Two deceptions. One done, and one to come
1 Reds under our beds
The day after telling the Australian people that the country faced the gravest possible economic news since the Great Depression, Scott Morrison fronted the assembled media and television cameras to tell us that we were under cyber attack.
He couldn’t tell us who it was but it was a state-based country. He was talking about China while at the same time treating us as children.
If he knows who is hacking into our systems why does he not name them? His acting was as bad as that second-rate actor, Ronald Reagan.
Of course, this time it was different. How different, he couldn’t say, but he assured us it was. In fact he couldn’t tell us much at all except it was serious.
The assembled press asked all the appropriate questions and went away to write about Chinese propaganda and other assorted hacking techniques.
He said that the attacks “hadn’t just started,” they were “on-going” and constant threats to Australia.
It was all straight out of the Crosby (now Sir Lynton) Textor book of political propaganda.
Crosby Textor are a globally conservative “dirty trickster” election campaign specialist company who exploit unstated fears in the electorate, aggressively attacking the opposition as not just wrong but positively incompetent in all manner of ways.
One of their dirty trick techniques is to continuously replace one fear with another.
Finding the truth and reporting it is more important than creating a narrative where controversy matters more.
So the fear of losing your job one day was replaced the next with the fear of the Communist Party getting into your bank account. Morrison’s cyber attack warning was a classic Crosby Textor grubby ploy that should have been identified by every journalist at the hastily convened press conference.
I happened to be watching at the time and I saw right through it. But the journalists starting asking questions like they had fallen for it hook, line and sinker.
How sadly it reflects on the quality of our journalism. Or was it just that most were Murdoch hacks.
Meanwhile, Twitter was busy reacting to Morrison’s announcement. Please note the cynicism:
Why announce a cyber attack by a state controlled entity without detail of by whom and of its impact and significance? Weren’t these already happening? Is this much more significant? Without detail reasonable to wonder whether announcement was just another distraction?
— John Hewson (@JohnRHewson) June 19, 2020
The “look over there” strategy is already working. Check MSM online and journalists on twitter. Far more interested in this than a massive overhaul of funding and career paths at universities. https://t.co/EKaWYrLznh
— Barrie Cassidy (@barriecassidy) June 19, 2020
Announces this “ongoing” attack just as the education overhaul hits the news. Could Scomo be burying the lead here? https://t.co/pLGLBFfZID
— Caitlin Cassidy (@caitecassidy) June 18, 2020
Why today? I hope someone presses the PM for this – if this has been 'ongoing'… exactly why are they announcing this today??
— Sabra Lane (@SabraLane) June 18, 2020
But on ABC Insiders last Sunday there wasn’t a hint of cynicism from the likes of Mark Kenny or Lenore Taylor when the subject was raised. Although confused by his intent, they didn’t doubt his words.
Yes, #ScottyFromMarketing had conned them all again. It showed that not only was he a brilliant marketing man but it also showed up the standard of journalism in this country. Mind you, most were from the Murdoch mob where the truth goes to die.
Lying in the media is wrong at any time however when they do it by deliberate omission it is even more so. Murdoch’s papers seem to do it with impunity.
2 The next budget: Who will pay to fix the economy?
On the one side we have the middle and the lower classes who earn very little – or more than likely they are on welfare. They also consist of regular taxpayers.
On the other side there are the upper class, the rich individuals who have earned their wealth through their own enterprise or inherited it. Then there are the small business owner’s, corporates and the multi-nationals.
When the next budget comes into being will it reflect the Prime Minister’s statement that “We are all in this together”?
Indeed we are, but will we all share the burden equally? I have long contended that the government is far too generous to the rich and privileged, who receive subsidies and handouts that are not available to the middle and lower classes.
So diminished is my trust in our Prime Minister that I cannot see any possibility of any equity in the coming budget.
Allow me to share with you some facts and figures from a report commissioned by Anglicare by Per Capita.
It records some of the details of what most people and the media already know. That is, that the richest part of Australian society receives much more government support than the poorest.
The study uses Treasury data, ABS figures and a University of Melbourne’s HILDA survey, to illustrate that the rich and privileged of society, the top end of town, costs ordinary taxpayers $135 billion a year. “Wow,” I hear from the assembled voices.
