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Project 2025 and Project Esther are right wing authoritarian blueprints for the disempowerment of progressive influence in the United States of America. Antisemitism has been weaponised by the Far Right as a witch hunt. This is a global campaign supported by the Trump regime and […]
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The last refuge of the incompetent is violence, to paraphrase a line attributed to Isaac Asimov. This truism is particularly apt for Donald J Trump and his regime in the United States. Busy stuffing up the world’s greatest economy, Trump and his cronies are now turning to violence to compensate. Venezuela is their first port of call, amid BS about attacking drug dealers, they are going after this nation’s oil. Venezuela has the world’s largest reserves of thick crude oil. The bully in the White House is picking on a weaker opponent, as bullies always do. You do not see Mister Trump taking on Vladimir Putin and Russia. This is despite the fact that Putin’s Russia is clearly the biggest villain in international terms. No, Trump and his kind pick on the weak, like undocumented immigrants in America.
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Let’s take a peek inside the Aussie racist bubble. This is where those wrapping themselves in the national flag and marching against immigration reside. The thinking goes that if we keep out all those brown skinned people, we will not see horrendous events like the Bondi Beach mass shooting. White folk from, predominantly, Anglo stock do not commit such vile acts, according to their script. Shutting the big bad world out will protect us from the atrocities. Yes, some of our business elite sell weapons to war torn countries and our superannuation funds invest for profit in such stuff the world over, but that is beside the point. Yes, our soldiers have fought in wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East but that is not our concern, either.
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AI is coming for your job. As someone who has just been replaced by an automated program this is real, let me tell you. In light of this it is pertinent to remember that Australia punishes the unemployed economically. It is bipartisan policy of Australian governments to provide below the poverty line welfare payments to the unemployed. This has been going on for decades and is one of the reasons why we have a substantial number of older Australians living in poverty. These folk cannot afford to visit the dentist to get treatment because it is too expensive and dental is not included in Medicare. This in one of the wealthiest nations on earth.
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.
Now, they are calling Zohran Mamdani a communist! This heavily right wing controlled nation has no conception of what that actually even means. America is such a brain washed society. In the land where money talks louder than the cries of millions of people suffering; they elected a convicted felon to be their President. More than 7 million Americans marched in towns and cities across the country in the No King’s rallies. These were peaceful protests against the Trump regime and its inhuman behaviours and blatant corruption. Donald Trump sent out a social media post showing him defecating on the millions of peaceful protesters below him and his warplane. That is the class of the man America chose as its leader.
Most movies I watch these days are disappointing. The Penguin Lessons is a rare exception. Set in Argentina in the 1970s, it tells a story of human pathos worthy of an association with an animal – a penguin in this case. Animals are far more trustworthy, I find, and deserving of greater respect than human beings in the majority of instances. The struggle for power by humans inside nation states is directly responsible for the deaths and damage done to millions of people. Argentina, back in the 1970s was in the grip of a fascist regime following the collapse of the Peronist government. Hyper inflation was rife and a police state existed, with anyone suspected of dissent being disappeared by bad men employed by the regime.
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Here is an interesting fact. Support for One Nation is highest in areas where there are relatively few migrants living. Regional areas and outer suburban electorates, where the vast majority of populations are white bread. Why then do they go on about the issue of high levels of immigration in Australia? It is not actual lived experience. Could it be because they watch Sky News Australia and listen to reactionary shock jocks on the radio? Blaming immigrants, refugees and foreigners, more generally, is a right wing populist saw. Combine this with a general underlying racism inherited down through generations and you probably get what is really going on here. Pauline Hanson has been banging on about her white supremacist views for decades and now has Gina Rinehart to bankroll her hate speech infected perspective downunder.
Culture Economics Fresh Government Politics Power Here is an interesting fact. Support for One Nation is highest in areas where there are relatively few migrants living. Regional areas and outer suburban electorates, where the vast majority of populations are white bread. Why then do they go on about the issue of high levels of immigration in Australia? It is not actual lived experience. Could it be because they watch Sky News Australia and listen to reactionary shock jocks on the radio? Blaming immigrants, refugees and foreigners, more generally, is a right wing populist saw. Combine this with a general underlying racism inherited down through generations and you probably get what is really going on here. Pauline Hanson has been banging on about her white supremacist views for decades and now has Gina Rinehart to bankroll her hate speech infected perspective downunder.
Culture Economics Fresh Government Politics Power
Here is an interesting fact. Support for One Nation is highest in areas where there are relatively few migrants living. Regional areas and outer suburban electorates, where the vast majority of populations are white bread. Why then do they go on about the issue of high levels of immigration in Australia? It is not actual lived experience. Could it be because they watch Sky News Australia and listen to reactionary shock jocks on the radio? Blaming immigrants, refugees and foreigners, more generally, is a right wing populist saw. Combine this with a general underlying racism inherited down through generations and you probably get what is really going on here. Pauline Hanson has been banging on about her white supremacist views for decades and now has Gina Rinehart to bankroll her hate speech infected perspective downunder.
