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Category Archives: Politics

Is Australian democracy at risk from an authoritarian leader?

Continued from Authoritarianism is taking over the world. Will it snare Australia?

To recap, in Part 1 I wrote that:

In recent years, we have witnessed three individual politicians who have used the techniques of the authoritarian leader, fear, negativity, misinformation and lies. I refer to Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and the now opposition leader Peter Dutton. All have used the methods of an authoritarian ruler.

The best way to guard against a takeover by a popular authoritarian is to create the best democracy possible.

Democracy is a complex political system that involves various components. Still, at its core, it is about individuals with similar beliefs and values collaborating to create a set of principles that guide their actions and decisions. It is a process that requires active participation and engagement from all members of the community, with a focus on inclusivity and equality. Democracy is a mechanism for achieving consensus and promoting the common good through dialogue, debate, and compromise.

They then become the foundation of political parties. These ideologies pull in different directions in a quest for majority approval by the people. It is a far from perfect system that has variations all around the world. It is elastically flexible, unpredictable and, at its worst, violent and highly combative.

The system of Australian Democracy, when it functions optimally, is characterised by a sense of dignity and constructive engagement. It effectively serves society’s needs and can accommodate a broad range of ideas and perspectives, regardless of their extreme. However, it is worth noting that the Australian democratic system is not perfect; it is far from ideal.

What’s wrong with our Democracy?

In their article The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule, Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz contend that:

“Undemocratic leaders and their supporters in democratic environments have worked to reshape or manipulate political systems, in part by playing on voters’ fears of change in their way of life and by highlighting the very real failures of their predecessors. They have promoted the idea that, once in power, their responsibility is only to their own demographic or partisan base, disregarding other interests and segments of society and warping the institutions in their care so as to prolong their rule. Along the way, the democratic principles of pluralism, equality, and accountability – as well as basic stewardship and public service – have been lost, endangering the rights and well-being of all residents.”

In fact, it can sometimes be cumbersome and unwieldy, and there have been instances where it has failed to meet the expectations of its constituents. Despite its imperfections, the Australian democratic system remains an important and valuable institution that plays a critical role in shaping the nation’s future.

Common to most Western Democracies (without anything better), it has a capitalistic economic system. One that is badly in need of an overhaul.

In Australia, the right to vote is the gift that democracy gives. People are free to vote for whichever party (or individual) they support, but overriding this is the fact that people cannot possibly believe in democracy if, at the same time, they think their party is the only one that should ever win.

A clear indication of an Australian democracy in decline is that people are giving up this voting gift, literally saying: “A pox on both your houses”.

The 2022 election had the lowest turnout for a century:

“For the first time since compulsory voting was introduced for the 1925 federal election, turnout fell below 90%.”

Our political system is in crisis because our solicitations need to speak with clarity on issues that concern people, particularly women.

I would argue that an enlightened democracy should give the people a sense of purposeful participation. It should forever be open to regular improvement in its methodology and implementation. Its constitutional framework should be exposed to periodical revision, renewal, compromise, and bipartisanship when the common good cries out.

But above all, its function should be that regardless of ideology, the common good should be served first and foremost. A typical good, healthy democracy serves the collective from the ground up rather than a top-down democracy that exists to serve secular interests.

Every facet of society, including the democratic process, needs constant and thoughtful renewal and change. Otherwise, we become so trapped in the longevity of sameness that we never see better ways of doing things.

Unfortunately, Australia’s version of the democratic process has none inherent in it and is currently sinking into a quagmire of American Tea Party hypotheses.

I am not a political scientist, historian or a trained journalist. I write this as a disgruntled and concerned citizen because it seems that the Australian democracy I grew up with no longer exists.

The demise of Australian democracy originates in a monumental shift by both major parties to the right, with the result that neither seems to know exactly what they stand for.

They are now tainted with sameness.

The Liberal Party has been replaced by neo-conservatism, authoritarian leadership.

Labor has lost its zeal for change and how to go about it.

We have ended up with an individual identity against a collective one, and old-style Liberalism no longer has a voice. There is little or no difference between the Liberals and the National Party, who seem irrelevant as a political force. Conservatives have gone down the path of inequality with a born-to-rule mentality that favours the rich.

They still carry the “lifters” and “leaners” tags so popular with the Abbott era.

“It is a distillation of the idea that there is no such thing as society, that we are only responsible for our own circumstances”. (Tim Dunlop, The Drum, 4/7/2014).

Labor seems unable to walk over the shadow of its past, a time when it did great things to advance the nation.

The Labor Party needs to rid its party of outdated objectives and invest in a social, philosophical common good. And recognise that the elimination of growing inequality is a worthwhile pursuit.

To do nothing is to allow the authoritarian his or her way. I don’t wish to sound alarmist, but…

In recent years, we have witnessed three individual politicians who have used the techniques of the authoritarian leader, fear, negativity, misinformation and lies. I refer to Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and the now opposition leader Peter Dutton. All have used the methods of an authoritarian ruler.

Next week: Ideas for change.

My thought for the day

We dislike and resist change in the foolish assumption that we can make permanent that which makes us feel secure. Yet change is, in fact, part of the very fabric of our existence.

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Conscious and Unconscionable: The Starving of Gaza

The starvation regime continues unabated as Israel continues its campaign in the Gaza Strip. One of the six provisional measures ordered by the International Court Justice entailed taking “immediate and effective measures” to protect the Palestinian populace in the Gaza Strip from risk of genocide by ensuring the supply of humanitarian assistance and basic services.

In its case against Israel, South Africa argued, citing various grounds, that Israel’s purposeful denial of humanitarian aid to Palestinians could fall within the UN Genocide Convention as “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

A month has elapsed since the ICJ order, after which Israel was meant to report back on compliance. But, as Amnesty International reports, Israel continues “to disregard its obligation as the occupying power to ensure the basic needs of Palestinians in Gaza are met.”

The organisation’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, Heba Morayef, gives a lashing summary of that conduct. “Not only has Israel created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, but it is also displaying callous indifference to the fate of Gaza’s population by creating conditions which the ICJ has said placed them at imminent risk of genocide.” Israel, Morayef continues to state, had “woefully failed to provide for Gazans’ basic needs” and had “been blocking and impeding the passage of sufficient aid into the Gaza strip, in particular to the north which is virtually inaccessible, in a clear show of contempt for the ICJ ruling and in flagrant violation of its obligation to prevent genocide.”

The humanitarian accounting on this score is grim. Since the ICJ order, the number of aid trucks entering Gaza has precipitously declined. Within three weeks, it had fallen by a third: an average of 146 a day were coming in three weeks prior; afterwards, the numbers had fallen to about 105. Prior to the October 7 assault by Hamas, approximately 500 trucks were entering the strip on a daily basis.

The criminally paltry aid to the besieged Palestinians is even too much for some Israeli protest groups which have formed with one single issue in mind: preventing any aid from being sent into Gaza. As a result, closures have taken place at Kerem Shalom due to protests and clashes with security forces.

Their support base may seem to be small and peppered by affiliates from the Israeli Religious Zionism party of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, but an Israeli Democracy Institute poll conducted in February found that 68% of Jewish respondents opposed the transfer of humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza. Rachel Touitou of Tzav 9, a group formed in December with that express purpose in mind, stated her reasoning as such: “You cannot expect the country to fight its enemy and feed it at the same time.”

Hardly subtle, but usefully illustrative of the attitude best reflected by the blood curdling words of Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, who declared during the campaign that his country’s armed forces were “fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly” in depriving them of electricity, food and fuel.

In December 2023, the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding, among other things, that the warring parties “allow and facilitate the use of all available routes to and throughout the entire Gaza Strip, including border crossings.” Direct routes were also to be prioritised. To date, Israel has refused to permit aid through other crossings.

In February, the Global Nutrition Cluster reported that “the nutrition situation of women and children in Gaza is worsening everywhere, but especially in Northern Gaza where 1 in 6 children are acutely malnourished and an estimated 3% face the most severe form of wasting and require immediate treatment.”

The organisation’s report makes ugly reading. Over 90% of children between 6 to 23 months along with pregnant and breastfeeding women face “severe food poverty”, with the food supplied being “of the lowest nutritional value and from two or fewer food groups.” At least 90% of children under the age of 5 are burdened with one or more infectious diseases, while 70% have suffered from diarrhoea over the previous two weeks. Safe and clean water, already a problem during the 16-year blockade, is now in even shorter supply, with 81% of households having access to less than one litre per person per day.

Reduced to such conditions of monumental and raw desperation, hellish scenes of Palestinians swarming around aid convoys were bound to manifest. On February 29, Gaza City witnessed one such instance, along with a lethal response from Israeli troops. In the ensuing violence, some 112 people were killed, adding to a Palestinian death toll that has already passed 30,000. While admitting to opening fire on the crowd, the IDF did not miss a chance to paint their victims as disorderly savages, with “dozens” being “killed and injured from pushing, trampling and being run over by the trucks.” The acting director of Al-Awda Hospital, Dr. Mohammed Salha, in noting the admission of some 161 wounded patients, suggested that gun fire had played its relevant role, given that most of those admitted suffered from gunshot wounds.

If Israel’s intention had been to demonstrate some good will in averting any insinuation that genocide was taking place, let alone a systematic policy of collective punishment against the Palestinian population, little evidence of it has been shown. If anything, the suspicions voiced by South Africa and other critics aghast at the sheer ferocity of the campaign are starting to seem utter plausible in their horror.

 

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Here’s ya hat, what’s ya hurry?

Skiddy leaves his mark

Full of shit and full of himself, Scooter has left the building.

His greatest contribution to Australian governance is his departure from it. A vacuous blowhard given to bovine slogans, a Pentecostal nutter convinced of celestial endorsement from a deity whose prosperity ethos luckily aligns with his own, yet he was also sufficiently self-aware as to disguise his odious actuality with his daggy dad artiface and endless photo-op dress-ups.

The ever-present, punchable smirk belied any of his claims to humility; rather it underlined his belief in his own devine exceptionalism – a would-be theocrat thwarted by secular reason:

“God’s kingdom will come. It is in his hands, we trust in Him. We don’t trust in governments.” (Preaching at the Victory Life Centre in Perth, 2022).

