In which nattering "Ned" and Dame Slap squirm away from talk of an inquiry into the rotten mess that is News Corp ...

 

 

 

 

Sweet dreams and delusions ... holding Murdochians, the lizards of Oz, nattering "Ned", the whole pack of reptiles to account is the big story ...

 

Sure, they'll slip-slide away, sure they've cultivated the acquaintance of powerful friends, and have spent a lifetime dissing climate science and such like ... but how pleasing it is to see "Ned" squirm, while he seeks to distract and divert by cheering on the big shakedown that the reptiles hope will save their empire ...

 

Indeed, indeed, SloMo is a world leader ... and he has form in stepping out ahead of the pack and cultivating the image of a lone wold bold warrior, and that's no doubt why his war on China has gone so well ...

Over at Crikey, (paywall) the change in rhetoric was noted ...

Fresh from an unexpected election win, having just visited his friend Donald Trump in the White House and seemingly with the world at his feet, last year Scott Morrison ventured a bold and positively Trumpian foreign policy perspective.
In an address to the Lowy Institute, Morrison attacked multilateralism and international institutions, which he characterised as “unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy” and “international institutions [that] demand conformity rather than independent cooperation on global issues”.
“We should avoid any reflex towards a negative globalism that coercively seeks to impose a mandate from an often ill-defined borderless global community,” Morrison claimed.
But about a month later, his treasurer contradicted him. Frydenberg, in a speech to the ANU, warned “there is no alternative to multilateralism” and urged the world to “recapture the co-operative spirit of Bretton Woods” which had led to “institutions that remain important to this day” such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and the World Bank.
Frydenberg was speaking from an economic perspective, in which Australia is a relatively small country that needs a functional international order and set of rules in areas like trade in order to prosper. Otherwise, we end up… well, we end up right where we are now, with China using trade to try to subject Australia to exemplary punishment for criticising and questioning the tyrants of Beijing.
In a foreign policy speech yesterday, delivered to a British thinktank, did Morrison continue the Trump act and attack multilateral institutions and damn “unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy”? Unsurprisingly, no. Indeed, Morrison has changed his tune quite dramatically.
He wanted to explain to the Brits “why groupings and institutions like the G7, the WTO and the OECD matter in a turbulent world and indeed the G20”.
The OECD matters, of course, because he couldn’t say otherwise while his government is backing, complete with a taxpayer-funded jet, Mathias Cormann’s bid to lead it. 

And so on ... the infallible Pope had a funny cartoon today on the matter, though the pond must apologise for it looking a little mangled ...

 

Meanwhile, Europe fined Google nearly $10 billion for antitrust violations, but little has changed (Washington Post paywall), and there's a wiki here too ...

Of course there's a good case for someone looking into the way that News Corp dominates the newspaper market in Australia too ... perhaps even a Royal Commission, as they cheerfully go about the business of spreading climate science denialism, fake news and conspiratorial disinformation, though the pond understands "Ned" thinks that's okay ...

What is good news is the way such idle talk of RCs and such like has got under the skin of "Ned" and the rest of the reptiles ...

 

Ah the good old gesture politics about News Corp ... and if only News Corp's climate science denialism had been gesture politics too ... but why is "Ned" picking on former Chairman Rudd alone? Perhaps he's still too bruised by his encounter with Malware, as recorded in the Graudian here ...

Malcolm Turnbull says News Corp has become an organisation for “pure propaganda” that has done enormous damage through its promotion of climate change denial.
In a heated exchange on Monday night’s Q+A, the former prime minister and the Australian’s editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, clashed over the media organisation’s treatment of climate science.
Turnbull told the program that News Corp had gone from being an organisation that “tended to lean more right than left to become pure propaganda”.
“The campaign on climate denial is just staggering and has done enormous damage to the world, to the global need to address global warming,” he said.
“I mean, it is so horrifically biased and such propaganda that Rupert’s own son James can’t stomach it.”
Kelly responded, saying Australia had many other publications and news outlets that were dedicated to “promoting the cause of climate change and radical action on climate change”.
“It’s OK to be a propagandist for one side, but if one is a critic or sceptic about some of these issues, that’s not OK?”
Turnbull, who has backed an e-petition initiated by the former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd calling for a royal commission into the Murdoch media, said Kelly’s response highlighted the problem with News Corp’s coverage of the climate crisis.

