Mass exoduses of people – refugees, asylum seekers, and migrant workers – are taking place all over the planet, causing tensions and tempers to rise. But are these really the kinds of immigrants we should be worrying about?
And how do border-crossing corporations and global treaties like TPP, TTIP and TISA fit into the picture? Join Robert Foster as he sets out to shift our perspective and broaden our understanding of this epoch-defining phase of the great human journey.
Young Muslim less literate than Steve Ciobo MP was provoked into an angered response by the minister who discredited the Supreme Court of Australia’s decision on finding Zacky Mallah innocent of terrorism after he’d been held in maximum security detention for two years. Language, lack of Education and being Muslim Zacky’s only crime for asking the minister a question on Q&A. Tony Abbott attacked the ABC for allowing such despicable Australian on the show. Today in Australia it would appear a crime for not accepting the insults of this government.
It should be noted that when an indigenous Australian from a remote community asked the the minister a question about Native Title he could only plead ignorance on the subject.
Referencing his own case, Mr Mallah asked: “What would have happened if my case had been decided by the minister himself and not the courts?”
Mr Ciobo said he would be happy to see Mr Mallah kicked out of the country.
“I got to tell you … my understanding of your case was that you were acquitted because at that point in time the laws weren’t retrospective but I am happy to look you straight in the eye and say I’d be pleased to be part of a government that would see you out of the country as far as I am concerned.”
“The Liberals have just justified to many Australian Muslims in the community tonight to leave and go to Syria and join ISIL because of ministers like (Mr Ciobo).” was Zacky’s reply.
The exchange appears to be out of character for the Sydney man who declared a “jihad of peace” in 2012 after visiting Syria and spending time on the frontline.
During his visit, Mr Mallah met with fighters from the Free Syrian Army and filmed footage for his YouTube channel. He was photographed holding an assault rifle but says he did not fight and had no intention of fighting.
Back home he has spoken out against clashes between the Islamic community and police and actively discouraged radicalised Australian Muslims from joining the Islamic State.
Zacky has some experience in understanding how ignorant men like Steve Ciobo MP have the ability by political stupidity alone to radicalize Muslims, the poor, the disadvantaged and even the educated and well off when openly strutting their vigilante attitudes.
Whose anger was justified in this case?
“It is racism killing our people – suicides born of racism” | The Stringer.
When a white Culture overlay has little or no empathy for indigenous cultural psychology. When a white cultural ego dominates a landscape of human emotions. Little recognition is given to minorities completely flattened by the impact of constant dominance and being at crossroads leaves nothing any longer taken for granted. Crossroads give birth to individual uncertainties in youth that can create existential despair and death welcoming.
Strange how politically useful politicians and the media find it to create that sense of emergency about terrorism , economic emergency, to create false realities for political ends. But how those same governments in doing so can totally ignore the real feelings of our indigenous and other minorities it’s citizens particularly their non voting youth and then simply write them off as if it’s their own cultural and psychological inadequacies.
It’s a case of who do you believe? I suggest the people who advocate there was nothing here but bush before the British arrived are profound liars. They appropriated or discarded everything that went before them and have created the myths that have dominated our psyches since but find hard to eradicate. The ghosts that remain and haunt not all of us but those at the crossroads particularly the youth of minority cultures the indigenous kids, the migrant kids that are told they should move on forget and assimilate to be worthwhile.The kids born of poverty sold a promise of equal opportunity who blame themselves when they realize the unachievable outcomes.
Have a look at this face we don’t need Scott Morrison to to feel globally ashamed. We’ve been towing back the boats of indigenous Australia since our arrival and blaming their their drownings on people smugglers we call their Culture.
Lookin Philinka’s eyes she’s better than you Bolt, Morrison, Abbott purveyors of the myth of hate for little more than cultural elite ego, and profit. I can’t speak from the personal experience suffered but I can empathize with the general condition you maintain. I can ask you Christian bastards to listen to all our Australian citizens black white or brindle on behalf our common humanity .
This one’s got to hurt.
And for those saying it can’t be, here are some quotes from Mein Kampf:
“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”
“Thank the Lord, Germanic democracy means just this: that any old climber or moral slacker cannot rise by devious paths to govern his national comrades, but that, by the very greatness of the responsibility to be assumed, incompetents and weaklings are frightened of.”
“The unprecedented rise of the Christian Social Party… was to assume the deepest significance for me as a classical object of study.”
“Even less could I understand how the Christian Social Party at this same period could achieve such immense power. At that time it had just reached the apogee of its glory.”
“As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned to his own heaven.”
Certainly sounds like a conservative Christian to me, regardless of his later relationship with the church
Also sounds like he had messiah complex. Says a lot really. Abbott and his cronies display very similar symptoms.. Just looks at Morrison!
Bolt’s favorite picture when he believed Abbott was on his side alone.
Why do Andrew Bolt and company love to hate the national broadcaster?
By Don Watson
M
Topics
ABC; Andrew Bolt; Tony Abbott; Conservatives
For millions of Australians, the ABC is all at once a homely source of intellectual and spiritual nourishment, a reliable source of news and information, and an ungainly emblem of the country’s character. In some measure, it satisfies both their national pride and what remains of their Anglophilia. For millions more, insofar as they are conscious of its existence, the public broadcaster is an irrelevant item of megafauna. On these broad lines the country divides: what is a sort of indispensable national house cow for one large portion of the population, another portion of comparable size scarcely knows and doesn’t give two hoots for. Like the two ventricles of the heart, they pump away in peaceful co-existence.
Then there is a third cohort, possibly numbering in the thousands, who believe the ABC is run by “Leftists” and crusades on “Leftist” causes such as “boat people, same-sex marriage and global warming”. One of the chief spokesmen for this extra ventricle, Andrew Bolt, recently asked readers of his blog to “imagine if every single one of the main ABC current affairs shows” were hosted not by the “Leftists” who presently host them but by him and “fellow conservatives Janet Albrechtsen, Gerard Henderson, Tim Blair, Miranda Devine, Piers Akerman, Tom Switzer and Rowan Dean”.
So close your eyes and imagine ABC current affairs programs, including Radio National’s venerable Science Show (Robyn Williams is numbered among the bad), being hosted not by the present “caste” of competent broadcasters but by these “conservatives”. What do you see? Fox News? What are they saying? Anything? If in this imaginary world no one at the ABC “crusaded on boat people, same-sex marriage and global warming”, as our outraged correspondent insists the present lot do, it seems possible that their replacements might have nothing left to talk about.
They would crusade on “free speech, climate scepticism and free markets”, he says. How strange, then, that they have crusaded against the ABC for letting the public know what Australian governments were up to with our neighbours, and for presenting information on boat arrivals that the government has been denying us. If free speech is their thing, how come they are for Scott Morrison and against Edward Snowden?
Oh, where are the conservatives of yesteryear, with Orwell and Oakeshott at their side, and the “open society” forever their objective? Now, it is a commonplace that open societies depend upon the individual’s right to scrutinise government policy. Why, then, are these self-styled conservatives so down on the free flow of information and so happy to defend government secrecy? Tell us again how the ABC is less than patriotic for reporting the stories of refugees in the face of the Navy’s determination to say nothing at all about what they have chosen to call, with Orwellian panache, “on water” matters. In the interests of free speech, will we swear to take the military at its word and question the patriotism of any civilian – or public broadcaster – who dares to quote a different view? Especially civilians who are “not even Australian”, as the minister for defence so sagely put it.
Yet I doubt that even disgruntled ABC viewers and listeners would charge the ABC with insufficient dedication to free expression. Or free markets. I don’t recall any of the named hosts – even the one who once worked for that stalwart of the socialisation objective, RJL Hawke – doing much crusading against free markets. Nor do I remember their extensive advocacy for same-sex marriage, but how refreshing to imagine an ABC crusading against it. As refreshing as imagining a show about science being hosted by an anti–climate science crusader.
You have to feel for the government in this. Much as they might wish to imitate their friends and supporters in what they like to call the “free” – as opposed to “government-owned” or “taxpayer-funded” – media, they can’t paint the government broadcaster as a chilling Orwellian nightmare without seeming to betray a liking for the genre. Pity, that: it would make a good speech. Like the one James Murdoch made in Edinburgh in 2009. He described the BBC in just those terms, and who cared if Orwell was spinning in his socialist grave at the gall of it? That’s the thing about the “free” press: “their money; their free speech”, as our blogger says. Free, that is, to traduce the living and the dead, posture madly, peddle influence, be parasites, ignoramuses and (vide Murdoch and son) epic hypocrites. There is no dog to bark at them – well, a couple of very small and all but toothless mutts, perhaps.
And there’s the rub. Most of those millions who value the ABC might in other circumstances be satisfied with the children’s shows, sport, music, arts, religion, farming, nature, nurture, history, philosophy, language, science, sociology, drama, emergency services and Stephen Fry. They might make do with an evening news service, if they thought they could trust commercial media for the rest of their current affairs. But they don’t trust them. It’s possible they find the very thought demeaning. They don’t like their news and opinion mixed in with advertising and coloured by the need to chase revenue through unrelenting noise and vehemence. They don’t like the tone of commercial media. It’s a matter of taste – or snobbery, if you prefer.
For the same reason, a lot of viewers and listeners would not complain if the public broadcaster stepped back from the popular melee. Some no doubt perceive bias or a lack of balance, but very likely just as many are peeved because they think it ill becomes their ABC to imitate the public riot. And this might be why the likes of such a right-wing caste are not likely to ever take over the organisation. A true conservative “eyes the situation in terms of its propensity to disrupt the familiarity of the features of [their] world”. By this definition (Michael Oakeshott’s), the ABC is in essence a conservative institution: old, familiar, pervasive and habit-forming, bearing the nation’s heritage and beliefs, speaking for the pluralist complexity of the country. It does none of this perfectly, but it is pretty well alone in doing it at all. By the same definition, the so-called “conservatives” who berate the ABC are not conservatives but heretics, radicals and vulgarians, and no amount of Dvořák – or Lou Reed – will cure them.
