Tag: Threat

Israel

At DNC, the Squad Warns Democrats to Wake Up to the Threat of AIPAC

As the Democratic National Convention entered its final day in Chicago, the topic of the war on Gaza and the role of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in elections had been largely absent from the main stage. No Palestinian speakers got time on the dais, despite the protest efforts from the “Uncommitted” movement this week.

Instead, the conversation among Democrats about pushing for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an end to U.S. weapons shipments to Israel, and the party’s role in allowing AIPAC to shape its primaries has been taking place outside the United Center, where progressives held protests to hold convention delegates’ feet to the fire.

And victims of AIPAC’s political campaigns were on hand to add their voices to the demonstrations.

At DNC, the Squad Warns Democrats to Wake Up to the Threat of AIPAC

Democracy Now

Who’s a Bigger Threat to Democracy—Immigrants, or Billionaires?


Sure, we may have sailed successful voyages most of the time (with the years 2000 and 2016 being among the worst exceptions). But with billionaire influence becoming larger every election, there’s an ever-increasing chance that democracy may not reach the shore. Will we be distracted by the dust on our hull or the massive wave rising before us?

Who’s a Bigger Threat to Democracy—Immigrants, or Billionaires?

Israel, Israel Crimes

Journalists under threat, unprotected in covering Gaza genocide | The Electronic Intifada

A man in press garb receives treatment from a doctor

Palestinian journalist Fatima Abu Nadi who lost her father during the current genocide, said journalists in Gaza “carry their lives in their hands.” Every step they take may be their last in light of an attack that is becoming more ferocious due to persistent attempts by the Israeli military to prevent coverage.A

Source: Journalists under threat, unprotected in covering Gaza genocide | The Electronic Intifada

Informed Comment

The Weakness of Labor, Not Automation, Is the Greatest Challenge Facing Workers

Anxiety that automation is coming for workers’ jobs has reached a fever pitch. But talk of robots replacing humans often conceals a less complicated reality: management uses technology to undemocratically reorganize and intensify labor.

Source: The Weakness of Labor, Not Automation, Is the Greatest Challenge Facing Workers

Trump

What It Means for Trump’s Campaign to Start in Waco

Smoking fire consumes the Branch Davidian Compound during the FBI assault to end the 51-day standoff with cult leader David Koresh and his followers. --- Photo by Greg Smith/Corbis SABA (Photo by Greg Smith/Corbis via Getty Images)

Trump isn’t writing his own scripts while eating burgers,watching TV and playing golf.

Holding his first rally near the site of an infamous federal raid could be seen as “a coded message to those on the extreme.” Mike Giglio

Source: What It Means for Trump’s Campaign to Start in Waco

Data Retention

Optus Hack just tip of the iceberg. FinTechs harvest bank details and passwords, can sell them too

Manal al-Sharif, data privacy

Australian FinTech companies collect your bank customer registration number and your password to access your bank accounts; and they keep that access even if you no longer use their services. Cyber security expert Manal al-Sharif explores privacy rorts.

Source: Optus Hack just tip of the iceberg. FinTechs harvest bank details and passwords, can sell them too

Ukraine

Ukraine: Russia flags expanding its war beyond east

Russia’s military “tasks” will no longer target “only” the east of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s Foreign Minister says, as the United States pledges more weapons for defending forces.

Source: Ukraine: Russia flags expanding its war beyond east

LNP, LNP Government, LNP Tactics

They were trapped in immigration detention for nine years. Here’s what life after the Park Hotel looks like – ABC News

Two men stand next to each other.

Morrison simply can’t speak to the truth because to the truth of the matter would condemn and reveal him to be what he is on a larger and more intense scale than currently publicly seen. It’s why he’s currently being condemned by so many members within the Liberal Party and why so many are abandoning the Party in numbers and droves never seen before. The Party has shifted to no longer be  a diversity of individual opinions to become one of strategists tactitionsand liars to achieve one mans goal and win at any cost.

Should Morrison win this election the cycle of shattered promises and increased repression will be felt in the first year revealing truth and fakery. But shortly after Morrison’s campaign of lies and illusion will begin again with media aid forging a path to the election in 2025. Dealing in the lies is now the norm, to win the goal, ignore democracy, serve oneself and  a select group supporters and have those least likely to vote for you pay. Groups, organizations and Institutions like ABC, Universities, the Arts, were critical thought might flourish will be dismantled or neutered. Systems that maintain power and enable reward to trickle, no flow up not down strengthened. As a consequence decisions that serve the Nation merely secondary in intent. This has been the increasing autocratic nature of the LNP this century and their ever increasing move to the extreme and religious right.

