Murdoch Mouthpiece Barks : Pro-Peace Aussies Hate News That Less Iraqis Are Being Slaughtered

A gruesome example of absurdity from the editor of The Australian newspaper, Chris Mitchell :

The sad fact is that for most of the anti-war Left, the only thing that matters is delivering a defeat to the Bush administration, and in achieving that end the Iraqi people are expendable.

The anti-war, anti-American Left should be ashamed, but precisely for this reason they continue to look away when Iraq doesn't fail in the way they wish.

What absolute twaddle.

Mitchell clearly still believes in the fantasy that only 'The Left' are opposed to war on defenceless people. That means something like 70% of Australians, and even a greater number of Americans, must be 'Lefties'.

This is yet more garbage about the fictional Left/Right paradigm so favoured by those who want to divide the populace into pro-this and anti-that, honing in on what supposedly divides the minority instead of focusing on what unites the vast majority.

Hundreds of thousands of Australians didn't march in the streets of towns and cities across the nation in early 2003 because they wanted the United States to be defeated in Iraq. They marched because they didn't want Iraqis to be slaughtered in an illegal war. They knew they were being conned, by media like The Australian, and they knew that the War On Iraq would lead to massive civilian death tolls and untold suffering.

The 'pro-peace' movement so despised by an ever depleting slice of Australian and American 'conservatives' are now supposed to be furious that the death rate of Iraqis is dropping?

This is maniacal spin of the most chilling kind.

The editor of The Australian, Chris Mitchell, is deploying his version of the fabled "six more months" argument rolled out by so many talking heads on American news shows through the past four years. If we stay "six more months" everything will be just wonderful and dreamy.

To try and now claim that the pro-peace movement is disappointed by the very recent reduction in Iraqi civilian deaths is just plain bizarre, and incredibly insulting to every Australian war veteran (thousands of them) who protested the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq because they knew, from experience, that war simply doesn't work when it comes to solving a problem like that posed by Saddam Hussein and his alleged arsenal of WMDs. The very same veterans who shook their heads in disgust when newspapers like The Australian enthusiastically pumped the fable that the Iraq War would have only a small number of civilian deaths.

It's not the pro-peace movement who have to rethink their positions on the War On Iraq. Their concerns and fears were proven right by the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed or maimed, the appalling insurgency, the horrific humanitarian crisis, the millions more who were forced to flee their homes and their country and the continuing destruction of the nation's infrastructure.

It is the pro-war mob who have to admit that they were wrong to back an illegal war against a mostly defenceless country, in the face of untold warnings about NeoCon lies on WMDs, and of the tribal and ethnic massacres and guerilla warfare that would inevitably follow the invasion.

Chris Mitchell also writes :

It is far too early to declare victory...

Declare victory? Nobody, except Murdoch mouthpieces like Chris Mitchell, is ever going to officially declare 'Victory' in the War On Iraq.

Not even President Bush mentions the 'V' word much any more.

War was not the right answer when it came to Iraq, no matter how much those who were so very involved in dispensing and pumping the BushCo. propaganda campaign in this country, like Chris Mitchell, to try and dupe Australians into backing the Iraq War fiasco, want to believe it all worked out for the best.

Chris Mitchell and the massed ranks Murdoch propagandists failed to get even one-third of the country on side back in early 2003 to support the illegal invasion, and they fail still in their gruesome efforts to find diamonds amongst all the death and destruction unleashed upon Iraq.

Mitchell should be ashamed of himself.


The Suicide Soldier Epidemic : 6000 'War On Terror' Veterans Killed Themselves In 2005

The Chaser : We Are Wankers


Channel Seven boss David Leckie

On Wednesday night, Channel Seven's Today Tonight devoted a solid, ad free 18 minutes to The Chaser. Unfortunately, it wasn't very funny. It was mostly footage of a couple of The Chaser team caught out in the midst of a stunt in the offices of Today Tonight, talking about calling their lawyers, saying their needed to speak to their lawyers and then speaking to their lawyers.

The funniest moments were delivered by a Today Tonight 'reporter' who berated The Chaser for "trespassing". This from Today Tonight less than a week after they aired footage of one of their reporters and a camera team refusing to leave the front yard of a western Sydney family, after being asked to get off the property God knows how many times.

The only big laugh from the increasingly symbiotic relationship between Today Tonight and The Chaser was the Rodney Rude-esque reaction from Channel Seven boss David Leckie :

'Where's The Chasers? What about The Chasers team? They're just f---ing wankers. They're nothing but a bunch of tossers, they're f---ing wankers."

The Chaser reaction?

"We are wankers," said Chaser executive producer Julian Morrow. "We make fun of people so we can't expect people not to make fun of us."

Morrow also got off another good line when he learned that Today Tonight had gone to court to stop them airing footage they had shot during the Today Tonight 'ambush'.

"We're stunned that Today Tonight has completely beaten up this story. Who do they think they are? Today Tonight?"

The Chaser and Today Tonight both need to take a long break from each other.

Or team up for a joint show.

Howard Already Whining Like A Loser

Depression In The Coalition Ranks Seals Their Fate

Howard And Friends had Mark Latham on the defence for most of the 2004 election. Every time he announced new policy, or held a press conference, he spent valuable time answering questions about a host of orchestrated lies and accusations that flowed like a river from Howard's team.

