Thursday 4 September 2014
Ex-News Corp journalist & Abbott propagandist Steve Lewis now a lobbyist with Newgate Communications
Friday 8 November 2013
Is Peter Reith splitting hairs in the hope no one will pursue his connection with the gas industry in Australia?
Friday 14 June 2013
Is the Liberal Party finally leaving the Metgasco building?
Tuesday 29 May 2012
A smoking gun in the Thomson vs Media saga?
In 2009 then Victorian ALP state secretary Stephen Newnham was one of the first people to start accusing Craig Thomson of alleged brothel creeping during his time at the Health Services Union.
Might it also explain why the veracity of this 2011 2UE954 News Talk image of Thomson's alleged credit card details (showing a misspelled surname on the face of this card imprint) is not being questioned? A set of 1st-8th April 2005 documents which appear to have been eventually handed over to VIC or NSW Police by HSU officials as evidence of Thomson's alleged 'guilt', if the accompanying interview with Kathy Jackson is to be believed.
Michael Smith: "The card was also used to pay for escort agency services.
I have a copy of one of the escort agency credit card vouchers. It’s the old style one, where you put the card on the plastic slider machine, put the carbon paper voucher on top of it and swipe the slider over the voucher.
The carbon paper makes a clear embossed impression of the card. You can plainly see that the credit card that was present on that night had this on the front of it – Craig Thomson, Health Services Union."
At best this is sloppy reporting. At worst the information in red bolding is a bald lie. Thompson is not Thomson, no matter how you spin it, and any reputable credit card agency would reject the slip in question - rightly worried about the possiblity of identity theft.
Sunday 27 May 2012
NEWS FLASH: CSG miners have HUGE bladders?
Wednesday 16 May 2012
Are waters being muddied already in the Clarence Valley campaign to improve mental health services?
Thursday 16 February 2012
NSW Minerals Council is offering itself to government as the economic saviour of New South Wales
Friday 3 February 2012
The Group of Sixteen is not a ringing endorsement of the anti-climate change position
On 27 January 2012 The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece titled No Need to Panic About Global Warming. WSJ editor stated that this was signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article.
To assess this opinion one needs to look closer at these signatories than just the name and job descriptions they supplied:
Tuesday 2 August 2011
Climate Change and YouTube
Some successful and not so successful YouTube user video lobbying on both sides of the Great Anthropomorphic Global Warming Divide*.......
http://youtu.be/yKUPUznJZoE
http://youtu.be/-zeGY8zbzc8
http://youtu.be/sSTLDel-G9k
http://youtu.be/eLs73KJI36w
http://youtu.be/S9ob9WdbXx0
http://youtu.be/CdvXWZxAAKQ
http://youtu.be/TQlHaGhYoF0
* Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency,
Debunking The Myths
Tuesday 5 July 2011
Willie Soon tells the world that porkers can fly
“One of the world's most prominent scientific figures to be sceptical about climate change has admitted to being paid more than $1m in the past decade by major US oil and coal companies.
Dr Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, is known for his view that global warming and the melting of the arctic sea ice is caused by solar variation rather than human-caused CO2 emissions, and that polar bears are not primarily threatened by climate change.
But according to a Greenpeace US investigation, he has been heavily funded by coal and oil industry interests since 2001, receiving money from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and Koch Industries along with Southern, one of the world's largest coal-burning utility companies.
Since 2002, it is alleged, every new grant he has received has been from either oil or coal interests.
In addition, freedom of information documents suggest that Soon corresponded in 2003 with other prominent climate sceptics to try to weaken a major assessment of global warming being conducted by the UN's leading climate science body, the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Soon, who had previously disclosed corporate funding he received in the 1990s, was today reportedly unapologetic, telling Reuters that he agreed that he had received money from all of the groups and companies named in the report but denied that any group would have influenced his studies. ‘{The Guardian on 28 June 2011}
Porker flew in from Google Images
Monday 4 July 2011
For no other reason than this political comment appears to be getting up Gerry Harvey's nose [video]
http://youtu.be/7ZSRLbRQVHk
The Sydney Morning Herald 4 July 2011:
MFC and GetUp! had planned to launched a 60-second television commercial targeting Harvey Norman, which is a major TV advertising client.
