Often we ask, “Who polices the police?”, with due trepidation.
Now it’s well overdue to ask, “Who ensures the integrity of the media?”
We may well yet see a few Watergate moments about the mainstream media, including Google and Facebook and Twitter, in the near future…
It’s your XYZ.
These are strange times, when the Alt Right, and media like the XYZ, are coming good on their promise to offer an alternative to the progressive mainstream media narrative.
It feels that we might be seeing some strange form of end game.
The examples are so plentiful, I will just focus on a few:
Strong Together: the campaign slogan of a quite ill Killary Hinton. It smacks of cognitive dissonance – like something SNL would comically dream up as satire if it was not completely biased.
We see the mainstream media scambling now for a semblance of credibility, as they have had to run from denials and cover-ups, hinting at conspiracy theories, to begrudgingly talking about a collapsing candidate’s health.
This befits the state propaganda arm of tinpot dictatships – not the media.
The media, by the way, should be professional cynics. They have a duty, if only they could remember or be aware, to act as a check and balance to government, and to society in general.
Of course, this is why many XYZ contributors loved the ABC – its charter, mission and legacy were noble. But, like so many things in this era of Islamification, it has been hijacked.
It has been hijacked, like the media in general, by the progressive left. The progressive left do activism, masquerading as journalism. Hopefully, the ruse is up.
Imagine a moment where the mainstream media can critique paedophiles running grooming programs in schools. A media that can cut to the truth of topics without fear of all the racist, sexist, islamophophic, bigoted catch cries that shut down free speech and public discourse.
It would strengthen the immune system of Western society itself.
In the interim, we have Sharia’s cousin running the show. Sharia’s cousin is progressive socialism. Like Sharia, it wants to control how we live and think and act. It gives us complete freedom – to say and do what it tells us is God’s will (or progressively approved). The punishment to be outside that is quite extreme.
I loathe both these systems to the core of my being. To openly discuss and critique these will be a fine moment in Western society.
If an ailing Clinton can bring the mainstream media down with her, and aid the rise of Trump’s anti-PC era, then we may actually, truly, become stronger together.
Photo by Bogdan Migulski 
Today, the former Minister for Wearing Underpants on his Head, Labor’s Stephen Conroy, announced his intention to quit parliament.
No doubt he will be replaced by someone further to the left, more beholden to left-wing identity politics, even more authoritarian in their zeal to squash freedom of speech, and more removed from the Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment philosophy and British and European culture upon which this country was founded.
But at the end of the day, there isn’t much to say about another Laborite who achieved very little, other than to play his small part in steering Australia into the deepest debt it has ever incurred.
Thus we leave it up to the Simpsons’ Reverend Lovejoy, who gave this beautifully underwhelming speech at the funeral of Maude Flanders, punctuated by Homer Simpson’s punchline, to articulate whatever.
By Darryl
Few, if any words, are used so repetitively and effectively to silence free speech. We should not have this debate because it is “divisive”? What a ridiculous statement! To merely have a debate involves arguing two or more sides! Our society is based on opposed points of view. Our Parliament has two chambers. In each of them we have a Government and an Opposition with their own usually opposed agendas, further complicated by agendas of minor parties and independents. Our judicial system is adversarial. Our society is riven with division and dissent. It thrives on it.
Those who seek to stifle debate use the word “divisive” as if that is the end of the argument. If something is divisive, then is it so evil that we must not even discuss it?
So, what is the meaning of divisive? The Oxford Dictionary defines it as:
Tending to cause disagreement or hostility between people: “the highly divisive issue of abortion”
The reality is that human nature is such that we disagree with each other. Often and loudly. Sometimes with hostility. Regrettably, sometimes even violently. Some people and groups do tend to be hostile to those who disagree with them. Some manage to keep their disagreements civil. Some even manage to respect their opponents and their points of view even though they disagree. If all debate is to be stifled because it might cause disagreement or even hostility, little would ever change. The civil rights movement in the US was highly divisive. So was the fight for gay and lesbian rights. Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras certainly caused its share of disagreement and hostility in its early days.
The issue of same-sex marriage right now is very divisive. But not because of a plebiscite. The status quo has long been established. The problems that same-sex partners used to experience have largely disappeared as laws throughout Australia have been amended to include them. This was mostly low key, and achieved without a public debate or substantial publicity.