Following the electorate’s clear gag reflex at the notion of this disingenuous gobshite continuing to represent the values of our country the image of a now forlorn figure on the Opposition’s backbench nose-bleed seats ironically elicited some entirely undeserved empathy. Scrolling his phone hoping someone had returned his calls, his “if you’re good at your job, you’ll get a job” banality taking its time to manifest itself, he was due instead the forensic grilling by a no-nonsense Catherine Holmes at the Robodebt Royal Commission where he distinguished himself as a practised sophist and blame shifter. And, due also, the ignominy of his too-clever-by-half ‘secret ministries’ parliamentary censure – a loose equivalent to the impeachment of his orange BFF and fellow twatwaffle Dorito Donny.

History will record, and many will now recall his many failings – his cravenness and inaction in the face of adversity, his ducking of accountability, his claiming of the success of others, his malice and bullying, repurposing taxpayers’ money to cronies and right-wing supplicants – all manifestations of his lack of character.

A shrivelled, one-dimensional intellect, a light-weight incapable of reflection or forethought with underlying smarm and personality defects, mentored by a proselytizing grifter and informed by an eagle painting he was impervious to self-reflection – comfortable in the belief he was the Chosen One.

In his departing sermon presented as a valedictory speech he professed “faith in Jesus Christ, which gives me the faith to both forgive but also to be honest about my own failings and shortcomings” which he then failed to be honest about by neglecting to mention any.

Manifestly unsuited to the job he is a study in how megalomania, verbal diarrhea, treachery and happenstance can reward a shameless fabulist and serial failure.

A creationist’s literal belief in biblical fables and his related, rampaging case of gynophobia are the 2 standouts in his compendium of personality defects.

He was visibly confused by the notion that women are equal.

He referred to females, including ministers, by their 1st names, men by their titles.

He mansplained over the top of his senior minister Anne Ruston when she was asked about the Lib government’s treatment of women.

Women to him were packaging:

“1st party room as PM. B4 media came he requested all women MPs move seats & sit in front of him. As props. For the cameras. When media left, Scott’s men took their seats” (Julia Banks, former member for Chisholm).

Counsel for all things female, the eponymous “Jenny”, was required to alert him to the unacceptability of rape via reference to his own daughters.

“I’ve had plenty of mates who have asked me if they can be my special envoy to sort the issue out with Pamela Anderson” he told Gold Coast radio station Hot Tomato FM. Wink, snerk, guffaw, eh? eh? Imagine that pasty slug pawing a woman. No actually. Don’t do that.

He did get handsy with unsuspecting disaster victims, admitting to copping a quick feel as some sort of subliminal, evangelical healing process by his God’s emissary – himself.

Inanity and beyond was a feature of the slogan bogan – each facile declaration followed by the smirk as if he’d passed on an inspirational maxim. The restraint shown by not shooting women protesters is a standout for the clueless galoot as was his spittle-flecked tirade against Christine Holgate who had the audacity to be a strong female role model as chief postie.

Which brings me to his trademark malice and bullying:

“The pattern is that if you attack Scott Morrison… he will lash out and background against you in the most vicious of ways.” (Samantha Maiden, The Drum).

This godly man, this humble servant of a benevolent divinity was ever eager to punch down, to victimise, torment, ignore and defame. Toddlers, Kopika, and Tharnicaa, asylum seekers, grannies,the unemployed. If some died, they died – his conscience was clear.

The black hole of honesty (truth bends around him) cultivated a regime where rorting was not a crime but a credential. The open disdain he held for established and trusted institutions went beyond the traditional Tory aversion to acountability – his God’s will over-ruled any and all. Science? Evidence? Proof? Veracity? Phhht!

When he needed to step up he stepped out; when opportunity arose to show true leadership he hid behind the curtains. He was anti-anti-corruption, aesthetically unpleasant, duplicitous and wantonly cruel.

His loyalty is transactional – Brother Brian? Who? Brother Stuie? Who? His most valuable gofer was his photographer. His closest confidante fled for the exit as an integrity commission was coming to fruition.

He claims credit for two issues as stand-out big wins for his legacy – the response to Covid and the AUKUS pact. Let us remain mindful of the context:

Australia came through the worst of Covid better than most. This is not due to The Galoot who was tardy with vaccines – worsening lockdowns and blaming the premiers. He, and cherubic Rubbery Figures Frydenberg were dragged kicking and screaming by the premiers (and, FFS, Igor Mortis John Howard) to implement the JobKeeper initiative of Greg Combet and Sally McManus.

AUKUS cedes our residual sovereignty to the Americans for decades and for a brain-bleeding price. Delivery is on the never-never and we can be sure the Seppos will bill us for every one of their inevitable FUBARS.

It looked for too long a while that we’d never be rid of The Galoot – stuck like a clock spring on the soap. Now to be referred to in the past tense, his name should become a verb synonymous with opportunistic duplicity – “That car yard sold me a lemon. I was Morrisoned.”

 

 

“He departs the parliament having scarred democracy, diminished trust in government, creating a legacy of shallow politics and photo op policies, of raising the individual above the collective, of switching the story to fit the circumstances; of above all, advancing Scott Morrison.” (Amy Remeikis, The Guardian).

 

Worst ever PM. Fuck off!

References

As Scott Morrison leaves Parliament, where does he rank among Australian prime ministers? The New Daily

Decoding ScoMo: the hidden story and messages in his Pentecostal mashup. Crikey ($)

 

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer.

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Trussonomics at CPAC

The silly will make print and leave bursts of digital traces; the idiots will make history, if only in small print. One such figure is the shortest serving UK Prime Minister in living memory, the woeful, joke-packed figure of Liz Truss who lasted a mere 50 disastrous days in office. She was even bettered by a satirical, dressed-up lettuce, filmed in anticipation of her brief, calamitous end.

With such a blotted record, the vacuous, inane Truss felt that her experiences were worthy of recounting to the Conservative Political Action Conference, held at National Harbor, Maryland between February 22 and 24. The gathering, conducted since the 1970s and organised by the American Conservative Union, has become something of a mandatory calendar event for US conservative activists. Those from other countries have also tried to make a splash – keeping Truss company was the demagogic voice of Brexit, Nigel Farage, arguably the most influential British politician not to hold a seat in Parliament.

A self-believer of towering insensibility, Truss oversaw during her flashpoint stint in office mind boggling budgetary decisions. On winning the Tory ballot after the fall of Boris Johnson in 2022, she promised £30 billion in tax cuts via an emergency budget, reversing the rise in National Insurance and a range of energy-price guarantees. That these tax cuts – eventually amounting to £45 billion – were primarily skewed to benefit those at the higher end of the scale did not bother her. “The people at the top of the income distribution pay more tax – so inevitably, when you cut taxes you tend to benefit the people who are more likely to pay tax.” What logic; what reasoning.

With figures of such incompetence, responsibility for failure is always attributed to someone, or something else. In Truss’s case, blame initially lay with fellow comic villain and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, with whom she had taken a wrecking ball to the UK economy and the British pound. With Kwarteng, she had previously authored a dotty pamphlet “Britannia Unchained”, warning that Britain should not emulate the economic model of southern European countries, saddled with poor productivity and growth, along with hefty and inefficient public services.

The Economist tasted the irony of it all, seeing Trussonomics as typical of “Britaly”, a country “of political instability, low growth and subordination to bond markets.” A further irony was that the horrified market reaction to Truss suggested her inability to understand the very forces she prefers unleashed over the wickedness of big government and bureaucratic interference. Live by the free market; die by the free market.

What, then, to tell her New World colleagues? At first blush, nothing new. In April 2023, she had already made it across the Atlantic to speak to the Heritage Foundation, where she gave the Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture. Monumental failure can undergo changes in transatlantic journey, and the conservative think tank omitted mentioning her spell of prime ministerial lunacy, impressed, instead, by her “long-standing” advocacy “for limited government, low taxes, and freedom, both at home and the UK and around the world.”

The speech was barbed, resentful and absurd, an attempt to channel a politician she resembles in no serious respect, bar certain Little England prejudices, with a smattering of superficially similar economic beliefs. Truss complained of “coordinated resistance from inside the Conservative Party”, “the British corporate establishment”, “the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and even from President Biden.” She grumbled of “a new kind of economic model” that was taking hold in the UK and US, “one that’s focused on redistributionism, on stagnation and on the imbuing of woke culture into our businesses.” Seen from another perspective, this “anti-growth movement”, to use Truss’s daft terminology, had been responsible for her demise.

In her CPAC display, we see an attempt to flatter Donald Trump, drawing from the well of Deep State rhetoric, and various scripted points about insecurity, immigration, terrorism, gender, “wokenomics”, “the power of the left and the power of those bureaucracies.” There are also some head-scratching remarks that lent a cartoonish feel to the mad bat: “you can’t triangulate with terrorists, you can’t compromise with communists, you have to fight for what you believe in.”

The speech is not entirely nonsensical, though Truss misses the significance of any pertinent observations. “What has happened in Britain over the past 30 years is power that used to be in the hands of politicians has been moved to quangos and bureaucrats and lawyers so what you find is a democratically elected government actually unable to enact policies.” While the estrangement of the elected from the elector, aided and abetted by unelected bureaucracies, is hard to deny, Truss is merely implying that an unaccountable dictatorship would surely be far better and representative.

To demonstrate the point, Truss raged against the Office of Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England who “sought to undermine the policies.” Again, the IMF, along with Biden, featured as targets. Again, ignorance of the free market and her ruin by its very dictates, was proudly displayed.

Decoding the Truss basket case of beliefs yields this question: Why were there such impediments to my mad realisation? It was far better, she proposed, to get “a bigger bazooka in order to be able to deliver. And I think we have got to challenge the institutions themselves.” A challenge is a good thing, but best bring a well thought out policy with you when going into battle.

 

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Destabilizing Australia: Will the LNP’s Culture Wars Be Victorious?

By Denis Bright

The hopeful possibilities of reaching out to build a better future for Australians and for our peaceful regional neighbours are under challenge across the political spectrum from more opportunistic political goals. There are possibilities of a return to more social democratic agendas through better policy management in our existing market economy.

The Poll Bludger has conveniently summarized the political milestones which can be scarred by such manipulative politics. Perhaps positive existential changes are in the autumn winds for consolidation by Easter 2024.

