words matter
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Day 3 of having no power due to a storm. No service: Profitability is the new power. Yes, this post is written under the duress of being cut off from electricity in my home and work. We live in a time, where being connected to the grid is more essential than ever before. Everything now runs on electricity. My gripe is that despite this clear and present reality, we are still dependent upon outdated and fragile infrastructure. 50 years ago, as I was growing up, I heard about the plans to put the power lines underground. Indeed, this has been achieved in many new suburbs. I do wonder why in this wonderful new world of privatised utilities how so many more established suburbs and towns have not been transformed in this subterranean fashion. Storms wreak havoc to power lines on poles.
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.
We use the terms Right and Left as shorthand for political persuasions. So, what are 8 things that mean you’re right wing? In the current climate, this is likely to indicate that this person shares exclusionary cultural attitudes, which could be categorised as racist, maybe white supremacist, supports the ‘trad wife’ gender positioning, doesn’t like much government regulation, is anti-immigration, and wants to pay as little tax as possible. Whereas those on the left may support socialism, which is more and better government regulation, wants to see greater respect for diversity in all its forms, an expansion of power sharing beyond the white male cohort, and wealth being taxed to create real equity among more of us.
Have you ever counted up all the things in life you now have to pay for? Say, for instance if we compare it to previous generations? Let’s start with music, as most folk have a subscription to listen to music on their phone these days. Back in the day people used to own their copies of recorded music not rented them. Next, how about all your streaming service subscriptions. Yes, range of content is much better now but we are paying for it. It used to be either free to air with ads or pay TV but now companies like Amazon are milking the cow from both ends. The voracious pigs like Jeff Bezos want to make you pay and get advertising revenue. I can see the whole sector going this way.
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Here are 5 reasons why Donald Trump is wrecking the global economy. The US has ruled the roost economically since WW2 and detrimental things that happen there negatively impact upon the world economy too. More than a million jobs have been lost in the US since Trump took over at the beginning of 2025. The labour market has been hit hard from tariffs and DOGE cuts shedding jobs. Things are in the doldrums in America and stagflation may well be on the horizon. Messing with the economy, as the Trump regime has, is having multiple effects.
Crime Defence Democracy Economics Fresh Government News Politics Power Here are 5 reasons why Donald Trump is wrecking the global economy. The US has ruled the roost economically since WW2 and detrimental things that happen there negatively impact upon the world economy too. More than a million jobs have been lost in the US since Trump took over at the beginning of 2025. The labour market has been hit hard from tariffs and DOGE cuts shedding jobs. Things are in the doldrums in America and stagflation may well be on the horizon. Messing with the economy, as the Trump regime has, is having multiple effects.
Crime Defence Democracy Economics Fresh Government News Politics Power
Here are 5 reasons why Donald Trump is wrecking the global economy. The US has ruled the roost economically since WW2 and detrimental things that happen there negatively impact upon the world economy too. More than a million jobs have been lost in the US since Trump took over at the beginning of 2025. The labour market has been hit hard from tariffs and DOGE cuts shedding jobs. Things are in the doldrums in America and stagflation may well be on the horizon. Messing with the economy, as the Trump regime has, is having multiple effects.
Crime Defence Democracy Economics Fresh Government News 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.
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Politicians on the Right have no long term solutions for anything. Short termism infects everything they do and say. Their intentions are all about getting elected via the politics of grievance. Once in power they achieve little and go about milking the system for their own benefit. Donald Trump is a clear example of this, campaigning on high prices and the cost of living under Joe Biden. The US economy is now in far worse shape since he returned to the White House. More than a million jobs have been lost and stagflation is on the horizon for Americans. Trump now has the lowest approval rate in the polls in US history. If you ask many of his voters if they are happy with his handling of the economy their answer would be in the negative.
Crime Culture Democracy Economics Fresh Government Politics
Day 3 of having no power due to a storm. No service: Profitability is the new power. Yes, this post is written under the duress of being cut off from electricity in my home and work. We live in a time, where being connected to the grid is more essential than ever before. Everything now runs on electricity. My gripe is that despite this clear and present reality, we are still dependent upon outdated and fragile infrastructure. 50 years ago, as I was growing up, I heard about the plans to put the power lines underground. Indeed, this has been achieved in many new suburbs. I do wonder why in this wonderful new world of privatised utilities how so many more established suburbs and towns have not been transformed in this subterranean fashion. Storms wreak havoc to power lines on poles.
