TOKYO MASTER BANNER

MINISTRY OF TOKYO
US-ANGLO CAPITALISMEU-NATO IMPERIALISM
Illegitimate Transfer of Inalienable European Rights via Convention(s) & Supranational Bodies
Establishment of Sovereignty-Usurping Supranational Body Dictatorships
Enduring Program of DEMOGRAPHICS WAR on Europeans
Enduring Program of PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR on Europeans
Enduring Program of European Displacement, Dismemberment, Dispossession, & Dissolution
No wars or conditions abroad (& no domestic or global economic pretexts) justify government policy facilitating the invasion of ancestral European homelands, the rape of European women, the destruction of European societies, & the genocide of Europeans.
U.S. RULING OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR TO SALVAGE HEGEMONY
[LINK | Article]

*U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR* | U.S. Empire's Casino Unsustainable | Destabilised U.S. Monetary & Financial System | U.S. Defaults Twice A Year | Causes for Global Financial Crisis of 2008 Remain | Financial Pyramids Composed of Derivatives & National Debt Are Growing | *U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR* | U.S. Empire's Casino Unsustainable | Destabilised U.S. Monetary & Financial System | U.S. Defaults Twice A Year | Causes for Global Financial Crisis of 2008 Remain | Financial Pyramids Composed of Derivatives & National Debt Are Growing | *U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR*

Who's preaching world democracy, democracy, democracy? —Who wants to make free people free?
[info from Craig Murray video appearance, follows]  US-Anglo Alliance DELIBERATELY STOKING ANTI-RUSSIAN FEELING & RAMPING UP TENSION BETWEEN EASTERN EUROPE & RUSSIA.  British military/government feeding media PROPAGANDA.  Media choosing to PUBLISH government PROPAGANDA.  US naval aggression against Russia:  Baltic Sea — US naval aggression against China:  South China Sea.  Continued NATO pressure on Russia:  US missile systems moving into Eastern Europe.     [info from John Pilger interview follows]  War Hawk:  Hillary Clinton — embodiment of seamless aggressive American imperialist post-WWII system.  USA in frenzy of preparation for a conflict.  Greatest US-led build-up of forces since WWII gathered in Eastern Europe and in Baltic states.  US expansion & military preparation HAS NOT BEEN REPORTED IN THE WEST.  Since US paid for & controlled US coup, UKRAINE has become an American preserve and CIA Theme Park, on Russia's borderland, through which Germans invaded in the 1940s, costing 27 million Russian lives.  Imagine equivalent occurring on US borders in Canada or Mexico.  US military preparations against RUSSIA and against CHINA have NOT been reported by MEDIA.  US has sent guided missile ships to diputed zone in South China Sea.  DANGER OF US PRE-EMPTIVE NUCLEAR STRIKES.  China is on HIGH NUCLEAR ALERT.  US spy plane intercepted by Chinese fighter jets.  Public is primed to accept so-called 'aggressive' moves by China, when these are in fact defensive moves:  US 400 major bases encircling China; Okinawa has 32 American military installations; Japan has 130 American military bases in all.  WARNING PENTAGON MILITARY THINKING DOMINATES WASHINGTON. ⟴  
Showing posts with label Labor Party (Aust). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labor Party (Aust). Show all posts

June 24, 2016

Electorate, Would I Lie to You?




ELECTORATE
Would I Lie to You?
AAP

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/federal/2016/06/24/pm-says-shorten-caught-lying-on-medicare.html

PM says Shorten caught lying on Medicare 

Published: 12:09 pm, Friday, 24 June 2016


PM Malcolm Turnbull says Bill Shorten has been 'caught out lying' on his Medicare scare campaign.

Malcolm Turnbull insists Bill Shorten has been 'caught out lying' over Labor's Medicare scare campaign.

The opposition leader, appearing on the ABC's 7.30 program, was not prepared to put hand on heart and repeat his claim the coalition had a plan to privatise Medicare.  [comment:  what are they, 5 years old?  It doesn't matter where their hands are, these tossers aren't to be believed.]

Instead Mr Shorten told host Leigh Sales: 'I can say to the people of Australia that this election and their vote on July 2 will determine the future of Medicare'.

He also took the opportunity to argue the Liberal plan, which included a freeze on indexed Medicare rebates, was 'scary'.

The prime minister, campaigning in Launceston on Friday, seized on Mr Shorten's apparent change of language.

'He was asked to put his hand on his heart and repeat his lies and he wouldn't,' Mr Turnbull told reporters.

'He has been lying about Medicare and he's been caught out.'

Mr Turnbull accused Labor and trade unions of calling older voters at night and 'frightening them with lies'.

'Now if somebody is running for prime minister and they're prepared to lie about something as important as that to vulnerable Australians, how can you trust anything else he says?'

Mr Shorten, for his part, accused the prime minister of having 'his hand in the policy cookie jar'.

'It is not what Malcolm Turnbull is saying now about a particular privatisation task force that's got me worried, what it is piece by piece, if given the chance, he will dismantle Medicare,' he told reporters in Darwin.

Labor campaign spokeswoman Katy Gallagher denied Mr Shorten was softening Labor's line of attack.

'There hasn't been any change to Labor's position at all,' she told reporters in Canberra.

'We are continuing to talk about our concerns about Medicare and potential privatisation.'

AAP

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/federal/2016/06/24/pm-says-shorten-caught-lying-on-medicare.html

LABOR PSEUDO LEFT
BILL SHORTEN

RE:  DONALD TRUMP
REPUBLICAN, USA
Australian Financial Review


" ... Mr Trump reached the number of delegates needed to secure his party's presidential nomination on Thursday. He has vowed to break the North American Free Trade Agreementand the Paris climate agreement, does not support the Trans Pacific Partnership and said he would slap a 20 per cent tariff on imported products."


