Murdoch Media : How To Spot A Global Warming 'Conspiracy Theorist'


image sourced from here

From news.com.au :

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.

Now you know.

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See That Shark? Watch Me Jump It

Meanwhile, The Great 'Rudd Shields Swan Over Fake Email (GRSFEC)' Conspiracy Theory Takes Shape

By Darryl Mason

After a consistently entertaining and dramatic week in politics in which utes and emails came to feature together for the first time in newspaper headlines. The Daily Telegraph's Piers Akerman straps on his water skis and submits his claim for monumental irrelevancy,

The last weeks of the winter session have been more damaging to the Rudd Labor Government than the Coalition, no matter how you slice it.

The first polls after the solid week of Utegate headlines, hysteria and claims of snarky conspiracy, show the opposite of what Akerman effervescently claims, and the damage inside the Liberal true believer ranks seems intense :

Malcolm Turnbull has paid for his botched attack on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, with more than half of voters believing he was deceitful about a now-notorious fake email. Even among committed Coalition voters, nearly a third believe he has been deceitful and another 10 per cent say he has been dishonest.

A Galaxy poll taken at the weekend has revealed the Opposition Leader's integrity has taken a hammering, revealing a rump of only 7 per cent of voters who think he was "open and honest" during the affair.

If it turns out that Turnbull was speaking, mostly, honestly throughout his dozens of interviews last week, something else will be needed to explain why so many Australians looked at Turnbull being interviewed on TV and thought, 'Oh, this guy is so full of shit.'

Malcolm Turnbull was interviewed by the AFP ("The Feds" for American readers) on Sunday, and Labor keeps hammering that Turnbull has something to hide. Something big. Maybe even a little dark, sinister.

Those kinds of vague claims crack deep into our culture's love-hate mistrust of politicians. We love corrupt politicians in novels and TV shows, the bastards, but we hate them in real life, those bastards.

And A Politician Who Has Something To Hide From The Feds feeds our political thriller fiction-fuelled desire to see corrupt politicians flayed publicly and prosecuted rigorously, regardless of who they are.

So Lindsay Tanner goes for a gushing head wound :

"Clearly, he's not going to provide his computer records to the federal police," Mr Tanner told the Nine Network.

"Given the nature of the potential crimes we're dealing with here, that is appalling. He should be making all assistance available to the federal police in order that they can determine whether any serious crimes have been committed and pursue them accordingly if they have been."

Brutal. And damn hard to shake off, even if the AFP interrupted Masterchef for ten minutes to announce that Malcolm Turnbull was in the clear and there was no reason to doubt his honesty on anything ute or e-mail related anymore. Even then, there would be plenty of Australians wandering around muttering, "Malcolm Turnbull? Dodgy prick."


Piers Akerman asked his readers the following question :

....did anyone really believe someone within Treasury would be sending faked emails?

Commenters responded to his call for exploration of a larger conspiracy involving Rudd & Swan and reasonably high-tech fakery and so was crafted a conspiracy theory swollen with potentially thrilling drama, tech-treachery and possible falls from power that makes you want to shout "I Want To See This Movie! (or at least read the book)', even if the theory doesn't turn out, in the end, to be actual reality. Some of these comments from Akerman's blog have been slightly
edited :

Michael A replied to lethal
Sun 28 Jun 09 (06:26am)

It is very interesting that the AFP were able to tell everyone the email was a fake almost immediately but have still not enlightened us as to the origins of the email. Was this all a Labor setup?

Angry God replied to lethal
Sun 28 Jun 09 (12:06pm)

As far as I understand computers and managed networks such as government systems, they facts are that the original email would contain data known as the MAC addreess. This is a unique number (that can be spoofed if you know what you are doing). The managed network locks these MAC addresses to the network switch.

A resonable investigator would have been able to identify the originating computer in a few seconds if they were competant. We assume that they are competant and as such we know that the AFP knows which computer initiated the modified (read fake) email.

In a managed network the spoofing of a MAC address within an email will be highlighted as a security breach. So either no spoofing of the MAC address occured or the email was sent from an outside of government network computer.

The AFP will know this info. It will be interesting where the fake comes from as it will be identified by this method.

