WordsforWeb
words matter
ON SALE AT APPLE BOOKS &
GOOGLE PLAY BOOKS
AUDIOBOOKS
ACHTUNG
words matter
ON SALE AT APPLE BOOKS &
GOOGLE PLAY BOOKS
AUDIOBOOKS
If you are disgusted and horrified at Trump and the revelations of the Epstein files. Do your bit: Cancel your Big Tech subscriptions. Bill Gates and Trump are ball’s deep in the sordid world of the late Jeffrey Epstein. Rich men treat the world with disdain and think they can wipe their muck off on us. What can we do about this? What action can we take to send a clear message that this is not good enough behaviour? Ditch your Microsoft subscriptions. Hit them where it will ultimately hurt. Stop spending your money with Big Tech.
Crime Democracy Economics Fresh Government News Politics Power
This statement has been the overwhelming meta narrative running through human political history forever. I studied ancient history for many years and this was true in ancient Greek and Roman civilisations too. The aristocracy has always seen itself as the only thing that really mattered. Only the wealthy matter is top of the bill in Trump’s America right now. The evidence for this is manifest in multiple places. Trump’s big beautiful bill cut taxes for billionaires and slashed spending on the poor. The Trump cabinet is populated by more billionaires than ever seen before. Big Tech oligarchs lined up to kiss the ring of President Donald Trump at his inauguration. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, inserted himself into the Trump administration via DOGE to garner attention on this stage. The messaging is clear – only the wealthy really matter.
Economics Fresh Government Life News Politics Power
A guy throws a bomb into a crowd of thousands of people. Luckily it does not go off, but if it had, it would have killed and maimed possibly hundreds of people. His lawyer successfully argues to have the bomb thrower’s name suppressed on the grounds of protecting his safety. WTF? What kind of country do we live in? Our justice system protects the anonymity of a wilful bomb thrower who wanted to hurt and kill Aboriginal people and managed to disperse a peaceful protest. White Australia worries about the safety of a bomb throwing terrorist. This is what is wrong with our justice system. Protecting perpetrators at the expense of our right to have these scumbags named and shamed. This happened in Perth on Invasion/Australia Day. There has been very little media coverage of this bomb throwing event in the right wing media, which dominates the Australian media landscape. Strange that, perhaps if it wasn’t at a brown skinned gathering it would have been given more attention by the Murdoch press.
Culture Fresh Media Police Politics Power
The Trump regime is attacking boats from Venezuela, blowing them up in international waters. Why this focus on a South American nation? Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves. The US has a great tradition of going after countries with lots of oil and administrations that don’t bend over backwards for them. Donald Trump is a firm believer in fossil fuels. His administration has already reversed much of the good work that was done under Joe Biden, when it came to renewables and the transition away from climate damaging fossil fuels. Trump is the ultimate head in the sand guy, when it comes to global warming.
Contact sports in the guise of AFL or rugby are coming under increasing scrutiny in regard to head knocks to players. The truth is that modern human beings are not designed to crash and bash into each other at speed. We have, obviously, evolved away from the need to do so in the natural world. Survival does not call for such behaviour these days and that has long been the case. It is, rather, recreational pursuits in the form of team contact sports which have become the unhealthy danger in recent years. The professionalism and commercialism within these sports have motivated players to become bigger, stronger and faster in pursuit of material rewards. The resultant clashes between these modern day gladiators are fuelling an increasing amount of brain injury diseases showing up in past and present players. Is it a situation where caveman sports have no place in a healthy life?
Google search and its AI Overview is killing off the last of the legacy media news organisations. Technology has taken the news from print to the internet and now we can watch the death of the news thanks to AI. If you are one of the increasing number of viewers who simply read what the AI Overview or bot tells them in answer to your query the days of news feeds is over. You are now solely in the hands of an automated AI source for your information. Gee, I hope you can put your unstinting trust in that thing!
When America elected Donald Trump as president in 2016 it was, I think, akin to the country shitting its pants. The chaos that resulted from the Trump presidency was embarrassing for the world’s superpower. Trump was a loose cannon with diarrhoea putting institutions and people at risk minute by minute. No one could work with him and the sackings were matched by the quitting of staff and appointees. The dysfunction was everywhere to be seen and things stank to high heaven. 8 years later and it is like America shat its pants and is revelling in it now or the idea of returning to that parlous state anyway. The standards of decency have come down so far among the half of the country supporting a Trump 2.0 they must be enjoying the feel of the filth in their underdaks.
