julius

Voting is a humongous subject. It is at the core of the health of democracy. We refer thus to the father of MODERN ADVERTISING: E T Gundlach. The excerpt above from his (somewhat satirical) book "Facts and Fetishes in Advertising (published 1931)....

Promoting political belief is often crass because of ... read above.

Ukrainian presidential advisor Alexey Arestovich resorted to obscene language to criticize those in the West urging Kiev to cede part of the country's territory to Russia for the sake of peace.

“Go f**k yourselves with such proposals, you dumb f**ks, to trade Ukrainian territory a little bit! Are you f**king crazy? Our children are dying, soldiers are stopping shells with their own bodies, and they are telling us how to sacrifice our territories. This will never happen,” Arestovich said in an interview on Wednesday.

The proposition that Australians were disengaged from politics has become something of an orthodoxy in recent years. Polls showing high rates of undecided voters before the election seemed to confirm this analysis.

But come election night 2022, it became clear — horribly so, for the MPs who were personally escorted to the exit by their electorates — that the Australian voting public is engaged, alert, and has its BS detector dialled up to 11.

The voting patterns around the country were intricate, and runic analysts in the major parties will likely be going over them for years.

Peter Dutton has issued a rallying cry to a devastated Liberal Party, promising to bring together moderate and conservative wings fractured by the election loss and vowing to take the fight to Labor on the economy.

Dutton formally confirmed on Wednesday he will stand for the leadership of the Liberals as he warned “things are going to be tough under Labor – higher interest rates, cost of living, inflation and electricity prices”.

“Labor talked a big game on the economy. They now have to deliver and we will hold them to account,” he said in a statement.

More than 4 million Australian school students were at risk of unprecedented tracking and surveillance during remote learning as corporations exploited their access to children.

Key points:

• 
  Human Rights Watch analysed 164 educational apps and websites used in 49 countries
• 
  It found 89 per cent of EdTech products used globally could put children's privacy at risk
• 
  Several products used in Australia were found sharing children's data with advertisers

The findings come from the most comprehensive global study into the murky world of student data during COVID-19 lockdowns, and the privacy risks for both students and their families as education shifted from schools to homes.

The German government has rejected criticism by Polish President Andrzej Duda, who accused Berlin of failing to substitute tanks Warsaw had delivered to Ukraine. It might take Germany a long time to produce the heavy equipment Poland seeks to receive from Berlin, government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told journalists on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Duda told the German news outlet Die Welt that Berlin had failed to replenish the Polish stocks in a timely fashion after Warsaw “weakened” its own military potential by sending “a large number” of tanks to Ukraine. Most Polish tanks are German-made ones and Warsaw expected Berlin to step in, the Polish leader added.

The war in Ukraine is a trompe l’oeil. Behind the appearances of the unity of NATO and its consolidation by new members, several big players run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. In reality, all those who are not blinded by their own propaganda know that their side is going to lose and is already planning other enemies on other battlefields. Washington is making the best of a bad situation and using Russian pressure to close ranks.

RISING TENSIONS (19)

A new war is being prepared for after the defeat in the face of Russia

by Thierry Meyssan

China and Australia's prickly diplomatic relationship has dominated foreign policy in recent years, with provocative rhetoric and public spats showing no signs of easing. 

Relations went into rapid decline after Beijing and Canberra clashed over several issues, resulting in a diplomatic stalemate and damaging tit-for-tat trade war.

Unless Moscow is defeated in Ukraine quickly, the collective West won’t be able to address climate change in time to save civilization, billionaire financier George Soros told the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday. He also called Russia and China the greatest threats to his concept of open society.

Russia sending troops into Ukraine “may have been the beginning of the Third World War and our civilization may not survive it,” Soros told the WEF, and even when the fighting there stops, “the situation will never revert to what it was before.”

The idea that war can be a source of national unity and national regeneration is one of the most dangerous in modern history. In 1914, it seduced a generation of European liberal intellectuals, many younger ones of whom paid for their illusions with their lives. In the interwar years, it formed the very core of Fascist and Nazi ideology.

One of the things that makes this idea so seductive is that it occasionally proves true. In Britain during World War II, the national unity government of Conservatives, Labor, and Liberals gave birth to the national consensus behind the British welfare state, which has lasted to this day. 

BY Anatol Lieven

Without even bothering to mask its Russophobic positions in the conflict in Ukraine and experiencing a failure in its actions there, Washington is strenuously seeking to unleash a “second front” against Russia in any zone sensitive to Moscow. The United States is actively trying to destabilize the situation in the Central Asian region, to worsen relations between Russia and the European Union, to create a conflict with Japan and in the South China Sea as a whole.

by Vladimir Danilov

Things are not going to plan for Vladimir Putin.

The once-feared Russian army has long since abandoned its goal of capturing Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, and it’s been largely beaten back from the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv.  

Moscow’s tactics for its invasion have changed — it is now solely focused on the ground war in the eastern Donbas region, and in the south. 

In those areas, it has managed to push its lines forward but the gains are incremental, often just a few kilometres at a time.

There has been no breakthrough.

Many experts classify the fighting now as little more than a standstill, with both sides braced for months of combat ahead.  

Sanctions imposed on Moscow are the real cause of a looming global food crisis, not Russia’s actions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday. 

He said that Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ opinion that there was a risk of global hunger. 

“That is true. But when it comes to grain, the president said that the imposed sanctions and restrictions led to the collapse that we are now witnessing,” Peskov revealed.

Sky News host Andrew Bolt says the Liberal Party need to reinvent themselves into “the party of the battlers” and “common sense”.

“See the Liberals are no longer the party of the rich. That’s Labor and the climate independents. They're the ones who can afford crazy green policies,” he said. “The Liberals now are the party of the battlers, in the outer suburbs and towns. “So, reinvent yourself, guys, into the party of the battlers, the party of common sense, not of climate hysterics.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke0snNtX5nI

MAY ANDREW BOLT'S HOUSE BE FLOODED OR BURNT DOWN IN THE NEXT AUSSIE CATASTROPHE....

Meanwhile:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says his dog rubs shoulders with the best

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Buddy is a very special political animal. He does share the highest office in the land – and he is helping with a very good cause.

While he may have one of the hardest jobs in the country, Prime Minister Scott Morrison says his best friend is alway there to greet him at the end of his day.

“It is often said that dogs are a man’s best friend,” says the Liberal leader.

“Well, Buddy is a Prime Minister’s best friend.”

The beloved black schnoodle – a mix of schnauzer and poodle – appears in The Advertiser Foundation’s special edition calendar, 2022 Power Pets.