Censorship & suppression in Murdochracy, Lobbycracy & neocon Lib-Lab-dominated Australian 2010 elections

Australia is going to the polls in August. However Australian voters have not got that much to choose between: an extreme right wing, pro-war, pro-coal, pro-Zionist, human rights-abusing Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Opposition (the Libs) and an extreme right wing, pro-war, pro-coal, pro-Zionist, human rights-abusing Labor Government (the Labs) led by PM Julia Gillard, these overwhelmingly neocon politicians being collectively known as the Lib-Labs.

At the last election (2007) the Lib-Labs got about 90% of the vote and the Greens scores about 10%. However decent people hope that the anti-war, pro-environment Greens will do better in 2010. Crucially, Australia has a compulsory, preferential voting system i.e. people must vote or be fined and voters have to list candidates in numerical order of preference. Thus if neither the Libs or the Labs get 50% or more of the vote, the second preferences of the Green voters become crucial. The Green second preferences usually favour Labor.

Indeed the Leader of the Greens, Senator Bob Brown, has announced a preference deal. According to Trading Room : “The Australian Greens have confirmed they will direct preferences to Labor in an unspecified number of lower house [House of Representatives] seats at the August 21 election. In return, Labor will direct its Senate [Upper House] preferences to the Greens ahead of all other parties. The deal aims to shore up Labor’s hold on a number of marginal lower house seats and pave the way for the Greens to hold the balance of power in the Senate in their own right from July 1, 2011” (see “Greens announce Labor preference deal”, Trading Room, July 2010: http://www.tradingroom.com.au/apps/... ).

Nevertheless Greens voters are very upset over inaction by both the major parties (the Lib-Labs) over climate change. Further, Greens have a very good chance of picking up a few Lower House (House of Representatives) seats for the first time e.g. inner city Melbourne and Sydney electorates that have better educated and hence more pro-environment voters.

Major players in the Mainstream media in Murdochracy and Lobbyocracy Australia include the Murdoch Media Empire (that has about 70% of capital city dailies and the national newspaper The Australian); the Fairfax news organization (including the Melbourne quality newspaper The Age and its sister newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald), the commercial TV and radio (mind-numbingly appalling), the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS, multicultural quality TV) and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC, Australia’s equivalent of the UK BBC) which attempts “balance” between the extreme right wing Libs and the extreme right wing Labs.

The Greens represent the only major political party with sensible, humane, pro-peace and pro-environment policies but get minimal coverage from the overwhelmingly right wing media.

Of course Australia is not just a Murdochracy (an ostensible democracy in which voter choices are heavily determined by a Mainstream media oligopoly heavily involving the Murdoch Media Empire) – it is also a Lobbyocracy in which Big Business, the Mining Corporations and the Zionists have extraordinary power.

Thus in the last few moths of his first and only term as PM of Australia former PM Kevin Rudd excited opposition from the Zionist Lobby (because of his timid objections to Israeli state terrorists forging Australian passports for murderous terrorist purposes and murderously attacking Australians on the Gaza Aid Flotilla in international waters).

Several weeks after an evidently unsuccessful dinner at The Lodge to placate Australian Zionists, Rudd was dismissed overnight by a pro-Zionist-led Coup led by present PM, pro-war, pro-coal, pro-Zionist Julia Gillard (see Gideon Polya “Pro-Zionist Betrayal in Australia’s 2010 Gillard Labor Coup”, Countercurrents, 27 June 2010: http://www.countercurrents.org/poly... ; Antony Loewenstein “Does Zionist Lobby have blood on its hands in Australia?”: http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/0... ).

It is compelling , however, that while evidently insufficiently pro-Zionist PM Rudd was betrayed and “assassinated” by a pro-Zionist-led band of Coup Plotters, the real reason for his dismissal was a brilliant, reportedly $100 million Mining Industry advertising campaign against the Rudd-Gillard Government’s proposed 40% tax on mining “super profits” and a huge consequent slip in electoral support for Labor, notwithstanding Labor committing $38 million of taxpayer money to a counter-campaign.

