Mood:  sharp

The ABC Radio News channel has a story line for most of this morning in words to the effect "Assange does not regret leaking diplomatic cables". Bold added.

This is wrong and the ABC should know better. Allegedly the cables were leaked to Wikileaks/Assange, which then published and reported on the cables. At least as we understand the stated position of Wikileaks, the organisation didn't leak, just as a journalist and a newspaper do not leak, rather they are leaked to.

There is much speculation that Bradley Manning did the leaking to Wikileaks and is in jail in the USA facing related charges. By contrast we are not aware of any facts in the public arena that Assange or Wikileaks solicited or facilitated that leak so as to have conspired in the leaking. Like any modern news organisation Wikileaks published the news leaked to them which is quite different.

We look forward to the correction by ABC Radio News, but we won't hold our breath either.

Posted by editor at 5:10 PM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 27 May 2012 11:45 AM NZT

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Mood:  blue

The rumour along the Oodnadatta Track near Coober Pedy, and William Creek is that an official investigation report is now in for the fatal helicopter crash of Gary Ticehurst, Paul Lockyer, and John Bean. 

The rumour, right or wrong, is that flying at night there is precious little orientation regarding elevation and sand dunes are deceptively high, claiming pilot error flying into a sand dune. 

Whether this is the content of the report cannot be confirmed. The rumour is sourced to a roustabout with experience of gyrocopter flying over long distances but strictly at daytime, and another character who worked for a decade on the Ghan, and local home steads, as told to a grey nomad tourist from NSW, and passed onto this writer at the Coober Pedy Stuart Ranges caravan park.

We take a skeptical legal view. We note the experience of the helicopter pilot and the unconfirmed nature of the rumour as well as the predeliction at times for remote areas with an economic dependence on tourism to play down dangers and mishaps including via blame the victim type stories. Whether this is the case time will tell.

Certainly tourist flights to Lake Eyre are advertised in every road stop and town centre in the region with numerous small town airstrips at Marree, Hawker, Wilpena, William Creek and no doubt more.

In any case the above rumour is running.

Our photo album of our outback road tour is here Outback road trip South Australia tour via the ubiquitous facebook. One beautiful location is here called Blanches Cup which is a mound spring in the desert near Oodnadatta Track 100 km or so east of William Creek:

May they rest in peace.

Posted by editor at 11:24 AM NZT

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Mood:  bright

News Corporation apparently are holding or improving their share value despite the huge reputational damage to the Murdoch regime at the top from the UK Leveson Parliamentary Inquiry. 

We are wondering if serious investor groups, ironically, agree with the view that Rupert is not a fit and proper person to run an international company, and that the prospect finally of having him removed against all previous experience, will finally release the value in the company massively constrained by nepotistic share structures and appointments. 

In short the creative destruction of capitalism at the expense of the Murdoch brand to the benefit of his Corporation? Or to put it another way - Murdoch bad, News Corp good?

We are actively googling for those Stephen Mayne stories of yesteryear say pre 2010 verifying hundreds of millions if not billioins of dollars of value in News Corp lost by Rupert Murdoch's bad commercial judgement - things like purchase of MySpace, forays into China and no doubt a host of other disastrous frolics by the Grand Old Man, all the while maintaining the ascendancy of his children.

Postscript:

Here is a useful list from Stephen Mayne via the website of the public library of Victoria (Australia) with bold added by moi, dated 13 October 2011:

"Seventy per cent of the News Corp shares on issue don’t get a vote. Let’s have democracy in Iraq, but not at News Corp. When I ran for the News Corp board in 2002, Rupert completely censored the platform. So it was the only one of my 40 tilts where shareholders weren’t even told how old I was or that I had a degree. That was free speech for you, Rupert-style. So when Rupert does colossally stuff up, it’s hard to do anything about it because whilst the Murdoch family only own 13 per cent of News Corp, this gerrymander gives them about 40 per cent of the vote and the ability to dominate appointments to the supine board, where power ultimately resides. Rupert really should’ve retired in 2006, when he turned 75. It’s been all downhill since then. One billion lost on MySpace, three billion lost on Dow Jones. And now suddenly News Corp has gone from being the most valuable media company in the world in 2007 to being $20 billion behind Disney. And then, of course, there’s phone hacking. With a compliant board and Rupert entrenched as executive chairman, there simply hasn’t been a mechanism available to impose regime change on a control freak who does have dictatorial tendencies and an unfortunate tendency to hire, promote and support rogues, which is something he has done around the world.

Representing the Australian Shareholders’ Association, I had lunch two weeks ago with Sir Rod Eddington and Peter Barnes, the two Australian-based independent directors of News Corp. Whilst I can’t reveal what they said, my comments can be openly discussed. And I really enjoyed talking truth to their power for two hours at the Kenzan Japanese restaurant just opposite the old Herald Sun building. At one point, I said, quote, ‘Guys, it must be hard holding the most powerful family in the world to account, representing us non-Murdoch shareholders. But are you up for the job of regime change?’. I’m not confident. When a majority of the independent shareholders vote to remove the Murdochs from the News Corp board next Friday, which they will, it will be very interesting to see how the independent directors react."

