Referendum defeated

The Voice to Parliament referendum has been defeated, the ABC projects. NSW, Tasmania and South Australia have voted against the change.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/referendum/2023/results?filter=all&sort=az&state=all&party=all

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

The PRYOR cartoon as shown by John Menadue's Pearls and irritations reminded me of the cartoon above (The Bulletin, Hop, 1900)....

Edmund Barton getting pissed (nothing new), the Churches bitterly competing for federation prayers, poets and musicians making a racket, while the Aboriginal people are ... nowhere to be seen...

 

And wisdom, which alone is truly fair. 

 

So spake our general Mother, and with eyes 

Of conjugal attraction unreprov'd, 

And meek surrender, half imbracing leand 

On our first Father, half her swelling Breast 

Naked met his under the flowing Gold 

Of her loose tresses hid: he in delight 

Both of her Beauty and submissive Charms 

Smil'd with superior Love, as Jupiter 

On Juno smiles, when he impregns the Clouds 

That shed May Flowers; and press'd her Matron lip 

With kisses pure: aside the Devil turnd 

For envie, yet with jealous leer maligne 

Ey'd them askance, and to himself thus plaind. 

 

Sight hateful, sight tormenting! thus these two 

Britain’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla will travel to Kenya on October 31 for a four-day state visit, Buckingham Palace announced on Wednesday. The trip comes as a parliamentary investigation into atrocities allegedly committed by British troops in Kenya gets underway. 

In August, the Kenyan government launched an inquiry to investigate allegations of murder, sexual assault, and damaging land, by the British Army Training Unit Kenya. 

Kenyan MPs have issued a call for the public to submit petitions regarding any alleged crimes by British soldiers. Investigations are to begin this month with a report to the country’s parliament expected by the end of the year.  

The depressing, crushing spectacle of extreme violence and mayhem unleashed across Israel and Palestine over recent days is a reminder of the depths to which humanity can sink. 

To see complex historical, cultural and geopolitical questions – let alone humanity and decency – reduced to a ceaseless cycle of hatred, death and destruction is hard to stomach. We gaze at our TV screens aghast, we hear the threats, counter-threats, and the endless justifications and commentary. Meanwhile, the bloodletting goes on – and on. Western politicians, weighed down with simple binaries, take sides and in so doing obliterate any sense of context or complexity that might help us understand how this mess occurred in the first place.

 

Months after leaving the White House, former President Donald Trump allegedly discussed potentially sensitive information about U.S. nuclear submarines with a member of his Mar-a-Lago Club -- an Australian billionaire who then allegedly shared the information with scores of others, including more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Police use teargas on banned pro-Palestinian rally in Paris as Macron calls for unity

French police used teargas and water cannon to break up a banned rally in support of the Palestinian people in Paris on Thursday night, as President Emmanuel Macron urged the French to remain united amid fears a spillover of the Israel-Hamas conflict in France, home to Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities.

"Let us not, through illusion or calculation, add national divisions to international divisions, and let us not give in to any form of hatred", said Macron, adding that the number of French people killed in the Hamas incursion in Israel had risen to 13.

Seventeen French nationals, including four children, have been reported missing since the attack.

Israel’s siege of Gaza will not be lifted unless Hamas releases all the hostages it has captured, Energy Minister Israel Katz announced on Thursday. His statement came after Israeli authorities cut off water, fuel and electricity to the Palestinian enclave following a surprise attack by Hamas militants on Saturday.

“Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water pump will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home,” Katz wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

US national debt surged by more than $500 billion in just 20 days to reach $33.5 trillion, according to data provided by the Treasury Department last week.

On September 18, the Treasury reported that the amount of money borrowed by the federal government to cover operating expenses stood at $33.04 trillion. It took Washington three months to drive it from $32 trillion to the current level.

The debt ceiling, which was legally set at $31.4 trillion, was surpassed in January 2023.

The total output of the US economy was only $25.46 trillion, meaning that the economy would have to grow by 33.5% to cover the national debt.

The White House has been pressing Congress to lift the limit. On June 3, President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan debt bill that allowed the limit to be lifted until January 2025, thus averting an economically disastrous default.

I visited Julian the other day at Belmarsh Prison for the second time. Britain’s Guantanamo. He spends 23 hours every day, for 3½ years in solitary confinement. This is an attempt not to break him but to kill him.

 

Julian Assange could be dying: Yanis Varoufakis     By Double Down News

 

It’s slow murder.

Of a man who’s not been convicted.

Has not been charged of anything except journalism.

I find it astonishing that there were people on the left who turned against Julian.

Newspapers like The Guardian who played a role in his incarceration and vilification.

Julian is holding on. Julian is not well.

The Wall Street Journal Blames Iran For Helping to Plot Tribe of Nova Massacre When This is Uncorroborated

During the late 1800s, the Hearst yellow press ran stories falsely accusing Spain of sinking the U.S.S. Maine in order to help mobilize public opinion in support of the Spanish-American War that resulted in the U.S. colonization of Cuba and the Philippines.

 

By Jeremy Kuzmarov

 

In the 100+ years since, the same formula has been followed time and again. The latest target appears to be Iran, whose Islamist government neoconservatives in Washington and Tel Aviv have long dreamed of overthrowing.

Russia sees absolutely no sense in the EU’s current policy of forgoing Russian energy supplies, particularly gas, President Vladimir Putin told the Russian Energy Week forum on Wednesday. He added that “the modern political system in [the West] obviously sometimes brings not the smartest people to the top.”

Speaking about the issue of Russian gas exports to Europe, he pointed to what he called a lack of common sense in some European capitals.

“There is no sensible explanation to why some European economies, including Germany's, should behave like this,” the president said, referring to the situation in the European energy market. He called it “surprising” that European nations did not demand that Kiev reopen one of the Russian gas pipelines going through Ukraine after it was shut down.

Had I been Palestinian born,

Would I hate god chosen people

Would my colonial blood ignore

Flowing through my black veins

From ancient rape and stolen generation

Born Ukrainian of Russian parents

What to do with the Kiev fascist nation

Should an Irishman love mother England 

American Indians running gambling dens

Defeated in the prairies by dollar passion

Confused by constant oppression

And pained by a tarnished tradition

Kept cattle-like in Gaza — a prison??????

 

Submit, says the empire

Love, the missionary inspires a lie

 

Die, tells the last horror of hope

 

    Robert Urbanoski - 11 October 2023

 

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WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced on Wednesday a new $200 million security assistance package for Ukraine that includes munitions for a new air defense system that will soon be delivered to Ukraine, among other weapons.

"I am proud that the United States has just announced its latest security assistance package for Ukraine, valued at $200 million," Austin told reporters ahead of a Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting in Brussels.

The Indian reaction to the massive eruption of violence between Hamas and Israel on Saturday belies ground realities and ignores the geopolitical environment in that region and globally in which this cataclysmic event merits careful appraisal. It will prove to be unsustainable and can damage the country’s interests and standing globally. 

 

By M.K. Bhadrakumar

Indian Punchline

 

10 Problems With India’s Stance on Gaza