Showing posts with label Bob Brown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bob Brown. Show all posts

Saturday, May 28, 2011

For those who missed it, this was what happened the day Greens leader Bob Brown dared to criticise a handful of Canberra press gallery journalists for their endless negativity on anything and everything the Greens have to say.

Note the only hysterical voice in this clip is that of a journalist :

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Standing Up, Moving Forward, Falling Asleep

By Darryl Mason

So here we go. Federal Election 2010 is on. Even though we don't actually vote for the prime minister of Australia, politicians to the media are quite happy to play along and make it a battle of personalities, less so than policies, or even competence.

But it's not even really about coup prime minister Julia Gillard Vs the Mining Industry/Coalition's Tony Abbott. It's about Gillard & Abbott doing everything they can to stop The Greens from gaining the balance of power in the Australian senate, and completely undermining the two party system that has served Australia's richest people so faithfully for so many decades. It's fortunate then that the Labor Party and the Liberals/Nationals coalition can rely on the full support of the Australian Murdoch media doing everything they can to scare people away from voting for The Greens.

As coup prime minister Julia Gillard has made clear, by mentioning the phrase more than 20 times in a 10 minute speech, the Labor Party are for Moving Forward, or Moving Forward Together or Moving Australia Forward :



It's a corny phrase already making people grind their teeth, less than 24 hours after the election date of August 21 was announced.

The Liberal Party meanwhile have settled on 'Stand Up' :



'Stand Up' is, of course, the name of an excellent song by The Angels :



Note these key lyrics :
Promises are easy
You swallow every word
Just be sure of who you serve

And here's the first official Federal Election 2010 ads from the leaders of the Labor and Liberal parties.





Here's Greens' leader Bob Brown outlining his party's policies for the coming election.

I'll go easy on the Federal Election 2010 coverage here, because you're going to be inundated with it everywhere you turn, and I'll be a bit busy elsewhere finishing off my first movie 'Fuck The War', starring Dave Gleeson, for an October release.



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Thursday, July 23, 2009

Bob Brown On Claims Jimi Hendrix Was Murdered

A new book claims Jimi Hendrix was force-fed pills and red wine by his manager, or someone hired by his manager, and then asphyxiated by choking on his own vomit. In September, 1970, Greens leader Bob Brown was working as an intern in a London hospital when the already dead body of Hendrix arrived in casualty. Bob Brown did not pronounce Hendrix dead, but he did break the news to the media waiting outside.

From an interview on Radio 2GB :
Bob Brown "Hendrix was brought into St Marys hospital in South Kensington....I'd just graduated from Sydney University as a young doctor, I went to London....I was doing locum, and I happened to be in the casuality at St Mary's Abbott when Jimi Hendrix was brought in. The man had been dead some time. The supposition is that he had died from an overdose, early in the morning, and this was quite a few hours later, so there was no revival possible.

"It's a long bow to draw (that Hendrix was murdered). Of course the circumstantial evidence has long been gone, I have absolutely no opinion or information that would help one way or the other. It was an enormous tragedy at the time.

"It wasn't as if there was something to be done about (Hendrix's death). There simply wasn't...any medical remedy. And as to what police investigations took place at the time, I've got no knowledge of that."
You can hear the Bob Brown 2GB interview here.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

That Freaking Old Hippie Raised HOW MUCH?

By Darryl Mason

There's something much scarier for the Liberal Party than imagining a future without Peter Costello.

It's this :
Senator Brown's so-called Wielangta forest fund had already raised $739,000....
Bob Brown announced, after losing a legal battle against a logging corporation, that if he was unable to pay more than $240,000 in court costs he could face being expelled from the Senate. In less than a week, Brown raised more than three times that figure through thousands of donors.

The Liberals couldn't raise $739,000 through donors that fast, even with a series of dinners starring John Howard and Peter Costello

No wonder the Liberals are so pissed :
Liberal senator Eric Abetz has accused Greens leader Bob Brown of misleading the public over claims he was approaching bankruptcy and could have been expelled from the Senate.

Senator Brown was more likely to be "ethically bankrupt'' than genuinely bankrupt, Senator Abetz said.

"Clearly the senator does not abide by the same accountability rules he so self-righteously insists being imposed on everybody else.''

The Greens leader must now disclose all amounts he has received, when he received them, to whom they were paid and how much money was involved, Senator Abetz told the upper house.

"Be accountable. Immediately disclose to the Senate ... exactly how much your fund raised prior to last week's appeal and disclose and substantiate your progressive and personal legal costs.''