ON SALE AT APPLE BOOKS &
GOOGLE PLAY BOOKS
AUDIOBOOKS
Rupert Murdoch upon being questioned about Fox News and its blatant political bias defended it via these words. “It is not red or blue, it is green.” Green as in greenbacks, the American currency. Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, was telling us that the primary role of his network was to make money by exploiting the market for right wing news. The fact that Rupert Murdoch himself is a rabid supporter of right wing politics is neither here nor there, according to the billionaire businessman. I leave it to you the reader to weigh up the truthfulness of said statements. That news networks, like Fox, have left the anchoring principle of ‘objectivity’ far behind in their pursuit of viewers and advertising revenue is the real shame here. What is the point of having news platforms at all if they only tell one side of the story? It is not journalism but PR. The media and its role in our lives has been diminished by purveyors of it like Rupert Murdoch.
Culture Fresh Media News Politics Power Rupert Murdoch upon being questioned about Fox News and its blatant political bias defended it via these words. “It is not red or blue, it is green.” Green as in greenbacks, the American currency. Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, was telling us that the primary role of his network was to make money by exploiting the market for right wing news. The fact that Rupert Murdoch himself is a rabid supporter of right wing politics is neither here nor there, according to the billionaire businessman. I leave it to you the reader to weigh up the truthfulness of said statements. That news networks, like Fox, have left the anchoring principle of ‘objectivity’ far behind in their pursuit of viewers and advertising revenue is the real shame here. What is the point of having news platforms at all if they only tell one side of the story? It is not journalism but PR. The media and its role in our lives has been diminished by purveyors of it like Rupert Murdoch.
Culture Fresh Media News Politics Power
Rupert Murdoch upon being questioned about Fox News and its blatant political bias defended it via these words. “It is not red or blue, it is green.” Green as in greenbacks, the American currency. Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, was telling us that the primary role of his network was to make money by exploiting the market for right wing news. The fact that Rupert Murdoch himself is a rabid supporter of right wing politics is neither here nor there, according to the billionaire businessman. I leave it to you the reader to weigh up the truthfulness of said statements. That news networks, like Fox, have left the anchoring principle of ‘objectivity’ far behind in their pursuit of viewers and advertising revenue is the real shame here. What is the point of having news platforms at all if they only tell one side of the story? It is not journalism but PR. The media and its role in our lives has been diminished by purveyors of it like Rupert Murdoch.
Culture Fresh Media News Politics Power
There is a direct line through history from raiders and enslavers to right wing politics today. The fundamental belief underpinning all of these positions is that it is OK to enrich yourself at the expense of others. Further to that, the primary focus is always on your own desires and bugger the greater community around you. The Vikings are most famous as raiders, who came to other places to slaughter and pillage. They would enslave their most saleable surviving victims to enrich themselves, even more. This attitude to life and getting ahead still exists in a tempered form for right wing folk. The belief that it is a dog eat dog world and that only the strong will thrive flourishes in far right politics today.
Culture Democracy Fresh Government Media Politics Power
We live in a segmented reality, where companies operate in their own little economic spheres. Sure, they are aware of markets and modify behaviours to some degree to take best advantage of these. However, these corporations do not act with any holistic responsibility to the greater good. AI is a tacit technological arms race in the competitive business world. Artificial Intelligence is fundamentally about replacing human beings with a cheaper and better machine alternative. The obvious economic downside of this is that when hundreds of millions of human jobs are replaced by AI, who is going to buy the products and services these companies produce? Many seemingly intelligent people know this but we do not see any slowing down of the AI revolution. This is due to the dangers of our disconnected world, where competing companies are only concerned with their own fortunes.
Culture Democracy Economics Fresh Life News Politics Power
All those Aussies voting One Nation and who claim they are not racists, your leader Pauline Hanson meets with far right thug, Tommy Robinson. White Australia policy aspirations are in the air, it seems. Blame all your woes upon the immigrant. The cost of living crisis has you looking around for convenient scapegoats. It is the same old story for a nation of dumb and craven folk. 30 years ago most of us knew that people like Pauline Hanson were fringe at best and nasty/dangerous at worst. That a third of some parts of Australia would vote for this racist and xenophobic political party is a sign of the times.
Culture Fresh News Politics Power
America is a strange place with its preference for really old men running the country. The mad, bad grandpa in the White House is a daily bullshitter. Telling lies and posting them on social media is, obviously, a compulsive habit of Donald Trump. It takes a special nation to elect the man who failed spectacularly during the global pandemic. Why would you put a x6 times bankrupt in charge of your country? This reeks of ignorance through disengagement with political and economic realities. Taking a compulsive liar at face value suggests that Americans are not the sharpest tools in the shed.
