Tag: The media

Australia's Shame

Mainstream media fabricates disgraceful lies about Labor’s Budget

 

Australia leading the world

We have known for some months that Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher were the only finance ministers in the world whose economy has enjoyed top credit ratings, both jobless and inflation rates below 4%, and positive economic growth every quarter last year.

Following last Tuesday’s Budget outcomes, Australia has joined Denmark as one of only two economies to have gained consecutive surpluses, reduced debt to GDP twice and kept average wealth per person above USD$350,000 (AU$520,000).

So, if the AFR approved the 2022 Budget, what superlatives would they lavish on the Albanese Government and these world-beating numbers?

Their lead analysis, headed ‘Spending addiction fuels a new decade of deficits’, attacked Labor for driving ‘the budget headlong into deficit for the next decade’.

The accompanying opinion piece declared, ‘This is the most irresponsible budget in recent memory’.

Other negative commentaries included, ‘Labor slammed for offshore gas approval backdown’ and ‘The big fail in Australia’s housing’.

Yes, wall-to-wall condemnation and pessimism. ABC News, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald were also highly critical. The Murdoch media was even more savage. The Herald Sun headed its critique, ‘Chalmed and dangerous’.

 

Dirty little housing crisis secrets hidden by the mainstream media

Source: Mainstream media fabricates disgraceful lies about Labor’s Budget

Media

Quality over quantity: Reliable media sources on the Israel-Gaza war

The West Bank is simply forgotten but extremely active.

Dr Shamekh Abu Rub was executed today while standing with his brother at the entrance of their home in Jenin. An armored Israeli military vehicle fired directly at them with the intent of executing them. His brother remains in a very critical condition. Their father, Kamal, is Jenin’s deputy governor. He is a friend.

Another heartless crime that brings the number of murdered Palestinians in the West Bank since October to over 230.

IT IS POSSIBLE to find out what is happening and why, in Gaza, to a certain extent, despite the din of arguments and raving bilge on social media. 

Source: Quality over quantity: Reliable media sources on the Israel-Gaza war

Royal Commission

‘Voice’ lies and mistruths bolster calls for media royal commission

Dutton wants an RC as well but not on the referendum lies and distortion but into how money was spent on NF people. Dutton wants to Robodebt audit the Indigenous Affairs dept and examine how that $26.5 B was spent or was that $4.5B allocated much of which never really saw the light of day in remote communities. All that admin bureaucratic planning that went into their brilliant “cash card” or the wages of other institutional administrators and thinkers of schemes like the $325K that was allocated to Warren Mundine’s Sky News program promised to fix that widening gap.

The “No” campaign won the referendum by muddying, misrepresenting, contradicting and lying about what the Voice is and its consequences, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.

Source: ‘Voice’ lies and mistruths bolster calls for media royal commission

Informed Comment

Dictator Dan Quits And Victoria Is Free… – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Of course, there were a number of articles this morning about what a shocking job he’d done and how the voters were just idiots who didn’t know how oppressed they were. Phil Coorey who is best remembered for his article on how Gladys saved Australia wrote in this morning’s Financial Review that his government came “stone motherless last on every metric in terms of handling the pandemic”. Interesting that the paper he writes for was also critical of Mark McGowan for closing off his state and streeting the rest of Australia in every metric and lost very few people to Covid meaning that he can’t be accused of being stone motherless last. Surprisingly, Coorey was terribly impressed with Gladys in spite of the Ruby Princess, the untested chauffeur setting off a wave and various other things that one would have thought rivalled any alleged mistakes that Andrews made.

As Steve Bannon said: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real enemy is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

Next time Peter Dutton announces on Sunday that he’ll hold another referendum if elected, only to say that he won’t on Thursday, or Dan Tehan tells us that Albanese should call off the referendum (which can’t happen without the approval of Parliament which won’t sit before the vote), then ask yourself if they haven’t decided to take Bannon’s advice.

Source: Dictator Dan Quits And Victoria Is Free… – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Truth in Humor

“If The Voice Loses It Will Be Albanese’s Fault!” – » The Australian Independent Media Network

“If The Voice Loses It Will Be Albanese’s Fault!”

