The anonymous editorialist at The Australian has struck again, this time with The great power of Adam Smith's invisible mouse.
Fresh from drinking milk with the Clockwork Orange yobboes, the editorialist gives former Chairman Rudd a right going over, such that the old veck starts moaning, and then out comes the blood, real beautiful, down like red curtains, as the editorialist smecks his head near off (and a few more violence quotes here).
The internet is knocking on the head any claim big corporations will always crush small competitors. In the internet age, ideas, not capital, are the currency of success and competitors offering new services will emerge, just as social networking did in the past decade. And it does not take a vast marketing budget or sales network to build a global business anymore. The internet has supercharged the flow of information, creating markets and opportunities all over the world. Welcome to the golden age of capitalism, Mr Rudd.
Wow, sounds like a stunning idea. Why not build on this a little further, seeing as how Australian access to the intertubes is currently onerously burdened by speed and bandwidth caps? Why not build up the infrastructure, get the community wired in a much more comprehensive way, then watch the golden age unfurl even further?
You mean, like with the NBN? We'll have an even more supercharged flow of information, creating markets and opportunities all over the world, and perhaps even the chance to tell the Murdoch paywall and Murdoch pay television and Murdoch lackeys to get fucked?
Sorry, likely enough that would be the ruination of the country. Welcome to the golden age of bankruptcy, courtesy of the anonymous editorialist ...
Oh dear, I keep forgetting the profoundly destructive nature of the NBN, which, thanks to The Australian's vigilant stance and constant timely reminders, is of course a welcome return to the golden age of socialism ...
Which also reminds me that many a man has managed to beat a drum while spanking the monkey, and so it is with the editorial policies of The Australian, which can celebrate the golden age of capitalism but entirely forget about doing anything to enhance the infrastructure allegedly underpinning the golden age ...
And speaking of The Australian's twin bete noirs for 2010, climate science and free markets (invariably linked to bonus NBN abuse) what fun to hear them given a tidy linking in Naomi Oreskes' talk to the University of NSW last year, which turned up on The Science Show yesterday, and is now available here for download.
You won't find Oreskes featured or her Merchants of Doubt featured anywhere in The Australian - long a haven for an abundance of merchants of doubt and such informed scientists as chipper Lord Monckton - so you'll have to head off to the land of the cardigan wearers in search of some balance ...
Oh sure she got a minor plug in Mike Seketee's Some sceptics make it a habit to be wrong, which pointed out that Nick Minchin is a prime candidate for any 'merchant of doubt for the year' award, but then Seketee is window dressing for the rag, and given the occasional 'fair and balanced' outing, as in Global weather disasters a sign the heat is on, so that the rag can purport to celebrate all kinds of voices ...
Meanwhile, back to the anonymous editorialist, and we discovered with delight and pleasure that one of the anonymous editorialists has been outed.
Yep, one Andrew Fraser, a 'senior writer', gets the credit for After the floods, the political deluge, which turns up under the editorial header, as well as on the features page, and so becomes part of the rag's official voice, but still offers no clarity of thinking, not when a 'gotcha' will do the job:
The desire to save water after years of drought may have contributed to the scale of flooding. Phil McMurray, director of engineering services at the Gundagai Shire Council in NSW, told this newspaper last month the Burrinjuck and Blowering dams had been kept too close to capacity.
"In hindsight, they should have been letting some water out over the past couple of weeks before the big rains," McMurray said. "Water is such a valuable commodity, they sell it to irrigators, so I guess it's in their interests not to let it out.
"But it would have been in the interests of the downstream communities if they did."
"In hindsight, they should have been letting some water out over the past couple of weeks before the big rains," McMurray said. "Water is such a valuable commodity, they sell it to irrigators, so I guess it's in their interests not to let it out.
"But it would have been in the interests of the downstream communities if they did."
But, but, but, dams are the solution to everything, flood mitigation, irrigation, and abundant water for all, or so Barners and Tony Abbott now keep telling us.
Now you tell us we must leave the dams empty, or empty them out, whenever it looks like a good rain might be coming, and never mind if the rain doesn't actually come?
Suddenly it's bad to keep water for irrigation, yet only the other day irrigators and the Murray Darling basin were being ruined by over zealous conservation control freaks?
Must every dam now come like any decent bath, with a free plug which should be pulled out from time to time in anticipation of a rain ... or do you think throwing in a 'may' or a 'with hindsight' into the mix gets you out of jail for talking nonsense?
And what if anything does this have to do with the current plight of those living near the Fitzroy river? Should the Fitzroy barrage and the Fairbairn dam have been emptied out a couple of weeks ago, in anticipation of the floods, and what difference would it have made?
Oh well, coherence isn't a prerequisite for considered editorials, but what is interesting is that the paper - justly famous for its own fair and balanced perception of its fair and balanced reporting of politics in 2010 - has recently found space for the thoughts of Bill O'Reilly.
Sure it's only a token effort, Wayne gave US a lesson in true grit, and it only features a standard bit of blather about Wayne delivering nobility - The man was larger than life, a symbol of the insurmountable American spirit - but is it a sign of how the opinion pages might develop during 2011?
It's long been predicted that Chris Mitchell will only achieve Nirvana when The Australian achieves a kind of antipodean re-birth as a neo-con haven with the popularity of Fox News, but why did he pick Bill O'Reilly to start the charge?
After all, if you're a minion of Murdoch, you should follow the party line:
Bill O'Reilly gets Hillary Clinton on. He's disgraceful the way he gives her such an easy ride. We're beating the shit out of CNN.
What about Glenn Beck?
There's a guy on Fox who started on CNN called Glenn Beck.
He is a little bit of an actor, he looks in the camera all the time. He's very genuine, extremely well-read libertarian, doesn't make any secret of it. He says don't trust the government, don't trust me, just trust yourselves.
He's hit a nerve. Millions -- millions -- watch him at five in the afternoon! (here).
Yes, forget about the pinhead rabbiting on about the Duke, and never mind that Beck is an abject loon who reads extremely wacky way out books like The Naked Communist and The Five Thousand Year Leap.
That just makes him well and widely read, or so the Chairman tells us. Yes, think of the numbers and bring on Glenn Beck. It'll be the ultimate consummation of The Australian's current worldview.
And think of the upside ... suddenly the anonymous editorials for The Australian will seem half way sane ...
And now since we love to be fair and balanced, just like The Australian ...
Mmm, broccoli ...
"I'll tell you why [religion's] not a scam, in my opinion: tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication...It always comes in, and always goes out. You can't explain that."
ReplyDelete—Bill O'Reilly