Not So "Funny", Now...

In August, The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair thought events following the sacking of more than 500 staffers and journalists from The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald was "fun" and "hilarious".

(Sacked staffers are) having a little rally in Sydney tomorrow morning, in case you’re wondering about an apparent increase in the city’s homeless population. Sing along, comrades!

Blair was particularly excited about the sacking of a highly paid Herald columnist.

But how many laughs will Blair get out of the fact that his boss Rupert Murdoch is about to start sacking some of Blair's own friends and fellow staffers, along with a savage culling of his barnyard of highly paid columnists?

Announcing a 30-per-cent fall in first-quarter profit yesterday, the media magnate, 77, said the company would step up cost cutting and "manage down" staff numbers where appropriate.

Asked about his newspapers in Britain and Australia, where News publishes The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and The Courier-Mail, Mr Murdoch told analysts: "You will see even leaner operations in both those places. I'm not prepared to say how many people - I know, but I don't want the headlines - but expect across-the-board cuts."

News shares fell 21 per cent yesterday, posting their biggest losses since December 1990, after the company said its operating earnings would fall as much as 15 per cent in 2008-09.

"Did you get fired, pal?"

"No, of course not. I was managed down."

Bridgit at Grods explains here why Murdoch's Sackapalooza Festival exposes The Rupe's first Boyen lecture on Australia's future as :

"...a masterly concoction of cloying nationalistic cliches and paternalistic bullshit."

There's an interesting rumour coming from media friends in the US that Murdoch will follow the example of a growing number of American newspapers and will take at least one of his own Australian newspapers out of printed circulation, to become an online only production with greatly reduced staff numbers, by next February or March.

I'll predict The Australian will get the chop from daily printed editions to become a more lavish, more expensive weekend newspaper, maybe with two magazines and a weekly free DVD.

It seems impossible to think that actual newspapers could eventually disappear, but without classified advertising, most newspapers can't afford to keep going, unless they raise circulations and cover prices and shred staff numbers.

The more newspapers rely on simply printing up Reuters and Associated Press wire stories and running syndicated op-eds, as the Sydney Morning Herald now does incessantly, instead of having actual reporters reporting on real local news, the more newspapers will die. The more reporters they sack, the less individual and local those daily newspapers will become and the less reasons there will be for readers to buy those papers. It does sound like doom.

For me at least, the daily newspaper is already all but non-existent, unless there's a long train ride to be...rodden. I've read most of the next day's paper online by about 2am. From the age of about 12 to only recently, I brought newspapers every single day, without fail. The idea of letting a whole day pass without picking up a newspaper was thought blasphemy, and downright wrong. But I can't say I even noticed when a full week had passed without having picked up a weekday newspaper along with lunch, or the evening bread and milk run.

But losing the weekend newspapers, that actual bundle of magazines and supplements and wind-catching broadsheet pages, will be devastating, and will forever change the fabric of lazy Saturday mornings, particularly those Saturday mornings spent sipping lattes at a paperback-sized, heavily leaning, curb-side table at an achingly fashionable Newtown coffee shop after a big night 'reading Miranda Devine'.

Fox News : We Don't Want To See Obama Or McCain Gunned Down, Honest

Both The Professional Idiot and his Sydney counterpart, Tim Blair, have spent plenty of time cataloguing Evil Pagan Lefties' apparent obsession with crazed American rednecks wanting to gun down Barack Obama. Hell, there's only been three known conspiracies to Obama in the past few months by, what a surprise, racist rednecks. But 'Kill The WannaBe President' imagery and allutations must be catching, because even Fox News is pumping these visuals now.


More on this here

But Fox News is owned by The Professional Idiot and Tim Blair's boss, ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch, so it must be okay then to go completely fucking insane and pump visuals like the one above to an audience that includes many heavily armed rednecks.

How much do you think Rupert himself would gain, cash in hand, from the assassination of either McCain or Obama? Remember, the increased Fox News viewership (almost triple the normal ratings) from the first year of the Iraq War, plus massive increases in sales of Murdoch newspapers across Australia, the US and England, when the war still looked likely to be won (without needing to bribe the Sunnis who were successfully killing many American soldiers a whole bunch of money to stop the slaughter), earned Rupert a few hundred million extra dollars.

A few weeks of increased viewership and historical newspaper sales following a successful assassination would have to earn him at least $20-30 million.

Thank God this circus of an election campaign, which has soaked up a truly insane amount of Australian news time, will be over in less than 100 hours. Well, probably. Then again, who the fuck knows? This is American democracy we're talking about.

When Truth Is 'Trolling'

I wrote a comment to this post by Tim Blair at a Daily Telegraph blog, about claims Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin linked the Iraq War to 9/11 in a speech to US troops, but it was censored for supposed 'trolling'.

I cited this story from the reputable Jane's, published on September 19, 2001, which shows that Israel's military intelligence service, Aman, were probably the first to publicly draw deep linkages between Saddam's Iraq and the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the WTC :

Israel’s military intelligence service, Aman, suspects that Iraq is the state that sponsored the suicide attacks on the New York Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington.

When I sent a second comment, asking these questions...

How exactly is trying to clear up where the Iraq Did 9/11 myth came from 'trolling'? Or is Jane's not a reputable enough source for Tim Blair's blog?

...the comment was again censored for 'trolling' :




So what exactly did Blair and his moderator object to in my comments? Was it that Israel is responsible for trying to link Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, a myth eventually rejected by President Bush? or was it the fact that I mentioned the Jane's story also details how the CIA and Mossad have used car bombs, killing dozens of civilians, as part of their joint 'counter-terrorism' operations?

A year later, in a combined CIA/Mossad operation, a powerful car bomb went off at the entrance to the house of Hizbullah’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah. Seventy-five people were killed.

Terrorism, ironically, is a fairly effective weapon used by the West to supposedly fight terrorism, in the 'War on Terror'. Is this really such a big secret? Only if you read nothing but the Murdoch media.

Obviously Tim Blair's readers need to cushioned from such uncomfortable truths. Wouldn't want facts to get in the way of the 'Our Terror Bombs Are Freedom Bombs' modern warfare narratives.

No Idea

The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair claims Bruce Springsteen "isn't the draw he once was".

Yeah, now Springsteen only draws tens of thousands of people together to hear his songs.

'Oh, Shit. Did We Help Drive Her Crazy?'

We already know Andrew Bolt, The Professional Idiot, has no real sense of humour. He will join in with those who want to give "two fingers" to the Professionally Outraged, while his irony meter registers nothing. They're talking about Professionally Outraged people like you, you moron.

