Friday, December 10, 2010

Bromance revealed

The Drum, ABC News's cheap opinion arm, today publishes more drivel from "political analyst" Antony Loewenstein, who can't make it past the second paragraph before screwing up:
Who can now say that the WikiLeaks cables detail no new information?

It was only last week that ABC TV’s 7.30 Report featured a story with supposed foreign affairs experts, including the Lowy Institute’s Michael Fullilove, who largely dismissed the significance of the document dump. Within a few days these men were all proven wrong.

Now we know Labor powerbroker Mark Arbib sends confidential information to the Americans. He’s not alone.
At least the three "foreign affairs experts" featured on the 7:30 Report possess foreign affairs expertise whereas Loewenstein does not. The experts were not proven wrong as Lowenstein claims, two of them agreeing that the Wikileaks leaks are significant, with Michael Fullilove restating the obvious:
A lot of the news that is breaking is things that we sort of knew anyway. We knew that Gulf States don't trust Iran. We knew that China doesn't like Google.
Loewenstein also comes up short on his claim that Mark Arbib leaked "confidential information to the Amercians", the linked article indicating nothing of the sort.

True to form, Loewenstein's article is full of rash judgments and language mangling:
The fact that the US had followed the rise of Julia Gillard and approved her views on the American alliance, Afghanistan and Israeli aggression is worrying though unsurprising.

It’s extremely rare that a leader rises who hasn’t received American approval or extensive years of obedience grooming. Former Labor leader Mark Latham was loathed by the US because he publicly expressed scepticism about the US alliance, the war in Iraq and then-president George W Bush.
Right, as if Latham was ever going to be Prime Minister no matter what the U.S. thought about him.

And finally, Loewenstein republishes the article at his blog giving it the rather cryptic title "Wikileaks exposes the bromance between journalists and politics". Jeez, it's no wonder the guy's a best selling author and a regular at Fairfax and the ABC.

Update: Loewenstein not only can't write, he can't count, estimating the crowd at today's "big" Sydney pro-Assange rally as 2,000, whereas AAP estimates more than 500 and the Sydney Morning Herald counts fewer than 800. Jeez, Sydney seems to have a shortage of unemployed Lefties with time to kill. Then again, no one in even close to their right mind would willingly suffer Loewenstein's endless adolescent bagpipe-like dronings.

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6 Comments:

Anonymous Steve at the Pub said...

Nice post, but I'm afraid you lost me at the insult to bagpipes!

6:29 PM  
Anonymous Dan Lewis said...

Loewenstein. Now taxpayer funded!

7:10 AM  
Blogger Minicapt said...

I agree with Steve; I would suggest 'kazoo' as a better metaphor.

Cheers

2:49 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

lowenstein = hypocrite and scumbag - I WONDER who is moderating his article comments, as the posts allowed seem to be fawning over him, apart from a couple of comments that possibly slipped through. I've made two completely polite but dissenting posts - moderated out of course.

But here's a beauty that slipped through by someone

"Mendax the Smug :

10 Dec 2010 12:46:26pm


"What is discussed? What are the agendas? Is there transparency in such dealings?..."


Antony, this will be perhaps difficlut for you to comprehend, but conversations between diplomats and politicians are often premised on the assumption of 'Confidentiality'.

You may even have had 'confidential' discussions with your own professional colleagues.

For example, as a 'journalist', you might be concerned at some point to protect the 'Confidentiality' of a particular source.


The source may have spoken to you 'In Confidence'?


In fact, did you see Laurie Oakes last night get his Gold Walkley Award for his expose on the Rudd Leaks story?


that was followed by a pompous little speech about Wikileaks and "freedom of information"?


Do you remember that?


Do you also remember that Laurie, at the time of the Rudd leaks, would NOT reveal his sources - because he defended the principle of his sources' CONFIDENTIALITY?


Do you remember that Antony? No?"

And of course Antony somehow managed to refer to a zionist conspiracy somewhere in the mish mash rubbish of an article.

This Lowenstien guy is just trash

4:09 PM  
Anonymous spot said...

Bagpipes? Kazoos? Vuvuzelas, I say.

1:06 PM  
Anonymous TBS said...

Of course he's trash, but he's a Jew (sort of) who trashes Jews so he's a hot little number at the ABC.

Pretty soon it'll be a point of honour to be trashed by AL becasue he's so often wrong and so very incompetent.
Wonder if that too is why the ABC, WaPo etc love him...?

9:37 PM  

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