We’re seeing the western political/media class bleating the word “unprovoked” in unison again, this time in reference to the massive multi-pronged operation launched by Hamas against Israel on Saturday morning which reportedly killed hundreds of Israelis.
Currently, the Voice has been ramped up as a major racial divide in a country in which the racial divide has existed since 1788. It was only recently that the LNP was insisting Multiculturalism was the nation’s biggest mistake in Australian Immigration in the 70s letting the Lebanese and other non-Anglos in. They now insist we should return to focus on who we let in and Assimilation policies instead.
Remember Australian Education needed to establish a degree in Western Culture and that black arm history not be taught in primary or secondary schools. Dutton made it perfectly clear that Muslims and Africans were unwanted and mocked Pacific Island neighbor’s fears of Climate Change . Boomgate revealed the true nature of the LNP and even showed Morrison the ad-man freaking out. Abbott wanted the return of Knights and Dames and us to be a part of NATO, not the Pacific or Asia. Morrison gave us AUKUS. He saw political advantage in promoting division. He used the Cronulla riots employing fear and bullshit to win his own preselection for the seat of Cook. The LNP has never really welcomed us being a Pacific Nation but has always preferred to see the nation through a European Western and a white Christian lens. Korea in the 50s, Indonesia, and Vietnam were a threat in the 60s, and the Chinese here, and China always a threat this century. Howard even stole Pauline Hanson’s Asian hatred out from under her, My god we had a ALP PM who spoke Chinese for god’s sake.
Division has been central to the LNP’s strategy and tactic and still is in order for them to maintain any political relevance. It’s why fear, fragmentation, and Voting No is so important to them
It has often been suggested that the LNP have always used an underlying fear and insecurity in the general public as a means of securing voting support on the basis that they offer better protection against external and internal threats. Typically, these threats are left vague, yet it is wholly evident that the main stream media is intent on ramping up China as an external threat and Middle East and youth crime gangs as an internal threat. Is Climate Change presented as a threat to our security? Rarely, and usually in an entirely non-systematic manner.
Source: Fearmongering: the media’s creation of fear in the general public – Pearls and Irritations
Winning and Losing isn’t the case here. What we are witnessing is Steve Bannon’s strategy of “flooding the zone with shit” for the purpose of fragmentation, division, and destruction of people’s lives and not serving, everyone a loser. Despite all the incontrovertible facts at the center of this “Our” story, no matter how clear a case the Yes23 makes, it will be highly likely that no single version of the truth according to the pollsters is ever going to be accepted.
We’re in an age of manufactured nihilism.
The issue for many people isn’t exactly a denial of truth as such. It’s more a growing weariness over the process of finding the truth at all. And that weariness leads more and more people to abandon the idea that the truth is knowable.
It’s “manufactured” and a consequence of a deliberate strategy. It was perfectly distilled by Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News and chief strategist for Donald Trump. “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon reportedly said in 2018. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
The No campaign doing just that and with x 10 the money being spent than by Yes23
Bannon articulated the zone-flooding philosophy well, but he did not invent it. In our time, it was pioneered by Vladimir Putin in post-Soviet Russia. Putin uses the media to engineer a fog of disinformation, producing just enough distrust to ensure that the public can never mobilize around a coherent narrative.(Vox 2020)
The cliché about disunity being death in politics sure doesn’t apply to the No campaign. It’s all over the place, and it’s winning.
Source: ” The… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
Yes, it’s getting very strange. I was out walking my dog and whenever he does his business, I give him a little treat. I guess that’s the business model of Murdoch. Whenever Andrew Bolt or whoever puts out some shit, they get a little treat.
Source: The Clear Bias Of The Labor Government! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
I…., governments gravitate in low fashion for the cheapest alternative. The payment of peanuts results in a monkey return.