Political Milestones Ahead

Here is a quick glance at just three emergent milestones in Dunkley on Outer Melbourne’s Southeast, Ipswich West in Queensland and Tasmania.

Dunkley by-election – 2 March

Inala by-election – 16 March

Ipswich West by-election – 16 March

Queensland councils – 16 March

Tasmania – 23 March

Dunstan by-election – 23 March

Cook by-election – Early 2024

Tasmanian Legislative Council – 4 May

Northern Territory – 24 August

NSW councils – 14 September

Australian Capital Territory – 19 October

Queensland – 26 October

Western Australia – 8 March 2025

Federal election – By 24 May 2025<

Introducing Dunkley Electorate

The federal LNP will benefit from the campaign by Advance as it strives to convince voters that their cost-of-living concerns are all due to the Albanese Government. There is not a scrap of evidence that the Albanese Government is fuelling inflationary pressures by over-spending. If there is a policy negative it is due to overly cautious responses to cost-of-living challenges.

Nikki Savva’s opinion piece in the SMH (15 February 2024) captured the mindset of Peter Dutton on his mission to win Dunkley for conservative populism. Dated polling released through Wikipedia for Dunkley shows that Labor is slightly ahead in polling from uComms.

The polling predicts a remarkably close result. Expect updates later this week to show the impact of the aggressive style of campaigning by both the LNP and the Advance lobbying network. The funding and steering committee of Advance should be fully investigated by mainstream media as this lobbying group seeks to have a higher profile in Australian political life.

 

Waiting for a Polling Update in Dunkley

 

A better-than-expected result for Labor’s Jodie Belyea in Dunkley, might make Peter Dutton a casualty of the by-election campaign.

Now Moving onto Ipswich West in Queensland

Once again, conservative populists have tried to make the Ipswich West by-election results an embarrassment for Labor’s Premier Steven Miles with a focus on tough on crime strategies.

Readers can listen to the tone of political discussion in Ipswich West as reported by Radio 4BC to evaluate the even-handedness of the interview between Peter Gleeson and the endorsed LNP Candidate, Darren Zanow.

The negative coverage of the performance of the Queensland Labor Government in this Radio 4BC interview on issues relating to crime and cost-of-living increases contrasts with the current government towards the City of Ipswich.

Both tough on crime strategies and attacks on levels of government spending have a long political history in Ipswich.

Almost a century ago now, the state seats of Rosewood and Ipswich fell temporarily as the Great Depression approached in 1929, a few months before the Great Crash on Wall Street. The seat of Bremer remained with Labor. Both William Cooper in Rosewood and Dave Gledson in Ipswich failed to win their local seats that year. The current state seat of Ipswich West now includes parts of the Ipswich and Rosewood electorates. This gives Ipswich West a level of volatility which has sent two separate LNP representatives to parliament since 1960 and a One Nation state member.

Responding to concerns about crime in Ipswich, the Queensland Premier and Police Minister Mark Ryan announced the following initiatives on 24 February 2024:

The Miles government is making a further significant investment in the capabilities of the Ipswich Police District.

Following a request from the Queensland Police Service for additional police resources for the Ipswich Police District, the government is providing the Queensland Police Service with a funding boost of $37.6 million to deliver the following additional resources:

Premier Steven Miles assured the voters in Ipswich West that:

… Every Queenslander should feel safe in their homes and community. There will always be more police under my government.

This investment will see dozens more police officers, mobile police beats, and extra resources.

This is to keep residents safe, and to catch offenders…

But Labor’s Tough on Crime Strategies must always be embedded in Labor values to protect human rights with the delivery of sustainable and socially just economic and community development policies. This contrasts with the imprisonment of the now deceased Bob Gibbs MLA (Wolston electorate in Ipswich) for joining in Right to March resistance during the Bjelke-Petersen era in the 1980s.

Street crime is not the only form of criminal activity which state Labor governments have successfully confronted. Previous Labor Governments of Queensland have come down heavily on corrupt practices in the corridors of power and influence within the former Independent Ipswich City Council. This Council was placed under the control of a team of administrators with criminal convictions and even prison sentences to the worst offenders (Brisbane Times 9 January 2020).

Labor also formed the Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) under the Goss Government in the 1990s as an income earner for the people of Queensland through strategic investment programmes. Unlike Queensland Treasury investments in the Bjelke-Petersen era, the QIC became a quasi-independent investment arm of the Queensland Government. Although the state premier and state treasurer are the only supervising shareholders in the QIC, it is quite unethical for them to be involved in day-to-day operations of the investment fund. However, the Queensland Government can make recommendations to the QIC to implement its planning goals (ShapingSEQ Plan 2023).

Premier Steven Miles in his capacity as Minister for Infrastructure was quite prepared to note my suggestions about the use of QIC investment and direct state government funding for the redevelopment of parts of the Ipswich CBD at a social function at parliament house in November 2023. It is an asset to have such approachable leaders in office with polling profiles that are tracking upwards in the latest poling from uComms in The Courier Mail (24 February 2024).

Co-investment between government agencies and the private sector can strengthen the economic, social and environmental goals embedded in the ShapingSEQ Plan 2023. It is an outreach of the New Keynesianism which has no rapport in far-right LNP circles with their fixation on the bricks and mortar of suburban shopping complexes in places like Yamanto in the Ipswich West electorate. Responsible government intervention can broaden the base of such projects.

Yamanto Shopping Village is a neighbourhood centre anchored by a high performing Woolworths supermarket, Super Amart, McDonalds, Caltex and another 25 specialty tenants. The village is situated on a prominent corner location 35km south-west of Brisbane and 5km south of Ipswich City Centre.

It is a credit to the Queensland Government that revenue from the QIC is available to enhance community development options across Ipswich. QIC returned $127.1 million in profits to the state government with a return of 20 percent on assets in the latest available annual report for 2022-23 from assets under management.

Not all its decisions have great logical appeal, including the wisdom of some QIC’s property investments in the USA in shopping malls and offices to deliver profits back to Queensland.

At the far-off Ohio State University in Columbus, the QIC invested $US483 million in the management of CampusParc to manage the car-parking facilities for students and staff as well as clients to the Wexner Medical Centre on Campus in 2012. This property asset has almost doubled in value according to Bloomberg’s Company News Report (27 September 2023). QIC has invested in similar facilities at Northeastern University in Boston with another 50-year contract. Profit taking on such deals can provide additional revenue for the Queensland Government.

A cool one billion dollars at least would be available from the sale of some US property assets from the still lucrative US property market could assist in revitalising the Ipswich CBD through new co-investment arrangements to transform Top of Town in Ipswich which has suffered from decisions by previous Independent Ipswich City Council administrations to move the hub of retailing across the Bremer River to the Riverlink Shopping Centre with great problems to cross-river traffic flows.

The movement of the hub of retailing in Ipswich to the Riverlink Shopping Centre in North Ipswich through the efforts of insiders in the former Independent Ipswich City Council still needs further investigation by Queensland CCC. Hopefully, QCC’s prior investigations of these issues are not permanently closed.

Installing a new member of parliament at a mid-term by-election is always challenging as shown by the close results in a previous by-election which made the transition from a retiring Ivor Marden MLA to Vi Jordan MLA in 1966. This was indeed a close call. This time Wendy Bourne does not have such high-profile contenders to challenge her transition to serve the people of Ipswich West (Images: Wikipedia).

 

 

 

And Onto the Tasmanian Elections

Any tidal wave of favourable LNP election results in Dunkley, Inala and Ipswich West, would create some momentum for survival of the Rockliff Liberal Government which is the last cab off the rank in this round of elections in March 2024 (Image: Wikipedia)

 

The Current State of Play in Tasmania

 

Available polling from Tasmania still predates the decision of the currently dissident Independents and former Liberal Party members to bring down the government. The Jackie Lambie Network (JLN) is now a significant factor in the forthcoming Tasmanian election. JLN was outpolling the Greens in the now dated YouGov polling (Image: Wikipedia):

 

 

 

If the JLN co-operates with Tasmanian Labor, Rebecca White could be premier after the Tasmanian elections. This would be a historic first to have Labor in-control of all Australian states and territories with Anthony Albanese in charge of the national government.

By the next full moon at Easter, these trendlines will have become political reality with immense longer-term impact on Australians. Keep watching the events as they unfold. Don’t be afraid to have your say on the AIM Network Feedback line unless you want the secretive streeting committees of Advance to have greater controls over our political futures.

Your critical responses are a real barrier to more sleep-walking into the future and more compromises with national sovereignty by obscure lobbyists.

Denis Bright (pictured) is a financial member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to consensus-building in these difficult times. Your feedback from readers advances the cause of citizens’ journalism. Full names are not required when making comments. However, a valid email must be submitted if you decide to hit the Replies Button.

 

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Dutton’s scattergun

It’s widely acknowledged that Tony Abbott came to be Prime Minister because he continually listed some ‘critical’ failures of the then Rudd and Gillard Governments using three-word slogans. Current Opposition Leader Dutton seems to be attempting to follow the same strategy however he seems to be having difficulty in finding a line of attack that cannot be easily debunked. In reality, the restructuring of the Stage 3 Tax Cuts was his time to ‘shine’, however the government clearly won the marketing battle by making the tax cuts fairer to all. Discussing why legislation passed in an era prior to a number of economic shocks may not be ‘fit for purpose’ now – if it ever was probably helped. It’s not hard to see why the Coalition has been dubbed the ‘Noalition’.

It’s also a shame the Albanese Government hasn’t announced real and substantial reform in a number of areas including tax, healthcare and housing to improve the standard of living for all Australians while further isolating the Opposition who seem to be in the business of opposing for oppositions sake (after all it worked for Abbott).

The Opposition’s job is to consider the government’s agenda and either suggest improvement or present a rational and coherent discussion on what they would do better. Dutton seems to be incapable of doing either of these objectives to a satisfactory level. Saying ‘no’ because the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Government didn’t do it is not rational or coherent.

After Parliament resumed for the year, Dutton claimed that Immigration Minister Andrew Giles is incompetent because the High Court determined that Coalition era legislation regarding detention of refugees were unlawful. So for a number of days all the Coalition could contribute to Parliament’s Question Time was asking Minister Giles why he didn’t amend the laws before the High Court had passed judgement. Apart from the general absurdity of the logic here, people who have committed heinous crimes (and that’s not saying for a minute that all of the refugees in question were convicted of heinous crimes) are released from the prison system every day across Australia. While each state has their own processes that might allow for some monitoring of people released from prison, no state has the power to assume someone is forever guilty based on a previous crime where the person has ‘done the time’.

