Imre getting into bed, so to speak, with Carmel, raising questions of bias?
Mood:  accident prone
Topic: big media

A state political reporter is supposed to talk to state MPs. So Imre Salusinszky chatting to "Carmel" late last week is no big deal.

But one wonders, based on our telephone conversation late last week with Imre, working for the Holt St Harlot, given a factual error by Imre in a report that day in The Australian about Lee Rhiannon, also his focus again today.

He took a second call during the conversation, muffled sounds, then dulcet tones of "thankyou Carmel .... [rustle rustle]" as presumably his hand went over the telephone hand piece.

It doesn't take a genius to know he is being fed by Carmel Tebbutt MP for Marrickville at risk of the Greens Party in that seat.

And the factual error in the piece? Ben Oquist sought preselection for the upper house of the Greens and was beaten in a competitive process, not blocked by Rhiannon per se, as argued by Imre.

My mail at the time some years back was that despite Ben being an excellent pollicy and back room guy working for Senator Bob Brown (and I know with media degree from UTS because he beat me for the state campaigner job at The Wilderness Society to leave after 2 months or so in 1993), he did not perform very well in the public speaking events in front of the Green branches statewide. This comment was made by Dietrich Willing a long time campaigner for Friends of the Earth, Sydney at that time around 2002 at a meeting of the Inner West Greens - then based around Concord.

Whether this is fair to Ben is another question again.

Given the article in today's The Australian by Imre, it is pretty clear he is desperate to distract the audience from the dissembling by the Israel lobby in bed with assassin Yigal Amir murderer of PM Rabin. Far better to promote a narrative of dissembling by The Green, admittedy with a grain of truth in it too, like all politicians.

I put it to Imre in a "personal" conversation - his word, that The Australian lacks credibility until they report financing of the predatory 'settler' movement, catspaw for a right wing Israeli government, from diaspora business interests in Australia, and report the cheer squad for assassin Yigal Amir.

 Imre's reply was stuck on Yasser Arafat failing to provide a partner for peace which is like - pretty old history in a fast moving diplomatic momentum to recognise Palestine in a unilateral declaration of statehood in 2011, virtually endorsed by the IMF recently as economically viable. He also noted people here can donate to anyone they like. 

Our view remains not if it's a breach of Australian law to promote terrorism, including 'settler' terrorism, quite apart from the immorality of a theocratic blank cheque for expansionist nuclear armed Israel.

Henderson's right wing paranoia about 'red' Rhiannon under the bed
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: aust govt

I first met Lee Rhiannon in the group house at 24 Beach Rd (I think that was the number) in 1992. A group house of 11 rooms on two levels (take note Victor Dominello MP - not an asian face amongst us).

It was a vegetarian, greenie, hippie house and it ran very well. An elder in the place was a guy called Geoff Ash. Geoff was dating Lee who was a bit older than Geoff and divorced.

Some of us worked for established green groups - myself at The Wilderness Society. Geoff worked for an organic vegetable distribution business based at Tamarama. Geof was committed to building a nascent NSW Greens party. It was an idea without flesh. An aspiration without form. Hopeful but a bit pie in the sky. Geoff was a refugee from the local Australian Labor Party, from memory.

If memory serves his time was mostly taken up with fighting off a rat bag called Joe Thorn, originally from NZ, and from the local ALP who wanted to own the nascent Green brand. Even from those early years the ALP were afraid of the potential of the Green idea. Much like Herrod in the New Testament wanted to kill every new born baby - just in case.

There was nothing about Lee's famous communist history on show during those several years at Beach Rd, or later nearby Curlewis St bedsitter, or the Eastern Suburbs Greens meetings I attended to 2000, 4 as a local councillor. I met her aged frail mother once but again there was no comments about communism or smashing the system and revolution. A milder bunch of people would be hard to find in East Sydney let alone Australia.

So Rhiannon's love story with Geoff Ash is the real basis of her ascension in the Greens. It's nothing to do with her communist parents. 

