A correspondent recently noted The Hack, (not to be confused with Hacks), about "one of the biggest abuses of power in our time", but spare a thought for the hacks down under, hacking on in their usual hack way, still serving that regular abuser of power ...
The angle for this day's hackery, as featured top of the digital edition early in the morning?
PM fights for democracy and ‘mate’ Starmer in UK Labour speech
Anthony Albanese has pledged to work with Keir Starmer to ‘defend democracy’, during a trip described by some Labor figures as ‘indulgent’.
By Geoff Chambers
The pond wondered who these "Labor figures" might be, but it was just a casual smear, thrown away in just one line ...
The visit has been described by some Labor figures as “indulgent” after Mr Albanese, who has built close friendships inside British Labour over decades, won 94 seats at the May 3 election.
Just below it Chambers loaded another bullet
Political gadabout: Why PM’s Save Starmer trip is really pushing it
Anthony Albanese is experiencing a stronger honeymoon than his first term. Yet he must still strike the right commonsense balance to avoid swings away from Labor’s already flaky primary vote.
At least the pond worked out the point of "indulgence" because it was a throwaway in the archived header ...
Albanese’s Save Starmer trip is pushing it. He needs to balance common sense and indulgence
The message?
Albanese is experiencing a stronger honeymoon than his first term. Yet he must still strike the right commonsense balance to avoid swings away from Labor’s already flaky primary vote.
Since the May 3 election, Albanese has travelled to Indonesia, Italy and the Vatican, Fiji, Seattle, Calgary, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, New York and Britain. On the way back to Australia, he will stop in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
After locking in his White House meeting with Trump, Albanese travels back to the US in October – for the third time since June when the US President was forced to cancel their meeting.
Albanese is then quickly off to Malaysia for the ASEAN and East Asia summit, and South Korea for the APEC summit, where Trump and Xi Jinping will meet on the sidelines.
In between those summits, Albanese is expected to stop by Japan.
He gets back on the plane in November and jets over to South Africa for the G20 summit. The year culminates with the UN COP30 climate change conference in the Amazonian port city of Belem.
If Australia wins its bid to co-host the COP31 summit in Adelaide, there’s a strong chance Albanese will finally make it to his first climate change extravaganza as PM.
Albanese is experiencing an even stronger honeymoon than his first term, but he must strike the right commonsense balance on overseas travel versus duties at home to avoid any adverse impact on Labor’s historically low primary vote.
The pond knew from too much exposure to the reptiles that this mantra would be taken up over on the extreme far right, and sure enough, look who was top of the reptile world ma early in the morning...
Yes, it was Simpleton Simon, also on about King Donald ...
The Prime Minister’s embrace of progressive world leaders has exposed a stark contradiction between his values-based foreign policy and Australia’s strategic interests.
By Simon Benson
Political analyst
Thank the long absent lord there are some values somewhere because if it's in Australia's strategic interest to get in bed with a narcissistic sociopath sending the troops into poor old Portland, we're doomed.
Who to call to help out simplistic Simon?
Why, good old disgraced Mike, still on his reptile rehabilitation tour ...
Former home affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo, who also was a former defence planner, alluded to this last week when asked about the significance of Albanese finally landing a meeting with the US President.
“Trying to pursue a foreign policy on the basis of values and political alignment is bound to come in conflict with a hard calculation of interests,” he told The Australian.
“When it comes to security in Asia, Trump’s values or political views hardly matter. What matters are his calculations, and our awareness of his calculations and the factors that drive and will likely in future drive those calculations.”
What Pezzullo clearly is talking about is what Trump’s private views are on a potential for conflict with China. It is in Australia’s interests to have an intimate insight into Trump’s thinking on this. This is to suggest further that Albanese has an opportunity when he meets Trump in Washington on October 20 to engage on the longer-term substantive issue that goes to the interests of both Australia and the US. This is more than just about one meeting but an ongoing and quiet dialogue.
