Category Archives: Politics – Australian

Defund the ABC

Posted on by
Reply

And as an example of the typical lying that the ABC can be counted on, we have this: Trump tweets conspiracy theory about Buffalo protester police officers knocked to ground. Here’s the tweet:

And here’s the truth:

Martin Gugino is a 75-year-old professional agitator and Antifa provocateur who brags on his blog about the number of times he can get arrested and escape prosecution. Gugino’s Twitter Account is also filled with anti-cop sentiment [SEE HERE]. Last Thursday Gugino traveled from his home in Amherst, New York, to Buffalo to agitate a protest crowd.

During his effort Gugino was attempting to capture the radio communications signature of Buffalo police officers. CTH noted what he was attempting on Thursday night as soon as the now viral video was being used by media to sell a police brutality narrative. [Thread Here] Today, a more clear video has emerged that shows exactly what he was attempting.

In this slow motion video, you will see Gugino using a phone as a capture scanner. You might have heard the term “skimming”; it’s essentially the same. Watch him use his right hand to first scan the mic of officer one (top left of chest). Then Gugino moves his hand to the communications belt of the second officer. WATCH CLOSELY:

You can find the complete story here.

THIS IS OUR ABC NOT THEIRS: It’s been pointed out in the comments that the story quoted above on “the conspiracy theory” is from the American ABC. So this is the same story from our ABC: Trump tweets conspiracy theory about Buffalo protester police officers knocked to ground. Did you really think the ABC collective would miss an opportunity to spread falsehood that allowed them to push their agenda?

On the day of George Floyd’s funeral, President Donald Trump on Tuesday touted a conspiracy theory in a high-profile case of alleged police misconduct caught on video — involving an elderly protester pushed to the ground and seriously injured.

On Twitter Tuesday morning, Trump suggested that 75-year-old Martin Gugino, who remains hospitalized in serious condition after being shoved to the ground by two Buffalo, New York, police officers, may be an “ANTIFA provocateur” and that the whole incident could be part of a “set up.”

Gugino’s lawyer has since called the president’s accusations “dark, dangerous, and untrue.”

“No one from law enforcement has even suggested anything otherwise so we are at a loss to understand why the President of the United States would make such dark dangerous, and untrue accusations against him,” Kelly Zarcone said in a statement of the president’s accusation against her client, who she said has been released from the ICU but remains hospitalized.

Defund the ABC.

Led by credulous morons

Posted on by
1

Coronavirus crisis projected to add $620bn to Australia’s net debt, PBO says.

Australia’s legacy of the COVID-19 crisis will be additional net debt of up to $620bn by the end of this decade, while the budget deficit will peak at nearly $200bn in the next financial year and will remain in deficit through to 2030, according to new Parliamentary Budget Office projections.

And if nothing else was proven today, everyone now knows with certainty that the lockdown past the first few weeks had nothing to do with public health and safety. Every political leader still enforcing the lockdown is only doing it to save them from the humiliation of being recognised as such credulous nitwits.

We urgently need a Royal Commission into the ABC

Posted on by
1

From Wikipedia: “Royal commissions are called to look into matters of great importance and usually controversy. These can be matters such as government structure, the treatment of minorities, events of considerable public concern or economic questions.”

Things have gone beyond tolerable. Picked this up today on the letters page at The Australian:

It’s pretty clear that the US riots sparked by the death of George Floyd have been hijacked by radical groups. US Attorney-General William Barr has sheeted much of the violence home to Antifa and its bunch of hard-left radicals. Far right groups are believed to be in the mix, too.

Listening to the ABC on Sunday you’d be in no doubt as to where the ABC came down on infiltration and mob violence: it’s almost entirely the work of the far right. The ABC interviewed one Andy Fleming, described as an “anti-fascist researcher”. He described the involvement of far right groups in the riots. Prompted on the involvement of Antifa and the left, he was strangely reticent.

Bemused by Fleming’s stance, I did a quick search and found out that there’s a little more to Fleming than the ABC suggested.

It seems that mystery man Fleming is “an Australian anarcho-communist journalist, academic and activist”. It’s pretty poor form that the ABC didn’t inform listeners of Fleming’s allegiances.

The ABC no longer represents anything other than a small smattering of far-left ignoramuses. Virtually no one any longer turns to the ABC for news, current events, documentaries or entertainment. It is a divisive institution filled with far-left ideologues which no longer serves any social purpose. It is a national embarrassment.

Make them justify their existence in front of a Royal Commission, if they can, which I doubt. And if they can’t, wind the place up.

