AUGUST 2018

POLITICS.

My friend in New York loathes Trump.  At least once a week I get something, links to a Mark Bryan cartoon, links to revocation of the security clearance of ex-CIA chief. (Why not revoke - he had lost the job?  In the Private sector it would be automatic.)

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated "Mr. Brennan's lying and recent conduct, characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary, is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation's most closely held secrets and facilities."

In the UK Boris has quit over Brexit. There are problems in Spain and Germany.

Never do I recall seeing such polarized politics around the world.

In Australia the Liberal Party (our version of the Republicans) has just changed Prime Minister.  Lots of bad feeling all round.

What is the common element?  It seems to be that the media no longer directs the masses.  So Newspapers, TV and radio are mostly proposing we do "X" and a significant number of "we the people" seem to want to do "Y".  Trump is an example.  The USA media is mostly anti-Trump. Even a number of Republicans are anti Trump.  Yet he has been getting his message out via Twitter and Facebook. That is how he won the "unwinnable" Presidential election 2016.

I go online to our national Murdoch newspaper "The Australian" which has journalists of all political colors.  Murdoch has introduced for the Australian a system of online comments.  Below each journalist's story is a space where readers can comment and have other readers read and respond to their comment.  A bit like a subscriber version of Facebook.

As a subscriber I can read and make comments online.  Regardless of the politics of the journalist, the hundreds, sometimes thousands of comments made are at the radical end of the spectrum.  Heavily against our LCP and Labour government.  Anti Antifa.

This is consistent with the resurgence of the right wing independent parties, like Pauline Hanson's "One Nation" or "Hunters and Shooters".

The "Deep State" is responding.  Twitter and Facebook and other online discussion groups have begun censoring links to websites of a certain political persuasion such as "infowars" and have even begun censoring individual comments on Facebook and twitter.  I have known for some time that this blog "OzDiary" is censored by the free wifi provided by department store Woollworths in Double Bay, Sydney Australia.

  MAIL TO barvennon@hotmail.com