Tuesday, March 14, 2023




Panelist calls out Australian TV for being too white as our local shows are branded a 'neo-Nazi's wet dream'

The rave below offers no statistics or evidence. It is in fact a very strange thing to say about Australia's politically correct media

By contrast, Malcolm Smith has given examples to show that minorities are OVER-represented on Australian TV.

So the unhappy lady is probably peeved only because HER minority group is little mentioned. She is simply over-generalizing. Ironic that the the host of the TV program where she made her accusations is in fact an Aborigine, a dark minority group

In any case Australians are overwhelmingly of European ancestry so that is the group that advertisers or others would reasonably aim to reach. Targeting such people is simply what you have to do if you want your messages to have maximum reach and impact

And the big irony is that the Arab population that produced the angry lady REALLY IS NAZI. The antisemitism of Islamic countries is well known.


A guest on ABC's Q+A has branded Australian television a 'neo-Nazi's wet dream' after Indigenous host Stan Grant slammed it for being dominated by white faces.

Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf - whose parents moved Down Under from Lebanon in the 1970s - blasted networks for being stuck in the era of the 1960s' White Australia policy.

Ms Lattouf lashed out at the representation of multicultural Australia on mainstream local television shows, saying it was now badly lagging behind the rest of the world. 'Australia's really far behind the UK or the US,' she raged on Monday night's show.

'We still have networks or programs that look like a neo-Nazi's wet dream. We still do despite the fact that more than half of the population are culturally diverse. '[But] we're just gonna kind of ignore those voices.'

Her comments came after Grant hit out at the lack of representation for people of colour on local television.

Monday night's show featured an otherwise all-white line up of 80s British pop star Billy Bragg, Labor MP Josh Burns, economist Gigi Foster, and Senator Perin Davey.

Grant claimed the lack of diversity was giving viewers a false impression of the multicultural society they actually live in.

'People like you and I are still rare on our screens,' the veteran broadcaster and outspoken racism activist told Ms Lattouf. 'And stories are still told by people who look like other people on the panel here tonight. 'What does it take to break through, because the world doesn't look like that? It looks like us!'

Grant, along with Ten's The Project host Waleed Aly and Malaysian-born ABC newsreader Jeremy Fernandez, are among the few people of colour regularly seen on mainstream Australian TV.

Ms Lattouf, a mother-of-two who founded Media Diversity Australia in 2017, said it required grit-teethed determination to succeed as a non-white in Australia. 'It takes patience. It takes a thick skin,' she told Grant. 'It takes having to fight the urge to go into Tourette-style swearing spiel when you get the opportunity. 'Because sometimes it's frustrating that the change is glacial. You take one step forward, four steps back.

'Even in the year of the referendum [on the Voice to Parliament], we still have all-white panels discussing things like the referendum. 'We still have all-white panels talking about refugees and asylum seeker policy - that baffles me.'

She added: 'At least in the UK, when you see politicians when you flick on the telly, even the Prime Minister, though arguably he's not a great win for progressive politics.

'All our all our storytellers, all our institutions of power - they have all been largely white men. 'There's a bit of progress now. We've got white women. And so there is a lot more work to be done.'

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A disastrous Aboriginal school in South Australia

Schools with Aboriginal majorities are well-known for violence in Queensland but the problem is not confined to Queensland. Everybody is too politically correct to take the firm measures needed to deal with the problem

A student at Port Augusta Secondary School has refused to return to school after a brutal bashing by a fellow student left him with concussion and almost shattered his cheekbone.

The 16-year-old boy, who was attacked on February 21, says he is too scared to go back amid fears he will be targeted again.

During the attack, the boy, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, was punched in the head from behind before being pushed over a retaining wall and hit several more times.

The boy’s father told The Advertiser his son had suffered post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the incident and did not feel safe leaving the house on his own.

“Enough is enough,” he said. “Somebody’s going to end up dead.”

The father said he flagged threats made to his son in the weeks before the attack but police and Port Augusta Secondary School took no action. “My son can’t even go down the street on his own,” he said.

The father said violence had continued at the school despite the installation of CCTV and the use of security guards. “They’ve had nothing but issues,” he said. “These kids are still going at it. Cameras aren’t going to keep the kids safe.”

He also said escalating violence on the town’s streets was being “dragged into the school”. “It’s just got to stop. Kids shouldn’t be doing this,” he said.

On Friday, The Advertiser revealed students at Port Augusta Secondary School were being “stomped on” during fights.

“The school is f**ked,” one student said.

In February, parents of another student who was the victim of a vicious attack told The Advertiser they had warned the school about a potential fight before the incident.

