Imagine over Sydney: photo by Kate Asmussen via ABC website

Imagine there’s no News Corp
It’s easy if you try
No Times to screw us
No lousy Sun or Sky
Imagine all the media
Caring for the truth

Imagine there’s no Fox News
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no Australian too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

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___

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Exclusive new ‘Leak of the Week’ special

Julia Gillard blames Kevin Rudd for a policy designed by “fools, crims and spooks”, according to a source located somewhere in far north Queensland.

Julia Gillard with Cairns blogger Michael Moore: new talent?

Referring to Senator Conroy’s ‘mandatory internet censorship scheme’, Ms Gillard is clearly furious she’s has been set up by “very silly boys” in the Rudd Government.

Julia Gillard & MP Jim Turnour: who's leaking?

My source informs me Gillard knows full well she has to fix this mess before the election – and that the crucial Communications Portfolio must be run by a competent woman if she wins.

“It’s no job for a boy!” the exasperated Gillard is rumoured to have murmured.

In a rare moment of candour, while appearing to relax in tropical foliage surrounded by birdsong and noisy frog mating calls, the new Prime Minister hinted she knows what deep trouble Labor has got itself into over the widely reviled and creepy ‘mandatory internet filter’ policy.

But in a senational new revelation, my source suggests Gillard is still trying to find the testicular fortitude to stand up to the Zionist Lobby, ASIO and powerful mass media interests, all of whom have long regarded the ALP leadership as compliant poodles.

A recent SMH internet censorship opinion poll: Rudd's psephologists told him not to worry

Laurie Oakes: likes a leak

The minor curfuffle over Laurie Oakes’ latest leak revelation – coming fast on the heels of Chris Uhlmann’s leak expose following Oakes’ previously announced leak – has obscured the really big leak which this blog is proud to bring to a breathless Australian public.

It’s a world exclusive.

Chris Uhlmann: ABC leak expert

According to an anonymous Canberra insider, Australian Opposition leader Tony Abbott recently told a top-secret meeting of his election team to avoid discussing the Gillard Government’s Internet censorship plans.

“The Coalition would love to gain extra votes by opposing this irrational, authoritarian and highly unpopular Labor policy – but Abbott’s high-level contacts in the mass media and security agencies told him to shut up and conform” the source explained, on condition of  anonymity.

Abbott apparently urged his colleagues to “get elected!”

[Laurie Joakes and Chris Buhllman are senior member of the highly respected Canberra Press Gallery with virtually unlimited credibility]

Who said Australian politics are boring?

Australian Luddite Party

This year, a Luddite party is running for office.

According to bookmakers, it’s likely to win.

For further details visit the Australian Luddite Party‘s website – appropriately decked out in patriotic red, white and blue.

A politician is an arse upon which everybody has sat except a woman

(With honourable exceptions)

Australia’s new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is entitled to a private life that’s private – as are we all.

She’s entitled to have boyfriends, girlfriends, dog friends, cats or any other kind of friends. They too are entitled to privacy.

Albert Dadon, Australia Israel Cultural Exchange Chairman. Not Julia Gillard's boyfriend. Likes: real estate deals and Israel. May like curry.

But Australians also like to be confident that their leaders represent genuine ‘whole-of-community’ interests, free from partisan bias.

Today comes the revelation that Gillard’s current boyfriend sells expensive real estate for the Ubertas Group. Ubertas’ managing director, Albert Dadon, is Chairman of the Australia Israel Cultural Exchange which helped organize the controversial ‘bipartisan’ trip to Israel last year.

Surely the only fair reaction to this story is to forget all about it?

After all, no-one would have cared two hoots if, back in the 1970s, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser had taken a lover who peddled Krugerrands! No-one would would have blinked had former PM Rudd bedded a man selling real estate on behalf of an Iranian immigrant who actively supported its Government.

Such purely personal, lifestyle choices would have attracted no mass media interest, as their politicial implications would clearly have been neglible. Australia is a mature multicultural society and there’s no place in this society for bigotry of any sort.

More durable than Robert Maxwell, Rupert Murdoch was always much more than a purveyor of smutty sensationalism as suggested in this 1970 Private Eye Front Cover.

For more than four decades, Murdoch has been the man at the helm (although perhaps not the ultimate controller?) of a mushrooming media and entertainment empire.

Over the years, The Empire has peddled war, paranoia, pro-Israel spin and lies about mass murder.

Way beyond a joke, when you think about it.

Private Eye Front Cover, April 24th 1970

After five decades, the last journalist with guts in the Washington Press Gallery retires in a hurry.

Helen Thomas – an institution at the age of 89 who has served as part of Washington’s Press Corp since the Kennedy era – was finally brought down by comments she made at a Jewish Heritage celebration at the White House on May 27th.

Asked if she had any advice for Israelis, she suggested they “get the hell out of Palestine“. It was a curiously tactless remark. Needless to say, it’s considered ‘indefensible’ in today’s USA. Had Helen been 19, she might have been tasered. This time The Lobby had to be content with her ‘retirement’.

This is the retraction statement issued via her website:

Helen Thomas issued the following statement today:   “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.” (June 4, 2010)

So, in the elite cadres of US journalism these days, it’s OK to lie about mass murder and illegal wars on a daily basis. But say something that jars at the spoilt child’s birthday party.. that’s criminal! (It’s also a most convenient time for The Lobby to throw a spat over ‘anti-Semitism’ – as more than one commentator has noticed.)

After last week, you may be thinking that the Israeli regime are a bunch of arrogant, murdering, maiming, lying shysters.

Making light of murder, laughing at the worl

Sad to say, you’d be right.

But what you may have missed is their sense of humour. Netanyahu – and all the junior yahoos who steer the nuclear-armed Israeli Ship of Rogues – aren’t just surly war criminals. They like a laugh too.

I just spotted this mind-numbing tale, contributed by Ayman Mohyeldin, on the Al Jazeera website: Israeli government’s media madness

It’s short – and I trust acceptable to quote in entirety [emphasis added]:

For weeks the Israeli government has bombarded journalists with statements, press releases and videos - all professing that Gaza is not suffering a humanitarian crisis, there is no shortage of goods entering the Strip and even mocking the suffering of people in Gaza by recommending restaurants to visit in the coastal territory.

It also went so far as to claim those on board the Freedom Flotilla had links to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. They showed us edited video clips of military footage supporting their version of events as to what happened onboard the Mavi Marmara – reports that are now widely discredited by eyewitness accounts.

That is the Israeli narrative of events and it is certainly within their rights to espouse it.