Gus: obviously, our Minister for aliens stuff and cargo cult has tough competition, with the PM who's loosing the plot completely: Beware of PM bearing comparisons.

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From the multicultural ABC

Terrorism comparison angers Greek community

A South Australian Labor MP says Prime Minister John Howard's comparison of terrorism in Iraq to Greece have outraged the Greek-Australian community.

Mr Howard last week described terrorist attacks in democratic countries as common and used Greece as an example.

South Australian MP Steve Georganas says it is outrageous to compare Greece with Iraq, where about 3,000 people are killed each month.

Mr Georganas says Mr Howard is risking the relationship between the two countries.

"What John Howard has done is to try and show that there's been some sort of movement in Iraq," he said.

"He's trying to compare it to peaceful nations that are having peaceful times, which is totally outrageous and unacceptable and it shows that he has no understanding of international affairs and diplomacy."

Former premier weighs-in on battle for Robb's seat

Meanwhile, former Liberal premier of Victoria Jeff Kennett has backed the daughter of former foreign minister Alexander Downer in the Melbourne seat being vacated by retiring Trade Minister Andrew Robb.

Georgina Downer, a former lawyer and diplomat, is expected to nominate for the safe Melbourne seat of Goldstein.

Her father and grandfather were federal ministers and her great-grandfather was premier of South Australia.

Mr Kennett said he had come to know Ms Downer as a fellow board member, and his support was not due to the Downer dynasty.

"It's got nothing to do with that whatsoever," Mr Kennett told ABC Radio's AM program.

"She's very focused, she's very well educated, I think she would be a valuable addition to our parliamentary ranks."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-16/abbott-baird-write-references-for-bronwyn-bishop-rival/7170494

It is important to see toon and story at top...

The devolution of the Downer family. 

One thing that most Australians agree on, left and right, is that the attempt by the Howard government to steal newly-formed nation East Timor’s oil and gas, was one of the most shameful episodes in our history. Foreign minister Alexander Downer played the lead in that, and it’s about all he’ll ever be remembered for. Now here’s someone in The Australian, arguing that the East Timorese don’t really need all that grubby oil; tourism is their future. The author of this manifesto? Georgina Downer, the Downer daughter, fourth generation politico, think tank blowfly, and failed preselection candidate for Goldstein, doing her bit to restore Daddy’s reputation against the oily oiks. In the UK they have Scottish and Welsh parliaments. We have political devolution here too: it’s the Downer family, getting less welcome with each passing era. — Guy Rundle

Gus: read more at Crikey. Read from top... Georgina is a nepotism-resultant tart who writes crap.

Former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer has accused supporters of Mayo candidate Rebekha Sharkie of directing "horrible hate" at his family during his daughter Georgina's campaign for the seat.

It followed a post from his wife on a local Facebook group asking people to vote for her daughter, which garnered dozens of negative responses.

"We are Adelaide Hills people and been in politics here for decades and through multiple elections never come across such abuse," Mr Downer posted to the group.

• Alexander Downer is blaming Rebekha Sharkie supporters for online abuse
• Comments on a post by his wife Nicky labelled her "overprivileged" and "stuck-up"
• Georgina Downer was also described as a "silver-spooned princess"

"Sharkie supporters have brought such horrible hate to our district."

He then added: "You must all be new arrivals."

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-28/downer-hits-out-at-sharkie-support...

Is this clown for real? The guy robbed Timor Leste, spied (or reported) to sink The Donald, was a liar to go to war against Saddam and did many other crappy things when in government. Read from top. (published yesterday, updated)

When the Downers meant something:

altering our way of life...

Less than 24 hours after being comprehensively beaten in Super Saturday's Mayo by-election, Liberal candidate Georgina Downer is already backing herself for another run at the seat at next year's federal election.

• Georgina Downer vows to seek preselection for Mayo after losing the Super Saturday by-election
• Ms Downer says she wants to continue her family's legacy in the seat
• But a politics expert says the so-called 'Downer dynasty' could hinder, rather than help, her chances

While votes are still being counted, Centre Alliance MP Rebekha Sharkie has retained Mayo in the by-election with a clear swing in her favour.

But Ms Downer, the daughter of former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer who held Mayo for 24 years, said she would again seek preselection for the Adelaide Hills seat as early as tomorrow.

"I put my hand up for [preselection] last night … and I am 100 per cent committed to standing in Mayo again next year," she said.

"I'm proud of my family's commitment and service to South Australia … I'm committed to putting up a fantastic campaign for the next election as the Liberal Party's candidate if I'm preselected."