Yep, I saw that on the front page of “The Australian” a few days ago and I was tempted to steal the paper but then I remembered that theft is one of those Ten Commandment things that still gets enforced by law and, more frightening than any jail term is the fear that I could go down in history as someone who thought that one of Murdoch’s papers was worse stealing.

Source: “If The Voice Loses It Will Be Albanese’s Fault!” – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Fossil Fuel Industry

Oil giant Shell makes world-first big battery investment in Melbourne

Oil giant Shell has given the green light to a big battery project in Cranbourne, its first investment in a grid-scale battery anywhere in the world.

Promoting the Fossil Fuel Industry as if it was Green and operating in the interests of the planet is The Age’s business model. Rather it knows as does Shell to stay ahead of the energy market it needs to transition or appear to be transitioning to some degree. In Africa and elsewhere Shell is known to be one of the world’s biggest destroyers and polluters of the natural world. So needless to say this minor battery investment will get an immense amount of publicity. BP is also known to be one of the largest investors in solar energy. However, like many of the worst industries, an investment in notable deeds is part of their business model.

Do we even know what percentage that investment entails in their overall business strategy? Or what percentage it entails in reparation of their historic ransacking of the planet? When for 75-plus years they were aware of the damage being done in promoting fossil fuel as the most efficient form of energy.

(Note the trumpeting headline and then read the actual pissant reality of the project)

Once fully operational, the 200-megawatt, 400-megawatt-hour battery system will have the storage capacity to power the equivalent of 80,000 homes across Victoria for an hour during periods of peak demand.

British energy major Shell has selected a suburb in south-eastern Melbourne as the location for its first direct investment in a big battery project anywhere in the world.

Source: Oil giant Shell makes world-first big battery investment in Melbourne

Informed Comment

Chris Hedges: The Trump-Russia Saga and the Death Spiral of American Journalism – scheerpost.com

Once fact becomes interchangeable with opinion, once truth is irrelevant, once people are told only what they wish to hear, journalism ceases to be journalism and becomes propaganda.

Source: Chris Hedges: The Trump-Russia Saga and the Death Spiral of American Journalism – scheerpost.com

Truth in Humor

“So Oskar Was Guilty Of Genocide: He Regrets It Now… ” – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Still the media have taken on board one thing. Throughout the campaign we were told that we didn’t know who Albanese was, even though he’s one of the longest serving politicians held a number of portfolios and spent some time in the position of Deputy PM. They must have done some soul-searching and realised that they couldn’t let that happen again, so there are lots of pieces on the new opposition leader, even before he’s elected, and they all seem to be telling us that the man we thought we knew is just a creature of fiction… No, not the one from the Harry Potter series because that’s making fun of his appearance and he can’t help that. No, the Peter Dutton that intervened agains department advice to allow a couple of au pair girls to enter the country now wants to be assured that the government is following department advice by letting a family with Australian born children stay here. I mean, imagine how the flood gates will be opened if all people have to do to get to stay is find another refugee to marry, have kids, make lots of friends in their local community, get dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, spend years in detention, have a child get dangerously ill and liv

Source: “So Oskar Was Guilty Of Genocide: He Regrets It Now… ” – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Australian Politics

Larrikins, bogans and bullshit artists: is Australia ripe for a blue-collar revolution? | Australia news | The Guardian

Australia prime minister Scott Morrison at a Cronulla Sharks game in Sydney in 2019. ‘Around 2016, Scott John Morrison – a Pentecostal rugby union fan from the eastern suburbs of Sydney – reinvented himself as “ScoMo”, a rugby league loving everyman from the Sutherland Shire.’

May be an image of ‎2 people and ‎text that says '‎م Û How Rich is Rich? Twiggy Forest's wealth is about $27.25 Billion! ($27,250,000,000) He is 60 years old! He could give away each day $1 Million ($1,000,000) and on his 100th birthday he would still have:- $12.65 Billion ($12,650,000,000) (less living expense) The 10 richest Australians have wealth totalling $180,000,000,000 3,400,000 Australians live below the Poverty Line‎'‎‎

When a minority uses fake culture wars to blindside an election. It didn’t work in Warringa did it? The biker surfer volunteer fire fighter lost by a country mile.

