BOLT VILIFIES BLACK ATHLETE BECAUSE BLACK ATHLETE COMPLAINS ABOUT BEING DISCRIMINATED AGAINST

Andrew Bolt today played the race card yet again by accusing a black athlete of playing the race card by complaining about being discriminated against.

Bolt, even if he knows nothing else about human decency, truly knows the meaning of the word ‘Chutzpah’!

IS ANDREW ABOUT TO BOLT THE MURDOCH STABLE TO BE WITH THE FAIRFAX FILLY?

Rumours are flying around at the Herald-Sun offices about Andrew Bolt’s intentions. It’s reckoned that he maybe hanging in at the Herald-Sun treading water while he waits for Gina Rinehart to get her foot in the door at Fairfax.

Ever since his publishers stopped him from doing his own blog moderating and then failed to find staff moderators to do the job due, so Bolt claims, to staff cut-backs, Bolt’s readership has dropped dramatically to the point where he’s no longer earning his keep.

Bolt’s quick staccato ‘cut and paste’ style of blogging journalism where he simply regurgitates stuff that others have written which he can then scoff at with just a sentence or two suited his column to attract interactive readers keen to comment about his posts, but it loses momentum when there’s no response. Readers have lost interest and gone elsewhere.

But Bolt has only himself to blame. He refused to publish dissenting views and even deleted dissenting views that snuck in under his radar. I emailed him and complained about most of my comments not being published and some being deleted after being published. I told him that, if I didn’t get a reasonable explanation for his action, I’d complain to the Australian Press Council (APC). He emailed me back saying that if I threatened him with ‘legal action’ (by which he meant me making a complaint to the APC) he would ban me. He was hoping to put me in a Catch 22 situation whereby, if I complained to the APC about being banned from writing dissenting comments and threats to ban me, he’d ban me anyway because it ‘wasn’t worth the legal risk to them’ – whatever that was supposed to mean. Anyway, it seems it has backfired on him and now no one is allowed to comment and his blog has all but dried up.

If, indeed, Bolt was hoping for Rinehart to get her foot in the Fairfax door and then offer him a blog at, say, The Age, then he might just have to think again.

Rinehart’s plans to get seats and influence on the Fairfax board, which may well have allowed her to get a spot for Bolt, seems to have stalled lately, especially since the rest of the Fairfax board are insisting that she has nothing to do with the editorial content of the company’s products.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode.  

BOLT GETS THE MESSAGE

I was wondering how long it would take him, but finally, Bolt’s got the idea:

We’re now picking up boat people almost within sight of the Indonesian coast - so why not just pick them up from the airport and spare the expense?

Why not indeed! I’ve been advocating doing just that for yonks. It’s good to see he’s finally woken up. Virtually all of them are going to end up here anyway, so why not?

ANDREW BOLT ONCE AGAIN USES A BOATPEOPLE TRAGEDY FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES

Andrew Bolt today told his dwindling readership about the Barokah boatpeople tragedy which occurred in December last year when a boat full of asylum seekers capsized in Indonesian waters and Australian authorities refused to help in the rescue. The disaster, the scale of which is only just becoming known – as is Australia’s role, or rather lack of it, in the events that followed the initial distress call from the boat – is an indictment of the Australian government.

For the racist Bolt, however, this is simply another opportunity to propagandise his anti-boatpeople stance by pretending to be horrified at the tragedy and saying that it is another reason why boatpeople should be deterred from coming to Australia and that incarceration in places they don’t want to be while they await a long drawn ‘processing’ of their claims will provide that deterrence.

To top it off, Bolt then uses the tragedy to push his anti-Left barrow saying that, “if this had happened under John Howard’s watch, we’d no doubt have had another SIEV X spate of protests and plays, accusing the Liberals of murder”.

Of course, it doesn’t matter under whose watch the incident occurred, someone needs to be held accountable, and policies need to be put in place to ensure that asylum seeking refugees that want to come to Australia are able to do so safely without risk of either sinking or going to off shore detention centers for indefinite periods if they survive the journey.

Australian’s need to demand an enquiry into the incident and to demand that refugees are treated a refugees and not criminals that need locking up.

