Mood:  crushed out

The public may want to ring the News Ltd organisation and ask them if they are being racist trying to rewrite Australian history for cheap divisive political reasons?

Here are their numbers, go ahead and give them a call:

Certainly they need a good mopping out ...

Posted by editor at 10:36 AM NZT

Updated: Wednesday, 29 June 2011 11:03 AM NZT

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Mood:  energetic

One becomes tired of, and bored, with the Sydney Daily Cartoon book misogynisitc attacks on Mayor Clover Moore's policies to improve the amenity of city streets - by reducing car traffic.

Virtually any city in Australia is more pleasant than Sydney, due to the invasion of cars.

Australians buy 1 million new cars a year, and I swear 990,000 are in the Sydney CBD.

So what is really going on? Bad News Corp are leveraging the advertising market on car sales. Chances are these attacks on Clover Moore are nothing more than that. Sleazy advertising editorial at play. Ditto the values challenged Parrot.

(Another reflection on News Corp bias is the non sequitur about state MP Clover whose seat is based around the CBD, apparently cannot be mayor of the same area, when both Town Hall and Parliament are literally 5 minutes cab ride from eachother. Not to mention modern communication gizmos. And overlap of policy issues .... like transport. How that relates to Hawkesbury conservative mayor now MP Bart Basset dual roles 45 km away in Windsor has yet to be explained.)

We think anyone who wants a better Sydney, clean air to breathe, more successful strip shopping centres, and happier communities sharing public space, should direct their car related business away from the bad News Corp carsguide.com.au until the cartoon book improves their news ethic ... like don't hold your breath.

There are plenty of other online choices like gumtree, trading post,  carsales.com.au, drive.com.au

Go your hardest, just don't support carsguide.com.au

Posted by editor at 1:38 PM NZT

Updated: Saturday, 11 June 2011 1:45 PM NZT

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Mood:  sharp

Here we go again on historical revisionism over the failed Bondi heavy rail scam.

We were Bondi Ward councillor at the time. And chair of the Waverley Council Environment Committee.

The proposal was a corporate scam. Caton had a marginal role that I don't even recall. Bill Leak was higher on the agenda as an opponent, raffling artwork for the cause. 

Lee Rhiannon, now MP was a central opponent given the banker scam behind it. 

As was Mayor Paul Pearce, in effect over the siting in Bondi Park, and failure to build a mid way station as promised. The wheels fell of the dog of a proposal. 

Historical information from that time at this link on SAM previously:

 http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1773172/carr-govt-incompetence-doomed-heavy-and-light-rail-development-to-bondi-beach-put-buses-at-risk/

Compare with a real Labor government in 1979 before the spivs took over?:

http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1802908/official-1979-brochure-nsw-alp-halcyon-days-opening-of-eastern-suburbs-rail/

Posted by editor at 7:01 AM NZT

Updated: Wednesday, 1 June 2011 8:17 AM NZT

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Mood:  d'oh

No doubt our doughty abc journo thought he was ahead of the curve with his interview of climate science communicator - not climate scientist as such - Prof Flannery last Monday night.

The Uhl took a few hits, then props by the grubs at News Ltd - more than happy to work with an ABC punching bag into their routine. Poor Chris! Dependent on the intellectual equivalent of drug dealers.

Uhlmann tried to get tricky in the interview, and was recorded playing cheap jack gotcha over the internal consistency of a Climate Commission Report.  Intensity not frequency and all that.

Flannery and Uhlmann both are flummoxed by a 1 m sea rise which Prof Hansen at NASA - a real climate scientist - says may really be 10-30 metres in 100 years given the cruel mastery of exponential change in sea rise from a tiny baseline. But that would knock the bejesus out of the whole theatrical political economy enterprise so we can't be telling the punters, let alone the corporates, that heavy stuff. 

But the Uhl trickery started well before the camera rolled on the interview. The Trick was the editorial decision to have a rhetoratician like Flannery discuss the hard science of climate instead of an actual locally based ... derr .... world class climate scientist in the field ... like David Karoly. 

