There’s a piece by ABC journalist Julia Baird in The Age yesterday lamenting the demise of “objective facts” in public discourse.
While politicians, lobbyists and supporters initiate fact-less commentary, the media is largely responsible for propagating a narrative based unquestioningly on emotion and personal belief, rather than fact.
Baird cites the ABC’s managing director Michelle Guthrie as an aficionada of “true diversity.” Diversity in newsrooms is one method of dispersing the fog of lies, Baird argues, on the grounds that most are staffed by middle class white men and a few middle class white women. There is apparently a correlation between middle class white men and women, and fact-less reporting.
It seems to me that one must be middle class in order to score a gig in mainstream media: perhaps it is the class, rather than the colour that is the dominant factor here. Perhaps we need to get rid of the middle class if we want to disperse the fog of lies.
This would be an interesting piece of research.
While I heartily agree with the need for diverse voices, calling up Guthrie as a proponent of objective fact and diversity is astounding, given that one of her first acts was to terminate the ABC’s fact checking unit, closely followed by the axing of the world-renowned Catalyst science program, resulting in the loss of a rare team of scientists talented enough to master the delicate art of conveying complex information in a half hour segment. Science broadcaster Robin Williams described this carnage as “morally and spiritually bankrupt.”
Baird concludes that: There is no simple solution for how to dissolve the fog of lies and fake news that has blurred our political landscape.
Well, actually, it’s not that difficult. Try telling the truth. Try prefacing reports such as the ludicrous segment on Pauline Hanson’s big day out on the Great Barrier Reef with a caution that “what follows has no factual content.” This simple statement shouldn’t get anyone into trouble. It’s the truth.
The fog of lies and fake news that has blurred our political landscape hasn’t done it all by itself. Note the passive voice. Media hasn’t had a hand in this. The fog has done all the blurring. Damn that low-lying fog. Let’s make people of colour responsible for lifting it.
Baird and the rest of the media can angst about this post fact reality all they like, but it’s a circle jerk. The answer is in their hands, so to speak. In the US, trust in media is at its lowest since 1972, and I’m betting there’s a similar lack of trust in Australia. The longest journey begins with the first step. Try truth. We might eventually get to like you again.
Objective facts! What a novel idea.
They could try removing “Balance” which it seems requires that any idea, no matter how good and true, be “balanced” by something opposite, no matter how bad and false it may be.
Loopy ideas (and the loopy people who propound them) are thus presented as realistic alternatives by our complaisant media. The general public aren’t sure what to believe, and not surprisingly divide fairly evenly, or according to their previous preferences – regardless of indisputable evidence to the contrary.
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Yes! Precisely, DQ. This balance business has got totally out of hand. Factless zone, just idiots expressing idiotic opinions with no foundation.
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A new way for the lazy western media to stop telling the fucking truth – invent a new thing called fake facts.
The rest of us just call it lying.
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Spot on re ‘balance’!
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Ahhhh – the truth. Like the first March In March in Sydney, standing and then walking peacefully but determinedly with about 15,000 people who’d travelled from all over the city and state (I walked with some people from Orange!) to protest a range of issues, and not even getting a paragraph in the “Sydney” Morning Herald because the journo felt that no celebrities (oh except that Billy Bragg guy …) or politicians would be there so it wouldn’t be “important”. But a crowd of several hundred who showed up to welcome home a footy team the same week received front page coverage with extra pictures inside. Is it because one fits the narrative that Aussies care about football but not politics? Actual words are just one way the mainstream media lies, and it’s no wonder people are turning off in droves. I know I haven’t purchased a copy of the SMH since then, and wonder how many others had the same reaction – all trust is gone, and I wonder how long it’s been happening before it became so blatant even *I* realised what is going on!
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Yes, Christine, exactly like the lack of coverage of that march.
And the language used to describe events such as that used by journos to describe the protest last week in question time.
I think it’s only in alternative media that these things will be challenged, and we just have to keep at it.
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Seems to me the best way to disperse the “fog” is to ensure there are always concomitant CONSEQUENCES for any false statements or claims. In other words, let’s stop this ridiculous state where a politician can make an absolutely false claim knowing the interviewer, typically for reasons of available time, will probably not pick them up on it – so no consequence – and the intended target of the falsehood (the credulous viewer) receives and consumes the message without a blip.
