Turnbull: Bolt Is "Unhinged" And "Demented"

The Herald Sun is now trying to recast extremist Andrew Bolt as a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. Good luck

By Darryl Mason

Finally, Malcolm Turnbull has said out loud what I've been writing here on this blog for almost eight years.

Murdoch's Andrew Bolt is "unhinged" and "demented."

Tell us something we don't know.

Turnbull: 

“...it borders on the demented to string together a dinner with Clive Palmer and my attending as the Communications Minister the launch by a cross-party group of friends of the ABC and say that that amounts to some kind of threat or challenge to the Prime Minister.

“It is quite unhinged. Now, Mr Bolt is fond of attacking what he regards as the government’s enemies in the media, principal amongst whom of course he numbers the ABC. I don’t think you would see anything as crazy as that on the ABC.

“Mr Bolt, he proclaims loudly that he is a friend of the government. Well with friends like Bolt, we don’t need any enemies.’

A split within the Liberal Party has been rumbling for months, as PM Abbott continues to plummet in the polls, and he and Treasurer Joe Hockey's extremist Budget 2014-2015 is rejected by an ever growing number of Australians.

Abbott has taken the right wing extremism of Andrew Bolt, The Australian and turd basket lobby group The IPA to the Australian public, has acted on their demands, has echoed their rhetoric, and the Australian public has been repulsed. Not all Australians, but certainly enough to cause the non-right wing nutters of the Liberal Party and their Nationals coalition partners to get nervous indeed. Many Liberal Party backbenchers, for example, are now wondering if Toxic Tony is going to lose them their seats at the next federal election in 2016, or even sooner.

Turnbull well knows that he doesn't need Murdoch media, or Bolt's support, to become prime minister, or to become a popular prime minister. Murdoch's media blew their wad going all out to get Tony Abbott elected PM, and Bolt is seriously tainted by his declared friendship with Abbott. How can anyone trust anything he has to say about Abbott, or Abbott's agenda, when he is known as a serial defender of his pal?

Turnbull's outburst against Andrew Bolt was sparked by a Bolt column today linking Turnbull to Clive Palmer, after their 'secret meeting' dinner in Canberra, and Bolt painted the pair as united against Bolt's buddy Tony Abbott:

Bolt smells the stench of Abbott's impending political death in the air and is trying to head Turnbull off at the pass, questioning his loyalty and trying to rally Abbott supporters in the Coalition against Turnbull and Palmer.

MegaFail.

Turnbull responded to Bolt's conspiracy theory in the stunning doorstop, quoted at the top, with the media a few hours ago. And everything exploded.


Fairfax media, rivals to Murdoch's NewsCorp, home of Bolt, unleashed with obvious glee.

The Australian Financial Review:

Philip Coorey in AFR:

Malcolm Turnbull has labelled columnist Andrew Bolt demented and unhinged after the leading conservative cheerleader suggested the Communications Minister was undermining Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Mr Turnbull told journalists in Parliament on Monday that Mr Bolt’s theories were damaging the government.

Mr Turnbull was incensed on Sunday when Mr Bolt, while interviewing Mr Abbott on his weekly TV show, asked the Prime Minister: “Now, why is Malcolm Turnbull wooing Clive Palmer on his own? It looks like he’s got his eye on your job.”

This was a reference to a casual dinner in Canberra last week with Mr Turnbull, Mr Palmer, Treasurer Secretary Martin Parkinson and businessmen John Fast and Tom Harley.

The participants all claimed it was a spontaneous and harmless gathering but it spiked paranoia inside the Coalition because Mr Palmer has been refusing to even talk to anyone else in the Coalition until he is given what he considers ample resources.

In his newspaper column on Monday, Mr Bolt continued the attack on Mr Turnbull, saying the dinner sent “an unmistakeable message to Liberal MPs:

“Replace Abbott with Turnbull as prime minister and Maybe Palmer will play ball’’.

Mr Bolt further accused Mr Turnbull of giving comfort to the enemy by launching a new parliamentary group of friends of the ABC.

 The Sydney Morning Herald:

Matthew Knott:

News Corp commentator Andrew Bolt's leadership speculation "borders on the demented" and is ''quite unhinged", says Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Mr Turnbull's dinner with Mr Palmer sparked fears among some in the Coalition that he was attempting to destabilise Mr Abbott's leadership, according to reports.

"It borders on the demented to string together a dinner with Clive Palmer and my attending, as the Communications Minister, the launch by a cross-party group of friends of the ABC and say that that amounts to some kind of threat or challenge to the Prime Minister," Mr Turnbull told reporters on Monday.

"It is quite unhinged. Now, Mr Bolt is fond of attacking what he regards as the government's enemies in the media, principal amongst whom of course he numbers the ABC. I don't think you would see anything as crazy as that on the ABC.

"I just have to say to Mr Bolt, he proclaims loudly that he is a friend of the government. Well with friends like Bolt, we don't need any enemies."

On Monday, Mr Bolt told Fairfax Media: ''It's a great shame and quite telling that Malcolm Turnbull attacks someone he calls the government's media friend with far more vitriol than I can recall him ever attacking one of the government's media enemies.

''This fits a pattern. No doubt he [Turnbull] will expand on this in his next Q & A appearance with Tony Jones.''

What a prissy, sooky reply from Bolt. But then, what else could you expect?

Bolt's readership is dropping away, his blog comment count is a shadow of his glory days and his TV show just can't seem to find any new viewers.

What Abbott is realising, and Bolt probably already knew, is that there is an extremely limited audience and pool of voters in Australia for IPA-style extremism. Bolt can't find more viewers and readers because he's fully tapped the market available.

What Turnbull understands is that there are far more 'soft conservatives' than extremist conservatives, like Bolt, like the IPA, like The Australian's editor Chris Mitchell.

Turnbull knows he can win back a huge slab of Liberal Party voters who feel done over by Abbott since the 2013 election and are now rejecting Budget 2014-2015.

And Turnbull is right.

The action over Abbott's tenuous leadership will grow only more heated from here on in.

UPDATE: The Abboot-Turnbull-Bolt fiasco makes it to Parliament:




From The Orstrahyun Archive...



 2009: The Last Time Andrew Bolt Went To War On Turnbull To Save Abbott

Andrew Bolt: I Don't Know How Twitter Works, But Its Freedom Scares Me

Seriously, What A Fuckwit - Bolt's Biggest Shriek For Attention Yet

Bolt's Reality Meltdown Over Fukushima

The Orstrahyun: Double The Readership Of Murdoch's Telegraph

Based on figures from this Murdoch media puff piece on its 'success', The Orstrahyun recently had a bigger readership than one of the most popular Murdoch Sunday newspapers, The Sunday Telegraph:

 “Our Sunday metro papers (all Sunday papers combined) are read by 4.7 million people each Sunday,” Mr Tonagh said.