As for Andy Fleming, this is what it says on Wikipedia, at least right now, until they try to hide the evidence:

Andy Fleming, also known as Slackbastard, is the pseudonym of an Australian anarcho-communist journalist, academic, and activist, known for his study of far-right parties and movements in Australia.[1][2] He has written for Guardian Australia, New Matilda, and the Overland journal.[1][3][4]

Fleming’s blog Slackbastard has reportedly received 7.5 million views since its foundation in 2005.[5] He has studied nationalist groups such as the United Patriots Front and Reclaim Australia.[6][7]

His use of politically motivated doxxing has been criticised as a form of political violence.[8] Despite attempts to identity Fleming, they [sic] currently remain anonymous.[9]

Bibliography[edit]

  • Rydgren, J., Fleming, A., & Mondon, A. (2018). The Radical Right in Australia. In The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Jump up to:a b “Andy Fleming | The Guardian”. The Guardian. Retrieved 7 April 2019.
  2. ^ Gregoire, Paul (21 April 2018). “The Rise of Australian Neo-Nazis: An Interview with Online Activist Slackbastard”. Sydney Criminal Lawyers. Retrieved 7 April 2019.
  3. ^ “Andy Fleming Archives”. New Matilda. Retrieved 15 April2019.
  4. ^ Fleming, Andy. “Andy Fleming”. Overland literary journal. Retrieved 15 April 2019.
  5. ^ Groom, Nelson (23 April 2014). “This Guy Has Been Trolling Neo-Nazis for Nearly a Decade”. Vice. Retrieved 15 April 2019.
  6. ^ Fleming, Andy (20 October 2015). “The UPF and Reclaim Australia aren’t ‘concerned parents’ or a bad joke | Andy Fleming”. The Guardian. Retrieved 7 April 2019.
  7. ^ “FACT CHECK: Did ‘Melbourne Antifa’ Claim Responsibility for the Las Vegas Massacre?”. Snopes.com. Retrieved 15 April2019.
  8. ^ “The doxxing ring”. Honi Soit. 22 March 2018. Retrieved 15 April 2019.
  9. ^ McKenzie-Murray, Martin. “Hunting Australia’s neo-Nazis”. The Saturday Paper. Retrieved 15 April 2019.

Seems par for the ABC course.

The NYT likes Australia’s approach to the CV

Posted on by
1

Australia made it to the New York Times: Did the Coronavirus Kill Ideology in Australia?. The sub-head: “How a government both sectarian and divisive learned (briefly) to become inclusive”. It’s by Richard Flanagan, about how the federal government melded with the state governments to find a unified approach, which is their version of saying what I think, that by doing everything sought by Daniel Andrews, we ended up with a single agreed approach. I’ll just highlight this:

Could it be that Australia’s record somehow embarrasses commentators of both the left and the right? The left, because the Australian government is in every other respect Trumpian in its male-led, climate-denying, nationalist tub-thumping and authoritarian sentiments; the right because a conservative government has succeeded only by very publicly abandoning ideology. And if ideology, and the culture wars, are nothing when everything is at stake, the inevitable question arises: Did they ever mean anything at all?

Which is followed by this:

Now, with the beginning of a return to normalcy, the strange miracle of this Australian consensus already is starting to vanish, with old habits renascent.

That is, as the pressure to end the lockdown grows, Daniel Andrews and others of his kind, are resisting all efforts to return to a market-based economic structure, rather than the public-sector driven quasi-command-economy of the moment. And this is even more revealing of the mentality of the author as well as the NYT:

Presented with growing doubts about democracy’s ability to deal with the pandemic on the one hand, and the seeming ability of a totalitarian China to address the crisis on the other, Australia unexpectedly, if only briefly, returned to its best traditions of communality and fairness.

So there we are, a paragon of pandemic virtue at the NYT. And then there was also this I found mentioned, which perhaps everyone already knows: Trump says he takes hydroxychloroquine to prevent coronavirus infection even though it’s an unproven treatment.

“I happen to be taking it,” Trump said during a roundtable event at the White House. “A lot of good things have come out. You’d be surprised at how many people are taking it, especially the front-line workers. Before you catch it. The front-line workers, many, many are taking it.”

He added: “I’m taking it, hydroxychloroquine. Right now, yeah. Couple of weeks ago, I started taking it. Cause I think it’s good, I’ve heard a lot of good stories.”

