A senior keeper of the words explains why territories are disputed, why Palestine is a special-occasion word and why, in the last three years, almost 300 dead journalists were simply found.
Category: Political Commentary & Analysis, Political Satire, Press Freedom, Media & Journalism, Australian History & Politics, Corporate Power & Democracy
Sons of Toil, Part I: The Toolmaker’s Bequest
Keir Rodney Starmer came into the world named after the great Scottish agitator who opposed a popular war and was expelled from Parliament for it. The naming was the most radical act the Starmer family would perform for the next six decades. After that, everything moved in precisely the opposite direction.
The Invisible Press, Part 3: The Deniability Machine
Hannah Arendt sat in a converted theatre in Jerusalem in 1961 and watched a gaunt, bespectacled man in a glass booth follow history through headphones. She called it the banality of evil. She was not writing about Australia. She did not need to. The third and final part of The Great Digital Enclosure.
The Invisible Press, Part 2
The Australian Harrow does not use needles. It uses bail conditions, suppression orders, national security legislation, and pre-trial process that can run for years before a single day in open court. David McBride got six years in gaol for telling the truth. Bernard Collaery was prosecuted for defending his client. The penal colony never really ended. It merely changed its dress code.
The Great Digital Enclosure: How Google is Stealing the Future of Independent Journalism
Google’s AI Overviews are strip-mining independent online writing. It’s institutionalised theft. And the regulatory framework is standing in the rubble, blinking.
That Was The Week That Was, No. 1 — Part Two: The RBA Show
The Reserve Bank cut rates. Jim Chalmers was pleased. He was, if anything, a little too pleased, the controlled smile of a man who has been waiting a long time for something to go right.
Uninvestable, A Clarke and Dawe sketch
This sketch is written in the tradition of John Clarke and Bryan Dawe, whose work set the standard for Australian political satire. It is offered as homage, not impersonation. John Clarke died in April 2017. Bryan Dawe continues to work as a writer and performer. … Continue reading Uninvestable, A Clarke and Dawe sketch
THE RECEIPT: the tab
The receipt from the Ararat servo gets longer. Palantir Technologies is watching every movement of every Coles shelf-stacker. The AI bubble is burning gas to produce, so far, almost nothing of measurable value. And thirty-five thousand Victorian teachers walked off the job to tell us what this is all costing. Urban Wronski tallies the full tab.
Not Reporting A War Part 2
Pete Hegseth is the Peter Principle applied to the largest weapons arsenal in human history. Pine Gap guides the missiles. Australian-made F-35 parts are in the payload. And our media calls it a partnership. Part Two of Urban Wronski’s investigation into what Australia’s press is not reporting, and what our silence is costing.
NOT REPORTING A WAR: HOW AUSTRALIA’S MEDIA LAUNDERS A CRIME (PART 1)
Australia’s mainstream press hasn’t just failed the Iran war test. It has “Ajax-ed” the crime, scrubbing blood and guts from the ledger of history. When 170 girls are obliterated in a classroom in Minab and the ABC calls it “more than 100 children dead in a strike,” the anaesthetic is working. By Urban Wronski.