Henderson, with his deliberately covert corporate funding for his Sydney Institute - undeclared in his letter to the The Australian today - is pushing his ideological aggression against Rhiannon. But it's misconceived. Much the same as the newspaper runs a dirt sheet on Gandhi, same edition. Charming I'm sure.

Sure Rhiannon has political organising skills learned at the teat of her political parents. Sure she was a student lefty. And signifying what? 

This writer used to be an alter boy until 14, and then had sex outside of marriage as an adult. Proving what?  That people grow and change - derr.

Henderson makes no mention Rhiannon also did a botany degree. But what he misses most profoundly is the love story with Geoff Ash,  a genuine founder of the NSW Greens who comes originally from the mainstream ALP tradition. In other words Henderson is a flake, and may well be indulging in some professional misogyny as well given he has never been elected to anything in his life.

 Geoff Ash is the story that Henderson and most of the big media have no clue about when it comes to the political provenance of Lee Rhiannon. And at heart it is a great love story.

How PM Menzies nearly sabotaged the Petrov defection, first hand account
Mood:  sharp
Topic: big media

The Corporate media are so biased to their political heroes - like long serving Prime Minister Robert Menzies - it is virtually axiomatic.

Today Menzies features prominently in The Australian's coverage of the old saw of the Petrov spy defection 60 years ago (!).

Talk about old fish wrapping.

If The Australian's research was any good they would quote from the first hand account of the spy who actually turned Petrov. Not haughty Colonel Spry head of then ASO. The actual spy who spoke Russian. The author, doctor and musician Michael Bialoguski, assisted in his account of the affair by the grandfather of this blogger at the time in 1955 (Sydney Morning Herald's Eric McLoughlin).

Some quotes regarding the incompetence of both Spry and Menzies by Bialoguski in The Petrov Story, (1955, publisher Mandarin Australia) at p137

In this way the incompetent Menzies and his staff almost blew the cover of Bialoguski who was a regular at the Russian embassy functions with Petrov and other functionaries and a trusted member of the Russian speaking diaspora in Sydney. Suffice to say Bialoguski was disgusted his dangerous work and his life was treated with such contempt. No wonder he wrote a book about it.

And this again at p140, referring to a messenger for Spry taking petty revenge on Bialoguski for going over his head to Menzies about the penny pinching and ham fisted support he was getting in his work of turning Petrov. Note Bialoguski's work, not Spry's. The quote:

Suffice to say Bialoguski remained on the Petrov case, and his motives may well have been more than pride (refer below) and he left for the UK after the Royal Commission.

At page 200:

In other words Menzies and Spry came within a whisker of sabotaging a defining moment in their own political and professional careers due to their arrogance and incompetence in relation to matters of intelligence. They almost blew the cover of the spy who turned Petrov because they had no sense of his key role.

So much for the heroes of the cold war lauded by The Australian newspaper today in a clumsy attempt to drag an ALP figure through the mud. This first hand account makes the cold war 'heroes' look like clods and fools.

And why was Bialoguski so committed to his infiltration of the embassy and turning Petrov? Refer page 10:

 and page 12 of his young adult life in Vilna, Lithuania in 1940:

And particularly note the profound motivation for chameleon Bialoguski by deduction from this at page 56:

ALP's slur via Danby MP is hopelessly flawed and sleazy
Mood:  sharp
Topic: aust govt

Danby MP lays out his sophistry in today's The Australian with this:

"I have never heard any of them speak out in support of the many thousands of political prisoners in North Korean labour camps, of the 300,000 murdered African Muslims of Darfur, or the Uighur people in western China, whose ancient heritage in areas like Kashgar is being bulldozed by the Chinese Communists as I write. Perhaps the common attribute of these struggles which does not endear them to Rhiannon and her watermelon faction is that they do not support violence and they are not anti-American."

 in MICHAEL DANBY: Knowing the truth will scare off voters

 Certainly Danby and the ALP must be worried being bracketed with the Yigal Amir poster boy movement that assassinated Israeli PM Yitzak Rabin to expand into Palestine.