Call EVERY falsehood out EVERY time. We only need a politician dragged down attempting to defend the indefensible against a dogged attack a very few times before they realise such flippant use of lying becomes self-defeating.
The same can be said of election promises. Pass a law that requires true consequence – such as loss of the privilege of being our representative, if specific, noted promises made and are subsequently not kept. If they claim changed circumstatnces, tell them not to promise what might have to change. Assemble the “written down” promises and hold their voicers to account. Politicians will quickly realise they shouldn’t make those promises so glibbly
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You are right, Peter, I just don’t know how journalists can be persuaded to be this forensic.
They must know by now that we despise them. Most of them, that is. There are still a handful I trust but it’s dwindling.
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Ordinary people would like it, but those who have the power to make it happen won’t!
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On this subject, see this cartoon:
Glen Le Lievre, Sydney Sun Herald, 26 June 2016, “The Interview”
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Just about sums it up..
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And thanks to Michelle Guthrie’s not allowing any public comments on ABC website articles, opportunities for calling out the untruths and dispersing the ‘fog of lies’ is greatly diminished. Yes, indeed, so much for the ABC’s welcoming a diversity of views.
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I didn’t realise there was a no comments policy as well.
They really in the business of control now, aren’t they?
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a bit like the the aim..
dont like a different opinion, they ban people, and then they complain they are being called an echo chamber.. well thats what happens when you only allow one side of a story..
http://theaimn.com/dissolve-fog-lies-try-truth/
those people simply not interested in truth
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To me, THIS is good, actually brilliant, broadsheet situational journalism/commentary..
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/dec/03/yes-malcolm-turnbull-youve-got-things-done-youve-tidied-your-sock-drawer
Would enough people read it or understand it, given the general dumbing down of recent times?
We have had Brandis censorship regarding serious issues and global hammering of whistleblowers, so what can the press and media fill its pages with?
This smarmy muck:
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/hadleyfreeman (to compliment the Baird lie)
(for contrast)
From the nursery, Badham on bananas and Ford on her epiphany to womanhood through childbirth.
But for a look at REAL garbage, people can check out the worst episode of Insiders this year, under Guthries watch (Coorey should be hung by his toes and left for the crows) and then watch teev on ABC24 for whole decades with being subjected to a REAL news story.
Sorry Baird, you and your brother can’t have me hit hit rock bottom . I am already there and no post truth right wing propaganda can make it hurt more than it does .
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Well, PW, I had to go looking for the Ford piece didn’t I?
I must say I never actually heard of anyone delaying birth for 36 hours after her waters broke but what do I know, I gave birth to my second on a bean bag in the lounge room.
You sound despondent, my friend.
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I hope Ford is not Stepforded. There is much less of her lately at Fairfax, but much more Kardashian stuff at what the SMH laughingly Daily Life (in death?).
Yes, a bit despondent, it can’t be helped. Stuff like Taylor’s REAL article shinig like a diamond in a cowpat, against the opposing nonsenses, merely compounds the thing.
What good can dumbing down do, any more than the medieval Church persecuting people like Galileo;involving things Heliocentricity, that demolished the theology, thus legitimacy of social structure in that era’s; because what the lateral thinkers discovered wasn’t “convenient” for a selfish, greedy, ignorant hierarchy?
How dare someone like Baird who parades her alleged virtue knowingly try to legitimate theft, deception and tyranny. How can these people do this?
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PW, the only way I stay on top of this stuff is to accept what I can’t immediately change and keep protesting nonetheless
There are nasty people abroad in the world. Have you watched House of Cards? Highly recommended, it demonstrates well how these things work.
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I loved the original with Ian Richardson but haven’t seen the US version, which I am told is good also.
I suspect we won’t see either now that the Murdoch has got its claws definitionally into public broadcasting.
I just don’t understand why many people want to raise their children in a world where the truth has become a dirty word.
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Well, you can’t kill your children, you have to raise them if you’ve had them, and then you have to help raise the grandchildren. I don’t have any trouble teaching my lot about truthfulness, it doesn’t seem that complicated. There’s no one Truth of course, we’ve known that for a while, it’s the mental & emotional capacity to live with many truths, often conflicting, that we need to learn. Not to mention the truth of uncertainty, which many of us find intolerable.