One of The Professional Idiot's favourite targets of his Professional Outrage, for at least two years, has been former stand-up comedian and professional comedy writer Catherine Deveny.

The Professional Idiot's not simply happy enough in feeding the paranoid 'Green Nazi' fantasies of his some of his most dedicated readers. He isn't content to merely dabble in blindingly obvious psychological media warfare tactics, with his constant sprinkling of the reaction words "rage", "hate" and "violence" all over stories he scratches out on his favoured targets. It's not enough to be the most prolific mainstream media distributor of fear and bigotry, as only the Professionally Outraged can do, Andrew Bolt now wants one of his favourite targets fired from her job, on the basis of unconfirmed gossip, when she may need that gig more than ever before :

"An unhappy columnist who writes what seems to me a plea for help, and who confesses she is indeed in trouble, should not be kept in harness by a newspaper hoping to win extra sales from her growing despair."

"Help Her, Don't Exploit Her" The Professional Idiot writes...Andrew Bolt is so sympathetic.

The spreading of mainstream media claims that a columnist for The Age is suffering bipolar disorder begins, of course, with "the equally sympathetic Tim Blair."

This is how sympathetic Tim's been towards Catherine Denevy, a writer whose work he has been stuffing his blogs with for years :

"Deveny’s tiring brain sometimes suggests that she relocate to where stupid people dwell..."

"For just one week every year, the high-pitched shrieking noise coming out of Melbourne is produced by something other than Catherine Deveny:"

"Catherine Deveny is an idea-resistant bigot."

"Catherine seems unbalanced enough to seek Keating-resembling facial modifications."

"The woman is insane."

A light sampling of the dozens of times Blair has used Catherine Deveny columns as the litter tray upon which his readers shit comments about her politics, her weight, her sex life, her face, her vagina. There's less of that kind of thing now Blair is blogging for the Daily Telegraph. His readers can't even swear at her, not like the old days when Blair was an independent blogger.

The Professional Idiot, naturally, has been just as enthusiastic as Blair in unloading general nastiness and twisted interpretations of what the 'possibly bipolar' columnist has had to say :

"It turns out that what impresses her most is abuse."

Here's The Professional Idiot suggesting Deveny be prosecuted for writing about Catholicism. And that was back in February, 2007. Andrew Bolt has been on his Fire Catherine Deveny mission ever since.

In April, The Professional Idiot devoted much space to how "Hateful" Catherine Deveny is, thoroughly proving how embarrassingly simple his concept of satire actually is, and ensuring that when anyone enters Catherine Denevy's name into Google, the second or third thing they see is Bolt's headline "Hateful Columnist". Whose children wouldn't love to see that kind of branding on their mother's search engine results?

Did Blair and Andrew Bolt not ever wonder if Catherine Deveny, a professional comedy writer, was taking the piss? Or are only blokes supposed to be that clever, or able to do that kind of thing so well that they could be fooled so monumnetally?

Now, just in case the already malicious gossip he and The Professional Idiot are spreading about Catherine Deveny, through the the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun, turns out to be actually true - neither 'journalist' used the miracles of e-mail or the telephone to confirm the claims they've published - Blair announces he will lay off :

Deveny’s columns...are a frequent target here. No more. Assuming the above account is accurate...

Why just assume?

A commenter at Blair's nearly gags on the hypocrisy :

A day late and a dollar short Tim. Your contribution to Australian public life has been to make it more vicious, personal and psychologically destructive than it otherwise would have been.

You go beyond the forthright criticism or satire of other people’s ideas or points of view to burrow into their soul. The strategy got you back in the game after no-one would hire you, and it’s served you well.

But these mealy-mouthed declarations of ceasefire are hypocritical in the extreme - as hypocritical as your apparent shock that adversaries could take delight in your recent cancer.

How do you know which of your targets is dealing with problems or issues as bad or worse? Not everyone is as eager to share their diagnoses with the reading public as you are.

Has it ever occurred to you that if you have to stop a certain way of writing about someone because they’re ill, then the attacks were unwarrantedly vicious and destructive in the first place?

So thanks for the late fit of decency pal - maybe your illness has made you think a little more reflective about how you’ll be remembered. But maybe we’d all be a little better off if you found another outlet for whatever’s inside you that propelled you in this direction in the first place.

Of course, you’ll throw in stuff about no-holds-barred comment and free thinking etc, but everyone knows that your selling point is the infliction of pain.

Blair and Bolt use hypocrisy for their own special hysteria.


Tim Blair and The Professional Idiot are having deep thoughts about whether they might have added to Deveny's mental load, or far worse, instigated some, or many, of the problems they seem to believe she is struggling through, with their tag-teaming, often personal attacks, in the blogs and the pages of two of Australia's biggest selling newspapers. Plus all those regularly vicious and downright nasty comments that their readers seem to be so fluent in.

What did they think would happen?

Can people be driven mad by being the target of a co-ordinated campaign of vilification and abuse through blogs and newspapers?

Of course they can. Isn't that the whole point of choosing a target and then going at it, week after week? To play with minds? Some disappointed readers of Blair and Bolt will wonder why they are now backing off, instead of finishing what they started.

The Professional Idiot thinks having an unconfirmed mental disorder is worthy of being fired from what could ultimately prove to be a most vital, important part of recovery. A job, a means of writing her way out of, or through, whatever is troubling her, if the unconfirmed claims from a blog comment that both Bolt and Blair are relying on turns out to be true.

Mental health issues rarely get the sort of coverage they deserve in the media, considering how widespread apparent depression, anxiety and suicidal behaviour is now in Australia.

More so-called mentally ill people should be writing for the mainstream media.

What happened to a diversity of views?

Why do only the apparently sane get to control debate in Australia?

*

The reason why the mainstream media that Blair and Andrew Bolt cling to is dying is because it can't compete anymore for entertainment value with the full-blooded rants and spectacular raves that can be found in the comments of hundreds of thousands of blogs every day. Theirs is a mostly Confected Outrage. And made safe for mainstream public consumption. Lawyers hover over everything Blair and Bolt now write. They are restrained, caged in, by their real, or professionally necessary, conservatism.

Writers like Catherine Deveny go further than Blair or Bolt would dare to, being easily frightened lads, and she manages to flare up the kind of devotion and blinding anger in her readers that Blair and Bolt long for, try so hard to inflame, but very rarely get.

Deveny is an original, perhaps that is what pains them both the most of all.

That and the lingering fear that she may have been having them both on, for years.

* I've posted the chunk I've deleted in comments below due to extreme verbosity.

Hypocrisy Over Hysteria

Blogumists Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt have proudly led the charge against hysterical claims about global warming aired on the ABC and in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Melbourne Age.