Kevin Rudd is very successfully laying out the issues that Howard is then forced to comment on, or react to. Now it's Howard's turn to constantly be on the defence. And he's not very good at it.

He looks sulky, he sounds whiny, and has the presence and demeanour of a man already in opposition.

Witness his reaction yesterday to Kevin Rudd's remarkably effective campaign launch speech.

Howard seemed shocked that Rudd had the gall to declare The Reckless Spending Must Stop :

Mr Rudd savaged Mr Howard as a selfish big-spender, prepared to risk inflation and land Australian families with higher interest rates to buy his way back into office.

...the Opposition Leader put economic conservatism at the centre of his political case for power, offering $2.3 billion in new promises and contrasting the spending with Mr Howard's "irresponsible spending spree" of $8.5 billion of pledges at his campaign launch on Monday.

"Mr Howard spent nearly $10 billion on Monday trying to buy his way out political trouble," Mr Rudd said.

"Unlike Mr Howard, I will not place in jeopardy households already struggling with mortgages.

"I don't stand before you with a bagful of irresponsible promises that could put upward pressure on inflation ... I am saying loud and clear that this sort of reckless spending must stop."

You can almost imagine Howard choking on his cup of tea and shouting "Son Of A Bitch!" at that.

Howard knows Rudd outspun him, and did it with gusto, and it's clear Howard is furious that most of the media brought the line that Rudd proved he was an "economic conservative" by announcing spending of 1/4 to 1/3 of that announced by Howard on Monday.

Howard is a defeated man, and acting like he has already lost will now finish him off :

John Howard last night accused Kevin Rudd of being "deceitful" by painting himself as an economic conservative, saying voters should look beyond Labor's campaign launch spending because overall the Coalition had promised to spend less than Labor.

The Prime Minister, campaigning in Townsville, said economic conservatism should be judged by the "aggregate of your behaviour - it's not just how you behave in an election campaign".

"Mr Rudd is being deceitful in his cost comparisons," he said.

"He wants the public to compare the cost of the announcements he has made in his launch with the cost of the announcements we made in our launch as if they are the only announcements that have been made by either side ... It's the total cost of commitments that matters."

He described Mr Rudd as an "arsonist claiming responsibility as a firefighter", saying the Opposition Leader would in fact hurt the economy with his plans to rip up Work Choices.

"On the score of economic credibility, Mr Rudd went missing today," Mr Howard said.

Maybe so, but few noticed. The headlines and lead news stories were virtually all in Rudd's favour. Another set of nails were banged enthusiastically into Howard's coffin.

Most of the Howard team has given up trying to win the election by praising the man who has ruled their roost for 11 years. Their coasting to defeat, and barely putting up a fight. Most of the senior Howard ministers are probably too busy lining up their new jobs, outside of politics. Leave it to Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce to cut to the core of what's now happening inside the Coalition. Depression is spreading like a flu virus through their ranks :

Coalition MPs are getting depressed and frustrated over their parties' poor performance in opinion polls, which are uniformly pointing to a Labor landslide, Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce has said.

Senator Joyce last night said the Coalition's election campaign might be faring better if it had made a big infrastructure announcement to capture public imagination.

“There is a sense of depression about it. If the polls are the reality we're not going to lose, we're going to get annihilated,” Senator Joyce told Sky News.

He blamed the trend on voter ambivalence about a change of government. “It's frustrating for us, obviously.

“I see it like you're in a perfectly good marriage that's been going for 11 and a half years - would you get divorced just to see what it was like?”

“We're working on the premise that there are a lot of people out there who are still making up their minds.”

He expressed some admiration for Labor leader Kevin Rudd's campaign strategy - which has been derided as a "me-too" plan to win office.

“Mr Rudd has done a very good job of neutralising any form of division between the two parties.”

The Queensland senator said the Coalition may have erred by focusing much of its attention on the economy, health and education.

“These are dry topics which people really have to really read through the paper to understand. It's a hard thing to sell in a pub on a Friday night.”

Joyce is right. Most of the punters don't want to read about it. They just want to government to do it, fix the problems, and shut the hell up.

Howard and the Coalition are not announcing Big Vision strategies. As others have noted, we are a wealthy nation, with huge surpluses, so where are the grand infrastructure projects that make jaws drop and get people excited about the future?

Howard seems only to be patching up holes in health and education, which leads many to ask, cynically : "Why now? He's been there for 11 years. If he has to spend so much to fix the problems, what's he been doing all the years to let education and health fall into such disarray?" Blaming state governments simply isn't cutting through.

Rudd has effectively echoed a lot of the Friday night pub talk that Joyce is talking about, hitting on themes like these :

"Howard only cares now because he's about to lose"

"Howard had years to fix all this stuff and he didn't do it"

"Howard's been there long enough. It's time for something new."

"I'm really sick of hearing Howard and Costello and Downer waffling on and on about how awesome a job they've done, but now they tell us how much there is to fix up."

Let's hope the action in this election campaign picks up next week. If not, it won't be an orderly change of government. It will be a thoroughly boring change of government.

Landslide Takes Out 20% Of Victoria's Power Supply


An incredible photo from Matt Smith, running in the Herald Sun, shows the aftermath of a massive landslide in an open cut coal mine at one of Australia's biggest power stations. A 'landslip' tore apart the retaining wall of a river and water poured into the mine.

