Tony Abbott, Cory Bernardi in public spat over future of Liberal Party - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
The Monkey Pod Room disunity Abbott could never be a team player
A spat develops between former prime minister Tony Abbott and Senator Cory Bernardi over the future of the Liberal Party. Cory Bernardi accuses Tony Abbott of stoking Liberal Party divisions
Paraphrased from "We are not living in a 'post-truth' world, we are living the lies of others |"
A dependency on a delusion for the need of Bolt's infamous demand for "free speech" we are presented with morality and immorality as part of a landscape that spreads out flat to the horizon. Even real reporters can see what is happening. To an extent never witnessed before, a lot of people now have started believing in things that aren’t true. And it is acceptable to do this. And Andrew Bolt is in the business of helping them.
Today, you can not only deny history – the Armenian and Jewish Holocausts, the Indigenous wars – you can also tell fibs, big or small, about almost anything which annoys you, and Andrew Bolt does. The Middle East, with today's journalistic help, is deep in the same false world. Every dictator is now fighting “terrorism” – along with the US, Nato, the EU, Russia, Hezbollah, Iran, the entire Arab Gulf , China, Japan, Australia and – who knows? – Greenland as well.
But justice is not on the menu. This is a word which few politicians, statesmen, even journalists, any longer use. Real justice for entire nations, for peoples, for the Middle East, even – for Palestinians. They do not live in a “post-truth” world. They’ve been living among other people’s lies for decades. While we feel less guilty in repeating all these lies. They have now – like war – become normal, a “diversity of perspectives” part of "free speech", part of a familiar, fraudulent world in which untruthfulness has acquired a “weird authenticity”. And it's just that that Andrew Bolt is fighting for. "Lying, which according to Fintan O’Toole, of the Irish Times “floats freely, with no pretence or need to be anchored in evidence”. Justice anchored in evidence needs according to Bolt to be cut adrift and he did that long ago along with Murdoch and News Corp.
"Rupert Murdoch has highlighted growing inequality in a post-dinner speech to G20 finance ministers in Washington. Warning that developed countries’ responses to the financial crisis of 2008 have increased the gap between rich and poor, Murdoch says a global reckoning is approaching unless business investment and innovation are freed up." The Guardian
Inequality Is Only Getting Worse | The Nation
Murdochs of this world read Ayn
Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged. She has a quiet cult following among those
who run the world, who just want great people to be able to do great
things. In Rand’s world, those with talent who are allowed to use it
freely, unencumbered by regulation and bureaucracy, will benefit us all.
It’s a compelling, if naïve, picture; unregulated markets cannot
discriminate between greatness and power. The heroes and heroines of
Rand’s books are paragons of integrity – trusting them to use their
wealth and power to do great things is a no-brainer. But as John
Steinbeck wrote in Cannery Row, in our system as it really exists,
“those traits we detest – sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness,
egotism and self-interest – are the traits of success”.
So if Murdoch’s concern about
inequality is genuine, he should examine the evidence regarding
inequality and government policy.
In the developed world the standout performers, with high standards
of living and low levels of inequality, are all in far northern Europe.
These countries loosely share a social and economic system called the Nordic model and have very large government sectors. Sweden and Denmark take around 45% of GDP in taxes.
At the other end of the scale sits the US, with one of the highest levels of inequality in the OECD alongside very low equality of opportunity. The US has very low levels of tax
as a proportion of GDP and consequently a relatively small government
sector. While the US is far from a laissez-faire economy, it’s much
closer than many others, particularly the Nordic countries
The next step is to force the implementation of policies that will
actually reduce inequality, rather than exacerbate it as Murdoch would
have us do.
So if Murdoch’s concern about inequality is genuine, he should examine the evidence regarding inequality and government policy. In the developed world the standout performers, with high standards of living and low levels of inequality, are all in far northern Europe. These countries loosely share a social and economic system called the Nordic model and have very large government sectors. Sweden and Denmark take around 45% of GDP in taxes.
At the other end of the scale sits the US, with one of the highest levels of inequality in the OECD alongside very low equality of opportunity. The US has very low levels of tax as a proportion of GDP and consequently a relatively small government sector. While the US is far from a laissez-faire economy, it’s much closer than many others, particularly the Nordic countries
The next step is to force the implementation of policies that will actually reduce inequality, rather than exacerbate it as Murdoch would have us do.
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