Australia – a nation of self-proclaimed straight shooters – has been hijacked by a pack of fabricated larrikins and bona fide bullshit artists. For a quarter-century, Australia’s conservative establishment has profited from pitting working-class battlers against the inner-city elite, coalmines against universities, larrikins against feminists and gays, patriots against Aboriginals, Muslims and asylum seekers.

Source: Larrikins, bogans and bullshit artists: is Australia ripe for a blue-collar revolution? | Australia news | The Guardian

LNP, LNP Government

Right-wing media backs Alan Tudge on ‘leftist’ history curriculum

Sky News commentator Andrew Bolt has supported the opinion of Education Minister Alan Tudge that the Australian history curriculum is ‘hateful’, writes A L Jones. “NEO-MARXIST RUBBISH”, says a NSW Cabinet minister of the new draft national curriculum. And the Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge agrees with Andrew Bolt that the history section is biased against our Western heritage and should include, for example, “what bad things Aborigines did to Aborigines”. Mr Tudge said in a Sky News interview with Bolt:

“I do get concerned that students don’t have a firm understanding of how we did become this rich, egalitarian, free, Western-liberal democracy… If you don’t understand that, then you’re less likely to value it and defend it.”

What a load of crap by these two hypocrites not judging, but protecting their history of Australian mythical facts from critical eyes and wanting to retain dogma rather than encourage reasoned research and critical analysis of the reality of our varying  past perspectives . The 500 years of colonial western history is writ large in the crippled African continent, the tragedy of the Latin Americas run by serial dictators, a middle east left in tatters totally repressed with the hate caused by caused by the West, and then there’s  Australia walked over by jackboots that remain largely in place today and ruled over by white supremacists. If any nation or culture were to be regarded as having done the most to lift billions to a better state of being in the fastest possible time then China is light years ahead of us. Even India has accelerated improvement since casting off the shackles of Western Colonialism. Maybe not as fast as China it might be argued but nevertheless fast enough for us to see just how far the West had held them back for hundreds of years.

What Aborigines did they did it to each other not globally or to the rest of the world. To suggest they wouldn’t have changed without European invasion is typical of White supremacist arrogance. The instruments of the torture used by the West are now “pay to see” items in European tourist centers. We can see what we did to each other and to others without a second thought using “god’s name” as justification. Things we did to those we self righteously  decreed were “lesser humans” and that these two bastards pretend today never existed let alone be taught to the next generation. Our museums are filled with the trophies gained by rape, pillage, slavery,pain and slaughter done, but not to be emphasized or taught or remembered in their “heroic” but false history of the world.

The LNP and Murdoch media hand in hand are found here preaching “Cancel Culture” not just antiseptically editing the past but any form of critical theory, reasoned research or analysis in search of truth. That is an excercise far too dangerous for them because the next generation just might want to reexamine the values taught them and change things for the better when realizing the worst of our past. Hitler believed in the the Bolt and Tudge principle of education as well.

The one thing that strikes me is these ultra-conservatives always combine the notion of Western Culture with Christianity with it’s then inferred god given right to their historic truth. It’s tied very much to the notion of the ‘elect’. A notion In line with the preachings of other religious extremes and cults. Groups like today’s neo-Nazis, Trumpsters, Moonies, ISIS, and other anti-democratic, authoritarians. People like Bolt and Tudge who want to turn our schools into unenlightened fundamentalist christian equivalent of Madrasas teaching only their orthodoxies. Beneath their suits beats the rise of yet another Inquisition and a return to the heart of darkness.

