see also:

Facebook video: https://www.facebook.com/thejuicemedia/videos/1000065646850670
Twitter video: https://twitter.com/thejuicemedia/status/1097372508011978752

References (jeez you can tell I'm a historian now):
- The children overboard affair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_Overboard_affair
- ScoMo's message to people smugglers: https://tendaily.com.au/news/v190217axv/scott-morrisons-video-message-for-people-smugglers-20190217
- The MedEvac Bill: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-13/senate-passes-controversial-refugee-evacuation-bill/10806196
- Greart article by Katharine Murphy on the importance of "nuances": https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/16/without-facts-we-slide-into-trumpism-the-truth-matters-here

 

From Juice Media

How Democracies Die is a 2018 book by Harvard University political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt about how elected leaders can gradually subvert the democratic process to increase their power.[1] The book was on The New York Times Bestseller list.[2]

 

Synopsis

[edit]

The book warns against the breakdown of "mutual toleration" and respect for the political legitimacy of the opposition. This toleration involves accepting the results of a free and fair election where the opposition has won, in contrast with advocacy for overthrow or spurious complaints about the election mechanism. The authors also assert the importance of respecting the opinions of those who come to legitimately different political opinions, in contrast to attacking the patriotism of any who disagree, or warning that if they come to power they will destroy the country. 

The authors point out that the various branches of government in a system with separation of powers have actions available to them that could completely undermine the other branches or the opposition. The authors warn against ramming through a political agenda or accumulating power by playing "constitutional hardball" with tactics like court packing, stonewalling nominations, or abusing the power of the purse, and recommend "forbearance" and some degree of cooperation to keep government functioning in a balanced fashion. Other threats to democratic stability cited by the authors include economic inequality and segregation of the political parties by race, religion, and geography.

Reviews and awards[edit]

The New York Times called it an essential guide to what can happen in the United States.[3] The Washington Post said the book offers a sober look at the current state of affairs.[4] The Wall Street Journalcalled it an unintentional clarifying lesson.[5] In the United Kingdom, The Guardian called it provocative but also unsatisfying.[6] The magazine Foreign Affairs concluded it is an important study.[7] Fair Observer called it an original contribution valuable to researchers, policy makers, and citizens.[8]

The book was awarded with the German NDR Kultur Sachbuchpreis 2018.[9]

 

Read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Democracies_Die

 

 

Considering these criteria, the Aussie democracy died long ago, under the careful poisoning of Uncle Rupe's media. 

Donald Trump Australia visit: White House security discussions 'very ...

 

 

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/...trump...australia/.../cb39026d0d269d416555372cc705...




2 hours ago - Is Donald Trump planning a trip to Australia? ... Donald Trump could be planning his first visit to Australia as US President as early as July. ... Mr Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton will visit Australia next week, when the new US ambassador Arthur Culvahouse will take up ...

The Paladin and Helloworld scandals are just the latest in a long line of Liberal Party cronyism and money laundering operations.

So, let’s have a look at a few of these and see if we can see a pattern.

Parakeelia

Parakeelia is one of the oldest money laundries in the Liberal Party arsenal. What is it? It’s a sophisticated software platform owned by the Party. To simplify, it is a political CRM (customer relationship manager) that is used to track voters, their interests and voting intentions.

This in itself is not unusual. The Labor Party has something similar (although theirs is licensed from a third party provider). But what’s the rort you ask? Well, all Coalition MPs, senators and candidates are required to subscribe to Parakeelia. The subscription costs are in the order of $3,000 per year. For sitting MPs this is claimed as an entitlement from the taxpayers (us). So, what we are seeing is a mechanism to funnel taxpayers’ funds directly into the coffers of the Liberal Party. They could simply double the subscription charge and double the money we pay them.

Indue

The Indue cashless welfare card is another nice little earner. The intent of the card (essentially a debit card) is to control how welfare payments can be spent. For instance, an Indue card cannot be used to buy alcohol. The company that administers the card, Indue Pty Ltd is a corporation owned by Liberal and National Party members that in turn donates to the Liberal and National parties.

Indue charges the Government $12,000 per card to administer. Yes, you read that correctly — $12,000. That’s taxpayers’ money (our money) going to a cabal of former Liberal and National MPs, who also then donate a portion back to their respective parties. That’s taxpayers’ money going straight back to the Party and the Indue shareholder skimming their own cut off the top.

But wait, there’s more! In remote areas, there are often very few stores where cardholders can spend their welfare money. In some remote mining communities, the only stores that will accept the Indue card are owned by the mining companies themselves — often Liberal Party donors. They can hike prices up and syphon off the taxpayers’ funds every time a purchase is made. It’s the old company store trick, revamped for the digital age.

