Nostr notes by Electric Trike

Could be. “A neighbour of #BrendanNugent said those who lived ...

2026-10-20T05:03:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…z2cc
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Could be.

“A neighbour of #BrendanNugent said those who lived nearby had frequently called authorities over concerns for his mental health.

A police operation was underway earlier today at a property in Tarrawingee, about 12km from Wangaratta, where Mr Nugent is understood to live.

The neighbour told the ABC that he regularly played "obscenely loud" music and could be heard "screaming".

They said they were scared of him and that he had recently "spouted gobbledegook" at their family.

"I feel like, you know, the neighbours have all called the police on him numerous times," the neighbour said.

"I think the police have done everything in their power, they've followed it through. I've asked for them to do mental health checks on him and get through to the mental health team that supports him and I'm sure that they have done that."

Sources have confirmed to the ABC that Mr Nugent has undergone a mental health assessment while in custody following yesterday's incident.”

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-20/what-we-know-brendan-nugent-arrested-alleged-attack-helen-haines/107286654

#GinaRinehartsOneNation owner #GinaRinehart has big plans for the ...

2026-07-14T19:42:31Z

#GinaRinehartsOneNation owner #GinaRinehart has big plans for the north of Australia.

#GinaRinehart spoke at the #NationalBushSummit in #Townsville last month - a #NewsCorp event sponsored by her company, #HancockProspecting - she said the #Queensland government could give some #FreeLand to "the #Israelis" to turn Townsville into a base for #Israeli companies to develop their #MilitaryWeapons systems.

"[We could] encourage the Israelis to develop and build their advanced war #drones and/or other advances in defence and improve upon their Israeli-style domes," she said.

She said Queensland could also give free land to #ElonMusk (the world's first trillionaire) for his #SpaceX satellite construction and launches.

A 'Northern Economic Zone' for Australia

But one of her biggest policy ideas is to turn the top half of the Australian continent into a "special economic zone".

In 2010, Rinehart helped to create the Australians for Northern Development & Economic Vision (ANDEV) think tank to promote the idea, along with Ron Manners from the #MannkalFoundation (a long-time affiliate of the #AtlasNetwork).

ANDEV says the "Northern Economic Zone" should have significant tax advantages to attract investment. It says dam construction within the zone should be encouraged to capture the north's annual rainfall for agricultural purposes.

It says Australia should adopt special migration agreements where a condition of the visa is that a foreign worker must live and work within the economic zone.

Between 2010 and 2013, ANDEV worked with the #InstituteOfPublicAffairs (IPA), a #neoliberal think tank (another affiliate of the Atlas Network), to push the idea into Australia's public debate.

#Rinehart. Last week, she said there should be no personal income tax, no payroll tax, no licence fees, and no stamp duty inside the special economic zone.

Her massive #mining and agricultural interests located in the northern half of Australia would presumably be among those to benefit from the tax advantages.

Earlier this year, #PaulineHanson was #gifted a #plane by a Rinehart company, as well as $2 million in #donations from the #billionaire's friends and business colleagues (stockbroker #AngusAitken and his wife Sarah, #AdamGiles and the geologist #IanPilmer).

Adam Giles, the chief executive officer of #HancockAgriculture (one of Rinehart's companies) has also "personally gifted" One Nation a new Ford Ranger to help the party campaign for the 2028 federal election.

Will Pauline Hanson and One Nation take up the "Northern Economic Zone" cause for Rinehart?

#auspol #RWNJ #Trumpist

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-15/one-nation-economic-policies-reserve-bank-gina-rinehart/106909282

#JetFuel made from used #CookingOil will be used at an ...

2026-07-06T04:46:23Z

#JetFuel made from used #CookingOil will be used at an #Australian #airport for the first time, giving wings to new technology without frying the planet.

#Brisbane has become the first Australian airport with a dedicated end-to-end pipeline for lower emissions jet fuel. #Airlines using Brisbane and some regional #Queensland airports will be able to buy sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) blended into their regular jet supplies at #VivaEnergy’s #Pinkenba Terminal.

Made from #biogenic feedstocks such as used cooking oil, it will be stored, blended, certified and pushed into Brisbane airport’s existing jet fuel system in a set-up designed to look and feel like business as usual for pilots and passengers.

It is the first dedicated end-to-end SAF storage and blending facility directly connected to an Australian airport fuel network and integrated with a carbon credit transfer program, Viva Energy says.

Viva Energy has previously supplied SAF to the #RoyalAustralianAirForce and to #VirginAustralia flights from #Proserpine, north Queensland.