The Australian and Canadian examples serve as salient lessons to those in government who forget their duties to the public. If you get into the bed of a sociopathic, petulant founder who could only conceive of dating girls through digital networks, using such skin-crawling argot as “the poke”, you are asking for trouble. Even more to the point, you are asking for some share of the blame in forfeiting your duties. Surely it would be more prudent for governments to establish their own information channels in times of crisis, invest in public broadcasters and improve their services to areas of a country, however remote?
He went on: “I want to find a place of grace, far from the stench of the media. I want to go where I am not reminded of the social media sewer.” Stan Grant
The statement is a generous invitation to walk together into a better future, and the Voice is the first step.”
Source: “This week… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
Remember when Andrew Bolt kept telling us the world was “cooling”. He no longer does but parrots off that the proposed “solutions” to climate change are wrong. Has the worm really turned?
The indefatigable Creighton does though use one of the most recent versions of the denialist position with the proviso: “Noone denies that climate changes. It always has, for reasons obviously unrelated to human activity. The question is how much of its our fault”.
for some time now, researchers have suggested that the balance of arguments propagated by climate sceptics or denialists has shifted from denying or undermining climate science to challenging policy solutions designed to reduce emissions.
“To comprehend the truth and not act upon it – is there a greater sin than this? Knowledge masked is murder.”
We might also take solace in all this with A.E.Housman’s “The house of delusions is cheap to build, but drafty to live in, and ready at any instance to fall…..It is and it must in the long run be better for a man to see things as they are than to be ignorant of them.”
But then it’s hard to see things clearly if you read Adam Creighton and watch Fox news or Sky After Dark.
Source: What do climate denialists say when the facts change? – Pearls and Irritations
However not so trump appointed Judge Cannon
Right-wing media are attacking Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will preside over Donald Trump’s pending criminal case in Washington D.C.
Chutkan was randomly selected to preside over the case. Appointed by former President Obama, she has been described as a “tough Jan. 6 sentencer” of defendants who participated in the insurrection, though she has “avoided some of the most pointed criticisms of Trump that some of her colleagues on the federal bench in D.C. have delivered.”
Media figures on the right have leveled numerous attacks and charges against her, describing her as politically motivated, and calling for her recusal in the case against the former president.
Source: Conservatives bash judge in Trump’s indictment, call for her recusal | Media Matters for America
In the United States, the advertising industry employs more psychologists than the health industry. It is all calculated to take power over your decision-making. And it works. The same can be said for Australian mainstream media; it also wants your brand loyalty and the power to coerce you into its way of thinking. It uses techniques similar to the advertising industry; the main ingredients are untruth and creating perceptions with subliminal messages.
The single dumbest thing the U.S. empire asks us to believe nowadays is that surrounding its two biggest foes with war machinery is a defensive action, rather than an act of extreme aggression.
Source: Caitlin Johnstone: Biden Lies About ‘Not Surrounding’ China
Chris Hedges: Journalists Abandoned Julian Assange and Slit Their Own Throats The failure by journalists to mount a campaign to free Julian Assange, or expose the vicious smear campaign against him, is one more catastrophic and self-defeating blunder by the news media.
Source: Chris Hedges: Journalists Abandoned Julian Assange and Slit Their Own Throats – scheerpost.com
Is Trump a reflection of America or are Americans a reflection of Trump. American Democracy has allowed for a minority to control attention and do away with the rules of bipartisan politics. When Capitalist money dominates politics representation fails. The corporate consolidation of media by Foxtel has allowed them 30% of the no-news market and over 75%+ of the dis&mis information market which has created chaos and divided America. That division isn’t the diversity once celebrated in the American model of Democracy where parties were once expected and prepared to accept an election loss.
Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) marveled at the willingness of the former president to make absurd comments.
The Grayzone obtained an exclusive look at the massacre some of America’s top Russia experts carried out against their own credibility.
It was as though the Soviet Union was collapsing all over again, and Prigozhin, a character named on the F.B.I.’s most wanted list whom the U.S. government has sanctioned for leading what it described as a “transnational criminal organization,” was suddenly a white knight storming into Moscow to liberate Russia from “the Putin regime” on the back of a tank. Move over, Juan Guaido.