Paladin

The detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island have proven another great opportunity for the Liberal Party to funnel taxpayers’ funds into their own pockets. Broadspectrum (formerly Transfield), Canstruct, Serco and, as we have learned this week, Paladin have all been involved. All these companies (and there are others) have close ties to the Liberal Party. They have all donated to the Party either in their own right, or their senior executives (often ex-Liberal Party executives) have done so directly.

So how does the laundry work? The Government pays these companies extraordinary amounts of money to manage these facilities — billions in fact. No doubt big chunks of that money are used to pay off local power-brokers and officials (especially on Manus Island – PNG). This is illegal of course under Australian law. It emerged during the week that Paladin pays its local staff on Manus a pittance and, even so, delivers virtually nothing. So where does the money go? We don’t know yet but remember dear readers, money transferred from one offshore account into another is not going to be picked up by Austrac — the Australian financial tracking agency. Someone has lots of our money stashed in the Cayman Islands.

Visas

Linked to Paladin are many other scandals. Most seem to have the Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton at the core as he is responsible for the Nauru and Manus detention centres as well as Visa processing. This is another scandal being investigated as we speak, cash for Visas, which if proven will be straight out old-fashioned graft and corruption. If the allegations are proven true and Dutton is the recipient of the payments, then he should do gaol time. Time will tell.

Helloworld

And the final example we’ll cover is the still-developing Helloworld scandal. Helloworld is a publicly-listed retail and corporate travel agency run by honorary Federal Liberal Party Treasurer Andrew Burnes. You may recall Burnes from a past scandal in Victoria that involved then State Liberal Party Planning Minister Matthew Guy, who infamously rezoned some prime Port Melbourne land for Andrew and other Liberals, making them a motzah along the way. Another Liberal Party member, former (failed) Treasurer Joe Hockey is also a substantial shareholder in Helloworld.

The whole Helloworld saga started with a Channel 9 report that Federal Finance Minister Mathias Cormann had not been invoiced by Helloworld for some personal family travel to Singapore, worth a little under $3,000. This led to him making an appearance before Senate Estimates. However, as his inquisitors tugged and pulled at the thread more emerged — much more.

It transpired that Cormann had called Burnes directly to make the booking. Cormann claimed to have given Burnes his credit card details and it simply hadn’t been charged. Cormann has since paid the gifted amount. The timing of the oversight could not have been worse as it was a only a week or so after Helloworld had won a major tender to supply travel services to the Government. This looks awfully like an in-kind payment for services rendered.

Further, it then emerged that shareholder Joe Hockey, now Australia’s Ambassador to the USA, had also actively lobbied on behalf of Helloworld to win the contract. This contract – worth $21 million – meant that Helloworld became almost the sole government travel booking agency. Jobs for mates, or chums in this case. The media has named this scandal “#ChumGate”.

But wait, there’s more! The Herald Sun apparently asked all 82 Liberal Party parliamentarians if they had ever received free travel from Helloworld. Only 14 said they had not. So this now appears to be systemic.

If the examples above provide a guideline, Helloworld:

• is likely to make substantial donations to the Liberal Party;
• will win substantial tenders;
• will supply services at above-average rates, paid for with taxpayers’ dollars; and
• in return, it will continue to provide free travel to key party influencers and donate more money back to the Liberal Party.

Have you seen the pattern yet? If you didn’t already think the Liberal Party was rotten to the core, hopefully, this week’s column will make you think a bit harder. And we didn't even start on some other laundering schemes such as Job Access, Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund, Great Barrier Reef Foundation, Clean Energy Fund or others. Is it time for the election yet?

 

Read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/wrens-week-pa...

 

Read from top.

 

Great cartoon from Mark David at the top of the article at IA!

 

 

by Professor Stephen Fogarty, the President of Alphacrucis College.

Australian "secular" society was never designed to exclude religion from public discussion and political decision-making. Rather, the nation's Constitution sought to limit the powers of sectarianism ― that is to say, a Government's excessive attachment to a particular dogma or exclusive doctrinal religion. The laws agreed upon counteracted the efforts of some to control power through the exclusion of certain associations or beliefs. It is fundamental, therefore, to Australia's national project that it gives expression to a form of civic freedom which is grounded in a diversity of worldviews, and that faith perspectives have a role to play in the development of democratic ideals.

There are increasingly, however, efforts to reignite a kind of war of religions, where public figures are forced to provide public confessions of doctrinal allegiance in order to maintain credibility. This time, the Inquisition is not comprised of Catholic or Protestant zealots, but of the vanguards of "secular" media.