TIM BLAIR CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PEOPLE SMUGGLERS AND BOATPEOPLE

In his xenophobic column a few days ago, Tim Blair seems to be confused about who are boatpeople and who are people smugglers.

He starts his piece by going on about ‘simpletons believing asylum seekers are incapable of calculation or strategy’. But then the only ‘simpleton’ capable of writing this rubbish, Blair himself, proceeds to talk about how people smugglers supposedly plan a strategy that will ensure boatpeople get to Australia. Surely Blair’s aware that they are two different entities.

Then, just to reinforce the notion of Blair’s simpleton ignorance, he finishes off this particular piece of lunacy with:

Quality prankage deserves a response in kind. This might be fun: “We have received your distress call. Passport details, please.”

The thing the vast majority of refugees fleeing their country are most unlikely do before leaving is to pop into a government office and ask for a passport!

The only simpleton here is Blair.

ANDREW BOLT’S AUDIENCE HAS DROPPED TO RECORD LOWS

There was a time when every rednecked Islamophobic racist in Australia would get on to Bolt’s blog for a read or to drop a comment in support of his xenophobic nonsense. However, since his managers have banned him from moderating comments at his own blog, his audience, according to my spy at the Herald-Sun, has plummeted and are likely to fall much further as more and more readers find it impossible to get a word in edgeways and simply lose interest and either not bother attempting to make comments or migrate to Bolt’s competition at Tim Blair’s Blog for Morons. The bottom line is; Bolt’s influence is on the wane and, hopefully, this will reflect in the long term on public opinion and possibly even on the numbers watching his Bolt Report show on Ten.

This can only be good news for real Australia.

Bolt has been his own worst enemy. He’s moaned and carried on about freedom of speech yet the reason for his managers banning him from moderating his own blog is because he has hypocritically been deleting or not allowing to be published comments that dissent from his own view. Some people – myself included – have stood up to his abuse of his blog in this manner and have complained to the Australian Press Council. This has been the result.

The downside, of course, is that the likes of Tim Blair and Piers Akerman are likely to get an increase in readership as the Bolt’s Bloggies attempt to find another vent for their racist and Islamophobic garbage.

WHY ARE AUSTRALIANS IGNORING THE BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS OVER THE BOATPEOPLE ISSUE?

While Australians and the politicians hum and ah over the deaths of hundreds of asylum seeking boatpeople and then argue among themselves as to whether the Nauru solution is better than the Malaysia solution, why aren’t Australians discussing the most obvious solution? It’s a solution which avoids all the deaths and misery of indefinite incarceration. Let’s call it the Australian solution – which is to bring them direct to Australia by the safest means possible which is flying them here. If they can pay people smugglers thousands of dollars then they can surely afford the $450 fare on an airline ticket to get here.

These people want to come to Australia. The vast majority of them will end up here eventually anyway - regardless of where they are sent to - so why do we need to send them to Malaysia or Nauru or anywhere else first?

The answer is blindingly obvious.

The reality is, frightened as most Australians are to admit it, some Australians are racists. Politicians and commentators on the right do not want Islamic or non-Europeans in Australia, it’s as simple as that. They’ll deny that they are racists until the cows come home, but that’s what they are - racist. And when I say politicians on the right, I’m not just talking about Liberals; I’m also talking about some in the Labor ranks as well. And of those politicians that aren’t racist, there are many that, for the sake of politics, will bow to public opinion or, at least, to the loudest or most influential of commentators in the media that are also blatant racists and who are currently pushing public opinion against boatpeople.

Despite the denials of the racist right, Australia has a long history of racism. Not only do Australia’s racists don’t want non-white boatpeople in Australia, they never really wanted the non-white people that were already here when their antecedents first arrived here a little over a couple of hundred years ago. And white Australians have been kicking up a fuss every time a non-white group arrived on our shores ever since.

The racist attitudes of some Australians haven’t changed with the arrivals of the latest groups of people wanting to come to Australia – boatpeople who are mostly from places we were involved in invading but, more importantly, mostly Islamic.

