ANDREW BOLT|Old Dog Thoughts |
News Corporation employs Andrew Bolt and provides him with a platform ensuring the inequality of speech. Bolt's Blog not only advocates conservative, right wing and Tea Party views it moderates out most opposing opinions which he is entitled to do. However Andrew Bolt simply lies when he says he provides an arena for fair and balanced discussion in a no spin zone. He doesn't it's all spin.
Beware of the EPOCH TIMES the effort to bring Right-wing Alternative Facts to the boil via printed press in Australia.
Australia is good at lying to
itself. It’s done it for years over racism and misogyny. Are we going to
kid ourselves that we are a fair, progressive, intelligent nation while
allowing the manipulation of truth, as identified by George Orwell, to
run rampant? How far are we willing to go? Perhaps fostering hate to the
point that people feel that it is OK to kill? Allowing the entitled to
destroy our democracy, as nearly happened in America over recent weeks?
How far Australia, how far?
But
it came at a cost to US taxpayers. Since September 2017, the federal
government has been spending $US3000 ($3850) a month – more than
$US100,000 to date – to rent a basement studio, with a bathroom, from a
neighbour of the Kushner family.
Drumroll
… trumpets, red carpet: we are rolling out Australia’s Top 40 Tax
Dodgers for 2021. Michael West unveils the villains and the heroes of
the tax scene, including new gongs this year for Lifetime Achievement
Award and UnAustralian of the Year.
Well, if not you, PM, then who?
Who speaks plainly for Australia’s bedrock values of due process, free
and fair elections, the orderly handover of power, respect for courts,
multiculturalism?
Trump's response BETTER BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR"
The House of Representatives' vote to impeach Trump came just a week before the end of his presidency
Donald Trump has become the first president in US
history to be impeached twice after the US House of Representatives
found him guilty of inciting last week's deadly riot at the Capitol.
"Trump's
speech last week openly incited insurrectionists to storm the Capitol.
Today, he called those comments 'totally appropriate.' He is continuing
to encourage insurrection and undermining the rule of law."
Racism at the cricket and our leading politicians Shame Australia in the eyes of the rest of the World. " Unfortunate" implies the attack on the Capitol was merely a matter of bad luck,while the banning of 'free speech' by Twitter of incitement to violence a bad decision. McCormack Frydenberg and Morrison don't do Australians any justice. They certainly destroy the image of Australia as an easy going country. (ODT)
er's decision to ban Donald Trump. Do
they have a point? Regardless of whether it was the right call, the
decision to essentially
deplatform the president speaks to the incredible power social media
companies have in shaping the discourse. And the calls for greater
scrutiny of that power haven’t just come from the embittered George
Christensens of the world.
Why Twitter and Facebook? Murdoch Media has far greater influence on the nation particularly helping Clive Palmer to misinform a nation during an election
In my view Twitter and Facebook
have every right, indeed a duty to ensure that their platforms are
suitably moderated – just a pity they didn’t think about it earlier.
Hidden away in my ‘To read’ file I
found a piece written by former Liberal Party leader John Hewson. I
shall have to clean my list out more often in the hope of finding more
gems. Hewson’s piece is important and I’m not sure how I missed it
because I have witnessed him going through a Fraser-like conversion in
his approach to politics in the past few years. The piece was written
almost 12 months ago and spoke to a favourite subject of mine. How to
clean up our politics to make for a better democracy for all
Australians. John Hewson proposes six Rules of engagement.
The
former Republican California governor warned of the dire consequences
of misleading people and said Trump will go down in history as the worst
President ever.
Idiots who claim Trump's Twitter ban is an issue of "Free Speech"are total idiots. The riots were planned encouraged and organized on Twitter and that has absolutely nothing to do wit "Free Speech" . Julian Assange has been hounded, Snowden had to flee the country and neither of them organized the violence we saw this week. Trump Jnr is a waste of space and sound declaring this to be a "Free Speech " issue. (ODT)
Twitter
employees defended the decision to ban Donald Trump from the platform,
saying they were particularly concerned about contributing to a possible
"secondary attack".
"Crimes and Misdemeanors" Trump runs his office like a mafia Don. He doesn't have the support of all the members of the Senate any longer. A precedent needs to be set to prevent Trump's Fascist tendancies from setting the example and standard for the next maniac. (ODT)
It is one of at least three phone calls where Trump sought help from high-level Georgia officials in subverting the election.
With Donald Trump likely to remain in power until Inauguration Day, Americans will undergo a trial by ordeal.
January 6 was announced to be ''the day of reckoning'' by US President Donald Trump as he exhorted
his followers to come to Washington where ''it will be wild''. Rudy
Giuliani, his legal lickspittle, urged the mob that turned up to engage
in ''trial by combat''.
The likelihood, therefore, is that Trump will remain in power, a President banned from Twitter
but holding the nuclear codes. Retribution can wait – like Al Capone,
Donald Trump will probably be prosecuted for tax evasion and hopefully
sent to a prison where his orange day-glow jumpsuit will match his fake
tan. But until January 20, he could do anything. Perhaps he will decide
to spite his disliked intelligence community by pardoning Julian Assange. Perhaps he will decide to bomb Iran. We will just have to hold our breath.
