The union intimidation continues. This time on Albo:

The Albanese government will ensure administrators can be appointed to overhaul the construction division of the CFMEU for behaviour it has described as “abhorrent” and “intolerable”, as the union is suspended from its peak body.

The action has led to a furious response from a senior union official, who has called Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ‘gutless’ and ‘spineless’.

“The Albanese Labor government has opened the gates of hell for tens of thousands of workers as he scrambles to shield the big end of town and his Labor mates from scrutiny,” the statement from the Queensland/NT branch said.

The branch’s secretary Michael Ravbar said the state and federal governments and major civil contractors should face the same level of scrutiny as the unions.

“Albanese has panicked and soiled himself over some unproven allegations in the media,’ Mr Ravbar said.

“Workers can see that Albo has lost control and the country is being run by buffoon breakfast show hosts and talkback radio shock jocks.”

Mr Ravbar “it’s the major civil companies that have brought the unsavoury elements on government-funded projects.”

“Albanese knows that a thorough investigation will put Labor governments in a world of pain,” Mr Ravbar said.

“Albanese is selective about his interest in criminal associations and willingly ignorant about our industry.

“Albanese has panicked and soiled himself over some unproven allegations in the media.”

A defiant Mr Ravbar said the CFMEU had repeatedly said it would cooperate with any criminal investigation, and hit out and “gutless Labor politicians” focused on affiliation fees and donations.

“The CFMEU is heare to stay, This union is owned by the members, not media moguls or spineless politicians,” he said.

“We will defend each other to the ends of the earth.”

Mr Ravbar’s followed the announcement earlier on Wednesday by Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke.

Mr Burke said the general manager of the Fair Work Commission would investigate after a series of allegations into the construction union were made public.

“The government will ensure the regulator has all the powers it needs to appoint administrators,” Mr Burke said.

“There can be no place for criminality or corruption in any part of the construction industry.”

Mr Burke said the government was prepared to legislate when parliament resumed in August if necessary to make that happen, but ruled out deregistering the union.

“The number one job of any union and its officials is to look after its members,” he said.

“The reported behaviour from the construction division of the CFMEU is the complete opposite of this.

“It is abhorrent and it is intolerable.”

Mr Albanese said his government had acted “swiftly” and decisively to ensure administrators for the construction arms of the Victorian, NSW and Queensland CFMEU branches.

“That’s appropriate. We’re not waiting. We’ve been decisive,” Mr Albanese told reporters in Brisbane.

“We’ve worked through with the Fair Work Commission, as we said we would do and with legal advice as we said we would do and today we’ve announced the action that is appropriate that will stamp out this corruption once and for all.”

Peak union body the ACTU dealt the under siege union another blow later on Wednesday, suspending its construction and general division after CFMEU leaders met with the executive.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus said the suspension would remain in place “until they are in a position to demonstrate to us that they are a well functioning, clean union, free of any criminal elements.”

“We absolutely reiterate our zero tolerance for corruption, criminal activities, all violence, all of it,” Ms McManus said.

”We will stand against it. We’ll root it out. We will continue to do what is necessary to rid our movement of any elements like that.”

The actions of the government and union movement follow days of allegations of corruption, bribery and bullying in the construction arm of the union.

The joint investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and 60 Minutes led to the resignation on Friday of CFMEU Victorian boss John Setka, who has denied the allegations.

But the government’s response has been slammed by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton as “weak’, calling for the CFMEU to be deregistered not just be put into administration.

“Bob Hawke had the guts to stand up against the corrupt BLF and we know that Anthony Albanese has not got any ability to show the leadership that Bob Hawke did,” Mr Dutton told reporters in Brisbane.

“I think this is an issue that’s going to go on. It’s going to bedevil the government for as long as the Prime Minister continues to be weak.”

He said the Albanese government’s response had been wanting and dismissed the excuse that the allegations were new as reason for not acting against the CFMEU earlier.

“There’s no new information available to the Prime Minister that wasn’t available when he decided to abolish the ABCC,” Mr Dutton said.

“Why did he abolish the (building) watchdog? Because the CFMEU wanted him to abolish and they had donated $10m to the Labor Party.

“The Prime Minister is only acting now not because he’s got new information but because his mates have been caught on tape and the corrupt practices we’re seeing today have been well known.

“They’ve been publicly reported on and if the Prime Minister says he knew nothing about it, he’s not telling the truth.”

But Mr Burke dismissed deregistering the CFMEU, saying it was no longer the “toughest action” a government could take against a union.

The Fair Work Act also allows deregistered entities to act as a “red union,” which allows them to bargain on behalf of workers, which would negate some of the reason for registration.

“That capacity was not around when the Builders Labourers Federation was deregistered (by former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke),” Mr Burke said.

“If we simply went down the deregistration path, we would have an organisation still capable of bargaining and doing the entire business model we’ve been seeing reported over recent days with no layer of regulation or additional oversight that applies to registered organisations.”

Steaming pile of horse shite.

Trump swallows universe

Rowan Dean, The Spectator Australia 18 July 2024

One of the most important Australian novels of the last few decades is Boy Swallows Universe, the semi-autobiographical debut by Queenslander Trent Dalton. Set in the boondocks of Brisbane in the early 1980s, it chronicles the post-war Australian dream bypassing an entire generation of ‘white trash’, leaving them in the clutches of welfarism, unemployment, drug and alcohol addiction and junk-food poverty. As its protagonist Eli Bell laments, ‘Life is really different when you grow up with a family of outlaws…. Someone’s always gotta pay the price.’

