Mark’s news digest March 1, 2021 

Today’s digest of national and international news by Mark O’Brien

 

General

Why interest rates are soaring and what it means for you. This shocked me when I read it. Does this mean the Covid housing boom due to extremely low interest rates is not only over but a debt trap that will squeeze mortgages? 

“Known paedophile Chief Justice Tom Bathurst” orders Justice Kelly Rees to stitch-up journalist Shane Dowling for exposing Australia’s Paedophile Protection Racket Not the kind of allegation I like to make or support without a strong case which appears to have been made.

New Liberals leader outlines his party’s politics – a ‘progressive’ Liberal party?

Why Morrison’s response to Brittany Higgins’ rape is woefully inadequate

Australia slides from world’s greatest country to pariah – in just ten years. My, how much has changed, and not for the better.  I recall the 2000 Olympics and the amazing sense of national pride and self-confidence it brought to the fore, only to be smashed the following year by Howard’s disgusting ‘Children overboard’ and the degeneration of the refugee discussion into a facade of lies Australia hid behind.

It seems that the denialists have been winning.

Smug silence and dogged stonewalling: the Morrison government really doesn’t like being accountable by Katharine Murphy

 

Murdoch media and Facebook

How Morrison’s media bargaining code sold Australia’s soul to wretched Rupert and Mark Zuckerberg

The Murdoch propaganda machine needs to be stopped

Despite ‘irresponsible journalism of the worst kind’, Murdoch gets a gong

 

Environment and climate change

Clive Palmer coalmine near Great Barrier Reef must be blocked, conservationists say. If this guy did not exist the world would be so much better! He appears to be a psychopath – he does not need money, nor to provide jobs, he seems to exist for just one purpose – the rape of the environment

Galilee (Adani, and later, Rhinehardt and Clive Palmer) coal unburnable and unbankable. Old article from 2015 but makes salient points around the absence of any business case as well as the climate suicide it represents

Tim Flannery says coal communities are being kept in the dark about dangers – from 2014 but still relevant

“Tidal wave” of new wind and solar will force early coal plant closures Excellent news

Major UK gas exit spells more bad news for Taylor’s gas-fired recovery Great news. It appears that ‘the market’ is sorting out emissions from energy

 

As the recent Facebook drama around news went nuclear and Facebook shut off news feeds amidst collective discomfort about Facebook’s ‘algorithms’ and data mining and Facebook ‘knowing’ what you ware interested in before you do, this page, Mark’s news digest, was created to provide a local independent news service.

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