It's all about alarm for the corrupt in Israeli politics over this;

Friday, 16 January 2009

Naomi Klein in The Guardian, prominent Jewish Canadian media practitioner calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
Topic: human rights

at

 http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1873835/naomi-klein-in-the-guardian-prominent-jewish-canadian-media-practitioner-calls-for-boycott-divestment-and-sanctions/ 

So what about this reportage contrary to Danby rhetoric, from back on 24 April 2008 on humble SAM news blog mentioning all of the afflicted people Danby says the critics of Israel (regarding Palestine) never mention:

Olympic torch relay: Chinese military in the frame as per sponsor Ch7 vision
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: big media

"Whatever you do don't deviate from the alloted path according to the Chinese People's Police, thankyou very much. Sebastian Coe, we get the picture! Very careful control and choreography is the name of the game. Those poor Tibetans and Uygurs, North Koreans, Burmese, Darfurians, Zimbabweans etc.

And that's not saying anything good about the terrible record of the USA or Soviet Union either with their famous record of abuse of power and human rights."

at

http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1808638/olympic-torch-relay-chinese-military-in-the-frame-as-per-sponsor-ch7-vision/ 

in the context of a local event here in Australia.

Or this

Thursday, 27 September 2007

Singapore, India 'trading' partners can promote justice in Burma
Mood:  sharp
Topic: human rights

at

http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1748415/singapore-india-trading-partners-can-promote-justice-in-burma/

Should the world boycott the Beijing Olympics for Chinese human rights abuse?
Mood:  sad
Topic: human rights

at http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1748403/should-the-world-boycott-the-beijing-olympics-for-chinese-human-rights-abuse/

 Or this

Monday, 14 April 2008

China Inc's catspaw: Brainwashed youth diaspora crank Olympic nationalism in Sydney streets here?
Mood:  sharp
Topic: human rights

http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1805801/china-incs-catspaw-brainwashed-youth-diaspora-crank-olympic-nationalism-in-sydney-streets-here/

 Or this

Friday, 4 January 2008

Xstrata and Barrick involved in highly contoversial mine conflicts in Phillipines, PNG
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: human rights

http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1777432/xstrata-and-barrick-involved-in-highly-contoversial-mine-conflicts-in-phillipines-png/ 

Danby by his stupid comment just proves he is moral bupkis(Yiddish for worthless).

For instance he completely ignores that the ALP councillors at Marrickville also voted for Boycott, Sanction, Divestment campaign against Israel until they change direction on Palestine human rights and the extreme and predatory land theft movement promoting theocratic 'Samaria'.

He also selectively ignores the record of Meredith Burgmann, a prominent campaigner for the ALP in Balmain state election seat, former MP, current Sydney City Councillor, who managed to airbrush the North Koreans atrocities from her cute report of visit to the secret kingdom, exposed here on SAM some years back;

Saturday, 29 March 2008

City Hall Left candidate Burgmann airbrushes 2 million death holocaust in North Korea?
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: nsw govt

at http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1800728/city-hall-left-candidate-burgmann-airbrushes-2-million-death-holocaust-in-north-korea/

Tony Blair ex PM of the UK grasps at Catholic redemption for Iraq slaughter, tragedy
Mood:  not sure
Topic: human rights

http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1774724/tony-blair-ex-pm-of-the-uk-grasps-at-catholic-redemption-for-iraq-slaughter-tragedy/

Wednesday, 12 December 2007

MOSOP Protests Against Shell in Nigeria
Mood:  sharp
Topic: human rights

http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1771683/mosop-protests-against-shell-in-nigeria/

And of course the good old Greens directly quoted here:

Tuesday, 28 August 2007

Burmese dictatorship attacks political protesters: Greens
Mood:  sad
Topic: human rights
Australian Coalition for Democracy in Burma Inc
Media Release
28 August 2007

http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1738571/burmese-dictatorship-attacks-political-protesters-greens/

 

Bob Carr's tragic logging legacy on the NSW south coast since 2000
Mood:  blue
Topic: ecology

Source of map and bar graph below: Tony Whan and South East Forest Rescue.