Bill Shorten ... saying US Republican candidate Donald Trump's views are "barking mad"

...  Shorten feels free to hurl insults

Malcolm Turnbull hit out at Mr Shorten over the comments on Friday, despite two of his ministers raising serious concerns about a Trump presidency.

AFR

COMMENT

The Shorten pseudo 'left' politician, from a party that wants wants to give their country away, has the nerve to be critical of Trump, while he and his Labor party parrot Liberal party policies, having abandoned Australian working classes, as far back as the late 1960s.

Notice that both Liberal and Labor capitalist serving & nation screwing assh*les are at one when it comes to slagging off an American patriot that's opposed to trade agreements.

Is there any actual material distinction between these two capitalist serving Australian political party assh*les?

 
Donald Trump, US Republican, position sounds more my idea of the left than anything the Australian Labor Party lowlifes stand for.

The Australian Labor Party & its union buddies ought to be challenged by forming alternative authentic left political parties and unions that represent socially conservative Anglo-Australian / European working-class interests ... assuming there still remains anything left of an Anglo-Australian or European working class in the country.  


COMMENT

Medicare is destined to be privatised when the politicians sign up for the US 'free trade agreement' (Transpacific Partnership (TPP)), which is a corporate free for all, in which national sovereignty, democracy, the welfare and the will of the people, will mean jack sh*t, on signing up for this American corporate rort.

I don't see that Shorten Labor tosser opposing the free trade agreement.

All his political party opposes is the ISDS clause.

While that's a positive, the entire free trade arrangement is sh*t and would be opposed in its entirety by any genuine left party that had national (and, particularly, mass, working-class) interests as a concern.

Both the Liberals and Labor are sh*t.  Greens are even sh*ttier.

I wouldn't vote for any of these assh*les.


ONLY VOTE WORTH MAKING IS A NATIONALIST VOTE


COMMENT 

Labor's refugee/immigration policy negates any reason whatsoever to vote for this capitalist serving, working-class undercutting and working-class resource redistributing, fraud of a 'left'.

CORPORATIONS
GET THE TAXCUTS

... Prime Minister used similar rhetoric in Sunday night’s debate against Bill Shorten to make the case for his plan to cut taxes for firms with revenue of more than $2 million.

... look at how far, or how low, Labor has drifted since Keating’s time.

Shorten described the Turnbull government’s plan to cut company tax as “useless and hopeless”.

It went largely unreported, although for a leader to describe a tax cut as useless and hopeless in an election campaign sounds like news to me.
Next day when he was quizzed about it, Shorten back-pedalled slightly to say “the truth (or troof if we are to be strictly accurate) of the matter” was that it was the wrong time and the wrong priority, despite the fact after last year’s budget he chided the government for not providing small business with an even bigger tax cut and invited it to work with him to take the rate down even further.
... Shorten also told the Australian Council of Social Service that “corporate tax reform helps Australia’s private sector grow and it creates jobs right up and down the income ladder”.
Under Shorten, after prodding from the unions, Labor baulked at the free-trade deal with China and equivocates over the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

The Australian



Australia Foreign Policy
http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/06/12/australias-uncertain-election-season/

Australian election offers few choices on foreign policy
12 June 2016


Author: Russell Trood, Griffith University


Australians will go to a federal election on 2 July 2016. At first glance the 19 seats in the House of Representatives that the Labor Party — the current Opposition — needs to win to take government seems a heroic undertaking. Yet, if the early polls are any indication, this may not be too far beyond its reach.

There are several dimensions to the 2016 election that add to the mystery of the result. The leaders of Australia’s mainstream political parties have only held their positions for a relatively short period of time. Neither has led his party through the gruelling demands of a federal election. And this year the election campaign period will go for around two months, nearly twice as long as usual.

But perhaps the greatest challenge is that this is a ‘double dissolution’ election — meaning that all 150 seats in the House of Representatives and 76 in the Senate will be up for grabs. It is the first time in nearly 30 years that Australians have experienced a double dissolution election. Predicting the result will be especially difficult.

To form government the winning party will need to secure a majority of seats on the floor of the House, but to be confident of providing stable, effective government and to pass its legislative agenda, it will also need to have a reliable coalition of supportive senators in the Upper House. This has been wanting in recent Australian parliaments and partly explains the rationale for a double dissolution election.

That said, this will likely be a very orthodox election with domestic political issues dominating the agenda over any significant international or foreign policy change. The Labor Party is making its pitch on increasing education funding, sustaining Australia’s high-class health care system and protecting the social security interests of its low-to-middle-class constituency. For Bill Shorten, the Opposition leader and former president of Australia’s trade union movement, this is the heartland of Australian politics.

In contrast, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s national economic plan of ‘jobs and growth’ draws on his more eclectic life experience, including as an international businessman. Since becoming prime minister in September last year, Turnbull has consistently emphasised the great economic opportunities offered to Australians by the transitions (and disruptions) now taking place in the global economy. He has stressed that there has never been more exciting time to live in a world of change and transition where enterprise and innovation can flourish and underpin significant domestic economic gains.

Against this background, it is unlikely that the election will provide much guidance on the future direction of Australian foreign policy. There is already a high degree of consensus, at least among Australia’s mainstream political elites, about foreign policy priorities. These include sustaining and deepening Australia’s security relationship with the United States, engaging with the Indo-Pacific, countering radical extremist terrorism and protecting homeland security.

During his three years as opposition leader, Shorten has done little to embellish this agenda, being content to respond to international issues as they emerge. And while the election will demand a more comprehensive statement of policy, it will likely be well within the parameters of the liberal internationalism that has long been the cornerstone of Labor’s foreign policy.