‘‘To put that in perspective, last month’s finale of My Kitchen Rules attracted 2.3 million metro viewers. The Block got 2.2 million.

‘‘Last season’s AFL grand final averaged 2.7 million.”

Oztam figures reveal this was well in excess of the average audience for television evening news bulletins on Sunday night in Sydney — with Nine News pulling the top audience of 386,030.

The Sunday Telegraph’s ­average weekly audience was 1.316 million in the 12 months to March.

1.3 million readers for The Sunday Telegraph? Big deal, The Orstrahyun clocked up a readership of more than 2 million people, and that was in less than one week:

And that was back in mid-April. By late April, The Orstrahyun readership for that AC/DC story had reached 2.5 million, it's now closing in on 3 million. And these figures aren't from a few hundred thousand readers returning multiple times to comment, or read comments, or reactions to their comments. These were nearly all unique hits, or views.

This means The Orstrahyun completely flogged Murdoch media's 'most popular Australian blogger' Andrew Bolt for readership:

And I won't even go into the stupidity of the Murdoch media big-noting itself by claiming it has more readers worldwide (and every Murdoch news site is available worlwide, and its stories are archived by Google, so they come up in Google subject and name searches) in one month than a state-based TV show has on a given night.

 Look at this NewsCorp graphic about the hilarious Telegraph's readership:

It all seems incredibly desperate. Which makes you wonder why they'd be so deceptive about their readership if it was as big as they claim.

What the Murdoch media fluffing stories (and there's been more than two dozen across its Australian websites in the past week, some even paywalled as 'premium content') don't tell you about their claimed readership is this - the total weekly audience they claim for websites like the Daily Telegraph, for example, is based on how many Telegraph online pages are viewed in a given period.

It's not how many people actually go to the website to read it specifically everyday, but how many clicks/views all the Telegraph online web pages get in a given period. This total includes all the links shared on Facebook and Twitter and other social media, all the clicks they get because some old celebrity story still on the website turns up in Google searches, and Google Image searches, and all the clicks they get from other Murdoch media websites linking to old stories housed at the Sunday Telegraph homepage because a celebrity previously covered, or 'More Here' links.

If from all that, Murdoch's NewsCorp can claim a readership of 1.3 million for one publication based on alleged weekly averages, why can't The Orstrahyun claim it has a readership of 2.5 million?

Can, and will.



The Orstrahyun - Readership: 2.5 million.


OK, The Orstrahyun clearly doesn't always get that level of readership action, but that's hardly the point when it comes to fudging readership numbers for big-noting purposes. And the Murdoch media are Yodas when it comes to doing that.

From out of the blue, an online story can attract attention and go completely viral, and that's what happened to this AC/DC story. It got picked up by international media, music sites, new sites, was linked to, and circulated heavily on Facebook, all over the world. It went completely ballistic.

Of course The Orstrahyun doesn't get a million or two online readers a day, but neither do any of Murdoch's news sites. They have huge spikes in traffic, like The Orstrahyun did, and then they use the total numbers (spikes and more mundane daily readership) to average out weekly traffic numbers that look far more impressive than they actually are. Online readership numbers for nearly all news sites, not just the Murdoch ones, are completely elastic.

In case you were wondering, an actual average day at The Orstrahyun draws a few thousand readers (without comment action) and a chunk of those hits is people finding archive stories through Google searches, just like the online Murdoch media gets a fat chunk of traffic from old stories. That's why Rupert Murdoch never lived up to his threat to stop Google from archiving and adding Murdoch media stories to search results. It would have been a huge, unhideable loss of daily web traffic.

Thanks to regular readers for sticking with The Orstrahyun over the past seven years. And hello to all the via Google tourists. We miss you already.



From The Orstrahyun's Archive...

Stop The Hysteria, Demands Hysterical Daily Telegraph

Daily Telegraph Exploits War Heroes To Demonise The Disabled

Daily Telegraph: Anyone Opposed To Abbott Is A Revolting Feral 

Peak Rudd - Daily Telegraph Couldn't Fit Anymore 'Get Rudd' Stories On Front Page 

Daily Telegraph 'Staff Writers' Demand Destruction Of Greens, Yet Again

Stop The Hysteria, Demands Hysterical Murdoch Media

By Darryl Mason

Across Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspaper and online news empire, panic is taking hold.

After campaigning so hard, so furiously, so absurdly for the Abbott government to win last September's election - to the point where even Liberal voters were saying, "I've had enough of this biased crap" - many of Murdoch's political commentators are now desperately trying to stem the terminal decline of the Abbott government in order to salvage what's left of their own reputations.

There's so many examples to choose from....

First, a quick refresher. After shredding prime ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd for almost 30 straight months on every mistake, misstep and triviality they could find,  or invent, most of Murdoch's newspapers ran front pages like the one below just before polling day:

Considering this front page was also a poster on display outside of hundreds of newspapers, it was more like Liberal Party bunting.

Now, as PM Abbott racks up popularity poll numbers below that of Toronto's crack smoking mayor, Rob Ford (this is actually true), Murdoch political commentators are screeching foul because other journalists are exposing all manner of apparently dodgy dealings and 'thanks for your support' favours and questionable fundraising adventures from the Liberal Party.

And Abbott critics and non-Murdoch media also have the damn hide to republish the endless quotes of Tony Abbott proclaiming variations of 'No New Taxes' and 'No Cuts To Pensions' and every other grinning lie he told to help get himself over the line, and win just that little bit of extra support he needed in a handful of electorates to become prime minister.

How dare they! How bloody dare they hold him to account.

And Murdoch columnists, or Liberal Party support team members, or whatever they're called now days, are plenty outraged that anyone would even think to ask if Tony Abbott's daughters might have somehow benefited from their father's Murdoch media-sponsored rise to The Lodge.

'Don't bring my family into politics,' Tony Abbott responded to claims one daughter may have scored a choice $60,000 design study scholarship, and job, thanks to a key supporter, and friendly donor, of the prime minister.

Do not bring Tony's family into politics.

Only he may he do that. As we saw for countless days during the 2013 election campaign when his daughters became almost permanent fixtures by his side.

All this being held to account stuff, and being asked the tough questions, and trivia-based mockery, has gone too far. Not to mention the Budget 2014 disaster. No, really, don't mention it. A budget bonanza of cruelty and misery so extreme that even Clive Palmer's suggestion to junk the whole thing and start again is looking like a smart move.

