Their ABC's The Drum is Q and A Lite

As we all know, cultural Marxists are forever peddling bollocks. There's almost never a moment when they actually tell the truth. And when you catch them out telling porkies, they never, ever 'fess up to clear the slate. They just dig in even harder!

Take how they define freedom of speech. Of course they say they're all for it. But what they really mean is, they want the right to shout other people down.

You see this a lot on university campuses in America, and increasingly here in Oz. They quack on about how opposing viewpoints create a dangerous environment; make the students feel unsafe. They say that speech itself is violence. It's so pathetic you almost can't believe it. 

Then, when a conservative speaker does actually lob to politely make her point, the lefties go utterly spacko and trash the joint. They are clearly more violent than the so-called haters whose words and ideas they simply cannot bear to hear. 

This is of course completely obvious to any sane, rational adult. But many leftist quackademics are incapable of perceiving this massive contradiction, which shows how dim they are. That's sad -- particularly when you consider that as so-called educators they're tasked with making the yoof smarter. "Clever country" my arse! 

That said, some of these activist "professors" are well aware of how absurdly inconsistent their behaviour is. But they just don't give a rat's. For them, power trumps truth. They believe that as long as they get to boss people around, any lie is justified. It's a truly sinister attitude. 

To be fair, most lefties are not quite as extreme as this. They can and do let their opponents speak on their turf and are generally civil about it. Still, they make damn sure that they're pulling the strings. They choose the subjects to be discussed, and will ensure the moderator is on their side (while purporting to be objective, natch). If one of the hated righties is about to drop a truth bomb, he'll try to cut her off or change the topic pronto!

They also make sure that lefties outnumber the conservatives. And they invariably label the latter as such, while not doing the same for their fellow travellers (who are often radical activists if not utterly unhinged moonbats) instead describing them merely as experts, writers, commentators, etc -- zif they're sage-like and totally unbiased! FFS. What a joke. 

Q and A is a perfect example of this tried and trusted leftist tactic of stacking the decks in their favour, while purporting to be fair and balanced. (Please check out some of my previous takes on individual episodes.)

Their ABC has another, more low key panel "debate" show called The Drum. Its politically correct bias is not as obvious as it is on Q and A. But it's still there.

In recent weeks this bias has become an issue on Twitter, with the show's host Julia Baird tweeting this:

Maybe Baird is actually being honest here. Perhaps she really does think that she's playing with a straight bat.

But the fact that she touts her post-grad qualifications in her Twitter profile is significant, IMO. It's like she's saying she's smarter than other tweeps.

And this smug, superior attitude is common on campuses across Oz. Tertiary education here is almost totally dominated by cultural Marxism, an elitist ideology if ever there was one. Campus "thinkers" see it as their duty to figure out what's best for the plebs, then get them to go along with their daffy utopian plans whether they like it or not.

While some sane adults do appear on The Drum, they are clearly outnumbered by the sneering hipsters, many of whom are full-time quackademics. Some are broadcasters with that background who've spent years poncing about in ivory towers congratulating themselves for their compassionate far-sightedness. Take Peter Van Onselen for example:

Wow. Talk about intellectual hubris.

He's like Tim Flannery -- another quackademic who's forever predicting the future, only to be regularly confounded by reality.

You've gotta wonder why he has a such a daffy view. Seems to me that because he dearly wants this child-brained utopian vision to come true -- or at least sees it as some kind of moral advancement -- then he believes it's gonna happen for sure.

But one thing you learn as you get older (if you're paying attention, that is) is that people tend to do what they want to do, not what you think they should do. And you can never know for sure what'll happen even in the relative short term. Even a coupla years ago, who would have thought that the UK, that bastion of democracy and free speech, would now be imprisoning those reporting on organized rape gangs to maintain the lies of political correctness?

But even if PVO is correct, and the so-called progressives continue to increase their power over us, he forgets to consider the effects of intersectionality. That is, if animal rights rule then plant rights'll follow, natch. So even veganism will be verboten in time. The woke'll chant: "Meat is murder! Hommus is hommuside!" Eventually everyone'll be so dang hangry they'll all go back to BBQs ...