The suspicion remains that Uhl knows, or should know, Karoly would eat him alive on national television and make him look the buffoon that the grasping reptile actually is. Karoly would eat Flannery alive for that matter too. And be done with the flibberty gibbet science communicator.

That might get a highly ironic, cross party - Green and Coalition - cheer as well as Martin Ferguson! To see old chubby Tim back studying rocks and tree kangaroos in Papua as he did back in the day on mining money. Perhaps he could get a gig on a fat farm with Noel Pearson?

The ALP and their information machine, including grey abc, really don't get substance over style do they.

Meanwhile the News Monster wants to eat Mark Scott and the ABC and chew them to bits so says their broadsheet editorial this weekend. Could be News 24 free to air is achieving more than SkyNews can live with. Hooray.

Amusing to hear oneself described by Mark Latham last week, along with maybe 50 other readers, as it is so true, a tragic reader of the MurTroll bible aka The Australian but only because it is Evil. If you listen carefully like a sea shell you can hear the MWWHAHAHAAAAA laugh in the ink.

Reminding one of Greg Sheridan's heartwarming paean yesterday to the Queen of Blighty visiting Eire, criticising another journo on history, then himself omitting the 1.5M deaths of the guided famine while Eire was a net exporter of food owned by the Queen's men 1845-1852. How exactly does a journalist of Irish descent airbrush out the deaths of 1.5M people - even after 160 years? Thats a lot of mass graves of little babes there Greg under American redwood trees like in the grounds of Killarney Cathedral. Too real for yer? Inconvenient losers? Dead babies are like that.

Just keep taking the sleeping pills Greg and pray for retirement. 

Posted by editor at 9:35 AM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 29 May 2011 11:58 AM NZT

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Mood:  down

Miranda Devine - comical non sequitur last week in the Daily Cartoon book.

Presumably she thinks she is very clever with her analysis about 'silly forest activsts' (reflex brand paper) and batty bat lovers (Sydney Botanic Gardens). 

But on her own terms she's got it wrong.  Hopelessly wrong. The bats are invading the Botanic Gardens because the loggers generally have destroyed their roost.

The baa baa sheep journo is so busy talking the book of the logger corporations she can't see the connection between the two. It's only 1% of forest logged per year, she says, on which basis it's fine to burn the paintings in the national gallery because it's much less than 1% of paintings across the land. Quality plays no part apparently.

Even Tim Entwhistle the botanist is culpable to some degree. He logged several old figs in the Domain - probably prime bat roosts! Might have been a bit smarter to organise a batty parking bay there?

Funny how bats move when you destory their home. And pretty bloody obvious too.

But too complex for Baa Baa Black Sheep or BBBS for short!. But I do thank her for giving me the opportunity for placing her in the Daily Cartoon Book conceptual firmament. 

Who knows. We may have Moir doing cartoons of her, just like Popeye Abbott? Which reminds me of that 'Peter Woof punched by Tony Abbott' blog story I posted ....4 years back now.....

ps Why did that late model white sedan driver deliberately hit and run me on my bicycle yesterday on Victoria Rd? Really so unnecessary, it's just a blog!

Posted by editor at 9:08 AM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 29 May 2011 11:51 AM NZT

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Mood:  incredulous

Chris Uhlmann says in the Daily Cartoon today his higher profie tv gig has nothing to do with his crash diet.

Maybe but it has alot to do with his political ambition. Failed indy candidate in ACT elections while the Greens have succeeded now at every level of Government, in every state, one detects a professional jealousy on Uhlmann's part, if not dishonesty about his tv vanity.

If Uhlmann is not another small screen wanker, a metaphorical car parking attendant, all powerful in his cubicle, then what is he?

His zeal, along with brother Cassidy for rigour on the Greens has nothing to do with personal ALP history? Oh yeah, right. Is that objective the way Graeme Morris says the ABC is our enemies talking to our friends?

