Fighting Fake News with REAL, 27/7/20; Right-Wing Bunnies at Bunnings; America's Friendly President; The shit will hit the fan and it should land on Abbott; Right-Wing Media have turned Socialist

theguardian.com

Australia doesn't need Reagan and Thatcher's neoliberal economics of misery | Van Badham

These economic times demand bold intervention to reconstruct our shattered economy and rebuild Australian workplaces

Australians experienced both the onset and impacts of neoliberalism in the 1980s in a more moderated form, given its introduction was facilitated by a Labor government, not a conservative one. Even so, its deprivations of job-offshoring, casualisation, privatisation and the end of full employment policy introduced economic insecurities into working life here that have been painfully exposed by the disappearing wages, layoffs and stand-downs of coronavirus.

These economic times demand bold intervention from government to reconstruct our shattered economy and rebuild Australian workplaces. Frydenberg spruiking Reagan, Thatcher and their economics of misery as the answer is just another hapless stagger, downhill in the wrong direction.

 The woman in Bunnings was right: the 1948 Universal Declaration Of Human Rights does have a clause about the right not to wear a mask at discount hardware chains | The Shovel

 

News In Photos

White House Clarifies That Trump Was Just Sending General Well Wishes To All Sex Traffickers

James Ashby sued the Speaker and lost — but the piper must be paid

Ross Jones 27 Jul 2020

The matter of a $3.75 million legal bill has been simmering since 2012, when James Ashby made false accusations against Speaker of the House Peter Slipper.

 The matter of legal and public relations expenses has been simmering since the 2012 attempt to overthrow the former Labor Government, when Ashby and sitting Coalition MP Mal Brough colluded with others to make false accusations in the Federal Court against the Speaker of the House, Peter Slipper.

 News Corp (Abbott's major media firm) played the part of magnifier, splashing fantasised lurid stories across multiple pages and screaming "sex scandal" at its readers. Ashby is openly gay and News Corp used his sexuality and his allegations as to what the married, religious Slipper allegedly liked in life, to beat Labor over the head so hard it could only reel.

 

 

 

Ultimately though, the bill will be settled one way or the other. James still has the wood on the Liberal Party. He can destroy the current players by exposing what their party did to gain the power it has not yet lost.

And nobody wants that.

 

How the illogical Right hijack debate

Rashad Seedeen 26 Jul 2020

Conservative political commentators preach simplistic narratives that align with their toxic worldviews, writes Rashad Seedeen.

 RECENTLY, THE HERALD SUN conservative columnist, Andrew Bolt, made the barely coherent claim that the outbreak of COVID-19 in Victoria is largely the fault of multiculturalism. Such a baseless claim is typical fodder for a pundit like Bolt.
Here is a sense of his diatribe:

‘Victoria's coronavirus outbreak exposes the stupidity of that multicultural slogan “diversity makes us stronger”… tribalism does tend to make us think more of our own than of other “tribes”. That’s not good in any crisis where Australians must make sacrifices for the safety of all.’

The correlation is absurd, at best.

Returning to Bolt, rallying against multiculturalism is one of his favourite projects. The COVID-19 pandemic is only his latest bugbear. Bolt’s racist diatribe has a scatter-gun tendency. Previously, Bolt claimed that multiculturalism was ruining Christmas, brought violence to "our streets"  and is a form of "colonisation, turning this country from a home into a hotel".
Bolt’s rants have many targets but common themes include confected outrage and reliance on false information. He reached a new low when he described Greta Thunberg as "deeply disturbed" and with "so many mental disorders".
Thunberg, a globally-recognised teenage climate activist, has been quite open about her Asperger’s syndrome, yet Bolt’s mocking was so egregious that the Australian Press Council deemed that he had breached standards.
Meanwhile, Bolt has been regularly exposed for pushing inaccurate and false science in the denial of climate change.
 If we want to see the end of illogical and divisive rants from conservative commentators, we’ll need a combination of re-framing and direct political action. Either way, it’s up to us to make change possible.

FAKE NEWS

CORONAVIRUS DEATH TOLL: HOW IT COMPARES

COLUMN Australians can’t leave their country and can’t travel freely inside it because 155 people have died this year from the coronavirus. Meanwhile, in the first four months of this year, 3937 Australians died of respiratory diseases such as  pneumonia, influenza and chronic bronchitis. That isn't the only comparison that should give us perspective.    

27m ago 

What perspective Andrew Bolt what perspective politics? Should we be surprised that when Bolt's demonises Dan Andrews and doesn't mention that the deaths are found to occur in those sectors of our health system controlled and regulated by the Commonwealth? Dan Andrews hasn't politicized this but talks of excellent mutual cooperation between the two. 

Patients are being moved. However, the contagion's epi-centres tend to be found in areas regulated by Morrison's LNP .The majority of cases resulting in pneumonia and respiratory are due to a failed immune system which is common to all viruses. But COVID-19 has other long term consequences that effect the heart and kidneys. What Bolt fails to mention is those found with COVID antibodies lose them over a short period of time making them vulnerable to repeated infections and damage already done.

Bolt's comparison is a little like comparing chalk and cheese as pneumonia,influenza and bronchitis are some outcomes as they are of various viruses well known about which isn't the case with COVID-19. So Bolt's comparison suggesting the conclusion that they are the same similar or less dangerous has no currency and/or logic. But  Bolt's effort seems to be suggesting COVID-19 isn't particularly serious and that we are overreacting. He's being totally reckless and irresponsible. However, Bolt's a yo-yo declaring Andrews was underreacting without mentioning that the deaths were in Morrison regulated centres. Politics is the essence of Bolt's information and is Murdoch driven and unwanted in the circumstance. He's actually backward as Trump and Fox News were 2-3 months ago.