In any case I shouldn't be too harsh on Van Onselen. He's by no means the silliest of The Drum's guests. Take Vanessa "Van" Badham. She seems to be on there every second week, peddling her trademark brand of sour, self-obsessed wrong-headedness. And she always seems to be wearing weird Carmen Miranda style headgear. One time it looked like she'd stuffed a giant half-eaten doughnut in her locks, no kidding!

One can only guess why she dons such OTT garb. Her verbose and pompous pronouncements are ridiculous enough already ... Maybe it's a feminist version of Pirate Pete's trademark red bandana? She's changed her name to sound more masculine ("Van" -- sounds like "man", geddit?) so I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. 

Hanson-hater Burnside goes bonkers over "blackshirts"

Nothing that your local leftie luvvies love more than sneering at "rednecks", particularly ones from Queensland -- or the "deep north" as they like to call it.

I always find their use of that particular term kinda funny. It comes from America, after all. Given that they routinely confuse countries with cultures, isn't that a clear case of "cultural appropriation"? 

Anyhoo, you often see this progressive racism on Twitter. Earlier this week, for example, Julian Burnside QC indulged in some of it during Q and A.

Take this cheap shot, in which he sneeringly mocks Pauline Hanson's accent.

Explicitly ridiculing a person's speech is cruel because it's something they can't change. It's like making fun of someone with a stutter or a lisp. Not a good look generally. And it's made worse here because this guy is forever fobbing himself off as "Australia's Most Compassionate Man".

And it's so classist! Because Ms Hanson doesn't speak with the clipped elegance of the eminent Melbourne Queen's Counsel and his tertiary educated ilk, he enjoys making jokes at her expense. Like so many of the latte Left, he is basically an elitist snob. Ol' "Crown Jules" really oughta check his privilege.

He's also not the sharpest pencil in the box (or should that be the "loudest gavel"?). Earlier on, he tweeted this about Ms Hanson:

A question for my "learned" friend: Mate, if Pauline Hanson's accent is so, er, boganistically "incomprehensible" to your oh so delicate ear, then how the fark do you actually know that what she's saying is genuinely "racist"?

C'mon Julian. Please explain.

Crown Jules cranked out more unwitting comedy as Q and A wore on. He asked this question about plods' uniforms: 

I'm now living in Sydney, so I'm not sure what exact hue the Victorian constabulary's clobber is. Several helpful tweeps suggested that they wore dark blue, not black. 

In any case, I don't think it's a stretch to conclude that this was another example of Crown Jules' rather worrying tendency to see fascism everywhere. (There was that notorious recent retweet of his about Peter Dutton, remember.)

Seems his febrile, luvvie mind was bubbling with images of jackbooted goons employed by the state to stamp out dissent with extreme prejudice. (So funny, because if the Victorian Police are reminiscent of another force it's not Mussolini's blackshirts, but the the Keystone Cops!)

If you think my conclusion is OTT then check out this other tweet of his:

Gawd. Talk about paranoid ...

Not to mention completely and utterly wrongheaded: Like all regressive lefties, Burnside is gullible enough to think that Parkland shooting sleb David Hogg and his teen team of avenging angels are actually the real deal!

Sooo obvious to any sane, rational adult that they are actually the mere puppets of wily Democrats and fellow "liberals" way older and more powerful than they are. Hogg is definitely more deserving of the "Nazi" tag than Dutton could ever be.

As that other -- far more intelligent and well informed -- Aussie Julian remarked, zealously pushing for gun control is a hallmark of fascist regimes across the globe.

I think I'll be calling my favourite latte leftie Julian Blindside from now on ...

Julian Burnside's troll list is a silly attempt at public shaming

Thing I find fascinating about regressive lefties is how emotionally driven and tribal they are. Defending the side and not the principle is par for the course for these muppets ... So deep-seated are these psychological forces that many prominent, capable professionals often act in amusingly daft and incoherent ways as a result. And here's a good example of this from Twitter:

Julian Burnside QC is obviously getting severely stressed by the constant criticism and attacks on him on social media. So he came up with the idea of compiling a shame list of right-wing trolls to put on his blog.

Lefties love this kind of stuff, natch. Collectivists to the core, they really get off on demonizing, discrediting and disqualifying their opponents en masse -- just as they love to assemble with scores of their smug fellow travellers and congratulate themselves on how fricken "compassionate" they are!