The report says that this is more than the cost of Newstart, the age pension, family assistance payments and disability payments combined.
And yet they say that welfare is such a burden on society. Will the budget correct this anomaly?
Poverty is the fault of the victim but wealth comes from virtue and both are the natural order of things.
And would you believe that more than half of these handouts go to the richest fifth of Australian society? The report doesn’t consider handouts to corporations otherwise the benefit to those at the top would be much larger.
Do you remember Foxtel received a $30 million handout in November 2018 and avoided paying $8.3 billion in tax for three years? It was only one example. Nobody to this day knows why they got the $30 million, not even the minister could explain it at the time.
It was but one example of 354 companies operating in Australia who avoided paying income on $911 billion, and last year, 36 percent of companies pay no tax.
And in the 2015-16 financial year, 17 of the 50 biggest Australian companies paid no company tax.
It was reported at the time that:
“In the context of the Per Capita report, it reveals that the richer you are, the more you get in superannuation concessions, and the greater your capacity to take advantage of income splitting, capital gains tax and negative gearing. It proves beyond doubt, that the tax system is deliberately designed to shift income upwards.”
It’s not the weak that are unable to say sorry. It’s the strong and the privileged.
If we want a more equitable share of the country’s wealth then the disproportionate handouts to the richest must come to an end.
However, I foresee a time in the near future when the Treasurer and the Prime Minister present the next budget where they will, like many other things, yet again try to pull the wool over the eyes of every Australian. Or just lie about them.
My thought for the day
Meritocracy is a term used to imply that those at the top of the social scale have merit and a slur against those at the bottom.
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Ill fares the land -
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Phil
Return to home pageAs the Scummo Sacked from Marketing COALition misgovernment flounders about waiting for the next election to confirm that their only hope of re-election is the massive political donations from the foreign owned multinational mining corporations, News Ltd, the unthinking media shock jocks and the inherent racism of the ill-educated Sydney western suburbs, the real losers are those misguided Australian souls who believed, for whatever reason, the political propaganda spewed by the Liarbral and Nazional$, and voted them into office.
Australian voters have a bad track record of believing fear based political campaigns rather than recognising the passed over costs of ignoring positive political policies that re-distribute wealth away from the undeserving wealthy and corporates towards the betterment of all members of the community. Consider the previous Menzies, Howard, RAbbott Turdball policies and then recognise that our present situation is a self inflicted wound.
When you shoot yourself in both feet you really cannot complain when you cannot walk.
There is now little doubt that the 1969 Club of Rome Report creating Australia as the biggest mining pit in the world for the benefit of European and American mining processors and manufacturing industries has been playing out since at least 2013 to the enormous disadvantage of Australian voters.
Scummo squarks “jobs” but does nothing to require at least first stage processing of Australian minerals in Australia, RAbbott closed down the automobile assembly industry on an ideological whim and inherent fear of unions, Howard wasted the profits of the mining boom buying elections with largesse to the aspiring missile classes while destroying secondary and tertiary education. Certainly these are “wonderful” political strategies … that do nothing for Australian voters.
This pernicious influence will only be removed from Australian politics by strong campaigning and voting against the self-serving incumbent at the next election. In the event that Labor returns to the Treasury benches, then following the Fijian example of requiring all Australian media to be owned by sole Australian natural persons may cause some positive changes.
Ummm…., there is no polite way to say this, but the fact that they keep saying “cyberattack” means they are trying to frighten old people who are not “with-it” in the technology field.
I mean, if you talk about a dangerous “cyberattack” on your network at work or school or whatever, younger people will (rightly) surmise that you are just clueless and you can’t deal with a simple Trojan or Malware infection (which are generally caused by idiots downloading something that promises a “Free iPad!!!” or suchlike).
But, then again, old people VOTE, and they vote in large numbers and that is the deal here, folks. Same as “Black African gangs” on the streets and other media hoaxes designed to scare the elderly.
And there you go…..
Talking about the “Club of Rome” ???? I mean what comic books have you been reading? Third-rate conspiracy rubbish that is being recycled on Facebook.
The pool was cool this morning, lord. with few warming giggles from you
Sadly the cycle of smoke and mirrors has always been the province of the lnp in government and in opposition.