In the February issue of The Monthly, popular writer and historian James Boyce trains his critical gaze on the Prime Minister, is an essay entitled "The Devil and Scott Morrison." In a manner reminiscent of Marion Maddox's God Under Howard, Boyce's attempt at an exposé concludes that Morrison belongs to a potentially dangerous, manipulative, heretical, demon-obsessed and essentially cultish sect, and that he is obligated to deliver a confession of faith to the Parliament and the Australian people, who must pronounce judgment on his political soul.

But the argumentative ploy at the heart of Boyce's essay is, at best, a crude one. He first identifies what he takes to be some of the more questionable beliefs characteristic of Pentecostalism ― the expression of Christianity to which Scott Morrison professes to belong ― and then finds the Prime Minister guilty by association. Unfortunately for Boyce, in this instance, the devil is the lack of detail rather than Pentecostalism. The caricature he provides of Pentecostalism is fundamentally misleading, and a number of his claims are patently untrue. One could only wish that in researching this important topic, some Pentecostal scholarship or indeed Pentecostal scholars could have been consulted. This appear not to have been the case ― but as the President of one of the largest Christian higher education institutions in the country, which happens also to be based in Pentecostalism, I can think of many exceptional academics and practitioners who could have given Boyce the benefit of their research and experience.

Is Pentecostalism a Christian heresy?

Boyce's first accusation ― and, historically, the most serious one ― is that some of Pentecostalism's teachings are "to an extent heretical … and … contrary to the teaching of the mainstream Protestant denominations and the Catholic church." These, for Boyce, include Spirit baptism and speaking in tongues, a certainty about the will of God and the nature of "the end times," and an overemphasis on the agency of the devil in human affairs. Boyce goes on to claim that the Bible is not the starting point for Pentecostal belief.

Let's begin with "Spirit baptism." It is certainly the case that Pentecostals believe that the presence of the Holy Spirit ― that is, the third person of the Trinity ― can be transformatively experienced as an expression of God's love, and that this experience can give rise to a number of expressions, one of which may be glossolalia or "speaking in tongues." Neither this belief nor the experience of glossolalia is exclusive to Pentecostalism, however. From the 1960s onwards, thousands of leaders and congregants across Australia from traditional Protestant and Catholic churches have reported similar experiences.

........

Australia's Constitution does not say much about religion. Section 116 makes clear, however, that "no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth." But this is exactly what James Boyce and The Monthly are demanding: to determine whether Scott Morrison is fit to be Prime Minister on the basis of his religious beliefs. There is something profoundly intolerant about such a demand, and it undermines the principle of secular governance that has been central to Australia's flourishing.

Professor Stephen Fogarty is the President of Alphacrucis College.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/pentecostal-pm-scott-morrison-in-the-han...

 

 

 

 

more about the Alphacrucis College.

WHERE WE'VE BEEN & WHERE WE'RE GOING

Established in 1948, Alphacrucis College (AC) is at the forefront of equipping leaders for careers of influence in theology, ministry, business, leadership, teaching, music, chaplaincy, community services and counselling. 

Since its inception as the national training college of the Australian Christian Churches in 1948, AC has had a rich history of ministry training, having taught and trained thousands of Christian leaders in Australia, New Zealand, and throughout the world. Now a multidisciplinary college, AC graduates are making an impact in businesses, classrooms and not-for-profit organisations.

Our mission is to equip Christian leaders to change the world. Our vision is to be a global Christian university, transforming neighbourhoods and nations.

 

---------------------------

What can I say?... I will have to muster a lot of "nasty" in order to explain that "god is an idea (a bad one)", that "the bible is full of deceitful shit" that "ALL religions are fake news by excellence", that "Morrison belongs to a potentially dangerous, manipulative, heretical, demon-obsessed and essentially cultish sect (which s a correct assessment of his attachment to the 'Noah's Ark society')" that "Scummo is more dangerous than Tony Abbott because we know were Tony is coming from — the land of porkies, lies and fudges — but Scummo cleverly wriggles like a mad cut snake in order to maintain his hypocritical position" and finally "read from top".

 

See also:

could scomo be as bad or worse than tony abbott?

In regard to the coming Aussie Federal elections, subconscious concepts in the mind of voters are the Scummo government's move of the Australian Embassy to Jerusalem — while Eurovision will be held in the capital, Tel Aviv — and the fact that Scummo has been modelling himself on a President Trump's monkey. Not a good look.  

 

 

Read from top.