Videos of fights, which appear to be planned, have been posted to several social media accounts in recent months.

An Education Department spokeswoman said the student who assaulted the 16-year-old had been “excluded” from the school for the maximum period of 10 weeks.

She said the school met with the victim’s family on “numerous occasions” before the attack but “despite their efforts an assault did occur”.

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Griffith University research could fast-track treatment for long Covid patients

New research from Griffith University has revealed that long Covid and chronic fatigue syndrome can have similar effects on brain structure – offering hope to finding a treatment to long Covid.

Using an ultra-high field MRI, Griffith researchers investigated how the two conditions mirror the same effects on the brain in both myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and long Covid patients, with the results showing major consistencies in brain-stem volume in these patients compared to those who did not suffer from the same ailments.

The research came after reports that 13-58 per cent of long Covid patients experienced symptoms similar to chronic fatigue syndrome, including brain fog, fatigue, pain, and autonomic dysfunction.

Lead author Dr Kiran Thapaliya said the MRI results revealed larger brain stems in long Covid and ME/CFS patients compared to those without the conditions. “It also showed similar volumes of the brain stem in patients which could be the reason long Covid patients exhibit all common core symptoms of ME/CFS,” Dr Thapaliya said.

“We also discovered smaller midbrain volumes were associated with more severe breathing difficulty in ME/CFS and long Covid patients. “Therefore, brain-stem dysfunction in ME/CFS and long Covid patients could contribute to their neurological, cardiorespiratory symptoms, and movement disorder.”

Dr Thapaliya said these findings could lead to further research into treatment and management of long Covid, which had previously been poorly understood and difficult to diagnose.

“Since we saw that there was an overlap between MECFS and long Covid, this could fast-track the treatment for the long Covid patients,” Dr Thapaliya said.

“For the treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome, we have used low dose Naltrexone, so this might pass as a treatment for long Covid persons So this could potentially fast-track finding a treatment”.

According to health experts, up to 43 per cent of people infected by SARS-CoV-2 did not recover fully and develop long Covid, including children.

Researchers at Griffith University will continue investigating the correlation between these two illnesses, including testing on a larger sample size and looking at the duration of the brain stem changes

“The next stage of our research is to see whether these changes in the brain stem are temporary, or permanent in long Covid and CFS patients,” Dr Thapaliya said

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Why Bruce Highway is a monument to Qld’s political ineptitude

A tunnel is needed but all we get is buck-passing

In play was the political football known as the North West Transport Corridor, the plan to build a motorway that has been kicked from one end of the electoral field to the other for decades without anyone kicking a goal.

It rained a few weeks ago, the weather gods unleashing one of those brief subtropical afternoon downpours that are a summer trademark of our city.

The result was traffic gridlock. I know this because it took me 45 minutes to travel from Newstead to the CBD, a distance of less than 4km.

Such is the fragile nature of the system that if rain slows the traffic flow, chaos ensues. Anyone forced to use Gympie Rd during peak periods that get longer every year will attest to its inability to cope.

A minor collision on the Story Bridge brings the city to a standstill.

I drove back from the Sunshine Coast one afternoon last week. Southbound the traffic flowed but the northbound lanes were a carpark, traffic snaking back for kilometre after kilometre as the system failed to carry the traffic volume – and this happens virtually every day.

The Bruce Highway is a monument to bureaucratic and political ineptitude, one that stretches from Brisbane to Cairns, and which is closed, cutting off North Queensland, whenever there is significant rainfall. What a joke.

There aren’t enough vehicular bridges and there aren’t enough tunnels.

On the one hand, the council spends mountains of money on “green” bridges, which are lovely for cyclists and joggers, but do absolutely nothing to alleviate traffic woes, while the state government looks the other way and does what it does best, which is nothing.

You don’t need to be an engineer to appreciate that building a freeway through the densely populated northern suburbs is not practical.

A tunnel is the obvious choice but rather than the council and the state government joining forces to drive this, we have petty bickering and name calling.

The North West Motorway is meant to take about 110,000 vehicles a day off surrounding roads by 2031. Thanks to procrastination, blame-shifting and general incompetence, this will never happen.

Put all of this in the context of the 2032 Olympics and the omens portent disaster writ large.

The announcement the state government will assume overall control of infrastructure construction should send alarm bells ringing throughout the Olympic movement.

Whenever the state government gets involved in a project, the costs blow out, the unions have a picnic, it’s late in delivery and questions as to how the money is being spent and who is getting it are waved away with claims of “commercial-in-confidence”.

I would like to think that the Olympics will be a happy experience for my home town but I fear the worst.

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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