And Bob Brown will do it. They've got nothing on him. It's one of the reasons why Liberals like Abetz hate him so much.

Brown is too clean, too honest, with too little, or nothing at all, to hide.

The Liberals have spent a lot of money over the years trying to get dirt on Brown that they can use against him in the media, or behind the scenes. And they found fuck all.

Abetz is making himself look like a jealous, petty arsehole, while providing Bob Brown with yet another opportunity to show why he is one of the most honest, respected, and quietly admired, politicians in the country.

Monday, February 23, 2009

"Assassinate" Bob Brown Talk Shows Up Again On Bolt's Blog, After Moderation

By Darryl Mason

The Professional Idiot, aka Andrew Bolt, grows uneasy at the latest results of his Stop The Pagan Nazi Commo Greens Before They Kill Us All! campaign :

I have just deleted from this thread a comment from a reader saying he wished he’d “assassinated’’ Bob Brown to save lives. It is a disgusting comment that would be repudiated by every regular reader of this blog.

Really? Repudiated by every regular reader of your blog? Are you sure about that?

His commenter's talk of killing Bob Brown "to save lives" is the expected fallout from the helplessness Andrew Bolt instills in his regular readers with his endless hysteria on the threat to their very lives he so often tells them they face from 'Green Nazi' policies, and ideology.

He's been ramping his readers up for months in anticipation of Green Terrorists posing the same kind of threats to their very lives and lifestyles he once promised were posed by the crazed Islamists living down the road, in country Victoria.

This dim fucker now tries to pretend that threats to Greens leader Bob Brown's life, published in his own blog's comments (that is, after moderation), have nothing whatsoever to do with anything he's ever written.

And it's not the first time assassinating Bob Brown has been been directly, or indirectly, discussed on Bolt's blog.

Threats of violence, and throat-slitting, directed at Bob Brown appeared on Bolt's blog, shortly after the February 7 bushfires, after Bolt goaded his readers with this headline, and intro :
Preaching Over The Dead :

"At least 36 Victorians die in bushfires, and Bob Brown sees on opportunity to preach politics..."
Bolt expected, and got, more than a hundred comments attacking Bob Brown for something he did not actually do. Many of the comments that followed hummed with a desire for violence against the Greens leader :

"You mongrel Brown...Come on you snivelling creep. Stop hiding behind your media whores."

"...the opportunist way Climate Change proponents are latching on to the event. Whats the term for opportunistic bastard? Its Bob Brown, taking this approach before the bodies are even counted.

"Insane, crazy, maddness. Its the Greenies, save a bloody lizard at the expense of human lives."

"What a truly appalling man he is. And more appalling is that so many hang off every sickening word."

"(He's) not a man. Men are human.

"Public crucifixion would be suitable for zealots such as Brown and Wong."

"Bob Brown is a sick and twisted fool."

"Frankly, if I’d been there at the time I’m not sure I could have refrained myself from decking the slimy moron."

"Brown is a swine of the first order, how anyone votes for this bastard and his party is beyond my comprehension."

"Brown, you are scum."

"Brown you are a poor excuse for a human being..."

"Bob Brown...what a despicable Turd!Makes his sick, twisted political capital out of charred bodies & ruined lives."

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”

When blog commenting in Australia becomes illegal without moderation, or some form of digital ID being used, you can thank Andrew Bolt for giving those who wish to censor us exactly the kind of ammunition they needed to ramp up their campaign.


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Monday, September 08, 2008

Recent Election Results Show The Two Party System Controlling Australia Is Melting Down

Greens leader Bob Brown thinks the spectacular political chaos thrown up by voters' choices in three elections in the past few days proves that the Liberal-Labor, two party system is breathing its last breaths.

Well, you can only hope so. Australians are getting anarchic at the miserable, pathetic performance of local, state and federal Liberal and Labor politicians. Why else are we now so willing to give the minor parties and independents such a go?

The good news is that both Labor and the Liberals are shitting themselves at the results of byelections in the federal seats of Mayo and Lyne, and the tumultuous results of the WA state election.

Incredibly, the Liberals almost lost Alexander Downer's old seat of Mayo...to the Greens.

Australia's major political parties have been put on notice after all were given a thumping during coast-to-coast elections held over over the weekend.

Until Saturday, Labor had won the past 23 successive state and territory elections.

Yesterday the WA National Party leader, Brendon Grylls, whose party won a better than expected four seats, held talks with the Labor Premier, Alan Carpenter, about forming a minority government - but today he will hold similar talks with the Liberal leader, Colin Barnett.