Rather than a debate over values, which would seem to be a pointless exercise, the question is whether this is the discussion the Prime Minister is prepared to have with the President.
Just to keep the war with China by Xmas theme going, the reptiles boiled some rice ...
China is rolling out its masterplan for the Pacific and barely bothering to hide its tracks. Beijing’s test case in Solomon Islands reveals Xi’s insidious plan for our neighbours.
By Stephen Rice
Sydney Bureau Chief
Some day it might dawn on the reptiles that TACO King Donald has paved the way for Vlad the Impaler, and has done much to embolden and empower Xi, and is currently setting up his own authoritarian emulation of their rule ...
How deeply weird is it getting?
Trump to Upstage Hegseth By Crashing Bizarre Generals Summit
A movement to dismantle the existing school system and remake it in a Christian nationalist image is well on its way across America.
And so on, but the pond must pause its survey of barking mad fundamentalist hack values of the bromancer kind to indulge in standard Monday climate denialist fare, served up as usual by the flood waters in quarries whisperer...
The header: Climate push hits turbulence as the world cools on Paris, For Sussan Ley, the global inflection point is a propitious moment to announce that the Coalition’s first measure on entering government will be to repeal the Climate Change Bill 2022.
The caption for the woman in a race with a lettuce: Climate change is a devalued currency and Opposition Leader Sussan Ley can make it play to the Coalition’s strengths.
The pond was extremely disappointed with the opening snap. No demonic wind mills, no Satanic solar solar panels to terrify the hive mind?
Would the reptiles remedy this grievous error?
It was the only intriguing thing to keep ploughing through what was a pitiful effort, even by the routinely cratering Caterist's incredibly low standards ...
“For more than 50 years, big oil has been lying to us,” Governor Gavin Newsom told journalists. “They’ve long known how dangerous the fossil fuels they produce are for our planet.”
Last week, with California’s motorists paying on average $US4.65 a gallon for petrol, 20 per cent more than other Americans, Newsom signed legislation to fast-track approval of more than 2000 oil wells in Kern County. Legislators hope it will prevent the closure of two more refineries and relocation of Chevron’s remaining corporate operations from San Ramon to Houston, Texas.
Recognising that even the hive mind was already stifling a yawn, the reptiles flung in a motley set of images, California Governor Gavin Newsom onstage during the NYT Climate Forward event. Picture: Getty Images for NYT; In January, Donald Trump said his administration would declare a 'national energy emergency' to significantly expand drilling in the world's top oil and gas producer.
Of course the Cantaloupe Caligula is a Caterist hero ...
Either way, Bowen and Anthony Albanese would be foolish to imagine Donald Trump was speaking only for MAGA Republicans when he told the UN that pursuing the Paris agenda was the sure-fire way to ruin an economy.
Democrats are coming around to that view, too. We shouldn’t imagine the US is merely taking a short break from the Paris Agreement and that when the Trump nightmare is over a Democrat president, maybe Newsom, will lead America back into the tent.
Oh no, we should imagine a planet completely stuffed, with the reptiles compounding the pond's gloom by doubling up with even more Craterism, carrying on with petulant Peta, Menzies Research Centre Senior Fellow Nick Cater says individuals who are in the climate change “caravan” are there because of “self-interest” and “incentive”. This comes as US President Donald Trump has slammed climate policy during his address to the United Nations. “It’s a huge number of people who will lose their jobs if this conventional wisdom is ever overturned … they have every incentive not to do it,” Mr Cater told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “Never underestimate the self-interest involved in keeping this caravan moving, even though it’s increasingly coming off the rails.”
What a relief that the pond's screen cap treatment means there's never any need to sample the offal dredged up from Sky Noise Down Under ...
Amazingly the cratiering Caterist managed a minor billy goat butt, only so he could join in the butting ...
While not everyone may agree with Trump’s assessment that global warming is a scam, climate is becoming yesterday’s thing.