Under the current set of circumstances there is no truth) beyond that which hides honesty
Everyone, able to considers longer than the seconds devoted on the morning shows, knows that cyber attack is real and has been around for years:
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/0910/Cybercrime#_ftn9
Why trot it out again as if it was NOW?
Perhaps Albo was drilling after all and was close to uncovering as cache of crooks.
Is there a Collaery oops corollary in the number of funding rorts and pollies smelling of conflicts of interest, nepotism and corruption that stimulated the ‘move this member be not heard’?
It really is just too easy for King Morrison the Stupendous isn’t it. His stage-managed performances during COVID-19 boosted his appeal (falsely – he did a good, but not exceptional job and he is still the same petulant, belligerent boofhead he was before), so now it is a simple task for him to whip up further fear and to convince more that he is the wartime Churchillian statesman that we need. He didn’t have to say it was China – that was always going to be assumed and it was therefore what was not said that was more powerful and exploited the recent decline in the relationship between China and Australia – but only for King Morrison’s political advantage. It is but one of his many diversionary tactics – copied from Trump and Johnson of course – King Morrison isn’t smart enough to do this on his own.
Now that King Morrison has boosted his popularity beyond any realistic measure or assessment of his substance, a compliant media that supports him and a public that now think that the serial liar, manipulator and backstabber is trustworthy, it is hard to see how Labor and Albanese can peg back the gap. It defies credible analysis, but then none of us is a stupid as all of us.
There is no answer fot this. The very nature of politicians on all sides is to obfuscate. They seem to be very shy of the truth, of simple facts, and if we have a compliant press which refuses to ask the right questions then we have no chance.
There would need to be strict rules that applied to them to tell nothing but the truth.
Not going to happen.
Oh – Whatever: I am an old person, most certainly ‘with it’ regarding technology. I accept there might be some who aren’t, but there is also a massive cohort of ‘couldn’t care less’ voters of all ages who are only interested in a sound bite telling them what they’ll get after the next election. Scotty from marketing has them in his pocket.
We dumbo Aussies are spied on, reduced to threatened electronic peasants, are totally manipulated and malleable for more, by.., CIA, Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Advertising inc., Big Business, foreign Corporations, and.., have been in huge increases of activity and filing for Decades. If the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans or others are now catching up or cashing in, they are well behind the USA, UK, Germany, and others. Morrison’s turdy mouth reveals a basic frustration, that we are children in the park here, unable to comprehend, defend, deflect. Yet we chuck shit at the littlies, Timor, Papua New Guinea, Solomons, sneer at Indonesia, Send Christensen the podpolisher to Manilla, cover up the stinking past of Downer and Pyne, ignore someone useful like Rudd, and tend to embrace the poxed comfort of a superstion drenched self serving anus like our P M, the Putrid Mentality of a Piltdown Man. POOP. And, we get useless defiled info through an ABC featuring a fellatio friendly former friend of the Mudoch Maggot Muckmaking ring, Speers.
yes keitha old is redundant the fear they are reinforcing is of labor. The people frightened by boobby are the target of language
Check out the actual world wide statistics at Kaspersky, cybermap. You will see that actual the last month and week statistics are clearly that China is under attack.
Well said again Mr. Pryor, every word a truthful gem. Government of the people by the people my fat aunt. We wish for a government that will govern for the people but how can you do that when every move has to be governed by the need to stay in power at all costs. The sins of rampant capitalism are just as venal and heinous as those of rampant socialism.
One source I find informative for Cyber crime and things of that ilk is bleepingcomputer.com. Another source, zdnet.com/au, though I think that is quite untrustworthy, but regularly elicits a few giggles from me after reading the propaganda.
ScoMo and his government, and the Vic Premier have got to be the worst propagandaists (new word, please add to dictionary), I’ve ever seen. Now resorting to threats. Most of what they said is garbage. I’d be surprised if there’s a word of truth in anything these people are saying. Reminds me of an old joke, modified for the situation in hand “How can you tell when a politician is lying? Their lips are moving”. Lame but relevant.
One fear is endlessly replaced with another; but what worries me is how easily people get sucked into all the BS. How can any rational human over the age of 5 not start to see a pattern or start to question their reality? And the gross overreaction by people! Wow! Who are the real terrorists here?