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The US version is superb, PW. I put the DVDs on my birthday & Xmas lists and now have the four series. They are keepers. Ive watched them twice through already.
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Can we have a reference to the “worst episode of Insiders”, please?
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But there are so many.
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Ha ha!!
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More on the ABC here:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/09/jaws-drop-at-abc-as-michelle-guthrie-defends-radio-national-cuts
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Guthrie sounds a tad confrontational doesn’t she?
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What coarse brutes authoritarian people are.
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One issue is that it’s not whose telling the truth, it’s who’s bought the better lawyer or more powerful politician. Our libel laws and political system are not real friendly to independent media. My QC loses to your cabinet minister, but you’re trumped by my friendship with a Cheezel.
Too bad if all I wanted to do was read the news with “President-Elect Trump talked to the leader of Taiwan (true), and promoted a report (true) that global temperatures are falling (lie)” Or “Barnaby Joice thinks (false) that Malcolm Turnbull will deliver (unlikely) better internet for rural areas (extremely unlikely)”… it would be hard to do that without ending up like that Ross guy who no longer reports on the NBN for the ABC. As the saying goes “reality has a liberal bias”.
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Hahaha, Moz, Barnaby & thinking ought never to be in the same sentence.
You’re right though, truth is the casualty everywhere one looks.
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Of course.
The continuing adventures of Brandis and the unfortunate Justin Gleeson, with those pesky Inquiries to follow.
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The fog of truth starts at the sub-atomic level and works its way outwards to the none proven existence of dark matter and multi-universe theory to the very edges or no-edged Cosmos.
Physics despite its reputation as a hard science has proven the cuckoo in the nest of truth, since the genius in the patent office spent more of his spare time dabbling with equations than reading paragraphs of contract law.
And because of the the alive and simultaneously dead cat, the missing eternal particle that finally turns up a year or so ago, the sighting of the 17th quark while two more still remain theoretical this reliance on what we interpret as truth is questionable at best once you add the elements of such lunacies as politics and economics to the list, at worst truth is a sham.
I watched the Snowden documentary last night, and couldn’t help but share the contagious paranoia of that Hong Kong hotel room when the fire alarm started going off intermittently.
Why should truth be counted as a simple accumulation of facts found, watch Citizen 4.
I welcome the post-truth world with open arms, it’s not as if we have passed from one state to the other, it has always been so, it’s like coming out of the closet and acknowledging and embracing the half-arsed, mirror shunning/mirror preening creatures we are.
Long live Truthiness.
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“He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
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Yep.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-center-for-constitutional-rights/surveillance-after-the-us_b_8827952.html
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http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/obama-politely-asks-trump-to-wait-until-inauguration-before-destroying-world
Yeah, Snowden. Whistleblowers have always had a tough life, and if you have to break big laws to blow the whistle …. who knows how it will end for him. I can’t hep wondering whether or not it was a smart move on Snowden’s part to let that white-haired scut currently dodging sexual assault charges in the Ecuadorian embassy to associated himself with Snowden’s actions.
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Well that is a pretty despicable comment that indicates the success of the system in brainwashing people against whistle blowers and dissidents?
“”She had won the victory over herself. She loved Big Brother”.
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If Snowden’s first instinct was dedicated to his public relations profile then perhaps you are right about his association with Assange. What Citizen 4 seemed to make clear was Snowden’s concern with his PR profile was the least of his concerns.
In the scheme of things Obama is the scoundrel of higher rank, ( I am quick to add that I do not have a comparative rating scheme that ranks Rape against Subversive acts of espionage domestic and International).
It is amusing to see left wing friends of mine recently admonishing Trump for not using cheat sheets provided by the CIA when speaking to foreign leaders.
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I was thinking more if his first instinct was the PR profile of his cause. I don’t criticise Snowden for letting Assange piggy-back off his actions, because, really, heck … he’s basically in a minute-by-minute toss-a coin if-you-jump-thewrong-way-you-get-crushed situation.
Oh yes, many of the wingers of whatever direction have never let themselves be overly concerned by self-consistency and Trump’s election has brought that into stark relief.
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I remember a few years ago a spate of threads here concerning the Assange issue and despite a mound of pro Assange evidence, who was the person who could not be brought to even possibility of innocence against guilt till innocence proven?