 

Palace of mirrors
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: world
Night comes down and finds you alone
In a space and time of your own
Lost in dreams in a world full of shadows.

Down the street the neon light shines
Offering refuge and hope to the blind
You stumble in with no thought of tomorrow.

Yes, I get a little lonely when the sun gets low
And I end up looking for somewhere to go
Yes, I should know better but I can’t say no.

Oh no no no
No no no no

The lights are low and the Muzak is loud
You watch yourself as you play to the crowd
One more face in a palace of mirrors.

One more drink, you’re sailing away
One more dream but it’s looking ok
One more time to watch the flow of the river.

Yes, I get a little lonely when the sun gets low
And I end up looking for somewhere to go
Yes, I should know better but I can’t say no.

Oh no no no
No no no no no no no oooooooh

Yes, I get a little lonely when the sun gets low
And I end up looking for somewhere to go
Yes, I should know better but I can’t say no.

Oh no no no
No no no no

You’ve seen it all yeah you’ve seen it before
Like a fool you always come back for more
You live your life like there was no more tomorrow.

Night comes down and finds you alone
In a space and time of your own
Lost in dreams in a world full of shadows.

Yes, I get a little lonely when the sun gets low
And I end up looking for somewhere to go
Yes, I should know better but I can’t say no.

Oh no no no
Oh no no no
No no no no
No no no no
No no
No no
Oooooooooooh

Vic bushfire dead - the families deserve the historic truth
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: wildfires

 

 

The truth is out there - in the Victorian election result. In the reform agenda to ban the logging of wet mature native forests in Tasmania. In the silence of the usually voluable and egregious Michael O'Connor on the ALP national executive.

Those who know, know: You can't log all the wet schlerophyll, rainforest, and otherwise green damfuls of water in mature forests, for 200 years and not expect megafires eventually.

Water is the limiting factor for life on this wide brown land. Scientific studies show that Aboriginal firestick farming was no where near the level of burning of colonials that effectively destroyed the forest water cycle.

Now there is barely any evidence of that original wet giant cathedral eucalypt schlerophyll forest in Victoria.  A bit in East Gippsland but mostly it's gone. The industry have been systematic in destroying the evidence of their crime against nature and humanity for 150 years now.

The brutal fact is the logging industry killed those 170 plus people over 50 to 150 years ago - out of ignorance, by their landscape conversion to new regrowth removing water out of the landscape. Coroner Justice Teague it appears is a learned fool who barely scatched the surface of land use history in Australia to it's inevitable consequence.

Just as humid forests on the equator in hot climates also tend not to burn. Or at least did not until recently when even the abused Amazon jungle is burning due to the drying process of fragmentation - by loggers.

The grim truth is we are in a diabolical land use downward spiral with the green dam of water breached and virtually empty. How to re-establish that green damful of water is the honest forestry job at hand that the 'experts' can only guess at: How to accelerate an old growth landscape with their watery sponge full of root networks where there is now only saplings like hairs on the back of a dog? Much like agri activist Peter Andrews promotes green damfuls on clapped out farms due to hopeless landscape hydrology.

It's never been done in regrowth forest, and may never be done. Meanwhile on the NSW South Coast, the logger's logger Ian Barnes rules, having operated illegally without an EIS for some 20 years to the end of the 90ies, now ratified by a corrupt NSW Government with resource security laws in 1999. Barnes is now busy preparing the way for the next megafire: Trashing any high volume wet green damful of water in the form of mature forest that he can. About 50% of forest outside national parks on the NSW south coast has now been logged in the last 10 years. A perfect patchwork of kindling for a megafire just like Victoria. How many will be barbequed in NSW? And how long until it happens?

Only it will happen. Tragically. Because of vandals like Barnes and predecessors back 150 years. Will Barry O'Farrell progress the loggers' megafire agenda via trashing of green dams of water that are left? One assumes so, over the weak objections of wets like Hartcher and Hazzard in his new cabinet come March 2011.