It’s time Australians got to grip with themselves and faced the reality that it is complacent majority of Australians who allow the minority of racists among us to dominate the policies that lead to the deaths of the boatpeople.

Enough is enough. Those Australians that call for a halt to boatpeople arriving in Australia should be called out for what they really are – racists every single one of them!

Raise the refugee intake quota and fly them in!

ANOTHER BOAT TRAGEDY, ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY FOR RACIST ANTI-BOATPEOPLE PROPAGANDA

It seems there may have been another boatpeople tragedy near Christmas Island with a boat carrying some 150 people capsizing.

The Murdoch racist Andrew Bolt has predictably been quick to seize the propaganda moment using the tragedy once again to peddle his anti-boatpeople racism that demands that boatpeople are stopped by imprisoning them in places they don’t want to be for long periods. Somehow, so Bolt and a myriad of other racists and assorted xenophobes think, this will stop boats from being unseaworthy and allowing boatpeople safe passage to Australia.

The only way to stop the drownings is for the Indonesian and Australian governments to get together and provide seaworthy boats or, better still – and cheaper – aircraft for those wishing to seek asylum in Australia.

BOLT GAGGED BY HIS OWN PUBLISHERS?

This could be good news for those that challenge Andrew Bolt’s extreme right-wing views at his online blog. In his latest post he writes, almost as an ‘Oh, and I nearly forgot’:

Please note: I am told there will be no moderating of this blog outside office hours.

He then adds very importantly and hoping no one really notices:

I cannot moderate it myself, I am told.

Last week Bolt deleted a comment I made against one of his posts saying: ‘SNIPPED FOR STUPIDITY’. My comment was well within the guidelines so I emailed Bolt and asked why it had been ‘snipped’ and told him that, if I did not receive a satisfactory explanation, I would lodge a complaint with the Australian Press Council (APC).

Despite being within the guidelines, Bolt said that my comment was vilifying, stupid and defamatory. Of course, it was nothing of the sort. Bolt then said that if I took ‘legal action’ he would ban me from commenting on his blog.

I have since lodged my complaint with the APC.

I don’t know, but I hope that Bolt’s gagging by his own publishers has been as a result of my and I suspect others complaints and I look forward to challenging his extreme right-wing views by commenting at his blog.

TIM BLAIR AND THE ‘WE CARE ABOUT THE DEAD BOATPEOPLE’ CON

Racists, Islamophobes, xenophobes and rednecks just hate being called racists, Islamophobes, xenophobes and rednecks, so when a boatpeople tragedy happens they see it as an opportunity to kill two birds with one piece of propaganda and immediately jump on the caring conservative bandwagon in an effort to convince people that they truly care about the welfare and safety of asylum seeking refugees coming to Australia by boat. This is exactly what Murdoch minion and racist warmonger Tim Blair has done.

Blair tries to make the case that racists, Islamophobes, xenophobes and rednecks are really ‘caring conservatives’ and, because they’re so caring, they want to make life really tough for boatpeople - for their own good, mind you - by banging them up in detention indefinitely in places they don’t want to be in order to deter people trying to seek asylum in Australia by boat.

Let’s get one thing straight here; the likes of Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt, et al, have absolutely no interest in the wellbeing or safety of boatpeople. They are racists that do not want non-white people in Australia – especially if they are Muslims.

The ‘we care about the dead boatpeople’ nonsense is just a con that attempts to cover their real motives of keeping boatpeople out of Australia.

TIM BLAIR EXPOSES HIS PRIORITIES WHEN IT COMES TO BOATPEOPLE DISASTERS

On Thursday last week Tim Blair’s piece about the boatpeople tragedy started by saying; ‘Stop the Boats’ then, almost as an afterthought, he added ‘Stop the Deaths’. Anyone with any real concerns would simply be saying ‘Stop the Deaths’. But then everyone knows where this Islamophobic racist’s priorities really lie. After all, why else would one promote the world’s second most Islamophobic war mongering loon on the planet, Mark Steyn. (The world’s most Islamophobic lunatic is probably Daniel Pipes, but there would be others in the running.)  