Such a stupid man, as if it will all just go away, disappear, be swallowed by a gigantic cornfield... and yet ...
That's the pond's usual attempt at an alternative reality, with links at source ... now back to the grind ...
“You can’t walk more than two feet at any global conference today without ‘pragmatism’ and ‘realism’ being thrown around as the order of the day,” former Obama energy adviser Jason Bordoff told The New York Times a fortnight ago.
That the NYT published Bordoff’s comments is evidence in itself of a decisive shift in the US conversation. Clips of Newsom’s climate rhetoric in his 2018 gubernatorial campaign look as dated as Jimmy Carter’s polyester suits.
A fortnight ago in The New York Times Magazine, David Wallace-Wells chronicled the retreat from the Paris goals that began with Trump’s 2016 election and accelerated after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Only 15 countries met the February deadline to submit 2035 emissions targets. More have trickled in but Wallace-Wells cites climate scientist Piers Forster, who calculated more than half of them represent backsliding.
Mark Carney served as the special envoy on climate action and finance to UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres. When Carney became Canada’s Prime Minister in March, his first act was to strike down the country’s climate tax.
Naturally the reptiles produced a snap of the Elbows up! man, In his first week as Prime Minister, Mr Carney scrapped Canada’s carbon tax having vowed to kill it off during the election. Picture: Amber Bracken/The Canadian Press/AP
Poor old Canadians ... living close to the King, and ducking for cover, per Elizabeth May in The Toronto Star, Where is the 'brainy and thoughtful' Mark Carney who warned the world of the dangers of climate change?
Naturally the Caterist is wildly excited by the giddy ride to planetary destruction ...there's nothing like heat domes, bankrupt provinces, and prairie droughts to get a quarry whisperer into an ecstatic state ...
Wallace-Wells is not nobody. In 2017, his article “The Uninhabitable Earth” became a classic in the climate-doom genre and the most-read article in New York magazine history. With hindsight, he reflects, the dream that the Paris Agreement would usher in a new era of co-operative global solidarity was fanciful.
The importance of his article, published in one of the leading progressive-left newspapers, lies in its acknowledgment that, whatever the perceived threats from climate change, the top-down, global, UN-led process isn’t working. Country after country has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement in spirit if not yet in fact.
Climate change is a devalued currency. International polling is consistent: while most people acknowledge climate change, it is not at the top of their list of priorities. Set against this, the Prime Minister’s US speech pleading for the world to look favourably on us, recognising that a former climate laggard has acknowledged the error of its ways, was as awkward as an ambassadorial bro hug that lingers a fraction too long.
Amazing that the Caterist should note the bleeding obvious ... by now most people recognise that the planet is well on the way to being a goner ...
The hacks' response? Keep hacking away, On tonight’s episode of Paul Murray Live, Sky News host Paul Murray discusses Anthony Albanese’s climate action at the UN, China’s pledge to reduce emissions, migration and more.
The sight of the Cantaloupe Caligula telling the UN the world was going to hell inspired the Caterist to help him speed up the process ...
Welcome as this moment of reckoning might be, we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves.
This is not yet the beginning of the end of the climate change delusion, which has become embedded in the corrupted scientific orthodoxy, is taught relentlessly in schools, has spawned a global multi-trillion-dollar industry to manufacture solutions to this ill-defined problem.
Climate advocacy has turned from a part-time exercise into a career with a network of opportunities in politics, journalism, government quangos and not-for-profits flush with cash. The best we can hope for is that it has at last dawned on the intellectual class that state-run energy transitions are as slow, inefficient and unproductive as state-run economies. The answer is not more government action but far, far less.
And let's be fair. Climate science denialism is a handy way for some denialists to make a handy living, except perhaps when predicting the movement of flood waters in quarries.