What is curious is where the obsession stems from. Even if the “massive power” alleged of the public broadcaster were real, it is hard to think of an election result that the ABC decided, or of political leaders cosying up to the ABC in the way they perennially do to Rupert Murdoch and used to do to Kerry Packer. Who does the British prime minister, David Cameron, most want to be his friend? Rupert Murdoch or Chris Patten, the former Conservative Party chairman and the present chief of what the Murdochs reckon is a rampant and menacingly “authoritarian” BBC? Who does Tony Abbott think more important? Murdoch or Mark Scott, a former adviser to a Liberal government and the present managing director of the equally menacing ABC? Is it that these national broadcasters have no power worth pursuing, or that in the main they use it responsibly and cannot be bought? Or that they are institutions woven so thoroughly into the fabric of national life that no amount of normal political harassment and interference can much change them? Whatever the case, true conservatives must at least half-heartedly rejoice.
Not these anti-“Leftists”, however. No doubt, as James Murdoch made clear, the “free” media resents any inroads public broadcasters are making on their commercial territory, but that’s at best a partial explanation for the journalistic Tea Partying. More likely it’s some species of projection. Never has the ideological difference between the major parties been narrower. So general is the liberal-pluralist consensus, the parties must search for something to believe in. Increasingly they find it in the dark corners of talkback radio (or the lighter ones of Q&A): not in reality, but in beat-ups and the excrescences of populism. There is a little bit of Putin in all sorts of politicians now.
Conservatives have their open society. They have a market economy, freedom of speech and pervasive liberal values. For some, so many victories were bound to prove unbearable, the more so, perhaps, because a lot of them occurred without their participation. They have inherited the spoils but, with one or two exceptions, have no claim on either the struggle or the moral and intellectual tradition. For all the unlikely power granted them by modern media, it is their fate to feel marginalised, denied, unfulfilled: when all’s said and done, like fringe-dwellers excluded from something essential at the centre of Australian life – namely, as the blogger reveals, the ABC.
Tony Abbott today launched another politically motivated witch hunt into supposed union corruption yet seems to have deliberately excluded any investigation into his former hero, Kathy Jackson. Peter Wicks from Wixxyleaks reports.
HOW THE LIBERALS FELL OUT OF LOVE WITH KATHY JACKSON
This morning Tony Abbott launched his latest stunt — a joint police taskforce to investigate alleged corruption, violence and organised crime connections in the construction industry.
Announced in a press conference this morning with Victorian Premier Denis Napthine, the taskforce between the AFP and Victoria Police serves the dual purposes of again kicking the union industry as well as attempting to win votes for Napthine’s Coalition Government.
Allegations about so-called union corruption are seen as a sure vote winner in Liberal circles because of the union movement’s close links to the ALP. With the Liberals trailing Daniel Andrews’ ALP 44-56 (two party preferred) and the election set for November 29, Napthine will be hoping the taskforce brings up some serious dirt — and fast.
Of course, it is interesting that this new dirtdigging unit is only interested in looking into the construction industry union, the CFMEU.
It wasn’t so long ago, during the term of the previous government, that the Health Services Union was portrayed as being the worst of the worst by Abbott and co — yet it seems to have been deliberately excluded from this latest witch hunt.
Could this have anything to do with the fall from grace of brave Joan of Arc-like whistleblower Kathy Jackson — a name that formerly could not be said enough times for the Coalition’s liking; a name that, in Coalition ranks, once seemed to be synonymous with everything the Liberal Party claimed to stand for?
This, of course, was back in the days when the HSU saga was working in the Liberal Party’s favour and they felt comfortable hitching the Coalitions credibility to Kathy Jackson’s integrity — blithely ignoring the mountain of allegations against her, even then.
Back then, current Employment Minister Eric Abetz couldn’t find enough glowing words to say about her — in fact every time he spoke of her it looked like his head was going to explode with pride and he even had her name was on his telephone’s speed dial.
George Brandis too, as Attorney-General and as Shadow AG has spoken about Jackson with admiration and a glint in his eye many a time.
Of course, Education Minister Christopher Pyne and Prime Minister Tony Abbott have both piled praise on Jackson, with Pyne arranging a parliamentary apology to her over a Craig Thomson speech to Parliament, while Abbott referred to her as “heroic” and brave, amongst other many glowing accolades while he was opposition leader.
Jackson was lauded by the shock-jocks, hailed a hero by the right-wing commentators and was even the guest of honour at an event at the home of union hatred, the HR Nicholls Society, which she happily attended as the guest of the lovable architect of WorkChoices, Peter Reith.
Yes, not so long ago, in the eyes of the Coalition and its many one-eyed camp followers, while she was piling allegation after allegation on Craig Thomson and running down the Labor Party, Jackson could do no wrong.
Moreover, back then Jackson was engaged to be married into a family considered Liberal Party royalty — the mighty Lawler family. Her fiancé Michael Lawler was the Tony Abbott appointed Vice President of Fair Work Australia, his brother John Lawler was then CEO of the Australian Crime Commission and their father Sir Peter Lawler — a senior staffer to PM Robert Menzies and Australia’s first Ambassador to the Holy See (The Vatican). Like the Abbotts, the Lawlers are said by some to have strong ties to the shadowy arch-conservative Catholic sect Opus Dei, as well as the Liberal Party.
But now, sadly for Jackson, things appear to have changed. The Coalition have seemingly turned on Kathy quicker than you can say “James Ashby”.
In Question Time on the 28 October, Christopher Pyne acting on Eric Abetz’s behalf as the Minister for Employment was attempting to besmirch Bill Shorten and Victorian Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews by linking the Victorian ALP to the CFMEU, when Labor MP Rob Mitchell made a comment about the Liberal’s friendship with Kathy Jackson, at which point the Speaker Bronwyn Bishop intervened.
The SPEAKER: Whoever made that comment will withdraw.
Mr Albanese: Madam Speaker, on a point of order: in what way is the name ‘Kathy Jackson’ unparliamentary?
The SPEAKER: Because it was reflecting on another member. I said: whoever made the comment will withdraw the comment.
I spoke to Rob Mitchell about the comment that had so greatly offended and its context.
Christopher Pyne had been trying to Labor Party as corruptly linked to the CFMEU, so Rob retorted with:
“Thanks Kathy Jackson”
Speaker Bronwyn Bishop was having none of it. Apparently, the same Party that could not align themselves with Jackson enough now think it is a huge insult to be linked with her.
How the mighty have fallen.
In Victoria, as part of their campaign the Liberal Party have launched a new website called:
‘Which Dodgy Character Will Turn Up At Labor’s Launch’.
It features a number of people the Victorian Liberal Party apparently view as dodgy.
One of those on the Coalition’s “dodgy” list is none other than their former Joan of Arc hero — Kathy Jackson.
The Victorian Liberal party describe her thus:
‘Health Services Union Secretary, Kathy Jackson, is alleged to have grossly misused union credit cards, cash cheques and general accounts and made unauthorised payments of over $1 million which workers are now trying to recover. These funds belonged to low paid, hardworking health workers.’
So, since the mainstream media started seeing Jackson’s true colours, the Liberal Party have tried to distance themselves from her — first by ignoring anything to do with her, then making mention of her name “unparliamentary” and then in Victoria even labelling her “dodgy” and seemingly accusing her of being a crook.
However, despite it being suddenly open season on Jackson, the man supporting and advising her ‒ someone allegedly heavily involved in the Jacksonville saga ‒ has so far been given a free pass while the taxpayer continues to pay his hefty wages.
Last year, as most would be aware, Tony Abbott reintroduced knighthoods to Australia.
One of the last people to receive a knighthood before they were abolished was Sir Peter Lawler, who is said to be a close friend of Tony Abbott’s father. I wonder if this had any bearing on Abbott’s decision.
Sir Peter is also a founder of the Australian Family Association, a far right-wing Christian lobby group, and, in 1986, was given the papal honour of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Pius IX, a papal knighthood.
Currently, Sir Peter Lawler’s prospective future daughter-in-law Kathy is in a psychiatric hospital and, when she emerges, will face Federal Court for around $1.4 million in member’s funds she is alleged to have misappropriated, and will then likely face criminal charges.
I wonder if she’ll refer to Sir Peter and Lady Mary as Mum and Dad.
We have two separate humanitarian crises looming, quite apart from the devastating Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in West Africa, with its tentacles reaching far and wide; Islamic State in the Middle East, spreading terror, hatred and death…with its tentacles reaching far and wide. So where is the story on two different potential catastrophes?
A Putsch takes place in Ukraine, Fascists are among those taking power, anti-Russian and anti-Jewish slogans are chanted, Russian-speakers are tortured and attacked, massacres take place against Russian-speakers. The West backs the perpetrators and imposes sanctions against Russia. Russia tries to broker a peace deal and a ceasefire in a foreign country, in which according to its “Government”, Russia has no jurisdiction. The West increases the sanctions and continues to back those who committed massacres. Just like they did in Syria, until their little darling (ISIL/ISIS/Islamic State) turned into a monster.
So rather than imposing sanctions and spreading division, sowing the seeds of hatred, why doesn’t the West use its energy concentrating on development, instead of deployment, and why doesn’t it use its political clout to pull the world together instead of tearing it apart?
While everyone is speaking about the spread of Ebola Virus Disease (now that it has started to make inroads into Western countries), where is the story on the impending food crisis in West Africa? Kanayo Nwanze, the President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, has warned that urgent action is needed to stave off an impending food crisis.
Speaking on World Food Day on October 16, in an interview with the UN News Center, he stated that eighty per cent of the food eaten today in the developing world is produced by smallholders on family farms. Here, he claims, is the danger because these farmers are most at risk from cycles of hunger and poverty. “We should actually decide to take action beyond words,” he warns.
