Australia - you're standing in it

Kudos also to Valiant, as 'Regal' backwards is 'Lager'.

Thanks Facto and VJ.
If I could indulge a little further; the whole Americas Cup race was held so far offshore one could barely make out what was going on from land and was pretty lame viewing.
But nobody really cared and we were told Freo had never gone off anything like that.
The day we lost the final race, well, you woulda thought we had won the event as the main street went berserk! A standout was the bloke who streaked across the building awnings while thousands of crew hurled beer cans, etc up at him and he dodged and weaved like a pinball wizard.
We foolishly drove through the main street and had countless dudes jumping on our car left right and centre, taking photos and whatnot.
Mind you, we later scored some great waves over at Rotto and down near Mandurah.
Cheers.

That sounds like a lot of fun. They did try to build Ob city (where Scarb cam is on Swellnet) in time for the race but it didn't complete until later... Freo was done up and a lot of the historic buildings got a makeover for '87, really helped the town and made for a fun pub scene later in the 90's. Classic that people were falling all over your car down the main drag! The streaker on the awnings getting pelted, haha! Much later I was on a night out and about to get going home along the main drag and a bloke was thrown out of a nightclub front door into my arms - it was my little brother on a separate night out with his mates, still throwing punches and mumbling incoherently! He'd kept the pool table with drunken talent and then had a disagreement with some WAFL players who wanted it, whom he then proceeded to thump - and get thumped, and was removed by the bouncers. Went straight back into charming character for the taxi driver "Hey, give it some boot / is that all it's got? / That's fukall mate, that's piss." If he'd grown up in Scotland he'd be Begbie.

The whole Sky After Dark roster is toxically lowball. And this bullshit is on free-to-air in the regions and has been for more than a year.

Faux News!

Strap yourselves in. A little piece more of US style crap coming our way in the widest sense possible.

Regards day 13 of the Assange trial.

An observation from Jonathan Cook:

"When lawyers for the US yet again quote from a book by the Guardian's David Leigh in a desperate bid to bolster their flimsy case against Julian Assange, investigative journalist Nicky Hager replies: 'I would not regard that [book] as a reliable source',
Hager is the latest journalist to strenuously deny criticisms of Assange made by Leigh and Luke Harding in their book. Assange was committed to redacting names before publication, says Hager. He attributes the criticism instead to Guardian 'animosity' towards Assange.
Ex-ambassador Craig Murray points out that the ‘bad blood’ between the Guardian and Assange related not to redaction issues, as Leigh claims in his book, but the fact that Assange refused to give the Guardian rights to a biography, which they hoped would be a big money-spinner.
Murray also makes the telling point that, even though the US relies constantly on Leigh and Harding's highly contentious claims in the book to aid their case, neither Guardian journalist has chosen to appear in court to be cross-examined or spoken to set the record straight."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/guardian-journalist-ac...

Speaking of Sky After Dark...

https://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=46912&fbclid=IwAR0IR9sPY0k_wJghj...

This article should put to rest any doubts about how beholden this government is to the Murdoch press

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-23/foxtel-benefited-from-fast-tracke...

"Computer expert at the Assange hearing calls the Guardian's David Leigh 'a bad faith actor' over his publishing a Wikileaks password that opened the door to every security service in the world being able to access 250,000 encrypted cables.
The Guardian has sought for nearly a decade to obscure Leigh's deeply irresponsible antics in publishing that critically important Wikileaks password. It's another reason why the Guardian has barely covered the Assange hearings. It goes way beyond 'conflict of interest'."

- Jonathan Cook

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silent-assange-tr...

Day 14, Assange trial:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-the-public-g...

Thanks Facto for the heads up on the Assange witch hunt travesty.

Why are our privileged overlords so blatantly and shamelessly swindling us? Is it simply a matter of grabbing as much as you can before the ship sinks? I feel another depress coming on...

And the beat goes on...

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2020/09/28/michael-pascoe-community-deve...

We need a federal ICAC urgently

Absolute joke!

These are the articles that Pascoe referred to in his piece. One thing mentioned by O’Grady is that he couldn’t get any other media outlets interested in the story, even the ABC (same as the Assange case). Seems the ABC is putting more focus on infotainment rather than real news.

https://vinceogrady.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/were-sports-rorts-another-r...

Day 19, Assange trial. The abuses of legal procedure continue.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-the-public-g...

