News update for Mon 8 July 2024
Your trusted guide to the top independent news and views of the day...
Welcome to your TrueNorth news update where every weekday afternoon we share curated articles from Australia’s independent news media sector.
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TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here
BREAKING NEWS - FRENCH ELECTION: France’s progressives keep out the far right, but what could happen next? - The Guardian - The Conversation
How to Stop Fascism - Five Lessons of the Nazi Takeover - Tim Snyder
The lessons from Germany that I present below are not at all new. We have been trained by digital media to believe that only what happens right now matters. But the people who intend to destroy the American constitutional republic have learned from the past. One of the basic elements of Project 2025, for example, is what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung: transforming the civil service into a fascist nest.
Those who wish to preserve the American constitutional republic should also recall the past. A good start would be just to recall the five basic political lessons of 1933.
Also read >
Project 2025: The Trump presidency wish list - 7am Podcast
Beware: Trump is Project 2025 - Robert Reich
The force behind Project 2025: Kevin Roberts has the roadmap for a second Trump term - The Guardian
What’s happening with the climate crisis and heat-trapping emissions in Australia - The Guardian
Australian government data says national greenhouse gas emissions have come down steadily over the past two decades and are now 29% less than in 2005.
But another calculation, based on the government’s data, says the emissions that matter have barely moved, dropping only 2.5% over that time.
Some analysts believe the second calculation is the true measure of Australia’s heat-trapping pollution – and that it reveals how little has been achieved in cutting CO2.
What should we make of this? In the charts below we explain Australia’s progress in cutting greenhouse gas emissions and the latest on what’s happening with the climate crisis.
Also read >
Calling all influencers: standup and be counted on climate - Pearls and Irritations
Electrifying the Future: Will Australia be a Leader or a Laggard? - Lyrebird Dreaming
How a Future Made in Australia can help end modern slavery - The Mandarin
Temperatures 1.5C above pre-industrial era average for 12 months, data shows | Climate crisis - The Guardian
Laura Tingle: Analysis The Australian government has tried to find a middle path when it comes to Gaza. Fatima Payman’s departure tells us that can be just as perilous - The ABC
He might have already been trailing in the polls. There may have already been deep doubts among voters about whether he was too old for the job.
But it took just one appalling, hard to watch stumble, by US President Joe Biden last week, to lead even the most sober of analysts to not just say he should withdraw from the presidential contest, but even question his capacity for office in the months remaining of his presidency.
That was despite Biden's slip being made in a debate with a convicted felon and sexual abuser who was widely reported to have lied repeatedly on the night about the most basic of facts.
Politics has never been a wilder and more dangerous place, it seems.
Read more from Laura Tingle for The ABC
Also read >
A timeline of leaks by ‘senior Labor figures who asked not to be named’ - Crikey (paywall)
Payman triggers a racist upwelling from deep in the political media psyche - Bernard Keane for Crikey (paywall)
Geoffrey Robertson: Keir Starmer was once my apprentice – and this is how I think he might fare as prime minister - The Guardian
What does Keir Starmer actually stand for? Will our new prime minister turn out to be a socialist (as Tories claim), an authoritarian (as the left fears) or a closet liberal? His legal background may hold some clues.
After university he applied to join my chambers, 1 Dr Johnson’s Buildings, which was at the forefront of the civil liberties battles of the day. In many ways it was not an obvious choice for an aspiring Labour MP, headed by the Welsh Liberal QC MP Emlyn Hooson, who had defended the Moors murderers, and had among its members John “Rumpole” Mortimer, the liberal Tory Joe Walker-Smith, and myself, by then a veteran of anti-censorship cases such as Mary Whitehouse’s crusade against Gay News, and author of the cumbersomely titled textbook, Freedom, the Individual and the Law.
Read more from Geoffrey Robertson for The Guardian
Also read >
Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has a thumping election win – what does it mean for the UK and the rest of the world? - The Conversation
What went wrong for Rishi Sunak? - The Daily Aus Podcast
Dutton’s claim about G20 nuclear energy use doesn’t add up - AAP Factcheck
Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton claims Australia is the only country not to use nuclear energy out of the world’s 20 largest economies.
This is misleading. Five other nations in the top 20 – Germany, Italy, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia – do not generate nuclear energy.
Germany, Italy and Turkiye import very small amounts of electricity generated from nuclear sources, but Indonesia and Saudi Arabia don’t consume any nuclear power.
Australia is the only top 20 economy that doesn’t generate, import or have a plan to do so.
Mr Dutton has made the claim at least four times in interviews about the coalition’s plan to build seven nuclear power stations in Australia without clarifying that he’s counting countries planning to use nuclear power among those that are actually using it.
Also read >
Without a massive grid upgrade, the Coalition’s nuclear plan faces a high-voltage hurdle - The Conversation
Peter Dutton has promised to solve our energy problems – but his nuclear policy still leaves Australians in the dark - John Quiggin
Lucy Hamilton: The Atlas Network's transnational revolution - Pearls and Irritations
Twice in a fortnight, the president of the Heritage Foundation has declared that America is experiencing its second revolution. The revolution would remain bloodless (because their side is “winning”) “if the left allows it to be.” The two bodies whose acts provoked the announcements are leading Atlas Network partners. They are also spending millions of dollars in Europe to roll back rights for women and LGBTQIA people.
Both president Kevin Roberts’ announcements were made on Steve Bannon’s War Room broadcast, central to the Trumpist movement and its efforts to remake America from every school board and electoral precinct upwards.
