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Rabbit holes distract Corruption? Let’s remind ourselves of Joh from truth seeking A
There I was last week, reading the latest Echo, nodding in agreement with Phillip Frazer, smiling at Mandy’s column, shaking my head over the weird Trump equals Julius Caesar article, when I was suddenly brought to a halt by page 10. WTF? Some poor person down a rabbit hole and, instead of helping, the newspaper is publishing a long account of this predicament? And this week, Politics in the Pub, which had a long history of presenting respected academics and thinkers with credibility, has apparently been replaced by conspiracy theorists. It must be the local terrain. Some people dig themselves into rabbit holes, aka conspiracy theories, and they don’t want to get out because their tunnelling has revealed the sinister framework that exists behind the world’s apparent randomness. Any evidence to the contrary is itself proof of the grand conspiracy. Of course we are lied to by media, by corporations and by governments, but they are not coordinated, cohesive, all-encompassing lies. Believing that the forces of darkness are so powerful that they control every facet of society, except for the brave individuals ‘doing their own research’ on the net, is a kind of victim mentality. We have every reason to be suspicious of the motives of tax-evading corporations, of the reckless adoption by police and banks of facial recognition and other AI devices, of governments’ obsession with ‘security’ over freedom, of dozens of developments that need the attention of involved citizens. But seeing all these problems as links in one giant plot leads to trumped-up fables of good and bad. It becomes easier to deal in black and white rather than the messy, grey-shaded, manylevelled, complicated reality that constitutes the world. Last year was rich in new conspiracy theories. Who needs chemtrails, or 9/11 when the novel coronavirus was created in a lab financed by Bill Gates, whose vaccine will contain a microchip to take over your mind? Better still, the spurious ‘plandemic’ is part of the babysacrificing lizard people’s attack on us, which will ultimately be revealed and repelled by Donald J Trump. America may be the cradle of most conspiracy theories, but closer to home two federal government MPs, George Christensen and Craig Kelly, have posted many inflammatory falsehoods about the US election and COVID-19. The prime minister, when asked why he allows them to propagate dangerous disinformation, answered that it is a matter of free speech. The obvious rejoinder is that any responsible prime minister would use his own free speech to point out that Messrs Christensen and Kelly are full of shit. Sometimes the accumulation of evidence to disprove a conspiracy theory is not enough. We need an overview of the mechanisms that cause such theories to take hold, and people need help to get free of them. Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories by Mick West is an excellent resource, as is his website www. metabunk.org. For quick checking of stories that sound either dubious or too good to be true, try www.snopes.com. It’s hard to find the balance between a rational distrust of people and organisations with their own agenda and falling down the rabbit hole of total paranoia, but it is what the times seem to demand of us. David Lovejoy, Echo co-founder
s a Brisbane teenager in Sir Joh’s stifling, authoritarian, corrupt police state, I’d buy a Nation Review each week to read Mungo on federal politics. His dark humour grounded in passionate belief gave me a way to see a Queensland politics that had hope in it. When I mentioned this on Twitter after Mungo died, several Tweeps said yep, that’s what they did and how they felt too. My big cause now is the urgent need for a strong federal ICAC. There’s only one way to make it happen, citizens in Coalition seats need to insist their MPs support the bill by Indi independent Helen Haines (now backed by Labor, the Greens and every cross bench Senator and MP except One Nation). The Fitzgerald Royal Commission delivered Queensland from our Trump, contemptuous of media, promoter of fake cancer-cure gurus, jackbooter of opponents through his police. His Country Party ruled by outrageous gerrymander for 23 years without any serious impediment to his government’s rampant corruption, lawless police force and stacked judiciary. Our media was complicit. My little story: Police misbehaviour became so grotesque Sir Joh set up a Police Complaints Tribunal led by a mate, District Court judge Eric Pratt. He never found a cop guilty and his findings were unreported. Thanks to a gutsy chief of staff at The Courier Mail I reported a gobsmacking not guilty finding detailed in the Queensland Law Society Journal. The police reporter’s ‘get off my round’ note landed on my desk. I reported another gobsmacking innocent finding, and Judge Pratt invited the editor and the police reporter to the Tribunal office and, I was told, proved to them there was nothing amiss. End of coverage. When the Sir Joh for PM movement took off, The Courier Mail sent reporters all over the State for reaction. I went to the North Queensland town I grew up in, Mackay, and found that my ballet teacher and the pieman who sold us kids pies ’n peas and a bottle of Coke for lunch at school thought he’d make a good PM.
