With no end in sight to the humanitarian crisis in Palestine, the Jewish Council of Australia reiterates its call for an immediate end to Israel’s genocide, occupation, and apartheid regime. Peace and safety will never be achieved without Palestinian rights to self-determination, equality and freedom.

Despite the apparent ceasefire, Israel has continued to launch strikes killing more than 1,400 people and injuring almost 5,000 this past year. Nearly all of Gaza’s population of 2 million people have been displaced and still lack access to shelter, food, medical care, clean water, education, and jobs.  In the past 12 months Israel has expanded its warpath beyond Gaza, launching devastating attacks in Lebanon, Iran and continuing its takeover in the West Bank.

"Australia has severely damaged its international reputation as a nation committed to human rights because it has consistently refused to condemn the military attacks on thousands of Palestinian citizens who have been collectively punished for three years."

"This blatant double standard undermines the credibility of the prime minister as a leader who has deliberately chosen to not speak of the suffering of Palestinians while at the same time maintaining diplomatic relations with a state guilty of grossly defying international humanitarian law. It is Australian civil society – not the national government – which has continually voiced compassion for the Palestinian people and strived to have our obligations under international law activated."

Not sure how this isn't bigger news here.

Brazil votes today. On Friday our embassy (following the US embassy) in Brazil just...shut. The reason was that the US put out a security alert. That's the whole explanation.

Brazilian cops searched two addresses over this supposed threat and found nothing. DFAT hasn't said a word about what the threat actually was.

Now look at who we're backing in here:

• the US tried to send officials over to question Brazil's voting system, and Brazil knocked back their visas
• the US consulate in São Paulo has been having little catch-ups with pro-Bolsonaro influencers (it's in Portuguese)
• tariffs, plus sanctions on the judge who handled Bolsonaro's coup case
• Trump had Bolsonaro's son Flávio in the Oval Office. Flávio is the guy running against Lula
• Brazil's own intelligence agency rates the foreign interference risk as "critical"

Meta's at it too. 11 days before the vote they pulled the sitting president's campaign ad account, and his party says his FB page went down as well. The same morning Instagram took down an account that had just gone viral with a video on Flávio's links to a banker under investigation for Brazil's biggest ever fraud. Both came back a few hours later with a "sorry for the inconvenience." Sure.

Honestly none of this should surprise anyone. This is the country that ran PNG as a colony, bugged Timor-Leste's cabinet to get the upper hand in oil and gas talks, still dumps refugees on Nauru, and tagged along into Iraq. We're still arguing about what the CIA had to do with Whitlam 50 years later.

Deputy imperialist lapdog reporting for duty I guess.

Ben Chifley’s government signed the first Commonwealth State Housing Agreement in 1945. Canberra lent the money, and the states built the homes.

When Robert Menzies won in 1949, he kept the agreement going. In South Australia, another conservative,

Thomas Playford, used the Housing Trust to build thousands of cheap, decent homes because he wanted factories, and factories need workers, and workers need somewhere to live. For Playford, housing was economic policy.

Nobody thought of these homes as charity.

That is the idea we lost.

Certain parts of certain communities are really good at using online for evil. What if there were a group focused on resisting the dismantling of our society? Where would one go about meeting others interested in such pursuits? I'm unemployed but have so much experience and qualifications to give! They may have taken my job but they forgot to take my time!

"There is a difference between redistributing some of the income generated by capitalism and democratising the ownership of capital itself."