At that moment, the pond let out a huge sigh of relief. The reptiles had delivered, with a snap not just of whale-killing windmills, but of Satanic solar panels ... ‘(Energy Minister Chris) Bowen’s target of adding a 200m wind turbine to the grid every 18 hours is a joke.’
And with that it was just downhill all the way in a final burst of denialism ...
Arguments for abandoning net zero write themselves. The targets are unachievable; national emissions have flatlined since 2023; capital costs of renewable energy are rising steeply as appetite to invest falls away; Bowen’s target of adding a 200m wind turbine to the grid every 18 hours is a joke; coal-fired power stations are kept alive with government subsidies out of necessity; collateral damage to biodiversity is considerable; billions in public money have been wasted on technological fantasies; and that’s just the start of it.
One of the chief arguments Scott Morrison made for signing up to net zero was that a trading nation could ill-afford to ignore what was happening in the rest of the world. With Paris mania out of control in the EU, there was a credible threat of sanctions for nations that wouldn’t play along.
Four years later, the bubble has burst. The same reasoning the Coalition used to get on board now compels Australia to bid adieu to la folie parisienne.
The pond hopes that all that amounts to the same level of insights that the Caterist employed on deciphering flood waters in quarries ...
And so to the Major, scribbling one of his seemingly endless litanies, though the reptiles clocked it as being only five minutes of suffering ...
The pond sighed. Not more Kirk, Kimmel and Klimate, dressed up with an ancient ploy, so hoary it had whiskers, "the hidden media truth": The hidden media truth behind Kimmel, Kirk and the climate, Australia’s media and political class are grappling with a new reality whereby social media engagement trumps factual reporting in shaping public discourse.
The caption for an image the pond didn't need to see yet again: The late conservative commentator and Turning Point USA cop-founder Charlie Kirk. Picture: AP
The pond knew that the Major would be coming, and so dug out an old profile, written by Sally Neighbour way back in The Monthly's August 2011 edition, The United States of Chris Mitchell.
It was a generally flattering portrait - the Major was still at the height of his powers - but Neighbour did cover one of the pond's favourite Major stories ...
“[An editor] came to me one day and said Chris would like me to do a piece on Manning Clark, and he told me why and I was horrified … He told me there was evidence that Manning Clark had close communist connections and had been awarded a Lenin medal or something.” The journalist regarded it as nonsense and refused to do it but the eight-page special duly appeared under someone else’s by-line, reporting that Clark had been awarded “the Soviet Union’s highest honour, the Order of Lenin”, making him “a member of the Communist world’s elite” and a presumed “agent of influence”. The first edition called him a spy.
The story was wrong, as revealed by David Marr in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Press Council, which found its publication unjustified. “It was the silliest scoop of the last 50 years,” says Marr. “It was a story so stupid, so baseless, so exaggerated, so bizarre, that only a man of Mitchell’s energy and genius could have survived it.”
Global news last week was dominated by the recognition of a non-existent Palestinian state, blanket coverage of the funeral of young US political activist Charlie Kirk – hailed by the right as a free speech messiah but derided on the left as a gun-toting extremist – and the short-lived sacking of late-night television comedy show host Jimmy Kimmel, who had criticised Kirk.
In truth, those recognising Palestine were signing up to a list already 150 countries long, and despite the extensive coverage in Australia of his murder and funeral Kirk was largely unknown outside the US. Kimmel’s temporary axing became a rallying point for free speech advocates debating whether the left or right was more committed to censorship.
Just as social media algorithms send users ever more content about things they have already clicked on, culture war commentary now drives much of modern media and politics, taking resources away from important news investigations and political policymaking.
This year’s federal election was a petri dish of the phenomenon: Labor promoted its generosity to younger Australians by rolling out Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on youth podcasts and social media. It offered little in the way of policy beyond a splurge of taxpayer money but most journalists went along with it because their readers want free money, unsurprisingly.
