Interesting stuff

Um i shouldn't have to point out the obvious, but free speech and illegally blockading streets etc is two very different things.

just like the last time when you said the australian public (and all your mates) were waiting with baseball bats ..

Agree with a few of the comments here, if ER are anti-establishment, good for them.
The political/corporate establishment is rooted, the whole set up needs a broom put through it.
I'd rather have a bunch of overwrought, undergrad mincers out protesting and adding to the effort than not.

"...... illegally blockading streets ....... ".

Bahaahahahaha ... The Xi Jinping of Swellnet has spoken.

That paul watson dude grates me, way down somewhere in my nervous system... but he does make a great video...

Over the last 20 years the right of politics has developed a finely honed climate change argument, raising some fair criticisms of the loftiness of the whole project

Meanwhile, over 20 odd years, the left has just gotten shouty shoutier with the same old stuff. Seemingly with little development, no cohesive plan, and a pathological obtuseness to criticism. they are literally dancing to the same beat

Watson raises some fair points - yes he does it totally unfairly, as he does - but that doesn't make them go away, they are fair points

I say good on the ferals for protesting, its good that they have the passion, and the right to do so. a right truly under threat of late. but you've gotta ask yourself, who do they really think they're convincing doing what it is that they do?

I'd say no one, not one. probably in the negative...

I liked greta, brought a bit of anger and honesty to the argument, a new breathe for an issue that seems well out of steam for many. she's even a bit hardcore, a bit edgy, asking some bigger questions that often get ignored, and will get ignored again. but really, even with the greta injection, what is the plan?

the best picture we have is in johnno's link. which raises some seriously fair points and assumptions

not least this...

"....I connect the primary architect and authors of the “Green New Deal” data to the World Resources Institute. From there, I walk you through the interlocking Business & Sustainable Development Commission, the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, and the New Climate Economy – a project of the World Resources Institute. I disclose the common thread between these groups and the assignment of money to nature, represented by the Natural Capital Coalition and the non-profit industrial complex as an entity. Finally, I reveal how this has culminated in the implementation of payments for ecosystem services (the financialization and privatization of nature, global in scale) which is “expected to be adopted during the fifteenth meeting in Beijing in 2020.”

....not real inspiring really

reeks of business as usual for the usual beneficaries. not to mention more selling of public assetts, more selling off of another public good, ...reeks of neoliberalism actually...

The amount of stress we put on our ecosystems driven by the way in which we use them (lifestyle) and the rate (population) will reach a point where the planet cannot sustain it for us anymore. At this point our lifestyle and or the population will see a correction. Don’t over think it, Fix it, or nature will do it for us

@GuySmiley

Isn't that what they are doing?

I mean these people have been doing crazy shit like gluing themselves to roads, drooping big concrete blocks in the middle of the road and cuffing themselves to it, all kinds of crazy acts just to basically piss off everyone.

Personally I'm surprised how it hasn't turned violent as it must be pissing people off.

Definitely not legal.

Foam, fibreglass, wax , neoprene...
All fine products of the establishment.

Indo,

What was your view when those mountain cattlemen rode their horses around Melbourne disrupting traffic protesting against the State government's decision to accept the science that grazing cattle in the high country should be stopped to protect an existing declared national park? City traffic was blocked for several days.

Or what about the time timber log trucks blocked the city for days protesting the decision to stop logging in the high country?

Or the time thousands of trucks blocked the Hume for days in a protest a few years back?

No response required.

But that was different

Well there you go Guy, you can call them many things but you can't call them original.

The preoccupation with how people look is such a fucken wearisome complaint. Usual fodder for the shouty shock jocks, and perpetual Murdoch culture warriors seeking to undermine resistance by any means possible.

If you're not being paid to complain yet find fault with how protestors "look" then I presume you're just old, or old at heart. Hope you had a good life 'cos you're irrelevant now.

Dont have much to add to the ER debate other than I think that without mainstream interaction and a political framwork it'll go the way of the Occupy movement.

Still, I think it's a good thing as it keeps important issues in the headlines and it empowers a large swathe of society - and not just those protesting, but others who relate to the movement realising there's a groundswell against the status quo.

You're spot on in regards to how people look and of course it's media driven. When you look at the images that make it to print or screen it's almost always the scruffy, pierced, unshaven man (or woman- ha ha) that gets the screen grab. If you look in the background of the pics, the vast majority of peeps just look like normal, every day Joe's. But, the oldies at home don't get to pass judgement on 'normal' people, they get to rue the image before them, bemoan on what society has become and hark back to those halcyon days where skirts fell below the knee and hair cuts were short back and sides.