When some refugees arrived by fishing boat and wandered into a remote community in Western Australia recently, Dutton commenced a campaign suggesting that the Albanese Government has cut funding to the Coalition era border protection program so beloved of Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton (to name a few). A week ago, Dutton claimed:

“They’ve ripped a cumulative $600 million out of Operation Sovereign Borders and Border Force.”

Actually ‘they’ haven’t according to Head of Australian Border Force, Michael Outram in a statement issued a couple of days later,

“Border Force funding is currently the highest it’s been since its establishment in 2015, and in the last year the ABF has received additional funding totalling hundreds of millions of dollars, to support maritime and land-based operations,”

Dutton, ably supported by some interested spectators such as Toyota and Mazda, have claimed there are various dire consequences that will result from the introduction of the government’s New Vehicle Emissions Scheme. Not only will it ruin everyone’s ability to buy the vehicle that is capable of driving to Cape York even though the furthest off-road it will ever go is to jump a traffic island, every tradie in the land will go broke if their vehicle is subject to emissions regulations. When even the internet sites that promote all things motor vehicles are saying that’s not correct, such as here and here there is a problem for Dutton.

Dutton’s claims clearly don’t stand up to scrutiny. In fact, fuel efficiency regulations help the consumer to drive a car that uses less fuel and is cheaper to run (as well as creating less pollution). It’s also interesting the vehicle importers complaining about the speed or severity of the forthcoming regulations generally are also the companies that haven’t been all that serious about introducing more efficient cars into their Australian catalogues – even though they are available overseas where there is already regulation on fuel efficiency and/or emissions.

It was difficult for Dutton to win the debate over the Stage 3 Tax Cuts when sections of the media were headlining their reporting with Working class communities in Coalition held seats the biggest winners in Labor’s stage three tax cuts overhaul’. It’s also difficult to argue that mandating better emissions control or better fuel consumption is a retrograde step for the consumer and the environment.

It’s a pity that the ALP Government seems to have done nothing to broaden the tax base away from wage and salary earners as our population ages or provide assistance to those who literally can’t find a house to rent. Maybe reinstating the former state government operated ‘housing commissions’ would help as the current programs to ‘assist’ housing affordability just don’t work. And while increasing the ‘incentive’ to bulk bill the elderly and children at the doctors may be having some effect, there is a large number of people who still have to work out if they should go to the doctor or eat more than one meal a day this week.

The Albanese Government has demonstrated that substantial policy changes can be made so they are beneficial to a lot more Australians. The political battle can also be won. The more beneficial change that occurs the more evidence there will be that Dutton’s scattergun approach is similar to the boy crying wolf. The ALP has a chance here to embed itself in government for a generation – the question is do they want to take it?

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A Copper’s Skewed Logic: Politicising Palestinian Visas

If only we could say that Peter Dutton, Australia’s federal opposition leader and curator of bigoted leanings, was unusual in assuming that granting humanitarian visas to Palestinians might be problematic. But both he, and his skew-eyed spokesman on home affairs, James Patterson, have concluded that votes are in the offing. Refugees may be accepted from the Ukrainian-Russian War, as long as they are Ukrainian, but anything so much as a whiff of a Palestinian fleeing the Israel-Hamas conflict is bound to be concerning. Ukrainians are noble victims; the latter might be terrorist sympathisers or Hamas militants.

This view started being floated in November last year, when Dutton began warning the public that visitor visas for Palestinians could result in a calamity. (At that point, 860 visas had been issued to Palestinians.) “The inadequacy of these checks could result in a catastrophic outcome in our country,” he foamed. “Taking people out of a war zone without conducting the checks, particularly those that are available to us in the US, is reckless.”

No concern was voiced about the possibility that Israelis, who had also been offered 1,793 visas, might pose a problem to the heavenly idyll of Australian security. It is also worth mentioning that Dutton, when home affairs minister, approved over 500 visas a week to Syrians fleeing the civil war. Ditto the granting of 5,000 visas to Afghans the month the Taliban resumed control of Kabul in the aftermath of retreating Western armies.

Dutton’s arithmetic is that of the typical copper: simple, direct, amateurish. Among the Palestinians, “one person, or could be 10 people, I don’t know” might be of concern. His concerns are feverishly listed: “Have interviews been conducted, do we know people’s ideologies, do we know their interest in the west, why they want to come to Australia.” This template would be applicable to every group of visitors or migrants seeking to come to Australia at any one point. No one is likely to say on their visa application: “I come to see your new country and hope to commit atrocities.”

Given the number of conflict zones on Planet Earth, Dutton was offering an obtuse statement calculated to boost flagging popularity. It was also timed within a matter of hours after the declaration of a four-day ceasefire in Gaza. While proving, at times, sketchy in her role as Home Affairs Minister, Clare O’Neil was close to the mark in stating that, “Dutton is a reckless politician who will do and say anything to score political points – even if it puts the national security of Australians at risk.”

But Dutton did not want to be dismissed as a paranoid former police officer who sees criminals everywhere and innocence as a constipated afterthought. “The prime minister here needs to hit the pause button – I’m not saying people shouldn’t come at some point – but people should come when all the checks are conducted.”

Again, a strange sentiment, given that visa applicants tend to face a series of tests that are more demanding than most when seeking to visit the Down Under Paradise where perfection is assumed. “If a visa applicant is assessed as posing a risk to the health, safety or good order of the Australian community, their visa may be considered for refusal,” were the dull words of a government spokesperson.

With the arrival of irregular migrants on the shores of Western Australia this month, cockeyed bigotry again assumed its role on the podium of Australian politics. Seeking to tie the arrivals as connected with shoddy security credentials, the opposition fanned out the implications of granting up to 2,000 visas for Palestinians, a fact seen as particularly galling to the shadow home affairs minister. “In the middle of an unprecedented antisemitism crisis, the government should be taking much greater care in granting visas to people from a war zone run by a terrorist organisation,” bleated Patterson. “How can they possibly assure themselves there is not one Hamas supporter among them? And how will it help social cohesion if they manage to slip through?”

By this logic, no one should ever leave a war zone, an area of devastation, a territory blighted by terror. You just might be a regime supporter, a sympathiser, despite suffering possible harm, even death. But there is an inadvertent slant coming through in Patterson’s mangled world view: Palestinians, having been maimed, murdered and traumatised, might wish to take out their grievance on a foreign power, possibly one sympathetic to Israel. Ignore the survival imperative, the desire to find, rather than abandon, security; focus, instead, on the motivation for vengeance. Even this view suffers for one obvious point: those wishing to avenge their families and friends are bound to wish to stay in Gaza and the West Bank, rather than flee and plot from afar.

With the current arrivals from Gaza – some 340 or so have managed to drip themselves from the Palestinian territories – the bedwetting fantasies of terror being induced by the opposition seem absurd and callous. But absurdity is a proven calculus for electoral success – at least sometimes.

 

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Authoritarianism is taking over the world. Will it snare Australia?

It would seem that many countries around the world have decided that democracy has run its race. Russia, India, Hungary, Turkey, Poland, China, Slovakia, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Libya, Laos, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan have-authoritarian-governments.

An explosion of elections is due now or into the near future that will see far-right authoritarian leaders elected who have parroted:

“Amidst all the chaos and uncertainty in the world, it seems that some politicians are trying to gain our trust by making big promises. They pledge to tackle issues like promiscuity, immigration, and corrupt leaders. Do you think they’ll be able to follow through on their promises?”

Many people are concerned about the increasing popularity of right-wing populism, nationalism, and worldwide polarisation. In just a few years:

Within just a few years, we’ve witnessed the election of Donald Trump in the US, the Brexit decision in the UK, the rise of Matteo Salvini in Italy, Victor Orbán in Hungary, the Freedom party in Austria and the Law and Justice party in Poland. The world’s largest democracy, India, is menaced by a newly virulent nationalism and xenophobia.

And last year, the Philippines elected Ferdinand Marcos’ son as President, signalling their preference for strongman politics.

President Putin is expected to secure a victory in the upcoming Russian election. The President has criticised the Western concept of gender, labelling it as a “perversion” and a “complete denial of man.” According to him, the idea is part of an “overthrow of faith and traditional values” by the Western elites.

Many nations and their leaders have discarded democratic practices and turned towards authoritarianism, while some democracies have been shaken by populist forces that reject fundamental principles. Countries with authoritarian powers are banning opposition groups, jailing their leaders, and tightening the screws on independent media.

Findings, released as:

“… part of the 2023 ANU Crawford Leadership Forum, show 77.4 per cent of Australians say they are satisfied or very satisfied with Democracy compared to 81 per cent in 2008.”

Political scientists will tell us that:

“Authoritarianism is the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. It has a lack of concern for the wishes or opinions of others.”

And that:

“An authoritarian government is also one that inflicts strict rules that limit the personal freedoms of its people. Citizens of countries that have an authoritarian government have diminished rights and privileges and are typically unable to freely practice their faith, fully express themselves, or choose their leaders through free and fair elections.”

When in 1991, the USSR collapsed, to the surprise of many in the West, what materialised was not a liberal democratic government. It was not the end of soviet history as we knew it, for what emerged was Authoritarianism. Since then, it has slowly crawled like rust into a world uncertain of its future.

To vote for these authoritarian, often corrupt figures, the citizens of democratic governments have to be monumentally dissatisfied, firstly, with the governance of their country, secondly, with their leader. Then, they give in to the favoured candidate.

After that, they are confronted with rigged elections.

Having accepted authoritarianism, the peoples of all the nations mentioned increasingly have less to say about their destiny. They are victims of their ignorance and the misinformation used to scare them.

Unfortunately, many voters lack sufficient political awareness, creating a situation where less informed voters outnumber the more politically aware. Consequently, conservative politicians often resort to misleading information to sway public opinion. Such misinformation contains many untruths propagated through various channels to achieve their political objectives. This phenomenon undermines the democratic process and may lead to detrimental outcomes for the general public.

If we are to save our democracy, we might begin by insisting that, at the very least, our politicians should tell the truth.