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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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The current shift to authoritarianism in the United States is not about folk with too little, but is being driven by those with too much wealth and power. The thing is that amassing wealth does not make you more amenable to sharing it, rather it has the opposite effect in many. People get very protective about their assets and wish ever greater control over things. A growing number of billionaires are driven by the desire to exert ever more influence and power over masses of people in America. It is disgusting really what we are witnessing in the US at the moment.
The ABC has reported that the Macquarie Group through its Next Payment’s ATMs is profiting from the black market tobacco trade in Australia. This multibillion dollar trade downunder is fuelling gang war slayings and making the nation a much more unsafe place. Macquarie bank raking in black market tobacco profits. Yet another loophole exists for criminals to launder their ill gotten gains in Australia – through private ATM machines. You get the strongest sense that authorities are not serious about stopping such things when they continue to allow flagrant violations by banks.
Those Americans detained by ICE are being housed in private prisons and have already proved to be a half a billion dollar motza for one such corporation running them. America is home of the financialized and privatized everything, where transparency is an outdated concept. No, it is all about profits and returns on investments for companies and their shareholders. The Trump administration is feeding its backers with the promised billions. The disgusting American business of incarceration. ICE is going after mums and school kids too. ICE is not limiting itself to targeting gang members and illegal aliens. No, that is way too restrictive on the numbers to fill these private prisons.
The Sydney Swans took one small step toward recovery in 2025. Yes, the red and white team recorded a victory over Richmond, last year’s wooden spooner. It was a match between the 2024 minor premiers and the bottom side of that season. Of course, a year or 6 months is a long time in AFL footy. It was great to have Harry Cunningham back in the team for the first time in 2025. It was like having an adult in the 18 out on the ground who knew what to do and how to go about his business. Similarly, Callum Mills played his second game of season 2025 and was solid for most of the afternoon.
Ill-disciplined Swans players look frustrated out on the field. This has resulted in a number of incidents and free kicks, which have cost suspensions and goals. An injury hit side like the Sydney Swans can little afford to lose more players to suspension. A losing team like the Swans can ill afford to give away 50m penalties and free kicks which directly cost goals to the opposition. It has been a perfect storm of poor play, lack of effort, weak tackling, loss of contest and ill discipline over the last 12 weeks. This is not the red and white team that the competition has grown to respect over many years for its unstinting application to the job at hand.
Most movies I watch these days are disappointing. The Penguin Lessons is a rare exception. Set in Argentina in the 1970s, it tells a story of human pathos worthy of an association with an animal – a penguin in this case. Animals are far more trustworthy, I find, and deserving of greater respect than human beings in the majority of instances. The struggle for power by humans inside nation states is directly responsible for the deaths and damage done to millions of people. Argentina, back in the 1970s was in the grip of a fascist regime following the collapse of the Peronist government. Hyper inflation was rife and a police state existed, with anyone suspected of dissent being disappeared by bad men employed by the regime.
The Sydney Swans playing group, obviously, lack belief in what they are doing. Whatever head coach Dean Cox has been selling, they aint buying! It has been awful, as a longtime supporter, to watch the crumbling of this once great team. This rendition of the Swans AFL side has almost made it to the pinnacle twice. We all know about the disastrous grand final fails of 2022 and 2024. Now, however, the 2025 Cox coached Swans are sinking and will not even make the finals. So, what has gone so dreadfully wrong after the bright hopes at season beginning of a fresh start under longtime apprentice, the big fella, Dean Cox? Why is the team going backwards at a rate of knots?
Do you know why more people who go to universities, like Harvard and other higher education institutions, support things like diversity and human rights? It is because it is the more intelligent path forward for human beings. It is not smart to hang onto old enmities related to skin colour and religious differences. The consensus among academics and the majority of students at these places of learning is that the progressive political camp has the better ideas for humanity. Nationalism and starting trade wars are not going to be better for the planet. In fact, historically, they increase the likelihood of actual war breaking out, as it did following the introduction of US tariffs in the 1930s. People take stuff being done to them around money personally. It grates on them a great deal. Tariffs are an insult to the nation they are imposed upon.
The Trump 2.0 regime is attacking education in America, along with a host of other things which have made America great over decades and centuries. Right wing extremists have been marshalled into a force for disassembling stuff. Trump and the rise of righteous fools. Harvard University, an institution of higher education which is much older than the United States itself, is being threatened and attacked by the Trump regime. One of Donald Trump’s son couldn’t get into Harvard. I mention this in passing because with Trump this sort of thing is usually personal.
Are the Sydney Swans so disappointing this year because their former coach, John Longmire, jumped from a sinking ship? Did Longmire desert the players in their greatest moment of need? Has Dean Cox, the long serving apprentice, been handed a poisoned chalice? Whatever is at the root of the blight the team are playing like a bunch of hapless losers. Cox has resorted to blaming the players in public, after 10 weeks of sucking up the pain himself, he is dishing some out himself. Questioning the list, as not being up to current AFL standards and questioning their heart. This last damning reality was never something to entertain under Longmire or Paul Roos.
