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PM Anthony Albanese was never going to stand up to the gas industry downunder. Weak leaders follow the power elite. They are content to see inequity and inequality flourish in this time of zombie neoliberalism. Nero fiddled whilst Rome burned or so the story goes. Governments do little these days but talk and let the markets run the show to the detriment of the working poor. We have a severe housing crisis and it is not getting any better. What is the government doing about it? Talking about it, but talk is cheap. They are not actually getting their hands dirty and getting into the game by building houses themselves. No, they are ineffectually encouraging private interests to do something about the housing crisis. The figures do not stack up in terms of meeting the challenge of new housing stock being built at the required rate.
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I thought that it could be useful, in light of the apparent rise in the populist politics of grievance, to ask, so, what does it mean to be Australian? Anti-immigration is the flag waving vanguard theme of One Nation and the remnants of the Liberal party. Blame it on the immigrant appears number one on the political grievance charts downunder. Therefore, it provokes the question – what does it mean to be Australian? If it is not out-and-out racism, as those on the Right deny it to be, who, then, qualifies to be considered an acceptable Australian?
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We have seen a spate of one-size-fits-all welfare payments and subsidies. You know, instead of governments helping the most needy they make stuff free for all. This is done for political purposes in attracting votes at elections. All this does is increase wealth inequality. Well off property owners should not be receiving government assistance in maintaining their lifestyles. This brings us to the Alan Kohler call for free childcare downunder. While I support the general idea, I question why wealthy Australians should qualify for these types of assistance. How about a carve out for those over a certain income and capital asset threshold? We need to reverse the widening wealth divide after decades of American style neoliberalism funnelling riches to a select few in Australia.
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Day 3 of having no power due to a storm. No service: Profitability is the new power. Yes, this post is written under the duress of being cut off from electricity in my home and work. We live in a time, where being connected to the grid is more essential than ever before. Everything now runs on electricity. My gripe is that despite this clear and present reality, we are still dependent upon outdated and fragile infrastructure. 50 years ago, as I was growing up, I heard about the plans to put the power lines underground. Indeed, this has been achieved in many new suburbs. I do wonder why in this wonderful new world of privatised utilities how so many more established suburbs and towns have not been transformed in this subterranean fashion. Storms wreak havoc to power lines on poles.
Here are 5 things to know about black teeth. Japanese women used to blacken their teeth and shave off their eyebrows post marriage, prior to the mid nineteenth century. Ohagaru was practiced up until the Meiji era. It is interesting to view this custom through the lens of our current 21C obsession with very white teeth. Some see this as further evidence of the control and denigration of the human rights of Japanese women in their traditional society, whilst others disagree with this conclusion. Early western anthropologists described ohagaru as an abhorrent custom, which disfigured women. The custom was, also, practiced in parts of China by minority groups.
It is amazing how often fate treats hubristic behaviour in lives of the rich and famous. It is, as if, a certain point is reached or crossed by the individual and this releases the hounds of hell upon them. Isaac Heeney, the No#1 rated player in the AFL for much of the season and the poster boy for toothpaste smiles has come a cropper in the shady wee hours of Melbourne with a lap dancer. Isaac Heeney: The boy next door is no more. No, the nice lad we once knew has morphed into a dirtbag hero. Strippers or exotic dancers crying sexual assault rings in the ears of the greater public. Victoria police are investigating an alleged sex crime and Heeney is at the centre of it.
Donald Trump’s regime in America is breaking the law on an industrial scale. There are more than 200 legal actions currently taken out against the Trump administration by aggrieved parties in the United States. Thus, fighting the normalization of Trump is an issue on this basis. People get used to the outrage and are deadened in some way to the gross injustices. However, the behaviour of ICE takes the cake in the outrage stakes in their total disregard for judicial due process. The snatching of Americans off the streets by masked men bearing no identification or documentation and detaining them for weeks and months is abhorrent in the extreme.
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Psychologically those individuals who back strongman leaders often feel that they need the protection of bullies. Trump voters in America, the MAGA faithful fall into this category. Why do people back the loudest voice in the room? White supremacists and racists are, when you boil it down, fearful of those they perceive as different from themselves. They want the faces on their streets to comfortably resemble their own. Far right political parties like One Nation use social media to emphasise examples of crimes being committed by Australians with dark skin, as if these folk are the only ones doing such things. This misleading propaganda rallies their supporters around key elements of their anti-immigration platform.