We have to ask why it was that when Russia tumbled, communism wasn’t replaced with some form of Liberal Democracy. Therefore, the invasion of Ukraine, a democratic European country, by an authoritarian regime should have come as no surprise.

Over the past 15 years, the principles of Liberal Democracy have been experiencing a decline and have rapidly retreated. This trend has recently reached a point that was once considered impossible to imagine. A study by Professor Nicholas Biddle said that:

“… the most significant change was fewer Australians being ‘very satisfied’ with Democracy than 15 years ago – 14.2 per cent compared to 23.4 per cent.”

Within many liberal democracies, authoritarian leaders continue to gain strength and popularity

A new report by The Global State of Democracy 2023 says that the erosion of democratic norms has been engineered by leaders claiming to speak in the name of and with the people’s authority.

In many parts of the globe, the fundamental principles of democracy are threatened by various populist leaders whose only interest is in the power they can obtain and the privileges that go with it.

When looking for those ingredients that make a democracy, ask yourself:

Are there free elections?

Is there an independent law system?

Is there a separation of powers?

Is there any transparency in government?

Is there a real opposition?

Who is in control of the budget?

Are ideas and diversity trashed?

Are those who vehemently oppose authoritarianism brushed aside?

I understand that it can be disheartening to see the decline of Liberal Democracy worldwide. It is difficult to accept that this trend has been ongoing for the last decade and a half, and understandably, such an outcome would be hard to imagine.

Is Australia at risk? Could we have a better Democracy?

In recent years, we have witnessed three individual politicians who have used the techniques of the authoritarian leader, fear, negativity, misinformation and lies. I refer to Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and the now opposition leader Peter Dutton. All have used the methods of an Authoritarian ruler.

The best defence against authoritarianism is to create the best Democracy possible

Democracy is a complex political system involving rules and conventions with various other components. The essence lies in the coming together of people who share common beliefs and values, working in unison to establish a framework of principles that serve as a compass to direct their conduct and choices. It is a process that requires active participation and engagement from all members of the community, with a focus on inclusivity and equality. Democracy is a mechanism for achieving consensus and promoting the common good through dialogue, debate, and compromise.

They then become the foundation of political parties. These ideologies pull in different directions in a quest for majority approval by the people. It is a far from perfect system that has variations all around the world. It is elastically flexible, unpredictable and, at its worst, violent and highly combative.

Having declared authoritarianism a form of dictatorship, next week I will look at a better democracy and how to achieve it.

My thought for the day

We exercise our involvement in our democracy every three years by voting. After that, the vast majority takes very little interest. Why is it so?

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Imperial Venality Defends Itself: Day Two of Julian Assange’s High Court Appeal

On February 21, the Royal Courts of Justice hosted a second day of carnivalesque mockery regarding the appeal by lawyers representing an ill Julian Assange, whose publishing efforts are being impugned by the United States as having compromised the identities of informants while damaging national security. Extradition awaits, only being postponed by rearguard actions such as what has just been concluded at the High Court.

How, then, to justify the 18 charges being levelled against the WikiLeaks founder under the US Espionage Act of 1917, an instrument not just vile but antiquated in its effort to stomp on political discussion and expression?

Justice Jeremy Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp got the bien pensant treatment of the national security state, dressed in robes, and tediously inclined. Prosaic arguments were recycled like stale, oppressive air. According to Clair Dobbin KC, there was “no immunity for journalists to break the law” and that the US constitutional First Amendment protecting the press would never confer it. This had an undergraduate obviousness to it; no one in this case has ever asserted such cavalierly brutal freedom in releasing classified material, a point that Mark Summers KC, representing Assange, was happy to point out.

Yet again, the Svengali argument, gingered with seduction, was run before a British court. Assange, assuming all the powers of manipulation, cultivated and corrupted the disclosers, “soliciting” them to pilfer classified government materials. With limping repetition, Dobbin insisted that WikiLeaks had been responsible for revealing “the unredacted names of the sources who provided information to the United States,” many of whom “lived in war zones or in repressive regimes”. In exposing the names of Afghans, Iraqis, journalists, religious figures, human rights dissidents and political dissidents, the publisher had “created a grave and immediate risk that innocent people would suffer serious physical harm or arbitrary detention.”

The battering did not stop there. “There were really profound consequences, beyond the real human cost and to the broader ability to the US to gather evidence from human sources as well.” Dobbin’s proof of these contentions is thin, vague and causally absent: the arrest of one Ethiopian journalist following the leak; unspecified “others” disappeared. She even admitted the fact that “it cannot be proven that their disappearance was a result of being outed.” This was certainly a point pounced upon by Summers.

The previous publication by Cryptome of all the documents, or the careless publication of the key to the encrypted file with the unredacted cables by journalists from The Guardian in a book on WikiLeaks, did not convince Dobbin. Assange was “responsible for the publications of the unredacted documents whether published by others or WikiLeaks.” There was no mention, either, that Assange had been alarmed by The Guardian faux pas and had contacted the US State Department of this fact. Summers, in his contribution, duly reminded the court of the publisher’s frantic efforts while also reasoning that the harm caused had been “unintended, unforeseen and unwanted” by him.

With this selective, prejudicial angle made clear, Dobbin’s words became those of a disgruntled empire caught with its pants down when harming and despoiling others. “What the appellant is accused of is really at the upper end of the spectrum of gravity,” she submitted, attracting “no public interest whatsoever”. Conveniently, calculatingly, any reference to the enormous, weighty revelations of WikiLeaks of torture, renditions, war crimes, surveillance, to name but a few, was avoided. Emphasis was placed, instead, upon the “usefulness” of the material WikiLeaks had published: to the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden.

This is a dubious point given the Pentagon’s own assertions to the contrary in a 2011 report dealing with the significance of the disclosure of military and diplomatic documents by WikiLeaks. On the Iraq War logs and State Department cables, the report concluded “with high confidence that disclosure of the Iraq data set will have no direct personal impact on current and former US leadership in Iraq.” On the Afghanistan war log releases, the authors also found that they would not result in “significant impact” to US operations, though did claim that this was potentially damaging to “intelligence sources, informants, and the Afghan population,” and intelligence collection efforts by the US and NATO.

Summers appropriately rebutted the contention about harm by suggesting that Assange had opposed, in the highest traditions of journalism, “war crimes”, a consideration that had to be measured against unverified assertions of harm.

On this point, the prosecution found itself in knots, given that a balancing act of harm and freedom of expression is warranted under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. When asked by Justice Johnson whether prosecuting a journalist in the UK, when in possession of “information of very serious wrongdoing by an intelligence agency [had] incited an employee of that agency to provide information… [which] was then published in a very careful way” was compatible with the right to freedom of expression, Dobbin conceded to there being no “straightforward answer.”

When pressed by Justice Johnson as to whether she accepted the idea that the “statutory offence”, not any “scope for a balancing exercise” was what counted, Dobbin had to concede that a “proportionality assessment” would normally arise when publishers were prosecuted under section 5 of the UK Official Secrets Act. Prosecutions would only take place if one “knowingly published” information known “to be damaging.”

Any half-informed student of the US Espionage Act knows that strict liability under the statute negates any need to undertake a balancing assessment. All that matters is that the individual had “reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the US,” often proved by the mere fact that the information published was classified to begin with.

Dobbin then switched gears. Having initially advertised the view that journalists could never be entirely immune from criminal prosecution, she added more egg to the pudding on the reasons why Assange was not a journalist. Her view of the journalist being a bland, obedient transmitter of received, establishment wisdom was all too clear. Assange had gone “beyond the acts of a journalist who is merely gathering information”. He had, for instance, agreed with Chelsea Manning on March 8, 2010 to attempt cracking a password hash that would have given her access to the secure and classified Department of Defense account. Doing so meant using a false identity to facilitate further pilfering of classified documents.

This was yet another fiction. Manning’s court martial had revealed the redundancy of having to crack a password hash as she already had administrator access to the system. Why then bother with the conspiratorial circus?

The corollary of this is that the prosecution’s reliance on fabricated testimony, notably from former WikiLeaks volunteer, convicted paedophile and FBI tittle-tattler Sigurdur ‘Siggi’ Thordarson. In June 2021, the Icelandic newspaper Stundin, now publishing under the name Heimildin, revealed that Assange had “never asked him to hack or to access phone recordings of [Iceland’s] MPs.” He also had not “received some files from a third party who claimed to have recorded MPs and had offered to share them with Assange without having any idea what they actually contained.” Thordarson never went through the relevant files, nor verified whether they had audio recordings as claimed by the third-party source. The allegation that Assange instructed him to access computers in order to unearth such recordings was roundly rejected.

The legal team representing the US attempted to convince the court that suggestions of “bad faith” by the defence on the part of such figures as lead prosecutor Gordon Kromberg had to be discounted. “The starting position must be, as it always is in these cases, the fundamental assumption of good faith on the part of those states with which the United Kingdom has long-standing extradition relationships,” asserted Dobbin. “The US is one of the most long-standing partners of the UK.”

This had a jarring quality to it, given that nothing in Washington’s approach to Assange – the surveillance sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency via Spanish security firm UC Global, the contemplation of abduction and assassination by intelligence officials, the after-the-fact concoction of assurances to assure easier extradition to the US – has been anything but one of bad faith.

Summers countered by refuting any suggestions that “Mr Kronberg is a lying individual or that he is personally not carrying out his prosecutorial duties in good faith. The prosecution and extradition here is a decision taken way above his head.” This was a matter of “state retaliation ordered from the very top”; one could not “focus on the sheep and ignore the shepherd.”

Things did not get better for the prosecuting side on what would happen once Assange was extradited. Would he, for instance, be protected by the free press amendment under US law? Former CIA director Mike Pompeo had suggested that Assange’s Australian citizenship barred him from protections afforded by the First Amendment. Dobbin was not sure, but insisted that there was insufficient evidence to suggest that nationality would prejudice Assange in any trial. Justice Johnson was sharp: “the test isn’t that he would be prejudiced. It is that he might be prejudiced on the grounds of his nationality.” This was hard to square with the UK Extradition Act prohibiting extradition where a person “might be prejudiced at his trial or punished, detained, or restricted in his personal liberty” on account of nationality.