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We have had 40 years of people in power telling us that the market will take care of everything. That market forces are the most efficient means of regulating all aspects of our lives. This economic mantra has been repeated by those on both sides of the political divide. Admittedly with more fervour by those on the right with a conservative bent. Well, Australians cannot afford housing, with both renters and first home buyers struggling to put a roof over their heads. The market has not looked after the most basic needs of the many in this regard. Governments have failed Australians and seem powerless and hardly inclined to do anything about this state of affairs. The market has failed renters in Australia and is eating up the livelihoods of a third of Australians.
In Australia, we like to tell people that we are not a racist nation. We are the whizz bang wonders of a multicultural society, after all. We judge things like racism by our own experience of such things. Coming from privileged, white backgrounds, our view of the world is rosy and she’ll be apples mate! Too much is made of this kind of thing. Hell, it doesn’t bother me! Nobody talks much about the concept of walking in another man or woman’s shoes. If you haven’t had shopkeepers and bystanders staring at you suspiciously. If you haven’t had women crossing the street to avoid your presence. If you haven’t experienced closed minds judging you when you apply for a job, a loan, or an even break – how the f*** would you know anything about racism in Australia, really.
In Queensland, yet another Indigenous Australian man is shot dead by police. 6 police officers could not restrain an angry young man with a knife without shooting him dead. The training around guns is so bad that we should follow the British example and only have specialist units armed with deadly force. Australian police: Take their guns away to save lives. Police should not be called out to domestic violence situations, as they too often make things much worse. Police officers in states around Australia fail to talk offenders down and disarm them. Their presence actually escalates the problems and results in the unnecessary use of deadly force.
Melbourne, the Nazi capital of Australia, is, also, the booing capital of the AFL. I wonder if the same folk booing at the footy are the same racist scum booing Aboriginal footballers? Victorian footy fans seem to think it is their God given right to boo every moment of a match when things don’t go their way on the field. It is an ugly sound just listening to it on the TV. Umpires and opposition players and fans have to listen to this crap from ungrateful entitled members of the crowd. Either these folks don’t know the rules of the game or just don’t care and loudly complain anyway. The ugly sound of booing during AFL matches is something you don’t hear at other football codes.
This is the world we now live in, where it is considered to be police policy to taser an old lady with dementia. NSW police so tough they taser 95 year old woman in nursing home. You have to ask yourself if there was, perhaps, another way of disarming an old lady with a steak knife? How about throwing a blanket over her arm and taking the knife off her? How about talking her down without the use of physicality in the first place? Why were the police called at all? Isn’t it the responsibility of staff at the nursing home to manage such incidents?
The Swans never stop trying but list management has let the side down. Yes, injuries have cruelled their chances this season so far but a lack of big man talent is pretty bloody obvious. Lance Franklin is seriously out of form and one needs to ask whether this year is one year too long? Has it been a case of Sydney Swans: Marketing over matter? Too many ‘feel good’ stories and not enough hard-nosed substance has been exposed. Paddy McCartin down back has been a vulnerability waiting to happen like a boxer with a glass jaw.
The AFL has a problem with crowds booing players during matches. Collingwood fans boo Buddy Franklin at the MCG. St Kilda fans booed young Jason Horne-Francis the weekend before against Port Adelaide. Booing is mob rule and sends a blunt and loud message to the targeted individual. It is prone to misunderstandings and is not a good look for the game. Sure, those fans who go to the game get passionate about what happens during a match but booing is not the way to express those heightened feelings. The booing of Lance Franklin, a Swan’s champion of the game, echoes the treatment of another Indigenous AFL former champion Adam Goodes.
Knowledge is Power. Beat Sticky Inflation, Recession & High Interest Rates. Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt & Financial Freedom is the new book by Robert Sudha Hamilton. In this collection of his articles on the Australian economy readers can take an investigative journey into the local and global issues facing us all in the current clime. The twenty-first century Western economy is built on the foundation of credit and debt. Credit and debt are intertwined and play a critical role in the functioning of modern economies. Money matters more now than ever before and things happen at breakneck speed in our modern digitised economies.
AFL has been messed with by former players and luminaries of the game to serve up a version their sensibilities are happy with. They wanted to turn the clock back to more high scoring and less ferociously defensive AFL games of the 1980s and 1990s. However, there are always side effects that come with any fixes – just ask the medical/pharmaceutical fraternity. AFL: What s**** me about the game and broadcasts. What we have in season 2023 is the ball carrier walking on water in terms of being protected by the umpires. Holding the ball has just disappeared from the umpire’s rules book it seems. Players must not attempt to fight off the tackle but just hang onto the ball for a ball up to be whistled. The obvious ramifications of this are the spate of dangerous tackles, as the tackler attempts to dislodge the ball and/or incapacitate the ball carrier because he cannot get a free kick for the now obsolete holding the ball rule. Players are getting head injuries and being suspended for dangerous tackles, as a consequence of this change to rule interpretation.