Carl Sagan said that in order to understand the present, it’s necessary to know the past. Nowhere does this apply with greater force than to the Australian media and its place in the nation’s power structure.
Source: ‘Media monsters’ used journalism to cement their empires
The FBI has reopened an investigation into Australian journalist Julian Assange, according to front-page reporting from the Sydney Morning Herald.
Source: FBI Reopens Julian Assange Case, Despite Australian Pressure
“Partisan standoff” is the way most of the media is now characterizing the fight.
Hello?
Enough with the “both sides” reporting on the debt ceiling.
Billionaires, Grifters, are vehicles for ratings Trump learned that years ago when doing his TV show. Attention matters and refusing it is the death of corporate media. Like Barnum like Madhoff Trump is still a master of the art of attention control.
A great start will be the mainstream media refusing to give Trump platforms such as last Wednesday’s CNN event. Of course, this is a forlorn hope, as the soaring ratings totally vindicated CNN’s decision.
The banner is still aloft over what used to be the home of the brave. It will recover its starry spangle when Trump and his White supremacist movement of anger, hatred and malice are gone forever.
Multiple events in the USA this month have dismayed, disturbed and disgusted the watching world, as Alan Austin reports.
In the same way Peter Dutton targeted Africans as if they were all cut from the same cloth Australia-wide pointing to Dandenong as being representative of why our immigration policies have failed the nation. Meanwhile, Dandenong hasn’t been a national issue at all. He’s gone to Alice Springs to declare Alice’s current indigenous issues reflect indigenous Australia and is in need of AFP policing and not a Voice. It’s exactly a mirror image of Trumpists in America
Dutton blows up 2800 cases as if they are representative of 3% 0f Australia’s 750,000k indigenous people that need policing. If that’s not the same racist argument we have heard for the past 250 years then what is. Particularly because it’s his reason for a “No” vote on the voice
If a reporter gets abused for simply asking “What is your evidence Mr Dutton?” The cop in Dutton reveals itself and The ABC blamed for not simply amplifying Dutton’s politics as Murdoch does. Is Dutton really a leader in control with his finger on the pulse? Is he there to help the people of Alice or simply there to help himself?
Weeks ago Dutton claimed he’d spoken to “authorities on the ground” and when it was pointed out he hadn’t left his office he generated this trip. He said he’d spoken to lots of people “on the ground”. He’s standing alongside Jacinta Price “the lots” remain unnamed and haven’t rushed to support him saying “We spoke to Peter and provided him with his facts” Peter Dutton has a way of manufacturing misdirection, and in this case, it’s look at Alice’s problem as if it were an Australia wide problem. It’s a distraction to the issue really at hand ” The Right of First Nation’s People. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to Constitutional recognition and a Voice” after 240 years.
One can learn much about political dealmaking in New York in the late 20th century in “Without Compromise: The Brave Journalism That First Exposed Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and the American Epidemic of Corruption,” a collection of Barrett’s investigative article published after his death in 2017, prefaced with essays by people who knew and worked with him.
“Without Compromise,” stands as a fitting tribute to the work Barrett did to inform the public in the city he loved. To be fair to his work the monument could perhaps be placed outside City Hall, since Barrett exposed corruption on both sides of the political spectrum, which in the New York of the ’70s and ’80s was dominated by Democrats. (Including Donald J. Trump, at that time.) But if anyone wishes to honor Wayne Barrett while sticking it to the guy who has spent his life enriching himself at the public’s expense while calling the free press “the enemy of the people,” that spot on Fifth Avenue would be perfect.
Source: The man who saw Trump coming: Wayne Barrett warned us decades ago | Salon.com
Our mainstream media puts wind in the sails of hate
In this article from 2021, Tom Tanuki outlined how the mainstream media gave racial extremists such as Tom Sewell a platform to spread his message of hatred to potential recruits.