He said that unless we start to invest in the real infrastructure which supports agricultural production, which means people, there could be a shortage of food in the coming years.
Fast forward a few thousand miles to the East, the UNO is warning of “an immense humanitarian crisis” this Winter in Iraq, the country destroyed by, who else, NATO back in 2003, when it was invaded illegally, outside the auspices of the UNO, in a murderous invasion causing the deaths of some one million people, in which military hardware was deployed against civilian structures.
In the words of Rashid Khalikov, director of the UN Office in Geneva for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “an immense humanitarian emergency is unfolding in front of our eyes”.
Officials from the UNO and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation found a potentially calamitous situation in the areas they visited, ravaged by the conflict caused by Islamic State, created in the void caused by the invasion led by, who else, Washington and poodle in chief, the top lapdog, London. They found 850,000 people displaced in Kurdistan, they found 90,000 people living in the open in Dohuk Governorate. As a harsh winter approaches, nearly one million people are in urgent need of food and shelter, while 5.2 million Iraqis need assistance, 1.8 million of these being children.
Those responsible are not only Islamic State, it is the United States of America and the United Kingdom, who in one of their imperialist ventures, destabilized a State and did not think the consequences through. The onus lies on these two countries, the ones who have been the motor behind the sanctions against Russia, to take a good look at their own foreign policy, man up to their responsibilities, and change tack.
Next story: a humanitarian crisis in Libya. Caused by guess who?
The Abbott government will ignore Commonwealth value-for-money rules on official real estate as it forces the Australian Taxation Office to spend millions on new offices in regional NSW.
The ATO has confirmed there has been no business case or cost-benefit analysis, as required by the Finance Department’s rules, for the plan to build a 6500-square-metre office block in downtown Gosford on the state’s central coast.
The Taxation Office has 6200 desks sitting empty in its buildings around Australia, is shedding up to 4700 jobs and is trying to get out of leases on office space equivalent to two-and-a-half times the size of the Melbourne Cricket Ground’s playing surface.
“It risks looking like naked pork-barrelling”: Andrew Leigh. Photo: Jeffrey Chan.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann says the government is keeping an election promise by going through with the building but the opposition says spending tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money without due process looks like “naked pork-barrelling”.
The Taxation Office has confirmed the project will go ahead, calling for expressions of interest from developers to build the building, but ATO bosses still cannot say what it will be used for.
But Taxation confirmed this week that neither the business case nor cost-benefit analysis, required by the Finance Department for large public service property procurements, was not undertaken for the Gosford project.
The agency plans to move 300 of its public servants into the building when it is completed in 2017 but it is unclear who will occupy the rest of the floors.
The ATO had previously said it had been making progress in reducing the amount of excess offices it rents from private landlords and had plans to offload about 50,000 square metres of space, about two-and-a-half times the playing surface of the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Labor’s shadow assistant treasurer Andrew Leigh said on Thursday that it looked as if the Coalition was spending taxpayers’ money to make good on promises made before the 2013 election solely to win the federal seat of Robertson.
“Without a business case or any kind of cost-benefit analysis for this building, it risks looking like naked pork-barrelling,” Dr Leigh said.
“If the Abbott Government actually consulted with the tax office, the agency would rather keep some of the 4700 staff that are being forced out the door than spend money on a brand new building when it already has thousands of desks sitting idle.
“If Joe Hockey is so keen to make investments in the tax office, he should start by rethinking the retrenchment of 500 auditors, some of whom will doubtless now be employed to help companies minimise their tax bills.”
But Senator Cormann said the ATO was observing procurement rules by undertaking the expressions of interest process.
“The Government is delivering on its election commitment to open a new building on the New South Wales Central Coast, with the Australian Taxation Office leading this initiative,” Senator Cormann said.
“Submissions to the expression of interest will be evaluated in line with normal processes.
“That is, expressions of interest will be shortlisted and then a more detailed request for final proposals will occur later this year.
“This is normal practice to ensure the best possible value for taxpayers’ money.”
Abbott government’s aversion to equality for all, their resistance to change and explains the reasoning behind their attitude to the unemployed, the disadvantaged and those on the lower levels of the socio-economic ladder.They have an aversion to social and economic equality. They suffer from ‘Right Wing Authoritarianism’ which rejects openness and accountability. They are hierarchical in structure, anti-egalitarian.
Their need for cognitive closure means they shun open mindedness, and they are suspicious of science and the arts and distrust foreign food and culture. Already we can see how this manifests in policies on boat people and climate change. Conservative parties are only interested in governing for today. They have no vision for tomorrow, no grand plan. They would rather let tomorrow take care of itself. They will say what is necessary to win support, concealing their true intent. Their intent is being the government rather than about governing.
After having gained power, conservative governments begin winding back the clock, repealing uncomfortable reforms that promote and support a more egalitarian society.They conveniently forget or simply discard their pre-election sugar coating and engage in legitimising their myths to justify restructuring society back to the hierarchical, authoritarian model. They move on dissenting voices, invoke extreme and unnecessary legislation to ‘protect’ their prejudices and reinforce their two principal aversions: equality and change.
Tony Abbott has not asked for burqa ban to be reversed, Speaker’s office says PM says he has asked Speaker to ‘rethink’ ban on facial coverings, such as the niqab, in parliament’s public galleries, but Speaker’s office denies such a request has been madeThe prime minister and the Speaker’s office appear to be at odds over the burqa ban, after Tony Abbott said he had asked the Speaker to “rethink the decision” while the Speaker’s office suggested that they had received no request to overturn the ban on facial coverings.
“No request has been received by the PM or his office,” a spokesman for the Speaker said at midday.
“I asked the Speaker to rethink the decision,” Abbott said. “My understanding was it was an interim decision, that it would be looked at again the light of security advice that will come in coming days and I am sure the matter will be fully resolved before the parliament comes back in a fortnight.”
Parliament’s presiding officers – Speaker Bronwyn Bishop of the House of Representatives and president of the Senate, Stephen Parry – made an interim ruling on Thursday that people wearing facial coverings, such as the niqab, could watch proceedings only from glass-enclosed public galleries.
It drew widespread condemnation from human rights commissioners, politicians across the divide and the Muslim community.
Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull has condemned the interim ban, warning that “demonising and alienating” the Muslim community was “doing the terrorist’s work”.
Turnbull said in his 10 years in parliament, he had seen one woman wearing a full facial covering in the public gallery.
Tony Abbott is desperate to go to war, but what are the costs Veteran Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh says
The so called Islamic State is a marauding force of Sunni adherents with an ambitious and opportunistic agenda. It seeks to fill the political and military vacuum brought about by the first American invasion of Iraq. Acquiring power behind the shield of religion is its modus operandi.
Commonsense and compassion dictates that the rampaging rebels must be halted and contained. They must be stopped from beheading western hostages, abducting and raping women and executing prisoners of war. But who is it that should stop them?
This is not Australia’s fight.Australia is not threatened in the way Iraq and neighbouring states might feel threatened.This is a fight for a broad coalition of Arab states. In the absence of this why should Australia step up?
Abbott is approaching military involvement as a religious crusade. He has said that anyone fighting for the rebels is against God and religion. The Attorney General, George Brandis, appears to be on the same hymn sheet, describing the “mission” as humanitarian with military elements. They describe the rebels as evil.The original Crusaders saw their missions as an act of love, righting the wrongs of Islamic occupation of the Holy Lands.
As with American entry to the war in Vietnam, this current undertaking is bereft of strategic thinking and planning. There is a forward rush based on emotional footage and commentary.Abbott and his followers are banging an urgent military tattoo, in order to drown out dissent and numb clear thought.
In building the case for war in Vietnam, media outlets in 1963 were swamped with images of village headmen decapitated, hung and disembowelled by the Viet Cong. Emotion and fear was exploited.
The slogan of the time was that it was better to fight Communism in Vietnam than at home. Abbott’s better to fight the Jihadists in Iraq than Australia eerily echoes the propaganda from that earlier ill-judged and failed war. 60,000 Australians served in Vietnam, 521 died and 3,000 were injured.
Nothing was achieved.
America fatally misread the political and social dynamics of Vietnam.Yet here is Abbott, a latter day lap dog, swallowing every grim U.S. ‘intelligent report’ on IS and Iraq, not factoring in the earlier failure of U.S. policy, which has led to the present imbroglio.
How exactly does Abbott believe the U.S. confrontation of IS will proceed to a more successful outcome than Vietnam, the first and second Iraq wars and Afghanistan?
We have gone to war with the IS in conjunction with the Iraqi military in order to support the government of Iraq, but what if the government in Iraq collapses and/or the untrained and uncommitted Iraqi military fades into the desert? Will the ‘Coalition’ continue the war? Will they take over the instruments of the failed Iraqi state?If Vietnam is any guide, the answer is yes — and with predictable and catastrophic results.What if IS should have further success, gaining more ground and assets and, in the process, look and behave more like a functioning state to the point that a number ‒ perhaps a majority of Arab countries ‒ give recognition and trade with the new entity or state.What if they turn against the ‘Coalition’ on the basis that it comprises interfering infidels?
What if the Taliban in Afghanistan use the ruggedness and remoteness of the country to train IS and other fighters?
As the war drags on, or perhaps before even that situation is reached, will the Abbott government introduce a war levy (tax) and re-introduce selective conscription, for what is likely to become an unpopular war? To top off Abbott’s silly and alarming sabre rattling, we have heard little from the immature government he leads regarding the far greater threat to the world posed by the Ebola plague.
Bruce Haigh is a political commentator, conscript and retired diplomat, who served in the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Australia is one of the safest countries in the world. Until last week we didn’t particularly fear “terrorism” or war on home soil, because these horrible events are far removed from our daily reality, encased in 30-second soundbites we ignore over our dinners.