But the groups said the ad had been refused classification by industry body Commercials Advice - which provides classification and information to advertisers, agencies and production houses - on the basis that it might expose free-to-air TV stations to legal action.
The ad was due to be shown during this week's State of Origin rugby league decider.
GetUp! national director Simon Sheikh said the classification decision amounted to corporate censorship.
"The reason given to us for the refusal was that running the ad may expose networks to lawsuits from Harvey Norman, but this assessment is beyond [Commercials Advice's] mandate," he said in a statement.
Markets for Change
‘NoHarveyNo: How Australia’s largest furniture and electronics retailers is driving the destruction of our native forests.’: Executive Summary and Report
Commercials Advice (CAD) 2010 Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice
Wednesday 13 October 2010
Marohasy confirms she's a AGW denier and tries to stack Q&A with rehearsed audience
This I just gotta quote in full from Jennifer Marohasy's blog on the 12th October.............
"I should probably be flattered to be invited on to the popular ABC TV program Q&A as a panelist. But why is the promo for the program next Monday advertising Tim Flannery as 'scientist' and me as 'climate sceptic'?
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/
Tony Jones could refer to us both as 'scientists'. Alternatively the promo could suggest Tim is an 'alarmist' and me the 'denier'.
I am not even a climate sceptic… but rather sceptical of what was the consensus position on anthropogenic global warming.
Anyway, it would be good if there were a few other so-called climate change sceptics at the event… and also some people who don't believe more water for South Australia will necessarily solve all the environmental problems of the Murray Darling Basin. So, I am encouraging readers of this blog to try for a place in the studio audience next Monday by applying here: http://www2b.abc.net.au/AudienceBooking/Client/AudienceRegistration.aspx
And you can send in questions via email using this link http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/ask.htm
Also, the annual Australian Environment Foundation Conference is this Saturday at Rydges in Brisbane. Max Rheese is organising a Q&A session at the Conference dinner on Saturday night, to give me some practice in advance of Monday, October 18th. Apparently there will be a 'Tony Jones' at the dinner and through him you can ask me questions. It should be a lot of fun. You can register here: http://aefweb.info/ "
Thursday 30 September 2010
Telstra continues down the path to irrelevance as Thodey tries to woo MPs with canapés & cocktails
Sunday 30 May 2010
Australian mining industry piles on the tax distortions as it tries to win over the electorate
Image from Mumbrella
Monday 24 May 2010
ICAC investigation into lobbying in New South Wales - have your say on undue influence and corruption
Communities on the NSW North Coast are subject to sustained population pressure and the growing influence of developers both large and small is distorting the democratic process in relation to planning policy and implementation at state and local level.
Here is an opportunity for Northern Rivers residents to have their say on failing processes in formal and informal interactions between government, elected representatives, public servants/local government management and communities.
From the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) website:
The Independent Commission Against Corruption is conducting an investigation into lobbying of public officials and public authorities in NSW and the related procedures and regulatory system.
The Commission is seeking input from individuals and organisations through a call for submissions which must be received at the Commission by 5pm Wednesday 23 June 2010. See the guide for making a submission for more information.
Submissions may respond to the Commission's issues paper on lobbying, the investigation scope and purpose and other relevant issues concerning lobbying in NSW.
Lobbying in NSW - issues paper
Guide for making a submission to the ICAC
Scope and purpose of the investigation
The scope and purpose of the investigation is to examine whether the relationship between lobbyists and public authorities and public officials may allow, encourage or cause the occurrence of corrupt conduct or conduct connected with corrupt conduct and to identify whether any laws governing any public authority or public official need to be changed and whether any methods of work, practices or procedures of any public authority or public official could allow, encourage or cause the occurrence of corrupt conduct and if so, what changes should be made.
Is your local council using this tool?
The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has recently released a Development assessment internal audit tool. The ICAC recommends that councils adapt all or part of this tool to address the potential corruption risks within the development assessment process.
Wednesday 11 November 2009
Are we in danger of entering a new faith-inspired Dark Ages or are we witnessing conservative right-wing religion's last hurrah?
