Saturday 10th of January 2026
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love and FEAR dictate the narratives of misunderstanding.....

With corporate media forcing PM Albanese into a small target corner on messaging, the right is filling the rhetorical void. Andrew Gardiner looks at the repercussions.

 

Albo’s search for the middle leaves him exposed on both flanks

by Andrew Gardiner

 

Canberra’s spin cycle took a familiar turn following both Donald Trump’s abduction of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, at the weekend, and the Bondi Beach attacks before that.  It’s a dynamic we’re seeing more and more of, the right straight out of the blocks, with a clear (if contentious) stand on both, which left our super-cautious PM in the rhetorical dust.

In a media release posted Sunday morning, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley threw her unqualified support behind Trump’s widely-condemned move against Maduro: “We should live in a world where dictators and despots face justice for their crimes”. On Bondi Beach, Pauline Hanson was well-and-truly in her element: “Since 1996, I have been warning Australia about the dangers of letting people into this country who refuse to integrate and assimilate.”

In contrast, Albanese’s handling of Venezuela felt over-parsed and run past a DFAT committee to make sure Trump wouldn’t be triggered into slapping on a new tariff (or worse). “We continue to support international law and a peaceful, democratic transition in Venezuela that reflects the will of the Venezuelan people (and) urge all parties to support dialogue and diplomacy in order to secure regional stability and prevent escalation.”

As with his Bondi Beach response, it was a typically safe, small target approach, simultaneously citing “international law” while anxious not to offend the man who’d just broken it. A jaded Amy Remeikis summed it up well.

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Amy Remeikis

 

The US has lost any pretence of legitimacy - Xi can do what he wants with Taiwan, Putin can play out his plans - and the US has nothing. And the Coalition is like ‘this is great’ and Labor is silent/‘gravely concerned’. Fab times.

Paul Bongoirno:

Trump, Putin, Netanyahu all trash international law.
We are entering an extremely dangerous period globally.
The US, once the guardian of the rule of international law is now a rogue aggressor.

[GUSNOTE: DESPITE WHAT MR BONGIONO AND THE WEST SAY, PUTIN DOES NOT TRASH INTERNATIONAL LAW: HE ACTED IN UKRAINE UNDER THE SPECIFIC #2202 RESOLUTION. SECOND, THE USA NEVER WERE THE GUARDIANS OF INTERNATIONAL LAWS...]

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But there’s a political upside to Ley opening “this is great”.  Say what you will about her endorsement of piracy and kidnapping in Venezuela, or Hanson’s shameless pandering to racist impulses over Bondi Beach. The fact remains, both conveyed a clear message and were willing to take a stand.

This scores points with many voters, at Albanese’s expense.

Bondi polling

Buoyed by a corporate media narrative that pretty well echoed their own, Ley’s and Hanson’s attacks worked. An SMH survey published just before Christmas found 46 per cent of people thought the government’s response to Bondi Beach was weak, poll respondents cutting his lead over Ley as preferred PM by almost half, while lifting Hanson’s party to unheard-of heights with 16 per cent support.

At this early stage of her tenure as Opposition Leader, Ley hasn’t collected enough baggage in punters’ eyes to be pegged as “just another flip-flopping politician”. More than two years out from an election, disengaged voters are yet to put her under the microscope, allowing Ley to present herself – for now, at least – as a strong and stable aspiring leader.

“Political parties ignore the power of clear, emotionally charged messaging at their peril”, Brisbane-based comms professional Roxane Horton said. It seems Albanese isn’t listening.

It’s a pattern dating back at least as far as Kevin Rudd ’s time in The Lodge. Corporate media keen to pounce on any slip-up on Labor’s part; the ALP rolling itself into a small target via a lower profile and workshopped comms; the right seeking to fill the resulting, perceived void in leadership by tossing soundbites at that same, often-friendly Fourth Estate.

Mainstream media blind-spotting

During Albanese’s first term, Peter Dutton used this trick to generate a profile that often dwarfed Albanese’s (frequently on issues outside his purview).

But the real impact of this lopsided media landscape is on the policy platforms of both sides, forcing both Albanese and Ley to the right. It may surprise some readers to learn that at one stage, these strange bedfellows both convened for the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine.

In 2011, Ley voiced her support for Palestinian statehood “because it will give heart to the ordinary people of the West Bank and Gaza”. Earlier still, Albanese blamed Jewish settlers in places like the West Bank for “the breakdown and impasse in the Middle East peace process … a tragedy for both Israelis and Palestinians”.