So why don't they turn their blowtorches on the far more widely read Australian newspapers and websites owned by Rupert Murdoch who do exactly the same thing, often with even more outrageous and unsubstantiated headlines?

Being dedicated advocates of exposing global warming hysteria, surely Blair and Bolt wouldn't let the fact that they are employees of Rupert Murdoch bias their choice of targets. Right?

The fact is that The Daily Telegraph (where Blair is a blogger and a columnist) and The Herald Sun (where Bolt is a blogger and columnist) actively promote the reality of global warming and regularly feature prominent news stories (not columns or blogs) pumping Rupert Murdoch's June 2007 declaration that global warming induced climate change "poses clear catastrophic threats" and that humans are, at least, mostly responsible for it.

It's like being an anti-gun advocate and working for the NRA's magazine.

Here's a prominent story from today's Daily Telegraph :

Gaffe-y

Tim Blair has settled into his new blog at Sydney's The Daily Telegraph, after howling outrage from many of his readers that he had betrayed them by closing his independent blog. Now if they want to comment at Blair's blog they now have to share comments space with people who actually hold opposing views to their own. The horror.

One day into the new gig, Blair was clearly already well over his mostly Bush-worshipping American readership's endless complaints that their bursts of 'brilliant wit' actually had to be moderated now, and why didn't he get more moderators or work faster so they could more quickly show each other how brilliant and witty they were? Blair's frustration was obvious :

Remember, we’re only 24 hours or so into this. Don’t fear the newness. Only a few years ago my site had no comments facility at all; I used to get slammed for that, too. And later for allowing too many comments. Now, for not posting comments quickly enough ...

We’ll sort things out. Might take a little while, but still.

Blair was then told by some of his most frequent commenters that they didn't think he was all that important to his own blog anyway, and it was the brilliant wit of the commenters that pulled the crowds and kept the blog alive. Nice. Here's Wronwright :

...this blog was built on the comments. This community has essentially crafted a unique situation. I don’t know any other like it. You lose that when you go over to a newspaper blog.

...I can tell it won’t be the same as this blog. For one thing, it’s not enough that moderation is being done. I detest 95% of the trolls and I’d just as soon they’d be eradicated. You can’t do that on a newspaper blog.

Diddums.

Tim Blair is also discovering already how embarrassing it can be to be a newspaper blogger, particularly when you're a blogger that likes to rip into the corporate competition. Witness The Daily Telegraph's Blair going after the Sun-Herald over this story, which claims :

The Australian Army tested chemical weapons on a town which now has deaths from cancer 10 times the state average.

Military scientists sprayed the toxic defoliant Agent Orange in the jungle that is part of the water catchment area for Innisfail in Queensland’s far north at the start of the Vietnam War.

Blair wonders :

A defoliant now counts as a “chemical weapon”? Fairfax staff are traditionally confused over this.

Blair's workmates seem confused as well, because they ran the exact same story on the same day as the Sun Herald over at the Telegraph :



Blair doesn't acknowledge this double-standard, of course. Not yet, anyway.

This is a typical tactic of both Blair and his Yoda, Andrew Bolt at the Herald Sun. They quote global warming hysteria and eco-mania from wire stories run in Fairfax media, and at the ABC, while refusing to acknowledge that their own newspapers are running the exact same stories, often with far more dramatic headlines and imagery. Rupert Murdoch himself announced last year that climate change posed "dire consequences" for the world, and that his worldwide media empire would work hard to convince readers of this truth.

But neither Blair nor Bolt will acknowledge that Rupert Murdoch is a far more influential promoter of climate change than Al Gore, or Tim Flannery (their standard emotional scratching post). Nor will they acknowledge the fact that the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun pump as much, if not more, environment- related Fear & Doom stories into the minds of their readers as Fairfax and the ABC.

But those truths don't tie into the Blair n' Bolt 'Evil Lefties' narrative, of course.

Bob Ellis Challenges Tim Blair To Public Debate

Tim Blair has been having great fun with Labor barnacle Bob Ellis in the past few weeks, on whether or not he deserves to be voted for in the ABC's 'Favourite Australian' poll, and a recent column published at ABC Online where Ellis gruesomely mused on how the world might be a different, and better, place if Hillary Clinton had spent more time orally pleasuring her husband in the mid-1990s.

Ellis responded to a Blair column bagging him in the Daily Telegraph with a letter, that Blair has now published as an opion piece :

Tim Blair said the Iraq War would bring oil prices down, and he still has his job.

He said there would be no humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq and now, with three million Iraqis living elsewhere, and a million of them, probably, dead, he still has his job.

He called George W. Bush a modern-day Winston Churchill, and he still has his job.

I think it's great he still has his job. He shows how wrong the Right are about most things, and how they never learn, and never admit a mistake.

Ellis' easy ire was sparked by this Blair colum and Ellis has now laid down a challenge to Blair that will be humiliating for him to refuse, even though it's clear that Ellis is hoping for a little attention, and money :

If he wants me sacked, impoverished and silenced, he should say why in detail.

Perhaps on a public podium, before a paying audience - one he shares with me.

Any time, anywhere.

Tim Blair's response?

UPDATE : It turns out Bob and Tim have been challenging each other to public debates for almost six years. Blair in 2002 :

...(Ellis) interrupted me with this challenge: we must have a public debate! I'm up for it, Bob. Name your time and place, and my appearance fee.

They're both hoping for attention and money. Six years, and they're still only making goo-goo eyes at each other.

Blair Is Back...But Not Up To Full Speed

Tim Blair is out from under the knife and back home recovering. Probably to his bemusement, and even slight dismay, Blair has had to admit that :

Leftist bloggers have been extremely kind and encouraging in comments about my illness.

Most of them. I deleted three anonymous comments from a previous post about Blair's cancer battle, but they were so over-the-top and ridiculously vile they could have only come from someone wanting to supply material for a later "Lookit! Lookit those sick Lefties so full of hate! Hate I tell you!"

Of course Evil Lefties don't want Tim Blair to log off permanently. Where's the fun in that?


I'll put it down to his no doubt hard and painful recovery, but Blair has been completely suckered in by a heavily parsed quote from Bill Clinton where he supposedly said :

We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.’

It's the kind of Evil Lefties Want To Destroy World Economies money shot quote that gets the anti-progress Righties all het up and frothy.

Bill Clinton's a bloated old windbag, but even he wouldn't be stupid enough to give the anti-progress, anti-renewable energy chorus such a ammo dump of a quote. Here's what Clinton actually said :

"And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada -- the rich counties -- would say, 'OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.' We could do that.

But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world's fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.”

I expect Andrew Bolt will be suckered in by this heavily parsed Clinton quote as well.