All in all, Sunday 'Australia Needs Tony' Telegraph political columnist Samantha Maiden has had just about enough, thank you very much:

image via @NewsAustralia

Let's take a closer look at that 'story':

“The question is, is everyone contributing equally,” Emma Alberici kept asking on ABC Lateline Friday night.

Who says that’s the question?

The budget is not meant to be a utopian wealth redistribution program.

Well, certainly not a conservative party budget anyway.

“Poorest families pay most in budget,” screamed the headlines. “How the budget pain is unfairly shared.” “Abbott budget to make Australia more unequal.”

Never mind how fatuous the idea of a budget of “equality” when the aim is to rescue the economy from a death spiral which includes $1billion a month in interest payments.

A 'Budget Of Equality'. Where the hell did Australians get that stupid idea? Time to come clean:

Admittedly, the equality meme was fuelled by the government’s own claim that its deficit reduction levy on high income earners was an “equity” measure, to “share the pain”.

So it was the Abbott government's fault. Abbott and Hockey talked about equality and equity and sharing the pain. They did it.

It was a threadbare argument, and opened a savage line of attack

OK, so the Abbott government is to blame for Australians thinking the budget would be about equality and 'sharing the pain', plus they're also responsible for 'opening the savage line of attack' they're now drowning in and which Maiden is so outraged by.


What these Murdoch columnists are bleating, in short, is:

LEAVE TONY ABBOTT ALONE!

And we all know that isn't going to happen.

The Murdoch media made its mission to obliterate any remaining respect the general public might have bad for the office of prime minister when Gillard and Rudd were taking turns as PM, and they set the new rules for just how petty and absurd and ridiculous media attacks on a prime minister could be. Just how low they could sink.

Like raising holy hell because Julia Gillard was photographed knitting, for a feature in a women's magazine. That hysteria-tinged knitting coverage in the Murdoch media lasted for days.

Now they want everyone to lay off.

They want the rest of the media to turn down the heat on Abbott and Hockey and their miserable budget.

It's not going to happen.

They know it's not going to happen.

So they'll just whine and plead, presumably, for what remains of Abbott's time as prime minister (gone by August, 2014 perhaps?), and haughtily demand everyone else stop stooping to the levels they did. On a daily basis. For years.


There's a lot of pressure on Murdoch's Sydney Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph these days, let alone the rest of the shuddering empire. Advertisers are jumping ship, and they've been forced to plug all-too-obvious ad gaps in the newspapers with double page spreads advertising their own online news subscription offerings. Not just here and there, almost every single day.

The fact is, many Murdoch columnists, besides the obvious ones like Andrew Bolt, have trashed their reputations barracking openly for Abbott for the past two years. And now they're paying the price. And their newspapers are paying the price, literally. Sales of the Daily Telegraph have plunged by some 60,000 copies a day since they became Abbott's support team.

And now their hero is going down in flames.

This Newspoll box sits on the front page of The Australian's website like a flaming bag of turds.

And tweets like this shocker, showing Labor's Bill Shorten leading Abbott as preferred prime minister....

....are distributed heavily across Twitter and Facebook and other social media. Even people who voted Liberal at the 2013 election share this info with their friends as they rail furiously in Facebook updates against Abbott, laugh bitterly over #MorePopularThanAbbott memes and tweets and sigh, bitterly, about how betrayed by the budget they now feel. The vast majority of Australians clearly feel betrayed:

The Murdoch media can't hide this stuff, they can't write it off as "polling trivia" or make it go away anymore.

It simply won't go away.

They are not "in control of the narrative" anymore.

Facebook and Twitter is. And these forums can't be controlled. Or tamed.
 
Hard times.

I'll leave it at that for now, but I just want to include two more images that billboard just how quickly the Abbott government has self-immolated.

First the 'We Won!' front page from Murdoch's Courier Mail front page after Election Day, Sept 2013.

And this image from today's Murdoch Adelaide Advertiser:

The political Circus Isn't Over after all, it would seem, there's just a bunch of different clowns in control of the careening clown car. For a short while anyway.


Talk of who could replace Tony Abbott as leader of the Liberal Party, and prime minister of Australia, has already begun to filter through the Australian media. Only eight months into his prime ministership. It's hard to think of another prime minister who has fallen so fast and so hard.

Does anyone really believe Tony Abbott will still be prime minister when Federal Election 2016 hurls into view?
 
Didn't think so.

------------

Recently on The Orstrahyun...

Murdoch's Tabloids Exploit Our War Heroes To Demonise The Disabled

Student Protests Erupt: 3 Police Needed To Haul Away One Schoolgirl Protester

 Barnaby Joyce: Tony Abbott Is Like Kennedy, Churchill

Australian Media Declares Abbott New Prime Minister Before 80% Of Australians Have Even Voted

By Darryl Mason

Vote Puppy! From The Australian today: 

 

I won't add to the Election Day opinion tsunami too much, except to say that 80% of Australians are yet to vote, but that hasn't stopped the main Fairfax and Murdoch city dailies (with the exception of The Age) declaring Tony Abbott victorious, and Labor losing by up to 40 seats.

A shameful display, following on from weeks of newspaper headlines, talkback radio, tabloid morning TV all declaring "Labor Is Lost!" "Abbott To Win!"

None of the Editorials backing Abbott have anything much to say except what Abbott has already said in campaign sonndbites, he will get rid of the Mining Tax and the Carbon Tax. What else? Not much. Oh, by the way, "Trust Abbott", go on "Trust him!"

That's right, editors of major Australian city dailies are asking voters to elect Abbott solely on trust.

 Trust!

But none of them mention, not in headlines or on front pages anyway, that there is no guarantee Tony Abbott will become Australia's next prime minister. A rise in votes for Independents, minor parties, the Greens, can throw the whole thing into chaos, and we might not even know who the next prime minister is going to be come Monday morning.

But you, Australian voter, clearly don't need to know that.

Here's The Australian online today (note reference to Abbott as winner, not the Liberals/Nationals Coalition)


 

No, your eyes do not deceive you, The Australian is still trying to wipe away the nasty known knowns about Tony Abbott by featuring him holding a puppy!

The Sydney Morning Herald declares 'Abbott' will beat Labor. All by himself? Does he still lead a political party?

One example of the 'Crushing Win' headline swamping Australian media this morning.

One of the more grim developments in our "serious" media this election has been the name-calling. Even the Australian got into it, announcing Clive Palmer was a "buffoon" on its front page.









Name-calling is the sort of trash the Murdoch media usually leaves to the likes of Miranda Devine, Andrew Bolt and other unprofitable bloggers. Not anymore. When our media so recently promised to Stop The Trolls, this kind of garbage is bad news for everyone:

And finally, here's The Australian again, with a pile of opinion and Abbott Wins declarations that are going to look even more ridiculous if he doesn't make it to prime minister, and if the Liberals don't get the majority of Autralia's vote, or the "crushing victory" announced pre-voting :

Who lost the Australian Federal Election? The big loser was clearly quality, unbiased media.