Ann replied to lethal
Sun 28 Jun 09 (12:24pm)

The cursory search of PMO and Treasury computers by Rudd lackeys found no evidence of email so Rudd shrieks “It’s a fake”. Yet AFP take five minutes to find it was generated on a Treasury computer, sent to Grech home computer then deleted from Treasury computer.

samantha replied to lethal
Sun 28 Jun 09 (02:41pm)

For me, there are two really big questions that need to be answered. WHO in Treasury devised the email, and for what purpose?

Sammi replied to lethal
Sun 28 Jun 09 (03:03pm)

The Treasury generated email was created to catch their leak and it was made as juicy as possible to make sure it would be passed on to the Opposition and used, hence Rudd knew about it before it re-emerged. It also served the double purpose of covering up the copious email trail created by Swan and Co while attempting to secure a loan for Rudd’s mate.

It's a very interesting theory. And no-one showed up to try and dispel it, for many hours on Sunday.

Unlike the Liberal Party staffers who haunt News Limited blogs, do the Labor Party staffers who zip around online, posting anonymous comments on blogs as they run interference, dispensing disinformation, countering accusations, get the whole the weekend off?

Piers Akerman, for what's it worth, is convinced the Great Rudd & Swan Fake Email Scandal still has plenty of drama to be played out :

...the hard evidence still shows that Swan did more in his attempt to assist Rudd’s car-dealer mate, John Grant, than he did for any other car dealer in the nation.

That is indisputable.

Treasury officials, operating on clear instructions from Swan’s office, went to extraordinary lengths on Grant’s behalf.

We'll see. But it would be no great surprise if Rudd and Swan produce something that gets them off the hook. Rudd promised to "mess with their heads" when he became Labor Party leader, and it doesn't look like he has given that strategy even a week off since.

Being the mind-bogglingly biased Liberal Party flunkie and junkie that he is, Akerman wants his readers to believe that whatever happens, it's Not Yet Over for Malcolm Turnbull. Akerman has to rally the team for the man who said that John Howard broke Australia's heart. Akerman knows Turnbull is shedding support faster than Brendan Nelson railing against whatever, but he has to pump for Turnbull. And throw in something conspiratorial about the Greens as well.

This is what Akerman does for a living.

But I'm not convinced that even if Wayne Swan was seized by the AFP and sent in chains to the SuperMax for a solid water-boarding session to finally get him to answer e-mail and ute related questions that happen to be those very "Not The Right Questions" he has refused to answer so far, that Malcolm Turnbull would still be able to effectively change the clearly very real belief amongst so many voters that he is brimming with bullshit and a craptastic liar as well.

Australians love great liars.

It was long part of our oral storytelling tradition to try and spin the wildest yarns, and any brave and bold attempt to pass off a story mostly comprised of obvious fiction was always admired, even if the teller couldn't carry the tale convincingly.

But we can't respect nor tolerate bad liars. And Malcolm Turnbull, like Swan, is a bottom shelf liar.

Turnbull thinks he is a rare brandy, but he is a harsh house spirit scotch when it comes to effectively bullshitting the Australian public. His face is a billboard screaming, "Don't listen to my words, look at my eyes, see? even I don't believe what I'm saying, why should you?"

Joe Hockey loometh.

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Of Course It Was A Conspiracy

The instant reluctance, almost pathological refusal to consider or even mildly entertain the possibilities of Conspiracy is one of the main reasons why so many of the biggest, most deadly, and most damaging, terror attacks remain unsolved.

ICC referee Chris Broad, who was in a van behind the bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team through Lahore, is not afraid to explain why he fears a conspiracy is behind the horrific terror attacks, carried out by a well-trained, extremely well armed and thoroughly rehearsed team who escaped and remain at large today.

As he tried to make sense of what had happened, Broad said there were several questions he was struggling to answer.

"On the first two days (of the Test) both buses left (the hotel) at the same time with escorts. On this particular day the Pakistan bus left five minutes after the Sri Lankan bus. Why?" he said.

"It went through my mind as we were leaving the hotel - 'Where is the Pakistan bus?' But there were times during the Karachi Test when the Sri Lankans went first and Pakistan went afterwards.

"I thought maybe they were having five or 10 minutes more in the hotel and would turn up later, but after this happened you start to think: 'Did someone know something and they held the Pakistan bus back?'"

Broad said although he had no evidence for a conspiracy, the events he had witnessed had left him perplexed.

"At every junction from the hotel through to where we were attacked and all the way to the ground there were police in light blue uniforms with hand-guns controlling traffic," he said.

