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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.
Culture Fresh Power Religion
I am, by choice, petless in my life. That is, without a furry companion to share my domicile. For four weeks, however, this changed, when I was invited to house sit on holiday in WA. Thus, the title of this post – Doggie Dementia: My month of pet poop and piss in Perth. It was a family arrangement with a sibling, she and partner were off to Bali, whilst I would hold down the fort. Water a few sheltered pot plants, turn on the irrigation system, take out the trash, something about feeding worms, and look after Misty – the Shih tzu Maltese Terrier Cross.
Dogs Fresh Health Life
Here is an idea for Anthony Albanese to take up for the betterment of Australia. Ban companies that use tax havens. The PM could ensure that the Australian government does not do business with those multinational corporations who do not pay their fair share of tax via the nefarious means of profit shifting to tax havens. Microsoft does it. Meta does it. Amazon does it. Google (Alphabet) does it. News Corp does it. Apple does it. Pepsi too. Lots of them do it, as tax accountancy consultancy firms facilitate this behaviour.
Crime Democracy Economics Fresh 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.
Here are 5 things to know about black teeth. Japanese women used to blacken their teeth and shave off their eyebrows post marriage, prior to the mid nineteenth century. Ohagaru was practiced up until the Meiji era. It is interesting to view this custom through the lens of our current 21C obsession with very white teeth. Some see this as further evidence of the control and denigration of the human rights of Japanese women in their traditional society, whilst others disagree with this conclusion. Early western anthropologists described ohagaru as an abhorrent custom, which disfigured women. The custom was, also, practiced in parts of China by minority groups.
We do not have a progressive national news platform in Australia. We have a rabid right wing News Corp, which controls most of the nation’s newspapers, has a national radio network and produces Sky News Australia and Fox News. Nine Fairfax and Seven West Media can be comfortably described as corporate legacy media on the right of centre, politically speaking. The ABC, our only truly national broadcaster, follows the News Corp lead in what it sets as the daily news agenda. This was not always the case, as a couple of decades ago the ABC contained the most intelligent and passionate journalists working around the nation. How the ABC lost its progressive soul? Is a question well worth asking.
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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It is amazing how often fate treats hubristic behaviour in lives of the rich and famous. It is, as if, a certain point is reached or crossed by the individual and this releases the hounds of hell upon them. Isaac Heeney, the No#1 rated player in the AFL for much of the season and the poster boy for toothpaste smiles has come a cropper in the shady wee hours of Melbourne with a lap dancer. Isaac Heeney: The boy next door is no more. No, the nice lad we once knew has morphed into a dirtbag hero. Strippers or exotic dancers crying sexual assault rings in the ears of the greater public. Victoria police are investigating an alleged sex crime and Heeney is at the centre of it.
Crime Footy Fresh Media News Police Sport It is amazing how often fate treats hubristic behaviour in lives of the rich and famous. It is, as if, a certain point is reached or crossed by the individual and this releases the hounds of hell upon them. Isaac Heeney, the No#1 rated player in the AFL for much of the season and the poster boy for toothpaste smiles has come a cropper in the shady wee hours of Melbourne with a lap dancer. Isaac Heeney: The boy next door is no more. No, the nice lad we once knew has morphed into a dirtbag hero. Strippers or exotic dancers crying sexual assault rings in the ears of the greater public. Victoria police are investigating an alleged sex crime and Heeney is at the centre of it.
Crime Footy Fresh Media News Police Sport
It is amazing how often fate treats hubristic behaviour in lives of the rich and famous. It is, as if, a certain point is reached or crossed by the individual and this releases the hounds of hell upon them. Isaac Heeney, the No#1 rated player in the AFL for much of the season and the poster boy for toothpaste smiles has come a cropper in the shady wee hours of Melbourne with a lap dancer. Isaac Heeney: The boy next door is no more. No, the nice lad we once knew has morphed into a dirtbag hero. Strippers or exotic dancers crying sexual assault rings in the ears of the greater public. Victoria police are investigating an alleged sex crime and Heeney is at the centre of it.
Crime Footy Fresh Media News Police Sport
I am putting my hand up to confess that I am a longtime supporter of the Sydney Swans. What did Confucious say? ‘May you live during interesting times’ or words to that effect, perhaps. Regular readers may be aware of the many posts I have written about the fortunes of the red and white AFL side this year. In an ironic twist, I have been bemoaning the lack of on-field mongrel in this normally squeaky clean team. Hells bells, I did not wish to shake down the thunder from the sky. What I wanted was some more fight and desperation out on the footy field. What we have all got, it appears, is some God awful, alleged sexual assault.
Footy Fresh News Power
I hate to harp on a topic but… The Sydney Swans missing mongrel factor for finals remains a major concern. There I was chatting with a Brisbane Lion’s supporter whilst playing golf and this person was complimenting the Swans on a good season so far. I had to qualify the praise with a reality check because the Swans have struggled to beat top 4 teams this season. The Lions had monstered Sydney very recently in a contest at the Gabba. Things are getting real now, as the AFL finals are mere weeks away. Winning contest and applying physical pressure for 4 quarters are crucial elements if you want to win football finals.