I ask myself, what is the person’s grudge?
Well, Jo?
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What “rape” ffs?
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Should read “alleged rape/s”, I have no leaning one way or the other as to whether JA is guilty or not.
A man can be a great humanitarian and full of the best of intentions, love his parents, his children and be kind to animals and still be a rapist.
A man can be a rapist and still be a force for good. Discuss.
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He has never, ever been accused of fucking rape.
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Are you talking about Assange? I think there’s one allegation outstanding, but its exact nature I can’t recall.
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Perhaps it is a matter of interpretation and the difference in legal language between Swedish and English.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/julian-assanges-arrest-warrant-rape-case-upheld-sweden-court-n649296
I am open to being corrected.
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The definition of rape in Sweden is quite different from ours, as I understand it.
all thumbs & Marilyn.
Under Swedish law I think there is one allegation of rape outstanding. Wasn’t he recently interviewed in the embassy by the Swedes on this matter? Or did they only agree to at some time in the future interview him in the embassy.
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You are right Jennifer that there is only a single allegation outstanding. He’s evaded extradition for the others long enough for them to have timed out. His reason for this, in case you’ve lost track of that also, rested on the twin premises that US forces that wanted to kill him couldn’t do so in England during the years he was appealing through the legal system, and US forces that wanted to extradite him couldn’t do so from England either.
I suppose that those who believe this feel a warm inner glow about how strongly committed the British Establishment is to withstanding political pressure from the US.
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Jo, As I understand it he is under the protection of Ecuador, and if he leaves that country’s embassy the Brits will arrest him. Haven’t the Brits been guarding the embassy for years in case he emerged?
I don’t think it’s a question of the Brits withstanding pressure from US. They’d turn him over in a heartbeat, but to Sweden I think, who have first dibs apparently, and from where he can be extradited to the US.
Although I seem to recall there are various charges the Brits want to bring against him as well, not sure what they are.
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Yes, that’s the current situation. Only before he entered the embassy there was a year or two of court appeals during which he relied on the British not to extradite him to the US. Dibs are immaterial – if the Swedes’ real agenda was to hand over Assange to the US, they would hardly object to Britain getting in first! Save them the trouble.
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Your head might wish Truthiness a long life AT, but your stubborn heart isn’t going all the way.
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Obviously Jo, Assange’s enemies were not aware of of Assange’s relationship with Presiden tCorea of Ecuador.
Assange knew the end game could well end up seeing him suffer the same fate as Chelsea Manning (at best) or rendition and torture for the identities of contacts.
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Yes, heard the story before. He also knew the British would resist pressure to extradite him to those enemies because … well he just knew. He’s Julian Assange after all.
I mean, the US government say they never made such a request. But they’re probably lying. They are the US government after all. The good old British Establishment came through for Assange. Or maybe Assange’s enemies just realised that if an expert analyst like Assange thought that any extradition request would be rebuffed, then it would, so why bother even trying.
I hear he’s not so keen on the British government these days, but no doubt there’s been a secret shift in the Establishment ranks that he’s aware of.
It all makes perfect sense.
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Assange’s opinion of Sweden changed fairly radically as well I recall. It went from being a safe place to set up Wikileaks operations, indeed he applied for permanent residency there, to being a lackey of US imperialists.
I remember reading about followers of Mohammed who were asked why his edicts about women changed so much over the years and followed his own personal circumstances so closely. They replied that God had sent him various women in order to make the correct behaviour clear to him.
Everything makes perfect sense for followers.
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“They replied that God had sent him various women in order to make the correct behaviour clear to him.”
Jo, I never thought I would have anything in common with the Prophet.
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Yes, I too can see a lot of merit in the idea of women making correct behaviour clear to men. 🙂
However, in context my clumsy wording was meant to get across the idea that a lot of the Prophet’s ideas about how women should behave related to making his life with his growing number of wives less stressful for himself. His followers’ explanation for this was that the wives had been sent to him by God in order to make His will for all women apparent.
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Because all women are the same. Of course we are. I have no irony font unfortunately.
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So the BigM was not a SNAG eh?
Who’d a thunk it?
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Then such a man is suffering from cognitive dissonance as well as psycho sexual dysfunction. He ought to get himself seen to.
