2015-11-9 Open Letter to Crikey re Crikey censorship
Dear Crikey,
I am a dedicated, much-published, 5-decade-career scientist who is appalled by Humanity’s remorseless march to the abyss (for alphabetically organized compendia of expert, science-informed opinions about this see “Are we doomed?”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/are-we-doomed ; “Nuclear weapons ban , end poverty & reverse climate change”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/nuclear-weapons-ban and "Too late to avoid global warming catastrophe": https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/too-late-to-avoid-global-warming ). I am also appalled by the mendacity and resolute malreportage of Mainstream media, including Australian Mainstream media, most notably the Murdoch media (who possibly don’t know any better) and the cowardly ABC (who very likely mostly do know better).
I waste a lot of my time attempting to get through the Mainstream media Wall of Silence and publish extensively overseas, but am largely excluded from publishing my science-informed opinions within Australia except as reader comments on Mainstream and Alternative media articles. To that end I subscribe to various Alternative media in Australia, including Crikey. Unfortunately Crikey, like Australian Mainstream media, has taken to massive censoring of my comments – even when such comments are buried in extensive reader comment threads - presumably because they contain things that Crikey or its agents think that Crikey readers should not be able to read, know about or think about (for details see Censorship by Crikey (Australia) http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/11/05/should-we-lower-the-voting-age-to-16/ ).
Of course Crikey is not alone in censoring informed and expert reader opinion. For some documented details of censorship by the global Murdoch media empire, Australian Fairfax media, the Australian ABC, the UK BBC, and the Australian universities-backed web magazine The Conversation in Neocon American- and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted and subverted Plutocracy, Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy, Corporatocracy and Dollarocracy Australia and elsewhere in the West see “Boycott Murdoch media”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottmurdochmedia/ ; “Censorship by the BBC”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbythebbc/ ; “Censorship by The Conversation”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by ; “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home ; “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/ ; “Censorship by The Age”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-the-age ; “Censorship by ABC Late Night Live”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbyabclatenightlive/ , "Censorship by ABC Saturday Extra": https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbyabclatenightlive/censorship-by-abc-sat and “ABC fact-checking unit & incorrect reportage by the ABC (Australia’s BBC)”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/abc-fact-checking-unit , "Censorship by The Guardian UK": https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-the-guardian-uk , "Censorship by The Guardian Australia": https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home/censorship-by-the-guardian-a , “Censorship by Crikey (Australia)”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-crikey and “Censorship by SBS (Australia)”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-sbs-australia .
Mainstream media lying by omission or commission is a major threat to the World. Accurate reportage is crucial for Rational Risk Management that is crucial for societal safety and successively involves (a) accurate data, (b) scientific analysis (involving the critical testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses) and (c) informed implementation of systemic change to minimize harm when adverse events inevitably occur.
Unfortunately Rational Risk Management (that, for example, has made passenger aviation so safe) is typically perverted locally, nationally and internationally by (a) lying by omission and commission, censorship, self-censorship, intimidation, whistle-blower punishment, commodification of truth, criminalizing of truth-telling, (b) anti-science spin that involves the selective use of asserted facts to support a partisan position, and (c) reaction by blame and shame (with war the most egregious example of this), noting that blame and shame has the counterproductive effect of inhibiting the primary reportage that is vital for Rational Risk Management (see “Gideon Polya”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home and “Gideon Polya Writing”: https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/ ).
A good example of comprehensive Mainstream media censorship in look-the-other-way Australia relates to Australia's new Coalition PM Malcolm Turnbull who is charming, intelligent, well-mannered and articulate and is the darling of the lying, US-dominated Mainstream media but is “lipstick on a pig” in being bound to the same US lackey, pro-Zionist, pro-war, war criminal, pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-fossil fuels, climate criminal, human rights–abusing and child-abusing policies of his politically assassinated predecessor, popularly elected but personally unpopular former Coalition PM Tony Abbott. I have alphabetically catalogued over 200 reasons why Australia must dump PM Turnbull but most of these realities are actually or effectively ignored by Australian Mainstream journalist, politician and academic presstitutes (see Gideon Polya, “Coalition Climate Crimes & 200 Reasons Why Australia Must Dump Pro-coal, Pro-war Coalition PM Malcolm Turnbull”, Countercurrents, 1 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya011115.htm ).
I am writing to you as a present subscriber to Crikey (I particularly like the articles of Bernard Keane and Shakira Hussein) in the faint hope that Crikey will change its censoring ways that are presently an insult not just to me but to all its subscribers and to Australians and Humanity in general.
I am also writing to you because peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Thus, for example, 7 million people die from air pollution each year (WHO), this including 10,000 Australians and 75,000 people dying annually world-wide from the pollutants from the burning of exported Australian coal, whereas by way of comparison, zero (0) Australians have ever been killed in Australia by a Muslim–origin terrorist organization and the equally barbarous ISIS non-state terrorists and US Alliance state terrorists are together presently killing about 12,000 Iraqis each year (see ““Stop air pollution deaths”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/stop-air-pollution-deaths ). Please feel free to publish this on Crikey.
Yours sincerely, Dr Gideon Polya (300.org; 29 Dwyer Street, Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria 3085, Australia; telephone 03 9459 3649).