A global best-seller, the story of young Eli’s struggle to overcome the deprivations and dysfunction that curse today’s white working-class poor was recently turned into a superb Netflix series by top Australian producer Andrew Mason.

Readers and viewers across our continent, from the rust-belt suburbs once home to South Australia’s car factories to the towns surrounding our silent coal mines, will have recognised the social failures wrought since the Whitlam years, in which an underclass dependent on the opiate of state welfare and handouts flounders in a world of increased crime, corruption and social despair. Some individuals, like Eli, break through and turn their adversity into a strength. Many, of course, do not. Has any political party successfully managed to represent the lost hopes and dreams of those whose jobs disappeared thanks to mismanaged globalisation and the pernicious effect of greedy unions and ever-increasing costs of production? Have any political parties seriously attempted to address the chronic and seemingly irreversible social decline caused and encouraged by the ever-expanding welfare state and its relentless focus on elitist, woke, eco-progressive issues? One Nation? Yes, but they are a minority party. The Liberal party? Yes, to a degree under Howard, Abbott and now Dutton but not at all under Turnbull or Morrison. The Nationals? Yes, to a degree. Labor? Of course not. The once-great party of the blue-collar worker these days prefers pandering to undergraduate ‘environmentalists’ and blue-haired, nose-pierced women with degrees in gender science.

Eli Bell should, of course, be a role model for those eager to escape the poverty trap of dispossessed, pension-addicted Australia. A real Eli Bell would be someone we would admire and look up to, a survivor who had overcome adversity to thrive and live the Australian dream. Ironically, the closest we have among our political leaders to an Eli Bell is Anthony Albanese, with his single-mum/housing-estate background; but the tragedy is that the young Mr Albanese instead of aspiring to a productive career as a self-made man preferred the leech-like embrace of socialism and Labor’s fraudulent undergraduate politics.

Two years before Trent Dalton’s book was published in Australia, a similar book was a major hit in the USA. Hillbilly Elegy, like Boy Swallows Universe, told the story of a bright young boy, this one brought up in the rust belt and white trash-land of Middletown, Ohio, in a childhood marred by poverty, domestic violence, abuse and parental drug addiction. Like Eli’s, this young boy’s mother’s opioid dependency deprives him of proper maternal affection. Like Eli’s, his dysfunctional family are a shadow of their proud forebears. And also like Eli, it is this young lad’s high IQ, buzzing personality and self-determination that offer a bright future as he seizes the opportunities that a free society presents to him.

As the author says, ‘Not all of the white working class struggles. I knew even as a child that there were two separate sets of mores and social pressures. My grandparents embodied one type: old-fashioned, quietly faithful, self-reliant, hardworking. My mother and, increasingly, the entire neighborhood embodied another: consumerist, isolated, angry, distrustful.’ Sounds like life in a thousand Aussie towns.

Hillbilly Elegy, like Boy Swallows Universe, was also turned into a Netflix hit.

At the end of Boy Swallows Universe, a flourishing career as a journalist awaits the bright young Mr Bell. At the end of Hillbilly Elegy… well, this week Donald Trump selected its author and protagonist J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential nominee.

Several points need to be made. Firstly, that if the choice of Mr Vance was a surprise, it was only because there were so many other exceptional talents Mr Trump had to choose from; a veritable smorgasbord from Ron de Santis and Vivek Ramaswamey to Tim Scott, former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard and others. The contrast with the Democrat party could not be starker, where, literally the only reason the decrepit, senile, demented and doddery Joe Biden has not been replaced is because they can’t think of anyone better.

Secondly, it is noteworthy that the bien pensants of the Australian ‘conservative’ media have by and large sneered at this appointment, much as they have always sneered at Donald Trump himself.

Thirdly, there is no question that the political, economic and social decline of the West will only accelerate without politicians like Mr Trump, Mr Vance, Nigel Farage, Pierre Poilievre and others (mislabelled as ‘far right’) who are prepared to slay the woke shibboleths and tackle issues like illegal immigration, cost of living and the self-inflicted energy crisis (aka climate change) with verve and imagination.

To quote the protagonist from one of the books, but it could just as easily fit the other, ‘There is nothing lower than the poor stealing from the poor. It’s hard enough as it is. We sure as hell don’t need to make it even harder on each other.’

He’s only partly right. of course. Even lower than the poor stealing from the poor is when the government steals from the poor, which is precisely what is occurring every single day with insane net zero and other leftist inflationary policies.

Congratulations, Mr Trump, on your inspired pick. What a week!

Zulu, Top Ender and other Cats interested in military stuff, via bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com you can download the pdf for free.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377471951_Jeremy_Black_Ed_The_Ptractice_of_Strategy_A_Global_History_Fvcina_di_Marte_No_17

Biden, apparently, has Covid.

This gives him a face saving out – he did not step down because he was too old and feeble, but because at his age he is especially vulnerable to the coof and he would not be able to prosecute a campaign the way it should be because he is sick.

The rest of the Dims and the MSM can then walk back their previous comments and Biden exit to the sound of hymns to his genius and moral leadership.

If they write a piece of music for the Marine band to play for Jill to walk out of the White House she might be coaxed out of the building like a cat going after a laser pointer before she realises quite what is going on.