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Thursday, August 25, 2022

Just a rich guy: If we don’t defend free speech, we live in tyranny

 "Just a rich guy" is the perfect epithet for Thiel, who, after all, is not an ideologue or an 11-dimensional ( name withheld )chess master. He's just another thin-skinned, greedy bastard who uses his money and power to accumulate more money and power. The rest is just window-dressing.


The property market is a favourite for money launderers, forcing ordinary Australians to compete with organised crime for their dream home, says investigative author Nathan Lynch. He blames the power of lobbyists as a cancer on our democracy. Lynch’s new book is a wake-up call, writes Stephanie Tran.

‘Lucky Laundry’ review: how Australia got caught in a toxic spin cycle


Cyber Crime on the Rise


A Rose Bay man charged with running a dark web business that sold $7 million worth of cocaine, MDMA and prescription drugs in 60,000 different transactions will remain on bail until at least October, after police hit both him and his brother with a raft of new charges.

Brothers Alexander Busse, 39, of Rose Bay, and Ioan Busu, 33, of Chatswood, were arrested in May this year, the culmination of a two-year investigation by NSW Police’s cybercrime squad into a dark web business named Aussiepillimporter

Sydney brothers facing additional charges over $7 million dark web business



John Mearsheimer’s latest article on Ukraine in “Foreign Affairs” – a critique Gilbert Doctorow Important.


Self-explanatory. Andrei Martyanov  Kinzhals in Kaliningrad and other matters. 



Companies Are Paying Inflation Busting Dividends at Cost to the Rest of the Economy, Including Their Employees

How companies are paying dividends rather than investing in their business or paying employees better……and often borrow to do so



Montana flagged bugs in cow app exploited in alleged China hack Al JazeeraCows need apps??? Wouldn’t cameras in and outside barns suffice?


A middle class holiday itinerary vs a working class holiday itinerary Daily Mash

 

Starbucks ordered to reinstate US workers fired amid union campaign Guardian 

 

If Everyone Is King Then No One Is Caitlin Johnstone 

 

The 2028 L.A. Olympics Are Already Creating a Housing Disaster New Republic 


 MARGARET ATWOOD:  If we don’t defend free speech, we live in tyranny.


Neil's article begins by saying:

IF there’s one document you read today make it ‘Surviving 2023' by the acclaimed British economist Richard Murphy. He lays out in stark, almost apocalyptic, language why we’re entering an economic ice age and how our paralysed government and political parties should respond. Failure, he warns, means “people will die”.

Reviews do not get much clearer than that.

'Surviving 2023' is available here.


The Australian Labor Party Embraces the Authoritarianism of a Political System in Crisis

By John McGregor, a translator and political violence researcher Australia is currently lurching from one revelation to another through a constitutional crisis that nobody near power will acknowledge the severity of. As it emerges that the former Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison secretly appropriated a number of ministerships for himself, the now-ruling Labor Party is […]




If you think Thiel is an evil genius, then maybe these contradictions are the result of your puny brain lacking the subtlety to understand how, on a higher plane of reasoning, they can be resolved. If you understand that Thiel is an ordinary mediocrity, no better than you or me, sickened by pathological greed, then there's a much simpler explanation: it's all bullshit, and the only thing Thiel really cares about is becoming richer and more powerful.