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NY Times:Jan.12 , 2016
“Obama’s embrace and vast expansion of drone strikes against militants and terrorists will be an enduring foreign policy legacy. Whereas President George W. Bush authorized approximately 50 drone strikes that killed 296 terrorists and 195 civilians in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, Obama has authorized 506 strikes that have killed 3,040 terrorists and 391 civilians. (Using the average estimates provided by three non-governmental organizations.) A technology developed and matured shortly before 9/11 to kill one individual, Osama bin Laden, became the default tactic for a range of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism missions outside of traditional battlefields.”
Does Obama still get wood?
Trump being so much older, I foresee an increase in drone strike deaths.
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Obama isn’t the president in a Sorkin tv series, no one gets the job unless they’re willing to slaughter, I think that’s a given.
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Don’t get what you mean here. Who exactly do you think is suffering these various maladies?
I DO agree if you mean the Swedes and some of the nutters pursuing Assange.
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LOL, PW, I was replying to allthumbs’ post on whether or not a rapist can also be a good person.
Sometimes replies seem to get transplanted and rendered bewildering or meaningless.
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I believe Trump prefers to communicate with foreign leaders on Twitter
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Its impossible to fathom the stupidity of the US courts.
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Is that the definition of truth all thumbs? A simple accumulation of facts?
There is no Truth, the postmodernists put a stop to that illusion.
But perhaps they threw the baby our with the bathwater?
I saw Snowden, the movie, a few weeks ago. Left me quite shaken.
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Jennifer, the irony of Snowden and his partner in those closing images of domestic happiness in their Moscow residence.
The Guardian destroying the hard drive. That tiny hard core physicality of truth that is supported by an inconceivably massive all encompassing world of subterfuge.
That film robbed me of a little more of my faith, hope and the tattered remnants of my smug sense of irony.
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Yes, allthumbs, the daily challenge I find is how to live in such a world and create some peace and happiness in one’s personal life that makes the rest of it endurable.
While at the same time never shutting up about the general misery of it.
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Any way, back to the topic.
Since much of the thread is to do with Drum, I tuned in tonight.
No Baird, Lord John was presiding.
Of the panelists tonight Van Badham has been mentioned previously and she was the one that shone, apart from missing the chance to follow up on the true significance of the Renzi resignation, given the her previous critiquing re neoliberalism and climate change.
She still has some residual odd ides about men, but that’s a minor quibble.
Ruddock did his usual deceitful stuffed owl impersonation, Mundine remained in side his shell for fear of risking something worthwhile in a comment and a Blairite academic did his best at honesty, significantly backing Badham on alternative against fossil fuel power generation.
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Ruddock? That cadaverous sadist? He still breathes?
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Only through his skin.
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Re LOL, have moved on via a final epiphany that reveals all complete, for me.
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/if-they-dont-like-it-they-should-leave-tensions-escalate-between-abc-management-and-staff-20161205-gt47na.html
The old collegiate ABC appears to dead as wealthier and more mercenary and poorer staff are played off against each other and the old approach dies in favour of a rat race amenable eg Murdochisation and dumbing down via the coded message of the need for a “younger audience” eg commercial network, that some how justifies removal of better quaiity ABC alternatives…a false dichotomy and truly nauseating story of corroded values.
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I completely agree with you PW. I was appalled when I read that piece.
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Here is another, later snippet:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/06/michelle-guthrie-murdoch-consultant-restructure-abc-jim-rudder
How does “restructure” equate to “dismemberment?
More importantly, why does Rudder look like a muppet?
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I though he looked more like a replicant
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Speak of the Devil!
More on Julian Assange:
https://justice4assange.com/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-07/julian-assange-goes-public-on-rape-allegations/8099276
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and this:
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Finally, this:
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I’ve consistently refused to judge whether or not Assange is guilty of the sexual offences he’s been charged with. I don’t believe I can possibly know. I wasn’t there. Unfortunately, I well know the complexity of such situations, & in the case of Assange, the waters are further muddied by the desire of the US to kill him.
I believe he’s been interviewed now on the remaining allegation.
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The texts did show up on screen?
Have you missed that these last postings are Assange’s response to the farcical interview with Ny, when NOTHING he said would have altered a pre-ordained response from the Swedes?
Just a few days ago an EU Court rejected Sweden and England’s approach, the key phrase in the judgement being “lack of proportionality”.