Like Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair’s obsessive interest in boatpeople and the disasters that occasionally befall them is simply the propaganda opportunity these tragedies provide in order for the likes of Blair and Bolt, et al, to push their anti-Islam and xenophobic nonsense to the people of Australia.

In light of the fact that asylum seeing refugees will continue to find way to come to Australia no matter what, the best way to stop the deaths would be for the Indonesian and Australian authorities to ensure that boats are seaworthy or, better still, simply fly them in. Making life difficult for these people will not stop the tragedies and nor will it stop them coming here.

BOLT THINKS TOO MANY ABORIGINES AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDERS ARE CALLING THEMSELVES ‘ABORIGINES’ AND ‘TORRES STRAIT ISLANDERS’

Bolt’s latest post at his online blog at the Herald-Sun infers that too many indigenous people are claiming to be indigenous.

He thinks last year’s census figures prove it.

Fortunately, the rednecks and racists that inhabit his blog have been deprived of the right to peddle their sick views; comments are not allowed.

BOLT THINKS TURKEY HAS AN EXCUSE TO START WORLD WAR THREE

Bolt headlines a post at his online blog with:

Jet down. Turkey has reason to move on Syria

For Bolt, the shooting down of a Turkish jet by Syria is an excuse to kick off WW3. Never mind that the Turkish warplane had flown into Syrian airspace and never mind that Syria had since apologised for the incident and are assisting in the search and rescue of the two crew of the downed aircraft.

Now it’s Bolt the Warmonger.

IS BOLT ENDORSING RACE RIOTS AND ENCOURAGING ‘TRIBALISM’?

In a post today at his online blog at the Herald-Sun, Andrew Bolt wrote:

The danger of riots isn’t just or even mainly a sign of economic stress. It is also a sign of increased tribalism…

First off, one needs to ask; ‘What riots?’ Well, apparently there was a ‘secret briefing’ to the government warning of the vague possibility that if the economy turns a bit nasty there ay be some riots in the streets by those unfortunate enough to be effected by such a downturn in the economy.

Bolt, however, sees this more of a racial thing than an economic thing. Never one to miss an opportunity to stir the racial pot, Bolt, merely by mentioning the notion that riots could be ‘a sign of increased tribalism’ – when there is no evidence at all that there will be any riots, let alone race riots – is effectively encouraging just that.

What else would one expect from a convicted racist?

BOLT CONTINUES TO EXPLOIT BOATPEOPLE TRAGEDY TO PUSH HIS ANTI-BOATPEOPLE STANCE

Bolt’s column continued today to sickenly exploit the recent boatpeople tragedy by cynically calling for the government to stop the boats by threatening people that come to Australia by boat with long detention in places they don’t want to be in order to deter them from coming to Australia.

Clearly, the only reason they want to deter asylum seeking boatpeople from coming to Australia, is not because they care about their safety, but because they are Islamophobic racists and do not want non-white people to come to Australia. It’s as simple as that.  

CONVICTED AUSTRALIAN RACIST ANDREW BOLT WANTS TO STOP BLACK AFRICAN IMMIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA

In his online blog today at Murdoch’s Herald-Sun newspaper, Andrew Bolt, a well known convicted Australian racist, has suggested that Australia stop allowing black African migrants into Australia.

The article is probably the most blatant piece of racism yet from Bolt who usually attempts to avoid being so obvious about his racism.

Bolt uses an article in the Age newspaper as an opportunity to peddle his hatred. The article tells of a group of Australian students who happen to be black who are complaining of police harassment when they visit the inner city in Melbourne. They have said that many of them are getting fed up with this harassment and, if it continues, there could possibly be a backlash such as there was last August in the UK when Londoners rioted over the death of a black Londoner who was shot to death by the police.

Racism, sponsored deliberately by the likes of Andrew Bolt and his fellow Murdoch so-called ‘journalists’ like the Islamophobic Tim Blair, Piers Akerman et al, is marginalising black youth in Melbourne who, in turn, look to each other for socialising and studying whilst readying themselves for work – if they can get it.

