Democracies still for sale, but Hungry Jack’s Australia already sold.

This list is from 2016, and ranks the top 100 world ‘economies’, government revenue v corporate turnover.

Now that’s scary. Only 30 countries in the top 100.

Ask yourself: how does the increasing corporate wealth and power influence the political class and decision-making in democracies? Would you like one lump or two of servitude with your cup of neoliberalism??

https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/the-worlds-top-100-economies-31-countries-69-corporations/

Australia won’t talk about it.

The last Australian troops in Afghanistan left yesterday, with nary a moment of reflection in Australian politics or mainstream media of yet another failure-war. When we don’t even ask the question, we never give ourselves the opportunity to learn from history. This intentional ignorance cannot be supported, and is only ever done to deny accountability and responsibility. If you don’t pay the fine for jaywalking, the state will try to forcibly take the money from you, and if you don’t have the money, you’ll go to prison. But each failure-war takes many human lives and costs a king’s ransom. One after another, time after time, the failure-wars begin with lies and end in unaccountability, and lessons are never learnt.

The Taliban are in power in parts of the country, possible even that they will overthrow the Western-imposed Afghan government, or enter into a power-sharing arrangement, and al-Qaeda are still a presence in Afghanistan, with no reason why they won’t get stronger now.

From Australia’s perspective, it’s been 20 years, nearly $10 billion, 41 lives, and more than double that maimed.

To accomplish precisely what then??

But there is no mainstream discussion.

Why is it NOT in our interest –in good faith and honestly, seeking only to understand and not repeat past mistakes in the future– for us to discuss such things??

What is this thing called democracy if rationality needs be rejected?

The citizen in a so-called democracy is in reality just another serf, similarly powerless, free to choose from 1000 different dishwashing detergents (subject to being able to afford the purchase), but unable to insist on honesty and accountability in their supposed representatives.

Both main Australian political parties supported the failure-war in Afghanistan, a bipartisan commitment to lies and unaccountability.

What we call democracy is now so corrupt that it exists only to protect the status quo, and promote the interests on the elites. 

It is like we stumble about in a fog, not able to see where we are, or where we are heading. And off the cliff edge we could fall.

Here in Australia, surveys consistently show about two-thirds of people think politicians lie all or most of the time. My question is: why does the one-third not think so, since the evidence is overwhelming, and the import of it so consequential? I suspect NO amount of evidence would change the mind of the one-third, and so a minority are preventing any kind of meaningful change. Why do they have this opinion, a belief that cannot be reasoned with, an attitude that no amount of evidence is sufficient to change? The conservative and right-wing soul is a very fearful one, and often moves into deeply delusional places — a Jewish space laser started bushfires!  so an elected representative speaks:  fear of the fires, fear of the effects of climate change, but an obstinate refusal to actually do anything about it, and fear strikes out, to apportion, however fanciful, blame.

“We have become a nation ruled by fear. Since the end of the Second World War, various political leaders have fostered fear in the American people–fear of communism, fear of terrorism, fear of immigrants, fear of people based on race and religion, fear of gays and lesbians in love who just want to get married and fear of people who are somehow different. It is fear that allows political leaders to manipulate us all and distort our national priorities.” – Former American Senator Mike Gravel (1969-2021)

It is 10 years since the NATO bombings of Libya to oust Gaddafi, another failure-war. The military intervention was publicly based on humanitarian reasons, to protect the people of Libya from a dictator. But was that the case? Considering the casual dismissal of past and ongoing civilian deaths in military interventions by  American, British, and French forces –depending on the victim, the hollow sombreness or belittling dismissal of so-called ‘collateral damage’– the humanitarian claim always seemed, if not outright deceitful, at least disingenuous.
As a consequence of the NATO bombings, Libya has since been a failed state, racked by civil war. It is no small irony that the majority of African migrants which so overwhelmed Europe in the recent past, came thru that failed state of Libya. The video below proposes reasons –entirely dissimilar to the publicly stated humanitarian aim– for the failure-war in Libya.

The question is, as the publicly stated aims for the war in Afghanistan have obviously not been achieved, apparently without any regret by the instigators, what were the actual reasons for this failure-war that we were not told?