Buoyed by the result in the west, where there is no coalition, the federal Nationals leader Warren Truss flagged his party walking away from the federal Coalition in a bid to survive. The massacre in Lyne wiped out any lingering joy from the Nationals' emphatic win in the Gippsland byelection two months ago.

Peter Hartcher :

Until only a year ago Australia was the Contented Country. Governments, state and federal, just kept getting re-elected, no matter how bad they were.

Now Australia is the Cranky Country. A cocky government can no longer call an election in the expectation that a nonchalant electorate will casually stamp its ticket for another term.

Since November, an election poses an existential threat to a government. Australians have snapped out of their long torpor, and they are unhappy with what they are finding.

The Howard government was the first victim, falling under the force of a 5.4per cent swing against it. In August the Northern Territory Labor Government suffered a brutal 9.8per cent swing but managed to cling to power by the tiniest majority, a single seat. Now the West Australian Labor Government has lost its majority after suffering a 6per cent swing.

In Alexander Downer's former seat of Mayo the Liberals managed to hold the seat but suffered a drubbing, a 10 per cent swing. In Mark Vaile's former seat of Lyne the Nationals lost to a strong independent.

Interestingly, in all the tat and twaddle now being spoken by senior Labor and Liberal politicians about the election results, they take aim only at each other, and have almost nothing to say about the all too obvious rise in popularity of smaller parties and independents. It's like Labor and Liberal politicians are telling themselves, "Maybe if we pretend all those independents don't exist, they will fade away and leave us alone."

Even when the truth of their fading favour with Australian voters is kicking them savagely in the face, Labor and the Liberals continue to pretend that the very core of two-party control of Australia is not suffering a catastrophic meltdown, when it so very clearly is.

Monday, December 03, 2007

Greener Than Green

Paul Sheehan strips some bark off The Green's Bob Brown for his tireless, and tiresome, attacks on the new Australian environment minister, Peter Garrett, during the election campaign.

Some of Bob Brown's dozens of prominent media blasts at Garrett, mostly because he refused to say that he opposed the building of a new pulp mill in Tasmania, on his way to seizing control of the government's environment ministry :

"Peter Garrett and Malcolm Turnbull will get together and say more uranium mines," Brown postulated on ABC Radio's PM on October 15. The previous week, he told a rally: "Peter Garrett claims he is 'perfectly comfortable' with the pulp mill … Peter Garrett, we're not perfectly comfortable with you!" (October 7)

"This is the Labor hierarchy gagging Peter. Labor [including Garrett] … needs to get a backbone." (Bob Brown media release, September 7.)

"I can't see Peter Garrett at all. Where is he? Peter used to be such a defender of Tasmania's forests … but he is missing in action," Brown told ABC Lateline on August 29.

"Peter Garrett must not stand on the sidelines while the environment is trashed." (Media release, August 23.)

"He [Garrett] hasn't affected the Labor Party one iota; but the Labor Party machine has taken him over and turned him into an anti-Green campaigner," Brown said on ABC's Background Briefing on March 4.

Sheehan points out that Brown nearly gassed himself on his own hyperbole, and probably did some damage to the Green vote in the election :

This is all pretty rich, given Garrett's long track record of effective environmentalism. Garrett did not respond to Brown's hostility, he just won the war. As of this morning, Garrett sits in cabinet, as Minister for the Environment, with the confidence of the Prime Minister.

Brown, in contrast, has squandered one of the greatest political windfalls given to any political party in Australia since federation. At the 2007 federal election, climate change, global warming and water shortages were part of the mainstream debate for the first time, along with a prime minister who appeared incapable of understanding the critical political importance of these issues to a new generation of voters.

When Garrett emerged as a threat to Brown's power base, he was subject to a steady stream of claims that he had "sold out". Brown dismissed him as Little Red Riding Hood. Now, just three years after entering Parliament, Garrett sits in federal cabinet with his hands on the machinery of policy and power. He has always practised the art of the possible.

If anyone has sold out in this contest it is Brown, for using the environment as a screen for other obsessions, and for failing to grasp the enormous political opportunity presented by the 2007 election.

It hurts, but it's also true enough.

Global warming, protecting the environment, renewable energy - all these things were vote-changing issues at the election. 2007 should have seen The Greens make massive leaps and bounds, and they should be easily in control of the Senate. But they didn't.