It’s time to end racism in Australia. Bolt’s blatant racism should never be allowed to take hold in Australia.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AMERICAN NATIVE IDENTITY RACISM AND AUSTRALIAN NATIVE IDENTITY RACISM

White ultra right-wing racists in Australia and neoconservatives in America have both adopted a propaganda line which seeks to vilify people who identify as having native heritage. The racists of Australia and the neocons of America do this by claiming that some people who identify as having native heritage but who have lost much or all of the physical features associated with the native people of Australia or America respectively are using their racial identity for purely pecuniary reasons. However, while both propaganda memes are racially based, the reasons why Australian natives are abused in this way and the reasons why American natives appear to be abused similarly are quite different from each other.

In Australia, the ultra-racist Murdoch journalist, Andrew Bolt, was recently found guilty of racial vilification in an Australian Federal Court. Judge Mordy Bromberg found Bolt guilty of vilification by virtue of Bolt’s claim that the Aboriginal people he was referring to were not really Aboriginal and only claimed to be Aboriginal in order to gain certain financial benefits. Judge Bromberg found for the plaintiffs based on the fact that the plaintiffs, all with Aboriginal heritage, had, despite their lack of Aboriginal features, identified as being Aboriginal and had always been accepted as Aboriginal by Aboriginal people for all of their lives and long before they had any knowledge of awards or grants being available to Aboriginal people. Judge Bromberg found that Bolt had failed to support his claim that those Aboriginal people concerned had claimed Aboriginality solely for the purpose of gaining a pecuniary advantage and that, in accusing them of fraud, Bolt had racially vilified them. For Bolt the intent was to vilify Aborigines that were fair skinned and had lost the Aboriginal features of their ancestors. The accusation that they had defrauded the Australian taxpayer by claiming Aboriginality was merely an excuse that provided Bolt with yet another opportunity to push his racist propaganda in his online column at Melbourne’s Murdoch-owned Herald-Sun newspaper. Judge Bromberg saw through Bolt’s deception and found for the plaintiffs.

In America, the neoconservatives are currently pushing a similar line about racial identity against a candidate for the US Senate, Elizabeth Warren. Needless to say, Professor Warren is a Democrat and she will be running against the Republican incumbent, Scott Brown in the upcoming elections.

As seems to be the norm in American politics these days, especially during election seasons, both sides tend to dig up as much ‘dirt’ as possible about their adversary and sling it at each other in the hope that some might stick thus giving the other some kind of advantage. Usually, the kind of ‘dirt’ dug up tends to be about the honesty and integrity of the other and thus goes to credibility.

In the case of Elizabeth Warren, it appears that at some stage in her career she had claimed American native heritage by virtue of her great-great-great-grandmother being identified as a Cherokee Native American. Warren’s neoconservative detractors claim that she made such a claim in order to gain a benefit in her academic career. Following typical neoconservative propaganda practice, the author of The Weekly Standard article, Michael Warren, (presumably no relation!) isn’t quite game enough to out-rightly state that Elizabeth Warren was flat out lying about her heritage, so instead, he quotes someone else who is game enough to say she is lying and, in this way, projects his endorsement of the idea whilst avoiding any potential legal action against him for defaming her.

While the accusations made by Andrew Bolt in Australia are the same as the accusations made by the Republicans and their neoconservative supporters in the US and which are as despicable as each other, the motives for Bolt’s accusations against the Australian Aboriginals are completely different from the neocon’s accusations against Elizabeth Warren. For Bolt the motivation was quite simply to racially vilify Aboriginal people generally, while in the US the neocons were simply attempting to defame a political adversary for political reasons though, in the process, they have also managed to vilify a person of native heritage.

Bolt is complaining that he is being denied his freedom of speech by being ordered by Judge Bromberg not to vilify in future. He points to the same accusations being levelled freely against Elizabeth Warren in the US as an example how the right to freedom of speech should be applied in Australia. But this, again, is just a propaganda ploy Bolt is using. Judge Bromberg has not deprived Bolt his freedom of speech as he claims, but rather Bromberg has merely found Bolt guilty of vilification and has warned him against re-offending.