Fed Libs GST blew out infrastructure by 50% now a 20yr Nation Building Strike.
Qld's 2 biggest neighbouring cities Air-train link project is now 22 years in arrears.
A century ago, interstate commuters enjoyed a longer connecting Railport service
Today Govts lock-down Syd-Bne East Coast Trade on [M1] for 2hrs am < > 3hrs pm

Fed,State,Council line own pockets by also slowing coastline a further 2.5hrs / day
#1 Qld transit priority is Timeshare Trolley for upzoning sea change monoliths.
Slowing Gold Coast Hwy to 1870 timetable upzones a Mega Retirement Village
Prime upzones boost States Stamp Duty & Council Rates & Superannuation shares.

Privatised Trolley costs Gold Coast 2.5 hrs lost income & productivity / day.
Govts excite with Speed rail while they purposely gridlock your city to 20 km'hr.

Gold Coast fastest bus service was in fact our first in 1930's slowing ever since.
1930's Golden Era of travel also had the greatest array of transit options.
Small towns standard combos of Buggy / Car / Tram / Rail / Ferries / Ships / Planes.
eg: Tourists chose to either Fly, Train or Bus from several beaches to Hinterland.
Once considered standard transit options now impossible dreams a century later.
Interstate Coastal Shipping & Rail + Regional River Ferry services all in museums.

Govt Strikes 5hrs/day on [M1] + 22yrs on Rail + 20 days 'illegal Scomo Spill Strike'.
Sit fuming 5hrs a day blocking grid for 20 yrs or jaywalk same queue for an hour?.
Govts instruct the cops to take out the human train bypassing the $15/hr [P] Tax.

Newscorp arrive 22yrs too late selling Timeshare Trolley to rid bottleneck offspring.
Only sky news reports protesters have held up city transit more so than crook Govt!
Any journalist could jaywalk the [M1] any am/pm for a million taller stalled stories.
'cause it's not about traffic delays! Protesters are damaging Govt Real Estate brand!

[Disclaimer] tbb recently partook in permitted rally & street march @ Broadbeach.

Your comparison with the occupy movement is interesting Stu, I’ve had much the same thought. But I see a difference with the school strikers, more a grass roots movement. It’s hard to argue against well informed articulate kids as our politicians have found. If the school strikers movement continues to grow, as I expect, it could possibly become a new moratorium movement in face of government inaction.

The school climate strikers already have the active backing of the Australian Conservation Foundation, GetUp and many corporate groups. It’s going to interesting to see where it goes from here.

The hypocrisy of ER members/supporters never ceases to astonish. Buying superglue and thereby supporting the petrochemical industry? Causing excessive use of CO2 spewing police vehicles to control their antics? Blocking traffic so that air quality is damaged? The majority are welfare recipients who are happy to take a share of industry's revenue. Any chance they could get off their soapboxes and contribute to society? PS The ABC loves to support them so complaining about the Murdoch press is a bit rich, stu.

Supporting the petrochemical industry by buying superglue!

Haha D-Rex, says the bloke who thinks Dutton is "spot on" (again).

In case you weren't aware of Dutton's cred, here's a few facts:

Under Dutton, people smugglers shifted their business model from boats to planes. 80,000 “airplane arrivals” have come under the Liberals, dwarfing the number of boat arrivals. 90% are not refugees - they are smuggled here to be exploited working on farms, restaurants or sex work.

Under Dutton, citizenship application waiting times have blown out to 22 months, partner visas 28 months, children visas 23 months and the AAT caseload has exploded. The Auditor General has excoriated Dutton’s Home Affairs Department.

Under Dutton, 19 boats tried to arrive. 14 tried to arrive under Morrison as Immigration Minister. The only boat to actually arrive came the very week that Dutton unsuccessfully challenged Turnbull for the top job. Talk about taking your eye off the ball.

Under Dutton, there are fewer days of marine patrol, and two boats just sitting in port in Henderson, WA, because Home Affairs doesn’t know how to crew or maintain them.

Under Dutton, the Paladin debacle. The $423m contract - without a competitive tender - to a company registered to a beach shack on Kangaroo Island. The contract was extended despite failures, fines and warnings from independent auditors!

Paladin was so bad at managing Manus that Home Affairs officials were too scared to visit the very site that they were paying Paladin $20m a month to keep secure. Great work, Mr Dutton. Slow clap.

And, of course, there is the hysterical claim from Mr Dutton that the Medivac laws will “open the floodgates” and caused the $185m reopening - and then closure - of Christmas Island for boats that never came. Also, his hysterical claims about “two doctors from Nimbin”.

And, under Dutton & the Liberals, Australia has been subject to divisive, fearmongering rhetoric that denigrates migrants, refugees, and our multicultural community.

The bottom line is that there is more credibility in a ball of belly button fluff.

Hang on, the boats tried to come or never came?

That's an operational matter Zen, and I'd kindly thank you not to bring it up again.

stu, you are always moaning about the murdoch press, what would you do? censor? ban? or are you ok with it and just like a whinge. serious question

Thank God for some serious activism anything that challenges the establishment and forces questions is something that society requires so it can grow for the better not for the sake of wealthy elite.