Footy Fresh Sport
The Sydney Swans have taken on the old Muhammad Ali rope-a-dope strategy, it seems. Absorb the opposition’s punishment for most of the match and then come out all guns blazing at the death knock. In this edition, Bloods sacrifice to beat Saints. Unfortunately for Will Edwards and James Rowbottom it was their blood and bone sacrifices on the altar of victory. A terrible injury for the rookie defender Will Edwards has finished his brilliant season prematurely. Rowbottom will likely be back for the finals. The Swans needed this win to hold onto second spot on the AFL ladder and it did not come cheaply.
Footy Sport
The housing crisis we are currently experiencing here in Australia, with rents going through the roof and a shortage of rental stocks, seems to be something terrible and uncharacteristic of the nation but it isn’t. Australia’s housing crisis is not new, in fact, it is a well-trodden path that we appear to traverse quite regularly. History tells us that housing has been a persistent problem upon our fatal shores for as long as white settlement has been around. There have been peaks and troughs but a shortage of housing stock has been the constant over hundreds of years. Therefore, the federal government’s identification of the cause may not be reason enough to hold out hope for any quick solution to this perennial issue.
The ACCC stands for Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Did you note that term ‘Competition’? This body is supposed to ensure that healthy levels of competition exist in markets. Yet, we in Australia have the highest levels of market concentration ever seen in our history. ACCC failings: What have they been doing? Down under in Oz we pay lip service to things to avoid actually doing anything about scams and fudges in the business world. Toothless tigers are our speciality when we establish the various commissions and overseeing bodies. Governments make sure that regulators like the ACCC don’t have the funding or the necessary connections to really achieve what their remit states.
The Sydney Swans AFL team made the finals in 2023. This was an achievement, as for much of the season injuries and form conspired to make this look unlikely. In a hope that AI might have some answers, I asked AI about the Sydney Swans and their season. So, John Longmire, if you get the chance to read this, may there be something of use in what Chat GPT had to say on the matter. Personally, I was a bit impressed, as the copy was not mere waffle on the topic but had a few pertinent points to make. Of course, my question contained the necessary qualifications to hone a reasonable answer.
Ancient royal soothsayers used to predict the future by throwing sticks and knucklebones on the floor and seeing what kind of patterns they formed. Today, we have economists to perform the same kind of thing but with formulars in dusty textbooks to guide them. There are strict rules around economic behaviours and outcomes like inflation. Different parts of the economy are linked, in their minds, like the unemployment rate with the level of inflation. They have been taught by their professors and textbooks to abide by calculations and processes considered to be carved in stone. Economics is fundamentally about human behaviours in the marketplace. The history of humanity tells us that there is only one thing that you can rely on and that is the unreliability of humans. Economists and soothsayers: Skin in the game.
10 years of Liberal/National federal governments stripped the public service of 15, 000 jobs and opened the door for consultants PwC, KPMG, EY, and Deloitte to feast on government contracts to the tune of billions of dollars. Coalition responsible for consulting crisis, as insider mates shuffle jobs between government and the big 4 consultancy/auditing firms to ensure the flow of business and big bucks. Four Corners has revealed the incestuous relationships in the Department of Defence and KPMG via whistleblowers telling their story about what has been going on. Pigs with snouts in the trough comes to mind as an analogy about what has been occurring.
AFL footy is a different game in the current clime. It started with outlawing the bump to protect the head. Players were told if you choose to bump you are likely to be suspended if you make contact with the head. Now, if you tackle too ferociously and bring the player to ground and he hits his head you can get rubbed out for 3 weeks, in many instances. 26 players have been suspended in 2023 for these kinds of things. AFL footy is a different game these days. Looking ahead the evolution of the game is probably morphing into a non-contact sport like soccer. The contact will not survive the civilising of our recreational activities in the future, I bet. There are very real issues emerging in both the men’s and women’s’ games in regard to the wellbeing of the players going forward.
It is time to call in the exterminators, according to the Senate review into consultancy firms preying on governments in Australia. These bloodsucking accountants and management consultants have managed to extract some $20 billion over the last 10 years. This is a direct result of the neoliberal push to privatise governments and their services. The public service has been gutted by a decade of conservative LNP government providing wealth to their mates via outsourcing to these multinational consultancy firms. Government pests: An infestation of accountants sucking the life and wealth out of Australia.
Robodebt was an ideological attack on the welfare system by the Coalition for economic and political gain. When they were unable to find the billions of dollars of claimed to have been rorted, they confabulated them via illegal means. Scott Morrison bragged about being a Robodebt welfare cop in his public announcements as social services minister. If he is not ultimately responsible for a scheme that has cost the lives of the innocent and vulnerable Australians who is. If Scott Morrison is not responsible for the $1.8 billion lost in a settled class action against the government who is.
The Coalition in opposition has voted against legislation designed to halt the massive increases to energy costs for Australian households due to the gas company cartel and its control of that market. The Coalition has, also, voted against the creation of a future fund designed […]
The leaders of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) are calling for unemployment to rise. Yes, the RBA want more Aussies out of work so they can slay the dragon they call inflation. You may not have been aware that for the last 50 years the economists at the RBA have adjudged full employment as an unemployment rate of 4.5%. That equates to around 500, 000 ordinary Australians being out of work. These are the sacrificial bodies and souls, apparently, necessary for the economy to work without high inflation. I have an alternative suggestion. Australians: Is it time to eat the rich?