Since arriving in Minnesota, local support groups have found the cousins a two-bedroom rental property, helped pay the bills and provided medical assistance. “As soon as we came here, they treated us with dignity,” Mehdi says. “Australia has never done that.” Former immigration minister in the Fraser government, Ian Macphee, says the Coalition’s track record with refugees makes him ashamed to be Australian. “People like Mehdi have committed no crime and yet have been locked up with no idea of when they’ll ever get out,” Macphee says. “The inhumanity of it is appalling, it’s racist and it’s hidden from most of us.” On March 24, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews announced Australia had agreed to New Zealand’s offer to take some of the boat arrivals, an offer made nine years ago. Mehdi welcomed the news but was sceptical: “I think they’re just trying to say before the election, ‘Look, we made a deal’.”

Source: They were trapped in immigration detention for nine years. Here’s what life after the Park Hotel looks like – ABC News

Science

COVID-19 researchers become victims in the war on science

trolling

Margaret Hellard has thick skin. You have to when you work with prisoners while researching infectious diseases. You have to when News Corp commentators like Andrew Bolt are calling the COVID-19 modelling scientists like you, “trash”. Sure, take a microscope to Professor Hellard’s work – the professor of epidemiology and director of the Burnet Institute won’t back away from meaningful debate. But death threats? Wishing her kids ill? That was not a danger the scientist was expecting to face while helping Australians out of the coronavirus pandemic. “You have these sort of things where somebody feels like they can say your work is crap or this or that,” Professor Hellard said. “Then every now and then you have one where (they say) ‘and I would like you to die or your family members to die or for you to fall off a cliff, or something evil to happen to you’ … that can be really horrible.” Police have launched an investigation into one particular email, in which Professor Hellard’s life and family was threatened.

Source: COVID-19 researchers become victims in the war on science

Australia's Shame

The Australian ‘police state’ is nothing new

Recent lockdowns have not signalled that Australia is a police state, though other civil rights abuses raise such questions, writes Dechlan Brennan.

Source: The Australian ‘police state’ is nothing new

Trump, Trumpland

Trump shows American democracy is in terrible danger
Either victory or an attack on the election: US President Donald Trump.

Trump’s motives could not be more transparent. If he does not win the Electoral College, he’ll muddy the results so that the outcome can be decided only by the Supreme Court or the House of Representatives (where each state delegation gets one vote). Trump has advantages in both right now, which he has boasted about for the past week. I can’t say this any more clearly: Our democracy is in terrible danger — more danger than it has been since the Civil War, more danger than after Pearl Harbor, more danger than during the Cuban missile crisis and more danger than during Watergate. Advertisement

Trump shows American democracy is in terrible danger
Informed Comment

Informed Comment – Threat to Law and Order
Informed Comment, Uncategorized

The greatest showman, or the greatest threat? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

When you push people beyond their capacity to understand their victimisation you can hardly expect them, during demonstrations, to behave rationally.

The greatest showman, or the greatest threat? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Media, Uncategorized

Fox News and GOP Media Now Warn of Bloodshed If Democrats Win in 2020 | The Smirking Chimp

You think John Bolton was a HAWK  (ODT)

Many major retailers that previously refused to take a stand on the issue of guns in their stores are now stepping up, and this highlights the momentum on the side of gun safety advocates. The tide is turning in this country, so radical holdouts at Fox News turn to threats of violence.

Fox News and GOP Media Now Warn of Bloodshed If Democrats Win in 2020 | The Smirking Chimp

Peter Dutton, Uncategorized

Duttonisation – an existential threat to Morrison? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

In summary, this piece argues that Dutton is resolutely determined to elevate his status and eventually take control of the LNP government. From the moment Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership came into question, Dutton believed he was the ‘better man’ to replace him, and that his bid for the top job should be supported by his colleagues. There is no evidence that he has abandoned this lofty ambition. In fact, recent revelations show how he and Morrison colluded in this shameful process. And I’m not the only one who sees it that way. Read David Tyler’s Dutton’s naked power grab in The AIM Network, and Kristina Keneally’s assessment of the ‘man who cries wolf’ in The Guardian.

I wonder how Dutton will react to the recent National Press Club statement on the AFP raids and the NPC event on 26 June: Press Freedom – On the line featuring the Managing Director of the ABC, David Anderson, the Chief Executive Officer of Nine, Hugh Marks, and the Executive Chairman Australasia, News Corp, Michael Miller?