Neither would come within a mile of such statements these days.

In November, pressure from corporate media, the fossil fuel lobby and her National Party colleagues forced Ley – purportedly a ‘moderate’ – to go along with ditching the Coalition’s commitment to net zero by 2050. Then there’s her propensity for wading into the far-right quagmire of crime and culture wars, most infamously revealed in a 2024 post scaremongering on “foreign criminals” assaulting women.

Albo in the middle

Albanese’s reversion from the Socialist Left to the political middle is a bigger body of work.  Since his 2022 election, the PM has presided over a catalogue of anaemic and sometimes egregious policy calls, a few of them listed here:

  • A “toothless” national corruption body (NACC) hamstrung by narrow parameters and a high bar for public hearings;
  • Political Donation Laws designed to entrench major parties/stymie new independent voices like the ‘Teals’;
  • Failure to reform lobbying laws and close loopholes;
  • Cronyism and “jobs for mates” largely unaddressed;
  • Planned Freedom-of-Information ‘reforms’, which would in fact weaken transparency;
  • New fossil fuel approvals like North West Shelf rendering net zero targets a joke;

But perhaps the most heinous call was to nix the judicial media inquiry, recommended by a parliamentary committee, that might have freed Albanese, the ‘socialist’, from the shackles of pragmatism, and liberated Ley, the ‘moderate’, from a far-right line that isn’t really her.

Helping level the playing field on information – coin of the political realm – was a bridge too far for Albanese. He is, after all, a 30-year MP who wants to stay there.

Emboldened by the current media landscape, Sussan Ley sometimes goes too far.

The impacts of media agenda setting on actual policy predate Kevin Rudd, of course, arguably dating back to the invention of the printing press (1439). Albanese’s small target approach to the media is mirrored by policies UQ economics professor John Quiggin ($) calls

just far enough to the left of the coalition to provide a point of difference.

For their part, Ley and Hanson know their favourable treatment by corporate media, which they rely on to win the messaging battle, has far-right, Faustian strings attached: lockstep compliance on lower taxes, fewer regulations and no net zero, to name a few. While Hanson is fine with such trifling details, Ley is compelled to toe that line in the hopes of fending off bona fide right-wing challengers like Andrew Hastie.

“Independent media are vital for strong democracies”, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s representative on media freedom, Jan Braathu, said last March. Media diversity helps put the battle of ideas on a playing field that doesn’t tilt too egregiously towards the rich and powerful.

For its part, Australian democracy staggers on under the burden of media ownership concentration (almost exclusively in right wing hands) ranked second-worst in the world.

The narrative battle here is between the right and something that calls itself Labor – if it can be nailed down on substance. Albanese can’t or won’t get a clear message out there, no doubt mindful of its evisceration by corporate media on those rare occasions it actually says something (remember the Stage Three tax cuts?)

Anyone doubting corporate media’s ongoing sway need only look at how things shifted after Bondi Beach. Specifically, take a look at the vociferous, weeks-long campaign for a federal Royal Commission into the attack, despite one already having been called at a state level.

And how is Albanese handling the pressure for a probe he’d already deemed unnecessary? By potentially backing down and establishing a Royal Commission, the very lack of leadership he stands accused of.

It seems life imitates narrative.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

".... a peaceful, democratic transition in Venezuela that reflects the will of the Venezuelan people?" WHY? A TRANSITION? MORE PEOPLE IN VENEZUELA THINK THEY ARE IN A DEMOCRATIC [albeit socialist] COUNTRY AND DO NOT FEEL THE WAY ALBO THINKS....

banditry....

The US intends to sell Venezuelan oil “indefinitely,” while depositing the resultant revenue in Washington-controlled accounts, Energy Secretary Chris Wright has stated.

Last Saturday, American commandos conducted a raid on the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, abducting President Nicolas Maduro and his wife and killing dozens of people. US President Donald Trump subsequently demanded “total access” to the South American nation’s oil and said that Washington would “run” Venezuela until a “proper transition” of power took place there.

Speaking at Goldman Sachs’ Energy, CleanTech & Utilities Conference on Wednesday, Secretary Wright said that Washington was “going to market the crude coming out of Venezuela, first this backed-up stored oil, and then indefinitely, going forward, we will sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace.”

The official added that the proceeds would be “deposited into accounts controlled by the US government.” The money would then be used to “benefit the Venezuelan people.”

“The resources are immense,” Wright concluded.

