Linkage

There was a time when such weapons sales at least sparked talk of “the merchants of death” or of “war profiteers.” Now, however, is distinctly not that time, given the treatment of the industry by the mainstream media and the Washington establishment, as well as the nature of current conflicts. Mind you, the American arms industry already dominates the international market in a staggering fashion, controlling 45% of all such sales globally, a gap only likely to grow more extreme in the rush to further arm allies in Europe and the Middle East in the context of the ongoing wars in those regions.

In his nationally televised address about the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars, President Biden described the American arms industry in remarkably glowing terms, noting that, “just as in World War II, today patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom.” From a political and messaging perspective, the president cleverly focused on the workers involved in producing such weaponry rather than the giant corporations that profit from arming Israel, Ukraine, and other nations at war. But profit they do and, even more strikingly, much of the revenues that flow to those firms is pocketed as staggering executive salaries and stock buybacks that only boost shareholder earnings further.

Michael Fotheringham, the director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, says the number of corporate landlords is increasing and should “in theory’” offer more stability to tenants.

“Institutional investors behave slightly differently [to small-scale investors], in that they’re more focused on rental yield and the longer term, and therefore tend to be more friendly to longer leases,” he says. “And because they’re often partners in the development of sites, [the buildings are] often higher quality.”

But because corporate landlords are “regulated exactly as well as small-scale investors”, there is no more protection for renters that would ensure “a guarantee of good behaviour”, Fotheringham says.

The executive director of advocacy organisation Better Renting, Joel Dignam, says Victoria should pull itself into line with the ACT and expand its rental protections to also ban no-grounds evictions after the first 12 months of a lease.

“[Forcing people out of a rental is] really hard to justify for a corporate landlord,” Dignam says. “They’re clearly not moving in, they’re not selling the property.”

Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter (Likud) was asked in a news interview on Saturday whether the images of northern Gaza Strip residents evacuating south on the IDF’s orders are comparable to images of the Nakba. He replied: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers.”

When asked again whether this was the “Gaza Nakba”, Dichter – a member of the security cabinet and former Shin Bet director – said “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

 

The situation is particularly dire for people on low incomes, with a single person on jobseeker having to spend at least 78% of their income to rent a one-bedroom apartment in any capital city. In Sydney, a one-bedroom apartment would on average cost 137% of their $22,100 annual income, making it the least affordable place in the country.

A single pensioner would need to spend 50% of their income to rent in all capitals except Adelaide and Hobart and at least 32% of their income in regional areas.

Last November, however, Trevaunance Cove turned brown with sewage. Lifeguards described the stench as "unbearable". The utility company responsible — South West Water — said heavy rains forced it to release the sewage and storm runoff to avoid the local filtration system becoming overwhelmed.

But the pollution event was no one-off. Two months prior, discharge alerts were in place at more than 100 beaches around the country, and in 2021, there were more than 370,000 such releases of raw sewage by water utilities across the United Kingdom. That year, another company, Southern Water, was fined a record 90 million pounds ($170 million) for dumping 21 billion litres of untreated sewage into protected marine areas off the southern coast of England.

Rivers and lakes have also been used as dump sites; there are credible reports that untreated sewage is spilled into natural waterways every two-and-a-half minutes. As temperatures across the UK have risen, there has been a growing backlash against the government's inability to fix the problem.

At the heart of the scandal is a decision taken in 1989 to sell off the country's water and sewerage industry.

Staffers from more than two dozen Democratic offices say they are receiving an unprecedented number of calls and emails demanding for members to support a cease-fire — an onslaught for which their caucus was wholly unprepared.

Following the Oct. 7 terror attacks on Israel by Hamas militants, up to three weeks passed ― and the death toll from Israel’s retaliatory strikes reached the thousands ― before many offices even formulated an official response. “Let it go to voicemail” was the prevailing guidance in several offices, one staffer said.

The yawning mismatch between voters’ and members’ sentiments on this issue strikes many staffers as outrageous.

“This building is not listening,” said one Democratic aide. “I’ve never seen such a disconnect between where voters and constituents are and where Congress is, and that’s saying something because there’s always a disconnect.”

In theory, the “free market” should reward publications that are doing important work. The more people care about a given issue the more they’ll read news stories about it, which should give publications covering it traffic and ad dollars. In reality, the advertising industry has singled out the issues the audience cares about most, like reproductive rights, as unsuitable to sell ads against, even though a ton of people want to read about them. This helps explain the precarity of publications like Jezebel, despite it being more vital to its audience than ever.

The death of Jezebel under this set of circumstances is particularly cruel considering that voters overwhelmingly voted to enshrine abortion protections and against politicians who made the dehumanization of trans people one of their key policies.

“The closure of Jezebel also underscores fundamental flaws in the ad-supported media model where concerns about ‘brand safety’ limit monetizing content about the biggest, most important stories of the day—stories that create huge traffic because people read and share them,” Jezebel staff said in a statement from its union, the Writers Guild of America. “A well-run company would have moved away from an advertising model, but instead they are shuttering the brand entirely because of their strategic and commercial ineptitude. Jezebel was a good website.”

For the traveling public, the cost of rail is now almost 8 percent higher in real terms than it was in 1995, before privatization. This figure has dropped in the last two years only as inflation as risen. Until the cost-of-living crisis, when fare increases were decoupled from retail price index inflation, fares were consistently 15-20 percent higher in real terms than when the rail was publicly owned. There’s no decoupling this fact from rail privatization: the annual outflow of funds during the years of privatization could have enabled an average cut of 14 percent in fares — and if the railways were nationalized now, and the flow of funds into the private sector cut off, the money saved would fund a cut of 18 percent in fares.

Under privatization, the rail system has become a cash cow for the cloud of parasitic private interests that swarm around it — and all passengers have gained is an increasingly expensive, fractured railway, run by people fixated with cutting staff costs. It’s no surprise, then, that public opinion polls consistently show overwhelming public support for the renationalization of railways.

I'm inclined to wonder whether this may be an official leak; inoculation, aimed at the feeble consciences of Dem centrists. i.e. "Oh, so what we say is monstrous, what we do is worse, but at least what we think is okay."

The memo has two key requests: that the U.S. support a ceasefire, and that it balance its private and public messaging toward Israel, including airing criticisms of Israeli military tactics and treatment of Palestinians that the U.S. generally prefers to keep private.

The gap between America’s private and public messaging “contributes to regional public perceptions that the United States is a biased and dishonest actor, which at best does not advance, and at worst harms, U.S. interests worldwide,” the document states.

“We must publicly criticize Israel’s violations of international norms such as failure to limit offensive operations to legitimate military targets,” the message also states. “When Israel supports settler violence and illegal land seizures or employs excessive use of force against Palestinians, we must communicate publicly that this goes against our American values so that Israel does not act with impunity.”

Here's how policymakers from the past thought about housing and citizenship and economic rights:

   "We consider that a dwelling of good standard and equipment is not only the need but the right of every citizen – whether the dwelling is to be rented or purchased, no tenant or purchaser should be exploited for excessive profit."

That was written in 1944 by the Commonwealth Housing Commission.

[…]

It said we had to get Australians into homes, and those homes should be affordable and adequate — not sites of exploitation for profit.

Does any of that feel familiar?

Well, last week the NSW Housing Minister, Rose Jackson, said we'll have to treat housing as a "fundamental human right" if we're to fix our current housing crisis.