These days, being "progressive" is all about feeling superior to the rest of humanity. They are the most grotesquely elitist snobs you can imagine ... The fact that they then have the gall to claim they're actually egalitarians makes you wanna burst out laughing and barf at the same time!

Then there's their massive double standard. Trolling is practised right across the political spectrum, of course. But for vicious online abuse, lefties have gotta be the worst. Just look at their infantile insults under any tweet by a conservative commentator or pollie and you'll see what I mean.

And it's a bit rich for Julian Burnside himself to be calling out trolls when he recently tweeted this about Peter Dutton:

Now I doubt that qualifies as defo. Tweeps have a lot of leeway when sledging pollies, it seems. Political speech is routinely hyperbolic, after all. And the targets tend to have much thicker skin than most. (Dutto in particular seems not only rhino-hided but pangolin-skinned and armadillo-amoured as well!) That said, I seriously doubt that many high profile business figures would be so legally indifferent to such an outrageous insinuation. 

In any case that tweet is certainly trolling by any reasonable definition. While Burnside was merely retweeting the Nazi image, he was certainly endorsing the comparison. And he did tag Dutton, who would have seen it for sure.

Not surprisingly, Burnside copped a helluva lot of criticism for that particular tweet, as he describes here.

Pretty clear that butthurt over that condemnation was a big part of his motivation for compiling the troll list. Such a typically leftist reaction, that. Rather then contemplate his own actions and accept that the tweet was beyond the pale (especially for a prominent player such as himself) he doubled down and said "look over there!".

So determined was he to shame his attackers and critics that he put out a call for help to compile this list:

Not surprisingly he got an enthusiastic reaction from his febrile following of leftist losers. Predictably, they were listing pretty much anyone they disagreed with as "trolls". 

To his credit, Burnside actually tried to narrow the definition:

Hilariously, prominent Burnside fellow traveller Vanessa "Van" Badham offered assistance with her block list -- which prolly contains about half the Oz Twittersphere. Soon after, some of Burnside's own -- very "progressive" -- supporters complained that they were actually on it!

Clearly Badham thinks they qualify as trolls, or something similar. And if Burnside values her judgement then he should include their handles in his list, shouldn't he?

Or maybe not ... Looks like ol' Julian's got some sortin' to do!

Such a microcosm for the Left, this. They crave a pile on so deeply that they inevitably end up making fools of themselves.

In any case Burnside is pressing on with his project. The first installment is up now.

Ball tampering furor fuelled by identity politics

I'm not really into sport of any kind these days. And I've never been one for cricket. So I haven't followed this whole ball tampering scandal very closely.

Still, given the intensity of the minute by minute media coverage of this still unfolding story, along with the public's reaction to it, it's clear that Aussies not only absolutely love cricket and its culture, they also take the issue of cheating extremely seriously.

This is strongly related to the Aussie cultural obsession with honourably observing agreed upon rules. You've gotta be fair dinkum everywhere, especially the sports field!

Obviously other nations take the issue of fair play in sport seriously too. But they don't seem to be quite as obsessed with it as we are here.

That said, it seems to me that while what the players did was wrong and they should've been punished, what they actually copped from TPTB was massively OTT. And the gleeful mainstream and social media pile-on has been disturbing, to say the least.

As with so many things these days, a major component in this whole scandal is the current obsession with identity politics. When the story first broke there were heaps of social media updates about how this kind of cheating was so typical of "white male privilege" and an example of "toxic masculinity".
 

I suspect that officials in Cricket Australia got wind of this infantile wailing by brainwashed tweeps and Facebookers and thought: "Yikes! The whole nation is out for blood. We'd better come down hard or we'll be called raaacist as well ... And that of course is the absolute worst thing in the world!"

So they did. And even when the punished players cried very real tears of shame and remorse many of the same lefties baying for their blood were not satisfied and kept kicking, or gloated at their ability to have such a devasting effect.

Even now in some of the seemingly less judgemental MSM commentary on the fallout from the ball tampering scandal, the same child-brained obsession with "toxic masculinity" remains.

The whole sorry clarsterfark is yet another example of people in positions of power believing a false narrative pushed by the PC Left and acting accordingly. They've really gotta start ignoring these arseholes and their nasty tactics or every institution is doomed, no kidding. 