Also on Wednesday, the US Energy Department published a “fact sheet,” claiming that the US government “has begun marketing Venezuelan crude oil in the global marketplace for the benefit of the United States, Venezuela, and our allies.” The US authorities said they anticipated the sale of approximately 30-50 million barrels.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited similar projections. He went on to claim that Washington had already made an “oil arrangement… with [Venezuela’s state oil company] PDVSA.”

In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, President Trump similarly proclaimed that the proceeds generated from the sale of Venezuelan oil “will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America.”

Russia – along with many other BRICS and Global South nations – has strongly condemned the abduction of the Venezuelan president. Moscow has called for the immediate release of Maduro, who is facing drug-trafficking charges in the US.

On Monday, the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, described the US attack on Venezuela as “international banditry.”

https://www.rt.com/news/630737-us-energy-secretary-indefinite-sales-venezuelan-oil/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

dictator don....

 

The international dictator Trump demands all nations capitulate.

 

7 January 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

He has already won the capitulation of America’s colonies or ‘allies’ in NATO, EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc., all of which have agreed to Trump’s tariff terms, and many of those ‘allies’ accepted them without being allowed by him to impose any new tariffs on their own side against imports from the U.S.; and now he is demanding capitulation also from countries that the U.S. Government did not previously control, especially Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba.

On January 7th, ABC News bannered “Trump demands Venezuela kick out China and Russia, partner only with US on oil: EXCLUSIVE”, and reported that the U.S. now has a total stranglehold over Venezuela international trade, and that “Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers in a private briefing on Monday that he believes the U.S. can force Venezuela’s hand because its existing oil tankers are full. Rubio also told lawmakers that the U.S. estimates that Caracas has only a couple of weeks before it will become financially insolvent without the sale of its oil reserves.”

Also on January 7th (and also in a news-exclusive), the Wall Street Journal headlined “Rubio Tells Lawmakers Trump Aims to Buy Greenland, Downplays Military Action: The secretary of state said the White House is using rhetoric to pressure Denmark into negotiations”, and opened:

WASHINGTON—Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers that recent administration threats against Greenland didn’t signal an imminent invasion and that the goal is to buy the island from Denmark, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Rubio’s statements, which were made Monday during a closed briefing, come as the White House has been offering increasingly belligerent statements about controlling the island. President Trump and senior administration officials have publicly declined to rule out seizing the territory by force. 

Apparently, the dictator is doing some kind of cost/benefit analysis to determine which is the cheaper way to get Greenland: either via a negotiated selling-price in which the other side to the negotiation has a gun (America’s military) to its head, or else pulling the trigger and “sending in the Marines” etc., if doing it that way would be cheaper. That’s the same negotiating tactic he’s using against Venezuela’s Governent. It’s also the same one that he is using against the Governments of Russia and of China, but those are more complex cases because they possess the military capability to defend themselves. Perhaps he is more intelligent than Hitler (who was similarly bold about his fascism) was; but, if so, that wouldn’t necessarily mean that Trump won’t go down in the same way that Hitler (and Mussolini before him) did, because what defeated Hitler was that the world recognized in time that the mega-imperialistic dictator would either enslave the world or else be defeated; and, so, almost everyone was hoping for a U.S.-Russia-UK victory, and therefore Hitler’s growing isolation left him alone in the lurch. This time, such a widespread public recogniton that America instead of Hitler poses the supremacist threat to the entire world might not be coming early enough to stop him.

On January 7th, even after Trump invaded and grabbed Venezuela and said that it was now controlled by him, America’s ‘allies’ haven’t yet gotten the message. The Wall Street Journal headlined “Rubio Tells Lawmakers Trump Aims to Buy Greenland, Downplays Military Action: The secretary of state said the White House is using rhetoric to pressure Denmark into negotiations”. Already on January 4th, Trump had publicly mocked Denmark and its Prime Minister, and the next day she retorted with a vague counter-threat that if Trump invades Greenland, then “everything stops … including our NATO” — she was publicly displaying her weakness by her NOT saying directly: “If you invade, we will withdraw from NATO” (no member-nation has yet done so). EU officials have been similarly weak. On January 6th, President Macron of France, Chancellor Merz of Germany, Prime Minister Meloni of Italy, Prime Minister Tusk of Poland, Prime Minister Sánchez of Spain, Prime Minister Starmer of the United Kingdom and Prime Minister Frederiksen of Denmark on Greenland, issued a “Joint Statement on Greenland” and it issued no threat whatsoever, of any kind, against the U.S. regime if it will invade and greatly expand its (current) military occupation of Greenland. This timidity, in the face of blatant imperialist fascism, is ludicrous: they are all allied with today’s leading facist-imperialist power — now the Trump regime — and that regime’s now openly threatening to invade Greenland and/or Denmark itself in order to take Greenland; and yet STILL all of them are deferential to it — deferential to imperialist fascism.