Posted by editor at 9:08 AM NZT

Updated: Thursday, 3 May 2012 9:20 AM NZT

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Mood:  chatty

Official findings of the big Leveson UK parliamentary inquiry that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit and proper person to run an international company.

Significant as the UK is the template for Australia's system of law and dominant western European culture albeit it highly multicultural. Also influential as both the leader of the Australian Government and leader of the loyal Opposition here in Australia were both born in the UK.

The Washington Post reports this way:

LONDON — Rupert Murdoch “is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company,” a British parliamentary committee said Tuesday in a scathing report on News Corp.’s handling of the phone hacking scandal.

The report, which culminates months of investigation by a select committee, was far more condemning of the 81-year-old media titan than expected, saying the chairman and chief executive of News Corp. had “turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness” over the widespread malpractice at his now-closed News of the World tabloid.

It appears the Inquiry report findings split along political lines of 6 to 4 regarding the Murdoch finding. The Post link is here. We go to that source because it may preface the huge media gorillas in USA and indeed in the government turning on Murdoch. Time will tell.

Posted by editor at 10:55 AM NZT

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Mood:  don't ask

Do Bolt's views echo those of Norway's mass murderer, without actually doing the deed? Certainly there seems to be some common beliefs against multiculturalism.

If there are common traits, we wonder if Bolt possibly inherited aryan dutch intolerance from the colonial East Indies network in south east Asia of past centuries? Apparently some of these white colonialists arrived in Australia after the collapse of the Netherlands empire in now Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

And it seems more than a coincidence that high profile Bolt attacks renewable energy initiatives which most thinking people understand to be addressing the science of climate change. One thing is clear - the institution Bolt writes for - the Murdoch press in Victoria and NSW - is raking in big advertising dollars from the mining industry via a sister newspaper broadsheet as pictured here in today's edition.

Posted by editor at 12:19 PM NZT

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Mood:  accident prone

Mmm, funny how the front page today of the Murdoch owned Sydney Daily Telegraph has sanitised the Sydney skyline by airbrushing the typical brown smudge of smog.

Could it be the smog is an inconvenient truth about promoting more motorways and hence more traffic on said tarmac? The fact that literally 1/4 to 1/3 of the Sydney landscape is already dedicated to motorised transport whether it be roads, garages, carparks, and probably other land tenure doesn't seem to rate. But the truth is that's alot of valuable real estate quarantined for cars and trucks and arguably quite excessive already.

Indeed we recently went to NSW Dept of Health website and noticed  their figure up to about 2009 or so that premature deaths from smog in Sydney is now running at 640 to 1,400 people a year. Putting aside the rather large statistical spread of those figures, it is clear that smog is a killer "right here, right now" as one federal politician Greg Hunt is prone to say.

The Sydney Daily Telegraph articles today are prominent in their support for the M4 East and M5 road expansions, but NO ONE believes they won't just choke up like Parramatta Road in a few years unless there is substitution off the roads. 

We understand Australians buy 1 million cars a year, and a great many of them are in Sydney right here, right now. 

There is token reference to the North West rail line in the SDT package of stories but it's a left over really. It seems the package is all about building the next road. And given head of infrastructure Nick Greiner is a road builder one doesn't have to be a genius to know who the Coalition aligned newspaper is barracking for.

No wonder the public are cynical about the Murdoch media, not just politicians. How about addressing the smog Mr Editor? Like supporting conversion to bicycle based transport for short trips? 

It seems to us fundamental change to transport in Sydney is just too big an ideological problem for an editor who is prone to bashing the current Mayor of Sydney who actually supports bicycle based infrastructure. 

Posted by editor at 12:00 PM NZT

Updated: Friday, 12 July 2019 12:09 PM NZT

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Mood:  down

Chris Uhlmann's spouse is an ALP politician which is well known in the belt way of insiders, but not to the general ABC public audience. 

Here is a beltway report of same:

http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/05/06/chris-uhlmann-a-pro-says-abbott-but-is-there-an-abc-double-standard/

Uhlmann runs his pompous jaded cynicism against The Greens tonight on the 7.30 Report. We think it's projection of his own flaws.

His concluding punchline is that the Greens are just like any other political party by failing to criticise Asher, who has quit the C'th Ombudsman role. 

Wrong.

Wrong for failing to disclose his own ALP family connection.

Wrong on the merits because anyone in said beltway knows that no one else at the Senate Select Committee from the major parties was ever going to pursue the questions that needed to be asked, other than the Greens, regarding the desperate plight of asylum seekers and broken detention policy.

Asher in effect voted with his morality and his heart to save peoples' lives, which both major parties have abrogated with extended mandatory detention, not least in the face of Dept of Immigration senior bureaucrates saying the system is broken.

Which by definition makes the Greens a political party, granted, by cooperating in asking critical questions the answers of which the public has every Right to Know.