Conversely, in the US, while the neocons accusations are despicable and may be considered bordering on vilification, the accusations were made primarily and deliberately to defame Elizabeth Warren for political reasons. Warren may or may not find that she has reasonable grounds to take her detractors to court but, if she does, it will be to sue them for defaming her whereas the Aboriginal people who took Bolt to court did so because they were vilified by him. His defaming them was as a result of his vilification of them, but in the case of Elizabeth Warren, her vilification is as a result of the neocons defaming her.

The two cases have similarities but have very different motives. Bolt cannot claim they are the same and hold the US up as a shining example of free speech.    

ANDREW BOLT THINKS AUSTRALIAN NATIVES ARE LIKE AN ‘ARMY OF GIANT RATS’

In his column today at the Herald-Sun, Andrew Bolt wrote the perfect metaphor that reflects his loathing and contempt for native Australian people.

In his article, Bolt describes how native Australian Possums in his neighbourhood are eating out the tops of the trees that have been planted down his street and have now moved into his garden. Never mind, of course, that it was he that had actually moved into their garden in the first place – a garden that they had occupied for millions of years before Bolt’s family arrived there. But that wouldn’t worry the likes of Bolt who now looks upon all of Australia’s natives, human or animal, that impinge into what he now thinks is his world, as ‘an army of giant rats’.

It’s his metaphor for describing what he feels about those that are different from him. His contempt doesn’t stop at native Australian Possums and Australia’s native peoples.

Just because he is Australian-born, he truly believes that he is a ‘native’ himself and that Aboriginal people, therefore, should become as he is – Australian.

The problem is; Bolt is not a ‘native’ as he likes to think he is. Being born here doesn’t make you a ‘native’. He is – like most who call themselves Australian – an introduced species. The word ‘Australia’ itself is a non-native construct that’s barely just a few hundred years old. The natives called their lands by other names – they still do. None of them were ‘Australia’.

(When one sees it like that, then I’m wrong in calling Aboriginal people; ‘native Australians’. I’m even wrong in calling native Possums; ‘Australian’ native Possums. More correctly I should be referring to them as being native to a land we – we who are not native to – call ‘Australia’.)

But, as I said, it doesn’t stop there for Bolt. His new-found nationalistic arrogance about being ‘Australian’ is so powerful that he now resents not just Possums living in his street but any person new to Australia who is not like him. Just as Possums and Aboriginal people are alien to him, so too are Arab, Central Asian and African people, and especially if they are Islamic and dress differently from him and what he perceives as an ‘Australian’ way of dressing.

Recently Bolt was taken to court for vilifying Aboriginal people. He was found guilty. Now Bolt is playing his conviction for all it’s worth in order further push his racist agenda.

Bolt denies that he vilified Aboriginal people claiming that he was only pointing out that some people are claiming to be Aboriginal in order to gain some kind of pecuniary advantage. He supported his accusations by saying that these people were so un-Aboriginal looking that they couldn’t possibly really be Aboriginals and that they, therefore, were frauds. Fortunately, Judge Mordecai Bromberg was able to see right through Bolt’s ploy and saw it for what it really was – blatant lies designed to specifically vilify Aboriginal people. Bromberg then ordered Bolt not to repeat such vilifying lies. Bolt has since responded by claiming he has lost his freedom of speech.

So now, instead of saying exactly what thinks, he uses metaphors as above and links to other racists writings who say what he is unable to. Despite all his denials, Bolt remains an outrageous racist. One day Murdoch will wake up to the fact that Bolt is not doing the image of Australia any good at all and shut him down. Australia will then be a far better place for everyone to live in – native or otherwise.

And even a better place for Possums to live in.

A NEW SEEPING PARADIGM THAT COULD DESTROY DEMOCRACY: GOVERNMENT BY THE MEGA-RICH

The very rich have always played a part in government but, for most of them, their decision to enter politics was for truly altruistic reasons. They believed that their experience in business could contribute to the well-being of the entire nation and that the nation as a whole would benefit from their management and decision-making skills. There were, of course, some that said that they were entering politics for purely altruistic reasons but either had ulterior motives for doing so in the first place or, alternatively, soon discovered that their position offered opportunities that could be exploited in order to covertly enrich themselves through various devious contrivances while being in politics. Such people, for better or worse, have been involved in politics for eons ever since ‘politics’ was invented.

