The Brown Note

Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese just sent an unexpected flare up on superannuation. After bagging him for abandoning the Labor party must-do list of rich people tax breaks, negative-gearing and franking credits, is he playing 4D chess with all of us?

Mere seconds after Aussie prime minister, Anthony Albanese even mentioned removing some tax breaks millionaires gained in recent times, the Australian mainstream media, from radio to tv to print, proved as always who it really works for - the top 1% of Australians (who they hilariously call middle Australia). But there power has never been weaker. This is a massive opportunity.

Whilst the West arms Ukraine with billions in weapons and universally sanctions a much larger and more powerful attacker stealing their lands, the West also gives billions in arms to Israel, whilst Israel attacks a much smaller and weaker opponent and steals their lands, and turns a blind eye to anything they do the Palestinians. I guess some people are worth more than others.  

No doubt sniffing future profits, and fearful of the online mob spoiling that party, the estates and publishers of Dahl's and Fleming's works are releasing new versions of their books, changing words. Never change an artists work. For a start it's missing a great opportunity to learn and teach - how and why history has changed, how to deal with being offended - it's also deleting a snap shot of th...

Move over COVID, conspiracy town has a new sheriff - and it's an a doozy. If you've spent your life (like I have) in horrendously developed major cities, the idea of having everything you need 15 minutes from your home, would seem like the sanest and most wanted and most human development plan ever, apparently its basically Stalin.

Never trust any phrases less in politics than "Tough on Crime" or a "A war on crime", it's just right-wing populist short hand for "We aren't going to address any of the reasons for crime, just lock more people up, even harder, which has never in the history of humanity worked". With El Salvador now going down this route with the America's largest ever prison camp - with a massive emphasis on just...

The 1.6 BILLION dollar Dominion Voting Systems defamation case against Fox News has revealed something we all knew was happening - Fox News doesn't even believe the crap it spouts. Whilst it's most toxic mainstays like #TuckerCarlson and #SeanHannity were spruiking mass voter fraud to a violently wound up audience who would end up trying to overthrow the government, they were mocking those same cl...

Well done to the world for their response to COVID - it needs saying - where for once right wing populism was ignored for a global belief in science (if only we could've done the same for climate change). Now the cookers, conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and charlatan politicians are claiming they were right about everything, when all they've done is spout a load of rubbish 3 years ago, dropped...

I'm no fan of either Anthony Albanese's wildly dangerous The Voice referendum on Indigenous recognition or voting on my fellow citizens rights, but it's happening and to lose the vote by a fraction because of something you've done Lidia, will be so damaging to indigenous Australians, the prime minister and maybe even Australia itself.

With US President, Joe Biden, on the ground in Ukraine, any pretense this anything other than a war between the USA, the EU and Russia is laughable - not when the USA pumped more arms into the country in three months than the entire annual defense budget of Russia. And with China now hovering around helping Russia, a year in and this conflict is more globally dangerous than ever, with Ukrainians s...

Despite initially holding out, either honorably or because of fuel price terror, Germany has got back with the program and is sending tanks to the Russian war in Ukraine - make no bones about it, each German tank equates to Ukrainian civilian deaths.

With Australians again being asked to again vote on OTHER Australians rights, if prime minister Anthony Albanese can't explain The Voice to the public in one sentence, he's giving a hugely dangerous and damaging free kick to the populist right.

Even a homeless person isn't as desperate for the next dollar as the super rich. With one of the greatest players of all time, Christiano Ronaldo, prepared to trash his legacy, right at the end, by becoming a performing clown in Saudi Arabia and probably the most prominent music act of the century, Beyoncé, happy to do the same - for basically the same people who got a very bad meal in The Menu -...

From Andrew Tait to Donald Trump, from Kanye West to Elon Musk, from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Katie Hopkins, Cardinal George Pell, Kari Lake, Pauline Hanson, Avi Yemini and Alex Jones - the modern day superheroes of the right are ALL really awful people, why? I think I know why.

A titan of Australian Catholicism, who was the third highest ranking Catholic on earth, leaves a legacy forever associated with the child sex abuse scandals that plagued his church. He is being lionised by those of the hard right as a hero, as they celebrate his eventual, controversial acquittal from his own child sex abuse conviction, whilst they completely ignore a royal commission into child se...

Is Australia's most infamous workplace incident over, or is it about to go supernova and finally ensure Brittany's employer at the time, the actual government, is finally held to account. Despite maintaining a scarcely believable and completely ludicrous position, that no senior person in the previous Liberal government, either knew about the allegations of rape against a staff member in their own...

Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is the Time magazine person of the year - rightly so as they base it on the person who overall has had the most impact on the year. It's also bloody funny as I know damn well the tweeting ego, Elon Musk, would've thought it should be him. But in one of my infrequent series of pieces that will make no friends - has he been GOOD for Ukraine or the Ukrainian p...

A double whammy of hypocrisy actually. As the biggest protests in decades greet the latest round of lock-downs in China, the Western world, (particularly my people on the left) who have spent the last few years attacking lock-down protestors, now regard them as freedom fighting heroes. And whilst mass public street protests have been common place in the West in recent years, particularly in Americ...

After a two year wait to get to trial, followed by a mistrial due to the actions of a Juror, the most controversial case and political story in modern Australian history would seem to be at an end - with Brittany in hospital for mental health reasons, the prosecutor has decided not proceed with another trial, saying her life is in danger and more important. Devastating stuff and now no one who in...

FIFA should be custodians of the world's biggest sport's most popular showcase, instead they've descended into such corrupt disrepute they need to be replaced. We all know the awarding the cup to Qatar was mired in bribery, lying and officials enriching themselves, but how could it not be when every other modern World Cup stinks to high heaven too. An overview of the whole debacle and why Qatar wo...

The Australian state of Victoria just held a long heralded election, which, if you listened to ANY Australian news - from TV to radio to print media - was a terrifyingly close referendum on the most hated man in the country, Premier Dan Andrews and his COVID dictatorship. It was NEVER close, not for one second, yet wall to wall media and polling said it was on a knife edge throughout. Dan walked i...

The UK's latest Tory meltdown is again both hysterically funny and maddeningly awful, especially when you think it was a personal choice to choose Brexit and Boris Johnson, rather than Jeremy Corbyn and have the best UK leader with the best policies of my lifetime. He is certainly looking good now. But not only did the right destroy him but so did the "Left" leaning Guardian Newspaper, who spent m...

Three major factors have contributed to the downfall of Australia's global city. One - John Howard's economic policies destroyed the standard of living and the housing market to the extent even an average job, once able to BUY a three-bed home, will now struggle to rent a one bed flat. Two - the infiltration of puritanical right wing (often religious) people in politics and the police have turned...

God I would love and Australia where the news media held right wing politicians even ten percent as accountable as the left, who are hounded out of office for any transgression immediately, or where even men in office fell on their swords half as much as women. Make no bones about it, they were gunning for Greens party Senator, Lidia Thorpe from day one - because she is independent, loud, brown, u...

A delightfully happy follow up to the previous piece a couple of months back, about how we are way past being able to stop the severe impacts of climate change - which are well under way - and that the most extreme forecasting barely covers how bad the next decade will be. Just checking in to see if things have gotten better. Oh dear.