Source: Uncovering the plans of Australian White supremacists: FLASHBACK 2021
I guess that I should be impressed by the fact that the speaker had the intelligence to use the word “if”. After all, various media outlets were telling us that the election was “neck and neck” and that there was a real question about whether Labor would be able to form government, even as a minority. Nobody was pointing out that the Perrottet government was already in minority, had a series of scandals apart from Gladys, as well as a series of questionable decisions such as knocking down stadiums and trains that didn’t fit in the tunnels.
Source: NSW Election: Too Close To Make Any Conclusions – » The Australian Independent Media Network
It is never, ever acceptable, under any circumstances, to cite think tanks funded by governments and the military industrial complex as sources of information or expertise on matters of national security or foreign affairs.
During his recent National Press Club appearance, former PM Paul Keating scolded mainstream media journalists — who deserved every stinging syllable of his pinpoint-accurate words, writes Belinda Jones.
LNP will do anything to take media attention off Robodebt
it takes the media’s attention away from Robodebt and the slim chance that they’d report the obfuscation, the inability of people to recall basic information and the obvious fact that it wasn’t incompetence that led to legal advice not being attached or passed on: it was a design feature of the standover merchant tactics that were employed by almost everyone involved.
Trivia Time: who said ‘All the way with LBJ’ regarding Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War?
Harold Holt, who succeeded Menzies as PM, in the completion of a flip from Austral-British to Austral-American focus for our national defence. It was contentious at the time, widely protested by Australian society, and of course (as time has played out), another contemptible waste of Australian lives and resources for no useful purpose. Another compromised commitment to Australia due to political ambition.
Source: Pernicious paradox: outsourcing our national security to the United States – Pearls and Irritations
News Corp shedding jobs in a market demanding jobs. Signs aren’t looking good For the Murdochs who have invested heavily in gambling
Last month Murdoch scrapped a decade-long ambition to reunite News Corp and Fox after opposition from investors and youngest son James.
If the Islamic Jihad cell had been planning an attack, as the Israelis maintained, then the raid was not illegal in itself. But it left so many dead bodies behind aside from the those of the three militants, not to mention injured, that the commando tactics appear to have shown reckless disregard for civilian, non-combatant life, which is a war crime.
We will see many more raids involving reckless disregard for human life in the West Bank now that Israeli extremists have been put in charge of 3 million Palestinians. It is as though a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the U.S. had been made Secretary of the Interior with oversight of native Americans.
PM Netanyahu announced that he would meet the challenge of increased violence by issuing Israelis (including the Israeli squatters on Palestinian private property in the West Bank) more guns. He said he would also try to collect ‘illegal weapons.’ That is, the Israelis are heavily armed but the Palestinians helpless. Squatter attacks on Palestinians help account for the high death toll of the past thirteen months.
Source: Netanyahu Proposes More Guns to Solve Israeli-Palestinian Violence as Tit-for-Tat Attacks Multiply
We are at a crossroads. The Ultra High Net Worth Individual (UHNWI) class is creating a new international feudal order, assisted by the professional enabler class including politicians in pursuit of their money. One of those enabling mechanisms is the media. In Australia, News Corp serves as the strongest weapon in the creation of their desired world.
Source: The Ultra High Net Worth Individual’s strongest weapon: News Corp – Pearls and Irritations
Each climate calamity we endure is another learning opportunity for the nation to understand the existential threat of climate change and why we must take the lead in reversing it. For the media to avoid talking about it is a loss for democracy.
Source: The Media’s Remarkable Silence on the Cause of California’s Tragic Storms | The Smirking Chimp
How quid pro quo works, and donations remain unrecorded. The ALP on the other hand suffers the slings and arrows of private mainstream corporate media. The ABC was exclused.
Josh Frydenberg sallied forth with a fulsome pat on the back this week … for himself.