The ABC is an alp slut, many a long year now. Presumably Uhlmann is calculating his timing just like Maxine McKew.

All this is orthodox Big Media politics and petty ambition. What is different about Uhlmann, let alone soldier's daughter Sales, is that he doesn't believe in climate science.

He's on record with his wishy washy, wet, wanky George Pell apologia for growth of the human project at any cost, contrary to best science, and get this, defiant about principles proposed by the Vatican. Uhlmann the failed happy clapper, who didn't have the guts of that vocation, can't face the truth of hard climate science either.

That's the real problem with his credentials: He's dumb on science. A DUMBY from the Pell church of infantile theology. Complete with praise from the Bolt blog in 2008:

"ABC political editor Chris Uhlmann delivers a brilliant riff on Insiders this morning on global-warming salvation seekers. This former seminarian knows a religious mania when he sees one. "

And the real problem for the Greens remains - but not as bad now given they are close 10 years late to moving beyond denial to facing - their task of building a mass media with a green political economy bias. A 10 to 20 year project no doubt, but it must be done.

We have done our best to build those bricks too for 15 years now. Time is soon approaching Stott when sitting in the back row is a luxury this country cannot afford. Yer feel me?

Posted by editor at 4:21 PM NZT

Updated: Saturday, 21 May 2011 4:29 PM NZT

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Mood:  quizzical

Clennell's feature on Nick Greiner was amusing in yesterday's Corporate Cartoon Book aka Sydney Daily Telegraph. Once one wades past the social trash pages.

Amusing for the self censorship and spin of both writer and subject, or editor - take your pick.

There is Greiner with the enormous howler, and non sequitur, claiming a bribe via a fat EPA directorship job in 1991 to get an MP to quit in a hung parliament, is the same as Robert Oakshot MP today taking a reasoned position  in harness as an MP for or against supporting the current federal ALP government. Greiner by that quoted rhetoric shows he continues to fail the character test, just like his promotion of corporate car industry, smoking, and forest destruction in his private career for decades.

Greiner asks gormlessly or perhaps arrogantly what is the difference? A world of difference. In one there is no bribe. In one the MP is not being pushed out of parliament to cancel their vote. One is not corrupt. The other is.

Sad to see Clennell omit Greiner's history in British American Tobacco given the political donations issue that is relevant today.

Sad also to see Clennell, ex SMH, omit several other close fought marginal seats in the 1995 election by dwelling only on Badgery's Creek, and omit Metherell's defection to the cross benches over the protection of wilderness areas. Given Greiner's corporate history with Big River Timbers Pty Ltd.

Amusing and ironic to see Premier O'Farrell effectively call Greiner a political dunce, as if to distract from the real issue of character. Because Greiner is not stupid, which leaves only one other explanation as per the headline.

Posted by editor at 10:14 AM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 8 May 2011 10:33 AM NZT

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Mood:  lazy

As  a secular Jewish colleague tells this writer, the Holocaust must never happen again.  And one presumes for that, it must never be forgotten.

But arguably it has happened again in many places to many people to a lesser or maybe greater degree. West Papua, Rwanda, East Timor, 27 million dead russians in WW2, 50-78 M dead worldwide in the same war.

Certainly the Holocaust should never be forgotten.  Certainly I will never forget the history now understood of the 1.5M Irish who died in the 1845-1852 famine under UK jackboot while a net exporter of food.

However one does get bored seeing more features in the weekend Sydney press about Anne Frank letters and book reviews of the week for my old environmental law lecturer based on a painting with a Holocaust back story.

And outright offended by the hypocrisy of the local Jewish Board of Deputies last week promoting a restitution list for WW2 victims of the Holocaust while effectively silent apologists for predatory settlers and an Israeli government riddled with corruption dependent on the same exponents of creeping conquest - the latest being Israeli Foreign Minister charged by the Israeli Attorney General no less, according to Haaretz mid April 2011.

