Despite the belief of many Americans – and endless US propaganda – the US has never been a full democracy.
Putting aside the obvious fact that until the 1960s African Americans were disenfranchised, and murdered for campaigning for civil rights, America did make some progress from the 1960s onwards.
As sure as night follows day business leaders and media warn of the cataclysmic consequences of workers getting paid more, going on strike or even wanting to avoid being called at 2am over something which could have been left until after breakfast at least but occurred to the boss when he/she was in a hotel room in another time zone.
Reading the latest Scanlon Foundation social cohesion report makes you aware that there are two quite distinct images of Australia.
One – totally dark and doom laden – is depicted in the mass and social media and the other – clear-eyed about both serious problems and opportunities – is depicted in the 2023 Scanlon Foundation annual Mapping Social Cohesion report.
If anyone ever imagined that commemoration of our war dead was not an opportunity to make political points look no further than the Daily Last Post ceremony at the Australian War Memorial at the recent opening of Federal Parliament.
We need to honour any Australian who died in war and remember those who came back and the problems they faced when they did.
US politicians and others are always boasting about the US being the greatest in just about any category you can think of – from the record for eating hot dogs in a given time to their so-called democracy.
But perhaps the greatest boast is that it is a peace-loving state committed to protecting the world.
In the 20th century a series of UK investigations, including the Leveson Inquiry, demonstrated that Murdoch newspapers had engaged in phone hacking, police bribery and resort to dodgy private investigators.
A subsequent parliamentary committee found that Rupert had exhibited ‘wilful blindness’ to what was going on and that he was not a fit person to be running a major international company.
Divisions on the Australian War Memorial Council and political pressure are putting Memorial staff in a difficult position over the depiction of Frontier Wars. This has become clearer as time passes and more evidence becomes available.
The immediate past Council Chair, Brendan Nelson, and the current Chair, Kim Beazley, have both committed to the representation of the Frontier Wars, though the extent of this commitment has been muddied as more information has come out on the qualifications and fudges included in the original August 2022 Council decision.
A day after posting on the Murdoch infestation at the Nine Newspapers mastheads comes the sad news of the death of one of the journalists who made The Age a great newspaper.
Tim Colebatch could seemingly write on anything. He was a perceptive environmental reporter when such rounds were just being established; covered US politics from Washington; provided sophisticated analysis of election results; and, was that rare thing in journalism – highly numerate.
If you owned The Age and had the choice as to whether you staffed it with former Murdoch employees or almost anyone else who would you choose?
James Chessell, Nine’s managing director publishing, recently announced Tory Maguire would have editorial oversight of all these metro mastheads including The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Brisbane Times and WAToday.
As Australia Day looms it’s not surprising that Peter Dutton has yet again found another culture war to prosecute – this time against Woolworths’ decision not to stock Australia Day themed goods.
The approach worked with the Voice campaign but if this is going to be his main tactic in the year or so to the next election, he might need to get his advisors to look beyond US Republican tactics and have a closer look at what concerns the majority of voters.