Marcia Langton abuses Mark Latham on Twitter. Projection personified!

Now we all know that PC lefties suffer from arrested development. Emotionally, they are like spoiled brats. They think that everything is all about them and their precious feels. And they reckon that when it comes to issues of social justice only they care; that anyone who disagrees with them must be a heartless hater. So they're always falsely accusing others of the intense disdain that they themselves feel for their political opponents. In short, they project.

You see this all the time on Twitter. Here's an absolutely perfect example of it: After reading a typically dishonest Guardian gargle about Mark Latham -- which itself omitted key facts about why the ex-pollie and current cant-buster was criticizing the Bankstown Poetry Slam -- prominent Indigenous academic Marcia Langton expressed her wish that he die a "slow, painful death".

It was just amazingly mean-spirited. What's even more astonishing is that she described him as the truly spiteful one -- implying that his death would erase hate -- in the very same tweet!

Upon reading it any sane, reasonable person would think: "WTAF is going on in this poor woman's head?"

Even some lefties woulda looked at it and said: "Yeah, not nice ... Still, Latham had it coming. He's a hater, no doubt about it."

Sure, Latho can be vitriolic and aggro. And he'll give as good as he gets -- and then some. But I've never known him to actually, seriously wish death upon someone else. Which is clearly what Langton did here.

Even more gob-smacking is the fact that she left the tweet up for quite a while -- a coupla days I think ... It is gone now, so maybe someone had a quiet word to her. Or perhaps she slowly realized how foolish it made her appear.

Still, the level of loathing in the tweet -- not to mention lack of judgement it demonstrated -- is a worry. And there's zero chance she'll suffer any negative consequences for it, of course.

You only have to contrast the professional immunity she enjoys with what happened to Professor Barry Spurr, who resigned from the University of Sydney because of the almighty ruckus over some off colour private e-mail correspondence that was meant to be humorous.

And people wonder why so many uni students are tragically right-on zombies these days. Yeah, well. Go figure.

You don't go to uni to "learn" any more. On the contrary -- "unlearning" is all the rage (rage being the operative word, clearly).

Menzies Research Center's Twitter event triggers trollective, and trends!

Last night I went along to an informative and entertaining event at the Menzies Research Center. It was aimed at encouraging those of the non-leftist persuasion (otherwise known as sane adults) to get active on Twitter.

There is absolutely no doubt that the platform "leans left", both in the membership and management. Data proves this, and it becomes crystal clear anyway if you haven't been guzzling the PC Kool-Aid all your life and you sign up and start tweeting. Joint is chockas with feral lefties who love nothing more than finding a tweep guilty of "wrongthink" and piling onto him with the most vile, witless abuse imaginable. (For shorthand, I call this tragic tribe of cowardly bullies "the trollective".)

Now, a lot of righties avoid it like the plague because it's so dominated by the Left. Not worth fighting them on their turf, they say. That's a fair point but remember that the MSM repeatedly (and dishonestly) cites tweets zif they are representative of the wider population's views. This allows them to keep peddling their fake news narrative, which they then leverage to skew the debate in Canberra, among other things. 

If growing numbers of normies are on there tweeting up a storm, however, it becomes a bit harder for Fairfax, their ABC, Buzzfeed and the like to keep selling their snake oil. This was one of the main motivations for the event, which was organized and emceed by the Menzies Center's Fred Pawle, and featured noted reporter and columnist Caroline Marcus, the prolific witty tweep Monsterdome, and veteran rhino-hided commentator Chris Kenny.

The event was live-streamed on Facebook and several of those present (including yours twooly) tweeted the relevant hashtag (#MRCTwitterWars) throughout. This gathered quite a bit of momentum and it actually became a trending topic for much of the night.

Now this was quite a small event specifically aimed at non-lefties. So it clearly provoked quite a large reaction from the Left. 

Many of these tweets were as vile as they were stupid, natch. But not all of them were. Some were merely excruciatingly pompous. Take those of one Patrick Stokes for example.

Now, Dr Stokes (for a doctor he is) often brings his powerful intellect to bear on contentious issues, taking prominent political figures to task. Here he is "schooling" Lyle Shelton for "category errors" for example:

There's politically correct "thinking" in a nutshell: Gender and biological sex are separate categories. As Gerard Henderson himself might say: "Can you bear it?" (I would love to see Stokes in a debate with another, far more prominent and clear-thinking academic -- and writer of this best seller -- Jordan Peterson. I think I know who'll get schooled then.)