"How did the terrorists come to the roundabout and how did they start firing and these guys not do anything about it?

"There were plenty of police there and yet these terrorists came in, did what they had to do and then went again. It is beyond me."

It sounds like an ambush.



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Murdoch Journalist Denies Murdoch Media Conspiracy

Andrew Bolt : 'We All Love A Good Conspiracy'

Murdoch Explains How He Uses His Media Empire To Change And Shape Public Opinion

Herald Sun columnist, and blogger, Andrew Bolt rails today against the growing tide of claims that Rupert Murdoch (Bolt's boss) instructed his Australian media empire to go after John Howard because he refused to step down. And that Murdoch gave the double thumbs-up to Labor leader Kevin Rudd earlier in the year, and ever since, Murdoch's sprawl of national, state and city newspapers have been backing Rudd, if not totally, then with a blinding enthusiasm once reserved for John Howard.

But there is no conspiracy, Andrew Bolt claims, all Murdoch columnists and journalists are free-thinking and independent. They can write whatever they like :

Murdoch columnists simply write what they really think, reacting to events that are obvious to anyone with eyes to see and the courage to report.

This theory that Murdoch orders his writers to speak his own mind is peddled by many of the usual suspects, from radical propagandist John Pilger to RMIT's journalism graduates.

But Bolt's claims that Murdoch never "orders his writers to speak his mind" comes completely undone when you look at the May speech by Rupert himself where he clearly lays out his plans to use his worldwide media empire to convince the public that climate change "poses a clear, catastrophic threat" and that he can change the beliefs of hundreds of millions of people.

Not only does Murdoch openly admit to his plans to use his newspapers, cable TV and movie-making empire to change peoples' minds about the threat posed by climate change, he says his media will pump his message directly to its readers and viewers.

All the below quotes from Murdoch's speech can be viewed in the context of how his vast Australian newspaper chain has reflected and precision-focused his desire to see Howard gone and Rudd installed in the prime minister's office :

"We need to reach them 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.

"Now... there are limits to how far we can push this issue in our content.

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

That's exactly what Sydney's Daily Telegraph in particular has been doing. Changing the public mind on how they view John Howard, not necessarily how they view Kevin Rudd. Of course there will be the throwaway columnists hammering Rudd, but that's not where the true influence and change induced by a concentrated media campaign matters the most.

The vast majority of newspaper readers take in the headline and the photograph of the newspapers they buy, and then they might read the intro. Maybe. Most newspapers go unread by their readers. They glance at photographs and headlines and the first few paragraphs. And in Murdoch's daily tabloids, the use of headlines and photographs have consistently, and quite obviously, torn apart and aimed to discredit the once impenetrable image of John Howard they've carefully built up, stone by stone, over the past decade.

Ever since Murdoch's May speech marking climate change as a key issue for promotion through his media empire, Andrew Bolt has quieted his criticism and once hysterical attacks on those who promote the fight against global warming. Sure, he'll still flog Tim Flannery and Al Gore with a wet lilly, but he's pulled back from branding all believers in global warming as being mentally defective and believers of "the most superstitious pagan faith of all".

We go through how Murdoch betrayed Andrew Bolt on global warming in The Changing Climate Of Andrew Bolt here.

In the news.com.au intro to Bolt's 'No Conspiracy Conspiracy' piece, this is written :

We all love a good conspiracy theory, but anyone who thinks opinion writers are told what to write by Murdoch is delusional.

But anyone who thinks an established and highly paid Murdoch opinionst, particularly one as compromised as Bolt, is going to even touch on the truth about about Murdoch's 'hands-off but guiding hand' approach to the editorial content of his newspapers is probably delusional enough to believe what Bolt is writing.

What isn't delusional is that moderators are heavily censoring comments to Bolt's piece, dismissing any Murdoch conspiracy. And the censorship is going down at both the news.com.au front page and on Bolt's blog. Both avenues of comment have been open all day and only attracted a measly 28 comments, combined, by 1pm.

There may well be a conspiracy, but don't expect Andrew Bolt to be your Oliver Stone.


Murdoch Journalists Warns Howard Government About Negative Column Before She Even Finishes Writing It

The Changing Climate Of Andrew Bolt

Andrew Bolt Admits Defeat On Global Warming : "I've Done My Dash"

Back In The Gutter Where He Belongs