Today, however, a frightening new trend is developing in Australia. No longer are the mega-rich entering politics in order to help create a better nation - and in recent history the likes of Malcolm Fraser and Malcolm Turnbull might be numbered among those. Today the mega-rich are quite overtly attempting to buy their way into both power and influence for no other purpose than to further enrich themselves and their shareholders.

Yesterday, Queensland businessman Clive Palmer announced his intention to enter Federal politics by running against Labor Federal Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan in Swan’s electorate of Lilley, Queensland. Palmer, whose main business interests are in mining, has made it quite clear that his purpose and intention for entering politics in this way is to fight against the proposed Mineral Resource Rent Tax and carbon tax which would directly affect his personal fortune and his company’s bottom line.

Joining Palmer in the quest for governmental power and influence in order to directly protect their assets and avoid having to pay the proposed taxes is fellow mining magnate Gina Rinehart of Western Australia. While Palmer is attempting to get into Federal parliament in order to get rid of the taxes, Rinehart’s preferred method of influence is to buy up interests in Australia’s media through which she hopes to influence public opinion by using aggressive right-wing media propagandists. In 2010 Rinehart took a 10% holding in Ten Network Holdings and has also latterly acquired a substantial holding in the slightly left of center Fairfax Media.

Already Rinehart’s influence in the Ten Network is paying dividends. The right-wing Murdoch commentator and Rinehart and Palmer supporter, Andrew Bolt, now has his own program at Ten, The Bolt Report, which overtly and frequently pushes  both Palmer’s and Rinehart’s personal agendas with regard to the mining tax and the carbon tax. Bolt also pushes those same agendas at his online column and blog at Melbourne’s Murdoch-owned Herald-Sun.

And, finally, there’s the perennial right-wing media player himself, Rupert Murdoch, who already wields massive conservative media influence throughout Australia and much of the Western world and whose journalists and commentators in Australia are already pushing the new paradigm of governance by the mega-rich in order to further enrich those that hope to eventually govern. Besides Andrew Bolt, Murdoch’s Australian media has a whole gamut of journalists and commentators who seem willing to take up the miners cause. In recent days, Murdoch’s UK newspaper The Sun has even been seconded to help the conservative cause in Australia with headlines that blatantly demonised the Gillard government.   

The domination of government and the media by the wealthy for the sole purpose of further enriching those that govern represents a fundamental change in our democratic system that, if successful, does not bode well for the political health of Australia. With the demise of the altruistic motives of the well-heeled and the well-intentioned being replaced by those that openly wield their wealth in order to influence, govern and then profit, Australians face a bleak future – if, that is, the mega-rich are allowed to get their way.   

ANDREW BOLT ATTEMPTS TO SMEAR ISLAM – AGAIN

Last week in his column at Melbourne’s Herald-Sun online blog, Andrew Bolt posted this disgusting article inferring that Muslims are able to practice necrophilia upon their dead wives provided they do so within six hours of death.

The story was based on some unsubstantiated story from Al Arabiya which Bolt knew was probably false and even said so in his piece quoting a Huffington Post piece that supported that idea.  

But that didn’t stop Bolt from taking the opportunity to jump on his anti-Islam bandwagon and posting the disgusting smear piece anyway.

I posted a comment in response that went thus:

Another sick piece of opportunistic journalism from Bolt designed specifically to smear Islam as part of his Islamophobic propaganda.

Needless to say, Bolt didn’t allow it to be published.

Today, Bolt, realising he was way out of line with his original post (or, more likely, told by his editors and legal people to at least tone it down) wrote a follow-up piece titled, ‘The making of the dead wife smear’ that almost – but not quite – comes across as a correction.

Again, I posted a comment in response. It went thus:

A smear indeed it was, Bolt - and one that you were prepared to perpetuate. Back-peddling furiously now will not relieve you of the responsibility of the part you played in this outrageous smear.

Again, of course, Bolt refused to publish it despite me sending it off several times.

The quicker this disgusting racist and Islamophobe is shut down the better for Australia – and it would even be better for Murdoch as well!