words matter
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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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I see reports that the alleged Bondi Beach gunmen were on ASIO’s radar. Well, further investigative reports tell us that they travelled to the Philippines in November and attended militia training there in the south. This would involve firearms training and learning strategies for shooting people, I would suggest. It seems that our security agencies are not all that we might hope, if the evidence is anything to go by. This in conjunction with gun laws that allowed an individual to have licenses for 6 firearms. What do you need to have this many guns for? It is time to stop treating gun owners with kid gloves and get real about the dangers these deadly weapons pose to the greater community.
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We can bang on about terrorism and causes but it was guns that made this horrific Bondi Beach incident so costly in lives. Why does a gun licensee need 6 weapons? For those that might require reminding, guns facilitate massacres by making it easier to kill people. 16 people are dead from this mass shooting event at the time of writing. It is lax and over generous gun laws which have provided these killers with 6 guns to use in this devastating attack on multiple victims. Nobody needs 6 guns, whatever their circumstances; and the Bondi Beach victims have paid the price.
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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.
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.
Do the dulcet tones of the human voice do it for you? Are you a lover of aural pleasure? The spoken word read well, whilst you drive to work? Listening for both intellectual and sensual gratification? Learning stuff and getting where you are going at the same time? All of these things are possible via audiobooks. For the very first time, sounds of fanfare ladies and gentlemen, my books are available as audiobooks. And they sound pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. Now, you can take the banality out of traffic jams by listening to what I have to say on the really important topics.
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.
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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?
Culture Democracy Fresh Government Politics Power 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?
Culture Democracy Fresh Government Politics Power
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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Trump starts war with Iran in concert with Israel and vandalises the world economy. This irresponsible fool then passes the buck to America’s former allies, demanding they re-open the Strait of Hormuz. Nobody wants to follow the US into this mess of their own making. This is what you get when you elect a convicted felon and multiple bankrupt to the presidency. The stupidity of America is on full display. The greed and selfishness of Americans is up on the world stage for all to see. Listening to a lying, loud mouthed idiot is taking the United States and the world to the brink of collapse and destruction.
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We need an Inquiry into why LPG gas deals have been so financially bad for the nation as a whole. Why do the gas companies pay so little tax and royalties on the huge amounts of gas they export for enormous profits? When elected representatives are deaf to their constituents, you know something is wrong with our democracy. Polling has indicated that 75% of Australians support a 25% export tax on LPG gas. Yet, this federal Labor government has knocked back proposed legislation to make this happen.
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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.
The version of democracy that we have had in the West, of late, has not served a lot of people all that well. The lot of democracy. This is why we have the current phenomenon of Donald Trump plaguing the world right now. Lots of folk in the United States wanted someone to shake things up and deliver something better for them. Be careful what you wish for. Â This is because things can, indeed, get a lot worse. Trump is not the champion of the ordinary American, as he professes at times. Trump is no Bernie Sanders. He is someone who has never served a constituency. Trump only serves himself.
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.