Goodbye to all that.

BREAKING NEWS: NewsCorp Reveals NewsCorp "Least Biased"

It's a special kind of humiliation for the remaining decent journalists at Rupert Murdoch's crumbling Australian newspaper empire that they even have to think about 'crafting' stories like this, let alone having to run them all over their media (image via TomWConnell) :

  

Hilarious. The desperate attempts at credibility-salvaging and face-saving going on at NewsCorp Australia is getting ridiculous, and quite sad.

Curiously, even NewsCorp readers don't think the ABC coverage of Federal Election 2013 is particularly "Leftist." But their columnists and editors keep pumping that line about ABC being over-run by leftist hordes and its news reporting being riddled with bias against conservatives.

Not even Murdoch tabloid readers believe it.


Here's a small sample of recent tabloid front pages from Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp - "Australia's Least Biased Publisher."

Daily Telegraph Couldn't Fit Any More Rudd Attack Stories On Front Page

A new record for Rupert Murdoch's Daly Telegraph in its fair and balanced coverage of the 2013 Federal Election.

Four anti-Rudd stories in prime top-of-the-page position on the DT front page online.

The strategy is a simple one. Say almost nothing about opposition leader Tony Abbott, just hammer prime minister Kevin Rudd day after day, with everything and anything, regardless of the facts.

It is true, according to some but not all polls, that Kevin Rudd's popularity is falling in Western Sydney, not quite as fast as the Daily Telgraph''s circulation, but getting there.
 

More to come...

Andrew Bolt - I Don't Know How Twitter Works, But Its Freedom Scares Me

 Oh yes, you do.

(quick backgrounder : Andrew Bolt is Australia's most heavily promoted Rupert Mudoch columnist. While never having used Twitter, it was decided that the #AskBolt Twitter hashtag should be used to stir up and "take on the Twitterati", and almost every Murdoch media held Twitter account began pumping out his challenge to Twitter users worldwide. In short, Bolt picked a fight with Twitter, and then hijacked the Usain Bolt #AskBolt hashtag in order to do so).

He can deny it all he wants. But The Bolt Report is an Andrew Bolt Twitter account. And it's official.

It's all a bit sad to see a once innovative political blogger so utterly lost amongst the trees when it comes to Twitter.

Boo Twitter, even though it's where a good slab of his daily blog traffic comes from these days, thanks to regular spammy-link tweeting by numerous NewsCorp automated Twitter accounts. He even has the 'Tweet Me' button on every blog post, along wth the official account for his TV show. He doesn't seem to know about that, either.

#AskBolt was an idiotic idea to begin with, promoting someone who doesn't use Twitter on Twitter, with 'Come And Get Me!' tweets like "Bolt Takes On The Twitterati!"

#AskBolt was a Fukushima-scale social media disaster.

There's no way around it. Even people who had previously used the #AskBolt hashtag to say hello to the incredible sprinter Usain Bolt joined in when they discovered some idiot from Australia  had hijacked their hero's hashtag.

#AskBolt made Andrew Bolt a Twitter pinnata. People who had never even heard of this goose from down under were weeping with laughter at the constant stream of 98% inane, and more the point, non-abusive, tweets that swept #AskBolt into the Top Trending Topics in a host of countries around the world.

Nobody on Twitter had seen anything like it.

For the love of FailWhale, you don't hijack established hashtags. Particularly when you don't use Twitter in the first place.

Mindblowing. What the hell were they thinking?

But Andrew Bolt knows what's going on.

It was all a big Australian Labor Conspiracy.

Really. Hard Leftists, you see, control the Twitternets.

Bolt also seems completely unaware that the Daily Telegraph tried to promote #AskBolt on Facebook as well. Hundreds of people mocked him in commemts and shares. Whether the Daily Telegraph Facebook moderator was laughing too hard to delete any, or whether nobody actually moderates the page, who knows? But the ridicule came thick and fast there, too.

Andrew Bolt doesn't use Facebook either.

 


Hard Leftists control Facebook, too, presumably.

Here he is having a spit after discovering just how much of a social media disaster, and wider public spectacle, #AskBot was becoming.



This is how he reported on himself in the Herald Sun:



Just fantastic the way the link for tweeting Andrew Bolt's column onto Twitter lines up perfectly with this:

"I took a dip in Twitter this week, and understand even better how Labor got flushed away in a sewer of hate.

"How could Labor - and many journalists - disastrously mistake Twitter for the real world?"

The real world, you see, isn't millions of people in more than 100 hundred countries around the world communicating freely and sharing information, ideas and quality knowledge, without paywalls.

The Raal World, apparently, is Andrew Bolt's BlogWorld, where you have to register to "join in the debate" and where he bans commenters who hit to close the bone.

"(#AskBolt) electrified the Twittersphere. For hours the topic trended as Leftists, many anonymous, competed to ask me - the Great Satan of Conservatism - the worst, silliest or most abusive questions on the #askbolt hashtag.

"Fairfax newspapers thought this was sensational news."

It wasn't sensational, but it was idiotic enough a move to warrant media attention.

After all, Andrew Bolt is constantly demanding the rest of the media and the general Australian public pay attention to him, and exercise their right to free speech.

Clearly Bolt now has his limits, on both

"Gosh, hold the presses. No, wait, they're slowing already at Fairfax and no wonder, if recycling playground taunts by anonymous tweeters now passes for news reporting."

Miaow. Poor Andrew. He doesn't even know Murdoch's newspaper operation has lost more recently than Fairfax.

"In fact, to be attacked on Twitter is no news to a conservative.

"Twitter skews hard to the Left..."

 Twitter refused to take him seriously. 

"Twitter also seems to bring out the worst in users."

 Twitter isn't a bubble.

"Maybe it's the relative youth of tweeters, and the anonymity of many. Maybe it's because hate tends to sell best in the look-at-me Twittersphere."

He has his own TV show. About His Opinions.

"Or maybe it's because Twitter appeals to the impulsive sensation junkies eager to instantly broadcast their most idle thought..."

This a person who has often published more than a dozen blog posts in a single day.

Now onto the Great Australian Labor Twitter Conspiracy.

"But here's the bizarre thing: this is the audience Labor thought could save it.

"This is the crowd Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tried to impress by tweeting a picture of his shaving cut to his 1.4 million followers, thus confusing the magpie attention of tweeters with respect from very real and unimpressed voters.

"But Julia Gillard as prime minister had an even more fatal attraction to Twitter.