The story behind the landslide, and how it will effect Victoria's electricity supply, can be read here.

Robert Manne Kisses John Howard Goodbye

There's already been a few John Howard eulogies published, but this one from Robert Manne, published today in the latest issue of The Monthly, will set the standard for the so-called "Lefties" that many on the Liberal side of politics and commentary are expecting to dance all over Howard's political grave. They're probably going to be bitterly disappointed.

Manne's comments are mostly respectful, honest and throws some early perspective on The Howard legacy. I'd certainly agree with Manne that the darker days of Howard's reign will shock future generations, while his success as a steady hand on the economic tiller will mostly be forgotten. That happens with all prime ministers and presidents. Howard will be no exception.

Howard was right to stare down many conservative Australians to bring about effective gun control. It is hard to believe that the absence of urban massacre since Port Arthur is an accident. Despite very serious intelligence and political error in the lead-up to the East Timor independence plebiscite, the role his Government played in the creation of an independent East Timor represents Howard's finest hour.

The greatest mistake in the first half of the Howard years was the attack he launched against what American neo-conservatives had labelled political correctness. The country's racist past was increasingly denied. The ambitions for reconciliation with the indigenous population and for the creation of a multicultural society were abandoned. The bitterness of so many indigenous people and the daily experience of marginalisation faced by Australian Muslims are the consequences.

The Keating government bequeathed to Howard a dangerous legacy in the policy of mandatory detention of asylum-seekers.

After losing East Timor, Indonesia secretly encouraged boats of asylum-seekers fleeing from the regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban to sail on to Australian territory. The cruelty with which the Howard Government treated these people will astonish Australians in the future

... Our support for the invasion of Iraq was the worst foreign policy decision ever made by any Australian government.

Manne also writes that "Only when (the Rudd era) opens will the meaning of the Howard years become clear."

A growing number of commenters on the blogs of Piers Akerman, Andrew Bolt and various opinionists for The Australian are gloating loudly about how the careers of conservative commentators will be over once Rudd wins and Howard is gone.

Hardly. The Akermans, Bolts and Tim Blairs will thrive on the change of government, as Rudd moves to implement his new policies and some will inevitably fail, or fail to live up to the hype. But how long will their readers put up with "I told you so!" and "Lookit what they done now!" as insightful commentary?

The fans of a losing cricket or football team of the final test or grand final don't mind getting together after a horror defeat to drown their sorrows, complain about the refs or rip to shreds the players who they know were capable of better. But even the most die-hard supporters only want to do that once or twice. They don't keep getting together to bitch about the defeat. They mostly move on, and look forward to the next season.

If a Rudd government manages to shake off the darkest days of the Howard era, and injects Australian society with new energy and optimism, the bitterness, endless whining and sniping of the Akermans, Bolts, Shanahans and Blairs will lose them a fat chunk of their audience. They risk becoming what they so despise today : the kind of commentators who can't stop complaining and fail to see the nation as it is, and the positive ways a federal government can change the nation for the better.

Rupert Murdoch Threatens Caroline Overington With "Disciplinary Action" For Her "Just Joking" Election Interference

Malcolm Turnbull : Murdoch Journalist "Not Part Of My Campaign Team"

The story of journalist Caroline Overington asking an independent candidate to preference her friend, Malcolm Turnbull, probably would probably not have been more than a one or two day wonder had News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch not weighed in on the controversy.

During a shareholder's meeting in Adelaide, Murdoch was asked about the Overington Vs Ecuyer story :

News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch says disciplinary action would be taken against any reporter who tried privately to influence political candidates in the name one of the company's publications.

He says the company cannot restrict the private actions of individuals.

"If they're doing it in the name of the paper ... we would more than discourage it, we would take disciplinary action," Mr Murdoch said.

"It's a free world and a reporter is entitled to his opinions as much as anybody else. I'm sorry about that."

Caroline Overington asked Wentworth independent candidate Danielle Ecuyer to "please preference Malcolm (Turnbull)" as an employee of The Australian newspaper. She told Ecuyer it would possibly become a front page story.

Murdoch's threats to take "disciplinary action" against Overington will ensure the story reaches the international media (probably only in a minor way), where the tale of independent candidate Daniellle Ecuyer running against her ex-boyfriend for the seat of "Bondi Beach" is already scoring headlines.

Malcolm Turnbull, Overington's preferred politician for the seat of Wentworth, dives into the controversy, choosing to back his friend, and supporter :

Malcolm Turnbull has defended a journalist accused of trying to pressure an independent candidate to direct her preferences to him. Mr Turnbull says Caroline Overington, a journalist at The Australian, is entitled to her opinion.

Ms Overington says the email was a joke.

Mr Turnbull says the journalist is entitled to her opinion on the direction of preferences in Wentworth.

"Assuming Caroline Overington's comments were serious and not tongue-in-cheek - and the email exchanges seem to be fairly humorous - she was expressing her personal opinion to which she's entitled," Mr Turnbull told reporters on the Gold Coast today.

"She's not part of my campaign team obviously."

Obviously.