By contrast, the Turnbull government has already clearly marked its foreign policy ambitions. It will seek deeper engagement with the global economy through comprehensive free trade agreements and partnerships with Indonesia and India. Turnbull will also press hard, though perhaps unsuccessfully, for the Trans-Pacific Partnership to become a reality. Perhaps most notably, and with a significantly higher degree of emphasis from previous  statements on the subject, the Turnbull government’s recent Defence White Paper gives high priority to working with all countries to ‘build a rules based global order’ which incorporates agreed rules of international law and regional security arrangements.

Once settled, the victor will have to face up to the pressing issues on Australia’s foreign policy horizon. In Japan, the Abe government was widely reported to have been disappointed, if not stunned, when Australia failed to award the contract for the development and manufacture of its new generation of conventional submarines to the Japanese contender. The decision raised doubts in Japan as to whether Canberra was seriously interested in developing a deeper strategic partnership. The answer is almost certainly yes, but rebuilding trust and confidence will demand some assiduous diplomatic attention.

Likely to be of a more enduring difficulty for Canberra is China’s determined push to expand its maritime boundaries in the South China Sea. Australia shares widespread regional concerns about the destabilising consequences of these actions. But Canberra is wary of being drawn into confrontation with Beijing and will need to strike a finely tuned policy balanceespecially with the United States — which protects its own national security interests.

Finally, Australia has to address the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court’s decision to close the refugee detention centre on Manus Island. The decision punches a large hole in Canberra’s elaborately conceived regime to deter people smugglers and asylum seekers from looking to Australia. The issue resonates deeply within the Australian body politic and is highly controversial among wide sections of the community. The bipartisan consensus between the government and Labor on the issue is a further complication. Labor is struggling to hold together a febrile internal policy consensus against left wing opposition. The government will certainly exploit this split within Labor to its political advantage.

At the start of the campaign, opinion polls indicated that the election could hardly be closer, with one predicting a Labor victory of 51 per cent to the Coalition’s 49 per cent, while another reversed these results. Over the coming weeks, the polls will no doubt fluctuate as Australian voters wrestle with the choice they have to make on 2 July. At this stage it is almost impossible to say that either side can be confident it has a clear path to success.

Russell Trood is Director of the Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University.
http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/06/12/australias-uncertain-election-season/


Free Trade Agreements
http://www.law360.com/articles/804406/australia-s-labor-party-wants-isds-nixed-from-trade-deals
Australia's Labor Party Wants ISDS Nixed From Trade Deals

By Caroline Simson

Law360, New York (June 7, 2016, 7:54 PM ET) --


Ahead of a July federal election, Australia's shadow minister for trade and investment and member of the country's Labor party said Tuesday that a Labor government would oppose investor-state dispute settlement provisions in trade agreements and work to remove them altogether from existing deals.

Speaking at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Trade Forum, Sen. Penny Wong, an opposition leader in the Australian Senate, said that a Labor government would not accept ISDS provisions in any proposed trade agreements.

Previous trade deals signed by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott contain ISDS provisions, including the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, despite concerns about the mechanism that have occurred in the country for years, she said.

In addition, she noted that there are
ISDS provisions in four of Australia’s earlier free trade agreements and in 21 bilateral investment treaties.

"Some of these provisions were drafted many years ago and do not contain the safeguards, carveouts and tighter definitions of more contemporary ISDS provisions," she said. "A Shorten Labor government will develop a negotiating plan to remove ISDS provisions in these agreements. Where this is not possible we will seek to update the provisions with modern safeguards."

Bill Shorten is the leader of the opposition for the Australian Labor Party.

Concerns over the way ISDS provisions are being used to challenge public policies have been raised by economic and legal experts, including the government's Productivity Commission and the chief justice of the High Court of Australia, she said.

Australia's minister for trade and investment, Steven Ciobo, is a member of the Liberal Party and has come out in favor of the TPP, calling it "very good news for Australia" in a February interview with Australian media transcribed on the trade ministry's website. He accused Wong of continuing to "fuel misinformation in relation to the impact of ... the [TPP]."

"[ISDS] is a feature that has been in trade agreements ... for something like 30 years. In 30 years we've had one issue come up, and guess what? Australia won on that one occasion it came up," he said. "The Labor Party runs around and says they're going to tear up all of our trade agreements, that they want to renegotiate them all. It's just a really bad approach from Labor, so my criticism is actually directed towards Penny Wong and the Australian Labor Party."

In December, Australia defeated a claim over its plain packaging legislation for cigarettes lodged by Hong Kong-based Philip Morris Asia Ltd., which is the Asian regional affiliate of the Philip Morris International group of companies.  [comment:  as if this is reason enough to ignore the future costs.  it looks like it's a win on a technicality specific to this case:  Philip Morris restructuring to take advantage of a treaty.  it's not exactly protection against future claims by companies.]

The company claimed in the arbitration that the 2011 law, which imposed a sweeping ban on trademarks of any kind on cigarette packages, violated its rights under a 1993 bilateral investment treaty between Hong Kong and Australia by substantially diminishing the value of its investments in Australia.

But a tribunal for the Permanent Court of Arbitration rejected the claim during an initial jurisdictional phase, ruling that the arbitration was an abuse of right because Philip Morris had restructured itself to take advantage of the Hong Kong-Australia treaty when it knew that a dispute was on the horizon.

--Editing by Aaron Pelc.

http://www.law360.com/articles/804406/australia-s-labor-party-wants-isds-nixed-from-trade-deals

http://archive.is/rDPxt


This was a bastard to edit.  Don't know why.  It was all over the shop.  I'm so sick of looking at this.  

