Few in the often fractious @AFL world are more universally admired than @CarltonFC long-time official (+ex footy boss at Dogs & Bris Bears) Shane OβSullivan, who won the Neale Daniher Lifetime Achievement award of the AFL Coaches Association. A fitting tribute to Shane & Neale.
You know who has sham elections? Russia.
You know who canβt hold elections because of Russiaβs war? Ukraine.
Now tell me which one is actually defending democracy.
'The monsters are no longer hiding in the shadows. They occupy presidential offices and ministries, command armies and police forces, control digital platforms, dominate television screens, administer borders, build detention centers, and transform the suffering of others into political theater.Β Their language of racial purification, mass deportation, extermination, vengeance, and disposability no longer produces the outrage it once might have summoned. Cruelty is displayed as strength. Humiliation becomes entertainment. The spectacle of suffering becomes a source of political pleasure. What should be unbearable becomes familiar; what should provoke resistance is absorbed into the rhythms of everyday life.'
'..We must move from monster to machinery, from the pathology of the individual to the political economy of organized cruelty, and from there to the cultural and educational forces that teach people how to live with the suffering such machinery produces. Monsters do not act alone. Their power becomes visible in the institutions that protect them, the wealth that sustains them, the laws that authorize them, and the violence that follows in their wake. We see their handiwork in streets stained with blood,Β in migrants brutalized and left to die in detention centers,Β in the torture documented in Israeli prisons, andΒ in the bodies of children and families torn apart by Israeli and American bombs in Gaza. Behind these abstractions are torn limbs, dismembered bodies, children pulled from rubble, families burned and buried beneath the ruins of their homes, and human beings reduced to flesh and bone by systems in which cruelty has been organized, authorized, and repeated until even the most horrific violence threatens to lose its capacity to shock.'
'The defining political question of our time is not whether monsters have returned. It is what kind of society produces them, what forms of power need them, and what pedagogical machinery teaches people to follow them. The monster is not the end of the analysis but its beginning. Fascism cannot be defeated by removing its most visible leaders while leaving intact the economic, political, and cultural machinery that produced them. The struggle against fascism must also confront gangster capitalism, white supremacy, militarism, the carceral state, and the institutions that turn human beings into disposable populations.'
https://t.co/DxVd3DnFnB
The Vic Liberals βHave a Planβ.
Jess, the Royal Commission commenced today. You need to edit out the $15B furphy. Itβs unverified & not court tested.
Watson said heβs been misquoted &he used an βunqualified person who was not very goodβ Numbers are dodgy.
Interfering with the RC
Barnaby Joyce sprinting away as fast as his drunken leg will take him, about allegations he met with neo Nazis in Canberra.
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has angrily denied holding a meeting with prominent neo-Nazis in Canberra earlier this month, after news outlet Crikey sent him an email alleging he spent two hours talking with the extremists at the local casino one evening.
Joyceβs denial of the interaction comes just weeks after Australiaβs neo-Nazi movement declared it would back One Nationβs path to government if the High Court overturns a ban on its new political party.
@smh
Imagine Twitter existed on Grand Final day, 1979β¦
Carlton v Collingwood. 113,545 at the MCG.
Iβve watched the entire game as though it was in real time and tweeted throughout.
Welcome to the 1979 Grand Final Twitter thread π§΅
Hope to enjoy it #Baggers#VFLGrandFinal1979
@DHughesy This remains one of my favourite photos of you Dave.
There you are fronting a Liberal Party event beside Bev McArthur, who recently billed taxpayers for a 'study trip' to Thailand to learn about their cannabis lawsπ.
And there you stand...our brave little integrity warrior.
I didnβt realise Heidi Murphy was judge and jury and part of the Royal Commission.π
Heidi, is there something you know that we donβt?
How do you know the RC might be a disaster for Labor during the election early voting?