UPDATE : Tim Blair gets the message :

The US ABC network’s Jake Tapper, source of the Clinton quote, has badly misrepresented him - as have I by repeating it.

....there’s no way (Clinton) could fairly be accused of urging an economic slowdown.

Non-Cancerous Blair Will Return Soon


Tim Blair's pizza delivery guy looks almost exactly like John Malkovich

The prognosis is good, for now, but blogger Tim Blair is going under the knife next week to have his cancerous abdominal contents removed. If he applies the same dedication to destroying his cancer as he does to regularly dismantling Al Gore, Tim Flannery and Traceee Hutchinson, Blair will get through this.

Back in 2002, Tim Blair's sister had a cancer scare. He wrote :

.....my sister Dianne underwent a routine pap smear. It revealed pre-cancerous cells. She's now recovering from an operation to discover whether she has anything worse to worry about.

Early indications are good. Although Dianne is yet to receive the results from her operation, she at least survived the surgery ordeal. I'm betting on a happy outcome; Dianne is super fit and as tough as hell, with a pain threshold so high it would shame a marathon runner. Which Dianne is, come to think of it.

She's a freak of a gal, my sister. Dianne has inherited all the athletic abilities of my father, combined with my mother's terrifying bulldozer determination.

His sister was given the all clear soon after.

Let's hope, for at least the sake of the Australian blogstream, that Blair gets the same kind of good news soon. Blair's blog, along with four or five fast coffees, can always be relied on to kickstart the head and the heart each morning, whether or not you agree with him. And let's face it, where's the fun (and adrenalin) in only reading blogs that agree with everything you believe? That's a fine way to learn absolutely nothing new.

It will be interesting to see how cancer surgery and a month or more of recovery affects his view of the world, and death in particular. No doubt it will shift a few perspectives, but hopefully the experience won't morbidise his often cutting and insightful wit. Plus, Blair's still got what will surely prove to be one of the funniest and most entertaining books on Australian politics, and the rule of Evil Lefties, to write.

The tributes pouring into Blair's blog are many, passionate and touching. It's nice to see them all not wishing death on someone for a change.

The Quote Of The Year Tim Blair Somehow Missed

Daily Telegraph light-relief columnist Tim Blair has rounded up a bunch of quotes from 2007, including some examples of the fear-mongering associated with climate change and global warming.

But how did he miss this one from Rupert Murdoch, which must surely rate as one of the most fear-mongering quotes of the year?

"Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats."

Or this one from Murdoch where he explains how he will use his vast global media empire to inflict psychological warfare on the public and make them believe climate change is a dangerous reality :

"We need to reach (our audience) in a sustained way. To weave this issue into our content-- make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior.

"The challenge is to revolutionize the message.

"We need to do what our company does best: make this issue exciting. Tell the story in a new way.

"...we can change the way the public thinks about these issues..."

Al Gore and Tim Flannery are fine targets if you want to highlight how public figures are terrifying the public about the possible effects of climate change. But Gore and Flannery can only dream of having the media influence and control to get their message out that Rupert Murdoch has. Murdoch is the biggest promoter of climate change in the world today, and his newspapers and cable channels regularly ramp up the fear-mongering.

But of course, Tim Blair is thoroughly compromised. Rupert Murdoch is, after all, his boss, and like all good Murdoch employees know, you don't diss the boss, even when he's making you look like a massive hypocrite.


September 2007 : Murdoch Media Launches 'Coup' To Take Down Australian Prime Minister

Rupert Murdoch Lectures Australians On The Dangers Of Becoming Too "Anti-American"

Hey Rupert? What Happened To All Those Post-Saddam $20 Barrels Of Oil?

Murdoch Admits He Tells His Newspapers What To Print - "We Can Change The Way People Think"

Murdoch : "Climate Change Poses Clear, Catastrophic Threats" - Fear Monger In Chief Warns Of Apocalyptic Future

Tim Blair's Bush-Mandela 'Gaffe' Gaffe

Blair Forced To Trawl Blog Comments When 'Anti-War Lefties' Fail To Live Up To Soldier-Hating Cliches

Tim Blair Just Can't Stop Lying

Tasmanian Author Promises Biggest "Civil Disobedience Campaign" In Decades For Anti-Pulp Mill Protests

The new Tasmanian pulp mill scored the approval of both Labor and Liberal, and saw conservationist Peter Garrett forced to toe the party line, and lose a rainforest worth of credibility while he was at it. We won't know until after the weekend just how much of an impact the controversial pulp mill's approval will have on the election, or in particular on the electoral choices of the voters of Wentworth, the seat of pro-pulp mill environment minister Malcolm Turnbull.

But activists against the mill are promising that it will never be built.

Here are some excerpts from a fiery speech given by author Richard Flanagan to a crowd of anti-pup mill protesters in Tasmania a few days ago.

While providing some solid background on the history of the massive corruption linking the Gunns woodchipping corporation and the Tasmanian state Labor government, Flanagan promises to join protesters in a civil disobedience campaign he declares will be the biggest since the successful protests stopping the damming of the Franklin River in the early 1980s, and claims the controversial pulp mill will never get the chance to destroy a forest or pollute the environment :

And if, in the end we have all other avenues denied us, if we are left with no other alternative, if it takes standing on the road to the pulp mill site and placing our bodies between their machines and our home, we will stand there, in peace and with pride, united against hate and greed, joined in our love for our island. And if we are arrested and thrown in jail, then we will go to jail in our tens, we will go to jail in our hundreds, we will go to jail in our thousands, and Paul Lennon will have to build seven new prisons to house all the people who will come and who will keep on coming before they even attempt to pour the foundations of one new pulp mill.

Now is the time for turning, now is the season for our change, now must come that moment when we no longer are cowed, when we cease to be silent, when we speak the truth to power and say no to this pulp mill and yes to a future in which we are governed in the spirit in which we live: with goodness, with the interests of others in our heart and not the leash of greed tearing at our throat. Now is that hour, now is our future. The journey is long, the road is dark and frightening, but together we can reach our destination: the Tasmania of which we all dream, where all are welcome and all prosper, made not of lies but truth, built not of rich men's hate but our love for our island and for each other. Our love. Our island. Let's take it back. Let's start marching.

Richard Flanagan brought the issue of the new Tasmanian pulp mill, and the long history of foul corruption linking Gunns and Labor and Liberal governments, to national attention in this shock-inducing article from The Monthly magazine. It is a story that every Australian should read.

Flanagan is the author of the novel, 'The Unknown Terrorist', which has become an international hit and has now been optioned for a movie by Steven Spielberg's company Dreamworks.