We’re more likely to fear bushfires and the holiday road death tolls along with our world-beating killer spiders, snakes, sharks and occasionally, crocodiles.
But we don’t fear these things regularly. We’re unlikely to come into contact with them on a daily basis. We do, however, come into contact with people. And if you live in western and north-western Sydney, where the majority of the “anti-terror” raids occurred last week, you are likely to run into *shock horror* a Muslim.
Last week, Australia woke to the front pages and shrill cries of breakfast radio and TV anchors acting as a government mouthpiece, trying to convince Australians that the war against the Islamic State, the militant Sunni group which has taken over large swathes of Iraq and Syria, had arrived on our shores.
And not just on our shores, like the “hordes of boat people” who apparently threaten the freedoms we enjoy, but also flourishing in our suburbs – near hospitals and schools and shopping centres.
Every day places so far from the dusty battle fields in the Middle East.
For most Australians, the information on IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL has been limited, filtered through sexed-up stories of “Jihadi war brides”, shocking images of beheadings and crucifixions and the sensationalist executions of three westerners – two journalists and an aid worker – filmed with all the suspense of a Hollywood drama.
The reality that nearly 60 Australians are estimated to have left the country to fight with IS forces has been abused constantly by the Abbott government to try and draw Australians into believing IS is a threat to the freedoms Australia has built off Aboriginal suffering and poverty for the past 200 years.
These events are undoubtedly shocking, but if your main source of information is the mainstream media, you’ve been sorely let down. There has been very little analysis on whether these threats are valid, and certainly no explanation of how it justifies an estimated $500 million a year “humanitarian” military intervention into a foreign country, and far-reaching, invasive laws which target one section of the Australian community.
Today, renowned American journalist Glenn Greenwald condemned the Australian political class’ “unhinged, fear mongering orgy over terrorism”.
On the Abbott government’s concerning anti-terror laws he wrote:
“The Australian government wasted no time at all exploiting this event to demand ‘broad new security powers to combat what it says is a rising threat from militant Islamists.”
Even by the warped standards of the west’s 9/11 era liberty abridgments, these powers are extreme, including making it ‘a crime for an Australian citizen to travel to any area overseas once the government has declared it off limits’.
“Already pending in that country is a proposal by the Attorney General to make it a criminal offense ‘punishable by five years in jail for ‘any person who disclosed information relating to ‘special intelligence operations’; the bill is clearly intended to outright criminalise WikiLeaks-and Snowden-type reporting and the government thus expressly refuses to exempt journalists.”
Greenwald criticises Abbott’s recent speech to Parliament as a “shameless” exploitation of terrorism fears to “seize greater power”.
“Abbott assumed the grave demeanor and resolute tone that politicians in these situations don to convince others that they’re the modern incarnation of Winston Churchill: purposeful, unyielding, and courageously ready for the fight. He depicted his fight as one of Pure Good v. Pure Evil, and vehemently denied that his nation’s 10-year support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq plays any role whatsoever in animosity toward his country in that region (perish the thought! – ‘It’s our acceptance that people can live and worship in the way they choose that bothers them, not our foreign policy’). And, most impressively, he just came right out and candidly acknowledged his real purpose: to exploit the emotions surrounding the terrorist arrests to erode liberty and increase state power, telling citizens that they will die if they do not meekly acquiesce.”
Sadly, just as all over the world, the greatest victims of “terrorism” have been Muslims themselves. How you define “terrorism” is up to you, but I would suggest the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians killed by western forces would count as victims as well, just as the innocent children of Gaza who are still recovering from a murderous assault by Israel earlier this year.
And the people who are most likely affected by Abbott’s response to this purported IS threat are Muslim Australians, who represent diverse ethnic groups across the country and yet are being targeted as one homogenous mass.
I attended the Lakemba rally held on the day of the shocking raids last week. The anger was clear, but the mood was solemn. A 12-year-old boy whose home was the subject of one of the raids spoke of his experience and was so obviously traumatised it raised the question of how the Abbott government can expect to placate a community who are so used to being targeted and ostracised by mainstream society, and whose hurt only continues to compound.
Since the raids, a torrent of hate has been unleashed towards Muslims across the country. Last week, a Muslim woman in Auburn awoke to find her car spray-painted with anti-Muslim slogans.
A rally on the Sunshine Coast against a planned mosque descended into outright hate with 500 people turning up.
One man, quoted by the Sunshine Coast Daily said, “It’s a disgusting religion. I’m in the Catholic Church over the road and I’d hate to think it was opposite. It’s evil and I’m totally against it.”
The waves of abuse on social media has also highlighted how open bigotry has become, as if the disgust around the Islamic State has given a free pass to intolerance.
Secretary of Salam Care, Rebecca Kay told the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this week that she had received a number of reports of intimidation across western Sydney.
“We had some Aussie ladies standing making gun movements with their fingers towards some Muslim ladies,” Ms Kay told the newspaper.
“It’s trivial… but it does affect people…. They seem to be more upset at first rather than scared. But then they do get scared that it might happen again, and they start worrying about whether they need to protect their children.”
While anti-semitic remarks and other racial attacks regularly attract condemnation in Australia – in fact can be used as justification to fire a popular newspaper columnist – the widespread vitriol against Muslims in the wake of these terror raids has been sadly underplayed.
Why is this so?
The biggest victims of this “terror threat” are not the suburban keyboard warriors afraid of random alleged beheadings, but Muslims, who should have the right to practice their religion free from persecution.
Sure, it’s easier to fear them than more immediate threats. It’s easier to take out our fears from a position of power, backed by a media that has been actively promoting Islamophobia. You can’t abuse a shark or crocodile or a holiday road death toll.
But that doesn’t make it ok. And it doesn’t smooth over the fact that this government is trying to exploit a foreign fear of terrorism to pass severely invasive powers over a targeted community just because you don’t feel safe.
I wrote this article 12 years ago. Has anything changed?
Australia is fast heading down a dangerous path. While our stories of history may permit us to see an era of fascism only in some distant place and some distant time, there is no guarantee in this story that the ugly head of right wing extremism will not rise again. Just because we participated in the fight against it, and shared in the spoils of the victory over it, does not remove us from being the constructors of an equally horrific threat. The current rhetoric of patriotism that is circulating within this nation suggests quite clearly that fascist ideologies are gaining prominence once again. And in this land where we claim there is opportunity for all, amidst all the rhetoric of a tolerant multiculturalism, such destructive ideas are starting to appear quite normal.
I’m not saying that John Howard is akin to Hitler. Let’s be honest, he really doesn’t have that much flair. Given a bit more intelligence, and the ability to speak with passionate vigour, and he might be taken more seriously by the masses. As it stands, however, he’s far too feeble and too docile to be such a crowd-controlling force. All too often his slippages and wayward comments have to be reshaped by his publicity machine in order to make them fit the full picture. It’s as if he doesn’t quite have all the pieces there to be able to do it alone.
Today, we fail to see that the Aussie dream, where the voice of the average person on the street is said to matter, is all but dead; that our governments are becoming increasingly distant, wrapped up in their own corporate-style worlds from which they see nothing of the reality of our lives. We just sit back and we trust them. We let them tell us of the fear on our streets and to our borders. There’s something out there, threatening, waiting to get in. Don’t go outside. Don’t question. The foreign—the outside world—is, so we are told, now a danger to our “normal” and precious way of life. But this way of life, this normality of us, is just an idealised way of life. It doesn’t even exist. The people we offend by adopting such a nationalistic and high-and-mighty stance may soon grow impatient with having to appease us. We would do better, therefore, to start recognising our commonalities with them instead of dozily lapping up the rhetoric of right wing ideologies without thought, without concern for the kind of future we invite. But we can only begin this process of communication and understanding when we stop thinking of ourselves as some superior and master, unquestionably lucky race.
Dean Laplonge is a cultural theorist whose research and consulting work explores the relationship between culture and everyday practices. He is the Director of the cultural research company Factive (www.factive.com.au) and an Adjunct senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales.
Shouting ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre is frowned upon in most societies and thought an example of a limit on freedom of speech we can all agree on. Tony Abbott did something far, far worse yesterday. He told an entire nation they could be randomly beheaded at any moment.
He then told us to calm down, and behave as if he hadn’t said it.
He added to the usual terrors female shift-workers endure on late night buses, late night trains and the long walk from a railway station home at 1.30 a.m. — the ultimate horror of having your head cut off.
He did it by adding the word ‘random’: by not even implying, but saying straight out that you didn’t have to be famous, or politically connected to a particular cause, or a prominent member of a particular faith. You could be an ‘innocent bystander’, beheaded.
He then said it was very easy to do. All one needs, he said, is a knife and cell-phone, and an accomplice with a car.
Is this responsible? Is it the act of a nation’s leader, or a cyberbully? It seems to encourage terrorists, implying they can’t be easily detected and it doesn’t matter who they kill.
Forty-six people ‒ Australian people ‒ died from cigarettes yesterday, none from decapitation.
Three or four motorists will die this weekend, in car accidents.
Before Christmas, two young men will die in pub brawls.
‘Domestic’ terrorism will occur — a father kidnapping and threatening his estranged wife or children once or twice this fiscal year.
I will bet a lot of money no-one will be beheaded here in Australia.
It is because it is not a very Australian thing to do. People who live here don’t do that sort of thing and thereby imperil their families, and the livelihood of their parents, brothers and sisters. It is a long way from the battlegrounds of Baghdad, Mosul, Gaza, Donetsk, where such ‘terrorist’ things do happen lately — incidents in war.
And this is why it hasn’t happened in ninety-nine years and nine months here, since the Battle of Broken Hill in January 1915. It is not a particularly Australian thing to do.
And frightening old women with it is, I think, unbecoming for a prime minister. And possibly illegal, as it ‘encourages the terrorists’.
