leader whose history proves him to be a grandmaster of both Islamophobia, Racism, and ethnic hatred and the Murdoch media are supporting him from the get-go.
We believe acknowledging and addressing the systemic negativity in media coverage of Muslims and Islam is vital for countering widespread stigmatization. This may, in turn, create opportunities for more humane policies that are fair to everyone regardless of their faith.The Conversation
Fox avoids systemic dysfunction it’s always an individual problem that emerges from absolutely nowhere other than La La Land but definitely not from a dysfunctional social environment. Nature’s defects can’t be controlled because like evolution Social Darwinism has brought about the best society has to offer and shit happens! Social change is at best incremental and never revolutionary and needs to be controlled. Power wealth and privilege are in the main deserved is the ideology sold and they must be protected at all cost.
By David — May 16, 2022 Fox News correspondent Nate Foy suggested that a man allegedly planned out a racist shooting rampage in Buffalo, NY because he had “mental health” problems.
Source: Fox Focuses On Buffalo Shooter’s ‘Mental Health,’ Not Racism | Crooks and Liars
Murdoch’s destroying America’s 450 year Dream
Fox News personality Tucker Carlson is the focus of an in-depth three-part report by The New York Times that was published online on Saturday and will appear in the Sunday newspaper. Part one is titled “How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable.” “In the years since, Mr. Carlson has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news — and also, by some measures, the most successful. Though he frequently declares himself an enemy of prejudice — “We don’t judge them by group, and we don’t judge them on their race,” Mr. Carlson explained to an interviewer a few weeks before accusing impoverished immigrants of making America dirty — his show teaches loathing and fear. Night after night, hour by hour, Mr. Carlson warns his viewers that they inhabit a civilization under siege — by violent Black Lives Matter protesters in American cities, by diseased migrants from south of the border, by refugees importing alien cultures, and by tech companies and cultural elites who will silence them, or label them racist, if they complain,” the newspaper reported.
Racism is Institutionally patterned behaviors generationally evolved historically and regarded as the norm. Some individuals were and are raised and socialized to internalize the cultural beliefs that support those behaviors as the norm. Others see them as unjustifiable systems, and merely socially constructed realities that can be altered and needn’t be maintained. Others see the need for them to be maintained and not altered to avoid disruption to the ” the natural order”. The ongoing though unequal natural order in evolutions struggle for power. Change has always been seen as a struggle forced not celebrated but resisted not encouraged by those whose social positon has benefited but not merited by what exists as opposed to what could and should have been. The distinction between Racism and any Individual is far more complicated by the dichotomy of these macro v micro perspectives.
However, racism is far less about individual acts of kindness toward a grieving family (or, on the flip side, calling an Arab a “terrorist”) and far more about social systems and power structures that ensure non-white people don’t get a fair go. The Abdallahs had trauma and loss – not political power or economic influence. Towke was a young politician with a promising career that he alleges was taken from him, accusing Morrison of using his racial background against him. “I would have been the first Australian of Lebanese heritage to be a federal member of parliament on the Liberal party side and that’s a bit of history there which they stole from me,” he told The Project. Morrison has categorically denied what he describes as “malicious” claims. But it doesn’t matter whether you’re “team Abdallah” or “team Towke” when it comes to the truth about the prime minister. It’s almost inconsequential. Australia’s racism is bigger than one man – even if he is the leader of the country.
1 He won’t bring on a defamation suit. The examination would destroy him
2 He doesn’t demand charges be brought for the signing of false Stat Decs. Because they’re not.
3 He offers to sign one himself but hasn’t. He’s merely “Posturing”!!
4 Can a PM be charged for signing a false Stat Dec?
Scott Morrison’s willingness to sign a statutory declaration over accusations of racism feels invalid considering his track record of lying, writes Dr Jennifer Wilson. THE PRIME MINISTER of Australia, Scott Morrison, announced on Sunday that he is prepared to sign a statutory declaration that he did not act in a racist manner towards the man he defeated for pre-selection in the seat of Cook in 2007.
Source: Morrison’s misogyny, racism and bullying won’t disappear with a stat dec
In Europe, the volunteers welcoming Ukrainian refugees are often the same people attacked for aiding refugees in the Mediterranean. That’s not just hypocritical, it’s inhumane — we should welcome all migrants fleeing war and terror.
Source: The War in Ukraine Shows That Europe Could Help Refugees if It Really Wanted To
Lachlan Murdoch once a Philosophy student is the worm that turned his brother James walked as did his sister.