'The Unknown Terrorist' is so despised by Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt, who haven't made clear that they've actually read the book they've dismissed as trash, that I had to read it myself. If they hated it so much, there was likely much on interest to be found in those pages. I'm halfway through, and it's a fast, interesting read, which successfully predicted the terror-related non-events of this year, where 'unknown terrorists' were rounded up, publicly prosecuted and then released.

Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt appear to be on a dedicated mission to trash Richard Flanagan as often as they can, but not so often as to raise suspicion to their motives.

Perhaps Bolt is annoyed at Flanagan's best-seller status, while his own book's sales stalled. Perhaps Blair is jealous that Flanagan has actually written books in the first place.

Naturally, Bolt and Blair seem to have absolutely no problem with what Gunns is doing to Tasmania's environment, and the further damage to come from the pulp mill, all against the will of the majority of Tasmanians. Flanagan remains their target of choice, even though there is a state Labor government involved that should be mocked and derided at every opportunity.

Flanagan's promised "civil disobedience" campaign will supply both Bolt and Blair with plenty of material to continue their mockery of those who choose to not sit idly by while a behemoth like Gunns mows down whatever, or whoever, gets in their way.

Expect the Tasmanian pulp mill issue to leap back into the headlines in the first few months of 2008.

By then, the pro-Gunns sate Labor government will probably be feeling cocky enough to try and stop the anti-mill protests and blockades using powers under the anti-terror laws. The powers that already allow for the prosecution of protesters who "interfere" with the smooth running of corporations, like Gunns.

The fear of Islamic terrorism was the bulldozer that rammed through the anti-terror laws, but the laws, and the definitions of what actually constitutes terrorist actions or terror support, are open enough to allow for the prosecution of pro-environment related protesters should a corporate entity like Gunns wish to do so. The bet is that they most certainly will.

If Richard Flanagan goes through with his plans for massive "civil disobedience", he may find himself in a very similar position to a key character in 'The Unknown Terrorist'. Except in his case, it will be his pro-environment actions that may see him fighting 'anti-terror' related charges in the courts.

Flanagan, however, appears ready and willing to fight that battle.

Tim Blair Just Can't Stop Lying

Tim Blair continues to cement his reputation as the new Piers Akerman by lying through his teeth, making utterly false and defamatory claims and trying to smear his critics.

In the below post from his blog, Blair first insinuates that I tried to con him into running false information on his blog, and then he flat out claims that I have done so in the past.

Tim Blair is wrong in both cases, and he knows it. He admitted that he knew he was wrong, but he refuses to post a correction. Every day the below post remains uncorrected is another day he shows what a desperate liar he has become.




Blair also persists with his fantasy that I've contacted his blog under a fake name, or fake names, repeatedly. I've asked him to supply proof to back up his accusations, but he refuses to do so, and has refused to do so for more than 18 months.

In regards to his Friday post, claiming twice that I've tried to encourage him to post fake or hoax stories, he really outdoes his previous efforts with this pathetic behaviour. He knows what he claims isn't true, but he clearly wants it to be true.

From Blair's Friday post.

Someone called “DM” emails:

Tim, Stumbled across this item in the Journal of Geoclimatic Studies...new report pans man-made CO2 as the cause of global warming...bad news for Dr Karl? Only if msm actually reports it, I guess.

The report is bogus. As for “DM”, it could be - let’s take a wild guess - that he is popular internet celebrity Darryl Mason. Multi-identitied Darryl has tried this crap before.

What makes these accusations from Blair particularly hilarious is that I wrote a story on the hoax global warming report on this blog, the day before, pointing out that it was a hoax and that someone was trying to sucker in global warming skeptics with it. That story is here :

Who Is Hoaxing The Global Warming Skeptics?

The story helping to expose the hoax report, and questioning the motives of the person responsible, went online the day before Blair posted his absurd accusation that I had probably sent him news of the report, trying to pass it off as the real thing.

The story I wrote on the hoax report, on Your New Reality, was picked up by a number of international websites with formidable reputations as global warming skeptics.

Tim Blair has my e-mail address and could have easily contacted me to ask if I had sent him that e-mail under the 'DM' moniker. But he didn't do that. He just posted the accusations on his site, and now he knows the truth he refuses to post a correction.

His credibility continues to sink into the same pit that his News Limited colleagues Andrew Bolt and Piers Akerman already dwell in. They are pulling him down with them.

No wonder his Australian readership is peeling away.


A few years back, Blair saw himself as a kind of gatekeeper on the Australian political blog front. When a new blog showed up, and started to get some attention, Blair would go out of his way to try and discredit the blogger (usually screaming "Liar!" with little to back up his claims) on his site. He then left it to his mostly American desperately unhinged right wing commenters to unleash hails of abuse, threats of violence and usually disgusting and extremely defamatory claims about the blogger's sexual preferences, their beliefs and the behaviour of the blogger's parents.

Some of the new bloggers were so shocked by the foul language, accusations and threats that were hurled their way, and filled their comment boards, thanks to Blair, that they were often forced to close their comments or chose to give up blogging.

So much for Tim Blair's helping to build Australia's blogging community.

Even a woman running a small coffee shop near Byron Bay found herself on the receiving end of vile vitriol and puerile abuse from Blair's readers after being singled out by Blair for mentioning that Philip Adams had stopped by her shop.

When the few on Blair's comment boards ever dared to suggest that the some new blogger Blair had singled out for rigorous attention deserved a fair go, and that Blair was being a bully, they too would then be subjected to the same kind of abuse and then often banned from the comment boards for being "a troll".

You would expect that as now Blair has been joyously welcomed into the Australian right wing commentariat elite, and in the process has picked up a gig as the opinion editor of the Sydney Daily Telegraph, that he would hold himself to a higher standard of journalistic professionalism and ethics than to post pure lies as fact, and then refuse to post corrections.

But you'd be wrong.

Blair is showing signs of extreme stress and desperation as he tries to cope with the reality of the rapidly shrinking Australian readership at his blog, despite it being granted the equivalent of a large strip ad across Blair's full page Saturday column in the Daily Telegraph each and every week.

Where only a year or so ago Blair could lay claim to having the biggest readership of all the Australian political blogs, he is now being flogged by the likes of Poll Bludger and Blogocracy, to name only two, and relies on regular links from Andrew Bolt's blog, through the hugely viewed Herald Sun site, to stem the tide of his falling Australian readership.

Blair has now adopted the exact same unethical tactics that he once so loftily and enthusiastically accused so many mainstream "Lefty" journalists and opinion writers of repeatedly using to attack or defame their critics.

But Tim Blair was an independent blogger back then, with fire in his soul.

