Articles from THE BLOT REPORT
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Izzy and Scotty
Not content with
losing his contract with Rugby Australia and Rugby New South Wales because of
his hateful tweet about homosexuals being condemned to hell unless they repent1,
now the buffoonish Israel Folau has said that the timing of the current round
of bushfires was not a coincidence. He stated, in his often confusing way, at
Kenthurst church: “Look how rapid these bushfires, these droughts, all these
Religious privilege dies hard
The government of the Australian Capital
Territory (ACT) has decided to withdraw from the Commonwealth School Chaplaincy
Program. The program was started by the Howard government in 2007, and it was stated
that the program was to offer “support and guidance
about ethics, values, relationships and spirituality”, and was supposed to
be based on pastoral care, not religious instruction1,2. There has
Barnaby’s lost marbles
Although it has been
dealt with elsewhere1, this bizarre rant from Barnaby Joyce was just
too hilarious to pass up. Surprisingly, Joyce initially said he accepted that the
climate crisis was making Australia hotter and drier, which is a first for him.
He had previously claimed that climate change was “an
indulgent and irrelevant debate because, even if climate change turns out to
How Murdoch ‘ruperters’ operate 21
Murdoch ‘ruperter’
Greg Brown has been a subject of essays in this series a couple of times1,2.
In this one3, he is helped by the unlucky Olivia Caisley while he
acts as stenographer for Barnaby Joyce in one of the latter’s foaming-at-the-mouth
rants against the Greens. This makes a change from Joyce claiming Labor is the
source of almost every ill, I suppose. Joyce has maintained that the bushfires
Gorman’s Law
Ginger Gorman is an
award-winning journalist based in the Australian Capital Territory and, in 2013,
was the target of vicious online trolling (many women are), which included a
death threat. After the trolling subsided, she indulged her curiosity and
investigated these online trolls. Over the subsequent years, she spoke to psychologists,
trolling victims, law enforcement officers, academics, and some of the trolls
International envy
This is part of a speech I saw which was given
on November 7th in parliament. It is worth reading:
Is Bevan Shields stupid?
Environment Editor at
Guardian Australia, Adam Morton tweeted the following on Friday (8/11/2019):
“Just to recap
Today’s fires are ‘unprecedented’
The fires in Queensland earlier this year were ‘unprecedented’
The Townsville flood was ‘unprecedented’
The inland flood afterwards was ‘unprecedented’
The central Queensland fires last year were ‘unprecedented’
The drought is ‘unprecedented’”
Will the media twig now?
Although similar
things have happened before with regard to the danger we face from climate
change, they have never been this large: More than 11,000 scientists from 153
countries around the world have put their names to a scientific paper
explaining the extreme danger the world faces1,2,3. For Australia,
this is on top of a petition presented to parliament signed by over 400,000
people urging the Coalition government to declare a climate emergency,