It is commissioning another SAF blending and storage facility in #Victoria. #AusPol

Leaked #BHP documents reveal something deeply broken in ...

2026-05-31T00:20:53Z

Leaked #BHP documents reveal something deeply broken in #Australian politics. #auspol

One of the world’s biggest #mining corporations publicly presented itself as committed to #climateaction, while internally #delaying major #cleanenergy projects, locking in diesel trucks and pushing #renewable investment years into the future.

According to leaked internal documents BHP shelved billions of dollars worth of renewable energy plans in WA, delayed the rollout of electric mining fleets, and bought new diesel trucks that could keep operating into the 2040s.

All while its #Pilbara iron ore operations made around $22 billion in pre-tax profits last financial year.

That’s the point that really hits home. BHP did not delay climate action because it lacked money. It delayed climate action because, when climate commitments came up against profit, profit won the fight.

It always will, and that tells us everything about the limits of government abrogating responsibility for the climate crisis and trusting big corporations to voluntarily step in and do the work for them.

These documents reportedly show BHP internally describing decarbonisation as “urgent” and warning that slow emissions reductions could damage the company’s reputation. But when serious investment was required, major clean energy projects were pushed back, electric fleets were delayed, and new diesel trucks were locked in.

At the same time, BHP continued publicly presenting itself as a climate leader.

This is the gap between corporate climate promises and corporate behaviour. And it is exactly why governments cannot keep letting massive corporations mark their own homework.

Corporations will not act at the speed the climate crisis demands. Governments have to make them.

That requires strong laws. Bold reforms. Proper regulation. No more public handouts for fossil fuels. And a tax system that makes big corporations pay their fair share for profiting from Australia’s resources.

Instead, #Labor keeps #protecting the very corporations slowing down climate action.

The government has #refused to tax gas corporations making obscene export profits. It continues to pay mining companies to pollute. Last year the Government paid BHP $627 million to burn diesel under the Fuel Tax Credits Scheme.

With incentives like that, no wonder BHP isn’t decarbonising.

And while people are told there is not enough money for the NDIS, public services, climate action or cost-of-living relief, some of the biggest corporations in the country are still being allowed to profit from Australian resources without doing their fair share.

Communities are already living with the consequences of climate delay. More dangerous #heat. More destructive #floods. More intense #fires. Marine life and coastal communities under pressure. Families wondering what kind of future their kids are being left with.

And while people are told serious climate action is too hard, too expensive or too disruptive, #multinational #corporations are delaying renewable projects while making billions from Australian resources.

As with the housing and cost-of-living crisis, the problem is not a lack of money. It is a lack of political guts and will.

#TheGreens could not have been clearer or more consistent: real climate action will not come from trusting big corporations to do the right thing when no one is forcing them to.

It will come from making them pay their fair share, ending public handouts to fossil fuels, and putting strict rules in place so climate commitments cannot be quietly abandoned the moment they become inconvenient.

That is why we are campaigning for a 25% tax on gas exports, which could raise at least $17 billion a year to fund the services people need, instead of leaving obscene profits with gas corporations.

And Australians are with us. More than 60% of people support a tax on gas exports because they can see the basic unfairness: gas corporations are making enormous profits from Australian resources while people are told there is not enough money for housing, climate action, the NDIS or cost-of-living relief.

These leaked documents show exactly why that fight matters.

Is #Trump mentally fit to be #President? In an address from the ...

2025-12-24T21:40:37Z

Is #Trump mentally fit to be #President?

In an address from the #WhiteHouse in December, Trump claimed that, over the past 11 months, his administration had brought “more positive change” than any government in US history.

“There has never been anything like it,” Trump added.

It’s true that his second term has been #unusual, including in some ways which the president might not appreciate. That’s because Trump, 79, has shown #erratic and at times #confused behavior throughout 2025, leading to questions about his mental and physical performance.

Trump has appeared to #fallasleep during some meetings; amid others, he has #drifted off-topic, launching into #bizarre segues on interior decor or about #whales and #birds. His public appearances have lacked focus, and he has used speeches to #ramble about how Barack Obama walks down stairs, or to #inventstories about the Unabomber.

The #unpredictable behavior has forced the White House to repeatedly defend Trump’s mental acuity, often in hyperbolic terms. Trump himself has bragged that he “aced” an assessment which tests for early signs of #dementia, but over the course of his 11 months in office, examples of unusual behavior have piled up.