Enough is enough. I’m old, but covid does not scare me in the slightest. What scares me is that people will continue to be sucked in and allow the total destruction of life, liberty and freedom. Daniel Andrews is certainly going out of his way to make that happen.
And we thought sportsrorts and regional grants were bad (and the other 250 million or so in other grants)? Just wait until the next election and see how much the try to sneak in then.
We are already seeing a snapshot in Eden-Monaro where people are still living in tents and pretty much stuff all of the $2 billion bushfire fund has been spent. Scummo is now promoting his little mate scrotevojs, a fellow anti SSM, anti renewables, anti climate change and general all-round lieberal scum sucking arsewipe. Scummo is porkbarreling again, basically saying vote for scrotevojs and get another $86 million in funding for the region or vote for Labor (or anyone else) and get nothing.
And the latest thing with the uni courses is just another box ticked on their fascist agenda list.
@whatever; I cannot be responsible for your lack of reading the literature of the past 60 years. Perhaps you may be able to find the publication on the Internet. Otherwise I may be able to find the hardcopy that I read in 1969 as I disperse my 5000+ volume library. (Chronic acute bibliomania is such a lovely affliction; you meet the nicest fellow sufferers).
I rebut your claim that this is a “conspiracy theory”. Rather corporations work to time plans, usually one year, there years, five years, ten years, twenty years and fifty years. These plans are updated usually every year and kept coordinated. If you still believe that history is a set of random events then I understand your naive comment.
Very good overview of what is wrong with economics, politics, media and Australia that is more about a PR narrative to have majority of people vote for the few, led quietly by imported US radical right libertarianism and white nativism or eugenics.
Debt, taxes, costs etc. have been imprinted into voters’ minds like microchips by constant reinforcement through media messaging so they will vote against any increases while services slip, wealthy and corporate sector get their tax cuts or e.g. cheaper wholesale energy; back grounded by constant dog whistling of immigrants etc.. Australians would chew through their own (or somebody else’s) elbow to gain a financial benefit equivalent of a cup of coffee a month….. and justify why they deserve it.
Government and politics is now an entertainment business written again by the radical right libertarians at IPA, messages honed and directed by Crosby Textor, constant polls to win on a daily basis, NewsCorp et al. do the communications while other outlets follow the set menu on media cycle carried out by mostly white middle aged men with some women whom all look and sound the same, i.e. conservative and shallow.
The latter is a concern where no longer are interrogative interviews conducted, everyone’s friend or mates, being gamed constantly by PR/political operators, heuristic short cuts take over when a guess or a glib cliche replaces journalistic analysis, most are data and/or financially illiterate, lack of broad/deep memory and understanding while keeping Australians insularised, like themselves, from the outside world of grounded ideas, policy and evidence with most international content limited to the US or UK while elsewhere features only if a disaster or incident occurs.
ABC’s Insiders and Offsiders are a good example, in the past when watching I recall if you were not paying attention they were interchangeable political media strategy was commentated as a sport while sport was commentated on with deeper analysis; a decent informed journalist like Waleed Aly could appear on Offsiders but not Insiders?
So diminished is my trust in our Prime Minister ,. ditto on that Mr Lord.
NEC:
‘There is now little doubt that the 1969 Club of Rome Report creating Australia as the biggest mining pit in the world for the benefit of European and American mining processors and manufacturing industries has been playing out since at least 2013 to the enormous disadvantage of Australian voters.’
Agree in more general global terms in short, the CoR was organised to promote the interest of fossil fuel, auto and related transnational corporate entities, along with a form of (masked) eugenics to preserve their future income streams and value against the multiple threats of environmental regulation, cross border taxation, competition and the ‘brown’ world upending the WASP status quo.
Without citing sources (have and they exist in the public domain), after the embarrassment of several US corporate and/or robber barons being in cahoots with the Nazis and associated with eugenics resulting in the holocaust, they had to be much more careful. The Population Council (had co-opted the American Eugenics Society pre WWII) morphed into the UN Population Division after the Rockefeller (Standard Oil later Exxon) gifted Manhattan real estate to the UN.
Nixon managed to set up the Environmental Protection Agency (along with commissioning Population Commission with Rockefeller support) which one would guess for the fossil fuel sector was red rag to a bull; Peabody Coal and Exxon already knew by the ’70s that carbon emission were heating the planet…..