But what is divisive is not the plebiscite, but the campaign to change the definition of marriage itself. If those seeking to stifle the debate were truly concerned about division, then they could eliminate such concerns by abandoning their campaign. Of course, I don’t expect them to do so, nor do I want them to. Free speech and free debate are good. Divisiveness is good. But hypocrisy is not. And the hypocrisy in this instance is breathtaking.
A very divisive campaign likely to offend and generate substantial hostility is commenced. But a plebiscite to test the effectiveness of that campaign on public opinion must be stopped because it is divisive? And now the Leader of the Opposition goes even further, saying we must not have a plebiscite because the debate around it or perhaps the result may lead to a gay child committing suicide. If this was to happen it would indeed be tragic. But we cannot stifle debate on important issues because some in our society are emotionally unstable. It is ridiculous to argue that we should make a major change to our society, with potentially far-reaching effects, without a proper public debate.
If we can’t have a debate and a plebiscite, then clearly the status quo should remain until we can.
I would suggest that when you hear the term “divisive” used, the appropriate action, perhaps with very rare exceptions, is to say, “Good.” Our democracy is healthy and working.
Photo by pumpkinmook
Malcolm Turnbull’s little coterie of leftist lickspittles have been starting to question their faltering messiah.
Even Nikki Savva, the toxic, snobbish, nepotistic dwarf who serves as Lord Malcolm’s court jester, is probably spending her nights in one of Canberra’s overpriced watering holes weeping softly into a glass of Chardonnay.
The leftist nincompoops who scribbled paeans of joy for Fairfax last September are now in full assault on their former icon. Even the rotund mandarins Malcolm Farr and Laurie Oakes are now making grave murmurings about this newest failed messiah.
But all these brilliant media minds, that without exception, kowtowed on their bellies for Rudd, Gillard and now King Malcolm, are agreed on one important point:
Tony Abbott can never return to the Prime Minister’s chair.
And it seems many in the Parliamentary Liberal Party agree.
“A member of Mr Abbott’s own conservative faction estimates he would command no more than 10 votes in the partyroom today, despite the public disappointment that has been the Turnbull ascendancy.. ‘You could put the Right flank in a telephone box virtually,’ said a conservative source.”
This, of course, needs to be taken with a grain of salt; the author, Hugh Aston, is one of the aforementioned brilliant minds who assured us that Lord Turnbull was the greatest thing since sunlight, so he definitely has a dog in the fight.
If Turnbull continues to wilt under the pressure of ruling with a one seat majority, a desperate party would elect anyone. If the events of last September prove anything, it’s that the average Liberal Party MP is a servile, pathetic, cowardly selfish cur with the morality of a public toilet and the survival instinct of a concussed rat.
After all, even the ALP, despite their factional system and culture of blind obedience when faced with similar pressure, went begging to Kevin Rudd, a narcissistic sociopath.
But even if they did go back to Abbott in a fit of blind panic at the prospect of being removed from the trough, it wouldn’t matter.
One quote from his article is factual, true and disturbing:
“Of the 19 elected Liberals in NSW, just Craig Kelly would be expected to back Mr Abbott.”
The Federal Parliamentary Liberal party barely has any principled Conservatives left.
Michael Photios and other leftists inside the Liberal party apparatus in NSW have put leftists into safe seats for so long that actual conservatives are now notable for their rarity. The same has happened in other states, the Gramscian march through the institutions has now gone so far that it has gained a dominant position in what was once the largest centre right party in Australia.
Despite the fact that honest right-of-centre folk remain, they are in the minority.
Even some who claim to be of the Conservative faction such as Josh Frydenberg amazingly manage damascene conversions on issues like Gay Marriage when the slightest pressure is imposed. It becomes painfully clear that the amount of “Conservatives” inside the PLP with any Conservative principles at all could probably fit in a small minivan.
Unless you know for certain that your local representative is one of the lonely few Liberals worth voting for, there is no longer any reason to give your first preference to the light blue version of the ALP.
If you vote for the Liberals in the House or the Senate, at either the State or Federal level, you are not making anything better. Just as millions of older Australians continue to support corrupted and rotten organizations like the ABC, out of nostalgia for the days when they weren’t infested by leftists, Conservatives will continue to vote for the sad and decrepit remains of a party that was once the voice of right-thinking middle Australia.
But it’s time to move on: this fortress is breached, this levee burst, and this trench taken. If the Unions started funding them tomorrow they’d be indistinguishable from the ALP within a month.
All thinking Australians must now move their votes elsewhere.
And this must happen, despite the fact that even losing half of their voter support will not wake up those now in power within what was once the party of Menzies; leftists just don’t work that way.
