ARTICLES

white and gray concrete building
5 mins 1 week

The Disgusting American Business Of Incarceration

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 America is home of the financialized and privatized everything, where transparency is an outdated concept.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.

Crime Democracy Economics Fresh Politics
Dead Swan (ca. 1700–1719) Jan
9 mins 3 weeks

Sydney Swans Can Little Afford To Lose

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.

Culture Footy Fresh Sport
black and white penguin walking on sand
6 mins 3 weeks

The Penguin Lessons

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.

Book Review Culture Democracy Fresh Movie Politics

New Content

graffiti on the side of a building reads eat the rich would by they are taste
7 mins 5 dys

Driven By The Desire To Exert Ever More Influence

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.

lowering the company tax rate
6 mins 23 hrs

Lowering The Company Tax Rate

Hey folks, lowering the company tax rate is not going to stimulate investment and increased productivity. For a starter, companies are going to spend money on AI, which is going to mean less jobs and more unemployment. Yes, that can look good on productivity figures because less workers producing more stuff is what that graph is all about. It is not going to be so great for the retrenched workers, however, and don’t give me that crap about them getting re-employed elsewhere. This takes time and the data tells us that these workers never recover the level of income they were previously on. They will just be collateral economic damage on the way to a more productive economy.  Who cares about actual people when there is an economic data graph at stake?

Economics Fresh
lowering the company tax rate
6 mins 23 hrs

Lowering The Company Tax Rate

Hey folks, lowering the company tax rate is not going to stimulate investment and increased productivity. For a starter, companies are going to spend money on AI, which is going to mean less jobs and more unemployment. Yes, that can look good on productivity figures because less workers producing more stuff is what that graph is all about. It is not going to be so great for the retrenched workers, however, and don’t give me that crap about them getting re-employed elsewhere. This takes time and the data tells us that these workers never recover the level of income they were previously on. They will just be collateral economic damage on the way to a more productive economy.  Who cares about actual people when there is an economic data graph at stake?

Economics Fresh

Don't Miss A Thing

Dean Cox Swans AFL coach
9 mins 4 weeks

Sydney Swans So Disappointing This Year

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.

view of brown ruin during daytime
7 mins 1 mth

The Lot Of Democracy

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.  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.

Harvard University banner
5 mins 1 mth

Fighting The Normalization Of Trump

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.

A cricket stadium with empty stands and a clear sky.
6 mins 1 mth

Sydney Swans Home Ground Not Up To AFL Standard

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.

silhouette of man in cave
7 mins 1 mth

Liberal Party Finally Finds A Female Leader

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.

5 mins 2 mths

Another Sydney Swans Side Unprepared

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 […]

man in black jacket holding white and blue banner
7 mins 2 mths

AFL Is Home Of The Cheap Shot

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.

woman in white button up shirt
7 mins 2 mths

Modern Australia No Longer Represented By Libs

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.

tilt shift lens photo of three men in costumes
7 mins 2 mths

Boycott Trump & Don’t Buy American

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.