Crime Culture Democracy Economics Fresh Government Media News Politics Power Psychologically those individuals who back strongman leaders often feel that they need the protection of bullies. Trump voters in America, the MAGA faithful fall into this category. Why do people back the loudest voice in the room? White supremacists and racists are, when you boil it down, fearful of those they perceive as different from themselves. They want the faces on their streets to comfortably resemble their own. Far right political parties like One Nation use social media to emphasise examples of crimes being committed by Australians with dark skin, as if these folk are the only ones doing such things. This misleading propaganda rallies their supporters around key elements of their anti-immigration platform.
Crime Culture Democracy Economics Fresh Government Media News Politics Power
Psychologically those individuals who back strongman leaders often feel that they need the protection of bullies. Trump voters in America, the MAGA faithful fall into this category. Why do people back the loudest voice in the room? White supremacists and racists are, when you boil it down, fearful of those they perceive as different from themselves. They want the faces on their streets to comfortably resemble their own. Far right political parties like One Nation use social media to emphasise examples of crimes being committed by Australians with dark skin, as if these folk are the only ones doing such things. This misleading propaganda rallies their supporters around key elements of their anti-immigration platform.
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OK, the Trump regime is now live streaming public executions by firing squad. It started with UFC staged fights on the White House lawn and has descended into further barbarism. Did you know that if you criticise ICE on social media and live in the United States, you can expect a visit from DHS to your home? This is fascism up and running in America. ICE continues to shoot and murder American citizens in cold blood around the country. This huge paramilitary force of heavily armed, masked henchmen is spreading fear wherever they go. I wonder for how much longer is the Australian government going to turn a blind eye to the abominable behaviour of its ally? When will Australia say to Trump’s America enough is enough? Will Australia stand up to Trump?
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We are watching a once great democracy falter and begin its fall. Nobody has faith in the American government under President Donald Trump. The re-election of Trump was a very bad sign. The power is in the hands of the Big Tech billionaires and oligarchs. The market is in a blind fever over AI to the tune of trillions of dollars. Greed will destroy America. Here is a statistic for you, half of Nvidia’s employees are worth $25 million or more. The gold rush fever is upon those invested in the AI sector. Trump is recommending self-regulation for this runaway train of an industry. Humanity is crammed up at the back of these carriages and the edge of the cliff is nie.
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A little bird told me, a cygnet perhaps, that the numbskull driving force behind the Sydney Swans Pullman 5 was none other than James Jordan. I wanted to know whose bright idea was it to engage strippers at a prominent Melbourne hotel in season, just a week prior to the AFL Finals. Especially, as your footy team was 2nd on the ladder and in with a real chance to win the 2026 premiership. Remember that the Swans defeated Brisbane by almost 10 goals in the Qualifying Final and that Brisbane went on to claim yet another flag this year. Sydney Swan James Jordon Pullman 5 instigator!
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I was watching something about the Chinese cultural revolution the other day and you know what it reminded me of today? Trump’s culture wars in his second administration. The crazy decisions being made around tariffs, DEI, vaccinations, ICE, cancelling green energy projects, the national guard, stifling free speech, and not releasing the Epstein files are all driven by special interest groups. These are not in the economic interest of the country. The immense cost and wastage of many of these executive and illegal presidential actions being challenged in the courts aren’t doing the nation any favours. The destruction unleashed in the Chinese cultural revolution damaged so many lives and set that country back for decades.
In a land chock full of guns hatred has become a currency. A young American man, from a Mormon family in Utah, who grew up around guns, I mean the family embraced a love of guns, used that weapon of choice to kill another man. This is an American story. Guns and hatred. The culture worships guns. Every movie and video game is packed with automatic weaponry. Why did Tyler Robinson kill Charlie Kirk? It’s pretty bloody obvious. The why was Kirk’s expressed and implicit hatred of non-white and different folk in America.