If the Prime Minister were serious about it, the two big football games this weekend in Sydney would have been cancelled, along with the opening night of The King And I. If he were serious, there would be random body searches of Middle Eastern women entering the Sydney Art Gallery. Most art galleries, given ISIL’s hatred of art, would be closed for six months.
But he isn’t serious, he’s making mischief.
He’s lost most of the policy battles of his first year and he’s thought a joke by many people, by many others a disgrace, and he’s embarked on the biggest ‘scare campaign’ since the Yellow Peril.
He’s become what I call the Chicken-Little-in-Chief. And he shouldn’t, any more, be given the time of day.
And he should be asked to resign by his colleagues (as Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond was a few hours ago and has done), or by the Senate, or by a poll of public opinion.
He’s blown it. May the sky come falling down
No’ chatter’ when it comes to threatening Muslims, vandalizing their property, abusing their presence on the street. Threatening to set a woman in hijab alight isn’t regarded as serious. The racist bogans are only up to mischief are they? Korans shredded, shock jocks vilifying a whole community. Andrew Bolt’s daily sling that’s just good old Aussie banter is it. But when Muslim kids open their mouths you jump on them with a totalitarian fist. How about some consistency in the application of your laws. How unbalanced is Team Australia?
Those Muslim kids you caught who you admit knew they were being watched may just have been pulling your agencies chain. If I was 19 and I and my mates knew somebody was trying to eavesdrop we certainly would. Because our first reaction would be to give you the symbolic finger
No 
“Then he said with a look of concern that we had to raise our level of public alert because of David Irvine …Brilliant!!!”
“There are people with the intent and the capability to mount attacks,” he said. So what is new about that? We have always known that. You only have to go back and have a look at some of the news broadcasts of 2001 and 2002 to see that. There is no logic for this public alert.
So if we look at the man and where it’s coming from the Prime Minister Tony Abbott.It smacks of political skulduggery. Our existing security organisations engaged in fighting terrorism are highly trained, well equipped and properly briefed. They have had over a decade to train and prepare. They are the ones who will maintain a vigilant presence and foil a terrorist plot, not you or I. They don’t need a nervous public overreacting, spreading fear and uncertainty, peering curiously at Muslim women dressed in the hijab; people who are simply going about their normal business.
As a cynic I believe it’s a dumb plan by a political party and its leader to strike fear into the heart of the Australian community. However not all of us are it’s a cruel plan the kind of plan a student political bully might go for if his ranking in the polls was lagging
The terror threat level has just been raised in Australia from medium to high — but Bob Ellis isn’t buying it.
It’s interesting what the Liberals think is a popular thing to do. Spending a billion looking forever, fruitlessly, for bits of a downed plane. Spending a hundred million looking for bits of bodies on a downed plane and ‘bringing them home’. Inviting Protestants, Buddhists, Jews and Muslims into a Catholic cathedral to speak before a crucified Christ. Going to war, again, in Iraq if the guys who lost the last two Iraq Wars ask them to. And, lately, a Terrorist Red Alert.
There may be ‘inconvenience’ at football finals, we hear, and airports, as if the ‘terrorists’ would go anywhere near such places. The last terrorist outrage at a sporting event was the kidnap and murder of some Israeli weightlifters at the 1972 Olympics, which set back Arafat’s PLO by fifty years, and no-one has done any such thing since then; you don’t kill sporting heroes, you don’t do that. The last terrorist incident on a plane was the Underpants Bomber, and full-body imaging makes it hard for that cock-up to be repeated.
What ‘terrorists’ often attack is suburban trains (London, Madrid, Tokyo), and they do it for the obvious reason that they can bring suitcases, backpacks, shopping bags on to them, can leave them on shelves or under seats and detonate them remotely.
Curiously, this particular Red Alert makes no mention of this. It’s in part because it’s impossible to police. If random electronic searches hold up four trains each morning and nothing is found, and five school buses, the Government falls.
If the government is serious, they must do random searches on every opening night a politician goes to — the Wharf Revue, The King And I, the Bob Dylan concert. They must upend, disrupt and inconvenience every political party conference. Labor’s conference in Sydney Town Hall, which had a pro-Gaza demonstration next door, could be entered by anyone, and observed from the gallery upstairs. Carr, Shorten, Plibersek were at it, Clare, Rees, Firth, Robbo, Albo, Faulkner, any one of whom could have been seized at gunpoint and beheaded on Facebook. So could a similar cast at Neville Wran’s funeral in the same crowded venue.
Abbott’s biking and Iron Man events must be discontinued, clearly. Joe Hockey’s visits to his Queensland farm must be overflown by vigilant thumping helicopters. Julie Bishop’s visits to Geneva must be accompanied by armed motorcades.
Do we believe any of this? Well, no, we don’t. The reason is that the terrorists’ resources are limited, and the people they want to terrorise aren’t living here in Australia. People wanting to set up a Syria-Lebanon-Iraq-Egyptian caliphate are not going to bomb Newcastle Town Hall. They are not going to kidnap and behead Peter Hartcher. They are going to concentrate their efforts round Mosul, Baghdad, Samara.
The ‘terrorist virus’ theory the Liberals are trying on lately – that young men, infected in Syria by beasts who want to overthrow Assad, will come back here and blow up a cricket match – lacks what Poirot would call
“… a believable motive, ’Astings. What do they ’ave to gain by doeeng zat?”
They have a lot to lose — their lives, their intimacy of their young wives, the love of their children, the suburban contentment of their mothers, cousins, old grandfathers. Why would they do it? What lost homelands would they liberate in Strathfield, Logan, Collingwood? Why would they do it?
And why haven’t they done it already? Muslim Afghans have been here since 1830, Muslim Pakistanis, Indonesians, Somalians for twenty, twenty-five years. And the last terrorist attack on our soil was by Martin Bryant, an Anglo-Saxon, in 1996, and the one before that, the Hilton Bombing, in 1978, was contrived not by terrorists but ASIO.
Oh, similar things do happen here. Bikie gang wars, Underbelly assassinations, suburban ‘incidents’ where the crazed fathers of kidnapped children shoot it out with the police. But nothing of the kind we know as ‘terrorist’ – the Bali bombing, the Tube train massacre – on our soil since the Battle of Broken Hill in 1916.
How much money will this nonsense cost us? Where’s it coming from? The shelved GP co-payment? What? And what evidence is there for alarm? None, evidently. Apart from two young men who are about to go to Syria to fight, as Obama advises, against ISIL.
Abbott, caught in a moral tangle as usual, says going to war with ISIL is a criminal offence if boys from Logan do it, but an heroic act if Diggers do it and it won’t endanger Australians at all — we won’t provoke the ‘terrorists’ by going to war with them.
And he won’t go to war unless the Americans tell him to — the Americans who got it so right last time, destroying six million lives, and causing ISIL while they were there. He’ll consult the Americans, but not the Australian people. And he’ll body-search Australians at football finals in case they’ve got atomic weapons up their clackers.
Dare we call this excessive? Deluded? Hyperbolic? Demented? Wasteful of, ho ho, the taxpayers’ money?
More Australians have died from backyard pool drownings in the last five years than ‘terrorism’ in the last hundred, on our soil. Fifty times as many from funnel-web spider bites. Twenty times as many, each day, from cigarettes. Four times as many, each week, from road accidents.
What you have to do in Big Scare politics is make the people believe you. Believe you, Tony Abbott. And one of the ways you do that is behaving as if you yourself believe it. And unless there are full-body searches of every foreigner at the Crown Casino, or The King And I, or the Melbourne Cup, or the corridors outside ICAC, no-one will believe you believe it.
Abbott says, ‘Carry on with your lives as usual’, and ‘Look, look, the terrorists might be strapped with bombs at the next Grand Final’ simultaneously.
What an oaf he is. What a creepy, Americanised, frantic fool.
What a Chicken Little-in-Chief.
Legislators also rejected an amendment to the law that would have called for a “five-minute cooling off period” before cops gunned down unarmed black teenagers on Missouri’s city streets. Lawmakers expressed concern that the amendment would sow confusion among “them negras,” and create an atmosphere of disrespect in cities where all white police forces lorded over majority black neighborhoods.
“We just can’t take away an officer’s right to choose,” said Jeffrey Jingo, a state senator from Bigot Bluffs. “If we let young black males freely roam our streets without showing them who’s boss, then all hell could break loose. I mean, you saw what happened in Ferguson, right? The last thing we need is all them colored folks thinking they enjoy the same civil rights as respectable members of our community.”
Legislators pointed out that Missouri cops feel threatened by unarmed black males, who might hurt them in some way
The first. ‘’Why Does Abbott Lie’’
‘’Everyone knows that our Prime Minister is a liar. He might even be the worst amongst the world leaders. He is certainly the worst this nation has ever seen. Many of our most respected journalists and media commentators have said so. He has even admitted he is a liar himself. The evidence is so abundant, so overwhelmingly copious that it is beyond contradiction. It is fair to say that in general the populace accepts his lying as a fact. I and many others have listed them, quoted them, itemised, analysed them and exposed them in crystal clarity. Even members of his own party have accepted that he is a liar of nefarious intent. And his sheer indifference to the fact that he lies together with his lack of conscience about it I find sickening. The list is as long as a toilet roll. Only people like Jones and Bolt seek to convince people otherwise.’’
“When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts”.
― Michael Ende. The Never-ending Story
“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed”.
Joseph Goebbels said it. Adolf Hitler re phrased it.
“When you tell a lie you deny the other person’s right to the truth”.Truth in politics matters. It is not a trivial matter in a democracy. Our whole system is based on the assumption that truth prevails over all else and that it is the people who judge its veracity. Without truth the people cannot give informed accent to office and democracy fails. There are ethical obligations of integrity and coherence upon which society depends. Our Prime Minister has failed the highest standards of political morality.