Watch Dutton in the months ahead and draw your own conclusions.

via Duttonisation – an existential threat to Morrison? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Julian Assange, Uncategorized

Sanders, Warren, and Wyden Slam Julian Assange Indictment

Buildings are reflected in the window as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is taken from court, where he appeared on charges of jumping British bail seven years ago, in London, Wednesday May 1, 2019. Assange has been jailed for 50 weeks for breaching his bail after going into hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.(AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

via Sanders, Warren, and Wyden Slam Julian Assange Indictment

The Indictment of Julian Assange Under the Espionage Act Is a Threat to the Press and the American People

James Risen

If the government gets to define journalism, what’s to stop it from making similar rulings about any outlet whose coverage it doesn’t like?

https://theintercept.com/2019/05/24/the-indictment-of-julian-assange-under-the-espionage-act-is-a-threat-to-the-press-and-the-american-people/

Studied Analysis

News Corp: Democracy’s greatest threat: Denialism, nihilism and the Murdoch propaganda machine | The Monthly

A MUST READ. News Corp and the fight against it for a BETTER Australia (ODT)

News Corp: Democracy’s greatest threat: Denialism, nihilism and the Murdoch propaganda machine | The Monthly

Trumpland Revealed

Two Weeks Before Midterms, Trump Attacks Democracy With ‘One of the Most Naked Attempts to Promote Voter Suppression’ in Modern Times

After President Donald Trump fired off a hysterical tweet this weekend warning of mass “voter fraud”—a right-wing bogeyman for which there is virtually zero evidence—and threatening violators with severe punishment, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law condemned the president for deploying Jim Crow-era scare tactics to suppress minority voter turnout just two weeks before the midterm elections.

via Two Weeks Before Midterms, Trump Attacks Democracy With ‘One of the Most Naked Attempts to Promote Voter Suppression’ in Modern Times

USA

US stuns world health community by opposing breastfeeding

Economic errorism by the the worlds largest Industrial Military Complex. Ready to alter the biology of mankind (ODT)

Then the US delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

via US stuns world health community by opposing breastfeeding

Informed Comment, Trust

Donald Trump a ‘critical threat’ to Australia’s interests as trust in US hits record low, Lowy survey reveals – Donald Trump’s America – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Key points:

Trust peaked under Barack Obama, hits low with Mr Trump
Mr Trump ranks low in world leader confidence
Poll shows Australians put faith in other Western allies
Political analyst says Washington will note the loss of trust

Lowy Institute annual poll results on trust in world powers.

via Donald Trump a ‘critical threat’ to Australia’s interests as trust in US hits record low, Lowy survey reveals – Donald Trump’s America – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Tony Abbott

Tony Abbott’s nuclear ambitions surface in call to rethink submarines

Australia should fundamentally rethink its submarine program and consider buying nuclear-powered boats, Tony Abbott says, to better arm the Royal Australian Navy at a time when regional rivals such as China and Russia are expanding their fleets.

Source: Tony Abbott’s nuclear ambitions surface in call to rethink submarines

Israel

Israel’s chief rabbi urges building Jewish temple on Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif | +972 Magazine

The turnaround by Israel’s rabbinical leadership, which in the past has acted as a sane counterweight to messianic Third Temple activists, is a worrying sign. Netanyahu has regularly dismissed suggestions that Israel wants to alter the status quo on the Temple Mount as ‘incitement.’ One of the biggest drivers of violence in Jerusalem in recent years has been Palestinian and Muslim fears that Israel is altering, or at least that it intends to, the status quo on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif — the holy esplanade which once housed the Jewish temple and today is the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque…

Source: Israel’s chief rabbi urges building Jewish temple on Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif | +972 Magazine

Climate Change

Climate fatigue is the biggest threat to our future

Climate change is already hurting communities and damaging prosperity.

Source: Climate fatigue is the biggest threat to our future

Donald Trump

Trump warns of riots if he can’t be Republican presidential nominee | Reuters

U.S. Republican front-runner Donald Trump warned on Wednesday of riots if he is denied the party’s presidential nomination after a string of primary election victories, raising the temperature even more in a heated White House race.

Source: Trump warns of riots if he can’t be Republican presidential nominee | Reuters

Climate Change

Climate change threatens to devastate entire regions of North America

The Great Drought is upon us: Why California is America’s barren new normal

Coal

The head of the OECD says wealthy countries should help poorer nations that cannot afford to replace coal with low-carbon alternatives. Alex Kirby from Climate News Network reports.

OECD: Coal investment is most urgent climate threat

IS

Is ISIS a threat to national security? – » The Australian Independent Media Network

flags

Is ISIS a threat to national security? – » The Australian Independent Media Network.

Israel

What It Feels Like to Be a ‘Demographic Threat’ to Israel | The Nation

Israeli Arab

What It Feels Like to Be a ‘Demographic Threat’ to Israel | The Nation.