AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION TURNS 80 AND STILL BEHAVES LIKE AN 8-YEAR-OLD!

Mark Scott was appointed to head the ABC by the Howard government. Scott came from Fairfax media and brought his right-wing reactionary views with him to the new job.

As with SBS the ABC has been sliding backwards for the last 10 to 15 years and has now reached almost rock-bottom with its political judgement so extremely on the right that Genghis Khan and others look positively liberal by comparison.

Apart from the dumbing-down politics of this once great organisation, other actions on a day-to-day basis show that the ABC ignores listener complaints learns nothing from past mistakes and continues to perpetuate them.

Take the introduction to the television news at 7pm every night when we have the introduction saying "ABC News - ABC News - ABC News" to ensure that those of us who are moronic enough not to understand what is about to take place that we are about to get to see a news bulletin! Really!

As if that isn't bad enough, some other programme promos tell us this is "ABC1 - ABC1 - ABC1" telling us that we really are too dumb to know if we only hear it once we won't know that the TV station is actually ABC1 - surprise, surprise!

One of the reasons people like me have taken to blogging is because over the years we have written to organisations such as the ABC complaining about things like the above, only to be totally ignored.

One of the other major sins about which people have been complaining for years - at least those whose letters actually get published - is the endless promos for various new programmes - such that by the time we get to see them we often feel that they represent an anti-climax - will they live up to the hype? Sometimes yes, mostly no!

Another major sin - and this too is on the list of complaints - endlessly - is the one about music-over accompanying speech for many programmes. The music drowns out the speech so one doesn't know what has been promoted. Many broadcasters who are well-spoken and articulate are drowned out totally - Marion Arnold is one whose announcements usually suffer, together with most others too.

One of the other major problems, apart from the right-wing bias so obvious in news and current affairs programmes is the creeping in of religious music on Classic FM and support for zionism and totally ignoring of Palestinians.

Unfortunately for many of us there is no alternative, but these days when it all becomes unbearable we turn to CDs and DVDs and thank goodness for them!

MICHELLE GRATTAN DOES MORE DAMAGE AND THEN SUDDENLY MOVES ON!

Michelle Grattan has worked for Fairfax media for many years and has slowly but inexorably moved from centre (?) to ultra right, becoming more and more extreme in the last 5 years since the Rudd/Gillard governments arrived in Canberra.

She has done her best to destabilise the present government and undermine Gillard at every turn.

She has done nothing to ensure investigation of the Slipper/Ashby/Thomson/Jackson scandals, she has done nothing to investigate the Oppositions's role in destablising the government and indeed she has done her level best to assist them - the Opposition - at every turn.

Grattan is reported as having accepted a post at the Australian National University where she will apparently be involved in media studies.

I pity her students - one-sided narrow prejudiced reporting does not academic freedom make as we are witnessing at the moment in the USA where - as in Australia - any criticism of Israel is taken to be anti-semitic, where the real anti-semites are the Israelis and zionists around the world!

The Gillard government may not be the best government ever seen in this or any other country, but in the country of the fair go - supposedly - every effort is being mounted by the media - Murdoch/Fairfax/ABC - you name it - they are all trying to cause the government to collapse.

We all make mistakes, some worse than others, but human beings are fallible creatures and it does not make them be condemned for all their efforts.

Gillard and Rudd have personally done me a great deal of harm, and their approaches to many aspects of government have been appalling, but do people like Grattan really believe that the Abbott-led team will be so much better than those who are in government at the moment?

If so, they are deluding themselves, and should the unthinkable occur at the election in September 2013 many of these people will be as shocked as the Queenslanders and News South Welshmen have been since electing Newman and O'Farrell.

ISRAEL'S WORLDWIDE ROLE IN REPRESSION

The following 28-page document was on the web pages of the organisation

INTERNATIONAL JEWISH ANTI-ZIONIST NETWORK.

The item was posted by Mondoweiss in December 2012 and the information on its pages should be read around the world.

ISRAEL'S INVOLVEMENT IN REPRESSION AROUND THE WORLD

STOP AUSTRALIAN INCARCERATION OF ASYLUM SEEKERS IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS - SIGN THE PETITION!

I started this petition some time ago when the federal government and its friendly opposition were vying with each other to see who could torture people who had already been traumatised by their persecution due to wars which Australia had been busy fighting in countries with which it had no right to be involved in.