This is an interesting podcast relevant to what we see happening today   https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-cult-of-trump/id1551582052?i=1000523783469  The Cult of Trump

(ODT)

Source: Right-wing media backs Alan Tudge on ‘leftist’ history curriculum

Israel, Uncategorized

‘North Korea TV can learn from them’: Netanyahu lashes out at Israeli media over ‘one-sided’ coverage of protests — RT World News

‘North Korea TV can learn from them’: Netanyahu lashes out at Israeli media over ‘one-sided’ coverage of protests

When you have nothing left blame the MEDIA, avoid the truth at all costs Do the Trump (ODT)

via ‘North Korea TV can learn from them’: Netanyahu lashes out at Israeli media over ‘one-sided’ coverage of protests — RT World News

The Rich and Famous, Uncategorized

The Epstein scandal

Sex, lies and video tapes. 64076.jpeg

via The Epstein scandal

Climate Change, Uncategorized

Conspiracy, commerce and climate denial: inside the parallel universe of Alan Jones | Media | The Guardian

Alan Jones

But despite the bulk of scientific evidence connecting drought, water shortages, heat waves and bushfires to climate change, Jones manages to consistently link these issues to claims that climate change is “a hoax”, and “there’s no evidence whatsoever to support [it]”.

Since August, Jones hasn’t interviewed any climate scientists, but he has given a platform to climate science denier Christopher Monckton, climate sceptic Peter Ridd and fossil fuel advocate Bjorn Lomborg.

He has also suggested that the government secretly wants the cattle of drought-stricken farmers to die because reduced methane emissions would help it reach its Paris target.

via Conspiracy, commerce and climate denial: inside the parallel universe of Alan Jones | Media | The Guardian

Informed Comment, Uncategorized

Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan Blasts The Media For Lopsided Coverage Of Islamic Terrorism | Crooks and Liars

“it is easy to condemn the far right nut case,” but dealing with the “soil and what’s been created, the culture of demonization, of fear, of incitement from main stream columnists, pundits, TV hosts, and politicians” is another matter entirely.

We have been conditioned to believe that a terrorist attack is only an attack carried out by a brown dude with a beard shouting something in Arabic.

Of course, statistics show otherwise. The ADL says three-quarters of terrorist deaths in the United States over the past decade were carried out by far right domestic white nationalist terrorists, a quarter by Muslims.

Can we say that the media coverage of terrorism in this country is 75 percent white nationalists, 25 percent Islamic terrorists? In face, Georgia State University did a study. They found that a Muslim terrorist gets four and a half times as much coverage of his crimes as a non-Muslim terrorist. Four and a half times.

a non-Muslim terrorist has to kill, on average, seven people more than a Muslim terrorist to get equal coverage, as a Muslim terrorist. That’s a hashtag media fail. And I’m always reminded of that old viral tweet that terrorism is one of the only areas where white people do most of the work and get none of the credit.

Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan Blasts The Media For Lopsided Coverage Of Islamic Terrorism | Crooks and Liars

Julian Assange, Uncategorized

The long siege of Julian Assange

GREAT IDEAS in publishing are rare, but in 2006 Julian Assange came up with one.

Assange reasoned that the key structure that generated bad governance was conspiracy. To fight the conspiracies behind corrupt governments, he advocated a strategy to expose the conspirators and the conspiracies through a systematic use of leaks.

His subversive proposal was to build a website for whistleblowers where they could upload their information in safety and from where it could be collectively analysed by citizen journalists. The name he gave his whistleblower-enabling website was WikiLeaks.

via The long siege of Julian Assange

Informed Comment

The unintended consequences of Barnaby Joyce’s affair

Illustration: Letch

But perhaps some obligations should be beyond political calculations. Perhaps there are times to spend political capital on people other than colleagues, allies and donors. Perhaps there are times to spend it on those whose people were wronged enough to receive a formal apology a decade ago, who’ve since seen several policies that concern them effectively abandoned, and who in spite of that, when asked to give us their ideas share them from the heart. Perhaps, but apparently not this week.

via The unintended consequences of Barnaby Joyce’s affair

 

Islamophobia

Trumpists beat Muslim-American Child of frmr Fulbrighter, harass Family out of US | Informed Comment| What Andrew Bolt encourages here

By TeleSur | – – After a series of violent attacks and recrimination, an esteemed Muslim academic flees the U.S. …

Source: Trumpists beat Muslim-American Child of frmr Fulbrighter, harass Family out of US | Informed Comment