There was the case in mid-July, when Trump told a detailed story about how his uncle, the late professor John Trump, had taught Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Trump recalled: “I said: ‘What kind of a student was he, Uncle John? Dr John Trump.’ I said: ‘What kind of a student?’ And then he said: ‘Seriously, good.’ He said: ‘He’d correct – he’d go around correcting everybody.’ But it didn’t work out too well for him.”

The problem is: that cannot possibly be true. First, Trump’s uncle died in 1985, and Kaczynski was only publicly identified as the Unabomber in 1996. Second, Kaczynski did not study at MIT.

Later that month, during a meeting with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, Trump abruptly switched from discussing immigration to ranting about “#windmills”. Speaking, non-stop and unprompted, for two minutes, Trump claimed without evidence that they drive whales “loco” and that wind energy “kills the birds” (the proportion of birds killed by turbines is tiny compared with the number killed by domestic cats and from them flying into power lines).

Another incident that raised questions about Trump’s state of mind came in September. Trump summoned the country’s top military commanders to a meeting in Virginia, and treated them to a speech touting his alleged successes before saying this:

“America is respected again as a country. We were not respected with Biden. They looked at him falling down stairs every day. Every day, the guy’s falling down stairs.”

Trump continued:

I said: ‘It’s not our president. We can’t have it.’ I’m very careful, you know, when I walk downstairs for – like I’m on stairs, like these stairs, I’m very – I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record, just try not to fall because it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy.
We don’t want that. Need to walk nice and easy. You not have – you don’t have to set any record. Be cool, be cool when you walk down, but don’t, don’t bop down the stairs. That’s the one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs, I’ve never seen – da da da da da da, bop, bop, bop, he’d go down the stairs, wouldn’t hold on. I said, it’s great, I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it, but eventually bad things are going to happen and it only takes once, but he did a lousy job as president.”

The White House has repeatedly batted away questions about Trump’s mental acuity, a spokesperson earlier this year said that his “mental sharpness is second to none”, while Ronny Jackson, a Republican congressman who previously served as Trump’s doctor, claimed he was the “healthiest president this nation has ever seen”.

Still, the speculation over Trump’s health is unlikely to go away, with the Daily Beast reporting that Democrats are planning to make his mental acuity and fitness a key issue ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

They will have a fair amount of ammunition. In November, Trump, the oldest person to be inaugurated as president, said he had undergone an MRI, but couldn’t remember which body part received the scan. That month he also appeared to fall asleep during a meeting in the Oval Office – the same thing happened during a cabinet meeting in early December, and again two weeks later, at a press conference announcing cannabis reforms.

Earlier this year, Trump mixed up Albania with Armenia when discussing a peace deal involving the latter; discussing autism in a speech at the White House, he mused about “certain elements of genius that can be given to a baby”. Announcing that 13 grants would be awarded to investigate autism, Trump added: “Nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen.”

Among these moments of confusion have been incidents of Trump lashing out without inhibition. In December alone, he declared Somali immigrants to be “garbage” and, in a move that shocked even some Republicans, essentially blamed Rob Reiner for his own death.

Trump finds time to say and do these things despite a reduced schedule. On average, Trump’s scheduled events only start at about noon, and usually end at 5pm, a shorter workday compared to his first term, the New York Times found, while the number of his official appearances has decreased by 39%.

A White House official told the Guardian: “Not all of the president’s meetings are listed on the daily guidance that is distributed to the press.”

Liz Huston, the White House assistant press secretary, said in an emailed statement: “The Guardian is a left-wing mouthpiece that should be deeply embarrassed to publish this garbage. As the President’s physician, Dr Sean Barbabella, has made clear time and again – and as the American people see with their own eyes every single day – President Trump remains in excellent overall health.

“President Trump’s relentless work ethic, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility stand in sharp contrast to what we saw during the past four years when the failing legacy media intentionally covered up Joe Biden’s serious mental and physical decline from the American people. Pushing these fake and desperate narratives now about President Trump is why Americans’ trust in the media just fell to a new all-time low.”

A Pew Research Center survey in November found that 56% of US adults “say they have a lot of or some trust in the information they get from national news organizations”, which is 11 points lower than in March 2025, and 20 points lower than it was in 2016.

That same month, a poll by Gallup found 36% of American adults approve of Trump’s performance, the lowest rating of his second term. Earlier this year YouGov found that half of Americans think Trump is too old to be president.

Throughout the year, the White House has ferociously defended Trump against accusations he is in decline. Yet the questions about Trump, who will turn 80 in June, are unlikely to go away. #uspol #auspol
#wackadoodle

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/24/trump-mental-health-speech-address-2025-review