At this time in our history we are experiencing a toxic tide of political mistrust. No other politician has contributed to it more than Tony Abbott. Is he the most dishonest, the most cynical and pathologically perverted liar to ever lead our nation? I will leave you to ponder the question:
John Lord
TERMINAL TONY the TSUNAMI OF CUTS AND UNEMPLOYMENT
KAMIKAZEE TONY KILLS ECONOMY
BOTCHED BUDGET
HOCKEY HOSES DOWN A GROWING ECONOMY TO ZERO GROWTH
AUSTERITY ABBOTT AND AN AUSTRALIA RECESSION
PYNE POXES EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA
BISHOP BENDS TO DJAKARTA
BRON BISHOP BITES BACK
MORRISON MAKES APOLOGY FOR DETENTION DEATHS IN CUSTODY
Andrew Bolt’s Dream Girl
Tony Abbott had her jailed.
Howard stole her policies
Elmer Gantry Right Wing National Front Media Fascist is still here. Andrew Bolt odorous tent preacher is still blowing his fascist stench over us .
“I’m better than you because my culture is better than yours”
Bolt says that our laws stifle the debate he says he wants to debate. Pigs arse he never sits on panels where he can be debated. Radio is with brother in thought Steve Price on 2GB. TV is with Michael Kroger who looks so bored playing deputy if Bolt fumbles all kicked along with the Murdoch Team of commentators pretending to run intellectually smart commentary from just one side of the fence. It’s Fox News in Australia. Heaven help us all. Anybody that differs from this team of Neanderthals whose brains drag on the ground when they walk is of the left. As garlic is to vampires the Racial Discrimination Act is the only thing that saves us from their one-dimensional simplistic rant.
Bolt even takes pleasure in self-aggrandizement by sniping at the Murdoch legal team for not letting him off the leash.” I’m bound by my gutless team of lawyers”. Like ISIS Bolt points his dullard brain at what he has branded apostate cultures Aboriginal, Islam, Socialist he’s only got one out of tune song. His ideal is Western Civilised Christian Culture produces the best conditions for individuals to flourish. All other cultures interfere and produce negative outcomes. Assimilation is the best policy to correct the problems in our society and strict immigration to protect it. That’s exactly the ISIS argument that their pure form of Islam (culture) will bring about the best conditions for individual life and that conversion is the best policy to correct current individual problems. ISIS however like Pol Pot , Stalin and Hitler believe killing fields are justified. Bolt believes in the conversion(assimilation) or lockout system as well. Our society was once WASP now after 200 years the catholics have been accepted so WCCC. Keep it pure by strict immigration policies. Those seeking asylum from death horror or mayhem need strict sorting on all levels if they don’t cut mustard piss them off. Try to avoid having them killed is not a good as the UNHRC is watching but lock them out and find any justification for doing it.
Today internally assimilation is also the best policy cultural genocide is what will save the Aborigines. Australia wide their culture obsolete it’s time it was deleted. It doesn’t suit the man to suggest there might be some successful communities all are a problem. Bolt’s ideal a race less constitution and a race less society all one with equal rights under one law. It sounds very French Revolution Liberty Equality and Fraternity. But it hasn’t worked out for modern France today.
The trouble is Bolt doesn’t want revolution he sees the current social structure and hierarchy as basically good it needs only to be adjusted to more closely resemble his ideal. Multiculturalism is bad because it produces ghettos of self-generating and sustaining problems. When it comes to showing us evidence Bolt first simplifies he hates complexity so Aborigines are all one and the same as are Muslims. They however see themselves quite diversified and distinct from each other have different languages different customs etc. Then Bolt takes a statistic orlooks for some piece of shocking evidence to explain why his totality is a failure. He loves picking out notable Aboriginal leaders most of whom he has never met and targets them Noel Pearson is a favourite in this article. Why firstly because Pearson doesn’t kowtow because he would probably call Bolt a cunt and Bolt would not be comfortable debating him. So it’s better to question the 4 communities Pearson represents from afar. these gulf communities get $100 mill over six years for a 3,500 pop and growing or $100 per week. It’s no large sum for what it entails and the project is thoroughly audited. Bolt however from afar the land of ignorance tries to suggest the program is a failure on questionable evidence of pertaining to less than 1% of that particular population. If extrapolated to Aborigines across Australia it amounts to 0.0000001% . The man is a serious Neanderthal and should be charged for vilification.
Putin has reminded the world Russia is a nuclear power. Pic: AP. Source: AP
GOING nuclear. It’s the last taboo in an age of hi-tech military equipment, where a single warhead can destroy an entire city, kill millions of people and impact generations for years to come.
Nuclear weapons have only been deployed twice in the world’s history — in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 — in a moment that saw leaders collectively vow to never use them again.
However this week, the terrifying prospect has reared it’s ugly head after Russian President Vladimir Putin told pro-Kremlin youth the world shouldn’t “mess” with Russia.
“I want to remind you that Russia is one of the leading nuclear powers,” he reportedly told a group of youngsters near a lake outside Moscow.
MORE: Putin talks nuclear power as he tells the West to back off
It comes after weeks of aggressive actions against Ukraine, which Western leaders are taking seriously. After imposing strict sanctions, members of the international military alliance NATO will amass a “spearhead” force of 4000 troops that can be rapidly deployed to the region.
So who really has what in terms of a nuclear arsenal?
Sources: Nuclear Threat Initiative, Federation of American Scientists, Arms Control Association. Graphic: Ron Erdos. Source: Supplied
GLOBALLY: It’s estimated there are about 22,000 nuclear weapons in the world today according to the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs. However it’s a number that is virtually impossible to verify as estimates are based on self-reporting and most countries cloak their nuclear programs in intense secrecy. It’s also made even more complicated by the fact that some weapons are due to be dismantled and not considered in active use.
It’s estimated North Korea has 6-10 nukes in their arsenal. Source: AFP
The Federation of American Scientists puts the total number closer to 16,300, with the US and Russia containing 93 per cent of the global stock. They estimate about 10,000 weapons are in nuclear arsenals with others retired and waiting to be dismantled. Around 4000 are available with 1800 on high alert ready for use at short notice, according to the organisation.
Five countries are officially recognised as having the weapons under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) including China, Russia, France, the UK and US. Here’s a breakdown of exactly who has what.
UNITED STATES: The US is the only country that has used nuclear weapons in the past — against Japan in 1945. Its nuclear arsenal peaked in 1967 at 31,255 warheads although this has since been reduced to 4804 warheads according to latest government disclosures in September 2013, reported by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a non-profit organisation concerned with reducing the spread of weapons.
However it also has “several thousand” that have not been dismantled and about 200 weapons stored in Belgium, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Turkey.
Obama has committed to reducing the number of nuclear warheads to zero. Pic: AP. Source: AP
RUSSIA: There is “considerable uncertainty” surrounding the sites of Russia’s nuclear weapons according to the Federation of American Scientists. However NTI estimates Russia has 1512 strategic warheads ready to be deployed with a total number between 8500 and 10,000 warheads and another 3000 waiting to be dismantled.
CHINA: China is also seriously secretive about its nuclear weapons, even using underground storage facilities to conceal equipment. It’s estimated the country has 250 warheads in 12 locations, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
FRANCE: France has 290 nuclear warheads, which are thought to be stored in six locations around the country.
Russia is estimated to have the largest global stockpile of weapons. Source: AP
UNITED KINGDOM: The UK has fewer than 225 nuclear warheads, all of which can be launched by sea. It’s part of the NPT and is committed to scaling back its nuclear program.
INDIA: India regards its weapons as a crucial part of strategic defence and is not party to the NPT. It’s estimated to have between 90 and 110 warheads.
PAKISTAN: Is also outside the NPT and has 100-120 nuclear warheads. It has agreed to provide India with advance notice of tests.
North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests and is thought to have up to 10 nuclear bombs. Pic: AFP. Source: AFP
ISRAEL: Israel is committed to a policy of “opacity” when it comes to nuclear weapons and has never admitted to having them, but is widely believed to have between 100-200 nuclear warheads.
NORTH KOREA: It’s not known for sure how many nuclear weapons North Korea has but the country has conducted three explosive tests and is thought to have enough enriched uranium for 6-10 weapons.
A demonstrator protests nuclear weapons ahead of the upcoming NATO summit in Wales. Pic: AFP. Source: AFP
IRAN: Has an advanced nuclear program, which it says is peaceful. However failure to report certain parts of it to the International Atomic Energy Agency has led to fears it is covertly developing nuclear weapons and the UN Security Council has passed resolutions demanding the country stop enriching uranium immediately.
SYRIA: No confirmed weapons but has reportedly received assistance from Russia, China and Iran to develop a weapons of mass destruction program.
The strange and suspicious case of Tony Abbott’s citizenship.
Why has there been so much serious stonewalling over this issue
the law is perfectly clear on the matter. How is it a compter has been hacked and why is Peta Credlin involved?
The Abbott government has achieved only chaos in its first year
Unemployment, now at a 12-year high, is rising. The budget is blowing out. The “infrastructure prime minister” has built nothing. The outlook for the government is bleak, because the Opposition and crossbenchers have no incentive to start co-operating, especially on unpopular budget items. Beyond the budget, it’s unclear whether the government has a legislative agenda of any kind. Perhaps this explains recent efforts to reposition Abbott as an international statesman, in charge of keeping Islamic terrorism, Russian tyranny and Scottish independence at bay. He needs to be above the fray, because domestically his troops are stuck in the trenches, and they’re starting to turn on one another. They must be relieved the Opposition is showing no stomach for a fight.
The Bully Boy of Sydney Uni want’s a stoush and he doesn’t care where he finds it. Running Australia isn’t enough he’s got the Kevin 747 feeling and now has equalled Kevin’s record of world travels in his first year 11. Remember the glory days when Abbott was satisfied with barking at Kevin and involved in local politics. He was a tour de force back then. Now it’s not enough to be just an American friend on their list of allies against ISIS. We have cut foreign aid so we have some money to spend on a good fight. Our fight one we own. Russia will do. Andrew Bolt said he’d be back.