For some strange reason the pond was reminded of the deep-seated fear the reptiles experienced when it was thought that blogging threatened the empire, to the point where they devised a blog and every reptile had a blog: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese talks with Abbie Chatfield on her podcast; Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the Sydney. Picture: Jason Edwards
Of course the Major is projecting, because the reptiles for years lurked behind an inviolable paywall, so that mug punters had to fork over shekels to stay onside with the Emeritus Chairman, and read the rants of the litany-inclined Major ...
It went to the poll with a nuclear power plan it scarcely campaigned on and refused to engage in advocacy against Labor’s net zero by 2050 policies, even though that was the motivation for the nuclear plan.
On Wednesday last week, The Australian reported the Australian Human Rights Commission had told a Senate hearing that regulation might be needed to prevent misinformation on climate change. The AHRC was not reflecting on misinformation promoted by the federal government on September 15.
Many reporters failed to point out the Albanese government had misrepresented the data included in its own detailed documents on deaths from heat, increasing fires, floods and cyclones, and likely sea level rises.
In effect, media outlets that are favoured by those who believe climate alarmist predictions failed to call out the misinformation in a document used as cover for increasing emissions reduction targets of 62-70 per cent.
Another Neighbour quote:
Guthrie likens News to the mafia. “It’s a family, it’s Mafioso, you’re a made guy. You’ve proven yourself by giving yourself to Rupert and signing on for the whole deal, and then you’re made, you’re part of the family.”
And that's how there's still a home for the pensioned-off Major, blathering on like an uncle in the kitchen in a sub-standard Scorsese flick.
And speaking of climate, another Major quote showing the Mafioso in action ...
Mitchell fired off a furious email to Wahlquist: “Asa, I have NEVER spoken to you about climate change in my life and have never stood over you about ANY of your stories. Indeed, I have not spoken to you in at least eight years. And I have never stood over people writing stories in 19 years as an editor. If I do not have an apology in writing from you today you will see me in court. I promise, Chris.”
Wahlquist was stunned. “I was pretty frightened. I’ve stopped working because I’m ill. I’m unemployed, and I didn’t have the assets for a Supreme Court case.” Mitchell is still threatening to sue Posetti for defamation. “It was offensive, it was damaging to the paper,” he says. “I don’t believe she has a right to repeat a falsehood. This woman is a journalism lecturer. She’s meant to be preparing young minds to work for people like me.”
Posetti says this: “What kind of editor, invested in freedom of expression, threatens to sue for defamation over a fair report of a public proceeding and then mounts his case against an individual via screaming headlines in his own newspaper? I’ve never met Chris Mitchell but his campaign against me reinforced, in a personal way, my judgement of the Australian under his editorship as a derailed newspaper, prone to bullying...
...Mitchell’s aversion to criticism stops many people from speaking out. Of the 70 people I spoke to for this profile, two-thirds would talk only off the record. “You can’t be quoted in relation to Chris Mitchell. He’s so vindictive,” said one. “If you come out and bag him, you know he’ll use the newspaper to attack you,” said another. It’s disturbing that a man committed to freedom of speech and information can have such a stifling effect on public debate.
Some of his staff believe Mitchell’s unbridled aggression is damaging the brand. “We are no longer about reporting news. That doesn’t sell, because people can get their news from so many different places,” an insider remarks. “We are now in the business that conflict sells. I think that’s the business model that’s emerging.”
The 444 per cent increase in heat-related deaths was the focus because the absolute number of deaths over the next 65 years would have been only a fraction of the number of deaths in, say, car accidents. Excess heat death totals would have been outnumbered by lives saved from easing of cold conditions.
Alarming predictions about natural disasters failed to mention most were forecast with “low confidence’’ by climate scientists.
This column in 2017 discussed the role of social media in privileging feelings over facts and how that was hurting journalism. The situation has only deteriorated since.
The Major is also devoted to showing off his reading, and his ongoing devotion to genocide ...