People quickly lost interest in the issue because of other scandals blowing up around that time and subsequently the two concentration camps used by the Howard government were found to be useful for incarcerating those managing to get to Australia alive!

It is time to resurrect the petition and ask you to get your friends to sign it too. Thanks for your assistance in this humanitarian crisis.

care2 petitionsite

Stop Australian Incarceration of Asylum Seekers

Digg StumbleUpon Reddit Print E-Mail signatures: 86 signature goal: 1,000 post to facebook tweet this email your friends get the widget

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/13/stop-australian-incarceration-of-asylum-seekers/

Target: Australians and International communities
Sponsored by: Mannie De Saxe, Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne

Australia is trying to negotiate an off-shore solution to Asylum Seekers coming to Australia in boats which are not seaworthy, and which have already been responsible for many drownings offshore. The latest attempt is the so-called Malaysian solution involving Australia sending 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia in exchange for 2000 refugees in Malaysia. Both the Australian Government and its parliamentary Opposition are demonising people fleeing desperate situations in their countries of origin, mainly because of Australian military intervention in those countries.

The total numbers of asylum seekers trying to enter Australia is a miniscule number in terms of refugees and asylum seekers around the world, and most of the people in Australia illegally have arrived by plane!

Australia is signatory to United Nations conventions on refugees but is ignoring these UN documents in its political attempts to stop the demonised "boat people" ever setting foot in Australia.

Help to obtain justice for Asylum Seekers in desperate situations.

The situation has worsened with the federal government reopening the concentration camps on Nauru and Manus Island.

Get the government to close these camps now.

SAVE OUR SBS FAILED TO DO JUST THAT - PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION BELOW TO HELP SAVE SBS FROM SELF-DESTRUCTING!

Some time ago I started a petition to stop SBS having advert breaks in the middle of its shows.I had been in contact with someone from Save our SBS who was not in Melbourne at the time but promised that the organisation would help with the petition.

Of course the organisation did NOT help with it and it floundered.

I am now hoping to resurrect the petition and request you to get friends to sign it and ultimately to peresnt a petition to SBS with many hundreds of signatures.

Here is the petition and the details of what it asks:

• Care2
• petitionsite

SBS Television and advertisements

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/902/258/197/sbs-television-and-advertisements/

• signatures: 48
• • signature goal: 1,000
• post to facebook
• tweet this
• email your friends
• get the widget
• Target: SBS Management in Australia
• Sponsored by: Mannie De Saxe

SBS television was started in Australia some 30 years ago to assist the multicultural aspects of modern Australia's changing demographics. SBS was funded by the federal government but successive governments reduced their budget, so SBS began putting commercial advertising at the beginning and end of their programmes in order to raise revenue.

When a new CEO was apponted some 10 years ago, he decided that if the advertisements were played in the middle of programmes, more revenue would be raised for the station. This ploy failed miserably, and as a consequence SBS lost viewers and the quality of its programmes deteriorated rapidly.

Now in 2012, SBS has a new management and this petition is to urge the new team to drop the advertisments in the middle of programmes. SBS used to have the best news bulletins of all tv stations in Australia, and, because of the advertisements, it has lost continuity and quality - and some of its best newsreaders!

We are hoping to get enough signatures on this petition to induce SBS management to reconsider, and restore the service to its former glory!

Late in 2012 SBS started a new channel specifically for Indigenous programmes. These too are interrupted in the middle of interesting programmes by commercials. These need to be stopped now in order to make SBS what it was originally - the world's first - and best - multicultural broadcaster.

GILLARD'S ANTI-DISCRIMINATION BILL 2012 RENAMED DISCRIMINATION BILL!

The Gillard Government put out a discussion paper for a proposed bill to encompass 5 anti-discrimination acts and consolidate them into one act.

The bill is called the "Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill 2012".

Now let's get this clear - we need to understand the meaning of anti-discrimination.

Basically anti is a preposition and derives from the Greek anti - against. In the English language the meaning in general usage is opposed to.

Discrimination means unfavourable treatment based on prejudice.

The proposed bill allows religious organisations to discriminate against certain members of the population which religions deem to be against their interests in relation to such issues as employment, teaching, administration and several others.

Although these institutions are tax exempt - another anomaly when it comes to anti-discrimination, many are in fact subsidised by the government to carry out their discriminatory activities.