"Her infamous misogyny speech last year - falsely branding Abbott a woman-hater - was rightly seen at first by most commentators as a hate-filled rant that would appal many Australians."

What was Bolt saying before about people ranting like arseholes?

"But Gillard's communications director, John McTernan, eventually convinced press gallery journalists it was a success because it had gone viral on social media, including Twitter."

Gillard's speech was viewed by millions across the planet, within days. A political speech. Viewed by millions. That wasn't JFK, Obama or MLK.

That's pretty fucking viral. 

"And so Gillard, convinced by tweets and blog posts, doubled down on her politics of division, pitting women against men, workers against bosses."

Oh Twitter, is there nothing you can't do?

"Stirring hatred may indeed light up the Twittersphere but it makes the world outside your window feel sick."

Eh?

"But it's no surprise if Twitter's culture has spilled out of the internet sewers and now floods media offices.

"No surprise, when Channel 10's Paul Bongiorno retweets Mike Carlton who retweets Rudd's daughter, Jessica, who retweets Channel 10's Charlie Pickering who retweets blogger Mia Freedman who retweets the ABC's Leigh Sales who retweets her boss, Mark Scott, who retweets his presenter, Jonathan Green, who retweets John McTernan who retweets the ABC's Mark Colvin who retweets Marieke Hardy who retweets Mike Carlton who . . .

"And on it flows, a steady stream of hate, flushing the feckless with it. Labor, too."

Andrew Bolt doesn't mention, of course, the numerous automated Twitter accounts operated by NewsCorp retweeting his every blog post intro, around the clock.

You see, mere mortal journalists have to tweet links to their own stories themselves, and try and get people to read their work. Pumping their stories on social media is expected of almost every working journalist today.

But not the Mighty Bolt.

He wouldn't lower himself to using Twitter.

He has others to do it for him.

One of the last of Murdoch's protected species.

 
And just because it's funny, here's Bolt flipping out at others doing what he does almost daily, taking someone's gaffe or misspeak and using it over and over and over again.



He's just so precious.

ENCORE: Andrew Bolt didn't always think Twitter was a sewer. When Rupert Murdoch dived into Twitter, Bolt called it the "coolest new medium."

Murdoch Media Reach Grim, New Low - Federal Election 2013 - Day FFS

By Darryl Mason

Sometimes it's best to learn the context of a photo, before you try and use it for political point-scoring.

Tim Wilson promotes himself as "one of Australia's most challenging opinion makers drawing on strong philosophical principles."

He's also a dickhead.

As Therese Rein politely points out, they were at the War Memorial, listeing to the names of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan being read out when the photo was taken.

Incredibly, incomprehensibly, Rupert Murdoch's Courier Mail uses the same photo to attack prime minister Kevin Rudd, without explaining where and when the photo was taken.

There is the cliff, and then there is the abyss.

(images via Twitter)

Here's a comment on the Courier Mail's own website tipping them off to the extremely inappropriate use of this photo, at 12.30am today. It took the Courier Mail 11 hours to change the photo on the story, so it was there all the way through the online Courier Mail's peak viewing time of 6am to 11am.

 And here's the original photo, before the Courier Mail cropped it, purposely cropped it to mask the true context of the photo. Fuck knows why Australian newspapers are dying.

 Appalling.

It has been pointed out, correctly, that the above photo is not the exact same photo cropped by the Courier Mail for its dirty little trick, it was the next photo in the sequence. Tim Wilson has apologised. The Courier Mail changed the photo, 11 hours later, floated the usual nothing explanation.

UPDATE: Here's today front page of the Courier Mail. PM Kevin Rudd is, of coruse, leading opposition leader Tony Abbott in Queensland:

Kevin Rudd won the Twitter poll thing hosted by the Courier Mail, by some seven points over Abbott.

UPDATE: Rupert Murdoch's Courier Mail has now pleaded guilty to publishing the photos and names of children involved in a high-profile custody dispute.

The Courier-Mail has pleaded guilty to breaching the Family Law Act during its coverage of an international custody battle over four Italian sisters last year.

The Australian Federal Police launched an investigation into the Queensland newspaper after it last year published the names and photographs of the sisters at the centre of the dispute.

Photos of the girls were published on the front page of the The Courier-Mail on May 15 and 16 last year, prompting a complaint from the Chief Justice of the Family Court.

The guilty plea came despite previous indications the paper would defend the charges.

They published the photos of the children on the front page, and were bombarded with complaints, and helpful requests, that they shouldn't do that again.

But they did do it again.

What a pack of shitbergs


LATEST: MURDCH MEDIA HITS PEAK HITLER

THE AUSTRALIAN'S OBSESSION WITH TWITTER GETS DOWNRIGHT STUPID

 DON'T ENCOURAGE THE DAILY SHOW!

THE UNIQUE 'REALITY' OF MURDOCH'S NEWSPOLL

AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER IN PUNK ROCK VIDEO - RUDD OUTSWEARS NWA

QUALITY JOURNALISM FLASHBACK - MURDOCH MEDIA LABELS JAPAN TSUNAMI 'NATURE'S TERROR ATTACK'

The Australian's Obsession With Twitter Gets Plain Stupid - Federal Election 2013 Day 11

Twitter, or even tweets, are not mentioned in this story, anywhere. The Australian's War On Twitter is an embarrasing, hysterical spectacle.
 

The Australian couldn't look any more desperate in its daily attempts to convince older readers Twitter has nothing to offer them. Lest they cancel their subscription to the Australian and go read most of the facts and figures the Autralian hordes behind paywalls on Twitter, for free.

The Australian's earlier attacks on Twitter as being an unreliable medium for distribution of information would be a bit more convincing if The Australian didn't have dozens of Twitter accounts spam-tweeting links to its paywalled content.

This Is What It Sounds Like, When A Blog Dies

A few weeks ago, Andrew Bolt let slip on his blog, a preview of future Bolt Blog plans:

"I don’t want to waste your time. I apologise, but all media outlets are now under severe pressure, and we cannot keep offering what’s essentially a free service. Should you have better suggestions, feel free to let the paper know."

Andrew Bolt deleted the above a few hours after posting it.

Bolt was the first of the Murdoch stable to hit his readers up for subscriptions and paywall ladders, and it was a complete disaster. Nobody wanted to pay to read online. Nobody.

Now, quite the opposite to executive-stacked newspapers and TV news room, small independent media in Australia is actually doing OK. It's the ones that have to kick up a few million a year to The Boss and all his executive buddies that are in the deepest shit.

Small, lean, fast digital news rooms (no office, no execs, no physical product) are the future, of course, it just took the likes of Murdoch, and Bolt, a lot longer than digital natives to understand.

