words matter
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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.
Crime Fresh Media Police Power
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.
Crime Fresh Government Police Religion
How the ‘Gig economy’ feeds on its workers to profit its corporate masters and their shareholders? Technology has facilitated more services and cheaper rates for consumers. Delivery drivers and riders provide their own assets, like vehicle and smart phone, to make those deliveries possible. These, often, expensive assets depreciate through use and the gig worker must bear the cost and not the parent platform. The risks are all with the worker and not the platforms. Indeed, Uber has a pathway where drivers, often, end up paying for the shopping with their own money, which is to be reimbursed days later. If the worker was being paid extra for these financially onerous uses of their assets it might be OK, but they are not.
Economics Fresh News Power Workers
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.
Do you find reading stuff to be a bit of a drag? Are you always on the look out for an easy hack? The bad news is that if you don’t exercise your brain function you will pay for it later on. Use it or lose it! Technology may seem great and so convenient, but it is dumbing us down and charging us for the service at the same time. Reading utilises different parts of the brain than watching videos. Processing the meaning of words and sentences makes you smarter and not the machine. Ruminating on important stuff via reading essays will make you wiser. Here are 5 good reasons why reading will save your brain.
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 […]
Some of us never quite grow up, it seems. Guns are not big boy toys. Why do individuals who live in the suburbs need fire arms? Recreational pursuits, they say. Well, these are not toys to be played with, they are, in fact, deadly weapons which make killing human beings easy. A fire arm gets stolen every 4 hours in Australia, according to the latest research. We are putting ourselves at risk if we place the recreational desires of a few above the safety of us all. We are not talking about farmers and people who live in the bush here, as the vast majority of guns are owned by Australians living in cities.
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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.
Culture Economics Fresh Government Politics Power
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.
Democracy Economics Fresh Government News 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
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.
Democracy Fresh Government Politics Power Workers
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.
Who is going to buy all the wonderful stuff if lots of folk can no longer afford to? Universal Basic Income: Its time has come.
The SCG is a disgrace in terms of the playing surface and dangerous for AFL players plying their trade on it. Sydney Swans home ground not up to AFL standard. Indeed, it mirrors the disappointing season the Swans are currently having in 2025. A concert was held on the playing surface some time ago and the ground has never recovered from the butchery engendered then upon it. Last night, once again, AFL players from both teams could not keep their feet and it is only a matter of time before a serious injury will entail. Perhaps, these have already occurred.
It only took them 81 years, but in Australia, the federal Liberal Party finally found a female leader. Of course, they only make these calls on merit and getting pantsed at the last federal election had nothing to do with it. I find in Australia, the Anglo-settler psyche only turns to women as a last resort and there are numerous examples of this over the recent journey. This is all about power and traditional blokes believe that they are best served by one of them holding the reins, so to speak. Peter Dutton made a meal of it but just about every recent Liberal leader has been turfed out of office by their own electorate in recent years.
Dean Cox presents yet another Sydney Swans side unprepared to play AFL football. The team that fronted up against Essendon were uncompetitive and disorganised. Very soon they were 8 goals down and 3 of them were due to ill discipline and 50m penalties, which resulted […]
Willi Rioli is in trouble for carrying things too far in the internecine trench warfare that goes on during AFL matches. The AFL is the home of the cheap shot. Unsportsmanlike behaviour is rife in games with players illegally slapping and bumping usually from behind. This stuff must come from the coaches and is part of some sort of psychological warfare to gain an edge on the day over their opponents. The unexpected hit from behind and trash talk are marring our great game. It is not a good look; and in Willi Rioli’s case things have gotten out of hand.
The Liberal Party of Australia have won no metropolitan seats in Adelaide and almost none in Sydney and Melbourne. Where does the greater part of the Oz population reside? In the cities, of course. Modern Australia no longer represented by Libs. This once popular political party is no longer representative of the modern Australia and Australians. Peter Dutton led the Libs further Right and has taken them into the smaller territory of that extremist category within the political sphere. It features a male dominated, Anglo-settler white is right, ethos which regularly attacks multiculturalism, refugees, LGBTQI folk, renewables and climate change, and ‘woke’ – which is really an attack on smart women and diversity. Inspired by Trump in the US, the Libs want to turn the clock back to an Australia where patriarchy and white men rule the roost and others know their place at the back of the queue.
Unless you are dumb and disengaged you would be worried about where the world is heading. The US is in the hands of a madman who fluctuates between acts of stupidity and evil. Global trade is being threatened and thus the interconnectedness of humanity is going backwards. What can you do about such matters? Boycott Trump and don’t buy American. Send a message through your actions as a member of the global community. The one thing that clearly impacts men and regimes like Trump’s is financial pressure. You are not alone in your rejection of these economic policies and concerns about what a trade war will do to the world.
Leadership on the national stage is no easy thing. In a largely two party political system it is not a dualist situation like that between good and evil. More is the pity, in the opinion of some. No, rather there are similarities and mutual understandings in Australia between the Labor and Liberal Parties. Timid or terrible: Australia’s choice is the description given to the current selection of leadership candidates on display. The former is, oh so careful, not to create a political rod for his own back by any moves too willing to be offensive to anyone. The latter refers to the opposition candidate’s proclivity for alarmist rhetoric about everything under the sun. He is quick to condemn those falling outside of the propertied white male category.