No matter how many times I look, it looks wrong to me ... as wrong as those mainstream Australian politicians.  LOL
Blogger throwing up unwanted code is sending me mental.  When I look at the back end, trying to edit things, I see a gazillion unnecessary font and like codes it's easier to leave in than edit out.  But when it later comes to editing specific portions, it's a nightmare of picking through vandalised code because of the automatic Blogger unwanted insertions EVERYWHERE.  Blogger, please don't help.  LOL



May 22, 2016

Australia: Assange on Federal Police Raid On Opposition Labor Party





Australia: Assange on Federal Police Raid
On:  Opposition Labor Party
AUSTRALIA
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1somvku
http://archive.is/xNTPA 


Assange on Federal Police Raid
On:  Opposition Labor Party - Australia


Assange statement on Australian police raids on #ALP #AFPraids #ozpol #auspol

Friday May 20, 2016 13:09 AEST

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) raids on the opposition (ALP)
cannot be tolerated

Raiding a suspected media source for a story embarrassing to the government is bad enough. But to raid the opposition during a federal election campaign in order to hunt down the source of such stories makes Australia look like it has become an Asian democratic backwater. 

Of course, it is hard for me to have much sympathy for the hypocritical ALP, which created what it called a 'whole of government' task force against me, which included the AFP, in-order to ingratiate itself with the US. 

But the issue is not about ALP or the government. It is about the rights of all Australians to know what their government is up to. 

When the opposition and the media work together to publicly reveal infrastructure mismanagement they are doing their jobs and doing it well. 

When police conduct raids on the opposition during an election to hunt down media sources they are not doing their job. They're stopping all the rest of us from doing ours.

It is not the role of policemen to interfere with elections--whether instructed to do so by the government or not.

Julian Assange



Article
AFP Raids on Opposition Labor Party
National Broadband Network Leaked Documents

LINK  | here


POLITICAL PERSECUTION
ASSANGE UNDER SIEGE
Link | here





May 20, 2016

AFP - National Broadband Network Leaked Documents: Raids on Labor Party





AFP
National Broadband Network Leaked Documents:

Raids on Labor Party
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/05/19/senators-melbourne-office-raided-afp?cid=trending
 
The federal police have raided Labor party offices in Melbourne over allegations of leaked NBN documents.
Source: AAP


19 May 2016 - 11:02 PM  UPDATED YESTERDAY 11:04 PM



Senator Stephen Conroy's Melbourne office is among Labor party premises in Melbourne raided by Australian Federal Police over alleged leaked NBN documents.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten confirmed the AFP raids on Thursday night, saying they were being carried out in relation to the leaking of confidential National Broadband Network documents.

"It relates to his (Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull) embarrassment over the fact there was a massive blowout of costs of billions and billions of dollars and, of course, huge delays to the delivery and the rollout of the NBN," Mr Shorten told reporters in western Sydney.

In February Fairfax Media, quoting an internal NBN progress report, claimed the $46 billion network had fallen two-thirds short of its benchmark construction timetable.

Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said on Thursday night two Labor staffers had also been named in warrants relating to leaked documents.

Fairfax Media reports they are both staffers for Labor's communications spokesman Jason Clare, one of whom is a former staffer to Senator Conroy.

Mr Dreyfus, who earlier cancelled a planned press conference in Melbourne, said many other serious government leaks relating to national security, defence and the federal budget had been raised previously - but none of them resulted in AFP raids.

He described Thursday night's events as "unprecedented" - especially during an election campaign.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the raids were "entirely" a matter for the AFP.

"The Labor Party know that as well as you and I do," he said on Thursday night.

AFP confirmed raids were being conducted in Melbourne but would not expand on where or what was being targeted.

"As this activity is related to an ongoing investigation, it is not appropriate to comment any further at this stage," an AFP spokesman said in a statement.

The NBN Co said it was assisting the AFP with an ongoing investigation but it wasn't appropriate to comment any further.


http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/05/19/senators-melbourne-office-raided-afp?cid=trending 


JULIAN ASSANGE
Re:  Australia Federal Police Raid
On Opposition Labor Party
LINK | here


COMMENT

If this sort of thing has happened before, involving much more sensitive information, but has not resulted in raids ... that can only mean one thing.  I think.

It's raids ahead of the election campaigning to either smear, discredit or disrupt the Labor side?  LOL

I don't like Labor all that much, so raid away.  LMAO.
I don't even care about 'protections' etc, because I don't believe there is any.  So no point crying over civil liberties. 
And all mainstream political parties are much the same, so it's not like it's a loss from that angle, either.




September 19, 2015

Australia: Turnbull Rising

Article
SOURCE
https://newmatilda.com/2015/09/19/rise-malcolm-turnbull-staggering-wealth-surprising-aggression-substantial-intellect



Summary

Malcolm Turnbull

wealth from:  stake in local ISP OzEmail / sold
  • lawyer
  • investment banker
  • co-chairman of Goldman Sach’s Australian unit from 1997-2001
Matt Taibbi on Goldman Sachs:
"world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid"  ...

"relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money" ...

... financial crisis ... "a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates"
HIH
"Australia’s then-second largest insurance company, HIH"
"HIH took over FAI for $300 million, but its assets were “grossly misstated” 
"HIH would become the largest corporate collapse in the country’s history, with liquidators estimating losses of up to $5.3 billion.”

"Turnbull, in his capacity at Goldman Sachs, was the “primary adviser to FAI”, whose chief executive was Rodney Adler."

"Turnbull was accused of concealing from the FAI board that he was working with Adler to take the company private. Adler was later jailed, but the Royal Commission cleared Turnbull and Goldman Sachs of any wrongdoing."