As I mentioned in a previous post, in South Africa as soon as the apartheid government wanted to introduce a new discriminatory piece of legislation, it was couched in terms which seemed to suggest the opposite.

This is, in fact, the intent of the current bill. It is designed to entrench discrimination and is the opposite of anti-discrimination.

It can therefore not be supported in any way as the bill now stands and Gillard has firmly stated that she has no intention of changing the direction of the bill - and as I also said before - this from an atheist unmarried prime minister living with a partner against the teachings of the religious institutions to which she is providing exemptions and for which she continues to provide funding and provide tax exemptions.

Gillard may look more personable now with her glasses than she has ever looked before, but the person behind the glasses is as steely-minded as ever and as Margaret Thatcher so infamously said, "The Lady is Not For Turning".

OBAMA TORTURES TORTURE WHISTLEBLOWER - DIDN'T HE DENOUNCE TORTURE? - HAS HE CLOSED GUANTANAMO?

This post was received by email and it is of urgency and importance to all of us who believe that our governments have gone too far and need to be constantly reminded that we are watching them! PLEASE SUPPORT THIS PETITION TO LET OBAMA KNOW THAT HIS SECOND TERM NEEDS TO FULFIL THE PROMISES HE MADE WHEN FIRST ELECTED 4 YEARS AGO!

Tell Obama: Pardon CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou

SIGN THE PETITION

Dear Everybody,

President Obama has opposed waterboarding as torture since the 2008 campaign - so why is he sending the man who helped end that practice to prison?

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who helped expose the Bush administration's torture program, recently plead guilty to sharing the name of a colleague to journalists to use as a source. He is expected to receive a sentence of 30 months in prison.(1)

It's a cruel irony that the first agent connected to the CIA torture program to go to prison is the whistleblower who spoke out against the heinous practices of our government.(2)

From Bradley Manning to Aaron Swartz to John Kiriakou, the government's pattern of overzealously prosecuting activists and whistleblowers has ruined too many lives already. If President Obama wants to show he opposes torture and supports government transparency he should pardon Kiriakou immediately.

Tell President Obama to pardon CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou.

Click here to read and sign the petition: http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/pardon-kiriakou

In fact, the Justice Department has refused to pursue any of the people who sanctioned and carried out the torture Kiriakou helped expose. Yet they have gone after whistleblowers and activists with a zeal unmatched by any administration in history. Bradley Manning faces life in prison. Aaron Swartz took his life to avoid prosecution. Thomas Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, the list goes on and on.

Kiriakou is the sixth person to be indicted under the Espionage Act by the Obama administration.(3)

It's time the president end this war on whistleblowers. He can start by pardoning John Kiriakou.

Sign our petition demanding President Obama pardon CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou.

Kiriakou served his country in the CIA for over 15 years, risking his life as an undercover agent chasing Al-Qaeda overseas — he does not deserve this treatment. Kiriakou says he engaged in rendition that resulted in the torture of detainees. He did not personally carry out torture. His leak was not even made public and presented no harm the country.

Compare this to the reckless and very public outing of Valerie Plame — a case that resulted in four felony convictions for Scooter Libby, but not a single day in jail. It is unconscionable that Libby could avoid punishment, while Kiriakou must face years in prison for exposing the illegal and inhumane actions of the government — actions the Obama administration claims to oppose.

President Obama should not punish, but pardon John Kiriakou for his exceptional patriotism in speaking out against torture.

Sign our petition demanding President Obama pardon CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou.

Thank you for standing up for transparency and fighting to protect whistleblowers.

In Solidarity,
Brian Sonenstein
Campaign Director,
Firedoglake.com
Sources:
(1.) Pardon John Kiriakou, CIA Whistleblower Convicted of Classified Leak, Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter, 1/15/2013.

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/01/15/pardon-john-kiriakou-cia-whistleblower-convicted-of-classified-leak/

(2.) The Only CIA Officer Scheduled to Go to Jail Over Torture Never Tortured Anybody, Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter, 1/6/2013.

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/01/06/the-only-cia-officer-scheduled-to-go-to-jail-over-torture-never-tortured-anybody/

(3.) Obama’s War on Whistleblowing: Ex-CIA Agent Indicted Under Espionage Act, Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter, 4/6/2012.

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/04/06/obamas-war-on-whistleblowing-ex-cia-agent-indicted-under-espionage-act/

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