"Cardinal George Pell to leave Australia for Rome six months after acquittal
Cardinal George Pell is due to depart Sydney for Rome on Tuesday, six months after he was acquitted of sexual abuse by Australia's High Court.
Catholic Cardinal George Pell is returning to Rome six months after he was acquitted of child sexual abuse, according to agency reports.
The former Vatican treasurer, 79, is expected to depart Sydney on Tuesday, after living in the city since his release from a Victorian jail, the Catholic News Agency reported.
"He always intended to return to Rome," Katrina Lee, an adviser to the Archdiocese of Sydney, told Reuters.
Cardinal Pell came back to Australia from Rome in mid-2017 to fight charges related to the sexual assault of two choirboys when he was Archbishop of Melbourne in the late 1990s.
He was convicted in December 2018 and served just over a year of a six-year sentence in jail before the High Court of Australia overturned the conviction in April and he was released.
Cardinal Pell had been head of the Vatican's Secretariat of the Economy, tasked with cleaning up the church's vast finances and eliminating abuse, and had taken a leave of absence from that role when he came back to Australia.
His return to Rome comes just days after a powerful Vatican cardinal, Giovanni Becciu, was fired after Pope Francis accused him of embezzlement and nepotism.
Cardinal Pell and Cardinal Becciu were reportedly previously at odds over reform of the Vatican's accounts.
"The Holy Father was elected to clean up Vatican finances," Cardinal Pell told the Catholic News Agency on September 25.
"He plays a long game and is to be thanked and congratulated on recent developments.
"I hope the cleaning of the stables continues in both the Vatican and Victoria," Cardinal Pell said."

Source: AAP

Power usually flows in one way, Doggo. Especially evident in the Assange and Pell cases.

Where was the abuse in legal procedure in the Pell case? There didn't need to be, did there?

The 'better economic managers' doing what they do.

https://medium.com/@edhusic/conrovia-here-we-come-now-look-forward-after...

Morrison plans less supervision, more rorts.

" The commonwealth agency responsible for uncovering sports rorts and the massive overspend on land at Western Sydney airport will be forced to cut the number of its audits without a budget rescue package, according to its own annual report.

The Australian National Audit Office fell six performance audits short of its target this year due to budget constraints, and the auditor general, Grant Hehir, has written to the prime minister, Scott Morrison, saying it needs a funding boost or will be forced to cut back further."

The independent senator Rex Patrick and Labor MP Julian Hill, the deputy chair of the joint committee of public accounts and audit, have both warned that without intervention, scrutiny of the government will continue to fall.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/30/agency-that-uncov...

Nothing to see here. Nothing ever to see.

Look over there in Victoria.

The 'better economic managers' in their natural environment.

https://www.michaelwest.com.au/guess-whos-coming-to-dinner-glencore-peab...

Right on, man.

That Dirty Power vid is essential viewing to understand the depth of cronyism between the highest levels of federal government and mining lobby groups.
It's quite accurate to say that government and the mining industry are indistinguishable.
A 40 second watch of the vid from 6.50 pretty much says it all.

And if you're interested, watch from 7.55 for a lesson on the power of lobby groups.

And if that doesn't make you angry, read the embedded article "Australia's top 40 tax dodgers".

If that doesn't make you want to punch your computer screen, I don't know what will.

Edit: Facto's link above.

Fark Andy, does my head in.

I'm gonna go check the surf.

It's, you know, a little bit of a worry.

All true Andy but let’s not forget it was Martin Ferguson formerly of the ACTU and Labor Govt minister that argued against a domestic gas allocation when it really mattered that see Santos wanting to frack the Narrabri plains now.

There is a book called Supercapitalism by Robert Reich that details how lobbyists have corrupted democracy in the west, well worth a read.

The endless shitfuckery by the ultimate cutters.

"it was Martin Ferguson formerly of the ACTU and Labor Govt minister that argued against a domestic gas allocation when it really mattered that see Santos wanting to frack the Narrabri plains now."

Not entirely following you Guy, do you have any more info?

Cutters??

Missing an "n" there?

All true WOL....and tragic. Makes you wonder how stupid people would have to be to vote for them.

I think you find that Furguson as a minister in the Gillard govt signed off on the last of the big international gas contracts that effectively reserved no gas for domestic use and locked Australian consumers into paying the international spot price, no other gas producing / exporting country has ever done that. Further, after that cunning stunt he left politics to work for some mining lobby group, comrade sellout !

Yes Andy, deffo intentionally left off the 'n', but it should be there.

Further digging needs to be done on how Barnyard Joyce made a fortune after not (yeah right) talking to then mining exec and once National Party colleague and leader but just happen to buy wasted salt bush land and then immediately flogging it off to some mining co.

With you now Guy, a cunning stunt indeed.
Lib/Lab, different sides of the same coin.

Sorry Westie, I did a reflex comment before seeing the vid.

The old 'comment before watching the vid' trick eh? haha

We all know what they are, I thought I'd go straight there!

ha! There's a song for that!

"Lib/Lab, different sides of the same coin."

Who's going?

Hey Facto, ever considered doing some, you know, straight shooting every once in a while?

Just for shits and gigs?

No?

Wayne Swan! The worlds greatest treasurer, that's who.

Rabbit- that hair mate, seriously.

Not to be confused with that hare.

the wabbit would do better if he kept clowns like that at a distance

I thought Wayne Swan was one of the better ones?

I thought / think that too

but his ever deminishing, never eventuating, over many years, many announcements, and many budgets, 'budget surplus' was one of labor's more embarrassing attempts at credibility...

good guy or not, the wabbit would do well to keep a distance from many of them

a new 'labour' party is urgently required

and one can only hope untarnished newbies like wabbit can influence that new 'labour' party to materialise...

Wayne is a distant relation here, and he's also a surfer. Same Nambour HS as Kevin and some of my fam.