Wentworth Electorate
eastern suburb - Sydney

Of 10 richest suburbs in Sydney
=  5 postcodes were in Wentworth

Of 10 most expensive suburbs in Australia
=  5 are in Wentworth

Turnbull resides
= “vast waterfront estate” in Point Piper, similar to a nearby mansion which sold for $52 million

Turnbull
= only politician to make the BRW Rich 200 in 2010, with personal wealth of $186 million

{  next wealthiest at the time was Kevin Rudd and his wife Therese Rein, at $56 million }

Wentworth
= safe Liberal seat
= reason: voters in Wentworth vote in support of their own financial interests

Wentworth
=  large Jewish population
=  Turnbull has represented an electorate with “the largest Jewish community in New South Wales”

Turnbull
= staunch defender of the Israeli government
= strong relationship with many elements of Jewish community, & its major organisations

Censorship

'Hate speech' reform
= killed off by Abbott and Brandis duo

= Turnbull likely to back
Brandis’s attempt to:
more strictly regulate racist speech
which appears to have been driven by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies concern at a speech made by Hizb ut-Tahrir
= Turnbull - will be careful not to antagonise the Jewish community

Israel
Turnbull competed every election with Labor candidates
= by promising to be the most loyal to the interests of the Israeli govt

= as PM,will need to temper his advocacy for Israel

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop
= on pro-Israel extreme side of spectrum

= opposition unlikely to challenge Turnbull on this, esp. 'Shadow Foreign Affairs' spox Tanya Plibersek

= biggest challenge re Iranian govt:
selling outreach and rehabilitation, under Julie Bishop
to Liberal party's Jewish supporters

Turnbull Profile
by John Lyons Good Weekend - 1991
'threat' appears x10
'fear' appears x6
Abbott
embarrassingly gauche
vs
Turnbull
recipient of proper class training

David Hicks
2005 - Turnbull address, Amnesty International (in Paddington)
great charm and persuasion
=  coupled with:
"Turnbull wouldn’t commit to saying or doing anything"

Turnbull
speech - 7 July 2015 
-  *worth checking out
http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/speech-to-the-sydney-institute-magna-carta-and-the-rule-of-law-in-the-digit

Policy
  • led campaign for Australia to become a Republic
  • support for gay marriage
  • climate change - watered down version of Rudd’s plan


    Climate Change

    “We cannot be seen as a party of climate sceptics, of do-nothings on climate change." [Turnbull]

    = "Howard’s obstinacy on the issue helped pave the way for the election of Kevin Rudd in 2007." {Michael Brull, New Matilda - source article}

    = Turnbull negotiated "a watered down version of Rudd’s plan on climate change action" ... committed to no more than cuts of 5 per cent of emissions below 2000 by 2020"
    / described as inadequate {Michael Brull, New Matilda - source article}

    "attack on public opinion from both sides of the political spectrum played a major role in destroying public faith in the urgency of political action on climate change" {Michael Brull, New Matilda - source article}

    "Abbott’s gambit of fiercely opposing action on climate change was seen by many as a risky, if not foolish ..." {Michael Brull, New Matilda - source article}

    Turnbull
    lost the leadership of Liberals by x1 vote


    "... rebuke and overthrow of Turnbull for his position on climate change can be seen as the lesson to him in his second run as leader."   {Michael Brull, New Matilda - source article}


    Immigration
    2009

    Turnbull warned
    Australia a “soft target” by Rudd’s reforms to Howard’s policies


    Turnbull
    =  “The object of Australia's border protection policies should be no boats.”"

    Turnbull
    2009
    = said Rudd has “lost control of our borders”, with the arrival of a new “people smuggling boat with illegal immigrants”.

    Turnbull
    = favoured - reintroduction of:
    • Temporary Protection Visas
    • Offshore processing


      Video linked in Article (quote from audio, not article)
      Muslim Schools

      1:15
      "It is important for us that we promote and encourage Islam and Islamic traditions which are moderate, which support freedom, which support democracy, and which support Australian values -- not in the sense of 'Aussie values' -- but in the sense of democracy, rule of law, tolerance, freedom.  That's what we're talking about."[Malcolm Turnbull]
      Video
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgTcwWOscqc&feature=youtu.be



      Jewish organisations
      =  thrilled by Turnbull’s promotion

      Muslim leaders
      = cautious optimism re rise of Turnbull

      Business

      =  very excited by the rise of Turnbull

      = business lobby is excited, & have good reason to be

      =  Turnbull might be able to push through their favoured measures:
      • reforms to laws - currently preventing media monopolies
      = Turnbull:  "only way, we can ... remain ... first-world society ... if we have outstanding economic leadership, if we have strong business confidence"

      *But:  WorkChoices and Joe Hockey’s first budget have shown, these are areas where Liberal govt must tread lightly

      Right-wing 'low-brow conservatives'
      = not so keen on Turnbull & elitism

      Murdoch press right-wing pundits
      = not fans of Turnbull


      Murdoch
      = but Rupert Murdoch  appears to have rallied behind Turnbull to beat the ALP

      Murdoch Press

      =  Murdoch press may well be able to turn away many of the Coalition’s voters from Turnbull

      {but, why would they?}

      MEDIA

      Turnbull
      = favourable coverage from:
      • Monthly
      • ABC
      • Fairfax

      LEFT

      Not much reason for leftists to be optimistic
      = different rhetoric, but same sell

      CONCLUSION
      Turnbull
      =  liberal instincts, tempered by the same ruthlessness he showed in his business dealings

      =  commitment to liberal values - outweighed by commitment to pursuing power when he led the Opposition


      source
      https://newmatilda.com/2015/09/19/rise-malcolm-turnbull-staggering-wealth-surprising-aggression-substantial-intellect

      ---------------------- ꕤ ----------------------

      COMMENT

      Summary, as I see the article. 

      Best to go to article for the full deal, as this is just what caught my eye ... and what I've understood, which isn't necessarily 100%. 