Murdoch Senior Journalist Claims Her Interference In Election "Just A Joke"

1 In 2 Australians Use Credit Cards To Bridge Gap Between Wages And Household Bills

Credit Card Fees No Longer Restrained By Reserve Banks

A rich and prosperous nation lashes out with their credit cards to live the high life, splashing out on luxury item like food and rent and electricity bills and mortgage payments.

The awesome gulf between John Howard's claims that Australian families are enjoying the benefits of a 'booming' economy and have never had it so good, and the reality of two million Australians (1 in 10) living below the poverty line, and millions more struggling to keep their houses paid for and food in the fridge becomes ever more stark, and disturbing :

In a sign of increasingly hard times, over half of Australians have admitted to using their credit cards to get them between pays and cover cash shortfalls, a survey reveals.

But plastic users are being stung with fees and charges and they aren't happy about it.

The survey of 1366 people conducted by NEWS.com.au and online polling firm Coredata found 54 per cent of people had used their credit card to get between pays after their cash ran out.

The survey revealed over 90 per cent of respondents had at least one credit card
with 36 per cent holding two. The survey was carried out between October 9 and 16.

A whopping 52 per cent of those with credit cards had been stung by penalty fees or interest rates in the 12 months before the survey.

Of those who had been hit with late fees, 83 per cent said they were a "rip off"...

They may feel ripped off, but the guilt-tripping propaganda and threats of legal action from banks that don't often even hold the money they are lending (themselves borrowing much of the money they issue as credit) does work, with 23 percent of surveyed people who have admitted to having paid late fees believing being hit with extortionist late fees "serves me right for not paying on time."

The vast majority of late fees charged by banks are forced onto low income workers. People who use their credit cards to pay the bills that their wages cannot meet. Late fees build up, incurring more fees and interest charges. If you've ever wondered why so many people on low wages are courted by the banks offering generous credit, via credit cards, it is because the banks know that poor people will clock up late fees, and will incur greater interest fees accumulations than the wealthy.

Unfortunately, many poor Australians feel intimidated by threats of legal action from the banks, over fairly minor debts, not realising that many such letters of impending legal action are nothing more than form letters.

The good news is, as this story points out, more and more people caught up in the credit card swindle are finding ways to pull themselves out of the hole.

How do so many banks and credit institutions get away with swindling the poor on so many fees?

Easy. The Reserve Bank of Australia "removed restrictions on merchants applying surcharges to credit-card payments."

That is, the Reserve Bank, no longer contained by the federal government, is letting the banks run wild, charging exorbitant fees when people miss making repayments on their credit cards by one, or a few, days.

Australian banks, per customer, are now some of the most profitable in the world.

Journalist Claims Her Controversial 'Interference' In Prime Liberal Election Seat Contest "Just A Joke"

Caroline Overington Downgraded By Editor From Walkley Award Winning Senior Journalist To "Colour Writer"

It's the sort of story that a journalist like Caroline Overington should never have become caught up in, regardless of how she is now trying to explain away the controversy :

From The Australian :

An independent candidate for the marginal Sydney seat of Wentworth will make a formal complaint to the Australian Electoral Commission after accusing a reporter from The Australian of trying to influence the outcome of the election.

Danielle Ecuyer, who is standing against Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Labor's George Newhouse, last night told The Australian she thought an email communication had been "inappropriate".

Ms Ecuyer plans to make a formal complaint as early as today to the Electoral Commission alleging an inducement was offered - a front-page article - in return for making a decision on her preferences.

Writing in The Australian newspaper today, Caroline Overington says :

I'd been at Ms Ecuyer's house a week or so earlier. We'd joked about her failed relationship with Labor's candidate for Wentworth, George Newhouse. She was loving the publicity, and the fact it described her as glamorous.

I asked whether she'd direct her preferences away from George and she laughed, and said she wouldn't preference anyone who supported Tasmania's pulp mill.

The idea that she would instead give her preferences to Turnbull to spite George was also raised. It was so absurd, I kept the joke up in emails to her a few days later.

In the email, I give her a wink, to show her I am joking when I say she should give her preferences to Turnbull.

Now she says I was serious, which is too hilarious, and so obviously a pitch for more publicity from a woman who just loves attention.

The emails, which I'm happy to provide to anyone, are obviously happy, lighthearted banter.

Danielle Ecuyer is an independent candidate for a prime seat that may help to decide whether or not John Howard returns to power. Malcolm Turnbull has a close relationship with a number of key journalists and opinionists for The Australian.

Danielle Ecuyer is battling both the Labor and Liberal parties massive publicity machinery. Of course she's going to love any attention, or headlines, she can get. Overington knows this.

MediaWatch claims :

Ms Ecuyer tells us she never discussed who she would be preferencing with Caroline Overington.

Despite Overington's attempts to downplay the content of the e-mails, the key e-mail cited doesn't sound like a big joke, at least not in isolation. It sounds exactly like what Ecuyer is now claiming. Overington says she is "happy" to provide the e-mails to anyone, but doesn't quote from them in her column to back up her claims. Why? Here's the key e-mail that sparked the controversy :

"Please preference Malcolm (Turnbull). It would be such a good front-page story. Also, he'd be a loss to the parliament and George (Newhouse) - forgive me - would be no gain."

Not a laugh to be seen.

When MediaWatch asked Caroline Overington why she asked Danielle Ecuyer to "please prefence Malcolm", the journalist responded :

"I would say journalists use a range of different ways to get their stories."