Morrison unlike Canada, UK, Germany France and NZ refuses to comment negatively on Trump. Even Israel has spoken out. However Morrison's silence is like that of Saudi Arabia's and other Middle Eastern States. He stands with China and Russia it would seem. Should we be surprised?(ODT)
Scott Morrison was asked what he admired about Donald Trump. He
answered, “He's a strong leader, who says what he's going to do and then
goes and does it. I mean, I can always rely on President Trump to
follow through on what he says.”
Scott Morrison was asked what he admired about Donald Trump. He
answered, “He's a strong leader, who says what he's going to do and then
goes and does it. I mean, I can always rely on President Trump to
follow through on what he says.” 2019
Morrison was prepared to say a lot about Trump back then but he's reluctant to be forthcoming now unlike so many of other American allies even Israel has spoken out. He seems more in line with Saudi Arabia than he is with Canada , UK, Germany and France and definitely in line with Trump in his refusal to comment.
The
Northern Territory government has caved in to liquor lobby pressure and
imperilled the health of First Nations People by approving a Dan
Murphy’s Darwin mega-store for Woolworths and lifting the licence cap
for Coles. The community will pay the price with their health, write
Professor Lesley Russell and Dr Jeff McMullen. Will this be Woolworths’
Juukan Gorge moment?
Suffering from Morrison Mouth our PM delivers a Trump Tantrum for his inability to deliver a vaccine to Australians in the time others have. Morrison at best has only delivered promises. Yesterday he had Hunt shorten the time of delivery but only in the format of yet another promise.
Remember Morrison's $16M app that was to lead us out of Covid it hasn't found a single cluster to date. Yet another Scotty from marketing lame duck promise. (ODT)
Rupert
Murdoch repeatedly claims, falsely, that he has never asked a prime
minister for anything. Yet his whole business career in three countries
has been founded on threatening or seducing politicians, writes John
Menadue.
If he hasn't spoken to anyone this statement is absolutely factless he doesn't know and too scared to care . However if he does come home Morrison will take some credit we can be assured of that.
A
British judge has rejected a US bid to extradite Julian Assange to face
charges relating to the publication of classified cables, saying it
would be oppressive and that he would be at risk of suicide.
The appeal process will now begin, with lawyers for the US government announcing they will seek to overturn the ruling of Judge Vanessa Baraitser.
The case could go all the way to the UK Supreme Court (equivalent to
our High Court) and then potentially to the European courts. This
process is likely to take another 18 months to three years.
The bitterness of the Americans has no end like Trump they can't be seen to be losers. yet at the same time they claim to be champions of press freedom and civilised incarceration. Their President is far more dangerous when it comes to the revelations of State secrets than Wikileaks ever was in fact Trump works with a press that makes up whatever it wants and nobody is ever charged unless of course the truth is revealed. (ODT)
"But she would not come at the proposal to place Assange, a man who is at
great risk of suicide and who suffers mental illness, in jail
conditions that amounted to solitary confinement for years on end.
"Faced with conditions of near total isolation … I am satisfied that the
procedures (outline by US authorities) will not prevent Mr Assange from
finding a way to commit suicide," Judge Baraitser said."
Assange,
if extradited, would have been held in a prison where he got one
15-minute monitored phone call with his family a month, where he could
not have contact with other inmates, and where anytime out of his cell
would be in a small room or a cage. Rather than face such conditions,
which could remain in place for the rest of his life given the maximum
penalty for the charges he faces in the US is over 170 years, Assange,
Judge Baraitser concluded, would rather kill himself. To visit such a
fate on an individual is not something this British court was prepared
to do. In this sense Judge Baraitser struck a blow for the rule of law
against an American penal system, which is horrifically inhumane, and
which showed in this case that when it comes to so called "enemies of
the state" it has learnt nothing from the horrors of Guantanamo Bay and
other similar facilities.
Of course, though, as noted above,
Assange’s troubles are not entirely over because of the lengthy appeal
process which both sides can pursue depending on the ruling in respect
of Judge Baraitser’s decision.
This
is where Senator Payne and the Morrison government come into the
picture, albeit they should have been there already lobbying Washington
to end this case for some time now.
They haven't to date so why should we expect them to today? (ODT)
Mexico's
President says he will offer Julian Assange political asylum and
supports the decision of a British judge to deny extradition of the
WikiLeaks founder to the US.
No doubt the Americans would love Assange in Mexico to do with whatever thay want rather than say Cuba where he be safe. The Australian government certainly wouldn't.
Lets not forget Victoria's cases stemmed from the NSW clusters
There
have been no locally acquired COVID cases confirmed in NSW in the past
day. Victorian Acting Premier Jacinta Allan said there were still no
mystery cases of COVID here.
How is it the UK, US and other countries are being vaccinated yet Australia has to wait till March. Recall when Morrison so proudly proclaimed he contracted vaccines before other nations had? It sound as if he was doing the Trump.
“The
hottest play on the planet,” Keith Pitt calls it. Resources Minister
Pitt and his government are keen to open up the Northern Territory to
gas fracking but, if the NT’s Beetaloo Basin is so “hot” for investors,
then why do they need public money to drill it? Even more bizarrely, the
industry has made it clear that it does not want public subsidies but
Pitt and Co appear determined to throw public money at the gas companies
anyway. Callum Foote and Michael West report on another extraordinary
case of corporate welfare, environmental destruction and the political
donors and large US hedge funds who we are all s