Now he's just another mainstream sellout, gasping for attention.

"Psychotic" Blue Poles Painting The Work Of 'CIA Mind Control Programmers'



In an effort to give some unbiased publicity to the smaller parties contesting the upcoming federal election, the Courier Mail reports today :

A party contesting the federal election believes a painting hanging in the National Gallery is undermining our collective ability to think straight.

The Citizens Electoral Council, with a 16-strong team in Queensland, endorses a pamphlet called Children of Satan III: The Sexual Congress For Cultural Fascism.

The pamphlet alleges the "Congress for Cultural Freedom" was a CIA-backed group which sponsored modern art to undermine "the population's ability to think".

It's a most curious choice of all the platforms and positions the Citizens Electoral Council takes for the Courier Mail to single out this one. They couldn't be trying to make the CEC look like a bunch of nutters, could they? The 'Children Of Satan III' pamphlet was released more than three and a half years ago.

More up to date is the CEC's opposition to the 'cult' of global warming. Strangely, Rupert Murdoch's Courier Mail makes no mention of the CEC's consistent railing against the global warming "fraud", a platform that has brought their website plenty of new traffic recently, and represents a position strongly echoed by two Murdoch journalists, Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt.

On their opposition to Blue Poles, the CEC prefers students to be taught about classical paintings, not modern art. Here's what the CEC has to say about the Congress or Cultural Freedom (CCF) :

"...it is a CIA-funded cultural warfare unit sponsoring hideous modernist and postmodernist "art" against the Classical tradition in art. This irrational garbage called "art" is used as a way of undermining the population's ability to think. One notorious example of this cultural warfare was the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom's support for the psychotic "Blue Poles" painting in the National Gallery of Australia by Jackson Pollock, a stalwart of the CCF.

A classical education must start at Pre-School level and henceforth be encouraged and funded throughout all schooling levels, universities and government media—radio and television alike. The CEC will adequately fund classical orchestras, actors, painters, sculptors and indeed all artists embracing the classical tradition.

Over time, this education will generate a culture of beauty, allowing us to understand the true nature of mankind—that we are creative beings inspired by ideas—not animals obsessed by instantaneous pleasures. Our suicide rates, crime and drug culture would necessarily reduce and as such we will witness a corresponding economic renaissance.

They could have just said they don't like a lot of modern art.

Plenty would agree with them on that.

'Violent' Pro-Howard Blog Gets Blocked By Government's Web Filters

Is Tim Blair's blog really too dangerous to be viewed by children?

Does it contain adult content? Offensive content? If you visit Blair's blog, will you come across 'High Impact Material' that falls under an X-rated classification as determined by the Howard government censors?

A reader e-mailed Blair recently to let him know that the Howard government's "Won't Someone Please Think Of The Children?" free internet censorship program rates Blair's blog as "violent" and blocks access.

The Howard government recently unfurled an $80 million-plus NetAlert program to provide free content filtering software to all Australian families.

The filtering software responsible for the virtual banning of Blair's blog in tens of thousands of Australian households is called Intergard, which also blocks all peer-to-peer file sharing, and appears to allow third parties (outside the home) to access web surfing histories, without the computer's users being aware.

Such outside access to temporary or hard drive computer files, via free programs like 'net nanny' content filters, are known in intelligence circles as a "backdoor" and are usually accessible through the use of auto-updates, as the Howard government's own content filtering Q & A page admits :

These updates are automatically added each time you connect to the internet.

A government that could get their hands on records of the web surfing habits of possibly hundreds of thousands of Australian children and teenagers, through the sharing of information derived from content filtering programs, would be a very well informed government indeed. How many kids are visiting, say, the Kevin07 site, and for how long? What information are they downloading from that site? How many times are they viewing Kevin07 videos?

Valuable information for a government. Particularly if they happened to be in the middle of an extremely grim election campaign.

But back to Blair and his X-rated "violent" blog.

Exactly how does the Howard government's NetAlert content filtering programs go about determining which sites should be blocked, or are deemed to contain prohibited content?

Some info from the NetAlert site :

Internet content filters can be used to help filter offensive web pages.

Some internet content filters use a variety of techniques to detect unwelcome content. One of the most common are ‘black’ or ‘exclusion’ lists to block access to content. These ‘black’ or ‘exclusion’ lists contain websites or website pages that have been deemed to carry inappropriate content...

If the user types in an internet address or click on a link to content which is on a black list, they will be blocked from viewing that content.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) regularly update a list of prohibited content. These websites, or web pages, are blocked by the free internet content filters being provided by the Australian Government’s NetAlert – Protecting Australian Families Online initiative.

Prohibited content is determined according to classification guidelines under the National Classification Scheme.

The Australian Government has implemented an online content regulatory scheme which allows the Australian Communications and Media Authority to require websites hosted in Australia to ‘take down’ prohibited material.

Prohibited content is internet content within the classifications RC (‘refused classification') or X 18+.

Certain kinds of extreme content are refused classification...

The RC classification includes content that contains: child pornography; bestiality; excessive violence or sexual violence; detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use.

A third category of strong content is also regulated. Content classified R 18+ includes content that depicts high level violence, implied or simulated sexual activity or other high impact material.

High impact material.

How's that for a loose and open-to-personal interpretation definition of what can or should be censored?

What is particularly interesting about the above definitions is that you would presume it refers strictly to violent or pornographic images or photographs or videos. Not so.

As Blair has discovered, simply writing about certain subjects, or allowing your commenters to call for the violent deaths of journalists and celebrities (even if they're supposedly 'joking') may be enough to get your site blocked by Howard government online censors.

Or maybe it was Blair's publication of the infamous 'MoToons' that got his site on the blocked list.

Whatever the reason, this is extremely disturbing news.

How will young Australians learn about Evil Lefties, the Great Global Warming Conspiracy, Al Gore's bizarre cold-weather attraction, President Bush's non-plastic turkey, unhinged columnists for the Melbourne Age and David Marr's clearly absurd claims that the Howard government is restricting debate and censoring free speech (oh, right) if they can't get the scoop from Tim 'High Impact Material' Blair?

I'm sure Communications Minister Helen Coonan will move very fast indeed to have Blair's site removed from the blocked list, possibly within a day or two.

The Howard government needs every supportive blogger it can get.

The Slim Chance

How do you know when you've scored a link on Tim Blair's blog?

You start getting comments like this :

Anonymous said...

you, sir, are a verbose f..kwit c.nt

But without the '..' of course.

Short attention spans are a curse when you're faced with more than a paragraph, or two.

Tim Blair appears to have a problem with this claim from a recent post :

This blog pulls anything from 1800 to 5000 individual readers per day, with about 80% of the readers coming from inside Australia.