"I would say I didn’t ask her to send her preferences to any candidate."

When asked what the words "please preference Malcolm" meant, she replied :

"It could be a way of getting a story from her."

Or a way of gettting Ecuyer to preference Malcolm Turnbull, who desperately needs preferences from independents like Ecuyer to win.

Despite all that, Overington should be more concerned with how her editor at The Australian describes her :

"Ms Overington is a colour writer."

Overington is not a "colour" writer. Here's how The Australian newspaper proudly describes her :

Caroline Overington is a senior writer and columnist with The Australian. She is a two-time winner of the Walkley Award for investigative jouralism (2004 and 2006) and last year received the Sir Keith Murdoch Award for Excellence in Journalism...

Overington also wrote an excellent, comprehensive and highly praised book on the AWB scandal. She has become caught up in this low-level scandal because she was pursuing a story, one that she believed would have made the front page of The Australian.

Faced with embarrassing headlines and growing controversy, The Australian's editor does not leap to Overington's defence, he writes her off as something much less than a serious investigative journalist.

Her editor's flippant dismissal of her talents, in the end, will probably be more damaging to Overington's reputation than the "joke" e-mails that started the controversy.

The Australian's senior editors were furious earlier in the year when bloggers referred to the newspaper as the 'Government Gazette'. Controversies like this don't help much to dispel that reputation of Rupert Murdoch's national newspaper working hard, in print and behind the scenes, to ensure the Coalition government wins the coming federal election.

Nor do front page stories like this one, from Dennis Shanahan, where he manages to bury the lead, at least three times, when he all but totally dismisses the devastating news that John Howard's government is going backwards, once again, in the latest Newspoll, less than two weeks out from election day.

Overington Slams Peter Garrett For Claiming He Was "Only Joking" When His "We'll Change It All" Quote Hit The Headlines

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.

More Gay Men Would Rather See Howard Nude Than Rudd

Perhaps the Australian Associated Press figures this is the kind of light-hearted story that allows them to drop the serious tone. Well, you'd hope that's the excuse for this story intro :

Twice as many voters want to see a nude Kevin Rudd than John Howard with his gear off, according to another opinion poll sure to worry the Prime Minister.

John Howard worries about how many Australians want to see him naked? Well take a wild guess and presume that Howard is probably more concerned right now by nine solid months of polls that have shouted, week in and week out, 'You Are Not Going To Win The Election No Matter What You Do Now'.

But all hope is not lost in the 'nude stakes' for Howard. He's a firm winner with the gay vote :

...18 per cent of men want to see the PM in the buff, compared to only 14 per cent for Mr Rudd.

Could Howard find a new career in retirement as a gay icon?

Howard scored only limp interest from the all important Yoof Vote :

Among 18- to 24-year-olds, Mr Howard fared even worse, with an estimated 153,000 keen for an eyeful, compared to Rudd's 845,000.

The federal election campaign has now become so intensely boring that this will probably be the most interesting Howard Vs Rudd story of the day.

From ED Day :

It's 5am. The sun's barely up and the heat is already becoming intense. No rain during the night. The city is wrapped in smoke. The fires in the suburbs and on the north side of the harbour are still burning. I can see the smoking ruins of dozens of houses across the water.

There's so many trees over there, small forests and national park lands packed with dried leaves, wild grass, dead branches. The fires could burn for weeks, months, until they run out of fuel.

If I thought it would work, I'd kill one of the lambs as a sacrifice to the Gods just to get some rain. Not just rain to put out the fires. The veggie gardens up on the roof are starting to wilt. The water drums up there are getting scary-low.

I've got enough water stashed away in my room, and other rooms of this hotel, to last me and Maggie and the other shut-ins three and a bit weeks. But that's only if I stop watering the vegetable gardens and fruit trees.


The above is an excerpt from the latest chapter of the online novel ED Day.

Go Here To Read More

Refuse To Shake PM's Hand? Get Questioned By Police

Calls Of "Scumbag!" Follow Howard On Suburban Mall Visit

Not the best day out on the campaign trail for the prime minister :

* A woman was knocked unconscious and lay unattended at Howard's feet in a shopping mall, after she was 'bowled over' in the rush of media, security and civilians surrounding the prime minister. Wonder if she'll get a "sorry" and an apology?

* At the same shopping mall in Penrith, Howard's progress was marked by waves of locals shouting "You're a disgrace" and "scumbag!" Malls in Penrith are supposed to be the heartland of Howard's 'battlers'. During the last election he was greeted like a hero in Penrith shopping malls. Not a good sign.

* A man who refused to shake the prime minister's hand, saying "I'm not a fan" was "questioned by police, before being allowed to leave". A public show of dissent scores you a quick questioning by police?

* Howard was rigorously questioned by locals on the interest rate rise, why he had 'lied' to them during the last election campaign about keeping interest rates low, why he had hit them with Workchoices and other subjects less appealing for the PM than a bunch of shoppers "Good on you, John!" The shouts of approval were apparently few and far between today.

* Howard was reduced to quoting from the 'conservative' mind of Mark Latham, as he continued his desperate search for anything that he could use to attack Rudd leviathan.

A photo of the suburban shopping mall woman, knocked to the ground, can be seen here.

