MediaActive ▪️EQUALITY ▪️JUSTICE ▪️PEACE
@mediaactive.bsky.social
940 followers 2.2K following 6.8K posts
Former ABC broadcast journalist, presenter. Pioneered Australian *national* radio talkback on ABC Radio National. Podcaster: https://rss.com/podcasts/transitzone/ THEMES: DEMOCRACY/JOURNALISM FUTURES/INTERVIEWING/AUSTRALIAN REPUBLIC/WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY.
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mediaactive.bsky.social
OPINION “It appears Attorney General Pam Bondi was given some very specific marching orders when she testified on Capitol Hill on Tuesday: Don’t answer any questions, pass the buck, & when all else fails, launch personal attacks against the senator questioning you.” #Trump #fascism flip.it/4eE-qA
Jen Psaki: Trump and the GOP have built an entire governing philosophy around playing the victim
Republicans are acting like they are mere spectators to all of this, like they are not the ones in charge of running the government.
flip.it
mediaactive.bsky.social
Nick Clegg nails his colours to the whatever. Yes, #capitalism. The key issue is about generative #AI & our performative, audio-visual culture. AI is a synthetic, algorithmic collage of elements of existing data. Writing, acting, visuals, voices, music. A grand diminishing. #creativity #originality
timdunlop.bsky.social
Kind of makes blindingly obvious the truth of all capitalism, doesn't it? It relies utterly on paying as littlle as possible, or not paying at all, for labour.
mediaactive.bsky.social
OPINION @washingtonpost.com editorial board. Discuss. Read the piece. Analyse the framing & underlying assumptions. Then the “facts”.
#journalism #Trump #ruleoflaw #democracy
pbump.com
I spent more than a decade at The Post. It was good to me and I was proud to work there. I’ve largely refrained from being critical since I left. But this framing of the special counsel probe is embarrassing and flatly wrong. Stunning, but not. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
Opinion | Jack Smith’s lawfare and James Comey’s arraignment on pathetically weak charges
Good people will be deterred from public service if they see a meaningful risk of winding up in jail afterward.
www.washingtonpost.com
mediaactive.bsky.social
OPINION What adjective to describe the appointment of Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief @cbsnews.com? Pass me the thesaurus. (“Bari Weiss, co-founder CEO of The Free Press, has been appointed CBS News’ editor-in-chief, Paramount announced”. www.politico.com/news/2025/10...) #journalism #Israel #Gaza
mediaactive.bsky.social
“Inflame”? We’ll just leave that there? #Israel #Gaza #Palestine
mediaactive.bsky.social
“Will the administration succeed in picking off enough of the opposition such that resistance seems useless? Or will civil society hold firm against a regime that wants to center all power on itself?”
#Trump fascism project, solidifying #dictatorship is succeeding? www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...
Opinion | Where Trump Is Vulnerable and How to Act on It
www.nytimes.com
mediaactive.bsky.social
Does the face tell the story, reveal the character? #Trump attorney general, Pam Bondi, before a #USA senate oversight hearing, was belligerent, insulting, supercilious, disdainful, contemptuous. She used every avoidance trick in the book incl withering stares & silence. #fascism #democracy #Epstein
mediaactive.bsky.social
“Flooding the zone with shit” on an industrial scale. #Trump “Goebbels”, Stephen Miller, working the levers. In a #media #journalism saturated #USA, “Portland is burning” self-evident, provable fictions, create utterly false, alternative realities. 2026 midterm elections? In the frame? #fascism
joycewhitevance.bsky.social
This administration is flooding the zone so furiously that people have largely lost track of the lethal attacks on boats in the Caribbean, the gov’t shutdown, the economy, failed release of the Epstein files & so much else. It’s a tactic of would-be strongmen.
mediaactive.bsky.social
“President Gustavo Petro of Colombia said … that his government believed one of the boats recently bombed by the #USA in its campaign against alleged drug traffickers had been carrying Colombian citizens.” Interdiction? Not extra-judicial murders? #Trump #fascism www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/w...