A sorrowful international year of the forests to be sure.

Fairfax frippery and other (Gerard Henderson) joke journalism
Mood:  lazy
Topic: big media

One question - who funds Gerard Henderson?

Supplementary: If you don't know because the Sydney Institute funding is secret - how can you publish him prominently in the opinion pages and claim you are a real newspaper and not simply a propaganda sheet?

The truth is Fairfax opinion editor is a professional joke.

 

Paul Monk, creepy spooky scared weird little guy, on wikileaks
Mood:  energetic
Topic: big media

What can you say about ol' Monky eh?

There he was back in the day slumming it at Ursula College residential hall at ANU in the mid 80ies, like a barely concealed ASIO recruiting officer.

2 doors down from Burgmann College were KR Rudd was holed up some 5 years earlier.

Monky had a reputation amongst what Sister Scholastica (RIP) referred to as the elite: One a maths professor today, another a uni medal winner destined for Macquarie Bank, another who got more HDs than credits or distinctions. And this humble cynic - even at that age. I spent too much time envying Rodney Day listed as world record holder of Pengo arcade game in Wikipedia, earnd in the Ursula common room.

Back in the day when it was a religious Catholic institution. And I confess I ought not to have stolen the bottle of alter (!) wine and am just about a teetotal these days.

We had another name for ourselves - The Sloth Club. Which was so not true - all ambitious and quite hard working in private. But in the common room to join our 'club' there was only one rule - you didn't care if you were in our club! Suitable social apathy was the evidence required of a strong identity and self confidence that eschewed vain double talk.

Hence Monky was never going to cut it. And now we read his prose yesterday in The Australian dated 4 January 2011 attacking Assange as literally Daniel Ellsberg endorses Assange. WTF? Monky tries to turn that endorsement around while ignoring the revelations on the Iraq war count, the Right to Know agenda, the effective rescue of the relevance of the 4th estate from their own craven compromises with Big Govt/Big Corp Donors, peace dividend from what Gandhi calls the role of 'openness' in his profound 10 principles of non violence. And so on.

Monky hasn't changed - short of stature and short of principled prose. No one doubts the Big Media aka conservative press will both exploit wikileaks and proceed to their 'little murder' of the source being Assange and wikileaks. The 5th estate well know the deconstruction. But it won't work.

For the same reason gold Walkley winner Laurie Oakes staunchly defends the role of wikileaks in boosting the public's right to know, so Monk has only made an intellectual and moral fool of himself - again.

 

Verrender, Van Onselen display their $15B stupidity on power asset profile
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: big media

On the issue of the sale (sell out?) of NSW power assets we keep reading the cannard of the 1997 sale proposal being worth $30 /$25 billion then only $15B under Iemma in 2007 and now only $5B (or $3B after the coal mine).

These are not the same asset bundle. As pointed out by John Kaye MP (Greens) some years ago the 1997 proposal included the poles and wires which may be Transgrid authority.

 No doubt there are other variations in the asset profile for the 3 DIFFERENT sale proposals.

For so called professional journalists or opinion writers in Fairfax and News Ltd in the space of 2 days to get their articles wrong by a mere $15B while promoting their critique is an outrage of public misinformation, probably as bad as the performance of the NSW Govt itself.

No wonder the Govt is so bad. The 4th estate is a sad projection of incompetence. The irony is that this makes the case for Wikileaks regarding actual sourcing of information to cross check the dopes in the big media.

Van Onselen's story may not be online but it appears at p100 today of the Sydney Sunday Telegraph.

Verrender's piece in the weekend Sydney Morning Herald is here:

Seller's remorse hits as power station buyers jump for joy

One stupid quote here:

"At just $5.3 billion, with maybe another $2 billion to come, NSW taxpayers have been royally shafted, ripped off and taken for a ride. At least, that's what the critics would have us believe. And, superficially at least, it's difficult to argue with them.

In 1997, those same assets were in the books at $25 billion. But within two years, the value had plummeted to $16 billion."