Blair claims :

Of course, there’s always the slim chance Darryl is making things up.

The "slim chance" is Blair's idea of sarcasm. This is the sort of slimy wording you use when you want to put forward an accusation but have no proof to back it up.

Here's visitors stats from Adsense for a recent average day for The Orstrahyun :




Perhaps Blair is troubled by the downward trend of visitors to his blog in the past ten months :



Or the fact that 79% of his readership now comes from the United States, while only 3% comes from within Australia (a few hundred most days when Andrew Bolt doesn't send over some traffic) :



UPDATE : It has been pointed out to me that the above pie chart may only represent the Australian readership of Tim Blair at a certain time of the day. Viewing the Sitemeter piechart over several days, at different times, shows Blair's Australian readership swinging wildly about. Sometimes it's 10%, other times as high as 40%.


But Blair's not alone in experiencing a dramatic drop in readership. It's happening all across the blogs that still champion Bush, find no fault in the Iraq War, actually believe that Islamists will find a way to over-run Western democracies and still cling to the belief the NeoCon swamp tide of death is the best thing that's happened to the world since the fall of European communism.

The rightoid blogs that helped Blair to find his large, mostly American readership - Powerline, Michelle Malkin, - have also experienced heavy losses of readership in the past year, as have many other attack blogs of the right, while 'lefty' blogs like Crooks & Liars and Think Progress have been steadily rising.

Blair's readership should, if anything, be growing by the day. He regularly picks up links from Andrew Bolt's blog, hosted by the Herald Sun and News Limited websites, two of the most heavily trafficked sites in Australia. Plus he gets a nice big plug for his blog across his Saturday full page column in Sydney's Daily Telegraph, a newspaper apparently read by more than 100,000 people.

If links from Bolt and a banner 'ad' in the Daily Telegraph won't drive up your readership, what will?

Or maybe Blair is just annoyed that he has been forced to hand around the bowl :

It’s the first selfish fundraiser in this site’s six-year life! Aims: replace the ancient laptop, set up a wireless deal, launch some cash at admin, pay off those damn bookies and get video happening.

Readers of The Orstrahyun should make a contribution if they can. It would be a loss to the Australian blogstream if Blair disappeared, or was unable to include videos of Kevin Rudd enjoying some ear fruit.

Blair continues to make a solid contribution to the growth of blogging in Australia, and remains one of our funniest and most precise bloggers, even if a disturbing number of his regular commenters revel in the untimely deaths of world leaders and celebrities, fixate endlessly on dreamed up 'lefty' conspiracies, have trouble expressing themselves beyond "you are a fuckwit c.nt" and enjoy fantasizing about how certain journalists should die or be killed.


Go Here To Read Darryl Mason's Online Novel ED DAY

Murdoch Media Chief Blasts Howard Government For Its War On Freedom Of Speech

News Limited CEO : "It's A Disgrace", Claims Freedom Of Speech More Restricted Now Than Any Other Time "In Living Memory"

In an extraordinary speech, Rupert Murdoch's key man down under, News Limited CEO John Hartigan, has attacked the Howard government for trying to shut down public debate and curtailing freedom of speech in Australia.

Hartigan said :

"...press freedom - the freedom of speech - is more restricted now than in living memory".

He believed the media enjoyed even less freedom than when, as editor of the Brisbane Sun, Queensland premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen tried to jail him.

Attorney General Philip Ruddock was "kidding" with his claim that "Freedom Of Information laws ensured all appropriate material is available to the public", Mr Hartigan said.

He said a current review of laws was so limited in its terms as to be "a disgrace".

"I believe Australians still care about their freedom and the value of great journalism.

"If you do too, fight like hell every inch of the way."

Interesting. When Fairfax reporter David Marr says the Howard government is curtailing freedom of speech in Australia, Murdoch media opinionists like Andrew Bolt go absolutely bonkers, call him hysterical and attack him for exaggeration.

But when his own boss echoes Marr and blasts the Howard government for curtailing freedom of speech?

Not a word from Bolt.

Hartigan's full speech can be read here.

Anti-War 'Lefties' Fail To Live Up To Soldier-Hating Cliches

Tim Blair Forced To Trawl Blog Comments To Nail 'Peaceniks'

You can easily detect the tollings of disappointment in Tim Blair's post on reactions to the death of Australian soldier, David Pearce.

No doubt Blair was all geared up to do a nice big fat post for his fans highlighting all those 'Evil 'Lefty' bloggers and columnists who saw fit to use the tragedy of Pearce's death in Afghanistan to spew anti-Howard and anti-soldier hatred.

But even though he left it almost a full day, Blair was unable to find even one Australian 'lefty' blogger who was ragging on the troops, or spilling anti-war rhetoric, to quote from in his long post.

Not one.

So what did Blair do?

He was forced to trawl through hundreds of comments from an online media site, so he could scrape together a measly 14 or so comments that fitted his pre-planned post, which he then titled :

Leftist Peacenik Sampler

But Blair couldn't go to grim 'Lefty' media hangouts like The Sydney Morning Herald or the Melbourne Age, to round up the 14 or so comments he knew would set his mostly right-wing American readers aflaming. He was forced to find them on the main portal site, news.com.au, for the tabloid newspaper he works for, The Daily Telegraph.

And how did Blair know those 14 or so News Limited media reading commenters were 'Leftist Peaceniks'?

Since when did Murdoch's media demand to know political affiliation for people wanting to comment on news stories on Murdoch media sites?

Since never.

But Blair knew he had to deliver a big fat post on his blog full of examples of vile Australian 'Lefty' soldier hate for his readers, or they'd be so disappointed. Not only disappointed, but they might start believing the very obvious truth that the vast majority of all Australians, whether they vote for John Howard or not, hold absolutely no animosity at all for soldiers who have gone to war, mostly because so many Australian families have long histories marked and punctuated by the tragedy of traumatised war veterans who were unable to explain what had happened to them.

Trawling comments and then quoting them is a standard tactic of Blair's American right-wing blogging and conservative media allies. Read through enough comments and you will be guaranteed to find people spilling the kind of bile you can use to make whatever pathetic point you want. And it's so much more dramatic, and downright grim, when you use this technique for blog posts on the deaths of soldiers, less than 24 hours after the tragedy has occurred.

You're a sad man, Blair, and you're trying to create an atmosphere of division and hate that doesn't actually exist in any large or even noticeable way in our society, outside of the media. Outside of blogs like your own.

But if your intention is to waste your excellent writing talents on becoming the next Piers Akerman or Andrew Bolt, then congratulations are due : you've just proved you're already there.