Given existing US legal practice, Assange also faced the risk of the death penalty, something that extradition arrangements would bar. Ben Watson KC, representing the UK Home Secretary, had to concede to the court that there was nothing preventing any amendment by US prosecutors to the current list of charges that could result in a death sentence.

If he does not succeed in this appeal, Assange may well request an intervention of the European Court of Human Rights for a stay of proceedings under Rule 39. Like many European institutions so loathed by the governments of post-Brexit Britain, it offers the prospect of relief provided that there are “exceptional circumstances” and an instance “where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm.”

The sickening irony of that whole proviso is that irreparable harm is being inflicted on Assange in prison, where the UK prison system fulfils the role of the punishing US gaoler. Speed will be of the essence; and the government of Rishi Sunak may well quickly bundle the publisher onto a transatlantic flight. If so, the founder of WikiLeaks will go the way of other prestigious and wronged political prisoners who sought to expand minds rather than narrow them.

 

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I’m Not A Racist Butt…

It’s interesting how quickly things change!

I mean wasn’t it just yesterday when Morrison and his fellow Liberals were telling us that people were innocent until proven guilty and, if anyone hadn’t been convicted, then they were innocent. Of course, this legal concept doesn’t apply to people who have been charged with a crime because we now keep hearing that criminals shouldn’t be out on bail while awaiting trial because we all know that they’re guilty.

And just last year, Anthony Albanese was being attacked for holding the Voice Referendum by the Coalition. Even though it was an election promise, he never should have proceeded with it unless he had bipartisan support. This year, he’s a liar for not keeping his promise on the Stage 3 tax cuts even though the changes have bipartisan support.

When it comes to the tax cuts the Liberal position is quite clear: “Albanese never should have changed them but now he has we’re voting for them because people need help but they need help now and the tax cuts that should have stayed the way he promised don’t come in until July and that’s far too late for something that we argue shouldn’t have happened at all!”

Anyway, if someone didn’t support the Voice that didn’t make them a racist. I know this because we were told over and over again that this it wasn’t fair to label someone a racist just because they didn’t want the Voice enshrined in the Constitution.

Of course, some people didn’t get the memo because they now argue that 70% of Australians voted against a Welcome to Country, having any sort of Indigenous body advising Parliament, changing the date, a Treaty, Closing The Gap, Linda Burney and truth telling.

Perhaps it’s just me but when someone gets outraged about truth telling, it does make me wonder exactly what they’re suggesting: “We don’t want any of that ‘truth telling’ round here! Lies were good enough for my parents and my grandparents and I’m sick of these people trying to wreck our traditions.”

Speaking of ‘lies’, it’s interesting that a broken election promise is somehow more worthy of examination than politicians lying on a daily basis. For example, when Dutton said that our interest rates were higher than all the G7 countries, this would be an easily verifiable fact were it not for the minor problem that it just isn’t one. Only Japan had lower interest rates at the time he made the statement, so either he was making it up, speaking off the top of his head or unable to read a simple table and work out that certain numbers were higher than others. All things that I would have thought worthy of examination by the media.

Similarly, the so-called tax on SUVs, utes and tanks has been a source of outrage from the Coalition of the Dulling. Inflation seems have grown worse here than our current rate of 4.1% because “Labor’s carbon tax” on new vehicles went from $10k one day to $15k a few days later to the $25k where it now sits until we learn that by the year 2087 it will cost over a million dollars to buy a jet thanks to Labor’s new tax.

Ok, some of you may be trying to defend the proposed emission standards by pointing out that it’s not a tax or by pointing out that we’re one of the only developed nations that doesn’t have one or by asking what’s wrong with emitting less noxious gases when we all know that the amendments to the American Constitution give all drivers the right to poison others by driving the vehicle emitting the most toxic fumes. However, you’re missing the logical flaw in the line of attack: Surely nobody can afford a new car under Labor!

It seems to me that there are a number of areas where Labor can be criticised, such as not increasing payments for the unemployed by more, inadequate support for the homeless, more urgent action on climate change and others. But when Angus Taylor attacked Labor for “spending too much” the other day, it sounds rather silly when they’ve produced the first surplus in fifteen years. It was even sillier when Gussie Taylor told us that Labor “spent an extra $209 MILLION dollars since they came to power. That’s $20,000 for every Australian household.” Mm, by my calculations that means there are only 2090 households in Australia… No wonder the Liberal Party couldn’t deliver a surplus!!

Ok, he clearly meant billion but it’s easy to get your billions mixed up with your millions when you have no idea what you’re talking about… Like when Josh got his sums out by a mere $66 billion but it was in our favour, so what’s carelessness matter?

While some criticisms of Labor by Dutton and his band of merry misfits are just not true, most of the others aren’t likely to make much of an impact on the swinging voter. For example, when the Coalition failed to support the motion on Julian Assange it argued that Australia shouldn’t be interfering in the legal processes of another country which is strange considering that I don’t remember that same argument being raised when China prosecutes our citizens. Whatever, I can’t see that being a position that’s liable to appeal to anyone who doesn’t already intend to vote for Voldemort…

Yes, I know people tell me that I shouldn’t call Dutton by that name. It has been pointed it’s upsetting and cheap and commenting on a physical resemblance that he can’t help is not fair. However, I simply reply by reminding people that Voldemort is a fictional character and therefore won’t actually be upset by the comparison…

If you look at the position Dutton takes on just about any issue, it’s worth asking who is actually going to be swayed into voting for him based on what he’s said.

 

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Identifying Imperial Venality: Day One of Julian Assange’s High Court Appeal

On February 20, it was clear that things were not going to be made easy for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who infuriated the US imperium, the national security establishment, and a stable of journalists upset that he had cut their ill-tended lawns. He was too ill to attend what may well be the final appeal against his extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States. Were he to be sent to the US, he faces a possible sentence amounting to 175 years arising from 18 venally cobbled charges, 17 spliced from that archaic horror, the Espionage Act of 1917.

The appeal to the High Court, comprising Justice Jeremy Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp, challenges the extradition order by the Home Secretary and the conclusions of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser who, despite ordering his release on risks posed to him on mental health grounds, fundamentally agreed with the prosecution. He was, Varaitser scorned, not a true journalist. (Absurdly, it would seem for the judge, journalists never publish leaked information.) He had exposed the identities of informants. He had engaged in attempts to hack computer systems. In June 2023, High Court justice, Jonathan Swift, thought it inappropriate to rehear the substantive arguments of the trial case made by defence.

Assange’s attorneys had informed the court that he simply could not attend in person, though it would hardly have mattered. His absence from the courtroom was decorous in its own way; he could avoid being displayed like a caged specimen reviled for his publishing feats. The proceedings would be conducted in the manner of appropriate panto, with dress and procedure to boot.

Unfortunately, as things chugged along, the two judges were seemingly ill versed in the field they were adjudicating. Their ignorance was telling on, for instance, the views of Mark Pompeo, whose bilious reaction to WikiLeaks when director of the Central Intelligence Agency involved rejecting the protections of the First Amendment of the US Constitution to non-US citizens. (That view is also held by the US prosecutors.) Such a perspective, argued Assange’s legal team, was a clear violation of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

They were also surprised to be informed that further charges could be added to the indictment on his arrival to the United States, including those carrying the death penalty. To this could be added other enlightening surprises for the judicial bench: the fact that rules of admissibility might be altered to consider material illegally obtained, for instance, through surveillance; that Assange might also be sentenced for an offence he was never actually tried for.

Examples of espionage case law were submitted as precedents to buttress the defence, with Edward Fitzgerald KC calling espionage a “pure political offence” which barred extradition in treaties Britain had signed with 158 nation states.

The case of David Shayler, who had been in the employ of the British domestic intelligence service MI5, saw the former employee prosecuted for passing classified documents to The Mail on Sunday in 1997 under the Official Secrets Act. These included the names of various agents, that the agency kept dossiers on various UK politicians, including Labour ministers, and that the British foreign intelligence service, MI6, had conceived of a plan to assassinate Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. When the UK made its extradition request to the French authorities, they received a clear answer from the Cour d’Appel: the offence charged was found to be political in nature.

Mark Summers KC also emphasised the point that the “prosecution was motivated to punish and inhibit the exposure of American state-level crimes”, ample evidence of which was adduced during the extradition trial, yet ignored by both Baraitser and Swift. Baraitser brazenly ignored evidence of discussions by US intelligence officials about a plot to kill or abduct Assange.

For Summers, chronology was telling: the initial absence of any prosecution effort by the Obama administration, despite empanelling a grand jury to investigate WikiLeaks; the announcement by the International Criminal Court that it would be investigating potential crimes committed by US combatants in Afghanistan in 2016, thereby lending gravity to Assange’s disclosures; and the desire to kill or seek the publisher’s extradition after the release of the Vault 7 files detailing various espionage tools of the CIA.

With Pompeo’s apoplectic declaration that WikiLeaks was a hostile, non-state intelligence service, the avenue was open for a covert targeting of Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The duly hatched rendition plan led to the prosecution, which proved “selective” in avoiding, for instance, the targeting of newspaper outlets such as Freitag, or the website Cryptome. In Summer’s view, “This is not a government acting on good faith pursuing a legal path.”

When it came to discussing the leaks, the judges revealed a deep-welled obliviousness about what Assange and WikiLeaks had actually done in releasing the US State Department cables. For one thing, the old nonsense that the unredacted, or poorly redacted material had resulted in damage was skirted over, not to mention the fact that Assange had himself insisted on a firm redaction policy. No inquiry has ever shown proof that harm came to any US informant, a central contention of the US Department of Justice. Nor was it evident to the judges that the publication of the cables had first taken place in Cryptome, once it was discovered that reporters from The Guardian had injudiciously revealed the password to the unredacted files in their publication.

Two other points also emerged in the defence submission: the whistleblower angle, and that of foreseeability. Consider, Summers argued hypothetically, the situation where Chelsea Manning, whose invaluable disclosures WikiLeaks published, had been considered by the European Court of Human Rights. The European Union’s whistleblower regime, he contended, would have considered the effect of harm done by violating an undertaking of confidentiality with the exposure of abuses of state power. Manning would have likely escaped conviction, while Assange, having not even signed any confidentiality agreements, would have had even better prospects for acquittal.