Remember the Vietnam protests as the government conscripted our finest and sent them off to the jungle nightmares many veterans still experience, how did that go fu(k-em, more power to those that actually can think independently.

I'd limit media ownership laws, for one. For the obvious reason that a diversity of views makes for a better informed society, and for the less obvious reason (to Murdoch readers) that Uncle Rupe and Sons use their media as a propaganda arm for business and ideological interests.

There are other reasons, but I'm not expecting much in the way of objectivity so I won't bother wasting my time.

“Whereas once upon time elected office was a privilege of the monied elite, it is now the prerogative of the political elite, enabled by business interests and a complicit media. We are ruled by men and women who have made politics their life long career. It is not their job to be visionary, it is not in their self-interest to pop their heads up above the party parapet. They are best served by toeing the party line, their career prospects determined more by who they support in the party hierarchy than actively advocating for causes in the national interest, let alone the interest of our planet.”

https://www.michaelwest.com.au/particracy-rules-the-triumph-of-clever-po...

"not expecting much in the way of objectivity so i wont bother wasting my time" fair enough, i sure just wasted mine

Zing!

"Far from destabilising democracy, protest has been instrumental in forcing the introduction of most of the freedoms that now exist in liberal democracies.

Direct action, mostly nonviolent, played a major role in the ending of slavery, extension of the franchise, curtailing ruthless aspects of the exploitation of labour and extending rights to women and minorities.

Many of the so-called normal channels for working through the system, which are often recommended as prior to or preferable to direct action, have themselves been established through direct action."

Also:

"By castigating protesters as disruptive, violent and illegitimate, critics are engaging in a political struggle against the goals of the protesters by basing their arguments on the unquestioned premise of the legitimacy of state power"

https://documents.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/pubs/94psa.html

If there is one organisation in the western world where it’s operations directly reflect the values of its owner it’s the Murdoch empire.

If that is accepted then how on earth did Murdoch and his sons escape criminal charges in the UK over his journalists/papers hacking the phones of private citizens through to members of the royal family? The fact that he and his sons didn’t is beyond belief.

Of course had he been found personally guilty instead of some fall guy/woman that would have meant he couldn’t have ran Fox USA as a convicted criminal.

None of it was ever going to happen in the UK, the US and divested media ownership here, well that’s not going to happen here also.

so you would throw him in jail gs?

'For 30 years I worked for News Corp papers. Now all I see is shameful bias'

No editor I worked for would publish the rubbish they now produce

About six weeks ago I cancelled my subscription for The Australian newspaper after getting it for more than 30 years. As soon as this election is over, I will do the same with the Courier-Mail.

I worked as a journalist for some 30 years for those papers and loved every minute of it. They were quality newspapers that cared for their employees and cared more for the product – concerned with breaking real news stories that were as accurate and true as could possibly be established.

The Australian in particular was a big-impact paper which regularly set the news agenda for media throughout the country.

But no longer. No editor I worked for would have put up with the biased anti-Labor rubbish that, shamefully, the papers now produce on a daily basis.

If it is not anti-Labor it is anti-Green or, quite ridiculously, anti-ABC. Anything except a story negative to the Liberal or National parties.

Gone is the requirement for balance. One has only to look at the story selection and headlines on the front pages of the papers each day to see that an anti-Labor angle has been taken, however contorted had been the literary gymnastics required to finally arrive at that particular bit of stupidity.

How infantile is it of the management of these organisations to fool themselves into believing that what they are producing is being accepted by readers as quality product. I have many conservative friends who are as disgusted as I am at these newspapers because they know that what they are reading is either distorted or just plain wrong.

-Tony Koch

but isnt "..many conservative friends who are as disgusted as i am..." something of an answer? i read the australian daily but there are some barackers (ergas, newman etc) i never read. do you really think people are all duped/misled?

All people? No.

But I also subscribe and I read below the line so I'm aware that there's a significant cohort who are.

I also find the columnists given the choicest real estate - Albrechtsen, Kenny, Sheridan et al - are the most dogmatic, reactionary, and depending on the issue, hypocritical, and that to me speaks volumes about the direction of the paper as an attack dog for ideological interests.

no question the paper has a right wing bias but is there anyone reading it who wouldnt be aware of that? i get the diversity of ownership thing but we are a small market and newspapers lose money mostly. i used to read the age/smh on a daily basis but the quality of journalism (not the bias) dropped to unsustainable levels. and there is always the abc for a leftwing perspective. the days of neutral press seem behind us, i am for free press(with all inherent problems) and dont begrudge my 10c a day for paul barry, michelle grattan , her husband and other comrades etc to hoover it up

"Lets hear the alternatives . Name a media outlet you believe it’s utterly unbiased."

