WordsforWeb
words matter
ON SALE AT APPLE BOOKS &
GOOGLE PLAY BOOKS
AUDIOBOOKS
ACHTUNG
words matter
ON SALE AT APPLE BOOKS &
GOOGLE PLAY BOOKS
AUDIOBOOKS
All those Aussies voting One Nation and who claim they are not racists, your leader Pauline Hanson meets with far right thug, Tommy Robinson. White Australia policy aspirations are in the air, it seems. Blame all your woes upon the immigrant. The cost of living crisis has you looking around for convenient scapegoats. It is the same old story for a nation of dumb and craven folk. 30 years ago most of us knew that people like Pauline Hanson were fringe at best and nasty/dangerous at worst. That a third of some parts of Australia would vote for this racist and xenophobic political party is a sign of the times.
Culture Fresh News Politics Power
A brave effort on the night, which could not be sustained. This sums up the Swans defeat at the hands of a rampant last quarter Dockers at the cauldron that is Optus stadium in Perth. Near on 56, 000 fans filled the stadium for this top of the table clash. Fremantle were goalless for a half and still won handsomely in the end. At the start of the second half Fremantle took control of the centre and won the ball out of there, repeatedly going forward. Too many avenues to goal meant they outscored Sydney in the third quarter, despite the heroics of Charlie Curnow at the other end.
Footy Fresh Sport
Contact sports in the guise of AFL or rugby are coming under increasing scrutiny in regard to head knocks to players. The truth is that modern human beings are not designed to crash and bash into each other at speed. We have, obviously, evolved away from the need to do so in the natural world. Survival does not call for such behaviour these days and that has long been the case. It is, rather, recreational pursuits in the form of team contact sports which have become the unhealthy danger in recent years. The professionalism and commercialism within these sports have motivated players to become bigger, stronger and faster in pursuit of material rewards. The resultant clashes between these modern day gladiators are fuelling an increasing amount of brain injury diseases showing up in past and present players. Is it a situation where caveman sports have no place in a healthy life?
Culture Footy Fresh Health News Sport
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 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.
Now, they are calling Zohran Mamdani a communist! This heavily right wing controlled nation has no conception of what that actually even means. America is such a brain washed society. In the land where money talks louder than the cries of millions of people suffering; they elected a convicted felon to be their President. More than 7 million Americans marched in towns and cities across the country in the No King’s rallies. These were peaceful protests against the Trump regime and its inhuman behaviours and blatant corruption. Donald Trump sent out a social media post showing him defecating on the millions of peaceful protesters below him and his warplane. That is the class of the man America chose as its leader.
Australians were never consulted over AUKUS it was orchestrated by former PM Scott Morrison without going to the people. This $368 billion bad deal for nuclear submarines with the US and Brits makes Australia dependent upon these nations for many decades to come. In a new world order where unreliable allies like Trump’s America prevail it is not a smart move to tie yourself down to another country. Anthony Albanese don’t suck up to Trump over AUKUS, the majority of Aussies do not support you on this. America has shown itself to be way outside of what we in Australia consider to be the acceptable standards of democratic behaviour and human rights.
ON SALE AT APPLE BOOKS &
GOOGLE PLAY BOOKS
AUDIOBOOKS
President Trump, in an obvious act of desperation, is offering every adult American a cheque for $5000 if his Republican party wins the primaries. This would cost some $1.3 trillion in a nation already $40 trillion in debt. Responsible Republican politics? The corrupt nature of populist politics is there for all to see. Now, I know Americans are pretty dumb but Trump has previously failed to honour promises for DOGE dividend cheques and for tariffs he imposed. Compound that with his promise to improve affordability for everyday Americans, which has not been realised thanks to his war with Iran and those many Trump tariffs. Things could not be much worse economically for ordinary Americans right now.
Democracy Economics Fresh Government Media News Politics Power Workers President Trump, in an obvious act of desperation, is offering every adult American a cheque for $5000 if his Republican party wins the primaries. This would cost some $1.3 trillion in a nation already $40 trillion in debt. Responsible Republican politics? The corrupt nature of populist politics is there for all to see. Now, I know Americans are pretty dumb but Trump has previously failed to honour promises for DOGE dividend cheques and for tariffs he imposed. Compound that with his promise to improve affordability for everyday Americans, which has not been realised thanks to his war with Iran and those many Trump tariffs. Things could not be much worse economically for ordinary Americans right now.
Democracy Economics Fresh Government Media News Politics Power Workers
President Trump, in an obvious act of desperation, is offering every adult American a cheque for $5000 if his Republican party wins the primaries. This would cost some $1.3 trillion in a nation already $40 trillion in debt. Responsible Republican politics? The corrupt nature of populist politics is there for all to see. Now, I know Americans are pretty dumb but Trump has previously failed to honour promises for DOGE dividend cheques and for tariffs he imposed. Compound that with his promise to improve affordability for everyday Americans, which has not been realised thanks to his war with Iran and those many Trump tariffs. Things could not be much worse economically for ordinary Americans right now.
Democracy Economics Fresh Government Media News Politics Power Workers
The shocked AFL pundits cried out, nobody picked this!!! The Sydney Swans demolition of the mighty Brisbane Lions in the Qualifying Final at the SCG. A talent depleted Sydney outfit outplayed the premiers for 4 quarters on a Saturday afternoon in the Harbour City. In actual fact, someone did pick this massive upset. No lesser person than the great Buddy Franklin picked this result and publicised it via his YouTube video with Shane Crawford. Buddy, I am reminded, is a great student of the game, according to John Longmire; and he proved it on this occasion.