      Very good article.  Really enjoyed checking that out.
      So somewhere between being in defence of freedom of speech, Brandis has back-flipped and now wants tighter censorship of speech / expression that might cause 'offence'?

      That's rather confusing.  Can't Brandis make up his mind?
      Any chance of legislating against the passage of politically suppressive bullsh*t?
      Just did a catch-up on the Brandis back-flip, which is really also a Liberal party election promise back-flip:

      Brandis Backflip On Hate Speech

      http://markdreyfus.nationbuilder.com/brandis_backflip_on_hate_speech
      Laws restricting freedom of speech don't merely apply to the occasional 'genocide advocate' or whatever that guy is that's supposedly a catalyst for the Liberal party back-flip.
      Suppressive laws of this kind affect everybody, across all manner of political and historical debate -- or lack thereof.
      Other
      Mark Dreyfus QC MP
      Attorney-General of Australia
      4 Feb 2013 – 18 Sept 2013
      Preceded by:  Nicola Roxon

      Prime Ministers
      • Julia Gillard
      • Kevin Rudd
      Australian Labor Party
      Promoted to Attorney-General
      - after resignation of Nicola Roxon
      / reason cited:  Roxon wanted to be with her family
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Dreyfus






      Assange
      Transnational Security Elite,
      Carving Up the World Using Your Tax Money

      London 
      OCT8 Antiwar Mass Assembly (2011)
      Link  |  here





      September 17, 2015

      Australia: Malcolm Turnbull the fourth PM since 2013

      Article
      SOURCE
      http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=1473



      Liberal Party Leadership
      source





      source





      Australian PM Tony Abbott Toppled By His Own Former Communications Minister

      Replaced swiftly by his former communications minister Malcolm Turnbull in a 54-44 vote, making Turnbull the fourth PM since 2013, Sharmini Peries speaks with Dr. Binoy Kampmark about the current political juncture in Australia -   46 min ago
        

      Full Episode

      Australia
      Australian PM Tony Abbott Toppled By His Own Former Communications Minister

      Audio
      Transcript
      Australian PM Tony Abbott Toppled By His Own Former Communications Minister
      SHARMINI PERIES, EXEC. PRODUCER, TRNN:
      Welcome to the Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore.

      Tony Abbott, who was Australia's prime minister until Monday, was ousted by Malcolm Turnbull and his own party members. Here's what Abbott had to say on his departure.

      TONY ABBOTT: The nature of politics has changed in the past decade. We have more polls and more commentary than ever before. Mostly sour, bitter, character assassination. Poll-driven panic has produced a revolving door prime ministership, which can't be good for our country. And a febrile media culture has developed that rewards treachery.

      PERIES: Mr. Abbott, who has been weathering a series of poor opinion polls, charged with mismanagement of the budget, received 44 votes in a leadership challenge by his former communications minister Turnbull, who got 54 of the votes. Upon taking office, this is what he had to say.

      MALCOLM TURNBULL: The Australia of the future has to be a nation that is agile. That is innovative. That is creative.

      PERIES: Under the Australian system, as in the UK, the prime minister is not directly elected by voters, but the party leader is selected by the party that commands most of the seats in parliament. Now joining me to tell us more about what's happening is Dr. Binoy Kampmark. He's a senior lecturer at the School of Global, Urban, and Social Studies at RMIT University in Melbourne. He ran on the senate ticket with Julian Assange for the WikiLeaks Party in the Australian federal election in 2013.

      Binoy, good to have you with us at the Real News Network.

      BINOY KAMPMARK: It's a pleasure being with you.

      PERIES: Binoy, give us a rundown on what's going on in Australian politics, particularly with the Liberal party, in the recent weeks.

      KAMPMARK: Well, I think for your listeners and your viewers, I think a very important thing to remember is that the Australian system is based on what is called the Westminster model. The Westminster model is a very strange one. It means that the leader of the country and the leader of the party is not directly elected by the people. So what effectively this means is that the prime minister in office can potentially be deposed. Can potentially be overturned, you name it, assassinated, whatever sort of exciting term you'd like to use there.

      And interesting enough, in the caption that you mentioned there, Tony Abbott's remarks, this is exactly what's been happening in Australia since 2008. Prime ministers have been surprisingly mortal in their positions because of party opinion rather than public opinion because the party membership have gotten very worried about the elections, the result being that they get rid of the prime minister and they replace the prime minister with their favorite. And that's what we've been seeing lately.

      PERIES: And I understand that Turnbull is the fourth prime minister you've had since 2013.

      KAMPMARK: Yes. It's too many, as far as I'm concerned. They all, these characters who are filling the ledgers and filling the accounts. The reality of it is, and this is something that I've conversated about extensively and I've written about, the idea about having a prime minister through the revolving door, as Mr. Abbott himself said, irrespective of whatever political belief you might have, there is no fixed term in Australia. There is no fixed prime ministerial term. There is a flexibility there about calling elections and there is a flexibility there about leadership. And it may be also something to consider in a broader reform for the system. But that's the nature of the Australian political system.

      PERIES: Now, both of these men are part of a Liberal party that is actually far from liberal when it comes to issues such as gay marriage and addressing issues of climate change. And in this particular case Turnbull seems to be more on the right side, at least, of history moving forward.

      KAMPMARK: Well, yes. Again, for those who are not familiar, the reality is that in Australia there is a term used, liberal. It is not the term, of course, that is accepted in the United States. The term liberal is associated usually with the progressive side of politics. Liberal in Australia has a specific classicist association with Sir Robert Menzies, who was the leader of the party from the '40s, and was the leader of the party throughout the early stages of the cold war in Australia. So the reality is that we're dealing with a conservative party with conservative values.