News Corp Australia CEO Kim Williams Quits After Daily Telegraph 'Nazi PM' Front Page - Federal Election Day 5

Less than two years after taking over Rupert Murdoch''s Australian News Corp operations, CEO Kim Williams is stepping down. Remarkably, not of Murdoch's 130 plus Australian newspapers scored this scoop.

We'll return to this dramatic news, and look back at Williams gormless attempts to demonise Australian bloggers and independent media, but here's Kim Williams e-mail to staff (somehow, Murdoch papers even got scooped on this):

Dear Colleagues

I attach the media statement about my departure from News Corp which will be effective from this weekend.

An action like this is always taken with a heavy heart and a mixed bag of feelings and reflections on a wide range of experiences with News Corp across almost 20 years. It is certainly not a decision made lightly, or without an awareness of the impact decisions like this inevitably have on many close colleagues, clients and diverse bodies within the media community.

I started with News Corp back in 1995 and have worked with the company ever since in three roles – as CEO at FOX Studios Australia, CEO of FOXTEL and as CEO at News Corp Australia. Each role has offered a diversity of challenges and wonderful opportunities. I have enjoyed the responsibility and have been honoured to work with many extraordinarily talented people.

Whilst the leadership roles and the issues encountered have at times been frankly really confronting, it has been a source of perpetual renewal and reinforcement to have worked with so many terrific colleagues both here and internationally.  It is the people that one remembers the most.   I will be forever grateful to those who have been so helpful and constructively supportive in the many matters we have mutually confronted. There have been many good wins matched with some memorable awful problems and opponents!  It has all been the stuff of a rich and varied professional life that I would never have had without the benefit of the trust reposed in me by many great colleagues at News Corp.

I wish Rupert Murdoch, Robert Thomson, their new management team in the new News Corp and all my international colleagues nothing but the best continued success with the product and commercial rewards that their efforts so richly deserve. I am genuinely in awe at the range and depth of talent in the company here and in the international arena and have great confidence in the future and all that it holds for the new enterprise.

Finally, I thank all my Australian colleagues for their support, understanding and commitment to the company, its products and customers over a long time. There are far too many people to single any one out – you all know who you are and what we have shared together!

With my warmest and best wishes to you all in continuing to meet the challenges of change to achieve a great future individually and corporately.

Kim Williams

More Here

How Murdoch's news.com.au defined Abbott's People in 2009 :

Global Warming conspiracy theory

This theory claims the science behind current environmental changes - as popularised by Al Gore in the film An Inconvenient Truth - was created for financial gain.

Some believe that governments are using the global warming "myth" to raise taxes and restrict competitive US businesses in Europe - or that it is a United Nations ploy to create a one-world government.

It's like reading the How To opinion manual for The Australian

Weird Scenes Inside The Murdoch News Mines

By Darryl Mason

News Limited executive editor (does that mean he just gets a nicer chair?) Alan Howes explains how the Murdoch tabloids act as "the watchdog" of modern politics (Headline : Taking A Rude Joy In Kicking The Watchdog) in this lovely piece of corporate propaganda, distributed widely, of course, across the Digital Rupert media landscape :

NEWSPAPERS easily make friends and enemies.

The friends are mostly readers, and mostly voiceless, but for the role a newspaper can play in representing their interests. The enemies are almost always powerful.

A key function of a thinking newspaper, like ours, is to snap at the heels of our elected governments and their appointed officials.

Yeah, woof woof, we get it.

That puts you onside with readers - whose only chance of directly expressing an opinion might come every election.

Unless they can write letters, protest, stage boycotts, type in comments on a multitude of news blogs and 'comment now' news stories, make phone calls to radio stations begging for talkbackers to call in, attend local political events where politicians are present, or use Twitter, Facebook and e-mail. Just how many housebound, illiterate readers with no access to modern communications or electricity do Murdoch tabloids have?

Alan Howe is one of those believers in The Right To Know. Except when it comes to knowing too much about the Murdoch media.

More than a few of them have been calling for an inquiry into Australia's media. If that threat sounds familiar, it should: We had the Norris Inquiry in 1981, a Working Party into Print Media Ownership in 1990 and, later, the Print Media Inquiry that spanned two years.

There's only been three inquiries into the Australian media in three decades? Only three? Is that all?

Perhaps Alan Howe is quietly terrified that many of his newspapers' readers would like to see the 2012 media inquiry televised, like the WaterGate hearings, particularly if a string of Australian celebrities and former politicians are willing to speak out on how their privacy was violated.

And to prove that the biggest bitches in the media have, in fact, always been male tabloid newspaper editors, Alan Howe takes on his critics :

Victorian Labor backbencher Steve Gibbons (who is he?)...

...dangerously thoughtless Greens Senator Christine Milne...

We should all be concerned about thoughtless dangerousness, too.

... NSW Labor MP John Murphy (doesn't ring a bell)

Oh, snap Alan. You nasty.

And of former Murdoch-league media mogul and competitor Conrad Black, News Limited executive editor Alan Howe has this to say :

Ironically, sodomy is no doubt often on the menu at Florida's Coleman Correctional Complex, where (Conrad Black) returns next month to serve out the rest of his sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice.

Prison rape is what Murdoch critics deserve, apparently.

Anyway, watchdogs.

Two of Australia's keenest Murdoch tabloid watchdogs gleefully discuss the new hairstyle of the former NSW premier :






Andrew Bolt :

Letting her hair down in Opposition. Well, letting someone’s hair down.

As they say, me-ow.

Just form a knitting circle or something.

Murdoch's Criminal Spying Scandal Will Soon Break Here

How Many Australian Celebrities And Crime Victims Did Murdoch Journos Or Their Private Investigators Hack?

By Darryl Mason

The Murdoch Spying Scandal is now so massive, so obscene the near total Australian Murdoch media blackout can no longer be maintained. From today's The Australian :




The AFP story :

A key US senator called for a probe into whether alleged hacking by Rupert Murdoch's media empire had extended to US citizens and warned of "severe" consequences if that proved the case.

"I encourage the appropriate agencies to investigate to ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated," senate commerce committee chairman Jay Rockefeller said.

"I am concerned that the admitted phone hacking in London by the News Corp may have extended to 9/11 victims or other Americans. If they did, the consequences will be severe," said Rockefeller, a Democrat.

His comments came as Murdoch faced an onslaught from British MPs as the government backed calls for him to drop his bid for pay TV giant BSkyB and a committee summoned him to answer questions on phone hacking.

It may be only a matter of weeks before one of Australia's most famous actors decides it's time to go public with their own stories and evidence of having been hacked and spied on, either by journalists employed by News Limited, or private investigators hired by them.

At a guess, I think the actor will come forward shortly before a parliamentary investigation into Murdoch's business practices in Australia is announced.

