How can you witness billionaires accumulate $10,000,000,000,000 in wealth during an economically catastrophic pandemic and not conclude that the system needs to fundamentally change?
Robert Reich
October 31, 2020
What we’re witnessing is a global phenomenon, something big has changed. The oligarchs have discovered the formula for persuading the poor to vote for the interests of the very rich and that formula includes massive lying and cheating on an unprecedented scale. Mobilising social media particularly to generate mendacious, manipulative adverts and memes and conspiracy theories in order to swing people round or to turn them off from voting all together. Pushing forward killer clowns like Johnson, like Trump, like Modi, like Bolsonaro, who will do whatever the oligarchs want but present a sort of almost amusing face to the public and so we laugh along with them and then they learn from each other, they teach each other. In fact very often the same political operatives will hop from one campaign to another, constantly refining the model, refining the formula.
George Monbiot
October 27, 2020
[in response to a facebook post by the departure of veteran journalist Philippa McDonald from the ABC after $84 million budget cut] What a legend. Watch this. It is what us mere journalistic mortals aspire to have covered in our careers.. and we grieve the loss of so many of our fine colleagues to government ideological bastardry. Hope you are feeling smug Scott Morrison.
Laura Tingle
October 27, 2020
Imagine being such an imbecile that you protest a lockdown which is about to end, because it was wildly successful.
Catherine Williams
October 26, 2020
Covid has shown us that we can lift every single Australian out of poverty today – bang. Just like that. They could and they chose not to. We must never forget that.
First Dog on the Moon
October 16, 2020
The only time religious freedom is invoked is in the name of bigotry and discrimination. I'm tired of it.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
October 12, 2020
COVID-19 has magnified the shortcomings of our failed paradigm of economy with all its imbalances, inequities and injustices. The pandemic has demonstrated a renewed demand from the citizenries of the OECD, indeed the citizens of the globe, for a new economic order. This is evident through the response to COVID-19, the burden of which fell to the State, and proved, if proof were ever required, that the State has the ability to play a leading, transformative role in crisis management and response; that the public sector has the capacity and expertise to deliver quality universal services to its citizens and do so effectively and fairly; that government can act decisively when the will is there. Yet the crisis has also shown us how so many of our citizens and their families are only ever one wage payment away from hardship; how the self-employed or workers in the so-called ‘gig’ economy lack security and are often impeded from access to basic employment rights; how private tenants in under-regulated housing markets are at the mercy of their landlords, how many designated ‘key workers’, those providing essential services, are shamefully undervalued and underpaid.
Michael D. Higgins
October 10, 2020
The nice part about accepting [climate] science is that you don't have to lie, shout, insult, cheat and/or be dishonest to make your point.
Gerald Kutney
October 9, 2020
He [Trump] allowed people to express their racism and bigotry in a way that they haven’t been able to in quite a while and they really love him for that. It’s a shocking thing to realise people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives. The hatred – what is that about? It’s a fear of your own weakness.
Fran Lebowitz
October 8, 2020
We live in incredible times, but still, it has been extraordinarily disappointing to witness how political ideology has guided reactions to a health crisis. Hypocrisy is rife. Take for instance, the federal coalition government, who closed the national borders, lambasting the Labor state governments (but not the Liberal ones) for closing theirs. Consider too, the about face of those were most opposed to Victoria’s voluntary assisted dying laws, when introduced. Back then, every life was sacred, no matter how old or sick the person. This meant people facing an imminent and agonising death should not be allowed to bring it forward, and end their own lives, painlessly, at a time of their choosing. Now, these same types demand various governments abandon restrictions and lockdowns because after all, only the old or the sick will die, and they were on their way out anyway. Suddenly, every life is not so sacred, after all. For months now, there has been vociferous criticism of governments, in particular, of Victoria’s, but the data is in. Across the world, voters expect their leaders to keep them safe, specifically, to prioritise human life over a balance sheet. Perhaps this is because we have all seen economies recover, but none of us have seen a person raised from the dead. The Pew Research Center recently asked citizens of various countries whether their country has done a good or bad job handling COVID-19. The countries that marked their governments with the highest “good” score were Denmark at 95 per cent, Australia at 94 per cent, Canada and Germany at 88 per cent, Netherlands at 87 per cent and South Korea at 86 per cent. The highest “bad” scores came from Britain, at 54 per cent and the US at 52 per cent. Closer to home, the results of a Newspoll for The Australian showed that despite the terrible mistakes made with hotel quarantine, and the cruelty of lockdowns, 62 per cent of Victorian voters are satisfied with how their Premier is doing his job, and 61 per cent think the current lockdown restrictions are “about right”. This data rises above the chorus of remarks by federal coalition politicians, and hyperbolic and often inaccurate criticism from the angry tub-thumpers on SAD (Sky after Dark). On SAD, our Premier is called “Chairman Dan” or “Dictator Dan” and Victoria is referred to as a “socialist republic” and a “failed state”. These insults demean every Victorian, regardless of how they vote.
[from The Weekend Australian, 26/9/2020]