When Fox News isn’t busy openly peddling white nationalism — and doing so with the full support of its top executives — it is now trying to manufacture a scandal to claim that President Joe Biden is the real racist.
Source: Fox News lies about Joe Biden speech to imply a racial slur | Media Matters for America
In summary, this thesis examined that the desire to remain one people without the admixture of other ‘races’ was one of the most powerful forces that impelled the colonists towards Federation and the ‘pure race’ that could be codified. Historians are in no doubt that a central policy of the movement towards Federation was the exclusion of all people considered inferior and unfit for a white country. Federation was the rationale to maintain white superiority and racial homogeneity, and subsequently the first act of the new parliament was the Commonwealth Immigration Restriction Act (1901). Racial discrimination in entry, residence and citizenship provisions were sanctified, and a unified White Australia established. This policy confirmed the racist ideologies based on white supremacy and the dominant perception of Indigenous inferiority and their low evolutionary progress.
Source: Nationhood and the ‘Pure’ Race (part 5) – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Stoking fear of Afghan refugees, Stephen Miller — architect of Trump’s ethno-nationalist agenda — used the Afghanistan withdrawal and the ISIS airport attack as another opportunity to spread Islamophobia. Just hours after Kabul fell to the Taliban, Miller focused on an anti-immigrant message: “It is becoming increasingly clear that Biden and his radical deputies will use their catastrophic debacle in Afghanistan as a pretext for doing to America what Angela Merkel did to Germany and Europe,” he wrote, referring to Syrian refugee resettlement through 2016. In Miller’s racist imagination, Merkel allowed the masses of Middle Eastern refugees to “defile” Europe’s traditional heritage while failing to identify Muslim terrorists hidden in their midst.
Source: The same MAGA mob Who supported Insurrection are Smearing pro-American Afghan Refugees as Dangerous
Ms Gbla said “FGM is put in the ‘too hard’ cultural basket, instead of being treated like all other forms of child abuse and violence against women. And the impact of that is that little girls are being left unprotected, and that’s the saddest part for me. That is what breaks my heart.” “If a white child was at risk of being abused, you’d never make the argument it’s their culture.” What’s more, Ms Gbla highlights that that the practice and definition of FGM is not limited to any one culture. It covers any kind of cutting to the female genitalia performed for non-medical reasons and is unfortunately practiced on every continent except Antarctica. “The history of FGM in the west gets suppressed,” Ms Gbla says, citing the condition of “hysteria involved cutting women’s clitorises left right and centre” while labiaplasty remains a modern iteration of FGM. “Violence against women and child abuse doesn’t discriminate, but we discriminate,” Ms Gbla said.
Source: Medicare investigation indicates female genital mutilation in Australia – Michael West Media
Is it any surprise that British Colonial settler territories have so much in common? Australian history with it’s “stolen generations” had very similar experiences even if the specific details differed. However Canada doesn’t have the denialist racist attitudes expressed by the Murdoch media organization when it comes to resisting the re-investigation of their history.
The Kuper Island Indian Industrial School was operated by the Roman Catholic Church from 1890 until 1969, when the federal government took it over. The school was closed in 1975 and the building was demolished in the 1980s.
Source: Justin Trudeau says his ‘heart breaks’ with more Indigenous graves found
Rightwing politicians and media outlets are attacking a strawman version of antiracism. A disappointing number of liberals and leftists have bought into it
That is 100 percent true. Before this moment in history, it would have been impossible to imagine that one of the world’s largest corporations — AT&T, owner of HBO, with a current market cap of $220 billion — would have funded and broadcast a film like this. The fact that it somehow squeezed through the cracks and onto our TVs and laptop screens demonstrates that something profound about the world is changing. Decades, centuries of people fighting and dying were required both to widen the cracks and mold someone like Peck, the right human at the right time, to step through. “Exterminate All the Brutes” is a sprawling disquisition — four episodes, each an hour long — into the invention and consequences of 500 years of “white” supremacy, presented via a high-gloss pastiche of old footage, newly filmed dramatizations, and clips from Hollywood movies. “White” needs scare quotes because the film makes clear that whiteness is not something that exists in reality — like, say, the moon — that is right there whether we believe in it or not. Instead, it’s something imaginary that we’ve somehow all agreed on, like pieces of paper having value.