      Now, historically, Malcolm Turnbull is not perceived to be that conservative, and that is one of the problems. He's been accused by his own party members as being a progressive in some sort of clothing of another conservative variety. So the question is, will he be a true conservative member on the liberal side in the Australian context of politics, or will he actually do something different? And that is something that people are waiting for, and we'll see what happens.

      PERIES: And what are the opinion polls in Australia like in terms of some of the more liberal issues? What are the people thinking, in other words, about climate change and issues of gay marriage, for example?

      KAMPMARK: Well, in terms of gay marriage the opinion polls suggest an overwhelming acceptance about the acceptability, as it were, of the institution. And that Australia has been lagging behind other countries, and that Australia effectively should, as it were, take a position on this more firmly and reform the law accordingly. That's one thing.

      It depends which issue, of course, we're talking about. If we're talking about, for example, refugees, the Australian electorate is rather conservative. The reason why, for example, the opposition leader of the Australian [inaud.] party and the, in fact, numerous parties with the exception perhaps of the Greens in Australia believe that refugees should be kept out of the country. Well, that's something that we'll have to see whether Mr. Turnbull changes it.

      In terms of climate change, Mr. Turnbull has shown amenability towards changing that platform, and I think he's going to budge on that. But when it comes to refugees and those broader issues, I'm not entirely sure whether he will change that.

      PERIES: But at the same time, Abbott's leadership came to a head, I think, particularly when he took such a harsh position, a reaction to the refugees and indicated that they've managed to stop boats from coming to Australia. Is that the political climate that he reflects?

      KAMPMARK: Sadly I do think it is. You have to remember, if you look carefully at the speeches being given by the new Australian prime minister, he's very careful not to mention the refugee situation too much. With the exception of this, that Mr. Abbott before he as deposed did make the concession that there would be the acceptance of 12,000 refugees from Syria.

      But with the exception of that, the hardline is fundamental. The Australian body politic, as it were, the suspicion about people arriving on boats is a very strong one. I'm not suggesting that it's a very good idea at all. I think in many ways it's an absurd thing. But it has been built into the political culture which has made politicians constantly build their political careers on being strong on preventing people arriving on boats to Australia. And I am interested to see whether Mr. Turnbull will change this. My feeling is he's not necessarily going to change this at all.

      PERIES: And where is the Labour Party in all of this? We of course saw this week in the UK the Labour Party electing a much more radical leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to head the party. Is there any such possibility in Australia?

      KAMPMARK: The individual who's currently leading the Labour Party is what I would call a conventional technocrat. Tony Blair would be very proud of him. The old, of course, the former British prime minister who was speaking about stakeholder economies was talking about a labor movement, if you like, that was more connected to the market. This individual, namely Mr. Shorten, is not in the Corbyn mould. Corbyn is the exception to the rule.

      I will tell you an example in terms of what happened recently in terms of Labour Party politics in Australia. At the Labour Party conference they accepted turn back the boats as a policy. They accepted that people should be detained in camps, and they accepted that there should be no resettlement in Australia for refugees. And if that's not a defiance of traditional Labour Party principles in what we would think about that, I don't know what is.

      PERIES: And a very curious note on your bio was that you along with Julian Assange ran for the WikiLeaks party in Australia in federal election in 2013. Tell us a sense of where the WikiLeaks party is at and your role in Australian politics at the moment.

      KAMPMARK: Well, my role in Australian politics is as an annoying scribbler, at the moment. I dabble and I engage in as many things as I can on the ground. In terms of the actual WikiLeaks experiment it is I suppose, to put it lightly, dormant at the moment. Julian Assange has many things to deal with in captivity, so to speak, pseudo-captivity in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, and I have various things I need to do in the context of broader political issues.

      But when it comes down to it the ideas still prevail, but the political structure, of course, is something that's become a bit hard to sustain. But that's the nature of these things. It's an incredible effort, as anyone who knows how to run a party knows. So when it comes down to it, happily engaged politically with pen, not perhaps so much with paper in the actual sense.

      PERIES: Dr. Binoy Kampmark, I thank you so much for enlightening us with Australian politics today, and we hope to have you back very soon.

      KAMPMARK: Anytime. It's lovely speaking with you.

      PERIES: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.

      End
      DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

      source
      http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14735

      ---------------------- ꕤ ----------------------

      COMMENT

      Some interesting commentary on the recent Australian Liberal Party leadership switch.

      I'm conservative in my outlook, so I would support most socially conservative positions - as well as firm control of borders.
      But that conflicts with opposition to:
      eg. censorship, mass surveillance etc, and economic punishment of the unemployed, elderly, and working classes, as well as privatisation of public assets & services, and entry into American 'free trade' agreements.

      So there's no right mix of positions, from my point of view.

      July 15, 2015

      GREECE - Pilger Article - "The problem of Greece is not only a tragedy. It is a lie."

      ARTICLE

      SOURCE
      http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-problem-of-greece-is-not-only-a-tragedy-it-is-a-lie

      The problem of Greece is not only a tragedy. It is a lie.

      13 July 2015

      John Piliger
      An historic betrayal has consumed Greece. Having set aside the mandate of the Greek electorate, the Syriza government has willfully ignored last week's landslide "No" vote and secretly agreed a raft of repressive, impoverishing measures in return for a "bailout" that means sinister foreign control and a warning to the world.

      Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has pushed through parliament a proposal to cut at least 13 billion euros from the public purse - 4 billion euros more than the "austerity" figure rejected overwhelmingly by the majority of the Greek population in a referendum on 5 July.

      These reportedly include a 50 per cent increase in the cost of healthcare for pensioners, almost 40 per cent of whom live in poverty; deep cuts in public sector wages; the complete privatization of public facilities such as airports and ports; a rise in value added tax to 23 per cent, now applied to the Greek islands where people struggle to eke out a living. There is more to come.