Read more from Lucy Hamilton for Pearls and Irritations
Today’s cartoon by Jon Kudelka for The Saturday Paper
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here
Alan Kohler: Low stakes in the UK, high stakes in the US - The New Daily
In a way, the UK election highlights what a weird and terrible spot America finds itself in.
Labour won a massive 290-seat majority in the UK after a campaign based on the one-word title of its manifesto: “Change”.
But there won’t be much change and beneath the surface, it wasn’t much of a win.
By contrast the US stands at a T-intersection, looking right and left: The paths on offer this November go in opposite directions; the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Read more from Alan Kohler for The New Daily
Chris Wallace: All ‘commit’ and no ‘disagree’: the real reason why Labor’s solidarity pledge is not working - The Conversation
The Australian Labor Party’s solidarity pledge is being widely sledged in the wake of Western Australian Senator Fatima Payman’s resignation from caucus.
But it’s worth stepping back and reconsidering this core element of Labor’s culture and history against contemporary culture and practices.
Read more from Chris Wallace for The Conversation
Also read > Labor’s slight on the hill - Senator Payman’s departure from the ALP exposes a divide with the membership and challenges Labor’s direction - New Politics
Propagandist: Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation and the Israel war machine - Michael West Media
“News Corporation is a reflection of my thinking, my character, and my values,” said Rupert Murdoch. Alan MacLeod investigates the media baron’s financial and political ties to the Israel war lobby and finds it’s number one propagandist.
Without a sympathetic media, Israel’s powerful military would be next to useless in its attempts to ethnically cleanse Gaza. It relies on crucial Western support for its project, and no one is as important in manufacturing consent for Israel as Rupert Murdoch.
The Australian-born press baron has close and extensive personal ties to the Israeli political elite and myriad business connections to the country.
Read more from Michael West Media
Also read >
News Corp is ailing. How long will the Murdochs prop it up? - Pearls and Irritations
The secret sources the media use to spice up the political narrative of their choice - Crikey (paywall)
Abul Rizvi: Asylum seekers hit new records despite increased processing - Independent Australia
While the Government is working to keep on top of the asylum seeker backlog, the volume of applications continues to hit record highs.
THE NUMBER OF asylum seekers in Australia hit a new record of 114,006 at end May 2024 with a new record of 40,877 living in Australia who have been refused at both the primary level and at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT).
Last year, the Albanese Government allocated an additional $160 million to try and get on top of this issue. That has led to an increase in the monthly number of asylum cases processed at both the primary level and at the AAT.
Read more from Abul Rizvi for Independent Australia
William Bowe: What does The Muslim Vote’s success in the UK mean for Labor here? - Crikey
Its campaign helped four seats in the UK flip to endorsed independents. A repeat performance in Australia could threaten two Labor ministers (Tony Burke and Jason Clare).
In the Australian context, that would leave the matter to be determined by a factor unknown to House of Commons elections — preferences.
With the Greens a modest presence in both seats, the ball would be in the court of the Liberal Party, whose supporters’ fealty to the party’s how-to-vote card was illustrated when it flipped from favouring the Greens to Labor in 2013, causing Adam Bandt’s share of their preferences in Melbourne to drop from four-fifths to one-third.
The Liberals would thus have to weigh up the prospect of taking out two senior ministers, and with them any chance of Labor retaining its majority, against a concern not to be seen facilitating “Muslim candidates from Western Sydney” — a line that Peter Dutton undoubtedly employed last week in full consciousness of the controversy that would ensue.
Read more from William Bowe for Crikey (paywall)
A question of representation: There’s no moral panic quite like an Islamic panic - The Politics
The Insiders panel yesterday was very focused on one thing: the importance of always using one’s inside voice.
“Do you think they need to change their name though?” asked David Speers of the panel.
He was referring to the group The Muslim Vote, hitherto obscure but catapulted to the attention of the Canberra press gallery because Senator Fatima Payman met with the group before resigning from the Labor Party.
The Muslim Vote is not a political party and has no candidates for public office. It does interest itself in issues of concern to Muslim Australians, and the potential for their collective voice to be actually heard.
Read more from Michael Bradley for The Politics
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Quick Links…
Marinating in liberalism - Can this philosophical tradition offer a blueprint for a just society? - Inside Story
Years at Exclusive Brethren school were ‘darkest moments of my life’, former student says - The Guardian
Labor’s fall: fast forward to disaster - Pearls and Irritations
UK election betting scandal exposes 'outrageous' gaps in Australia - Capital Brief
‘Do you like this position?’: The workplace rife with shocking sexual harassment - The SMH/Age
Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential - The Lancet
In our make-believe politics, the strings pulled by the super-rich are all too visible - Pearls and Irritations
Obsession with growth is enriching elites and killing the planet. We need an economy based on human rights - The Guardian
Spin Cycle: Phillip Adams Reflects On His Decades Long Career — Triple R 102.7FM, Melbourne Independent Radio
The need for safe injecting programs in prisons - Denham Sadler for The Justice Map
No House? Two-party Senate squeeze on cross-bench locks in Defence spending debacle - Michael West Media
Shorten teaming up with Hanson on the NDIS tacitly endorses her views of disability - Crikey
Australia could be the first nation in the world to eliminate poverty - Pearls and Irritations
Half of Australians in the five largest cities live too far from public transport to ditch cars - The Guardian
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here
Share your views on Australia’s media landscape through TrueNorth’s short survey
You’re up to date for Monday the 8th July. See you tomorrow!
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here