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Much of everything is about power. Who wants it? Who has it? What are they doing with it? It’s all about power. Most things you read about or view in the news are really all about power. The global blast zone about the Epstein Files is, it has been revealed, largely to do with the elite and their appetites. Yes, sex is on the menu but merely as an appetiser. Money, sex and power stink up these documents. The unfortunate truth is that the Epstein class rules us all. The game is rigged, as the power elite conspire to win big at our expense. Jeffrey Epstein was a paedophile and sex trafficker.
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The federal Liberal Party returned to their spots, as the beast that reckons females have their place beneath a man. For many years, the Libs argued that it was purely based on merit why they had so few women in positions of power. Pull the other one boys. This sons of Anglo-settler political party sees power as the natural home of men born to rule. Going to the right private school and ascending gracefully via a network of old boys is the Liberal Party way. Sure, the odd woman, who can act like a bloke, is neither here nor there; but leadership is reserved for the right kind of man.
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The latest tranche of the Epstein Files released has revealed how far the tentacles of right wing wealth and power reach across the world. Bill Shorten, the favourite whipping boy of the Australian Right, along with being falsely accused of past union corruption had Clive Palmer spending big on attack ads during the last week of the 2019 federal election. Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former campaign director, is claiming to Jeffrey Epstein that he advised Clive Palmer on this matter. Those on the Right are, as we know, terrible liars, and Epstein and Bannon are both headline acts in this regard. Taking credit for stuff is what these guys do. Whatever the factuality of this matter it reveals the network of wealth and power across the globe.
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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.
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.
Do the dulcet tones of the human voice do it for you? Are you a lover of aural pleasure? The spoken word read well, whilst you drive to work? Listening for both intellectual and sensual gratification? Learning stuff and getting where you are going at the same time? All of these things are possible via audiobooks. For the very first time, sounds of fanfare ladies and gentlemen, my books are available as audiobooks. And they sound pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. Now, you can take the banality out of traffic jams by listening to what I have to say on the really important topics.
Former PM Malcolm Turnbull exposes how gutless the ABC has become in an interview with a breakfast announcer. In response to questions about his criticism of US President Donald Trump Turnbull hit back at the ABC.
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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.
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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.
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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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I saw a headline from The Australian, a News Corp publication, which is an American multinational corporation, asking the question whether the ABC should be worried in light of Donald Trump’s threat to sue the BBC for a billion dollars. This is, of course, all about intimidation. Trump’s BBC billion dollar libel: Will the ABC be next? Trump sues people and organisations to shut them up, as do many powerful people. Intimidating the media is a favourite of the Trump regime, as it seeks to distort and divert attention away from factuality. The Murdoch family, the owners of News Corp, which operates Fox News and Sky News Australia have been a conduit for and supporter of Donald Trump. You could say that they plough the same right wing furrow.
The ABC and its legacy media pack leader, News Corp, are unable to adjust to the new political landscape downunder. The Liberal Party has become an irrelevance to modern metropolitan Australians. However, the mainstream media are stuck in a 2 party adversarial model in their coverage of federal politics nationally. Thus, we have disproportionate amounts of attention being paid to a political movement that the bulk of the population have moved past. Aussie news stuck in adversarial 2 party politics model. The LNP Coalition was trounced at the last federal election because Australians were sick of far right toxic masculinity masquerading as democratically elected representation. The Tony Abbott/Sky News Australia led hard Right faction of the Libs were completely out of step with a younger and more dynamic Australia.
If you wanted proof that the police services are more aligned with right wing white supremacist movements than other protest groups you only had to watch Neo-Nazis demonstrating outside the NSW Parliament. The NSW police service had no problem with this going ahead. You do not see many non-white faces among police anti-riot units when watching news coverage of protests around the genocide in Gaza. Bashing up brown skinned people and those passionate about defending the rights of innocent women and children in Gaza are, obviously, more in line with the priorities of Australian police. Masked men in black saluting in paramilitary fashion whilst protesting against Jews is more the cup of tea of the upper echelons of the NSW police, it seems.
The Liberal Party of Australia is in a civil war between its moderate side, which seeks to regain relevance within a modern Australia, and the far right faction still in the grip of toxic masculinity. Peter Dutton fell at the last federal election, as leader, rejected by the Australian electorate on all fronts. He had run a campaign and his tenure as opposition leader aggressively, in the mode of former short term PM Tony Abbott. Abbott was still pulling the Liberal Party strings, along with his former chief of staff now over at Sky News Australia. Their conservative brand was Trumpist, via its extreme nature, which was always attacking and polarizing. Liberal Party in civil war for control, who will lead them going forward? Currently, Sussan Ley holds the mantle atop the Liberal Party of Australia.
Do the dulcet tones of the human voice do it for you? Are you a lover of aural pleasure? The spoken word read well, whilst you drive to work? Listening for both intellectual and sensual gratification? Learning stuff and getting where you are going at the same time? All of these things are possible via audiobooks. For the very first time, sounds of fanfare ladies and gentlemen, my books are available as audiobooks. And they sound pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. Now, you can take the banality out of traffic jams by listening to what I have to say on the really important topics.
Many Australians are becoming aware that gas companies in Australia pay bugger all tax. This situation is pretty incredulous. Santos has not paid any corporate tax for 10 years, whilst it has generated revenue in excess of $50 billion. In addition, the PRRT does not raise much revenue from LPG in Australia because of the way it is structured.
Americans used to tell the world that they were the best of us. Now, with Donald Trump at the helm, Americans: they are clearly the worst of us. Denying food stamp welfare to the disabled and American children is the latest low point in a chaotic and cruel Trump administration performance. SNAP is going unfunded by the Republicans, as they continue their social Darwinism campaign to eradicate the poor and vulnerable within the United States of America. You can only take greed and not paying your taxes so far without taking the food out of the mouths of the needy.
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.
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.
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.