      "Anti-austerity party sweeps to stunning victory", declared a Guardian headline on January 25. "Radical leftists" the paper called Tsipras and his impressively-educated comrades. They wore open neck shirts, and the finance minister rode a motorbike and was described as a "rock star of economics". It was a façade. They were not radical in any sense of that cliched label, neither were they "anti austerity".

      For six months Tsipras and the recently discarded finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, shuttled between Athens and Brussels, Berlin and the other centres of European money power. Instead of social justice for Greece, they achieved a new indebtedness, a deeper impoverishment that would merely replace a systemic rottenness based on the theft of tax revenue by the Greek super-wealthy - in accordance with European "neo-liberal" values - and cheap, highly profitable loans from those now seeking Greece's scalp.

      Greece's debt, reports an audit by the Greek parliament, "is illegal, illegitimate and odious". Proportionally, it is less than 30 per cent that of the debit of Germany, its major creditor. It is less than the debt of European banks whose "bailout" in 2007-8 was barely controversial and unpunished.

      For a small country such as Greece, the euro is a colonial currency: a tether to a capitalist ideology so extreme that even the Pope pronounces it "intolerable" and "the dung of the devil". The euro is to Greece what the US dollar is to remote territories in the Pacific, whose poverty and servility is guaranteed by their dependency.

      In their travels to the court of the mighty in Brussels and Berlin, Tsipras and Varoufakis presented themselves neither as radicals nor "leftists" nor even honest social democrats, but as two slightly upstart supplicants in their pleas and demands. Without underestimating the hostility they faced, it is fair to say they displayed no political courage. More than once, the Greek people found out about their "secret austerity plans" in leaks to the media: such as a 30 June letter published in the Financial Times, in which Tsipras promised the heads of the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF to accept their basic, most vicious demands - which he has now accepted.

      When the Greek electorate voted "no" on 5 July to this very kind of rotten deal, Tsipras said, "Come Monday and the Greek government will be at the negotiating table after the referendum with better terms for the Greek people". Greeks had not voted for "better terms". They had voted for justice and for sovereignty, as they had done on January 25.

      The day after the January election a truly democratic and, yes, radical government would have stopped every euro leaving the country, repudiated the "illegal and odious" debt - as Argentina did successfully - and expedited a plan to leave the crippling Eurozone. But there was no plan. There was only a willingness to be "at the table" seeking "better terms".

      The true nature of Syriza has been seldom examined and explained. To the foreign media it is no more than "leftist" or "far left" or "hardline" - the usual misleading spray. Some of Syriza's international supporters have reached, at times, levels of cheer leading reminiscent of the rise of Barack Obama. Few have asked: Who are these "radicals"? What do they believe in?

      In 2013, Yanis Varoufakis wrote: "Should we welcome this crisis of European capitalism as an opportunity to replace it with a better system? Or should we be so worried about it as to embark upon a campaign for stabilising capitalism? To me, the answer is clear. Europe's crisis is far less likely to give birth to a better alternative to capitalism... I bow to the criticism that I have campaigned on an agenda founded on the assumption that the left was, and remains, squarely defeated... Yes, I would love to put forward [a] radical agenda. But, no, I am not prepared to commit the [error of the British Labour Party following Thatcher's victory]... What good did we achieve in Britain in the early 1980s by promoting an agenda of socialist change that British society scorned while falling headlong into Thatcher's neoliberal trip? Precisely none. What good will it do today to call for a dismantling of the Eurozone, of the European Union itself...?"

      Varoufakis omits all mention of the Social Democratic Party that split the Labour vote and led to Blairism. In suggesting people in Britain "scorned socialist change" - when they were given no real opportunity to bring about that change - he echoes Blair.

      The leaders of Syriza are revolutionaries of a kind - but their revolution is the perverse, familiar appropriation of social democratic and parliamentary movements by liberals groomed to comply with neo-liberal drivel and a social engineering whose authentic face is that of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany's finance minister, an imperial thug. Like the Labour Party in Britain and its equivalents among former social democratic parties such as the Labor Party in Australia, still describing themselves as "liberal" or even "left",  Syriza is the product of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, "schooled in postmodernism", as Alex Lantier wrote.

      For them, class is the unmentionable, let alone an enduring struggle, regardless of the reality of the lives of most human beings. Syriza's luminaries are well-groomed; they lead not the resistance that ordinary people crave, as the Greek electorate has so bravely demonstrated, but "better terms" of a venal status quo that corrals and punishes the poor. When merged with "identity politics" and its insidious distractions, the consequence is not resistance, but subservience. "Mainstream" political life in Britain exemplifies this.

      This is not inevitable, a done deal, if we wake up from the long, postmodern coma and reject the myths and deceptions of those who claim to represent us, and fight.

      Follow John Pilger on twitter @johnpilger

      SOURCE
      http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-problem-of-greece-is-not-only-a-tragedy-it-is-a-lie

      ---------------------
      COMMENT
      Another good article re Greece.

      How inaccurate are the mainstream press articles about these 'radical' lefties?  LOL

      This mob must be one of those third-way, pretend lefties.  And they've betrayed the electorate making promises they've not kept, & sullied themselves doing secret deals, contrary to the basis upon which they were elected.  Very grubby.

      Not really sure what postmodernism is:
      postmodernism, also spelled post-modernism,  in Western philosophy, a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power.

      This article discusses postmodernism in philosophy. 

      [britannica]
      Too lazy to get into it the look-ups. 
      Favourite bits:
      • *theft of tax revenue by the Greek super-wealthy. 
      • *euro is a colonial currency:  a tether to a capitalist ideology.
      • *liberals groomed to comply with neo-liberal drivel and a social engineering whose authentic face is that of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany's finance minister, an imperial thug.