words matter
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
Do you find reading stuff to be a bit of a drag? Are you always on the look out for an easy hack? The bad news is that if you don’t exercise your brain function you will pay for it later on. Use it or lose it! Technology may seem great and so convenient, but it is dumbing us down and charging us for the service at the same time. Reading utilises different parts of the brain than watching videos. Processing the meaning of words and sentences makes you smarter and not the machine. Ruminating on important stuff via reading essays will make you wiser. Here are 5 good reasons why reading will save your brain.
Canada is applying a digital service’s tax on US companies doing this kind of business in that country. This will raise billions, as they are making it retroactive. Australia needs to copy Canada’s digital service tax to get these companies to pay their fair share of tax downunder. This Canadian initiative will apply to Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and the usual suspects in the digital space. The reason that this is required is that these giant companies avoid paying tax by shifting profits to low tax nations like Ireland, the Cayman and Virgin Islands etc. plus, claiming expenses in higher tax places like Australia and Canada. It is a well known corporate rort exploiting loopholes in the tax systems of nations with legions of tax accountants employed by them.
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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 am sure that the fact that a right wing war criminal, who happens to be the PM of Israel, is unhappy with him is making Anthony Albanese, the Australian PM, shake in his bones. Benjamin Netanyahu, the man who has unleashed a genocidal war machine upon the people of Gaza, desperately wants other European-settler nations to back him in his mass murderous treatment of Palestinians. The old ‘white is always right’ approach to stealing the land of those who were there before the settlers comes to the fore. Netanyahu loved Peter Dutton and sponsored him on a junket tour of Israel prior to Peter’s cataclysmic defeat in the last federal election downunder. Dutton and his Rupert Murdoch News Corp mates ran on a pro-Israel ticket despite the killing of more than 17, 000 Palestinian children and the murder of aid workers and journalists in Gaza by the IDF.
First up, I would like to say that I support the AFL stance against homophobic slurs, as I do its stance against racist insults on the field. Izak Rankine and homophobic slurs in the AFL. The Adelaide Crows AFL footballer is in the crosshairs right now over an alleged homophobic insult made against a Collingwood player on Saturday night last. It is important that these things are called out in light of the intense scrutiny AFL players are under here in Australia. These things are a given in the current 21C climate, as we progress toward a fairer and better society for all. It is interesting, however, to dig a little deeper into why we find ourselves in this situation.
Donald Trump’s attitude to history the same as Epstein cover-up. Downplaying the racist crimes against humanity in American history by banning reference to them in Smithsonian museum exhibits and elsewhere reeks of covering-up the truth. Funny how similar that is when considering Trump’s cover-up of the Jeffrey Epstein files. The paedophile President, who was best friends with America’s most infamous sex trafficker of underage girls, is at it again with the whitewashing of inconvenient truths. Nothing to see here folks! This is despite thousands of victims and hidden cameras in every room at the Epstein mansions. Americans are not the sharpest tools in the shed, obviously.
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.
Australia has a tax problem and I am going to suggest something to remedy that. The ATO is in a hole for some $52 billion, mostly from Australians who owe back taxes. In the most recent financial year that we have records for, some 91 Aussies who earned more than a million dollars paid no tax on that income at all. They managed to do this via creative tax accounting paying professionals hundreds of thousands to make it happen. These folk would rather do this than pay their fair share of tax on their earnings. There is an American flavour to this – the idea that the rich shouldn’t have to pay a lot of tax is promulgated by the wealthy and the GOP in the US. America has a national debt of $37 trillion and this correlates with the reduction of taxes on the wealthy over the last few decades. The top income tax rate was in the 90% range in the 1960s and that has come down to 37% as of now – that is a huge drop. Company taxes have come down substantially, as well, in recent times. Wealthy individuals and corporations are not paying their fair share of tax.
The murder of an Al Jazeera film crew and prominent journalist in Gaza by the IDF in a targeted attack is the final straw. Australia must sanction Israel and cut off all ties with Zionists here and abroad. Enough is enough! The outrageous destruction of an entire city and the genocide of the Palestinians is well beyond the pale. Over 17, 000 children have been killed out of the more than 60, 000 Gazans bombed and shot to death by the IDF. Acts of terrorism are no justification for murder and destruction on such wanton levels. It is time that Australia gets real about what is occurring in Gaza and in the West Bank.
Donald Trump justifying his tariff policy trots out the line that other nations are taking advantage of the United States. That trade imbalances are an unfair attack on America and its people. This Trump claiming victimhood status BS has reached new levels of absurdity. Who buys that the most powerful economic and military might in the world is being taken advantage of? Come on folks, you might not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but really? This poppycock is a smokescreen for the fact that you will be paying another tax on everything you buy, which is imported or uses imported components. Hang on, wasn’t Trump going to make things more affordable? Didn’t he promise that for your vote?
In America, you get the sense that if someone made a fortune from murdering babies and draining their blood and selling it on the internet they would still be celebrated. The billionaire factory keeps churning out these obscenely rich individuals. Jeffrey Epstein was reportedly worth some $600 million at his death. This former math teacher (with no teaching qualifications) accrued an enormous wealth via his philandering, financing, blackmailing, spying, pimping and sex trafficking activities. Epstein was a celebrated billionaire buddy of Donald Trump for many years and they shared a passion for very young pretty girls, according to Trump himself.
America is a strange place with its preference for really old men running the country. The mad, bad grandpa in the White House is a daily bullshitter. Telling lies and posting them on social media is, obviously, a compulsive habit of Donald Trump. It takes a special nation to elect the man who failed spectacularly during the global pandemic. Why would you put a x6 times bankrupt in charge of your country? This reeks of ignorance through disengagement with political and economic realities. Taking a compulsive liar at face value suggests that Americans are not the sharpest tools in the shed.
You know, paying your taxes is pretty important for the country. It may not be popular but tax revenue challenges are vital to the future of this nation. ATO $2 billion scam failure lets down Australia. The ABC’s 4 Corners has exposed huge holes in the ATO automated system to the tune of billions of dollars. Local scammers and criminals have plundered the tax office to an extraordinary scale over recent years. The disappointing nature of this is not only the embarrassing hit to the nation’s coffers but the fact that ATO retrenchments directly contributed to the appalling loss and theft of funds.
