The Brown Note

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 how sadistically they will treat the prisoners - the residents of San Salvador's worst gang neighborhoods now have the enviable life of, not being able to escape joining a gang and then being put into an even worse prison for the rest of their horrible lives after.

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 claims in private. This isn't freedom of speech - this should be treason.

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 90% of it and still claimed to be right about everything cos they waited 3 years. Mistakes will always be made on unprecedented global events - but we were never wrong in listening to who we did.

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 still its biggest victims.

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 - in Dubai, the integrity of the mega-wealthy has never been so cheaply for sale. Nor has their holistic commitment to human rights been more transparently exposed surface level noise.

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 sex abuse finding he knew of, helped cover up and even facilitated the abuse of children over decades. This is not a man to celebrate at his time of passing.