And while there, have a read of The Australian says it accepts climate science, so why does it give a platform to 'outright falsehoods'?

As usual, "Ned" can't resist a swipe at social media, while throwing in a second "gesture politics", because that's what the reptiles do when under threat ... and then comes clean and admits that the reptiles are part of a partisan, propagandist organisation, because everyone does it, and that's why the reptiles do it too ...

 

Oh fuck it, not another tossing in of "gesture politics". What a tosser the old loon is, no wonder he was such easy meat for Malware ...

Speaking of desperate attempts of reptiles to avoid the obvious question - why should Google and Facebook money be used to prop up the Murdochians, as opposed to say all the smaller brands out there struggling in the market place to have their voices and insights heard? - Dame Slap attempts the same kind of distraction and diversion this day by mounting her own call for a Royal Commission ...

 

 

 

 

Yes, former Chairman Rudd and Malware have really got under the reptiles' skin ... but why don't they launch a full-on attack on Malware for his disgraceful mishandling of the NBN?

 

Oh wait, that's right, for years the pond spent its time tracking the reptiles' attempt to bring down the very notion of a national broadband scheme, and stifle competition for their own desperately unpopular image streaming service. How they urged on the onion muncher and his minions to produce the mess that now stalks the land ... if anything, they're even more guilty than Malware ...

 

So let's get on with Dame Slap's attempt at a different distraction and diversion ...

 

 

 

 

There comes a point every so often that the pond realises that for all that she's an IPA stooge and a hack, Dame Slap - for all her alleged credentials - is a really stupid person.

Citing the man who sexed up talk of weapons and indulged in a war in Iraq that didn't go terribly well, then talking him up, and getting him blathering on about the importance of risk ... well, that's truly bizarre ...

Sometimes we have to accept no one is to blame? That's easy for Bleagh to say, but let's face it, he can cop a lot of the blame for what happened in Iraq, and share it with other key players ... and Dame Slap should face a share of the blame for the outrageous follies indulged in by the lizards of Oz, even as they keep on doing it ...

As for that talk of the pandemic, the pond would like a Royal Commission into News Corp ... not just for climate science denialism, but the space they gave to talk of Sweden, and Killer Creighton, and sundry assaults on premiers, when really, if the pond might briefly resort to Crikey again ...

 

 

 

But back to Bleagh warning about science, which no doubt helps explain why Dame Slap donned the MAGA cap and slipped out into the night, but not before warning that climate science was going to be used by the UN to establish a world government by Xmas 2009 ...

 

Suddenly the UK is an example to follow? But the UK is comprehensively fucked, and has been fucked for some time now ... with endless talk of lockdowns and tiers, and the only way out of Boris's mess a vaccine that works ... and hopefully the anti-vaxxers toddling off to a grave on their own ... though no doubt many of them are devout reptile readers ...

As for the United States, and Dame Slap's MAGA cap ...

But back to that distracting and diverting talk of a different Royal Commission ...

 

One thing's certain ... the pond is eternally grateful that prudent leaders failed to draw on advice from many reptile sources ... because this country would have been as fucked as the UK and the United States currently are, and will be until, and if, the assorted vaccines do the trick ...

The pond realises that talk of a Royal Commission into News Corp has only a snowball's chance, and will go nowhere, but it's pleasing to see how such talk has got under reptile skins ...

The reptiles will never retreat and never surrender, but then that's in the tradition of that noble reptile hero, Dame Slap's MAGA cap man, celebrated by the immortal Rowe here ...