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We’ve Already Got a Dictator-in-Chief: How Absolute Power Corrupted the President
Once a dictator, always a dictator. Power-hungry, lawless and steadfast in its pursuit of authoritarian powers, the government does not voluntarily relinquish those powers once it acquires, uses and inevitably abuses them. Likewise, any presidential candidate who promises to be a dictator on day one, if elected, will be a dictator-in-chief for life. Then again, the […]
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Rot in the Civil Service: Farewelling Mike Pezzullo
There was no better example of Australia’s politicised public service than its Home Affairs Secretary, Mike Pezzullo. In most other countries, he would have been the ideal conspirator in a coup, a tittletattler in the ranks and bound to brief against those he did not like. Give him a dagger, and he was bound to […]
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A Duty to Obey: David McBride, Whistleblowing and Following Orders
The unpardonable, outrageous trial of Australian whistleblower David McBride was a brief affair. On November 13, it did not take long for the brutal power of the Commonwealth to become evident. McBride, having disclosed material that formed the Australian public about alleged war crimes by special forces in Afghanistan, was going to be made an […]
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Authoritarians Drunk on Power
There is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? […]
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A Losing Voice: The Fall of an Indigenous Referendum Measure
Even before October 14, The Voice, or, to describe in full, the Referendum on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament, was in dire straits. Referenda proposals are rarely successful in Australia: prior to October 14, 44 referenda had been conducted since the creation of the Commonwealth in 1901. Only eight had passed. […]
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Authoritarian Control Freaks Want to Micromanage Our Lives
Man is born free but everywhere is in chains. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract Authoritarian control freaks out to micromanage our lives have become the new normal or, to be more accurate, the new abnormal when it comes to how the government relates to the citizenry. This overbearing despotism, which pre-dates the COVID-19 hysteria, […]
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Destroying Chilean Democracy: Australia’s Covert Role Five Decades On
The tear-squeeze remembering those who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington has become an annual event. In the words of US President George W. Bush, it was an attack on “our very freedom”. The US had been targeted because it was “the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in […]
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Let Them Eat Bugs: Challenging the WEF’s Corporate-Driven Food Reset
The prevailing globalised agrifood model is built on unjust trade policies, the leveraging of sovereign debt, population displacement and land dispossession. It fuels commodity monocropping and food insecurity as well as soil and environmental degradation. It is responsible for increasing rates of illness, nutrient-deficient diets, a narrowing of the range of food crops, water shortages, […]
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Tell Congress More Work, Less Vacation
Thursday, several colleagues and I, sent an open letter to all 535 members of Congress about reducing their five-week vacation and remaining in Congress to address crucial long-delayed tasks. ***** July 27, 2023 Open Letter to Members of Congress: Crises Demand More Work Time Shorter Vacation The Congress is about to embark on the longest […]
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A State of Martial Law: America Is a Military Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy
What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? —Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, December 20, 1787, in Papers of Jefferson, ed. The government is goosestepping all over our freedoms. Case in point: America’s founders did not want a military […]
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