The Byron Shire Echo Volume 35 #31 January 13, 2021 Established 1986 • 24,000 copies every week The Echo acknowledges the people of the Bundjalung nation as the traditional custodians of this land and extends respect to elders past, present and future. Disclaimer: The Echo is committed to providing a voice for our whole community. The views of advertisers, letter writers, and opinion writers are not necessarily those of the owners or staff of this publication.
www.echo.net.au Phone: 02 6684 1777 Editorial/news: editor@echo.net.au Advertising: adcopy@echo.net.au Office: Village Way, Stuart Street, Mullumbimby NSW 2482 General Manager Simon Haslam Editor Hans Lovejoy Photographer Jeff Dawson Advertising Manager Angela Harris Production Manager Ziggi Browning
Nicholas Shand 1948–1996 Founding Editor
They knew nothing about the reality. They just liked him. The paper’s Phil Dickie tried to break open the overt prostitution and illegal gambling rackets operating under police protection in the Valley in Brisbane, but his work was legalled into an incomprehensible mess. The uber-corrupt minister for everything, Russ Hinze, said there was no prostitution or illegal gambling in Queensland and that was that. But when the ABC’s ‘Moonlight State’ documentary definitively proved the big lie, while Sir Joh was overseas, his deputy called the Fitzgerald Royal Commission. Tony Fitzgerald slowly, transparently opened Queenslanders’ eyes and took us all with him – including my ballet teacher and the pieman – to transform our State electorally, and politically, with a Crime and Misconduct Commission, because he earned our trust and became the most admired man in our State. He paid the price. Of course he did. He lost his precious privacy, and his destiny, to be a High Court judge, was thwarted owing to National Party animus. The current federal government is deeply corrupt, and everyone who takes an interest in politics knows it. Take a look at Scott Morrison’s sorry excuse for a federal ICAC bill, published under extreme pressure from Helen Haines’ campaign late last year. It’s a protection racket for politicians and public servants, yet another #ScottyfromMarketing scam. I was going to write about all that, but a day after agreeing to write for The Echo, the world watched the humiliation of America’s
deeply corrupt democracy. I was in our Parliament as a reporter in 1996, when renegade protesters at an ACTU rally forced their way through the front door. It was frightening – 90 people injured – but they were never a chance to enter the Parliament or MPs’ offices. They didn’t get past the public foyer. Yet this ‘mob’ from the US – which included GOP state MPs, off duty police officers, defence force veterans and company executives – stopped certification of the presidential election, trashed the Speaker’s office, occupied the Senate Chamber, and defecated in the seat of power in the world’s most powerful nation. America was unmasked. It was one of those days, like S11, when you’ll remember where you were when the world changed. I’m still in shock. America is in free fall as its viciously authoritarian rival for world leadership spreads its wings. Scary times for Australia as we face climate change horror. Queensland had its Trump, and we emerged and thrived owing to the ABC and a Royal Commissioner we trusted and empowered. We cleaned up our system and became a real, vibrant democracy. If Australians believe democracy is the best way to survive the dangers ahead, we need to clean it up. We need to elect people to federal politics who want to serve the public interest, not themselves. We need a federal ICAC led by a person we trust. We need a strong ABC. Only we can make it happen. Politics as entertainment is over. Time to get serious. As Mungo always, always, was.
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The Echo presents political writer and author Margo Kingston. In her own words, ‘[Margo] was a mainstream (MSM) journo, who thrived till she didn’t’. She now describes herself as a ‘citizen journo and climate change activist’. She is best known for her work at The Sydney Morning Herald and her weblog, Webdiary (webdiary.com.au). Margo’s 2004 book Not Happy, John was republished and updated in 2007. It inspired the ‘Not happy, John!’ campaign, of which she was a founding member.
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