The Brown Note

In one of my irregular, "how to make friends", pieces - a new hill to die on, a defence of of the poster-boy for colonialism, The British Museum.

The recent death in custody of Russian political dissident, Alexei Navalny (which I don't actually think benefits Putin) has been met with a wave of Western condemnation and new sanctions against Russia, apparently the only nation committing these crimes international sanctions warrant... However the West's treatment of their own political dissidents and whistleblowers has been identical to what P...

Ignoring the dozens of personal and financial crimes Trump stands accused of, why is someone with charges hanging over their head, relating to trying overthrow democracy and the potentially treasonous handling of state secret, whilst lobbying for immunity from any crime, allowed to actually stand for President of that democracy? When many of these trials will be resolved after the next election, w...

If you are a protected male in politics like Barnaby Joyce, being filmed, lying sh$t faced in the gutter, babbling profanities, is either funny blokeish behavior to be forgiven or a need for sympathy. For a woman, being drunk comes loaded with innuendo regarding their morals, their credibility, their behavior and their deserving their treatment. And this was hardly Barnaby's first rodeo - but noth...

For most of us, the cost of living crisis has been raging for years, for the right wing media, it began the day Anthony Albanese was elected leader. Despite the Reserve Bank of Australia announcing six interest rate rises before Labor were even elected, despite the Liberal government near tripling the deficit and going into a per capita recesion by 2019, BEFORE COVID. But then right wing media onl...

The latest US regime change, in a country of 240 million people, that's the world's only nuclear armed Muslim nation, has happened in full view with barely a whimper from Western media.

The worst human being to have ever led Australia has finally quit politics. A man synonymous with lying, bullying, incompetence, smugness, and a total lack of accountability (or ability) - a look back at a vile dark stain on Australia.

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said what we all knew, he never supported the two-state solution anyway. What Western media isn't even engaging in is what this means. Not the absolving of the West Bank and Gaza Strip into the state of Israel, but what Israel would do with a Palestinian population that numerically matching its own Jewish one.

After a grim year of rising interest rates, a cost of living crisis and The Voice referendum debacle, Albo has come out of the gates of 2024 firing, with a genius move. Not canning the wildly unpopular stage 3 tax cuts, even better, making them for all and not just the rich. Lets play this out Dutton. And Waleed Aly must be the biggest flog not to have a show on Sky at night.

Sure to be a popular piece... Something just doesn't sit right with me about poor women being paid to use their bodies as baby incubators of the rich.

Pitchfork music magazine has apparently been executed, the century's most important music bible being folded into GQ magazine by its evil corporate overlord Conde Nast. As a devout consumer of Pitchfork since the turn of the century, I've been predicting this for the last five years - the post Fetch the Bolt Cutters years, but really the five years that editor in chief Puja Patel has been in charg...

With only 15% of Israelis wanting Prime Minister Netanyahu in charge after the current war, him having so few friends, either internationally or at home, and his saying the quiet part part out loud - there was never to be a Palestinian state, is a wider conflicting his goal now? He has only ever craved saving his political career, is solely beholden to an ultra-extremist right wing in Israel and p...

In a banner year for big, great and terrible movies, my best and worst films of 2023. Emperor's New Clothes award going to, Killers of the Flower Moon, sadly.   *Repost from the Brown Note Movie Review channel

My yearly list of the best albums, in a pretty decent but not great year in music, in a particularly poor era for music journalism. Movies to follow. Emperors New Clothes award for most inexplicably, universally praised album of the year - Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want to Turn Into You *Originally posted on the other channel - The Brown Note Movie Review Full show with music - https://www.mix...

I can't read English Premier League side, Everton, being docked ten points for one count of financial irregularities as anything other than a shot across the bows of global soccer titans, Manchester City, currently accused of one hundred and fifteen counts. Though the right thing to do, with the global money men from FIFA to Saudi Arabia, looking to break apart football for their own interests, wh...

Why is it that every now and then a right wing populist scores a stunning election victory and their opposites on the left - like Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn - never do? It's simple - far from being revolutionaries, tearing the system down, the right wing populist, from Argentina to the Netherlands, represents the global elite economic interests, just much more colorfully. You will see them co...

With nearly everyone a loser in this Western-backed horror show, one person has come out an undoubted winner - Vladimir Putin. After a year of unrelenting demonisation, sanctions and international pariah status (at least to the West) due to his war in Ukraine, suddenly the whole paradigm has flipped. It's now impossible for Western nations to both support Ukraine and Israel at the same time, witho...

Despite the USA having gone through the most tumultuous period of their modern existence, with an actual attempted overthrow of government and half the country openly flirting with fascism, the Democrats still have only one play in their book - rely on Trump and use Biden. Like last time. They should've lined up a batch of potential new leaders, instead they've no one and have spent the last two y...

Western governments, by their relentless, one-eyed and punitive take on the latest conflict in Gaza, are doing more to fuel a new outburst of global antisemitism than anything else - by refusing to ascribe any of this conflict to a Netanyahu government deemed an extremist global pariah a year ago, they are helping place that burden on the Jewish diaspora globally. And by denying the population of...

The ex-Liberal Party staffer, Bruce Lehrmann, recently involved in one of Australia's highest ever profile rape cases - the infamous Brittany Higgins rape trial, which collapsed due to jury misconduct, before a retrial was cancelled due to Brittany Higgins perilous mental health, has now been named as a person facing two new rape charges. Which on the face of it, I would have expected to generate...

An overview of the latest, crushingly repetitive episode in genocidal apartheid - now, post Ukraine, with even more helpings of Western hypocrisy.

Now that Australia's attempt to be nice to indigenous people was roundly defeated, a look at the reasons it failed and the behavior and culpability of all involved. Particularly the media - who were happy to complain daily about how the public never understood what the voice was, yet never offered to help explain it to them, despite widely supporting it and being the main conduit for that very pub...

The Australian Labor party - in the midst of a cost of living crisis - should let others take control of the Voice referendum, lest it be a referendum on them.

Okay a deliberately inflammatory title. A truer statement would be, why do we always lump cyclists into one group, when there are two main groups. The first are the people getting from A-to-B, minding their own business, casually riding, wearing normal clothes - doing great things for their health and the environment, god bless them. The other group are the Lycra commandos, that go out in packs of...

The cost of living crisis is hammering every nation that bought into the neoliberal economic nightmare - but it's mainly a cost of housing crisis, with the impact of house prices and rent killing our ability to weather any economic storm, as we eviscerated the idea of a meritocracy in favor of an inheritocracy. From the viewpoint of Sydney, rent and mortgages - on the one home you actually live in...