You know, paying your taxes is pretty important for the country. It may not be popular but tax revenue challenges are vital to the future of this nation. ATO $2 billion scam failure lets down Australia. The ABC’s 4 Corners has exposed huge holes in the ATO automated system to the tune of billions of dollars. Local scammers and criminals have plundered the tax office to an extraordinary scale over recent years. The disappointing nature of this is not only the embarrassing hit to the nation’s coffers but the fact that ATO retrenchments directly contributed to the appalling loss and theft of funds.
In Gaza, Israel is actively starving Palestinians to death. This follows bombing the shit out of the place and killing in excess of 50, 000 human beings. Meanwhile, in Australia the politicians are worrying about antisemitism and a few criminal acts of property destruction. Whilst in America, it is all about a sex scandal involving the exploitation of underage girls by Jeffrey Epstein, who has been dead for 6 years. This is the world we live in. Protesting acts of genocide is being made illegal by the efforts of those working the system to the advantage of their influential friends.
Americans have a funny idea about democracy if their behaviour around voting is any indication. If you look at the current situation and at the history of voting in the United States there is a greater push to keep people from voting than any encouragement for them to do so. More eligible American adults didn’t vote in the last presidential election than voted for either main party by about 20 million voters. The prevention of voting in the US. American men in power prevented women getting the vote unilaterally in the US for around a century. Of course, racist America stopped black women from voting until the civil rights movement in the middle of the 20C. New Zealand gave women the vote in 1893. Russia in 1917.
Since the 1980s the way big companies in the United States do business has poisoned the well for the rest of us. The sick American corporate culture ruthlessly focusses on shareholder returns in return for enriching the executive to obscene levels. Stock options and company stock buybacks have become key ingredients in the billionaire factory churning out the super wealthy. This manipulation of the fabric of how companies do business has come at the expense of other stake holders like employees, consumers and the nations where these corporations do business. Downsizing, outsourcing, and profit shifting are all means by which companies have increased profits, reduced costs and avoided paying their fair share of tax. At the same time, these actions have reduced community engagement and care in return for outlandish levels of wealth for a few at the expense of the many.
The AFL has created a game that human bodies cannot actually cope with. How do we know this? Take a look at the number of soft tissue and knee injuries on the playing lists of AFL clubs. AFL a game unfit for human bodies. The evolution of the game has AFL players running at top speed, suddenly stopping, turning, twisting and being tackled. No bloody wonder that human joints and muscles cannot cope with the stress being applied to them under this kind of duress week in and week out. The physical conditioning experts employed by the clubs would know this but their well paid jobs encourage them to stay silent on this issue.
In the land of billionaires and oligarchs did the wealthy really need another tax cut? You know at the beginning of the 1960s the top tax rate in the US was up there around 90%. It is now all the way down to 37%. Think about that for a few moments, a reduction close to 60%. That is a heck of a lot. Americans have been rewarding themselves at the top for 60 years with huge reductions in tax. Now, under Trump they are coming after social security and Medicaid for the poor and sick. You know where this is going to end, Social Darwinism and killing off the weak and the needy.
Something close to two thirds of surveyed Americans disapprove of the big bill that passed the senate. This bill takes from the poor and gives to the super rich by slashing Medicaid to fund tax cuts for billionaires. The US Republican lawmakers lack courage in the face of mob boss Trump and his MAGA machine. There is no place for individuals to stand up against stuff on behalf of their constituents in US politics anymore – the game has been rigged. Trump has corrupted the democratic process to deliver him the votes and the American people are the losers.
Canada is applying a digital service’s tax on US companies doing this kind of business in that country. This will raise billions, as they are making it retroactive. Australia needs to copy Canada’s digital service tax to get these companies to pay their fair share of tax downunder. This Canadian initiative will apply to Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and the usual suspects in the digital space. The reason that this is required is that these giant companies avoid paying tax by shifting profits to low tax nations like Ireland, the Cayman and Virgin Islands etc. plus, claiming expenses in higher tax places like Australia and Canada. It is a well known corporate rort exploiting loopholes in the tax systems of nations with legions of tax accountants employed by them.
Australians were never consulted over AUKUS it was orchestrated by former PM Scott Morrison without going to the people. This $368 billion bad deal for nuclear submarines with the US and Brits makes Australia dependent upon these nations for many decades to come. In a new world order where unreliable allies like Trump’s America prevail it is not a smart move to tie yourself down to another country. Anthony Albanese don’t suck up to Trump over AUKUS, the majority of Aussies do not support you on this. America has shown itself to be way outside of what we in Australia consider to be the acceptable standards of democratic behaviour and human rights.