Tim Blair's Bush-Mandela 'Gaffe' Gaffe

Tim Blair, of Sydney's The Daily Telegraph, loves to point out how evil, deluded Lefties consistently misconstrue the words of the wise and poetic President Bush :

'Nuance Missed'...read a lefty who apparently thinks Bush was literally referring to Nelson Mandela.

Pity Tim Blair of the Daily Telegraph didn't bother to notice that the Daily Telegraph is also misconstruing the words of President Bush :

By Staff Writers

Nelson Mandela is still very much alive despite a gaffe by US President George W. Bush, who alluded to the former South African leader's death in a speech yesterday.

Another Tim Blair triumph of Lefty-bashing, while ignoring the increasing tide of Bush vilification in his own newspaper.

Blair became one of the most popular bloggers in Australia in 2003-2004, mostly due to his occasionally funny work in shredding the hypocrisy and hysteria of the mainstream media.

Now Tim Blair is about as corporate mainstream media as you can get in Australia, with his gig as opinion editor and columnist with the Daily Telegraph, he's become one of the corporate media hypocrites he once so devotedly despised.

He'll enthusiastically wet lily-bash some blogger hyping global warming, who gets a few hundred visitors a day, while totally ignoring the climate change fear-mongering now so prevalent in his own newspaper. The same newspaper which is read by hundreds of thousands of people per day, and which helped to push climate change into the top three of the most important issues and voter concerns in the coming federal election.

The biggest promoter of the threat of global warming in the world today is not Al Gore, it's Rupert Murdoch, Blair's boss.

Rupert Murdoch : "climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats."

Murdoch also said he would take the fight against global warming and :

...weave this issue into our content-- make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun.

"We need to do what our company does best: make this issue exciting. Tell the story in a new way.

"...we can change the way the public thinks about these issues..."

Witness the Daily Telegraph's sudden, total embracing of the fight against global warming as a prime example of Murdoch's promise in action.

But will you see Blair shredding Murdoch for succumbing to - as fellow Murdoch media professional hypocrite Andrew Bolt put it - "the most superstitious pagan faith of all."

Of course you won't.

There are some things more important than pointing out the delusions and hypocrisy of the mainstream media. And for Blair that is making sure he stays a part of it.

The Professional Idiot Admits Defeat On Global Warming

"I've Done My Dash..."


After months of pretending that little had changed at the newspaper and the media company he works for, anti-global warming alarmist, Andrew Bolt, has finally admitted defeat off the back of a massive eight part 'Saving Planet Earth' campaign, with poster liftouts for the kids, in Sydney's Daily Telegraph. A campaign soon to be replicated in Bolt's own newspaper, The Herald Sun, which he likes to point out is "Australia's biggest selling newspaper".

Ever since his boss Rupert Murdoch announced that "climate changes poses clear, catastrophic threats" in early May, Bolt has been slowly degrading the sharpness of his attacks on those who claim to be fighting the rise of global warming.

No longer does Andrew Bolt lash out and call the likes of Al Gore and Tim Flannery deranged and mentally unstable and peddlers of fiction, as he did not so long ago, for their calls to combat climate change. How could he? His own boss has joined the campaign.

Murdoch said he would use his worldwide media empire to spread the message about combating climate change, and seeing as he control 70% of Australia's newspapers, News Limited can now claim the title of being Australia's largest reaching, and most influential, anti-global warming campaigner.

Before Rupert Murdoch converted, Bolt used to call Gore, Flannery and other CC campaigners frauds and liars. If they weren't mentally ill, they were "hysterical". Or they were falling victim to "the "warming faith", "the irrational faith", or the "new apocalyptic faith".

Here's Bolt on May 3, referring to global warming as :

"...a religion that already shows signs of falling apart."

Here's Bolt on Thursday, May 8 :

"I repeat, it’s a religion, and with that old-time hook - Repent, for the end of the world is nigh..."

True believers in global warming and climate change were, according to Bolt, all a bunch of "cultists" and, my personal favourite, they were busy promoting "the most superstitious pagan faith of all".

But then Rupert Murdoch delivered his "Clear, Catastrophic Threats" speech on May 9, and Bolt began to tone down the attacks on the "warming faithful", clearly because Rupert Murdoch had become one of them.

Now the Sydney Daily Telegraph has launched its massive 'Saving Planet Earth' campaign - with a similar campaign to soon begin in the Melbourne Herald Sun - Bolt is facing up to his corporate responsibilities, where blinding hypocrisy is clearly worth less than eight pages of ads in a Sunday liftout. But Bolt goes down with plenty of whining :

"How thrilled I am that one of the papers in our News Ltd family is campaigning to save the world from this shocking global frying that will start any time soon..."

Back in the days when Andrew Bolt didn't have to curb his opinions, or rein in his ranting, global warming campaigners were "planet wreckers". Now he calls them "planet savers".

How infuriating it must be for Bolt to see the "inspiring words" of his arch-enemies of reality, Tim Flannery and Al Gore, featured so prominently, without criticism, at the forefront of News Ltd's full blown climate change campaign.

Flannery? Gore? Even worse, soon to be federal Labor environment minister, Peter Garrett, was online the Daily Telegraph's live blog "discussion" of the day.


Andrew Bolt has admitted defeat :

Face facts: There’s no place now for my kind of petty carping....who might employ me now that I’ve done my dash.

Seniors Weekly?


Tim Blair, columnist with the 'Saving Planet Earth' Daily Telegraph, once warned Tim Flannery and other global warming proponents to stop scaring children with fear campaigns based on (in Murdoch's own words) the "clear, catastrophic threats" posed by climate change.

In particular, Blair warned those climate change true believers to "stay away" from his nieces, and fulminated over the teaching of global warming in schools.

The Daily Telegraph now devotes web resources pages and newspaper liftouts to teaching students the very same kind of Flannery approved "fear campaigns" that Blair and Bolt once railed so vehemently against.

News Limited is even linking up with a 'cool' mascot to 'get down' with the kids on ways of conserving energy : Ollie!

Will Blair now warn of the "alarmist" climate change fear campaigns of his own newspaper, and debunk the 'Saving Planet Earth' series? Particularly now the Daily Telegraph is pumping stories he once mocked about polar bears turning into cannibals due to the effects of global warming?

Yeah, right.



Regardless, Murdoch columnists struggling with their boss's embracing of all that they hate has become a very, very entertaining spectator sport, with plenty more fun to come.


The Changing Climate Of Andrew Bolt - Betrayed By Murdoch Over Climate Change

Bolt Anticipates Terror Attacks In Australia So Howard Can Showcase His "Vast Experience"

Back In The Gutter Where He Belongs