The issue of foreseeability, outlined in Article 7 of the ECHR, arose because Assange, his team further contends, could not have known that publishing the cables would have triggered a lawsuit under the Espionage Act. That said, a grand jury had refused to indict the Chicago Times in 1942 for publishing an article citing US naval knowledge of Japanese plans to attack Midway Island. Then came the Pentagon Papers case in 1971. While Summers correctly notes that, “The New York Times was never prosecuted,” this was not for want for trying: a grand jury was empanelled with the purpose of indicting the Times reporter Neil Sheehan for his role in receiving classified government material. Once revelations of government tapping of whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was revealed, the case collapsed. All that said, Article 7 could provide a further ground for barring extradition.

February 21 gave lawyers for the US the chance to reiterate the various, deeply flawed assertions about Assange’s publication activities connected with Cablegate (the “exposing informants” argument), his supposedly non-journalistic activities and the integrity of diplomatic assurances about his welfare were he to be extradited. The stage for the obscene was duly set.

 

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The Hero Haunted World

By James Moore

I do not understand. Perhaps, I never will. Does anyone?

As Russia kills innocents in Ukraine and dissidents within its own borders, a former American president refuses to criticize the murderous dictator. Maybe, it’s because he idolizes the brutality and wants some of his own to deploy for political purposes on American soil. In the U.S. House, there is a refusal to provide military resources to save Ukraine from Russia’s expanding totalitarianism while the American government has already armed Israel’s attack on Gaza to the point the wider world has begun to view it as the facilitation of a genocide. Israel, however, refuses to be chastened even by the humanitarian concerns only recently expressed by its most significant benefactor, U.S. taxpayers. Meanwhile, the U.S., once the moral and democratic guidepost for other nations, wants to sanction South Africa for calling out genocide in Gaza. The contradictions and hypocrisies can hardly be catalogued or annotated.

Who can keep up?

But Russia’s Putin may have hastened his own demise with his murder of opposition leader Alexi Navalny. Political movements often crystalize with the acquisition of a martyr. Navalny, even after being imprisoned in a six-by-seven foot cell after an attempted poisoning, never relented in his fight against Putin’s control. He may have been sent to a prison north of the Arctic Circle, beaten and poisoned until he died, but his words and aspirations for his country have been amplified in death. Russia cannot incarcerate all the citizens who will begin to gather in the streets and demand democracy and freedom, unless the entire nation is turned into a gulag. Deposing Putin seems more of a possibility for the Russian people today than while Navalny was drawing breath, and his wife, fearlessly, has taken up his cause and his message.

 

 

Putin will not stop killing his detractors and opponents, however, until he is out of power or out of breath. The threat of a nuclear event will also not be eliminated while he controls Russia’s military and is able to continue selling oil to India and China. Sanctions are not reducing his oppressions, and in this country, a former president sees himself as a Navalny-like hero instead of the Putinesque villain. He wants authoritarian rule like Putin but to be lionized as if he were principled like Navalny. How does that work? Putin has found creative ways to get his political opponents to jump out of high rise buildings or fly in planes that point at the ground and the political right in the U.S. still aligns itself with the murderous machinations. A former American network TV host flies to Moscow and praises the dictator in an interview that amounts to a kind of journalistic fellatio, which encourages American MAGATs to see in Putin a powerful and decisive leader. The saner political world wonders how much more time is left on Putin’s clock before there is another Russian revolution.

While American politicians praise the defiance of Navalny and his courage of speaking truth to power, our judicial and political systems continue to push for the extradition and prosecution of Julian Assange, who shared a truth that American power did not want made public. The Wikileaks founder distributed 2007 videos of U.S. helicopter pilots gunning down two journalists and Iraqis in the streets. The total dead was eighteen civilians, which included two Reuters reporters and two children. The Apache helicopter pilots mistook shouldered video cameras for handheld RPG launchers, but also later laughed at the killings they had committed. Gunships had reportedly been dispatched to the area because U.S. soldiers had been dealing with small arms fire in that location earlier in the day. Assange and Wikileaks released a 39 minute video (below) showing the attack, which prompted global outrage.

 

 

Assange, who is considered by many publishers and reporters to be a hero for committing an act of journalism, is, instead, facing extradition from the UK to the U.S. and likely prosecution that could put him in prison for 170 years. The U.S. is in court in London pressing for Assange to be extradited to face numerous charges in America. We do not necessarily honor people in America who risk much to reveal the truth. Rather, we prosecute them because it risks revealing the horrors and the lies of our geo-political ambitions. Assange received the videos, and more than 750,000 classified and unclassified but sensitive documents, from Chelsea Manning, a U.S. Army soldier who was convicted under the Espionage Act. Manning spent seven years in prison until her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama. Assange, meanwhile, held out with diplomatic immunity in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London while the CIA plotted to have him kidnapped or killed.

There is a tradition of American citizens releasing information of value to the public when it will inform them of the actions of their government that might be improper. There is also a tradition of prosecuting those citizens, emotionally and legally, whether it is Edward Snowden, who defected to Russia after revealing global surveillance operations by the CIA and NSA, or it’s Reality Winner, a U.S. Air Force veteran who released classified information to journalists about Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential election. She received the longest prison sentence ever imposed for an unauthorized release of government information to the media, which would have little reason to suspect Russian meddling in U.S. elections without Winner’s actions. There is also, of course, Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1973 was charged under the Espionage Act for releasing the Pentagon Papers, an extensive analysis by the Department of Defense on flawed U.S. decision-making policies regarding the War in Vietnam. He was facing 115 years in prison until his prosecutors and investigators bungled evidence collection and all changes had to be dropped, even though the New York Times and Washington Post had published his massive report, which hastened the end of our Southeast Asian tragedy.

There ought to be no difficulty in deciding what kind of actions or character comprise heroism. They are definitely not contained in spray-tanned conmen who compare themselves and their 91 indictments to the heroic resistance of Alexi Navalny to the Russian killer of humans and facts. Heroes are not American politicians who decry the murder of Navalny for confronting Putin with facts while denouncing the release of information by Assange, who saw wrongs in how the U.S. was prosecuting the Iraq War, an invasion and occupation based upon a demonstrably false claim of weapons of mass destruction. Governments must, of necessity, keep some secrets to maintain advantage over adversaries and control threats to sovereignty but that hidden information ought not be protected when it hides facts that deceive citizens and their rights to know what their government is doing and why.

American history is replete, though, with the elimination and assassination of inspiring leaders who were taking the country in an informed direction toward equality of opportunity. Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy, exactly a century apart, had messages the nation wanted but other interests did not, whether it was JFK’s peace efforts to end the Cold War or Lincoln’s to reunite a nation and free people from slavery. Our own CIA was likely culpable in JFK’s death, and, according to the family of Martin Luther King, the civil rights leader was assassinated by the FBI, which had been listening to his plans with endless wiretaps. Bobby Kennedy’s death ended any hope of finding the truth about his brother’s murder in Dallas but there were other inspiring American figures who were wronged for confronting wrongs. Muhammad Ali was stripped of his heavyweight boxing title and lost years of earnings and competing because he resisted the draft and the War in Vietnam, and now we are engaged in funding a genocide in Gaza by Israel even as we proclaim our outrage of Putin’s assault on Ukraine.

It’s a sad country that has no heroes, and an even sadder one that needs them.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. His newest book will be released mid- 2023. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.

He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).

His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.

Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”

 

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Ok, So This Is A Boring Post… Or Should I Say A Boring Read?

Gloria Sty, bud Iyam riting this coz I wanna mayk sum poynts bowt reeding and fonnix…

You probably read that first sentence more slowly than usual and some of you will have just ignored it, but your probably able to read it, if you read it allowed.

Of course, you probably read that second sentence much more quickly and only some of you will notice that it used the wrong homonym. It should have read: You’re probably able to read that just fine if you read it aloud.

More importantly, you were able to read the first sentence because you were able to use phonics to decode the sentence. For most people that made it much, much slower than the way they read most things.

To use an imperfect analogy, think of reading like learning to drive: It’s very important to learn how to use the brakes. And the steering wheel and the accelerator. Once you’ve learned where all those things are, then it’s time to start concentrating on where you’re going and what’s around you. You may still be a poor driver and have no sense of direction, but only a small number will need a refresher course on where the brakes are. In this analogy, think of knowing how to use letters to sound out a word as the breaks and knowledge as the accelerator. Sometimes you’ll neither be able to use either of those things to make meaning, so you might swerve around them with the steering wheel and continue in the hope that what you avoided isn’t a problem later.

Ok, it’s an imperfect analogy. I admitted as much myself. Of course, just like with driving, it’s a lot more than knowing where the brakes, accelerator and steering wheel are. You have to know where you’re going and – even though you’ve been driven to Grandma’s house hundreds of times – when you’re driving you may suddenly become aware that you don’t actually know which road to turn down and you need someone to direct you, or else you need to put on the brakes and look up the route… (Yes, I’m ignoring the possibility of using a GPS because it doesn’t fit the analogy…)

Reading is not simply a matter of decoding words with phonics any more than driving is a matter of knowing where the brakes are. In both cases, if you have to use them every few seconds, you’ll never get anywhere. Reading requires knowledge which Daniel Wllingham explains rather succinctly in this article: “School time, knowledge and reading comprehension”.

When I say knowledge, I’d don’t just mean a knowledge of vocabulary. While a rich vocabulary is extremely important in understanding what one reads, one needs a wide general knowledge to pick up the inferences in what one reads.

A sentence such as: “Albanese took the wind out of Dutton’s sails by agreeing with him!” requires not just a knowledge of Australian politics to appreciate the implications of the sentence, but unless one is familiar with the phrase “wind out his sails” then one might be left confused. Similarly the following paragraph needs the reader to make a number of inferences that aren’t present in a literal reading:

She thanked David for the lift and asked him if I’d like to come in for a coffee. “Won’t your husband mind if we wake him up?” he asked. “No,” she replied, “he’s away at the moment, so we really don’t have to worry about him at all!”

A literal reading would have the reader believing that David was concerned about the sleep patterns of the husband, whereas most people would suspect that there was a subtext to the question as well as the answer.