We won't have to wait long.

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 :

"The Media Can't Be Trusted To Tell The Truth"

(I'm re-posting this August 2009 post because it seems even more accurate today than when originally posted)

By Darryl Mason

Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes, in a debate, lists a series of recent debacles from the mainstream news media :

On July 21, four days after the Jakarta hotel bombings, Seven News reported: ‘‘Another bomb has exploded in Jakarta. The device went off just moments ago at a building near the Australian embassy.’’ No, it didn’t. No bomb, no unexploded bomb, no suspicious package. Nothing but a couple of hoax phone calls.

On June 20, the first edition of The Daily Telegraph and other News Ltd papers read: ‘‘Revealed: Email that could topple a Government.’’ That email may yet topple an opposition leader. But it won’t do any harm to the journalist who ‘‘revealed’’ its content, or the editors who decided to publish it, even though it turned out to be a fake.

Then there’s page one of The Sunday Telegraph on March 15: ‘‘PAULINE BETRAYED. Provocative: A young Pauline Hanson pouts for the camera in racy lingerie … ’’

The Sunday Telegraph editor promised to quit if the nipple revealing 'Hanson' photos turned out to be fake. They were fake, the editor didn't quit.

Holmes is just scratching the surface. He argues one of the biggest problems gouging away at the credibility of mainstream media today is not solely a lack of journalists, or highly skilled journalists, but the Deadline Now! atmosphere of 24 hour breaking news on TV, on radio, and online.

Fewer and fewer people are under pressure to produce more and more. That means less time to research, less time to write, less time to check, fewer subeditors to knock copy into shape.

Which is why the media, arguably, can be trusted less than ever to tell the truth.

Holmes posits a greater problem, however, about what modern journalism in mainstream media actually means :

"The media are not in the business of telling us the truth. The media are in the business of telling us stories.

"That simple little word dominates any professional conversation between journalists. I’m working on a story. It’s a good story, a great story, a balltearer of a yarn. Or, it’s a dud story, it’s a non-story, there’s no story.

"The idea of the story, of course, dates back to the time when people made little distinction between fact and fiction. Was Homer telling us the truth about the Trojan Wars? Did the Cyclops really have one eye, or Perseus winged feet? Does it matter? They’re great stories.

"They’re about love, and fear, and rage, and jealousy, and courage in adversity – the same emotions that 2500 years later sell copies of the Tele, or attract viewers to A Current Affair.

"But the media, of course, are supposed to tell us true stories."

How 20th century of you, Mr Holmes. This is the age of manufactured news realities. The story is everything. Does it matter if it doesn't turn out to be true? It's fun for a few days, and if the truth is, eventually, published it usually turns out to be nowhere near as exciting.

The reality a series of stories builds up, even if they are only brushed lightly with the truth, in the media over days, or weeks, or years, becomes for some all the truth they need to know. Or want to know.

Why shatter the manufactured reality with too many distracting facts?

Today, if you want to live in a reality where the future of the planet faces "dire consequences" resulting from our addiction to old energy sources and only the wisdom of carbon tax profiteers like Al Gore and Rupert Murdoch can save us all, you can follow certain columnists, haunt certain news sites and blog sites, all of which will mostly continue to enforce that reality. And add to it.

Or you can believe the climate crisis is one big fat conspiracy created by those who stand to most benefit from the implementation of a global carbon tax.

You can, depending on the radio shows you listen to and the newspapers and bloggers you read, live in Sydney and truly believe that you are under constant direct threat from Al Qaeda (via Somalia/Lebanon/Pakistan/Iran) linked Islamist terrorists.

You can easily find enough material on a handful of mainstream news sites to reinforce that dangerous reality most days, and ignore anything that tells you otherwise, that threatens to bite away at the manufactured reality of a looming threat which you find curiously comforting.

Whatever your choice of fear, it's easy to find a selection of news media and online screeds to feed it and sustain it. You can get Google to send you news alerts every time a story or blog post involving your favourite fear is published online.

Personally, I live in perpetual fear of both UFO invasions and surviving into the post-apocalyptic aftermath of a massive meteor impact. Fortunately, my double fear is countered by supreme confidence that the world-crushing meteor will arrive just as the UFO invasion begins and destroy them all, resulting in the meteor being obliterated into harmless but beautiful fiery dust in our night skies.

You'd be amazed at how many stories find their way online from across the world every month about looming UFO invasions and planet-killing meteor strikes.

Then again, you may already know. You probably read the mainstream media as well.

The rest of the Jonathan Holmes piece is here.

(slightly edited before reposting)

Heath Ledger Was Right About The War On Iraq

"It's Not A Fight For Humanity, It's A Fight For Oil"

By Darryl Mason



Heath Ledger, like the million other Australians who marched against the War On Iraq, was right, as Paul Bignell details in the UK Independent (excerpts) :

Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.

The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.

The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity."

The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq's reserves – 60 billion barrels of oil, bought up by companies such as BP and CNPC (China National Petroleum Company), whose joint consortium alone stands to make £403m ($658m) profit per year from the Rumaila field in southern Iraq.

Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts.

Rupert 'Always Wrong On Iraq' Murdoch knew all about the deal making on Iraq's oil future, and could barely keep his trap shut, boasting a month before the war :

"The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be US$20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."

A bit later, after publicly giving his full and solid backing to the war, Rupert Murdoch explained why, in his deluded old man fantasy world, the War On Iraq was likely to fuel economic recovery :

"We're keeping our heads down, managing the businesses, keeping our profits up. Who knows what the future holds? I have a pretty optimistic medium and long-term view but things are going to be pretty sticky until we get Iraq behind us. But once it's behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else..."

People actually believed that. They really, really did.

At least, until the truth about Australia's ongoing involvement in the War On Iraq became a little clearer in 2007 :



Amusingly, it was Rupert Murdoch's own Australian media empire that spread this bit of truth far and wide. At least they did for a few hours, until Don't Make Rupert Angry censorship survival instinct kicked in and they tried to make their own headlines disappear and went delete crazy on one of the biggest stories of the past decade.

From The Orstrahyun, July 6, 2007 :

The phone calls from John Howard's office to the head office of Rupert Murdoch's News Limited in Sydney yesterday were less than pleasant.

The News.com.au website, the main portal for Murdoch's network of Australian newspaper websites, reaching some more than 1.5 million Australian readers per day, ran a number of headlines claiming John Howard had said that oil was now a key reason to stay in Iraq. Some of the headlines said the Iraq War was a war for oil. Just like all those protesters back in early 2003 claimed it would be.

By the time Howard moved to deny he said anything such thing, it was too late. The story was out, columns and articles had been written and sent to the printers for today's news racks, and there was no going back.