There's something about that image that should make Howard extremely nervous. One of his cherished 'battlers' lying prone on the floor of a shopping centre, unconscious, the prime minister standing over her, unable to help, not knowing how to help her.

In comparison, Rudd's morning was boring.

Daily Telegraph Brands Kevin Rudd 'Gay'

12 Hours Later, Dirty Tricks Headline Wiped From Website
A few days ago, we mentioned that we were getting e-mail tips that the Sydney Daily Telegraph had a big 'scoop' on Kevin Rudd planned for its Friday front page. The rumours ran that Liberal dirt units had uncovered something allegedly dodgy about the way Kevin Rudd came to purchase his current home in 1994.

So here it is, Friday, and what's the big 'scoop' in the Daily Telegraph?

All we could find in the online edition at 1.20am was this incredible headline :




Kevin Rudd, John Howard's election rival, is 'gay'?

If true, it would certainly be a scoop indeed.

Trouble is, the story under that headline mentions nothing about Howard's election rival being 'gay'. It doesn't mention the word 'gay' at all.

Instead it's a story on John Howard and Julia Gillard waffling on about Howard's Monty Python-esque explanation of how saying "sorry" for rising interest rates is not the same as giving an apology for rising interest rates.

So what's going on here?

Is this a dirty tricks attempt by the Murdoch media to plant a thought-seed in peoples' minds that Kevin Rudd might be 'gay'?

What other explanation could there be for such a bizarre and unsubstantiated headline on a news site visited by tens of thousands of people this morning? A headline that has now been indexed on GoogleNews?

The headline is not a typo. The intention and headline is clear, despite what editors will later claim. And the accusation is all over the Daily Telegraph site. Here's how it appears on the 'National News' page :




Here's how it appears in the 'Also in News' listing on the main Daily Telegraph site (its second appearance on the main page) :



The aim of such a headline is clear : to spark speculation about Kevin Rudd's sexuality, and force him into a position where he has to issue denials.

This is very similar to the 'make him deny it' media campaign against Mark Latham in the 2004 election, where the Labor leader was forced to repeatedly deny that there was a saucy video tape of his bachelor party doing the rounds.

The Daily Telegraph and its sister Melbourne paper The Herald Sun were all over that one as well. There was no video tape, but Latham spent days in the final weeks of the election campaign denying it existed, or that his bachelor party was anything less than respectable. It didn't matter that the allegation was utter fiction, it planted seeds of doubt in voters' minds.

Clearly, the intention of the Daily Telegraph here is to plant a few seeds of doubt about Rudd.

The last two weeks of the election campaign, as far as some branches of the media is concerned and if this odious effort from the Daily Telegraph is anything to go by, is going to get extremely nasty.

UPDATE : The PM Not Sorry, Election Rival 'Gay' headline was removed from the front page of the online Daily Telegraph site around 11am today. It's still running, without explanation, on the National News page and the DT's Election 2007 page.

UPDATE II : The PM Not Sorry, Election Rival 'Gay' headline is now gone from all Daily Telegraph online pages. The complete x-ing of that headline happened at around 1pm. Same story, but brand new headline :



END

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1600 Mothers Delay Births To Get Government 'Baby Bonus' Payments

This takes the idea of 'birth control' into bizarre new territory.

Over the past few years, more than 1600 pregnant women have purposely delayed the birth of their children so they would qualify for thousands of dollars in government payments.

Treasurer Peter Costello urged Australians to get busy breeding, and made sure they were rewarded for their contribution to the growth of the population. It's hard to believe that no-one in the government foresaw that making payments worth thousands of dollars only applicable after a certain date would lead to this kind of behaviour :

A huge number of expecting mothers delayed births in order to qualify for the increased Baby Bonus payments in July last year, a new study has revealed.

And many more soon-to-be mothers will do the same for the next increase in 2008, researchers from the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University warn.

The researchers estimated that more than 600 births were delayed until after Baby Bonus payments rose to $4000 a pop in July last year.

According to the Born (again) on the First of July study, mothers refused induced births or caesareans until the July 1, 2006.

Researchers claim more the births of more than 1000 babies were delayed when the scheme was introduced two years ago.

The Baby Bonus scheme was introduced in July 2004, with mothers receiving a lump sum payment of $3000.

Doctors and health workers have been concerned about the number of mothers delaying birth in order to receive the payments, citing health concerns for both woman and child.

You can't blame the mothers. Some two million Australians (ten per cent) now live below the poverty line. If giving birth on June 28 got you nothing, but giving birth on July 1 scored you $3000 or $4000, money essential for the very expensive business of raising children, why wouldn't a mother delay the birth of the child if they were able to do so?

"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.

How Truly Desperate Have Howard & Friends Become?

Now Fighting For The Rights Of Gay Couples

This doesn't undo a solid decade of intolerant, prejudiced and sometimes downright nasty anti-gay behaviour from Howard & Friends, but it's a start :

The Coalition has relented to pressure and will grant to gay and lesbian couples the same rights on Commonwealth public sector superannuation as heterosexual couples.

Malcolm Turnbull, who is under considerable political pressure from the sizeable gay community in his seat of Wentworth, flagged the changes in a speech to a gay and lesbian business leaders function last night. They will be confirmed today.