But it also makes the Greens a very different kind of political party to the lazy, arrogant born to rule characters in the two major parties. Including said ALP spouse.

And Uhlmann appears to have deliberately airbrushed out the role the Greens played in embarrassing Gillard on her failed Malaysian solution as an obvious grounds for subjective bias in the quotes from Senator Faulkner. The only real news indeed in the story was that the two major parties are bullies against the Greens and free speech. Nothing new about that. 

What Asher has done is basically verified what most thinking voters already know. That the two major parties stink with inflated self interest and have no ideals or convictions and only the Greens fight against injustice. Because if Asher had given the dorothy dixer questions to other parties to ask you can be sure the chair of the committee would have shut him down real quick.

But Uhlmann prefes sophistry to reporting the obvious real politik? Conflict of interest have anything to do with that Chris?

Posted by editor at 9:17 PM NZT

Updated: Thursday, 20 October 2011 9:20 PM NZT

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Mood:  quizzical

Unreasonable people change the world and society. Lee Rhiannon is such a person, no doubt. I find her unreasonable no doubt.

But then we have puffer fish (they are poisonous too) Graham Richardson pontificating on talent pool and sanity of elected officials. 

Which might play pre GFC but a wise person said: The definition of madness is doing the same thing - read doing the same kind of politics and business - and expecting a different result.

That's Richo in the frame there. A dinosaur mendicant to big media and corporate interests including the business donation base of the ALP and broader corporate interests.

One notes that Rhiannon's greatest achievement is the promotion of the Democracy4Sale research of such assistance to journalism. 

Even to the extent of a backlash on herself regarding donation to Survey by a foreign nominally hostile power under Gorbachev. The irony.

Mmm. What could Richo tell us about cash in brown bags I wonder? The man has a vested interest. Even if it is ovetaken by the parental career instinct nowdays.

As for talent pool of the Greens 'dropping off' after Brown and Milne'. Not according to reports (Crikey) of the green think tank behind the climate change committee. 

And the WA green senators are superb speakers and thinkers. No problem with talent there. Hanson Young will mature and is already a raw beauty in the political talent stakes that any major party would be proud to annexe, but won't.

Qld practicising lawyer. Medical doctor from Victoria. 

Indeed how deep is the talent in Richo's old mates network, you know, deeper than self interest and Keating's most cynical of philosophy that ushered in the dregs of the middle class?

People in glass houses Richo, will not prove to be a sustainable provider. Understand?

Secondly the deification of leader Bob Brown, admirable as he is, and courage beyond measure, has his human failings. Failing to publicly stand up for Alec Marr would have to be a big one, duly noted. Especially with Garrett's mates behind the unravelling of Marr. More irony.

Posted by editor at 9:21 AM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 16 October 2011 9:33 AM NZT

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Mood:  cool

There will be some ABC types invited to the ANU AFL 50th anniversary reunion dinner tonight who won't be feeling too celebratory at the shocking demise of expert work colleagues. The grief in the broadcasts this last 24 hours has been palpable. And yes we are tearing up. Seems bloggers have a sympatico with dedicated news people who create light more than heat.

One person we have no sympathy for is a dog of a man, advisedly.

Last Thursday at about 8.40 am Alan Jones had a call in from his "mate" who helped organise the buses for the right wing rabble at federal parliament protest earlier that week. All well and good. Democratic voices who have a right to be heard you might think. But that same day of protest was also the day when photos of Norway's white supremacist mass murderer appeared in all the big press. The images showed the killer on site going through a police renactment. 

So back to Alan Joness "mate" 2 days after that chilling press, describing to Jones on Sydney public radio how he helped cause "carnage" in Canberra earlier in the week and was now in contact with the next right wing protest cavlcade - of truckies from NW Western Australia heading to Canberra. 

 "Carnage eh? Ha ha ha ha" laughs Alan Jones. Then Alan's little "mate" boasts in a tone of high spirits how the truckies are now coming to Canberra "to clean up the carnage".

Get it? Right wing white supremacist kills the cream of Norway's organised left wing youth. Then Alan Jones thinks references in polite society to political "carnage" is funny.

How are we to interpret this? Presumably Alan Jones' big mate Tony Abbott doesn't need a bullet proof vest when addressing these right wing pro gun rabble  unlike John Howard famously at a protest in 1998, because Tony feels he is behind the gun sights with people like Alan Jones and his little "mate" not in front. Other people altogether are the targets.

We think Jones is a violent dog roaming the streets of Australian public life and should be treated as such. Mad, bad and dangerous to know. One can theorise about the psychology, that Jones' has sublimated his minority sexuality for so long as he panders to conservative power to make a living, that he is now filled with hateful rage at other minorities, as an expression of his own self loathing. 

Whatever the reason, we are witness to the banality of evil on Sydney radio now, courtesy of Alan Jones and 2GB.

Posted by editor at 9:15 AM NZT

Updated: Monday, 22 August 2011 4:47 PM NZT

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