John Howard's office knew there was little point trying to get Fairfax newspapers to retract their stories, in print or online. Howard Admits War For Iraq's Oil was the story many journos for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age had been waiting more than four years to write.

But Howard knew the Murdoch media were likely to play ball. If not in print, then at least online, where news.com.au now reaches more Australians than the same company's newspapers do, in print.

But even until the early afternoon today, almost 24 hours later, some of the Murdoch websites were still carrying 'Howard Says Iraq War For Oil' headlines and stories, even though the main news.com.au site had rewritten headlines and stories, inside its own archive, and published the following correction....oh sorry, clarification :

An earlier version of this story from the Australian Associated Press incorrectly reported the Prime Minister as saying oil was a reason for Australia's continued military presence in Iraq.

He said "energy", but as we all know, "energy" is "oil" when it comes to the Middle East, unless Howard is thinking about cutting natural gas deals with Iran sometime soon.

The phone calls from Howard's office to News Limited HQ clearly worked.

News.com.au chose to blame Australian Associated Press for supplying the wire news story that claimed Howard had admitted to a war for oil in Iraq.

Here's the pre-furious phone calls from Howard's office Uncorrected Version as it appeared online yesterday :

And here's the spiffy new Corrected Version :

Note that the sub headlines now put the words relating to 'Iraq War For Oil' squarely in the mouth of defence minister Brendan Nelson, when it was also Howard who publicly talked of needing to "secure" energy resources in Iraq and the Middle East.

The sub headlines were also edited to remove the dead giveaway line 'Another Reason Is To Uphold Prestige Of US, UK', to be replaced with the far more Freedom And Democracy Agenda-friendly 'We'll Stay Until Iraq No Longer Needs Us, Says PM'.

But perhaps more importantly, note that on both the 'corrected' and 'uncorrected' stories above, the byline clearly reads "By Staff Writers And Wires".

AAP may have supplied a story that claimed Howard said Australia had an interest in staying in Iraq to secure future oil supplies, which is, of course, exactly what he said, but unless the byline is a total lie, more than one journo rewrote or added to the text and headline and sub headlines before it went online. Hence "by staff writers and wires".

But to Howard's utter horror, that correction, sorry clarification, only made it onto the story on the main news.com.au site.

The calls for clarifications to the story must not have gotten through to other city newspaper editors and staff in Murdoch's network. Unless, of course, they chose to ignore the clarifications because the story didn't need any clarifying at all. It was true.

And if that was the case, then good on them for not following directions from head office, via the Howard office.

The below pages were all still online through the Murdoch online stable at 10-11am today, and later.

From the Adelaide Advertiser :



Australia's biggest selling daily newspaper, The Herald Sun, ran the following editorial today, hitting the presses before it could be pulled, and staying online, unchanged, well into the late morning :



The Tasmania Mercury still had this up on their site at midday :


And the Murdoch site in Perth still had this posted after midday today :



Even though the story of Howard's Iraq Oil Slick was running up hundreds of comments an hour on websites around Australia, any mention of it was gone from the news.com.au front page by 10.30am this morning.

Over at Murdoch's flagship 'The Australian' newspaper website, at least three key columnists weighed in supporting Howard's claim that he didn't say what he said, and it really didn't matter even if the prime minister and the defence minister did say what they said. Which they did.

Just to jog your memory, here's a reminder of what John Howard had to say about claims that the, then, still coming War On Iraq was about something other than WMDs and deposing Saddam Hussein back in February, 2003 :

"No criticism is more outrageous than the claim that US behaviour is driven by a wish to take control of Iraq's oil reserves."

And here's what the Murdoch media's favourite political whipping post, Greens Leader Bob Brown had to say in that same week, in 2003 :

This is not Australia's war. This is an oil war. This is the US recognising that, as the economic empire of the age, it needs oil to maintain its pre-eminence.

Back then, 76 percent of Australians were opposed to a War On Iraq.


By midday today, the Australia In Iraq For The Oil scandal was making international news, in a big way.

And the hundreds of headlines from around the world were immune to Howard's attempt to reframe his own comments, and those of his defence minister. They went in hard, using Howard as the first leader of a Coalition Of The Drilling country to finally admit the truth about a war so blackened and poisoned with so many lies :

Herald Sun, Melbourne : PM's war for oil

Daily Times, Pakistan - Oil key motive for Iraq involvement: Australia

The Scotsman, Scotland - Oil keeps Australia in Iraq

The Independent, UK : Australian troops 'in Iraq because of oil'

RTE, Ireland : Mideast oil priority for Australia

The BBC : Australians 'are in Iraq for oil'

Turkish Press, Middle East : Oil a factor in Australian role in Iraq: minister

Voice Of America : Australia Says Oil Key Motive for Involvement in Iraq

The Guardian, UK : Oil a factor in Iraq conflict, says Australian MP

Xinhau, China : PM: Australian troops to stay in Iraq for oil

Aljazeera : Australia admits Iraq war about oil

Forbes : Australia says securing oil supply means no Iraq withdrawal

Press TV, Iran : Aussies in Iraq for Oil

Gulf News, United Arab Emirates : Oil 'key factor for Australia's role in Iraq'

Stratfor (key military intel site) : Australia: Oil A Reason For Iraq Presence

Alsumaria, Iraq : Oil supply is an essential factor

Zee Tv, India : Mid-east oil crucial to our future: Australian PM

Alalalam News Network, Iran : Australia: Oil Means no Iraq Pullout


Some of those same news sites ran Howard's attempts to deny that he said what he said, but his retraction was given mostly backwater coverage. Those international editors knew, like some editors of Murdoch's Australian newspapers knew, that Howard was trying to scam them.

Like he tried to scam the entire nation back in late 2002 when he said he hadn't decided whether or not he would send troops to Iraq, when they were already in the Gulf. And in early March, 2003, when Howard said he hadn't decided yet whether or not commit troops to the coming war, when some of those already deployed troops had already written letters to their children in case they died during the fighting.

Read The Full July 6, 2007 Post Here

------------------------------

So when are we going to have an investigation into the real reasons why Australia became involved in the War On Iraq?

When are we going to have an investigation into Howard government foreign minister Alexander Downer's meetings with some of the world's biggest oil companies in 2002-2004?

When are we going to have an investigation into the false intelligence circulated so enthusiastically by the Howard government and the Murdoch media back in 2002 and early 2003?

Taxpayers who were swindled of almost $20 billion over eight years for the War On Iraq deserve the truth.

The thousands of Australian soldiers who served in Iraq, the hundreds physically & psychologically wounded, those who committed suicide after they got back, the families ruined, deserve nothing less than the truth.