Charlie Kirk, it appears, was murdered, allegedly, by someone further to the Right, a Groyper. Unfortunately for Donald Trump, who longs to blame those on the Left – the nutjobs with the guns are predominantly on his side. A Groyper is a follower of Nick Fuentes, who is basically a Neo-Nazi in his professed views re-antisemitism and white supremacy. Charlie Kirk was murdered, allegedly, by someone further Right than himself. Trump has normalised racism, white supremacy, antisemitism, belittling women, and demonising Democrats in America.
America voted Donald Trump back into the White House. This tells us Trump supporters are on-board with sex trafficking and abuse. You cannot have your cake and not eat it, in this instance. Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump were best friends for 20 years. Rich men buying and selling young girls and women to flaunt their wealth and power is the cream of American elitism writ large. Americans worship money and elect billionaires to run the country. Everything is about money in this culture. Justice is determined by wealth and status. Power is bought by these very wealthy men.
Changing the name to the Department of War from Defense will cost billions of dollars. The Donald Trump gimmicky regime is busy making marketing moves, whilst the US economy is in the toilet. Toxic masculinity poster child Pete Hegseth is playing with his blocks and toys on the carpet of the Oval Office. “Hey, Uncle Donald, can we rename it the Department of War? Can we, can we? That would be so cool!” Beating his chest and throwing his toy soldiers around in glee, Pete is very excited. Meanwhile, at the desk above him President Trump looks proudly around at the abundance of gold leaf and filigree on the fittings of the Oval Office.
There I am sitting in my living room gazing out the front window. A warm feeling is generated by the return visit of mister and missus duck and their trailing ducklings. Watching the ducks go by, I notice that the brood is down to 5 when it had counted 7 a couple of days ago. I ponder stuff about the meaning of life. Suddenly, a flurry of activity as duck parents race after the next-door cat and the ducklings are now down to 4. Nature, hey? We view it through rose coloured glasses, when in actual fact, if you actually live in it – it is brutal.
You may have noticed the confluence of public rallies purporting to be about anti-immigration in Britain and Australia. These are organised by white supremacist groups and are attacking Labor governments in both nations. The right wing anti-immigration con job conveniently misses the fact that both countries have had 10 years of conservative governments prior to the rise of Labour. Blaming Anthony Albanese or Keir Starmer is a bit rich when it is decade’s old policies driving the bus on immigration. White skinned people wrapping themselves in the national flag makes for paper thin patriotism in my book. The empire and colonial times are over folks, the world has moved on, thankfully.
Up until this moment, Australia has been pretty laid back about Sovereign Citizens and their ridiculous carry on about their rights. Unlike many other countries, where if you went around saying, ‘your laws do not apply to me,’ you would be arrested and locked up. Now, however, one of these so-called ‘freedom fighters’ has killed 2 cops in cold blood and wounded another. On this basis, the party is over folks! No more cutting these people slack. It is time to declare them domestic terrorists and to proscribe them on this basis. There is no place for individuals in this nation going around claiming that they are immune from our laws. You are either with us or against us!
I am sure that the fact that a right wing war criminal, who happens to be the PM of Israel, is unhappy with him is making Anthony Albanese, the Australian PM, shake in his bones. Benjamin Netanyahu, the man who has unleashed a genocidal war machine upon the people of Gaza, desperately wants other European-settler nations to back him in his mass murderous treatment of Palestinians. The old ‘white is always right’ approach to stealing the land of those who were there before the settlers comes to the fore. Netanyahu loved Peter Dutton and sponsored him on a junket tour of Israel prior to Peter’s cataclysmic defeat in the last federal election downunder. Dutton and his Rupert Murdoch News Corp mates ran on a pro-Israel ticket despite the killing of more than 17, 000 Palestinian children and the murder of aid workers and journalists in Gaza by the IDF.
First up, I would like to say that I support the AFL stance against homophobic slurs, as I do its stance against racist insults on the field. Izak Rankine and homophobic slurs in the AFL. The Adelaide Crows AFL footballer is in the crosshairs right now over an alleged homophobic insult made against a Collingwood player on Saturday night last. It is important that these things are called out in light of the intense scrutiny AFL players are under here in Australia. These things are a given in the current 21C climate, as we progress toward a fairer and better society for all. It is interesting, however, to dig a little deeper into why we find ourselves in this situation.