The government and I believe the Australian people would like to repay Ukraine for it’s support and friendship especially as the Ukraine continues to be the subject to active destabilization and indeed outright invasion from Russia a country it has never ever sought to harm”
Australian Foreign Aid is premised on trade. Do we trade with the Ukraine? Yes $35 mill exports no less and to Russia $1.8 Bill. Well some Australians are going to be hurting because of Abbott’s decision. Some might find themselves broke. The price of Vodka will go up. I believe he’s watching Dr Strangelove for the first time and thinks it’s a documentary.
‘Forgive me if I see Tony Abbott’s trumped up fear and warmongering for what it is — the last ditch attempts of an unpopular prime minister to gain some support in a country that is sick of his political posturing. It’s the George Dubya Bush school of crisis management — concoct a war, ramp up the terror and let fear and loathing for the unseen enemy unite the country behind he who so bravely leads the charge.’ Sophie Love
Saudi Arabia Our Allies Beheaded 79 people in 2013 foreigners were amongst them
And because we are so isolated in our own homes, cars, and offices, it is easy to convince the vast majority that there is a terrible terror threat ‘out there’. That we are under attack.
That “they hate us” and want to bring us down. In February 2003. Over a million people could see that Bush and Blair’s considered oratory and fear mongering was a web of lies, masking simpler and more sinister political and private industry needs. The same people are falling for the LNP spin and rhetoric. Have we learned nothing?
Wake up, my friends, this is just the last ditch efforts of a floundering government to win friends and influence people. Don’t be a patsy to their political bravado. Watch what the other hand is doing. Sophie Love
ISIS are a long way from here. Quite frankly we have more to fear crossing the road or driving our cars. The current Government seems to want to close our open and generous hearts with all the rhetoric about the threat to our shores, the terror threat, the budget emergency… fear and loathing in Australia.
The Australia I chose 27 years ago was one of hope, open hearts, open minds and welcoming arms. Please don’t change… Sophie Love
What’s behind the spike in Saudi beheadings? |
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Young Bangladeshis stage a mock execution in protest of Saudi Arabia beheading eight workers in 2011 [Reuters]
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| Human rights groups say there has been an upsurge of executions in Saudi Arabia, after more than one execution per day in the first three weeks of August was carried out. To date this month, the country has almost doubled the number of declared executions in the seven months before August 4.Charges have included murder, drug smuggling, and sorcery. On August 18, four members from the same family in the southwestern city of Najran were beheaded for smuggling a “large quantity of hashish“. The next day a Saudi national was executed in the northern city of Qurayyat for sorcery.The Saudi Ministry of Justice has announced the execution of 26 individuals since August 4. In the seven months prior, 15 executions were carried out, bringing the total number to 41 so far this year. However, there were no executions during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan this year between June 28 and July 28
Each year, the Saudi government executes foreign nationals as well as local citizens.
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AMANDA VANSTONE 7:34am The media response seems to be rather different for Bill Shorten.
Once an idiot always an idiot. Amanda Vanstone’s article on Bill Shorten is proof positive of Vanstone’s disregard for truth. She begins with not knowing Shorten’s age. He was born in 1967 Amanda you either failed math or you just make it up as you go along. He is not 44!!!
Shorten was far from kidding himself and very wise raising the issue before your mob could savage it like the mongrels you are. Unlike you kidding yourself that that you can bring any new incite to the story other than keep it running. Get a life your a lazy commentator Amanda Vanstone. Shorten was fully aware what you media trolls could do with it. Particularly those of the Newscorp and the 2GB variety. He came out first and removed the pounce you would all have done banging heads in the hope to run with it.
What saints you all were running your personal little jihads of restraint
‘there has been a good deal of restraint excercised by both the media and members of parliament in the lead up to and since.’
There is no comparison with Tony Abbott as there were witnesses to the fact that he scared the shit out of Barbara Ramjan. If you deny that you might just be asked to make a court enforced public apology as did Andrew Bolt,Michael Kroger and Alan Jones when they tried to deny that it was truth. So go ahead Amanda deny it publicly please.
If a similar complaint were made against Abbott with his track record of abuse and violence maybe it wouldn’t be held back. There is a clear history of misogynist behaviour by Abbott not by Shorten. However we know for sure if it was Tony you,Newscorp or 2GB would not have said a peep. Would the ABC and Fairfax the leftist media you work for break the news? Do they have your over blown sense of integrity?
What a load of speculative lazy codswallop you write. You have plagiarised idea from Andrew Bolt’s self aggrandisement on the Bolt Report That was his excuse for not breaking it. You are the Australian journalist that Frank Sinatra once failed to compliment. I’ll say no more and show restraint b***h.
You all weren’t fast enough nor were politicians. Why don’t you name and shame those investigative journalists those trolls with no morals you allude to in your commentary? Wouldn’t it be sweet revenge for catching you out for taking $$$$ to change a known Mafia persons immigration status and allowing him to remain in this country on compassionate grounds. Another moment of personal jihad was it Amanda Vanstone?
Australia’s voice in the Pacific has gone after 40 years. It fostered a sense of regional community. But it’s gone because Abbott cut $223mill from the ABC budget. All talk about Abbott being the pivot of Asia/Pacific and being a bulwark to the movement of increased Chinese influence in the area is little more than political advertising by Abbott. In reality Abbott has handed Pacific nations communications to the Chinese free of charge. The ABC under it’s charter is obliged to have an international broadcasting service it has been reduced to 60% of it’s previous budget. Local Pacific content has been sacrificed and withdrawn from the region and replaced with Australian parochial content.
China’s official news agency Xinhua is in Fiji and has this year signed a deal in Vanuatu to supply news in English French & Chinese with it’s 171 foreign bureaus it’s influence is steadily growing across the region. So what is the Abbott pivot’s job description, Consierge ? “All talk no action Abbott” Meetings of leaders where Australia and NZ once had a voice will now fall even more under Chinese influence. These territories also acted as eyes and ears for Australian security against drugs, illegal arms and boats.
The ABC’s Sean Dorney provided us with understanding how PNG developed as a country he did the same for South Pacific Regionalism and gave newly formed independant Island states a collective South Pacific identity across the airwaves. He was their news across their region. When Abbott talks about National Security it’s merely the sound of his own voice and short term political gain just another sound byte coupled with his personal vendetta against the national broadcaster. The pivot has no interest in a region essential to our security. The Chinese love this doorman. The Maitre’D
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It came a day before Melbourne was named the world’s most livable city. It’s the world’s most livable city because it’s — probably — the world’s most successful multiculture.
Melbourne people think of themselves as Macedonian Australians, Greek Australians, Italian Australians, Croatian Australians, Sudanese Australians, Chinese Australians, Korean Australians, Japanese Australians, Pakistani Australians, Tongan Australians, Filipino Australians, Arabic Australians — and so on. Scottish Australians. Irish Australians.
Abbott truly doesn’t know how strange he is, how repellent some of his beliefs. No raped woman should abort the result. No woman, not even his sister, should marry a woman. When the vote is 70 percent against him, he is not for turning. When it’s 90 percent against him, he is not a team player. He’s just a little crazy.
Abbott is reviving the days of Arthur Calwell ALP Minister for Immigration. ‘Team Australia’ is another slogan for ‘New Australian’ or ‘Assimilate or Leave’, drop this 60’s,70’s,80’s &90’s multicultural crap. In those decades we established a true rainbow nation. Team Australia is a slap in the face of anybody that’s different. There isn’t another country in the world that tells its migrants to forgo their ancestry their national pride when they arrive. He opened his mouth and alienated half of Scotland. He re-introduced Knights and Dames into Team Australia maybe he’s considering King as well.
When our tourist and education industries rely heavily on Asia what’s Abbott’s underlying message “Come here spend your money and piss off”!! If your Hindu you will eat steak, Muslim or Jew you will get pork like it or lump it if the shrimp have run out you will get whatever we choose to put on the barbie. Water will cost but the beer is free. Got it, get it, good!! We will escort your women around like we do our Queen hand on bum that’s the Aussie way, you’ll love it. You will need to be aware if you look too different we’ll stamp SHIT in your passport and send you home charging a triple departure tax. SHIT was what they used Penang in the 60’s to move people on in 24 hours, ‘Suspected Hippy In Transit’. However today it’s Abbot’s way of saying Suspect Human Is Terrorist……piss off!! There’s 2 industries definitely fucked any wonder Tertiary fees will go up along with unemployment.
Abbott told Radio 2GB recently: “Everyone has got to put this country, its interests, its values and its people first, and you don’t migrate to this country unless you want to join our team”.
In truth, in Australia today, some people are really departing from the core Australian values of humanity, diversity, fair go, liberty and inclusiveness. They are not the values of the well-off, privileged, elite, middle-aged men of Tony Abbott’s Team Australia.
That is coming from Tony Abbott who grew up as an English Catholic migrant in a very Protestant and highly prejudiced Australia. The song ” Catholic dogs stink like frogs” still rings in my ears and I’m sure in his.The state school bullies always challenged us to a fight on the way home from school. We were ‘Micks”and that was enough. Maybe that’s why Abbott took up boxing as a young man in the same way young indigenous and Lebanese men took up the sport. Self-defense or was it to fight his way into some elite Team Australia in his mind?
“Abbott must have known what it was like to have his faith pilloried and made the subject of public scorn. He also felt the pull of political Catholicism in the movement of an Italian migrant named Bartholomew Augustine Santamaria, whose anti-Communist views often translated into divisive positions on domestic and international politics, which many Catholics abhorred. That did not stop Abbott from sitting beside Santamaria’s deathbed during the latter’s final hours.”