While Ms Downer said no single person was "entitled to a seat" and said it would be up to the party to decide, she has prominent backers for another run in 2019 including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-29/starting-gun-fired-in-federal-elec...

Time to put Georgina back into the box... She sound a bit too much like the dummy of her ventriloquist daddy... Read from top... 

See also:

Georgina Downer's campaign has been sprung using a former political staffer and party official without identifying his pedigree.

Read from top.

See also about daddy spy downer:

http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/34954

Labor has asked the auditor general to investigate how the Liberal candidate for the seat of Mayo, Georgina Downer, was allowed to present a taxpayer-funded grant to a bowling club.

Downer, who has been preselected to recontest the South Australian seat after losing a 2018 byelection, was photographed presenting a $127,373 novelty cheque – featuring her face and Liberal party logos – to the Yankalilla bowling club.

The funding was a grant to the club under the federal government’s community sport infrastructure program. Protocol usually dictates that such funding is announced by the local MP.

Rebekha Sharkie, the Centre Alliance MP who beat Downer at the byelection, said on Twitter she had been notified about the grant recipients on Tuesday and had sought to let them know. “However, one was aware and had already organised their Friday night cheque presentation event.

She added: “In more than a decade of politics I’ve never seen a taxpayer funded grant delivered by cheque with a candidate’s face and name on it.”

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/24/call-for-investig...

The Labor Party has written to the auditor-general accusing Ms Downer of "inappropriate" conduct in presenting the cheque to the Yankalilla Bowling Club instead of the local MP for Mayo, Rebekha Sharkie.

Ms Downer, the daughter of former foreign minister Alexander Downer, posted a photo to her Facebook page on Friday which showed her holding a novelty cheque — with her face and name — for $127,373 to fix the club's third bowling green.

This morning on ABC Radio Adelaide, Ms Downer said she was "not presenting Commonwealth money" because the cheque was "not legal tender".

She said the Fleurieu Peninsula club had asked her to come and present a "novelty cheque" because she had worked with the club to make sure its Community Sport Infrastructure grant application was successful.

"They didn't detail the specifics of the novelty cheque," Ms Downer said.

"… there was not one person in the bowling club on Friday who thought it was my money, who thought the cheque was real or who thought the grant did not come from the Commonwealth Government."

Ms Sharkie beat Ms Downer at the July 2018 by-election.

Ms Sharkie had stepped down after it was revealed she was a dual citizen.

Ms Downer was then preselected for the upcoming federal election, expected to be held in May.

Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus told ABC Radio Adelaide it was "outrageous that a failed Liberal candidate should turn up at a bowls club representing that $123,000 of Commonwealth grant money is a gift from the Liberal Party or a gift from her".

He said the problem was her "great big mug on the cheque" and the blue and white Liberal stripes on it.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-25/downer-says-cheque-was-absolutely...

Read from top.

The University of Melbourne is negotiating with the Menzies Research Centre, a Liberal Party-affiliated think tank, to open a museum and library dedicated to former Prime Minister Robert Menzies in the campus’s historic Old Quad. The Robert Menzies Institute, which would honour a PM notorious for Nazi sympathies and anti-communism, is set to open in September.

This semester, a campaign is kicking off that has one simple demand: get the Menzies Institute off our campus. To understand why many staff and students at Melbourne University are opposed to the administration’s plan, we have to look at who the institute is honouring.

Menzies was an ardent monarchist, architect of the modern Liberal Party and hard-right political activist. He served as prime minister in 1939-41 and again from 1949 to 1966. Through this period, he waged a concerted campaign against the unions, repeatedly used the military as strikebreakers, opened up huge tracts of Indigenous land to mining companies and pursued Australia’s imperialist interests with fervour, sending troops into Malaysia and Korea and reintroducing conscription during the Vietnam War. 

His right-wing economic agenda was backed by conservative politics. Like his counterparts in the rest of the US-aligned Cold War bloc, Menzies was firmly anti-communist and in 1950 attempted to ban the Communist Party of Australia. 

Unsurprisingly, this champion of big business and enemy of the left was sympathetic to the rise of the German Nazis in the 1930s. Quoted as admitting that “one cannot but admire” the way Hitler had created an authoritarian state in which individuals were subordinated to the good of the nation, Menzies was right at home with the countless ruling class politicians who backed Hitler’s project right up until it became politically untenable to do so. That in itself is enough to warrant opposition from staff and students to the proposed institute. But there’s more to it than this.