Don’t forget it is not SW who has vengeafully chased after Assange or even Ny, who orginally dropped the case before political pressure was brought to bear.
(sighs) I am going for a walk.
I really do begin to despair of people in this now-habituated Orwellian world.
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Yes, PW, I’ve read it all.
I’m still unwilling to conclude that Assange is or is not guilty of rape. Just because SW hasn’t pursued him doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, there are many reasons why a woman doesn’t pursue a man who raped her. Especially when the entire world is watching.
That doesn’t mean I concur with any of the treatment meted out to him by Sweden, Britain and the US. I don’t.
Assange offered years ago to submit to an interview, and Ny refused to conduct one in the London embassy, in an effort to force him to Sweden I believe, and thence to the US.
I don’t argue with people about the rape allegations anymore. I simply do not know, one way or the other.
You are despairing of me after all this time?
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PW you are supremely oblivious to the ickiness of Assange’s attempt to orchestrate a trial by media on these allegations. So an alleged victim said she didn’t want him charged. Could it be she didn’t want to be an international hate target, or even the hate target of the local people she was trying to impress by bedding a high profile dissident in the first place? You seriously see no power imbalance here?
Let’s assume everything Assange says is true. Could it be that there are things he is not saying that might put things in a different light?
The issue here is not Assange’s guilt or innocence. It’s whether he should be using a massive power imbalance to evade court proceedings, and hiding the absurd premise on which his justification for this hangs (that the Swedes would extradite him to the US but the British wouldn’t) under a fog of press releases and escalating conspiracy theories.
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No. You really are mad. The power imbalance is the one involved in hate target Assange’s persecution. You are so obsessed with seeing Assange done over that you don’t see the forest for the trees.
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That’s your answer to why it’s OK for Assange to exploit the massive power imbalance between himself and his alleged victims? Because not only don’t you comprehend the power imbalance, but since you don’t I must be imagining it, which shows I’m mad and obsessed with doing Assange over?
The reasoning of the follower can be quite interesting sometimes. Relax and enjoy your faith in peace.
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Yes.
I am quite certain that your and certain others interest is exclusively about having Julian Assange done ever as a scapegoat, driven by irrational hate and bias.
I fear for your vision of the world, the world of Mississippi, where anonymous people wearing white sheets and pointy hats can castrate and lynch others on no better than gut prejudice.
Guilt till innocence proven and gut hate replace evidence contested in open court.
I once asked a couple of young women, students at a pro Assange meeting,their views and they said,
“Rape is too serious an issue to be hijacked by politics”.
If I’m wrong I’m sorry, but nothing in your approach so far suggests I need to any feel shame at my conclusions concerning you or not sleep well tonight.
If you can prove me incorrect, go for it, but I abjure you on the evidence of your writings over quite some time
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I am quite certain that your claim to be quite certain is honest. Faith is always certain.
Your claims about me however are not.
– That I pretend to know (or even care) anything about Assange’s guilt or innocence. False.
– That I seek to replace evidence contested in open court with gut hate (Actually this one is laughable given that I seek to replace a media blitz by a powerful media man with evidence contested in court.)
– That anything I’ve written indicates otherwise
You are welcome to your faith and regardless of a degree of annoyance about being bothered by you over it, I do see that acting in accordance with it compels you to do so. However it does not compel you to lie, so you should feel shame.
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I withdraw my irritable accusation of lying. Even though your claims about me are false, you may well believe them – it’s always easier to preserve your faith if you convince yourself that anything that challenges it must emanate from a serious character flaw.
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For my part, I apologise too.
I am shamed in the presence of perfection and my only consolation on the inexorable march to Calvary is the epiphany that another bears an even weightier, cross the one of perfection, beyond the one I could bear.
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I’ll be fucked!
Here I am, a failure, who has spent much of his life trying to remove his defects of character. Yet suddenly I am thrust into the presence of one who has achieved this seeming impossible, a unique transcendence to a state of unblemished perfect knowledge and wisdom.
Do tell, Jo Wiseman, how you alone, managed this miraculous feat?
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From this evening (16/12) from 7 30.
Jennifer Robinson, the lawyer representing Julian Assange on the current state of play, deals effortlessly with a series of;loaded questions.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2016/s4593973.htm
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