The politics of exclusion and marginalization has been historically the core of this country for 200 years. Assimilation is now Abbott’s required path to be recognized as a part of ‘Team Australia’. New arrivals are expected to drop what they can of their foreign dress,customs,food and religions. In the recent past they resisted and were allowed to be themselves. The 70’s and 80’s supported Multiculturalism. Abbott’s family must have been one with their affiliations with Catholicism & DLP. So why is Abbott asking today’s minorities to give up their legal rights as a ticket of entry to some Disney Team Australia?
Abbott’s a Papist not a Protestant the Vatican and Rome came before Australia he hasn’t changed. This applies to 8 other of his cabinet ministers who claim to be practicing Catholics with principles not attuned to the public.. Abbott’s mindset grew out of the DLP a movement accused of siding with dictators and very anti-socialist movements. If for one minute Abbott and his ahistorical advisers gave some consideration to the fact that over 40% of 500k Muslims were born here and had a history in establishing this country. They grew up here and didn’t fly or sail here on a ten pound plan like the Abbotts. Every major wave of Australian migration has included persons of Muslim heritage.They are Australian and were here before he was born. If he ha any intelligence he’d realize there isn’t much Christian about any Team Australia.
Australia was and is a nation of bullies trying to define & protect their turf from anyone they perceive as outsiders. Did anybody see the movie ‘Wake in Fright’ it’s worth seeing and portrays a not too pleasant but realistic view of Australia from a newcomers perspective. This turf protection is usually directed at people sufficiently different in the wrong way and for reasons beyond their control with little tolerance for the difference.
After WW11 Italians, Greeks, Germans, Dutch, Poles and Yugoslavs arrived in their thousands these ‘new Australians’ supplanted the Irish Catholics at the bottom of the ladder where they’d been since colonisation and BW ( before wogs) . They had their own schools, football teams, clubs and moral princiles . Mixed marriages were frowned on and even divided families. Shit if a wealthy protestant girl wed a catholic she was abandoned and the Catholic church did not recognize the marriage. Jobs weren’t equally available to all. Catholics were very much Public Servants whilst Protestants were the Business Barons Squattocracy and politicians. However to the new arrivals anybody who spoke native English was Australian giving young Abbott the opportunity to rise above these traditional prejudices.
” By the ’90s, European migrants had moved up a rung, as Vietnamese and Lebanese refugees took their place. Irish Catholics, astonishingly, had reached the apex of power: Paul Keating as prime minister, William Deane was governor-general and Gerard Brennan was chief justice of the High Court. Around then the term “Anglo-Celtic” became common, conferring a retrospective respectability on the once-despised Bog Irish”
“But as historian Patrick O’Farrell warns us, ‘Anglo-Celtic is “a grossly misleading, false and patronising convenience, one crassly present-oriented. Its use removes from consciousness and recognition a major conflict fundamental to any comprehension not only of Australian history but of our present core culture.”
The idealized culture that Abbott insists exists and all migrants should strive to be part of if they want to live here his Team Australia is an idealization of some monocultured Australia of the past. The only reason the division between Catholicism and Protentism deminished was because of the influx of migrants and multiculturalism. The Knights Dames & the Union Jack are a core part of Abbott’s dream his fantasy of joining the elite,it’s so Camelot. Only by acknowledging previous inequities can we hope to understand the current hierarchies, and engage usefully with contemporary issues such as today’s intolerance towards the current influx of Lebanese, Afghan,Sudanese and other new Muslim arrivals. To deny these conditions is to deny Australia.
“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”said George Bernard Shaw. Team Australia means Team Anglo- Celtic .Anglo-Celtic has become a glib collective term for Old Australia — a polite way of saying White Australia BW ‘before the wogs’.
In truth, however, in Australia today, the people who are really departing from the core Australian values of humanity, diversity, fair go, liberty and inclusiveness that multicultural policies represented are the well-off, privileged, elite, middle-aged men of Tony Abbott’s cabinet. Who want us to be more like them. Maybe they can run a Top of the the Town Festival to show Lakemba how it’s done.
JOIN OUR TEAM MR ABBOTT WE ARE AUSTRALIAN
In 1967, Prime Minister Harold Holt said that he knew of no other free country where “what is produced by the community is more fairly and evenly distributed among the community” than it was in Australia.
The pillars of egalitarianism in Australia were high wages, high home ownership and low unemployment.
The figures tell a different story. While big business continues to rake in record profits, wage rises have been so low over the past year that most workers have gone backwards.this at a time when productivity is at an all time high.
Not only is the minimum wage under attack, penalty rates are also in the firing line.On Tuesday, Assistant Infrastructure Minister Jamie Briggs said it was unfair that small businesses had to pay double on Sundays and triple on New Year’s Eve, and it was on the government’s radar.
ACTU boss Ged Kearney said dropping penalty rates will not increase jobs or help small business but damage the economy by lowering the amount of money people spend in stores and restaurants.
“You cut $200 a week out of someone’s pay . . . and small business will be the first to suffer,” she said.
Despite rising unemployment, the Coalition plans to expand the 457 visa program, remove existing controls on employers, abolish any training obligations and open the program up to more semi-skilled workers.
So with an active push to reduce wages, no plan to create jobs amidst rising unemployment, movement away from federal action on affordable housing while encouraging investors to drive up housing prices, one wonders what Mr Holt would have to say about Abbott’s Australia.
“Climate Science is the new false god” Bolt’s repititious mantra.
It’s costing the economy by it’s inexactness. It’s unable explain or predict the untimely end of hundreds fish washed up on the ninety mile beach a few weeks ago. According to Bolt the whole science needs to be washed up. Applying Bolt’s argument of inaccuracy to all sciences first year uni students might as well drop out now.
From Physicists to Economists and everything between unless it’s cheap drop it. Believers in these inexact sciences are bowing to false gods. Luddite springs to mind. An inquiring mind is the devil’s playground. For Bolt the costs of the research and the associated courses of action suggested by it are unwarranted because what we have now isn’t broken. Imagine the lack of progress this past century had everybody taken this dropkicks advice.
Sciences aren’t about getting everything right because they don’t even Newton’s Laws have their limitations. Science is a process of inquiry to better understand the world around us. It makes mistakes and moves foward it’s not the activity of one man but a whole global community and 97% of scientists support Global Warming Theory and with it the shift to renewable energy sources and the reduction of CO2. The false god is the the stock market price of coal. The effort Bolt is putting in for Abbott is simply about not letting the price of coal drop.
Bucketing the science is akin to the church bucketing Gallileo it prevented him publishing for 100 years on the threat of excommunication. His study of weaponry was supported though. Well Abbott wants to close down the research and anything connected with it. Bolt & Jones are assigned to calling them heretics and Abbot is forcing them into change or exile to pursue their careers.
23% of our energy is now coming from sources other than coal. The wholesale price of electricity has come down. Where has the money gone? Not to us the consumers but to the retailers. Isn’t that the intelligent question. If renewables are a cleaner cheaper form of power surely it’s the way of the future. If other countries are moving away from coal as their primary energy source it won’t be worth digging out of the ground. Australian coal now costs more now than the wholesale price of electricity in India today so why would they want to buy it. Modi the new PM of India supports a move to solar solutions because he as some of the worlds most polluted cities in India. China and the US are taking similar measures. I wouldn’t advise any body to invest in it. Gina sold out of it. Glencore our biggest coal miner paid zip in tax on a $15 bill profit and was heavily subsidized. How much of the $15bill was our $$$. We have paid them to build a mine and are collecting rent they don’t need to sell product. Investors like BHP have dropped their investment in the train line to Abbott’s point Abbott’s coal selling trip to the US was an energy wasted farce. So what’s the false god COAL
Corman our Finance Minister has every faith in the science of free market economics and in particular financial service industry. A topic that Bolt doesn’t often address but supports.. Deregulation is a guarantee of success and trust the pillars holding it together. Freeing up the finance sector is Corman’s agenda . It’s making way for the secret international TPP agreement about to be signed that will make it easier for multinational companies to operate here. It’s going to safe guard their intelectual property and I assume deregulate pricing by competion. Firstly our access to generic medicines won’t be allowed pushing the price of medication up. Secondly Multinationals will be able to sue us for any loss of profit if enticed to Australia and they can’t make a proft on agreed terms. We the citizens of this Democracy aren’t allowed to know those term before signing. We know the reputation of our politicians Corman says trust us.
Deregulation of obstacles in the way of financial planners will make things grow or it might putting the chickens back in the hen house with the fox. His response to the cowboys at the CBA pillaging 4000+++ accounts was ” an old story” history and we need “to move foward and put it behind us”. Deregulation of and industry that only shuffles paper and lends money for commissions one that doesn’t produce anything other than more and more ways to shuffle money even faster for more commissions was the industry that caused the GFC. The regulations that saved us from the crash are now being removed. Corman says there are sufficient laws in place that cover the issues of corrupt managers should they arise “trust us”
The law doesn’t seem to be very helpful for the CBA clients out of pocket. Corman is telling them to “get over it, suck it up and move on”. Why are the regulations needing planners to operate in the best interests of their clients irrelevant or for them to reveal their commissions too much to ask in the name of tranparancy? Does he believe ponzi schemes or another crisis is not waiting in the wings? that planners won’t drive money where commissions are the highest. Why remove the pillars of trust? Regulation is not only there for the 10% of society but for all of us to build trust.
If the law was an equal playing field and really available ASIC may have had teeth. If legal aid was available to assist the less wealthy maybe planners wouldn’t be so cavalier. However it’s not. The “buyer beware” the caveat remains. The banks lend money, employ planners sell product and have the best & most expensive legal firms to protect them from their clients? They are an entire system of trust and non transparancy the whistle blower their biggest fear. Why has it taken the banks so long to fess up to this scandal and so slow to do anything? Macquarie bank seems uncofortable at the moment as well. Corman remains fixed on deregulation to assist the flow of money out of our accounts and into the the accounts of the top 10%. Trust is what we are told will make this work. However trust is being eroded by this false god of profit for everyone. Bolt is the maitre’d of Abbots TEA PARTY.
olddogthoughts 
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