The Menzies Institute’s backers claim that it’s a non-partisan centre of intellectual and historical inquiry. This is a lie. One look at the people sitting on the board is enough to show this institute for what it is: an outpost of the hard right of the Liberal Party, which is using the platform and authority of the university to give greater credence to right-wing thought. 

The board is a line-up of some of Australia’s most repulsive reactionaries, from CEO Georgina Downer, heir to one of the country’s oldest conservative political dynasties, to Sky News commentator Peta Credlin. They are joined by a host of current and former Liberal Party members and stalwarts of the country’s conservative media establishment. Collectively, they want to further a right-wing political project that’s all about reverence for the ruling class, attacking workers and waging a relentless culture war against the oppressed. 

Although the centre is latching on to the university like a parasite, the relationship is reciprocal. The University of Melbourne administration has a keen interest in partnering with some of the worst elements of the Australian ruling class. Through its links with planet-poisoning corporations such as Saudi Aramco, Rio Tinto and ExxonMobil and weapons manufacturers Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the university endorses and plays an active role in maintaining the capitalist status quo. 

Vice-Chancellor Duncan Maskell spent the last eighteen months attacking staff and students, cutting hundreds of jobs and slashing courses. The attack on higher education was simultaneously carried out by Scott Morrison’s federal government. It’s telling that a government that has slashed public funding to universities, and last year refused to include tertiary education workers in its JobKeeper scheme, can find $7 million to help set up the Menzies Institute.

We oppose the institute not just because of the ideas it represents, but because it would establish a precedent that political forces can buy a university platform from which to project their ideas. And it’s symptomatic of the federal government and the vice-chancellor’s agenda: to fund the interests of the rich and powerful at the expense of students and staff. The $7 million (and much more) should go towards staff wages and funding for courses.

The good news is that, although we may not have multi-million-dollar resources of our own, staff and students have the power to make our voices heard in other ways. The fight for free and fair education encompasses many related campaigns. Right now, a key fight at the University of Melbourne is for a campus in which political influence can’t be bought.

read more:

https://redflag.org.au/article/robert-menzies-institute-must-be-stopped

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Meanwhile in America:

....

And yet it is that same brand, that same leadership, and, above all, that same system of partisanship that drives the march of class dealignment. The more left-wing candidates present themselves as “like the Democrats, but more so” — on the model of many progressives today — the faster they accelerate this fatal process. A post-Bernie progressive movement that puts partisan identity ahead of class politics is a progressive movement that has abandoned class politics altogether, except as a recruiting slogan for college students. Nothing could make Chuck Schumer or Mitch McConnell happier.

The hard truth is that there are no real victories to be won within the current partisan order. Our only hope is a political struggle on two fronts: first, and most fundamentally, against the forces of economic reaction that have sapped class solidarity for over a century. This is not primarily an electoral fight — it begins, above all, in the effort to rebuild and reorient labor organizations. “The immediate unity of class interest,” as political theorist William Clare Roberts writes, “is a myth that obscures the hard work of forging a common interest.” Across the first Gilded Age, it took decades of savage labor struggle to accomplish that work. In the very different conditions of the twenty-first century, it will no doubt look very different, but it may take just as long.

Forging a real class interest, though, also requires fighting back against a national political order that works to undermine it at every turn. That means a left-wing electoral struggle aimed strategically not just at Republicans, or even at “moderates,” but at the partisan alignment itself — the gargantuan clash of identities that sucks all material politics into the infinity war of blue versus red.

Such an electoral struggle is not so simple as the familiar pundits’ pivot from “culture” to “economics,” especially when “culture” refers to fundamental commitments better described as civil rights. But it does mean refusing the temptation of today’s relentless partisan culture, where party affiliation stands in for personal virtue, and incessant manufactured outrage — over rude tweets, mean op-eds, “foreign” attachments, and shocking episodes of personal misconduct — drowns out real clashes of economic interest.

Class dealignment is both a historical process and a political choice. The history of the Obama presidency underlines the larger forces and figures that have driven the developed world away from class politics. But the history of the Obama campaigns — alongside some elementsof the Sanders primary runs — reminds us that other political choices are possible, and other political coalitions are achievable. In the 2017 UK election, Piketty shows, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party also halted the march of dealignment by income and wealth.

As labor organizers battle in the trenches to challenge the power of capital, left electoral politics must continue to fight, against the partisan grain, for a working-class coalition. It is no great mystery why Democrats like Biden, Clinton, and Schumer have chosen the path of class dealignment, which suits both their electoral fortunes and the larger interests they serve. But for the fragile, fledgling Left that has emerged from the Sanders era, no choice could be more disastrous.

Read more:

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/02/the-politics-of-a-second-gilded-age

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