But back to the hashtag at hand: Dr Stokes zeroed in on the event's "win at Twitter" label and concluded that the participants were guilty of "sophism".

Sophism? Gawd.

I think he was reading far too much into it. I was there and it was pretty much WYSIWYG -- hardly intellectually dishonest. If anything, it was advocating stoicism ... Actually, I think it mighta been Dr Stokes himself who made the biggest "category error", don't you?

And don't you love his line that Twitter shouldn't just be used to win, but "to know more and be better human beings than we were when we started".

Because that's what the Left are all about, right? They're such a learned, edifying bunch aren't they?

Yeah, right ... Take this sophisticated contribution from a self-described "comrade", still holding a kennel for the Chaser.

And here's a perfect example of the kind of "progressive" misogyny Chris Kenny specifically mentioned on the night.

Oh look, here's some more! This delightful tweet was provoked by Ms Marcus's quite reasonable and accurate observation that Twitter is basically people proverbially shitting on each other. 

Plenty more where that came from. It really was the tip of the shitberg.

Almost refreshingly some of the snark was more subtle. Take this dog whistling about the newly unmasked Monsterdome's appearance:

Predictably, Asher's followers got the hint and piled on with markedly less restraint:

Sure, MD is "no oil painting". Most of us blokes are -- particularly when we get into middle age and beyond. But to imply someone resembles a rapist because you disagree with him is just putrid.

This vicious mockery of opponents' appearance is made worse by the fact that it's lefties themselves who are so keen to condemn others for "lookism". (As a semi-baldie myself, I'm used to the brazen domophobia. Currently compiling an official AHRC complaint as a victim of "pate speech".)

Back to Ms Wolf:

Well, she wasn't watching very closely. There were many good observations on this very subject from all panellists on the night. Take this list of ten tips from Monsterdome, for example:

Go through each of those points in turn. You'll see that the PC leftist approach for each is pretty much the exact opposite. (Spookily, it's a bit like how Satanists view the Ten Commandments.)

When we zig, they zag. When we talk, they squawk!

Triggering the trollective is twitloads of fun. That in itself is reason enough to be on Twitter, so please do feel free to join us ...

UPDATE: Several short videos now up on YouTube.

Chinese New Year Festival inflatables brighten up Circular Quay

One of the PC Left's main gripes about Australia is how terribly raaacist we are. But this accusation is obviously bollocks. Walk down any crowded street in Sydney, for example, and you'll see people of a whole range of ethnicities. It's a truly global city without a doubt. 

Then there are the various cultural festivals held throughout the year. Right now, for example, it's Chinese New Year. There are many events on in Sydney in celebration of it.

Its presence is pervasive. Take Circular Quay. Currently there are numerous giant inflatables placed in various locations within it. They give the place a colourful and, dare I say it, exotic quality that the crowds clearly appreciate.

Obviously each of these figures has a unique back story. But what I like about the whole display is that you can create your own narratives out of it if you wish.  

There's a giant dragon in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art, for example. It appears to have a humanoid figure (reminiscent of a Teletubby!) holding a golden orb sitting on its tongue. I'm not sure what this symbolizes but it's certainly intriguing.

Resting regally right next to the train station platform is a huge tiger. He seems to be peering towards the small park near The Rocks.

In that particular location are a team of brightly coloured rabbits doing Tai Chi!

These guys are really "in the zone". Check out their expressions of intense focus:

Perhaps such self-possession is required given the potential threat presented by the big cat nearby?

Speaking of which, there's a large ram right near the water below and behind the tiger. Understandably, he looks a bit nervous.

When I got this shot, the ferry named in honour of Victor Chang was docked nearby. Kind of spooky given the context, and maybe a case of "sino-synchronicity".

Looking down towards The Sydney Opera House, at the base of "The Toaster" apartments, are three wise monkeys. 

Not quite sure what they are so desperate to avoid knowledge of ... Perhaps, like Paul Keating, they are just simply appalled by the "architectural monstrosity" behind them?

There are several other charming installations placed throughout this iconic location. Definitely worth a visit while the festival is on.