words matter
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In the United States, you have an actual crook who is president, a convicted felon, Donald Trump. This travesty of a human being is inventing bogus charges to indict those who have challenged his behaviour in the past. The dichotomies of now, sees a real crook using the US DOJ to pursue individuals who were doing their job in prosecuting or investigating a career liar and con man – Donald Trump. The truth is probably the most serious collateral damage in this whole sordid situation. Once the power elite lose all contact with the bedrock of factuality the entire nation is in major trouble. Arrogant bad liars taking the stand at senate hearings will come back and bite us all in the end.
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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!
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Christianity, like most religions, is a useful fiction to have in the background if you are interested in power. Here you have a collection of arcane stories purporting to be in someways associated with the word of God. People in power, in many places, often, refer to their own faith, as if it is a one size fits all stamp of righteous authority. That their belief in the God of the religion, shared by the dominant cohort, conveys some moral probity within their quest for power. Card carrying Christians wave their bonafides in the face of all and sundry who may question their ascendancy. The illusory nature of religion can be bent into all sorts of shapes.
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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 As someone who has just been replaced by an automated program this is real, let me tell you.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.
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.
There are those that blog and those that don’t. I would posit that there are many more non-bloggers out there than the dedicated and diligent keyboard artists. Here are 5 top reasons to blog. Writing is for many an undiscovered joy and a challenging chore, when they are forced to record their thoughts on screen in print. Many owners of websites outsource all the boring bits to poorly paid writers, who are, often, located in the third world. Now, of course AI can do all that too. Communication via the written word is, somehow, seen as arcane and not worth the effort. Which means that we have a lot of bad writing and poorly constructed sentences adorning the pages of the world wide web. However, despite this, blogging is the new medium for the essay.
It seemingly began with groups of Christians claiming that they were under attack from a progressive liberal America. They wanted the right to discriminate against individuals on the basis of their sexual preference. All these human rights coming into law, often at the behest of the United Nations and their treaties, were, apparently, threatening the basis of fundamental religious instruction in schools and churches. Now, we are seeing the Christian march to power in America. They have their immoral leader Donald J Trump promising them a new land with authoritarian laws amended to fit their way of life.
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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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Nick McKenzie and The Age have revealed more corrupt and incompetent government behaviour from Morrison’s Coalition. Home Affairs during the Coalition’s recent time in office were paying massive amounts of money to companies running the offshore detention facilities in places like Manus Island. It has now been revealed that these corporations and their directors were involved in bribery of foreign governments and drug and arms running. Peter Dutton was the Home Affairs Minister for much of this time. The amounts of money involved in these contracts were in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Billions being spent on what were really political beat ups and that money was going to highly questionable people and their companies.
Australia is famous for the generous deals it cuts the fossil fuel industry. The lack of taxation derived from miners and gas companies making huge profits extracting and selling our resources is becoming infamous globally. I think it is time to investigate politicians dealing with the fossil fuel industry. Have any of our investigative journalists really dug deep into the financial affairs of the state and federal ministers involved in cutting these generous deals. Is it incompetence or something more sinister? Why would sane members of parliament responsible for Australia’s resources fail to capitalise on their worth for their constituents? Is this a dirty business at its core?
Unfortunately, many in the world still look to America as the leading example of humanity in the current era. The superpower in military and economic terms remains a showcase for much of the world. In 2024, however, we have reached a nadir via Trump and his influence on American political and cultural life. The anti-elite mood of that nation now glorifies what is stupid, nasty, and brutish about the USA. Fascism is making a cyclical return to the political spectrum via the GOP in its current form. White supremacy and the shadow of America’s slaver past seems to be infecting the future of this once great country. Looking to America is fraught with illustrations of what is worst about humanity.
Supposedly we live in an age defined economically, where the dollar worth of everything matters most. Why then are our politicians and their strategists forever focusing attention upon cultural stuff? The war on woke, the attacks on LGBTQI folk, and the endless anti-elite ethos. Every politician and political party wants to stand with the ordinary voter, apparently. Finger pointing at those categorised as elite reinvokes the old class warfare it seems. We the people vs those individuals too superior to represent our interests. These are all manipulations and part and parcel of the politics of grievance.
The expression feet of clay is meant to indicate the flawed earthly nature of man. Donald J Trump has always been a most unlikely candidate for saviour and champion of any group. White America and Christian Nationalists have got behind the former president as their guy they are hoping to put back in the White House. Trump is facing multiple criminal and civil indictments in courts across the country. Only the most partisan and cultish among his supporters could fail to recognise the writing on the wall when it comes to Trump’s likely fate. It tells us that America’s orange Jesus has clay feet.
In Australia, we live in one of the most concentrated corporate markets in the world. In every sector duopolies and oligopolies control markets to the detriment of competition and consumers. Surely it’s time to stop all  mergers. Mergers benefit companies and shareholders at the expense of the market. Productivity is not improved via this concentration of corporate control over markets. This can be observed via the evidence, as the concentration of market power into the hands of fewer businesses has accompanied years of falling productivity. If companies don’t need to compete for market share they do not innovate and improve productivity rates.
America has made its bed and now it has to lie in it. A while ago, expert political strategists worked out that voters engage more fully with the democratic electoral system on an emotive level than a mere rational one. Therefore, they made negative attack ads which painted their candidate’s political opponents as demons. These campaign strategists formulated speeches and oped content full of emotive finger pointing about stuff upsetting sections of the electorate. In a culture of complaint they developed the politics of grievance. This has now culminated with presidential candidate Trump, who lights the bonfire of hate every time he opens his mouth to speak.
Australians spend most of their money and time buying and selling property to the tune of $400 billion every year. That is not making anything new or manufacturing useful things for the world. The Great Australian Dream is home ownership and that has become a very expensive obsession for most of us. What it does do is make our banks very rich and provides real estate agents and state governments with their fair share too. Australia wasting its money and future on housing market is a troubling indicator of where we are as a nation.
They say that you can tell a lot about a nation/culture by the kind of movies that comes out of that country. Well, American movies are by and large full of guns and really stupid characters doing dumb things. Films and popular culture are a mirror held up to that nation. No wonder democracy is reputedly on its last legs in the US of A. The greater mass of American movies are dire tripe. The screenplays of many of them must have been written by 13 year old’s with foetal alcohol syndrome (with apologies to 13 YO’s). The plot, characterisation, and dialogue are so putrid that turning them off is the only option. American movies celebrating guns says a lot about the culture. Amazon, as a streaming service, must have the worst selection of American films I have witnessed in a long time. Dumb and dumber must be their mission statement or cheap and cheaper perhaps.
The state supreme court in Colorado has declared Donald J Trump unfit to be on the ballot for the 2024 presidential race in that state. Many of us who have been following the Trump vs democracy saga would say – about bloody time! How can you have a candidate vying for the presidency who continually casts doubt upon the veracity of the electoral system? A man who promulgates ‘the big lie’ that he was robbed of victory in the 2020 election. This is despite numerous private and judicial enquiries into election fraud finding nothing that merits this erroneous belief. Even the investigator paid by Trump’s own legal team has come out and said he found nothing.