CORONAVIRUS DEATHS: SHUT THE DAMN DOOR

What's easier? Trying to stop all infections, or stop them getting into aged care homes?: "Here a third of all deaths have been nursing home residents... In the UK, The Guardian reported 16,000 people had died in nursing homes by late May... The New York Times has reported 40 per cent of all deaths in the US are in aged care facilities."

5m ago 

What Bolt conveniently overlooks is that currently, less than 10% of that 30% of deaths have occurred in his hated Socialist controlled Aged -Care centers. Today that 10% has shrunk to even less. So these deaths have occurred in private institutions not regulated by Dan Andrews but Scott Morrison which before COVID Bolt deemed  best but over-regulated system. He's now been calling for even stronger regulation somehow suggesting Dan Andrews take them over completely.  https://theconversation.com/heres-what-we-know-so-far-about-the-long-term-symptoms-of-covid-19-142722 (ODT)

CORONAVIRUS TESTS TOO LATE IN AUSTRALIA'S DEADLIEST STATE

COLUMN On Sunday, we saw the same deadly incompetence after Premier Daniel Andrews said another 10 Victorians had died of the coronavirus. This is the state that makes fit, healthy people wear face masks — even when alone in the open air — while leaving open the door to nursing homes. Killing zones. And it doesn't get test results back until too late.

11m ago 

  God Bolt repeats himself doesn't he and conveniently ignores so many facts. 

1) Victoria was the most successful state in the country the boom state for jobs. It should be no surprise when a recession hits the biggest downward impact will generally be felt here.

2) Victoria the jobs state had the highest number of new arrivals looking and finding work. 

3) However, across the nation, the precariousness of that work has been exacerbated across Australia due to the LNP's attack on industrial relations and the unions.While Australians battle against casualisation, wage theft and imported labour making those conditions felt more here along with anxiety. 

4) That impact is felt the most among the working poor and that's where COVID-19 has hit the hardest. In the State that 6 months ago provided the greatest opportunity for work.

5) The "deadliest" State as Bolt calls it is now suffering because it was the best and it's borders now closed. Job loss, financial need, desperation and anxiety has now increased

6) You won't hear Bolt arguing for a UBI to alleviate that pressure in the need to beat this virus. No all you hear is his call to get back to work no matter the precariousness of that work. A precariousness he doesn't have to face being paid for unproductive work. We hear him telling workers that the virus is a trivial matter and immunity is easily achieved just get back to work. Children are perfectly safe and should be back in school. All facts that research is to date proving to be wrong advice.

7) His illogical efforts to debate is the right-wing attempt to hijack a political conversation which can be found in MURDOCH's MEDIA global approach in the US,UK and Australia. supporting the policies of the clowns currently leading the countries to the world's greatest failures. (ODT)

Will this just fade to black? Will the AFP and DPP assist?

Wipe My Brough. I’m in Trouble

 

Since the airing of the 60 Minutes Ashby interview the murk of conservative gutter politics, with regard to the Ashby/Slipper Affair, has worsened.
James Ashby has left himself open to charges of perjury and Mal Brough (a private citizen at the time) has all but confessed that he incited Ashby to steal Slipper’s diary.

Coalition gutter inhabitant Christopher Pyne has contradicted himself in saying that he had no direct knowledge of Ashby’s accusations other than what he read in the papers. Yet it is alleged he had a meeting with him to discuss the matter and might have offered him some form of job security.
He confirmed that he raised a possible Coalition win at the Queensland 2012 and federal 2013 elections as chances for Mr Ashby to secure a new job.
 Why did channel nine wait until September 7 to air the interview? It could have done so while parliament was sitting. Questions would have had to be answered especially by Brough and Pyne.
Had they aired it a week earlier, on Sunday 31 August, it would have been at the start of a Parliamentary sitting week.It has been suggested that Ashby was paid $100,000 for the interview.

 Labor backbencher Graham Perret has asked the AFP to urgently investigate the case. It is difficult to imagine they wouldn’t given Brough’s confession on 60 Minutes:

“I would urge the Australian Federal Police to proceed with its investigation immediately, especially given the risk of disappearance for vital evidence.”

 Victorian Labor MP Michael Danby, has said he will ask the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to examine whether Mr Ashby has perjured himself by changing his story on whether he was offered any incentives to make a sexual harassment claim against his then boss Mr Slipper.
Mr Danby said:

“Taking him at his word, James Ashby claims to have been induced by Liberal MPs into making his sordid claims against Peter Slipper. What he told 60 Minutes last night about these alleged inducements directly contradicts what Mr Ashby put on oath in a sworn affidavit?”

Let’s take a few steps backwards and look at the sequence of events.

Sexual harassment claims were made by Ashby against Slipper. Justice Rares found that it was a vexatious claim and that its real purpose was to bring down the Speaker and cause as much havoc as possible to the minority government.
Later his judgement was overturned by the full court in a split decision and as a consequence we had two judges saying it was more to do with law than politics and two others saying the opposite. The appeal court determined that it should go to court to be sorted out. But then Ashby withdrew making a mockery of the court’s decision. It has always been about power and the price conservatives place on it. In this case they were even prepared to subvert our democracy to obtain it.

Photo: morningmail.org

Both Pyne and Abbott insist they had no specific knowledge of the events but both are contradictory and by inference say they had a general knowledge. We need to know exactly what that was. Abbott for example needs to explain the mystery of how a press release calling for Slipper’s resignations was on the streets the moment the Telegraph went to press with the story. Metadata records even suggest that the press release was prepared prior to the Telegraph story. Remember the Telegraph was leading the media charge.Why is there is an application from June for the Commonwealth to pay $1 million for Ashby’s legal costs.