It doesn't exist, however that's not my main criticism.

and i dont mind them protesting as long as i can get home from work

"What was your view when those mountain cattlemen rode their horses around Melbourne disrupting traffic protesting against the State government's decision to accept the science that grazing cattle in the high country should be stopped to protect an existing declared national park? City traffic was blocked for several days.

Or what about the time timber log trucks blocked the city for days protesting the decision to stop logging in the high country?

Or the time thousands of trucks blocked the Hume for days in a protest a few years back?"

Have to say the only one of those i vaguely remember is the trucks.

IMHO they should all be treated the same and charged and forced to move on.

The BIG difference with those cases and this one is all those would have been one off protest.

A majority of these fuckwitts are serial protestors, they get charged and they are back out there doing the same shit the very next day, one guy has been charged 11 times for the same kind of protest..

The problem is the court doesn't take these issues seriously so they don't care, it's the same with the vegan protestors that break into peoples farms.

First time you can accept a bit of leniency, but after that the penalties should ramp up very quickly.

The thing that really pissed me off, is i bet if someone did something to the protestors that glue themselves or cuff themselves to crap etc they would get dealt with much more harshly, even if it was just pissing on them etc

Sadly the government and police have just become weak because of all you leftards.

The ideal situation would be like some have suggested, just leave them there and put a barrier around them, let then cook in the sun and shit themselves.

The Murdoch bias I don't like - same goes for bias of any stripe - however what I find most abhorrent is the wilful lies to shape the news agenda, and then sitting just behind that is the old Lizard's business agenda.

Leftards?

Are we back in 2010 all of a sudden?

As for bias media, it goes both ways, problem is when its government funded like ABC and SBS that's when it sucks.

And please dint give me BS ABC or SBS aren't bias, there only not bias if your a leftard.

I have to say the most bias news media though is Sky News...but i do love it, its so bias its funny...

Leftard just makes sense, perfect description.

Maybe...though I think it says more about the person writing it.

You can think that if you like.

So you can’t egg Fraser Anning, full weight of the law , but you want equivocation when it comes to being violent against a non violent protester. Maybe the courts have a pretty good handle on who to throw the book at and who is no more than an occasional nuisance.
Your posts too could be described with (prefix)tard
So tell me ID what does your perfect right wing police state look like........ are we there yet?

@Soggydog i can see why you would compare the two, but the big difference is between people not breaking the law and people breaking the law.

If these people were like the kids legally protesting and they got egged etc then yeah okay charge those who did it and deal with them harshly.

But imho these people should become fair game because they are breaking the law, id like to see people taking advantage of their stupidity, if someone came along and pissed on them or egged them etc

Then maybe they should be charged but ideally in a court of law, the judge should use common sense and say it was fair game as the protestors were the provocateurs, problem is i bet they would get dealt with harshly while the protestors, that cause high inconvenience to others and waste of police resources etc would be let off.

We are nowhere near a right wing police state, thats why this shit happens, because there is zero deterrent or zero punishment.

loungelizard, unsurprisingly, the parliamentary enquiry ended with a fizz when it came to Murdoch and his son, the fall guys were already in place with well rehearsed lines.

Indo, I didn't really want a reply as it turns out I correctly foresaw what you might say. The 3 examples I gave, namely, the cattlemen, loggers and truckies, well I disagreed with their demands but I wasn't bothered at all that they protested, in a liberal democracy that's something we have the right to do.

Now that mountain cattlemen protest was a particularly cynical exercise given it really was about the commercial advantage only a handful of families had being allowed to graze their cattle on lush national park grass over summer. It is very similar to the arguments currently put forward by commercial interests to allow thousands of brumbies to trash our high plans national parks. The legend of the man from snowy river is really about a handful of families making a buck off it so fuck the environment up there they say.

Anyway, I'm going to highlight an issue I have in your reply ...... to paraphrase your comment you think the examples I gave ought to be treated no differently to ER, but they would have been one off, and the police and governments go easy on the ER protesters etc because of the "leftards".

Well, Indo I think the exact opposite happens to what you say when it comes to the left and the ER protesters, they do get arrested. It would have been a very brave government/police chief/police officer who, according to your view, tried to arrest a mountain cattleman, or logger or truckie, very brave. Apart from the physical threat the police or government would never have won the PR war. The same would apply if police tried arresting school climate strikers, never going to win that argument. So I think you are dead set wrong, protesters on the left are easy pickings compared to cattlemen, loggers or truckies.

"Leftards". I'm guilty of using the term "rightard" in the past but the other night I heard a discussion about its use, as you know the "tard" is short for retard and the discussion highlighted its use is extremely hurtful to people with disabilities.

Never go full leftard

Gretas family have emerged
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/dutch-family-waiting-for-end-of-time...
Just having a laugh..