Go to One Nation, go to Katter, go to the ALA, or go wherever you feel most at home.
Preference the Libs over the ALP and Greens unless you feel your local Liberal needs teaching a lesson. Encourage your friends, your family and your workmates to do the same.
But whatever you do, don’t continue to support with your time, money or first preference vote the zombie party that clings to a macabre simulacrum of its former life.
As with the Universities, as with the ABC, the Liberal Party that once served Australia and Australians is dead.
And while the leftists now pulling its strings continue to jerk the rotting corpse around, it will not rest in peace.
Despite hysterically pointing fingers at Howard’s battlers, and framing them as fat cat investors for having the audacity to squeeze young people out of the housing market by negatively gearing modest investment properties, it seems that Greens politicians are only too eager to indulge in this particular vice of conspicuous capitalism behind closed doors.
Curiously named ACT Greens Leader Shane Rattenbury has endorsed the principled opposition of his party to negative gearing by… well… negatively gearing two of his own prime pieces of real estate, one of which just happens to be strategically placed along the new light rail corridor that he lobbied for.
Unlike the evil, racist, sexist, homophobic, negative gearing policy of those jackbooted Liberals, bringing light rail to Canberra is a policy that Ratters IS passionate about.
He’s fought tooth and nail for a system of public transport that Blind Freddy could tell you will be a white elephant.
Of course he’s passionate about light rail. The Greens leader owns two negatively geared properties, one of which is along the proposed light rail corridor that looks set to increase astronomically in value the minute that first outrageously wasteful and ineffectual light rail carriage rolls by. LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!
Quizzed on Canberra’s 2CC about his apparent lack of consistency with regard to negative gearing, Ratters justified his behaviour by explaining in so many words that while he is outraged by all these racist, sexist, homophobic deplorables who voted for Tony Abbott securing a future for their children by negatively gearing investment properties, it’s fine for him to do so, and it is perhaps even his duty because it is legal.
It’s an interesting leap of logic and moral justification. If Ratters were a plantation owner in the Confederacy, he’d no doubt be passionately campaigning against slavery while simultaneously taking full advantage of slave labor on his cotton farm and training Mandingo fighters. Because, you know… all this stuff is legal. He wouldn’t be doing anything wrong.
This kind of rampant hypocrisy isn’t that unusual for the Greens. In fact, it’s straight from the socialist playbook. It’s Communism 101. Everyone has to take up their tools, work hard, and make sacrifices for the good of the party and the state. That’s just the way it is. But not us in the inner party. No, we have a more important role. Unlike all you proles (or perhaps deplorables), we are paid to think and therefore we require special concessions from socialist doctrine.
I’m sure that if you asked Sarah Hanson-Young whether, in a perfect world, an unskilled worker would be paid the same as a neurologist (that is to say that an unskilled worker would see their wage raised marginally, and a neurologist would see his or her wage decreased dramatically to that level so that both could struggle equally and neither can make ends meet), she’d be totally behind it. That’s socialism.
But if you were to point out to her (or Ratters for that matter) that she can easily just bank the annual wage of an unskilled labourer and donate the remainder of her parliamentary remuneration to charity, she would no doubt default to Shane Rattenbury’s position of being legally entitled to her full wage, and will gladly (if not conspicuously so) take advantage of it while complaining incessantly about the wage gap.
The ‘but it’s legal to do it, so I’m obliged to do it even if I don’t have to and it is at odds with my moral compass!’ argument of Shane Rattenbury really doesn’t hold any water. Same-sex marriage is currently illegal in Australia. By Ratter’s logic, same-sex marriage advocates have no right whatsoever to criticise opponents. They aren’t homophobes or ‘Bible thumpers’. To use the Rattenbury defence, perhaps opponents are merely against it because it’s legal to be against it. It’s the yardstick for morality that he has established.
Instead of being critical of Cory Bernardi, Fred Nile, and others, perhaps Ratters and his socialist cronies should just shut their pie holes. The ‘homophobes’ are merely personally benefiting from something that’s legal in the same way that he is. Until he and other Greens, who no doubt also have negatively geared investment properties, align practice with policy, they really have no right to cast the first stone against anyone.
At any rate, Ratters’ rampant hypocrisy isn’t the biggest part of the story here. We should be more concerned about whether he declared a conflict of interest due to his investment property that stands to increase in value from a public transport system that he so vehemently campaigned for, despite the fact that it will never pay for itself, and that Canberra taxpayers will foot the bill for decades after it is eventually scrapped.
