Australia's Hall of Fame
As always, he had more ideas than he knew what to do with, and one of them was to begin a series of articles badged Australia's Hall of Fame, highlighting the characters who had emerged in these recent troubled years.
Top of the Pops, he guessed, would be Matthew Martin Gray of Café Locked Out, who had distinguished himself as one of the most significant documenters of the era.
Perhaps next would be Rukshan Fernando, who moved from being a moderately successful wedding photographer to one of the best and clearly most sincere commentators.
Avi Yemini, always controversial, and Monica Smit both had new books out, forged in this era of conflict and repression.
If the government, and its institutional libraries, funded as always by Australia's beleaguered taxpayers, were doing their job, they would be right across these developments. But of course they weren't.
As for the mainstream media, it simply couldn't be relied on to do its job, with the television news jocks breathlessly lamenting the slow uptake of vaccine boosters, 80% of Australians were yet to get updated for a so-called "vaccine" which neither stopped transmission nor infection and was already the subject of class actions and massive scandal worldwide.
The cancelling of Russell Brand, even being banished from YouTube, based on anonymous allegations dating between one and two decades; that he was emotionally abusive, that he allegedly raped someone, that one of the alleged victims was 16-years-old at the time.
It was a minefield.
A deliberately manufactured minefield discouraging dissidents from rising in support and smearing him with unproveable allegations; joining the queue, Alan Tate, Australia's own Julian Assange.
If you can't do it honestly, do it by the backdoor. Dirty tricks. Smear campaigns. Everywhere the headlines on Russell Brand were the same. It wasn't just gutter journalism, it was heavily manipulated and designed to take out a rival; a man who had been highly critical of America's corrupt health bureaucracies and the companies which had made hundreds of billions of dollars out of a scare campaign now widely considered a fraud.
Who was next? Why couldn't they live with the truth? Why did the government go along with it? Why did the media corporations fall into line, or do the Deep State's dirty work for them?
Because they were all paid. Because they were all corrupt. Because they cared not one jot for the damage they did.
The disaster rolled on, ever spreading, ever evil, ever acting in the dark of night, by stealth, by deceit, by crooked remonstrance.
In this period of insane censorship and corporate and government dishonesty, the truthtellers, the canaries in the coal mine, the once admired journalists, anyone could be excised, rewritten, destroyed.
He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.
Straight out of the totalitarian play sheet.
If it could happen to Brand, with his 6.5 million followers and his repeated insistence there was a deep spiritual element to the current conflagration, it could happen to anybody.
Beware. Be cautious. You are meant to be intimidated. To retreat to silence. To stay out of the game.
While above, all around, the air thickened with intent; in these most surprising of times.
AUSTRALIAN MAINSTREAM MEDIA SITES
SBS
KEY POINTS
With over six million subscribers to his YouTube channel, Brand has repositioned himself in recent years.
Brand denied the "very serious criminal allegations" on social media hours before they were published.
Live shows planned by Brand have also been cancelled after the allegations emerged in the media.
YouTube has blocked Russell Brand from making money from his online channel after the British actor and comedian was accused of a string of sexual assaults.
Brand, once one of Britain's most high-profile comedians and broadcasters, said on Saturday he had never had non-consensual sex.
That came as the UK's Sunday Times newspaper and Channel 4 TV's documentary show Dispatches
.
London police said on Monday that
since then they had received an allegation of sexual assault dating from 2003
.
SKY
A rally outside a ‘No’ campaign event brought out the “ugly side” of the ‘Yes’ campaign as protesters hurled abuse at people entering Adelaide’s convention centre, Sky News host Peta Credlin said.
About 1,000 people attended the Fair Australia's No Campaign launch in Adelaide on Monday night, including Shadow Indigenous Affairs Minister Jacinta Price and Indigenous leader Warren Mundine.
Liberal Senator Alex Antic shared a short clip on social media of some protesters outside the venue shouting "racist pig" and "racist dog".
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas denounced the verbal attacks directed at ‘No’ campaigners on the radio on Tuesday.
“For a constitutional change that the Prime Minister said was just a matter of being polite, there's been plenty of ugliness – and nearly all of it has been from the Yes camp,” Ms Credlin said.
SMH
The Voice will help to improve wasteful and expensive Indigenous programs, according to Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney, who will highlight precise examples of how she would consult the Voice as she pitches the proposed advisory body as a solution to day-to-day problems.
Labor HQ chief Paul Erickson told party members on Tuesday the Yes side had developed positive momentum off the back of weekend city walks, as he launched a donation-matching drive to boost advertising spending and said “the pathway to victory is still open” despite many poor polls.
GUARDIAN
Young people aged 18 to 34 are still more likely than any other age group to vote yes. Yet the official TikTok account from the no campaign Fair Australia is far outstripping its opponents in terms of followers and content views.
Data collected by Guardian Australia shows Fair Australia’s content has almost 21m plays overall compared with about 1m plays on the two official pro-voice accounts, Yes23 and Uluru Statement.
The Fair Australia TikTok account has more than 47,200 followers, compared with Yes23’s 3,993 and Uluru Statement’s 4,497.
The official no campaign account dominates several of the most commonly used voice to parliament hashtags. For the most widely used hashtag, #voicetoparliament, seven of the top 10 videos by total plays were from Fair Australia.
Even on the yes-aligned hashtag #yes23, nine of the top 10 are from Fair Australia, with the first video from the Yes23 account coming in at nineteenth (see the notes below on how these stats were collected).
Fair Australia has been embracing meme formats and slickly edited video set to trending audio on the app. One of its videos, a clip of the former Liberal MP Browyn Bishop, has been played at least 1.9m times.
ABC
New economic forecasts are painting a bleak picture for the world's economy in 2024, dragged down by persistent inflation and ongoing problems in China.
Key points:
The global economy is forecast to grow 2.7 per cent next year, and Australia's economy 1.7 per cent, according to the OECD
That could cause an economic slowdown and higher unemployment in Australia, the federal government says
The two main challenges are a global rise in interest rates and the end to China's economical rebound post-pandemic
The federal government is warning that it could translate to an economic slowdown and higher unemployment in Australia.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) latest growth forecasts have revised this year's figures upwards, based on surprising economic resilience, but scaled back expectations for next year.
The global economy is now forecast to grow 2.7 per cent next year, and Australia's economy just 1.7 per cent.
The OECD, an international organisation made up of 38 wealthy countries, points to two main challenges.
The first is the impact of interest rate rises across the globe, necessary to rein in inflation, which it expects is yet to be felt in full.
The second is an end to the rebound in China's economy after its post-pandemic reopening, with its economy forecast to slow significantly.
RUKSHAN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n11Wn-opD6Q
Anthony Albanese's Voice Referendum is already highly divisive, and we have already witnessed instances of individuals from both sides engaging in behavior that should be condemned. However, the latest escalation involves organized groups of Yes supporters attending peaceful events organized by the No campaign to protest their gatherings. In stark contrast, the Yes side was able to conduct multiple peaceful walks across the country without encountering any interference from groups of No supporters, allowing them to freely gather and convey their message. In my opinion, with polls indicating a continuing decline in support for the Yes vote in this month's upcoming referendum, extreme Yes supporters are engaging in what can only be characterized as a coordinated political intimidation campaign against No supporters during peaceful political gatherings.