While the Coalition will not grant gay couples de facto status, or adopt any of the other 58 recommendations outlined in a human rights report in June, it will allow, if re-elected, interdependent gay couples to share each other's public pensions and super benefits - as heterosexual couples do.

Labor has already promised to institute all 58 changes, saying it was unfair to discriminate financially against people on the basis of them being gay.

In 2004 such discrimination was abolished in relation to private sector superannuation.

Mr Turnbull was unsuccessful in pushing the changes through cabinet and further deliberation was postponed until after the election. But with Mr Turnbull in trouble in his seat, and his Labor rival, George Newhouse, supporting the change, the Coalition has made the promise now.

Naturally, the big change in attitude and policy comes directly as a result of plunging opinion polls on the likelihood of Turnbull holding onto Wentworth.

It's amazing how open-minded Coalition politicians can suddenly become when they're facing Howard-branded "annihilation" on election day.

Armoured Vehicles For Australian Police

Federal Police Transforming Into Paramilitary

With the announcement that Australian Federal Police will be buying a fleet of armoured vehicles, they are well on their way to becoming a paramilitary force.

The Australian Federal Police currently has some 320 officers stationed in the Solomon Islands, Afghanistan, Cyprus, Nauru, East Timor, the Sudan and Cambodia.

The AFP are primarily concerned with counter-terrorism and peace-keeping, but have become engaged in armed conflict in East Timor and the Solomon Islands.

Even though the AFP is currently preparing to buy armoured vehicles, most likely including the sort of heavily armoured vehicles used by Australian Defence Force soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, no official announcement on the cost, number or type of vehicles that will be purchased has been made.

The AFP is now doubling its international forces to some 1200 officers, at a cost of more than half a billion dollars.

Naturally, we are told the AFP's armoured vehicles would not be used domestically, but of course if prolonged conflicts in Australia or internal disruptions, for example an unstoppable flood of asylum seekers or climate change refugees, demanded it, the armoured vehicles will be deployed.

Australians are likely to see their federal police in war-zone recognisable armoured vehicles towards the end of 2008 when training is underway, and they are rolled out for the media. There will be plenty of occasions for the media to cover the AFP tooling around in their new armoured vehicles so we quickly get used to the sight of seeing our federal police in 'bomb-proof' Landrovers and mini-tanks, on our city streets.

The Australian Federal Police seemed pretty well convinced that chaos is likely to break out in the Solomon Islands and East Timor, as well as other Pacific nations, for many years to come. Hence the need for 'riot-ready' vehicles covered in light-to-heavy armour.

More On This Story Here

What Does The Daily Telegraph Have In Its Friday 'Scoop' Bucket For Rudd?

'HouseGate' - Rudd May Have Scored Big Discount When He Purchased Family Home

When I first heard that the Daily Telegraph is preparing a huge front page 'scoop' for its Friday paper that is expected to do some damage to Kevin Rudd's credibility, I thought it might be photos of Rudd with his face buried in a stripper's breasts at that infamous New York City strip club.

But the scoop, if the e-mails flowing in can be relied on, won't be anywhere near as dramatic, or damaging, as that kind of imagery might have proven to be.

The story goes that the Liberal Party's dirt units have dug up records relating to a house purchase Rudd and his wife made in 1994. The house the Rudd family now lives in.

The big 'scoop' then, supposedly, is that Rudd, or his wife, managed to pick up the house at a substantially discounted price. Someone did them a big favour.

Pretty Kruddy, but how damaging? It depends on how cheap they got the house, or probably more importantly, who they got the house from, or who negotiated the deal.

It may be a one day wonder, and it will probably stretch through the weekend, if the public interest level is high enough and if another bigger story doesn't break the same day.

The Liberals may be able to get some mileage out of claiming that Rudd knew the 'HouseGate' story was coming, and this is why he announced policy earlier this week on helping young families to buy their first homes.

Then again, if Rudd's people know this story is coming, and it certainly appears that they do, then they've had days to prepare something big themselves for Friday to try and steal away the media's attention.

And, of course, when it comes to discounted housing, it's hard to go past a big photo of John Howard living the high life in Kirribilli House, where he lives for free, billing the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for the extensive wine cellar, renovations and general upkeep he and his wife demand so the house remains spiffy for the many grand parties they throw for their wealthy friends.

Glasshouse. Stones. Throwing.

It should be easy for Ruddites to counter the 'HouseGate' scandal, if it even proves to have some momentum, by blasting away at Howard for seizing and occupying Kirribilli House and denying its use to a long list of charities who had previously made great use of its beautiful location and expansive lawns for fund-raising activities.

And 1994 is a long time ago. If the dirt units want to rip Rudd apart, they clearly need something far more recent. 'HouseGate' won't be the last of the dirt unit leaks to the Murdoch media and you can presume they have something far worse for the last week of the election campaign.

The media will have to be on their toes, however, to make sure they don't fall for the ridiculous 'bachelor party tape' bullshit they were so easily suckered into during Mark Latham's run at the Lodge.

It'll be very interesting to see how accurate the e-mailers are to the truth about the Friday Telegraph's Bucket On Rudd story, how much impact the story will turn out to have, and how effectively Rudd's team will be able to counter its appearance.