Photo by VeloBusDriver
The prospect of Canada being “swamped by American Democrats” in the wake of a potential Donald Trump victory in the US Presidential Election in November, has this month triggered a surge in xenophobia in Canadian national media, social media, and halls of power. Bumper stickers, lawn signs, and hashtags featuring the slogans “US SJW’s Out! Eh?” and “We’re not sorry anymore! Eh?” have proliferated from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and a movement is emerging, united by the determination to “Build a wall, and make Portland, Oregon, pay for it! Eh?”
Until the last couple of weeks, the plethora of US celebrities threatening to move to Canada if Trump wins, backed up by the so-called spike in internet searches for, “How can I move to Canada?” were considered an amusing sideshow to the more open expressions of hatred by US “progressives” against Donald Trump. But in the wake of a serious gaffe by Hillary Clinton, a stellar week of campaigning by Donald Trump, renewed allegations of corruption against Clinton, and the inevitable acknowledgement of Clinton’s health issues by the mainstream media, Canadians have been forced to consider the mass migration of US lefties to Canada as a real, concrete possibility. As one anonymous racist Canadian troll said, “If there is one thing we know about US liberals, it is that they always follow through with what they say they are going to do, eh? That means they’re coming here, eh?”
Transparent excuses, hiding the inherent racism of ordinary Canadians, have become common in Canadian public discourse. One argument ironically makes the case that opposition to US liberal immigration is based on the necessity to “avoid the appearance of racism, eh?” Many of the US liberals threatening to leave America if Trump wins are rich white coastal elites. However, quotas have been put in place to ensure that most Americans taken as migrants will consist of minorities. One anonymous source told The XYZ, “We have pretty much determined the content of their character, eh? We can guarantee that we will vet people based on the colour of their skin, eh?”
Another line of argument used as cover for underlying bigotry raises concerns over Canada’s ability to provide for an influx of migrants who appear unable to provide for themselves, expect the State to provide for their every need, and require protection from ideas which conflict with their own fragile sense of self-worth. “We just don’t have the resources to provide for that many looters, eh?” said an unnamed source from the Canadian Human Services Department. “We are already stealing so much wealth from the productive to give to the unproductive, we are wary of upsetting this balance further, eh?” Similarly, Canadian Immigration Department officials have raised the technicality that “skill-sets such as rabble-rousing, inventing new forms of discrimination, and fudging statistics to make it look like white people are killing black people, when in fact black people are killing white people, are already in over-supply here in Canada, eh? We don’t need any more of their kind, eh?”
The most disturbing cases of hate-speech against the possibility of accepting large numbers of new Canadians have revolved around suggestions that most of those coming in could have a criminal history or a criminal nature. Again, one online troll has suggested, “Canada doesn’t need violent thugs who consider being political to simply mean shouting abuse at or beating up people who disagree with you, eh? People who call for the death of cops aren’t welcome in this country, eh?” Some have even suggested that if Canada accepts people associated with the Occupy movement, or members of the Clinton family, then it could be welcoming “murderers” and “rapists” into the country.
It’s your XYZ.
Grumpy Motorist’s latest rant is in response to this meme, featured on the Facebook page of Equal Marriage Rights Australia:
How is it unfair?
You actually get a say in the process of law changes.
How is it unsafe?
Are the voting staff going to get papercuts?
How is it unworkable?
The nation votes for local, state, and federal government often, and we do the stupid, time-consuming census. How will this be any different?
This, right here, is democracy. Proper, direct democracy.
With all the support I see for it online it would probably pass anyway. I couldn’t care less either way, as long as it doesn’t affect the institution of marriage for me.
However, in spite of the huge amount of scare-mongering with no firm facts to back it up from the left, I will vote no if it comes to that. Sometimes people need to learn when to SHUT UP!
This is Grumpy Motorist signing off and remember STAY IN THE BLOODY LEFT LANE!
Photo by Tony Webster
Tuesday’s Quote of the Day was suggested by an XYZ reader. One has to admit, the XYZ readership are a cluey bunch.
Let me pose this question: to which modern Western leader do you think this quote most aptly applies?
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)
It’s your XYZ.
Photo by sn6200
Search for the Truth in the Comments Section of Any Online Mainstream News Story
Well, I was wrong. I’ll admit it. It looks like Pauline’s appearance on Q&A was just a bad case of ring rust. She’s back, swinging, and more prepared than ever. Her 2016 maiden speech was a stroke of brilliance. Unapologetic like Trump, but full of indisputable facts and figures (occasionally the Donald’s Achilles heel) that were so indisputable in fact that they triggered a walkout by easily triggered Greens as they finally realised they were bankrupt in a free market of ideas, particularly in regard to Islamisation. It was a very cheeky Milo moment for Pauline, and she revelled in it.