Rudd’s successor PM Julia Gillard very quickly terminated the $38 million Labor advertising campaign in return for the Miners stopping theirs, and modified the tax regime after consultation with biggest Miners – further powerful demonstrations of Lobbyocracy in action (see Gideon Polya, “Australian betrayal and coup: pro-war, pro-Zionist, pro-coal Julia Gillard Australia’s first female PM”, Bellaciao, 26 June 2010: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?ar... ).

The politics dominating Murdochracy Australia is accordingly a bipartisan, pro-war, pro-coal, Lib-Lab politics of “politically correct” xenophobia and greed. The 2 major parties are striving for a Lib-Lab consensus in order to not alienate swinging voters. The result is an extraordinary lack of differentiation on major policy.

Thus Sydney Morning Herald political editor Peter Hartcher has written an article entitled “Her or him, it’s time to choose” in which he states: “Neither leader is attempting to offer a vision, or an ambitious reform program, and each promises no net new spending of public money. That’s why this election campaign will resemble two people wrestling in a brown paper bag. Both Gillard and Abbott have constructed their campaigns by a focus group audit of the Rudd government, stripping away anything that might be unpopular, difficult or complex. It’s the politics of the lowest common denominator” (see Peter Hartcher, ““Her or him, it’s time to choose”, The Age, 19 July 2010: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/po...) .

Such “politics of the lowest common denominator” happens when the major parties are scared of anything “controversial” and the pro-peace, pro-environment Greens are sidelined. Indeed suppression of such civilized, informed, alternative views by Mainstream media (MSM) is a major part of the problem.

This suppression and censorship in Murdochracy and Lobbyocracy Australia is well illustrated by the following example. I sent the following informed and polite comment about Peter Hartcher’s article “Her or him, it’s time to choose” to The Age but it chose to only publish the first couple of lines – thereby suppressing and censoring a sensible attempt at differentiation of Lib-Lab policies.

“Excellent article. However the pro-war, pro-coal Coalition vastly better than pro-war, pro-coal Gillard Labor in many key policies i.e. good Green voters should put Labor last.

1. Abbott offers $1.5 billion for mental health (noting that 1 in 5 Australians suffer mental illness in their lifetime; Rudd and Gillard failed grossly on this key health issue).

2. As pointed out by Peter Hartcher Abbott’s maternity leave scheme is vastly better than Gillard’s.

3. Abbott’s opposition to the Rudd-Gillard and now Gillard ETS approach is supported by top climate scientists and economists who say that the Carbon Trading Emissions Trading Scheme approach is empirically ineffective, counterproductive and intrinsically fraudulent (it involves selling something you don’t have the right to sell, i.e. the right to pollute the one common atmosphere of the planet). Thus top US climate scientist Dr James Hansen (NASA and 76-Nobel-Laureate Columbia University): "Cap and trade with offsets is astoundingly ineffective" and "cap and trade would practically guarantee disastrous climate change for our children and grandchildren".

4. Abbott is straightforward in his pro-war and pro-coal policies whereas pro-war, pro-coal Gillard has betrayed all decent anti-war, pro-environment Labor voters on these issues in addition to successfully betraying her own leader at the first opportunity.

5. Abbott wants to cut immigration intake whereas Gillard spins about population without advancing clear policies to deal with it.

6. Australia is unfortunately a country that glorifies war but there is something peculiarly horrible about a woman PM supporting the US Afghan War in which 280,000 Afghan infants die avoidably each year from US war-imposed deprivation (UNICEF).

7. Fiscal responsibility (Coalition), fiscal squander (Gillard).”

What The Age actually published was “Excellent article. However the pro-war, pro-coal Coalition is vastly better than pro-war, pro-coal Gillard Labor in many key policies i.e. good Green voters should put Labor last. (edited by moderator)”.

One assumes that The Age moderator (censor) did not want my informed, carefully composed, key, Lib-Lab differentiating points 1-7 to be read.

As long as Mainstream media and neocon politicians treat Western voters like mushrooms (“keep them in the dark and feed them manure”) the citizens of Western Murdochracies and Lobbyocracies will not even know what the problems are, let alone find the right solutions.