Culture Footy Fresh News Sport
Much of the news you view downunder is controlled by News Corp, which is owned by a right wing American billionaire. Facebook and Instagram are owned by another right wing billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg. X, formerly Twitter, is owned by yet another American billionaire, Elon Musk. American billionaires control your news feed. Can you perceive a bit of a pattern here, folks? The news you get either by legacy media or social media platforms comes via Trump supporting oligarchs. AI is likewise owned by a bunch of American billionaires, who have kissed the ring of President Trump. Your news and information comes via a filter, a right wing filter, which puts a decided slant on things.
Democracy Fresh Government Media News Politics Power
Did anybody notice that all 4 AFL clubs playing off in the Wildcard round were Melbourne based? In this expanded VFL parading itself as a national competition something had to be done about the lack of success for the glut of Melbournian AFL clubs. Enter the Melbournian mediocrity wildcard weekend, where a midtable result gets rewarded in season 2026. Something like 180, 000 footy fans attended these matches at the MCG. Big clubs like Collingwood and Carlton played off for a final’s spot against perennial also-rans the Western Bulldogs and Melbourne. If you build it they will come, to quote a line from an old sport’s movie.
Footy Fresh News Sport
Let’s get one thing clear, it is those on the far right who invariably turn to violence on the back of their intolerance. In Perth, we see an individual throwing a homemade bomb into the midst of the peaceful Invasion Day march. Thankfully, this device did not go off or we would be having a very different discussion right now. On the Gold Coast a young March for Australia organiser gets into a fight and deliberately lies about the ethnic identity of his opponents. He promotes this disinformation to his online audience, fraudulently claiming that his fisticuff fight was with Middle Eastern Australians. QLD police declare this information to be false and misleading. You cannot trust what comes out of the mouth of racists.
The American pollical system is pretty weird. For instance, where is their Leader of the Opposition? They have 2 major political parties opposing each other at elections, but when one party is in office the other is nowhere to be seen. Right now, President Trump is doing his grandiose thing, but the recently defeated Kamala Harris is a big fat zero on the scene. How can the party not in power be the alternative government in waiting without a leader to rally around? Congress is a massive failure and has been for many years, as many of them don’t represent the people they are supposed to because they have been bought by AIPAC or some other super pac. Republican congress men and women are so much in thrall to President Trump that they have collectively lost their voice.
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.
We live in interesting times, as the old Confucian adage goes. I write this in light of the inspiring speech delivered by Canadian PM Mark Carney at Davos. The Mark Carney middle power speech. His leadership at this time, provokes comparison with that of our own PM Anthony Albanese. Labor has come to power federally downunder on the back of being a small target, as political strategy. This continues to infect this government and its leadership, I find. The elephant in the room is, of course, President Donald J Trump. I wonder for how much longer will Albanese duck and weave in the face of this wrecking ball of the old international order?
The foundation of organised religion is hierarchical authoritarianism. It is a patriarchal construct with an imagined divine father figure at the top. Just below this comes the actual top guy in the particular church. Pope, Patriarch, or Archbishop, as there are different names for this office depending upon the brand of Christianity. In the Evangelical or Baptist churches the local pastor or minister is the head guy for each local church in this more decentralised setup. There may be less hierarchy in these instances but the authority remains with some man ministering to the flock and interpreting the ‘so-called’ word of God. Christians are supporters of authoritarianism.
I have to share with you that I am profoundly disappointed with where the world finds itself. I have been around for six decades and I must say I expected better. The rise of Donald Trump has pulled me into a deep concern for world affairs. This turn toward out and out greed and aggrandisement by the ‘so-called’ leader of the free world upsets me more than I can say. However, it is his complete disrespect for factuality and an adherence to the truth that riles me the most. If you cannot trust your leaders, then we are fucked, to put it plainly. When truth is the victim, faith in any future is lost.
I could have also used the terms selfish, greedy, disinterested and trapped in the past. Look around you at the current crop of right wing governments in the United States and Israel as illustrations of this. The MAGA supporters are, on the whole, focused on what they can get from a Trump administration and turning the clock back to a less integrated multiracial America. You do not get the sense that these folk are interested in what is good for all Americans, no matter their skin colour, gender or sexual preference. This is why right wing voters tend to be more stupid.
If you were asked who sits atop the business/economic pyramid, who would you nominate? If you answered shareholders you would be correct. These investors are the owners of companies and businesses. CEOs and boards do everything in their power to increase the value of their companies. Often enriching themselves in the process, of course, via stock buybacks and such like. Consumers and company employees sit well down on the hierarchical ladder of importance these days. Keeping prices high and wages low are part and parcel of increasing the value of company stock. This economic greed is destroying our lives, as it is completely out of balance.
Trump’s US forces bombed Venezuela and snatched its President. Trump illegally invades a sovereign nation. No declaration of war. No congressional approval. This was one corrupt regime attacking another corrupt regime. This was about oil. Donald Trump is a convicted felon, he is a mob boss running a super power. Trump lives in the past, this old white man, almost an octogenarian, thinks he can turn back the clock. The United States treating Central and South American nations with disdain is something that many thought belonged in the 20C. Latin America has been bedevilled by American corporate greed for centuries. You have heard the term ‘banana republics’, well, this is where it was coined.
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 […]