This writer agrees wholeheartedly the Holocaust should never be forgotten, but where are the voices in local English Big Media press for the several million Palestinian Arabs, or indeed Arab voices for that 250-300 million section of humanity? The balance? It is of course unrealistic to expect loyal supporters of Israel to talk the book of their enemies or rivals but what about the alleged journalists? When are the press going to get over their inherited guilt or perhaps over compensating for (their own?) residual sub conscious anti semitism/racism, and treat Israeli conquest and predation on it's modern merits and lack thereof. Indeed treat Jewish politics according to their common humanity, rather than special or chosen or a people apart?

When indeed will Big Media here see through the gulling of their analytical faculties on the current middle east and in particular a clique of expansionist ziono-fascism leveraging Holocaust porn and guilt in the West. Like some Catholic sin of scruples for a terrible thing and obsessive compulsive hand washing of a black spot they actually have no reason or even right to adopt as theirs to be guilty about?

Israel is a world power with world impacting military, not least nuclear weaponry. The days of Israel as a victim country at existential risk are long gone, notwithstanding the tub thumping about existential risk and suitcase bombs on donkey carts. Indeed that old story is so over whether one comes at it from an Arabic or Jewish perspective. Where indeed is the story about Israel's 100-200 nuclear weapons as estimated by the Federation of American Scientists via simple google of their website?

One gets the distinct impression by the tone and slant of general big media English press coverage in Sydney that there is a moral and political blank cheque to the Israeli government, and the predatory creeping conquest of the alleged 'settler' (who glorify political assassination of PM Yitzak Rabin). Presumably some of it has to do with Australia's own black history of creeping conquest and terra nullius of the 'settler' myth here. That is murderous land theft of the 40,000 year previous owners. That's one great big shameful motive for denial about other so called  'settlers' more akin to land predators pleading a theocratic mandate.

It was however heartening to see all 4 worthies in the moral feature in the Sydney Morning Herald demolish the case for Marrickville Council staying out of the international Boycott Divestment and Sanction campaign, as some balance at least for the Holocaust guilt porn.

Posted by editor at 9:38 AM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 8 May 2011 4:13 PM NZT

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Mood:  don't ask

In the wake of the controversial BDS campaign the loyal supporters of Israel based in Australia represented by Vic Alhadeff of the Jewish Board of Deputies has called for a list of property for restitution to evicted Palestinians the victim of the predatory 'settler' movement.

Vic said: "We can't condone the historical rewards allowed to a movement that has assassin Yigal Amir as it's poster boy. We support a restitution of properties stolen from their legal owners since the boundaries of the 1967 war."

"There are between three and four thousand Palestinian survivors of the 1967 war in Australia who may have legal claims to return of their property."

Mrs Meyer of Bellevue Hill said: "We would never support appropriation of the Holocaust as PR cover for predatory settlers, as a justification for land theft from our Palestinian brothers and sisters."

[This story is a fiction. It never happened. The quotes were never given.]

Posted by editor at 3:58 PM NZT

Updated: Saturday, 7 May 2011 7:17 PM NZT

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Mood:  sad

Picture: Peter Gray shown here at right, 3rd from the top. His funeral is this Saturday in Newcastle NSW.

We are advised Peter died after a long struggle with cancer over the
Easter weekend just past. The editor of SAM met Peter once at the pictured Marrickville Town Hall meeting over a coal mine at Anvil Hill on 24 June 2007.

We got his picture after chatting, aware that he had won a famous legal precedent as the plaintiff against the NSW Government, a case which was not appealed and can be found here:

Gray v The Minister for Planning and Ors [2006] NSWLEC 720 (27 November 2006)

with costs order in Peter Gray's favour here:

Gray v Minister for Planning & Ors (No 2) [2007] NSWLEC 91 (27 February 2007)

We received this email recently:

Posted by editor at 4:13 AM NZT

Updated: Saturday, 7 May 2011 7:18 PM NZT

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