Source: “Exterminate All the Brutes” Was 500 Years of Genocide in the Making
The big takeaway that Republican leaders and conservative pundits clearly got from the Trump era was that the Republican base wants their racism delivered piping hot and with the minimal amount of subtlety. It’s a situation that is likely to get much worse before it gets better.
For example, the Biden administration has moved aggressively to roll out vaccines here in the United States. But it has rejected global appeals to waive patent rights for vaccines, to share vaccine technology, and to require transparency from pharmaceutical companies about their pricing. The result is “vaccine apartheid” on a global scale. As of early April, 20 percent of the population in North America had received at least one dose of a vaccine, compared to less than 1 percent in Africa. Global inequalities play out on so many issues like these that it is no exaggeration to talk of a more general “global apartheid.” This global system is structured not only by race, but also by class, gender, and national origin. There are many different levels of privilege and vulnerability. But similar patterns are repeated from the local to the global levels.
The era of Trump has arrived in Australia and it began with No Cuts Tony Abbott.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s new strategist has revealed that she realised she was racist after marrying her black husband. Genevieve Roth has claimed all white people are “rife with internalised racism and unconscious bias”. “Race is an issue in our marriage because as a white woman of privilege, I have racist tendencies written in at a cellular level,” she said. The comment echoes an observation made by Prince Harry, who said his own upbringing meant he had been ignorant about the widespread nature of racism until he met his wife.
Archewell strategist Genevieve Roth: why race is an issue in my marriage
The Original Inhabitants of these lands may have been reduced to a mere 3% of the entire population, but we, the Oldest Living Cultures in the World, are still here. We stand upon Aboriginal Land, why are we solely meeting on Colonial grounds? Australia, we are fellow citizens and it is time you stood by us, on our terms not yours!
Australia’s racial terrorism – » The Australian Independent Media Network
We need to be careful to not assume that these high-profile cases are exceptions. They are the tip of the iceberg. I hear racist, homophobic and other slurs around difference at my local golf club and in other places where people mix, on a regular basis. And so do you. We damn the different, no matter what the form. We don’t value diversity, only diversity that makes others more the same as us, in other words, assimilation. We want migrants to be Australians, as long as they cook their authentic national dishes. Sadly, we are not as civilised as we would like to think ourselves to be. I think we are getting better at calling out prejudice when we see it but we still need much more leadership from politicians and institutions such as those that support the events I’ve described above. The quip of the week goes to Deborah Devine who talked about her son Dan Levy, the star of Schitt’s Creek, who is gay. She had a message to Dan’s bullies at a school camp when he was a boy: “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” Dan was hosting the prestigious program, a measure of his enormous success.
Being Indifferent to Difference – » The Australian Independent Media Network
First Nations politicians, academics and activists demand action from the club and its corporate backers following a report that found systemic racism at the Magpies.
Open Letter Calls For Eddie McGuire To Resign, Demands Action From Collingwood Sponsors | HuffPost Australia
The Palestinian boycott of Israel is not racist, it is anti-racist
The claims made by Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang in a recent op-ed in the Jewish weekly The Forward, point to the prevailing ignorance that continues to dominate the US discourse on Palestine and Israel. Yang is a former Democratic Presidential candidate and is vying for the Jewish vote in New York City. According to the reductionist assumption that all Jews must naturally support Israel and Zionism, Yang constructed an argument that is based entirely on a tired and false mantra equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. His pro-Israel logic is not only unfounded, but also confused.
The Palestinian boycott of Israel is not racist, it is anti-racist
After Jacob Blake was shot several times in the back by Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer Rusten Shesky, and was lying paralyzed from the waist down and handcuffed to a hospital bed, right-wing media, conservatives, and the usual crowd of other assorted racists were searching for a justification for what seemed to the rest of the world as an unprovoked assault. Some said that Blake was reaching for a knife. Others insisted he was resisting arrest.
There Are No Black Victims in Donald Trump’s America – Mother Jones
“I think there are some situations where statistics would suggest that they are treated differently, but I don’t think that that’s necessarily racism,” Barr said.
William Barr Says Police Being Racist Toward Black People Isn’t Racism | HuffPost Australia
In refusing to call out the cartoon you are refusing, once again, to call out so very much more.
It is the faux purity of ignoring one cartoon so that you can continue to ignore the far more threatening task of addressing the foundational racism of News Corp that is most sickening.
via Why we must confront the racism of ‘The Australian’ cartoon
If Australia wants to welcome Chinese students and the world back, it needs to reflect on the climate into which it is bringing them
olddogthoughts 