Naturally the entire story is about how reckless the President has been because of its side-effects and because it has not been approved by any medical experts. Contrast their attitude with this: Hydroxychloroquine.

If you’ve watched the news lately, you might be under the impression that a medicine President Trump touted as a possible game changer against coronavirus — has been debunked and discredited. Two divergent views of the drug, hydroxychloroquine, have emerged: the negative one widely reported in the press and another side you’ve probably heard less about. Never has a discussion about choices of medicine been so laced with political overtones. Today, how politics, money and medicine intersect with coronavirus.

Here’s some of the positive story.

Dr. O’Neill is now leading a study to find out if hydroxychloroquine can serve a critical role as a medicine to prevent coronavirus. But he says the bad press is making it difficult.

Dr. O’Neill: Now people are scared to use the drug without any scientifically valid concern. We’ve talked with our colleagues at the University of Minnesota who are doing a similar study, and at the University of Washington. We’ve treated 400 patients and haven’t seen a single adverse event. And what’s happening is because of this fake news and fake science, the true scientific efforts are being harmed because people now are so worried that they don’t want to enroll in the trials.

The one certainty in the media is that if Donald Trump is for it, they are against it, truth and evidence be damned.

Socialist distancing

Posted on by
1

Part of a note to members from John Roskam discussing a video the IPA has just been released.

We Want To Work is a four-minute video we’ve released at the same time to both IPA Members and the public. It puts a human face to the jobs tragedy befalling Australia. Four Australians – Nathan from Central Coast in New South Wales, Phil from Townsville, and Richard and Julia from Melbourne explain what’s happened to them because of the lockdown and why they want to work.

Nathan and Richard each own and operate a small business, while Julia worked in a small business, and Phil was a pilot working for an airline. Small business has borne the brunt of the COVID-19 lockdown. Because so many politicians and journalists are now so removed from the real economy, this video is a feature of what is happening and what is only now starting to get the attention it deserves. It is noteworthy that on the executive board of the Prime Minister’s advisory panel to help business recover from the lockdown there are four people from big business, three public servants, and one former trade unionist. If ever there was a demonstration of how far the Liberal Party has moved from its base that’s it.

There’s no-one from small business. No-one. Literally no-one. Out of a committee of eight people.

Yet according to the PM “the creation of a new National COVID-19 Coordination Commission…will coordinate advice to the Australian Government on actions to anticipate and mitigate the economic and social effects of the global coronavirus pandemic.” In Australia, small business is 35% of the economy and employs 44% of the workforce.

The importance of small business to the economy and the community rests on many factors including the fact that small business is what drives employment growth in a way that big business doesn’t, small business is what gives the vast majority of people their first experience of the dignity of work, and small businesses and their owners and employees have a stake in society that big business doesn’t have.

I’ve mentioned to you before the work of an American author and demographer, Joel Kotkin. He’s a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University in California, and two weeks ago he wrote a brilliant piece entitled ‘The Death of Small Business is a Tragedy for Jewish community and democracy’. What he said about America applies equally to Australia.

This is some of what Kotkin said about the impact of the lockdown on small business:

“Small-scale commercial production is, every moment of every day, giving birth spontaneously to capitalism and the bourgeoisie…wherever there is small business and freedom of trade, capitalism appears.”— V.I. Lenin

A great connoisseur as well as sworn enemy of the free market, Vladimir Lenin might smile a bit if he witnessed what is now happening to small businesses in the current Covid-19 pandemic.

The longer the shutdown continues, the tougher things could become for many of the estimated 30 million small businesses that employ roughly half of all Americans. The prospects are particularly bleak for restaurants, small retail establishments and “personal service” establishments like salons and gyms whose primary selling point against larger firms has been their scale and familiarity with customers. According to the JP Morgan Institute, 50% small businesses have a mere 15 days of cash buffer or less.

If the shutdown lasts much longer, as many as three-quarters of independent restaurants simply won’t make it. In the end, once the fog of the pandemic dies down, we are likely to see a great deal more empty storefronts and many of our beloved local businesses abandoned….

If you get the chance read the whole piece. The significance of what Kotkin talks about is that it reveals that in the discussion about reopening the economy we’re talking about something much bigger than ‘the economy’ – we’re talking about the future of our democracy. Which is the reason why the IPA made We Want To Work.

They’re all socialists now.

Daniel Andrew’s defining moment

Posted on by
1

Whatever Daniel Andrews may do for the rest of his life, closing down Mother’s Day one day in advance of allowing social visits of five or more to each others’ homes will be what he is remembered for best.