Round the same time ZPG Zero Population Growth was founded with main players being Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich and white nationalist and admirer of the white Australia policy John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton with support from Rockefeller Bros., Ford and Carnegie Foundations. Both Ehrlich and Tanton helped set up ZPG Australia then Sustainable Population etc., environment issues, need for policies etc.? No, look over there immigrants!
The Club of Rome was sponsored by Fiat and VW on the Rockefeller estate, with participation of Ehrlich helped promote the PR construct of ‘Limits to Growth’ masquerading as science (was debunked quickly by a University of Sussex research team but still has legs amongst the old environmental left) that was applied to environment, population and economics. The latter was the ‘steady-state economy’ developed by Herman Daly a ‘good old boy’ which was basically economic nativism or autarky, ignoring economic growth, having strong borders, anti-globalisation, stop immigration, no multilateral trade agreements or blocs etc.
Later, in a parallel but same universe, the Kochs emerged from their slumber (indirectly of course) promoting radical right libertarianism (with Chicago School Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan), eugenics and trashing any threat to fossil fuels whether climate science, environmental regulation, tax/government etc. and developing networks of think tanks to manipulate media, politicians, agencies and legislation.
One of their main entities is the ‘bill mill’ ALEC American Legislative Exchange Council where seemingly unrelated people and/or organisations crossed paths including oligarch donors, politicians, evangelical Christians and white nationalists, including Steve Bannon’s muse John Tanton….. whom also applied Limits to Growth to population and immigration….
The question was raised, how does radical right libertarian economics fit with nativist autarkist steady state economy, surely contradictory? Brexit was a good example (plus Trump too), allows existing transnational corporate entities or players to avoid regulation (from e.g. the EU) while precluding competition and new market entrants, who must remain behind national borders. In other words it protects existing legacy investments, infrastructure and influence for future income streams of the 1%; strategic management 101.
Have credible and/or peer reviewed sources in the public domain for the lot; a few coincidences that joined up a few dots.
Shit! Thanks, Andrew.In other words,we’re f*cked.
@Andrew Smith: Thank you for the informative contribution. You have filled in many of the spaces between the dots. So, it appears that Scummo Sacked from Marketing has sold out Australian voters as a continuation of Liarbral Nazional$ policy by playing the ‘cultural cringe” card that too many Australians still believe. Such is the unfortunate impact of colonialism; we can beat England in cricket but not international finance under the present rules.
Anybody with even the most rudimentary interest in history will not be surprised at the way that the shit in society always floats on top and no amount of flushing ever clears the system.
The English had a Peasants Revolt led by Wat Tyler where the ordinary people prevailed but lost, as they were certain to.
Less than 50 years later Jack Cade led a ‘lower middle class’ revolt with a similar ‘win’ but eventual loss.
Oliver Cromwell removed a despotic monarch only to allow his even more repellent son to return.
The French – they removed a monarch only to allow an emperor to install himself. Hence ‘the more things change the more they remain the same.
Russians overthrew the Czar and what did they get?
The same.
The Americans ousted a monarch and installed a system which elects a monarch every 4 years.
As we can see with the present incumbent – the presidency is just a monarchy, arguably with more power than the hated system they ousted.
I’ve given up hoping for a genuine democracy. The people don’t deserve one anyway. 1975 showed us that it was futile, but it’s taken me all this time to realise it.
The only thing to come is the greatest financial crash the world has ever seen. When the stimulus stops and it will, it is all going to slowly but surely, end in tears. Where I live and take my dog for a walk on the coast, the people living in cars move in to camp up for the night. There is a cold shower and toilet blocks there and people are using them. They can be seen by the people living behind them from houses worth a million bucks. To watch a women tuck her two children in, – into the back seat of a car, is a fking scandal in 2020. Morrison and his coterie of babbling baboons masquerading as a government, should all be arrested and put on trial for gross malfeasance. We are heading into uncharted waters, there is a shit storm coming down on us and anyone who can’t see it, try taking your head out of your arse. Btw, Morrison knows what’s coming, they are counting on ,in fact preying they loose the next election.They are going to let that dopey Albanese take the can for what’s about to happen.