“The Coalition’s ‘world-first’ Media Bargaining Code was a ‘success’,” pronounced the former Treasurer. A success indeed; a terrific success for the Coalition’s media mates Rupert Murdoch, Peter Costello and Kerry Stokes.
To be fair to Josh, he was only repeating what was in the press. Josh’s “media reforms” had forced Google and Facebook to pay millions in cash (secretly) to Big Media. In return, the News Corp, Nine, Guardian Australia and so forth sang the praises of Josh’s “world-first”. Manufacturing consent is a breeze, you just have to pay people.
One thing you can be certain of it’s not ANTIFA. However the Usual Suspects are hiding in plain sight!!
The concerted attacks against comedian Friendlyjordies are simply not funny.
Jordan Shanks-Markovina, known as Friendlyjordies, is a funny man and a popular YouTuber but his incisive investigative videos, which reveal embarrassing truths about politicians and powerful corporations, are ruffling too many feathers, it seems.
Source: Friendlyjordies’ dangerous work met with firebombing attacks
It’s been the same here in Australia. Morrison did it in the hope of political gain with Deves. Pentecostalists have entered Politics and are spreading hate. The only reason we haven’t seen a mass shooting is because of our gun control laws and the level of tolerance and inclusion due to multiculturalism in this country. The LNP have simply tried to Americanise our politics and will continue to do so if Peter Dutton is an indication. He went straight to America after being nominated Opposition leader in parliament.
AOC is right. This entire year has seen Republicans and their media agitators and MAGA supporters develop horrific conspiracies against the LGBTQAI+ community in order to gain political power. Revving up the hatred against “the Left” who only want tolerance and welcoming for all people.
It’s been sickening to witness.
Source: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Smacks Down Lauren Boebert Over Shooting | Crooks and Liars
Oh, he’s mad.
Despite having picked so many winners, I have to put up with the Fake News. For me, Fox News was always gone, even in 2015-16 when I began my “journey,” but now they’re really gone. Such an opportunity for another media outlet to make an absolute fortune, and do good for America. Let’s see what happens?
For those many people that are being fed the fake narrative from the corrupt media that I am Angry about the Midterms, don’t believe it. I am not at all angry, did a great job (I wasn’t the one running!), and am very busy looking into the future. Remember, I am a “Stable Genius.”
Source: Trump Posts Late Night Meltdown Over Midterms: ‘Enemies And Losers’ | Crooks and Liars
Eyes are off the ball and haven’t noticed The AGE crying out for attention
I don’t live in Victoria and I don’t vote in Victoria but from a distance it appears to me that the two main contestants in the upcoming state election are the current Premier representing the ALP, Dan Andrews and Newscorp although, in the latter case it is not clear if it is the dirty digger himself standing or the prodigal son who may be living on his yacht in Port Phillip Bay – but is he on the Victorian electoral roll ?
Truth is it’s neither and they don’t seem all that fussed about the Liberal Party but they both dearly want to destroy the ALP.
Source: Vote for Newscorp ! – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The Age’s attempt to make out that Dan Andrews is pushing to make public reporting of IBAC leaks illegal, and that Matthew Guy, is a crusader for press freedom is actually propaganda built on a house of cards. Buried yet again in the Age’s biased report is the hidden fact. It’s IBAC and QC Redlich who is appealing for stronger laws against the leaks in their investigations. Leaks well before any formal report is even released and leaks before any conclusions have been reached. The new Age is in the full conspiracy swing of an American a PR agency modelled on Fox News, News Max and OAN in competition with Murdoch’s Herald Sun for number one spot.
IBAC now wants to go a step further and is pushing the government for “urgent” legislation that would make it an offence for any person to report the contents of draft IBAC reports.
In a strongly worded statement, IBAC said it was a “critical” part of the natural justice process to give people the chance to respond to preliminary findings.