And this is ALREADY after the U.S. Government, during all of the years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, imposed primary sanctions against Russia and secondary sanctions against America’s own ‘allies’ in the EU and NATO, which FORCED those ‘allies’ to switch AWAY from using the by-far-least-costly energy sources, which least-costly, for all of Europe, are pipelined-in natural gas and oil from Russia, and to switch instead to using primarly U.S.-sourced liquefied natural gas — LNG, compressed, canned, and trans-Atlantic-shipped from the U.S., at three times the price that Europe’s prior primarly energy source, Russia, had been charging. The result for Europe has been a steady decline in their economies, and the de-industrialization of European countries — all in order to assist the U.S. Government to ultimately take over Russia.

Furthermore, the billionaires-controlled U.S.-and-allied news-media are propagandizing their respective publics by pretending that the fascist-imperialist threat to Europe is coming from Russia, NOT from the United States. For example, on January 7th, Politico bannered “How Trump gets Greenland in 4 easy steps: And worryingly for the Danes, it looks like he’s started …”, and insinuated that Trump was basically copying Putin:

Americans with ties to Trump have carried out covert influence operations in Greenland, according to Danish media reports, with Denmark’s security and intelligence service, PET, warning the territory “is the target of influence campaigns of various kinds.”

Felix Kartte, a digital policy expert who has advised EU institutions and governments, pointed to Moscow’s tactics for influencing political outcomes. … “Russia mixes offline and online tactics,” he said. “On the ground, it works with aligned actors such as extremist parties, diaspora networks or pro-Russian oligarchs, and has been reported to pay people to attend anti-EU or anti-U.S. protests.

“At the same time, it builds large networks of fake accounts and pseudo-media outlets to amplify these activities online and boost selected candidates or positions. The goal is often not to persuade voters that a pro-Russian option is better, but to make it appear larger, louder and more popular than it really is, creating a sense of inevitability.”

On Greenland, the U.S. appears to be deploying at least some of these methods. …

A U.S. military takeover could be achieved without much difficulty. 

Crosbie, from the Royal Danish Defense College, said Trump’s strategists are likely presenting him with various options.

“The most worrisome would be a fait accompli-type strategy, which we see a lot and think about a lot in military circles, which would be simply grabbing the land the same way Putin tried to grab, to make territorial claims, over Ukraine. He could just simply put troops in the country and just say that it’s American now

No matter how bad the U.S. regime is, it can be blamed on Russia — for people who don’t know the actual history.

It’s no wonder why, with propaganda organizations like this, constantly shaping public opinion throughout the U.S. empire, the public are extremely inclined to distrust Russia’s Government, not America’s.

Why isn’t Russia now publicly offering to negotiate with Germany, Finland, and the other European countries that have been hit especially hard by the U.S. and EU anti-Russian sanctions, peace and trade treaties with each one of them, so as to together build a European peace, and to free Europe, finally, from the ever-worsening fascist grip from the other side of the Atlantic?

The U.S.-created anti-Russian military alliance NATO has psychopathically expanded closer and closer to The Kremlin, and ever since Obama’s anti-Russian coup in Ukraine in 2014 to turn it against Russia, the U.S. has been threatening to place its missiles in Ukraine within a mere 300 miles (500 km.) away from (a mere five minutes of missile-flying-time from) The Kremlin; and America refused ALL negotiation-efforts from Russia to cease-and-desist this American-led hyper-aggressivity. Finally, Russia had to respond by invading Ukraine itself. This war in Ukraine is between Russia and the U.S., initiated by the U.S.; and all European leaders ought to end their alliance with the fascist regime on the other side of the Atlantic and accept into their European union the largest (economically, in population, and militarily) of all European nations: Russia. Russia didn’t want to conquer Europe; Russia wanted to continue selling, to Europe, Europe’s by-far-least-costly energy. The U.S. regime stopped that, and it profits considerably by having done so. The time for Europe to separate itself from that fascist-imperialist regime is now. This is the only way to establish an enduring peace in Europe. In order for Europe to have peace, ending its fascist-imperialist alliance across the Atlantic is essential. With Russia as part of the European union, prosperity will return to Europe. There is no other way it can.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

 

https://theduran.com/the-international-dictator-trump-demands-all-nations-capitulate/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

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