Andrews has become the very essence of a political buffoon, recognised that way across the entire country, not just in Victoria. I can see he is beginning to understand the ridicule everyone else is offering on his moronic leadership. A complete clown, but the man with the power to enforce all kinds of idiotic outcomes which he did.

I went looking for Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, which he did not actually live through so it is complete fiction. But in looking it up, found this quote which fits many a leader, and not just Andrews.

Nature has left this tincture in the blood, That all men would be tyrants if they could.

Whether it is “all” or not may be questioned, but it seems to be mostly true for anyone who seeks political leadership. The only people who can be trusted with power are those who do not want it. The next best thing is to put as many barriers in their way as possible.

I know how she feels

Image

1

And then there’s that woman in New South Wales.

Which for some reason calls to mind Max Weber:

‘Every state is founded on force,’ said Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk. That is indeed right. If no social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, then the concept of ‘state’ would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that could be designated as ‘anarchy,’ in the specific sense of this word. Of course, force is certainly not the normal or the only means of the state – nobody says that – but force is a means specific to the state.

Today the relation between the state and violence is an especially intimate one. In the past, the most varied institutions have known the use of physical force as quite normal. Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.

Note that ‘territory’ is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence.

 

It wasn’t the flu, it was YOU

Posted on by
1

From The Australian: Morrison brings Ardern into national cabinet in trans-Tasman solidarity:

Ms Ardern will take a seat alongside Mr Morrison and the state and territory leaders at Tuesday’s meeting to discuss ways to allow a quick return to travel between the two countries and to kickstart businesses in the region that have been devastated by COVID-19.

We have not been devastated by COVID-19. We have been devastated by a stupid, panicky government without a brain in its head or any obvious sense and judgement. We could have taken the same road as Sweden. We could have done whatever it takes to protect those most at risk while leaving the rest of us out of lockup.

Whatever it was, it has come and virtually gone. It is time, without delay, to open things up. But no. YOU decided to go the whole way at a cost of $4billion per day and are still mulling it over. You are the ones responsible. If you are going to play around with this Invasion-of-Privacy App of yours, and delay the recovery, it will be YOU and no one else who is responsible. Since you can take off these restraints any time you like, it is YOU, the Liberal-National Party Coalition that is primarily responsible for the enormous harm that has been done to our lives and the economy.

And since nothing you can do, nothing you can do at all, will prevent whatever it was coming back, if you are still going to threaten us with going back into lockup, the economy will never really start up again, only those bits that can easily open and shut since no one can now trust your judgement.

In the hands of idiots

Posted on by
Reply

It seems to me that every political leader wants to be remembered as the Winston Churchill of their times, when the reality is that there is no greater truth than rooster today, feather duster tomorrow. It is incredible what a bunch of fools this country is led by, state and federal.

We here in Victoria are blessed with the Laurel and Hardy duo of Dopey Dan and Slo Mo. Possibly the stupidest statement to come out of our present situation is from Paul Kelly in relation to the PM: “Political capital built during the virus crisis must be spent wisely on reform”. The only form of capital that occurs to me is capital punishment. We are led by such power-driven idiots that it is hard to have imagined this outcome. If any kind of reform is needed it is to find ways to limit the power we seem inadvertently to have put into the hands of our political leaders. Let me therefore take you to this from Adam Creighton – Coronavirus: We’re paying a high price for saving not many lives – who shows a great deal of what is now missing everywhere, common sense.

He discusses the absurd numbers flowing from the Victorian government. Whoever wrote the document he refers to should resign in disgrace:

The most absurd document published by an Australian government in recent times must be from Victoria’s Health and Human Services Department, which claimed 36,000 Victorians would have died from COVID-19 without the tough lockdowns brought in by Premier Daniel Andrews.

Adam Creighton also puts a number of what this is costing:

The cost [per life saved] is looking enormous and far more than we typically spend to save lives. If we’d followed the Swedish trajectory we might, crudely, have an extra 4500 fatalities by now (our population is 2½ times the size).

For the federal government alone, that works out at $48m per life saved, given the $214bn in budgeted federal assistance.

That is only the additional tally for federal money spent, leaving out the states. I did another similar estimate based on lost GDP which came to $300b per life saved. But let’s work with merely the $48m per individual life saved.

We are in the hands of idiots of such colossal proportions that no one will ever again be able to look back at the Salem Witch Trials and laugh at the people of their time since we are among people so far in advance with their own superstitions that believing in witches will eventually seem rational compared with the dolts we are in the hands of today.