The media quite often throws up quotes by religious leaders on the subject of global warming and some journalists have a penchant for picking those clerics who are most likely to be firmly anti-science.
So, are we in danger of entering a new faith-inspired Dark Ages or are we witnessing conservative right-wing religion's last hurrah? Now there is a question which itself smacks of as much wishful thinking on my part as that demonstrated by climate change sceptics within the clergy.
I don't think that there is any danger of paternalistic traditional religion fading away or its right-wing cadres disappearing into thin air. It's much more likely that when climate change descends on the heads of these faith-based sceptics we will all be told chronic water scarcity, food shortages and all our violent weather woes are God's punishment for our manifest sins.
Still, egged on by certain dominant groups and paid lobbyists, those against the idea that there is any such thing as catastrophic man-made global warming are now firmly entrenched in the religious arena. It would be folly to ignore the ability of religious groups to influence government policy, particularly in the role of stalking horse for big business.
Recent shifts in COP15 2009 rhetoric from binding legal agreements to non-binding political agreements being the goal for Copenhagen this December are no coincidence, as the alliances forged between anti-science groups supported by polluting industries and right-wing religious groups are emerging into the light.
On the U.S. faith-based Cornwall Alliance website currently there is a copy of An Open Letter to the Signers of"Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action"and Others Concerned About Global Warming which states:In the accompanying document, "A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming," we present extensive evidence and argument against the extent, the significance, and perhaps the existence of the much-touted scientific consensus on catastrophic human-induced global warming. Further, good science–like truth–is not about counting votes but about empirical evidence and valid arguments.
The website also features The Cornwall Stewardship Agenda and is listed by that secular anti-global warming group The Heartland Institute as one of its 2009 conference co-sponsors.
Even Australia is not immune - for years Catholic Cardinal George Pell has been a member of the anti-science chorus and been quoted in media as saying that he is not convinced that climate change poses a threat, which shores up Monbiot's theory that many of the vocal global warming denialists appear to be middle aged to elderly.
While Christian right-wing political parties Family First and the Christian Democratic Party have both frequently taken highly sceptical, contradictory and often unreasonable positions on the existence of man-made warming. Although these two political parties are not alone in their desire to deny. The Liberal-Nationals Coalition is also riddled with anti-science sentiment as illustrated by the recent ABC Four Corners episode Malcolm and the Malcontents [Program Transcript and Reports and Resources].
It would not surprise me if findings of the October 2009 Pew Research Centre survey on attitudes to climate change were mirrored in Australia (this American survey found that the belief that global warming was a very serious problem had fallen by 27 percent within the combined 50 years of age and over groups and only 9 percent within the combined 49 years of age and under groups. These changes occurring in a sixteen month period). Indeed the summary of The 2009 Lowy Institute Poll appears to indicate that this is possible, however the 1,003 respondents do not appear to have been differentiated across all age groupings - at least for public consumption.
Monday 2 November 2009
In 2007 Monsanto spent US$4M+ on lobbying, in 2008 it spent US$8M+, while in 2009....
Graph U.S. Agricultural sector lobbying expenditure 2009
Monsanto & Co. continues to expand its dominance of the world seed and genetically modified food additive markets with certain of its corporate expenses rising each year this century.
In 2006 this biotech multinational spent over US$3 million on lobbying governments and government agencies. By 2008 it was spending over US$8 million. In 2009 so far Monsanto & Co has spent over US$6 million on similar activities.
It is only one of 342 agricultural sector lobbyists in the United States listed by Open Secrets but is by far the biggest spender this year.
The U.S. agricultural lobby sector in 2009 is worth $25,721,913, has made over $2 million in campaign contributions for the American 2010 election cycle to date and Monsanto is in the top five donation contributors.
In February of this year Monsanto approached the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking a ruling that stearidonic (SDA) omega-3 soybean oil was generally recognised as safe.
Now it is reported that Monsanto is positioning itself to release soy-based GMO omega-3 oil on the market sometime after 2010 and according to a Monsanto media release the FDA has announced this month that genetically modified omega-3 oil is safe to use (however the FDA makes it plain that it has solely relied on Monsanto's own assessment).
Are we getting close to quod erat demonstrandum?
* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.