Garrett has gone from radical conservation activist and wild rock star in the early 1980s to Minister For The Environment in 2007.

You won't see them say it in print, or in press conferences, but there are legions of old right-wing conservatives, and anti-Garrett old schoolers, whose jaws are still hanging to the floor today at what Garrett has achieved.

What he does with his new power remains to be seen. But it's a shocker that Bob Brown has not been cheering Garrett on, and celebrating his extraordinary win.

The conservationists and pro-environment crowd have won. And one of their own is now in a real position of power in the federal government. The highest position of power, short of prime minister, that any of them who were lashed to logging trucks and protesting uranium mines in the early 1980s could have ever dreamed of achieving.

It would be a terrible thing indeed if mere jealousy was the main reason Bob Brown went on the Garrett attack all the way through the election campaign.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Australia Finally Gets A Viable Third Party

The Greens Scored More Than One Million Votes At Election 2007

The success of The Greens at Saturday's election would have been much more impressive if both the Labor and Liberal Party had not adopted soft version of their climate change key platforms in the past twelve months.

The Greens put climate change on the map as a key election issue. Labor got serious about climate change when around 30% of Australians said they were concerned about how global warming would affect their childrens' and grandchildrens' future. The Liberals Under Howard suddenly became climate change disciples when that percentage tipped over 70.

It's also refreshing to see that despite a concerted anti-Greens campaign in Murdoch daily papers in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart and Melbourne, The Greens still polled remarkably well. More than one million votes.

In some locales, they blasted the Nationals out of the water and also managed to match, or at least came close to matching, the number of votes cast for the Liberal Party.

No doubt, Bob Brown's appearance on Rove, six days before the federal election, killed off a lot of the negativity and scare campaigns hurled at The Greens by the Liberals, Family First, the Exclusive Brethren and the Murdoch media.

Bizarrely, for a party that we were told want to end all coal-mining within three years (they don't), The Greens managed to pick up thick slabs of votes in coal mining districts like Kalgoorlie.

When Australia undergoes a generational change, and transformation, they really go in hard :

The Greens have declared themselves Australia's third-largest political party claiming to have out-performed the Nationals by a "country mile".

The party says it attracted nearly 1.1 million (9.02 per cent) senate votes at Saturday's federal election compared with less than 6 per cent for the Nationals.

And, in claiming a definite five seats in the Senate with a chance for two more, the Greens have also seen off the Democrats whose four senators all lost their seats.

"The Democrats' famous aim was to keep the bastards honest but our long-term vision is to replace them," Greens leader Bob Brown said.

"All the epithets and abuse have boomeranged and people valued the big environmental issues around climate change, the pulp mill and drought."

Senator Brown said the party's rural vote had increased along with its pensioner vote after the party campaigned to increase pensions by $130 a week.

Tucker still chances to secure spots.

The Greens surpassed the Senate quota barrier (14.2 per cent) in Tasmania for the first time, meaning they won a Senate seat in their own right and didn't have to rely on preferences.


Labor could not have won the election without the help of The Greens. They will demand, and should get, some of their wishes fulfilled.

The Greens deserved one million votes if only for their pledge to do something about the appalling poverty that hammers elderly Australians, many of whom worked themselves into the ground for decades for the good of the country, besides going to war and having to cope with that emotional and physical fallout.

In their last days, the elderly should be treated with far more respect and regard than John Howard ever felt they were worth.

Bob Brown Hugs Trees "Very, Very Often"

Monday, November 19, 2007

Bob Brown Hugs Trees "Very, Very Often"




For our international readers, a bit of background : Dr Bob Brown was the first leader of the Australian Greens elected to the Australian Senate and has been instrumental in helping to preserve vast regions of Australia's ancient rainforests and wilderness. Some of the areas Bob Brown fought to preserve discovered there was more money to be made from wilderness tourism than would ever have been made from logging.

Bob Brown's
the only Australian political party leader you can count on getting an honest answer from to almost any question, and whether you agree or disagree with his political views, it's hard not to admire his honesty.

The Australian Greens have been rapidly building their base in the past six years, opposing the War On Iraq, the detention of immigrant children in outback prison camps, John Howard's 'War On Drugs' and the absurd fiasco of Australia's supposed anti-terror laws.

The Greens are expected to probably win control of the Australian Senate in next weekend's federal election, and could capture as much as 12% of the national vote.

Quick fact : Dr Bob Brown was working as a hospital intern in London in 1970, and he was the young medico who stood before the media and announced that Jimi Hendrix had died.