If the 'HouseGate' scenario mentioned above turns out to be close to the 'scoop', we will also know that Rudd has friends inside the Daily Telegraph who are leaking pre-publication news of damaging stories in the hope that the full impact of a surprise front page story will be weakened by 'rumours' floated on blogs, like this one, in the days before the big story 'breaks'.

Australian Soldiers Cheaper Than Robots

Troops In Afghanistan Denied High-Tech Bomb Detecting Bots

An Australian soldier in Afghanistan, Sergeant Michael Lyddiard, had his arm and eye blown away over the weekend when a roadside bomb detonated only a metre from his face. He was flown to a medical base in Germany and members of his family have now joined him there. Some 28 Australian soldiers have been wounded in Afghanistan since 2001, two have died.

On that back of the news of Sergeant Lyddiard's injuries comes the shocking revelation that Australian troops have been denied the kind of bomb-detecting robot technology that has saved the lives of countless American and NATO troops in Afghanistan :

...the Howard Government cancelled work in 2004 to develop robotic technology capable of dealing with roadside bombs.

The aim of the program was to develop robotic technology to counter IEDs. Questions are now being asked inside Defence as to why Australian soldiers and explosive detector dogs are being used to render roadside bombs safe when other NATO forces use advanced robotics.

Thousands of remote-control mine and IED detectors have been rushed to Afghanistan and Iraq by the US military, with more than 5000 in operation last April, compared with 150 in 2004.

The ADF, however, relies mainly on sniffer dogs and perilous manual defusing, such as the job Sgt Lyddiard was attempting when the device exploded in front of him.

The robot plan, known by its army designation Project Land 133, was shut down by former defence minister Robert Hill.

A spokesman for Defence Minister Brendan Nelson yesterday admitted the project had been shut down but said the decision was taken on the advice of the army.

Brendan "We Didn't Do It" Nelson keeps up his usual standards of buck-passing.

What's happened to the endless promises made by John Howard and defence ministers Hill and Nelson that Australian soldiers could always count on being given the very best equipment during overseas deployments?

The grim truth is that even though the Australian government spends almost $1 billion a year fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our troops are forced to continually cut corners and often have to make do with inferior or substandard equipment.

Robot development programs are expensive, and number crunchers have clearly worked out that it's cheaper to put soldiers' lives at risk than to spend the money needed to build and deploy bomb-detecting robots.

It's a miracle the casualties in Afghanistan, and Iraq, have not been higher.

Garrett & Rudd Betrayal Of Green Vote Comes At Heavy Price

How can Labor lose 'green' votes to Howard And Friends? Easy. Betray the hardcore over issues like Kyoto and opposing pulp mills and watch their anger and dissent spread amongst the waverers like wild fire.

Some amazing stats drawn from the latest NewsPoll :

* In only four weeks, Labor has lost a big fat ten points in its lead over Howard And Friends on the question of which party would best handle the environment.

* 22% of 'Howard Huggers' would rather Peter Garrett be environment minister than Malcolm Turnbull. Yes, really.

* 45% of voters believe Garrett would be a 'more capable' environment minister than Turnbull at 37%. But there's still a whopping 21% of voters who believe neither are 'more capable' or remain uncommitted.

From The Australian :

Labor's strong lead over the Coalition on handling the environment - about 15 points since Mr Rudd became leader and appointed former rock singer and conservationist leader Mr Garrett as his environment spokesman - has shrunk dramatically.

Last weekend, when asked which party would better handle the environment, 29per cent said Labor, 24per cent said the Coalition and 27per cent said "someone else".

In June last year the ALP and the Coalition were equal on 28per cent and "someone else" almost the same on 26per cent. But after Mr Rudd became leader, the ALP's support jumped to 41per cent, the Coalition dropped to 24per cent and "someone else" registered 15per cent.

Labor is going soft on one of its biggest issues. And they're paying for it.

Think about it. Peter Garrett is losing votes to Howard And Friends on the environment.

Howard is now actively trying to portray himself as being a successful and reliable custodian of the Australian environment, a conservationist and the person who can realistically handle the complex environmental, social and economic issues surrounding climate change.

Incredibly, it seems like Howard The Greenie is now starting to become a more believable proposition to more and more voters. If Howard thinks there are votes in it, you might even see him lying down in front of some old-growth forest clearing bulldozers. Okay, maybe not. But you will see him standing with his hands on his hips staring up at a rainforest canopy sometime soon. Or handling some wide-eyed trembling little marsupial.

Turnbull, meanwhile, is quickly on his way to becoming as popular as Tony Abbott. That is, as popular as slipping in someone else's warm vomit on a hot summer evening.


And seeing as we haven't done this yet, we'll quote some lyrics from a Garrett-credited Midnight Oil song, one of their best, 'Pictures' :

I just want to talk through paradise
I just want to see that clear clear ight
Don't want to be a member of a species that's deceasing
Keep on making those promises that they aren't keeping

Don't sit around in silence you don't need a licence
It's moving in a hurry
there's no need to worry
We're really going to change it the critical mass approaches
I can almost hear it

The video for 'Pictures', from 1985, which ends with a quote from Dr Bob Brown follows :





Garrett can't afford to forget the messages that helped make him such a popular and important leader of the 'green movement'. Claiming he can achieve more by working within the system, rather than pushing against it from the outside, only cuts through for so long. He's losing the faith of green voters. Indeed, a critical mass approaches...