SMH journalist Latika Bourke’s articles make it evident that she clearly buys into all the conspiratorial nonsense about the patriarchy, wage gap, and systemic racism, despite the fact that she is a woman of Indian ancestry. Keep in mind that this is a migrant group that statistically have become more prosperous through good old-fashioned hard work than just about any other ethnicity (including Caucasians) in Western nations.
So successful, indeed, that they’ve ostensibly found themselves honorary members of the white patriarchy, despite being of a darker caste than many of those from other, less prosperous ethnicities who are more inclined to become bogged down in crippling identity politics and perpetual victimhood. Latika Bourke is doing far better for herself than some blue collar member of the white patriarchy trying to make ends meet by digging holes in a hi-vis sloppy joe.
The columnist wrote a predictably waffling virtue-signalling piece on the maiden speech that was shallow on statistics, but overflowing with paranoid champagne socialist platitudes. Latika claims that Pauline didn’t provide any evidence to back up her claims, yet never attempts to counter them with any statistics of her own. Funny that. The entire piece seems to navel-gaze about how many times Hanson says the word ‘Muslim’, while seemingly not correlating that factoid with the causative effect that concerns about Islamisation was the crux of her maiden speech.
I’m sure Andrew Bolt could come up with a similar ‘whopping’ statistic if he were to collate how many climate alarmist buzzwords the Greens senators uttered in their maiden speeches, or how many times Obama is going to parrot the phrase ‘wrong side of history’. About all that could be gleaned from the piece was that Latika Bourke is apparently more morally superior than Hanson and the rest of the basket of deplorables.
But I digress. More often than not nowadays, I find myself quickly skimming to the comments section to get to the heart of any story. Particularly one in which regressive leftists try to analyse and invariably discredit the fears and issues that concern ordinary Australians living in faraway low-socioeconomic areas that they are far less likely to ever visit than say, Havana, Cuba or a hiking destination in Nepal…
Usually, ordinary people who can string a few words together (despite popular mainstream media opinion) who aren’t beholden to toeing an editorial line, and have first-hand experience in what they’re talking about, offer more informative fact-based commentary than mainstream media, whose observations are incredibly naive and often indistinguishable from Pravda.
In this particular case, you needn’t bother reading Latika Bourke’s piece (which amounts to basically informing us about how wise and tolerant she is for mindlessly buying into groupthink). A self-aggrandising love-in that celebrates the superior virtue of Fairfax journalists, completely dismissing the support Hanson enjoys in a face-palming echo of dismissive coverage of the Trump phenomenon by U.S. Media, that had a flat earth quality right up until recent weeks.
Instead, I direct you to a comment below the Latika Bourke’s article by someone who calls himself ‘Gatsby’:
Gatsby Sep 15 2016 at 8:25am
“Myself and millions of Australians agree with her comments on this issue 100%.
“Imagine you wanted to call out Christianity for it’s treatment of women, but you were told that you’re forbidden because it might radicalize Christians to commit mass murder of innocent men women and children.
“Labor-Greens and their Leftist allies in the media say they care about gay rights and equality for women and domestic violence but will sell you out in two seconds as soon as they think someone else is more marginalized than you – and then they turn on you. Zero principles. There is nothing Leftists won’t make excuses for.
“Most telling of all, is that we barely ever get to talk about the important issues regarding Islam in newspapers. If she’s wrong then use facts and logic to make those who agree with her look foolish.
“Instead we don’t get facts and reason. All we see from the Left is baseless smears attacking the person (not the issue) by calling them racist in an effort to intimidate them into silence, rather than explain why they’re wrong. An utter disgrace. I laugh at people who don’t know the difference between a racist and someone who is opposed to an appalling set of ideas.
“Most of Europe and America has now woken up. Finally Australia is starting to get the courage to take on those who would intimidate you into silence with personal attacks and baseless smears.”
In this particular case, as with so many other online mainstream media articles, the comment has picked up the ball so clumsily dropped by the reporter. Comments used to be regarded as online condiments to compliment articles and opinion pieces. But as mainstream media continues to jettison all pretence of fairness and balance, the humble comments section seems to be evolving from the mustard or tomato sauce into the meat and potatoes of the story.
It’s Your XYZ.
Photo by Steve Daggar