It said this natural justice process had forced it to seek the injunction to prevent The Age from publishing information from the draft report. (The Age)
But it’s not the accident itself that’s at issue here. The point I’m making is that for the issue to resurface in the midst of an election campaign is rather interesting timing. Coincidence? Of course, one couldn’t accuse the Murdoch paper of having an agenda. I’m sure that every ten-year-old incident where no new evidence has been produced is always worthy of a front page, so I’m sure we’ll have something about Matt Guy’s lobster lunch and how one of the guests was an Australian citizen thanks to the largesse of Amanda Vanstone and her compassionate granting of citizenship.
Source: Murdoch Media: Propaganda Or Proper Goose? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
He’s taken the words out of Murdochs mouth and applied them to Ch9 and what was once the Fairfax press
Murdoch led us to conspiracies which led us to even the more extreme QAnon mindset along with both militant, religious, and Far-Right groups in the USA and here. Australia’s own homegrown Christian-right dream of a theocratic-led state like ISIS and are calling for one openly.
Andrew Bolt declared, after the bombings in Barcelona, that the Australian Christian youths should have the same commitment as those bombers had in Spain. To the death, he wrote with the blessing of Murdoch’s media. Mind you he doesn’t have the same commitment himself but insists and drives others to have it. He went into immediate hiding for 4 days after the Christchurch massacre and then outpoured own denial to any violence. What did he mean when he said Australian Christian youth were gutless and needed to fight back? He certainly said it, wrote it, and they read it. The Australian militant mass murderer in Christchurch hero-worshipped and listened to a series of far-right guests giving voice to aggression on Andrew Bolt’s show. The Murdochs didn’t even profit from it yet they promoted it. The fact that Bolt admired the commitment to the death, of the Barcelona bombers says it all. He was a media crusader and recruiter for the radical right and as Judge Mordecai Bromberg declared a lazy and no-talented hack who had no regard for facts.
The same forces are in play in Australia: desperate people, stoked with existential dread at the crimes of the Elites, exacerbate each other’s sense of victimhood. They falsely claim the pandemic was manmade, and vaccines intended to control them or kill them slowly. They celebrate their pure blood and sperm. They wondered if they felt sick after gathering unvaccinated because the government had sprayed them with toxins. (Because conspiracies are unfalsifiable, every consequence of stupidity becomes fodder for paranoia.)
Source: Conspiracy: the disease that threatens our survival – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Editors at Nine Entertainment and the ABC have been diagnosed with Acute Journo’s Ear Syndrome and possible Craniorectal Inversion following reports of an $8 billion Medicare fraud. Callum Foote reports.
Ron DeSantis, is the governor of Florida, although he’s this Trumpian, maybe alternative to Trump from the right wing, was educated at the best schools in America. What is it? Harvard and Yale.
Jim Mamer: Harvard.
Scheer: And yet he mangled history so badly, and in your column, you raised a question of whether it was out of ignorance or malice or what have you, but really, tell us about the state of historical knowledge among young, well, any Americans. You’ve been at it for a long time and you just pointed out these blatant errors. So let’s go there. Do we Americans really know anything about our history, the world’s history, and whose fault is it?
Source: Jim Mamer: Fake Journalism Is Only the First Draft of Fake History – scheerpost.com
“Extremely investor friendly” is how the latest fossil fuel buyer describes Australia. Along with the twilight of the coal era with its astronomical profits has come the rise of squalid public relations tactics. Zacharias Szumer investigates the case of Liechtenstein-based coal trader Sev.en Global Investments, its billionaire owner Pavel Tykač and Sev.en’s propaganda associates.
It is vital to free ourselves from belief in the systems of white supremacy and imperialism that are inculcated in the educational system and are affirmed and amplified by the media and establishment opinion.
The recent death of Queen Elizabeth II puts the need for political and psychological liberation in high relief. We are encouraged to admire an anachronistic monarchy, and are exhorted to join in mourning an individual and a system that have caused great harm to Black and other oppressed people around the world.
olddogthoughts 
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