When the Grattan Institute’s report was publicised last week, I couldn’t help but notice that the media used the failure to success anecdote by talking about an individual school who had made a dramatic improvement after adopting the recommended strategy. The trouble with the failure to success model is that it doesn’t tell you what’s going on elsewhere and, in this case, I’d suggest that most primary schools do have a structured approach to teaching kids how to sound out words. There may be room for improvement but when you are talking about the failure to success model, you aren’t looking at what’s happening in most places.

To explain what I mean as simply as I can, I’ll move away from education and use healthcare to illustrate by way of a fictional example:

Jonestown Hospital had one of the worst fatality rates in the state, then a new chief of staff, Dr Smith, instituted a policy of sterilisation. Dr Smith insisted that instruments were sterilised after each use and mandated the washing of hands between surgical procedures. “Surgeons had been instructed to save soap and water by only washing their hands at the start of the day but once we washed before every operation, the infection rate went down dramatically!”

If only other hospitals were to adopt these simple measures then we may be able to reduce fatalities to zero.

Yes, the reason that Jonestown hospital was able to improve was that it wasn’t doing what nearly every other hospital does. That’s why it had such a high fatality rate.

Now to drag that back to education, it’s obvious that if one poorly performing school isn’t doing something that most other schools are doing and they start doing it, then they’ll likely improve but that’s not an indication that all the schools who were doing better than the previously poorly performing school has something to teach them. In fact, it may be the opposite.

Every time the media report on education they have a tendency to report on the failures within the system and present some solution as though it’s the panacea for everything, while overlooking the fact that some of the reasons for poor performance are known to everyone and ignored. For example, why does NAPLAN compare like schools? Well, everyone knows if we compared all schools with all schools and didn’t take into account socio-economic factors, we’d find that socio-economic factors were the biggest element in the difference in ranking.

 

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Border Paranoia in Fortress Australia

The imaginative faculties of standard Australian politicians retreat to some strange, deathly place on certain issues. In that wasteland, they are often unrecoverable. Like juveniles demanding instant reward, these representatives find complexity hideous, troubling, discomforting. Focus on the prospect of immediate electoral gain, the crude punch, the bruising, the hurt. That, in sum, is Canberra’s policy towards refugees.

With this month’s appearance of 39 asylum seekers on some of the most remote shorelines on the planet in Western Australia, the customary wells of hysteria were again being tapped for political gain. “Here we go again,” lamented the Tasmanian Greens Senator Nick McKim. “A boat arrives with desperate refugees who need our help and we’re suddenly in a ‘political crisis’ because the media said so.”

One desperate politician was opposition leader Peter Dutton, who wondered how these dangerous subversives could have ever arrived undetected in the first place. “The government has all sorts of problems,” he crowed. “It’s clear that they don’t have the same surveillance in place that we had when we were in government.”

Dutton found it “inconceivable a boat of this size, carrying 40-plus people, could make it to the mainland without there being any detection.” The insinuation is hard to ignore: the Labor government permitted the arrival to take place.

The 2022-3 Australia Border Force annual report had noted a reduction of “maritime patrol days” by 6% and aerial patrols by 14%, the result of vessel maintenance, personnel shortages and logistical difficulties when operating in remote parts off the coast. Overall budgetary costs for the ABF have also been adjusted to account for the fact that the 2022-3 budget was, as Home Affairs department chief finance officer Stephanie Cargill explained in May year, “overspent”.

The ABF chief, Michael Outram, has even gone so far as to reproach Dutton for his assessment about funding cuts, which deceptively, even mendaciously suggest belt tightening on the part of the Albanese government. “Border Force funding is currently the highest it’s been since its establishment in 2015 and in the last year, the ABF has received additional funding totalling hundreds of millions of dollars, to support maritime and land based operations.”

All in all, there has hardly been a softening of the brutal policy that presumptively and prematurely judges undocumented naval arrivals as unworthy. As the ABF statement on the arrivals notes with customary severity, “Australia’s tough border protection policies means that no one who travels unauthorised by boat will ever be allowed to settle permanently in Australia. The only way to travel to Australia is legally, with an Australian visa.”

The dubious rationale for maintaining the policy, formally known as Operation Sovereign Borders, is still very much in place. “Australia,” the ABF continues to explain, “remains committed to protecting its borders, stamping out people smuggling and preventing vulnerable people from risking their lives on futile journeys. The people smuggling business model is built on the exploitation of information and selling lies to vulnerable people who will give up everything to risk their lives at sea.”

Rear Admiral Brett Sonter, who leads Operation Sovereign Borders, had also stated that nothing has changed. “The mission of Operation Sovereign Borders remains the same today as it was when it was established in 2013: protect Australia’s borders, combat people smuggling in our region, and importantly, prevent people from risking their lives at sea.” To suggest otherwise would create an “alternative narrative” susceptible to exploitation “by criminal people smugglers to deceive potential irregular immigrants and convince them to risk their lives and travel to Australia by boat.”

This became a point of contention for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who decided to give Dutton a parliamentary scalding by suggesting that his opponents were “just full of nonsense, and they should stop being a cheer squad for people, encouraging people smuggling.”

Such “business models”, as they are derisively and demagogically called, are the natural consequence of a yearning to flee. It is a yearning that is being globally punished, notably by wealthier states less than keen to accept asylum seekers. Canberra’s savage approach to the problem – non-settlement in Australia of those eventually found to be refugees and detaining individuals in concentration camps in the Pacific – has become the envy of border protection fetishists. The British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, for instance, dreams of an Australia-styled solution that will involve “turning the boats back” and deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. Unfortunately for him, and most fortunately for humanitarians, an army of lawyers and judges have frustrated his vision.

The border fetishists also make a crucial omission. The people smugglers, who are of all stripes of opportunism and exploitation rather than some monolithic bloc, are merely facilitating the provisions of the United Nations Refugee Convention. All who arrive should not be discriminated against on the basis of how they arrive or their backgrounds – the articles of the Convention state as much – yet Australia’s border policy remains persistently cruel and defiant. Whenever a boat appears with a small cargo full of desperate individuals who make it to land, the fantasies of invasion, unwarranted intrusion and unwanted infiltration catch alight. It was high time they were snuffed out.

 

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Joe Biden: The Damnation of Age

He was sweet and well meaning, but he was old. He was hazy. His memory was poor. Doddering, confused, the self-proclaimed leader of the Free World seemed ready to check into a retirement village. That, at least, is the thick insinuation of the Special Counsel’s report on President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents when vice president during the Obama administration.

The findings of the Special Counsel Robert Hur were not punitive. But they were laceratingly wounding. It seemed to resemble more of a nurse’s assessment of whether you need an upgrade in aged-care treatment, a bolstering of services for a person in declining years. (“Have you lost your mind, dear?”)

During the course of the investigation, things did not get better. “In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’).”

At an ill-tempered press conference, Biden insisted that his memory was “fine”, that Hur should never have asked such questions as whether the president could recall when his son died and that he was “well meaning. And I’m an elderly man. And I know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve been president – I put this country back on its feet.”

The picture is not a good one. But then again, when was it? Prior to coming to power, Biden already had a bookshelf list of bungles, gaffes and misjudgements. The only question looming behind was the degree of intent behind them. In 1987, he notoriously plagiarised much of a speech by the then leader of the British Labor Party, Neil Kinnock and, to show he was on a hot streak, generously decorated his academic record from Syracuse Law School. Despite describing this as “much ado about nothing,” he withdrew from the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination that September.

His campaign team, terrified that he might verbally snare himself leading up to the 2020 election, tried their best to insulate him from penetrative public scrutiny. This was very much aided by the ravages and restrictions of the pandemic, which afforded him the perfect excuse to operate in conditions of masked isolation.

As commander-in-chief matters have only worsened. Figures, for example, were airily revised – a million dead US residents and citizens from the ravages of COVID-19 became the somewhat reduced figure of “over 100”. World leaders dead or alive were swapped in Biden’s memory channel – a flattering form of death revival, and a denigration of the living. Biden, for instance, confused the current French president, Emmanuel Macron, with the late François Mitterrand before a campaign rally in Las Vegas.

His geographical recall was not too good either. “Right after I was elected, I went to a G7 meeting in southern England. And I sat down and said, ‘America is back!’ and Mitterrand from Germany – I mean France – looked at me and said, ‘How long are you back for?’”

In terms of wars, he has remarked that Russia’s Vladimir Putin was “losing the war in Iraq”, which would have surprised the Russians, Ukrainians and everybody else. More could have been made by the Republicans about this in Congress, but then again, their aged warriors are hardly endowed with brainbox memories of sound recall or cognition either.

Other mishaps could cause titters of amusement – the harmless, dotty chap who muddles the facts, lighting up pub conversation. During his April visit to Ireland last year, light entertainment was caused by his confusion between the terroristic Black and Tan enforcers during the Irish War of Independence (1919-21) and the All Blacks, New Zealand’s fabled rugby team. The remarks were made in Louth in the context of speaking about a former rugby player and distant cousin Rob Kearney. “He beat the hell out of the Black and Tans,” an admiring Biden recalled.

The more significant, and dangerous problem is that a decaying, eroding memory can become the perfect pretext of making appalling policy even as it is forgotten, a form of erasure as things are being done. Policies long pursued and understood can be given the heave-ho. Biden’s belligerence over the Taiwan question, and whether a war over the province with China would be worthwhile, is a case in point.

Biden’s opponent does not, oddly enough, have that problem. Donald Trump, even at 77-years of age, has a habit of transmuting inability to faux talent. One never knows whether his confusions are intentional in their malice or genuine acts of indifference or imbecility. (He very intentionally forgot the existence of WikiLeaks after the 2016 election, despite lauding the organisation’s press achievements prior.) More recently, competing Republican contender Nikki Haley got switched with Democrat veteran Nancy Pelosi. Petulant, hysterical, and stubbornly adolescent, he has a form of counterfeit youth on his side, the child in rompers who always screams even after downing the milk. When he errs, he is not only forgiven but given candied approval by his understanding supporters.

What matters now is the sense that the errors and lapses have arisen because of Biden’s age, the causal attribution to worn memory that renders the ruling magistrate enfeebled and vulnerable to overthrow. The campaign trail till November 2024 will be long and vicious, and Biden’s team may well have to reprise their role as quarantine specialists for their leader. In the meantime, best consult the RAND Corporation study about the risks posed by dementia afflicting the US imperium’s aged security and intelligence community. It promises to only get worse.

 

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