“The Dawn of the post-literate society”, by James Marriott, on the Cultural Capital site, quotes university educators discussing young students arriving at prestigious universities unable to read a complete book. Many have only read parts of texts in their entire school years.
Marriott cites 2010 as the year when Western IQs began falling after a century of climbing. This was also the year global school tests began flatlining. Mariott argues this matters because history’s greatest political leaders and artists were once prolific readers.
He links reading by the masses to the rise of democracy. “Democracy draws immeasurable strength from print – the old dying world of books, newspapers and magazines – with its tendency to foster deep knowledge, logical argument, critical thought, objectivity and dispassionate engagement, Marriott writes.”
“In this environment ordinary people have the tools to understand their rulers, to criticise them and perhaps to change them.”
Now politicians can use social media algorithms to win mass approval via brief messages on social media.
Globally, Palestinianism is riding the surge in smartphone use, surpassing the issue of climate change in online activism.
Why is it that the reptiles never provide links?
Sure there was a link to the Major in 2017, but that kept the punters inside the hive mind.
There was no link to Marriott of The Times. How hard would that have been? (Perhaps it would have revealed where Dame Slap got her ideas from?)
Instead the reptiles interrupted with a snap ... Tensions flared at a pro-Palestine gathering in Sydney on September 7. Picture: Flavio Brancaleone
That set the Major off on one of his usual tirades in support of ethnic cleansing and genocide ...
These offers were rejected each time, often in violent attacks against Israel, which was smart enough to accept UN Resolution 181 and proclaim independence in 1948.
Journalists and politicians of the left remain positive about Palestinian statehood, yet the Ramallah-based Centre for Policy and Survey Research has been clear for almost two years that Hamas is more popular than the Palestinian Authority, suggesting claims that Hamas can have no role in a future state may prove unenforceable.
Hamas’s barbarism on October 7, 2023, has destroyed the once strong Israeli support for Palestinian statehood. Remember the two-state solution at Oslo was proposed to PLO leader Yasser Arafat by the late Israeli Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin.
And what of Charlie Kirk’s senseless murder? Surely the world’s media could have done better than battle over whether left or right are more violent in modern America.
The real story – yet again – is the need for US gun law reform, the role of mental illness in gun violence, and the need for students to go back to books and ditch keyboard warrior activism.
Jimmy Kimmel and free speech? This column reckons US President Donald Trump and his Federal Communications Commission chief, Brendan Carr, were mad to buy into the issue.
Not another shot of Kimmel, Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel arrives for the 74th Emmy Awards on September 12. Picture: AFP
That sent the Major off again ...
Trump should have emphasised American Broadcasting Company regional affiliates in markets with high Republican support were wanting to junk Kimmel’s show because its relentless pro-Democrat bias offends their viewers.
It might do politicians and journalists tethered to their phones some good to read the speeches of another Republican assassinated with a gun: Abraham Lincoln. Trump could certainly learn a thing or two about presidential rhetoric. Albanese likewise.
Actually if you wanted to read about Kimmel, why not try The Atlantic?
And so on, and as the Major is apparently into golf, he'd no doubt appreciate the manners of US punters at golfing events, attempting to be civilised in the manner of their King, and inspiring the immortal Rowe to celebrate their behaviour...
Geoff the Chambers: "...avoid swings away from Labor’s already flaky primary vote".
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, Labor's "flaky" primary: at the last election, labor scored 5,354,138 primaries (34.56%) and Dutton's muttons scored 4,929,402 (31.82%).
So exactly whose primaries are 'flaky'?
Tragically, the fragrant Freya Leach will no longer be Firing Up on Sky - she’s been axed.
ReplyDeletehttps://archive.md/PQ4wr
If anyone ever wondered what you have to do to be sacked by Sky After Dark (apart from being Mark Latham) we now have the answer.
Surely she could be compensated with a regular Lizard Oz gig? She’d certainly reduce the average age of its columnists by several decades, physically if not mentally.