Colombia’s President Says Boat Bombed by U.S. Was Carrying Colombians
www.nytimes.com
mediaactive.bsky.social
Hitler engineered the 1933 Reichstag fire. #Trump is currently claiming “Portland is burning to the ground” & Democrat led cities are “war ravaged”. All utterly, provably false. In a #USA saturated in #media #journalism outlets these fictions dominate. A Capitol fire is unlikely? Isn’t it? #fascism
mediaactive.bsky.social
“The specter of Portland ‘burning’ is dim-witted #MAGA #propaganda. But #Trump is now nakedly threatening to invoke the notorious nineteenth-century act if Democratic governors or the courts lawfully exercise their roles in our constitutional schema, in a way that displeases him.” #dictatorship #USA
mediaactive.bsky.social
THREAD We are witnessing from
afar history on fast forward but with that chilling sense this is a revival show. All the same old inflammatory rhetoric & self-evident #propaganda deceptions. Specious. Blatant. Corrosive. All eyes on the #Trump inner circle esp his “Goebbels”, Stephen Miller. #fascism
gregsargent.bsky.social
JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom are doing something new and important: They understand Stephen Miller's theory of fascist power politics, and they've developed a theory on how to combat it. More Dems need to reckon with Miller's understanding of the moment.

New from me:
newrepublic.com/article/2014...
mediaactive.bsky.social
THREAD We are witnessing from
afar history on fast forward but with that chilling sense this is a revival show. All the same old inflammatory rhetoric & self-evident #propaganda deceptions. Specious. Blatant. Corrosive. All eyes on the #Trump inner circle esp his “Goebbels”, Stephen Miller. #fascism
gregsargent.bsky.social
JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom are doing something new and important: They understand Stephen Miller's theory of fascist power politics, and they've developed a theory on how to combat it. More Dems need to reckon with Miller's understanding of the moment.

New from me:
newrepublic.com/article/2014...
Inside Stephen Miller’s Secret Plan to Normalize Trump’s Dictator Rule
He wants to supercharge searing civil tensions to get low-information voters to embrace their inner authoritarian. Exactly two Democrats appear to fully grasp this.
newrepublic.com
mediaactive.bsky.social
#Trump is unfurling his #fascism project at speed, across multiple fronts. Consolidating his evolving #dictatorship. Congress, SCOTUS are #GOP #MAGA captured. Lower courts being slammed as “insurrectionist” by Trump, Miller, Bondi etc. if they rule against their power grabs. Daily inflection points?
timothysnyder.bsky.social
The people who are sincerely in favor of freedom of expression will speak out now for the reporters.
newsjennifer.bsky.social
🚨THIS IS A BIG DEAL. Chicago journalists are suing the Trump administration for using excessive force against reporters & protestors in violation of the 1A.
The press here is doing astounding work documenting how ICE is out of control. The violence they face in doing so is obscene.
mediaactive.bsky.social
#Trump … said the Illinois governor & Chicago mayor should be jailed as they oppose his deployment of National Guard troops for his immigration & crime crackdown in the nation’s third-largest city. The officials said they would not be deterred.” Are we there yet? #fascism
#USA flip.it/WBVgVh
Trump says Illinois governor and Chicago mayor should be jailed as they oppose Guard deployment
President Donald Trump says the Illinois governor and Chicago mayor should be jailed as they oppose his deployment of National Guard troops for his immigration and crime crackdown in the nation’s thir...
flip.it
mediaactive.bsky.social
“Trump has claimed Portland is ‘war-ravaged’ - but residents & local authorities dispute that.” Because it simply isn’t true. This is pantomime politics by #propaganda. The Huckster needs to conjure an “emergency” to sideline 2026 mid-term elections. That’s the agenda. #fascism flip.it/oO8Xh6
Kristi Noem ‘stares down’ Antifa. It was reporters and a guy in a chicken costume
Trump has claimed Portland is ‘war-ravaged’ - but residents and local authorities dispute that
flip.it
mediaactive.bsky.social
. @theatlantic.com series is a #journalism anniversary publishing event. Probably worth a critical read. #USA civic religion of “exceptionalism” is potent. Pervasive hubris & sense of superiority as if actual robust democracies (Australia?) don’t exist. A fractured republic, unwinding #democracy.
mediaactive.bsky.social
@theatlantic.com brings together a remarkable group of scholars, essayists & reporters to revisit America’s founding era, measuring the success of the American experiment, two & a half centuries later, against the lofty dreams & designs of the founding generation.” #democracy flip.it/JjSp_9
The Atlantic presents special issue: “The Unfinished Revolution”
Featuring 21 pieces by leading scholars, essayists, and reporters on the history and lessons of America’s founding era
flip.it
mediaactive.bsky.social
#Trump, the oldest man to be inaugurated #USA president, will visit Walter Reed national military medical center on Friday for what the White House said was a ‘routine yearly check up’. Sure. #propaganda #GOP #fascism www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Trump to visit Walter Reed for ‘routine yearly checkup’, the second since April
Purpose of Friday checkup at US military medical center unclear for oldest man to be inaugurated president
www.theguardian.com
mediaactive.bsky.social
“‘Can presidents unleash the armed forces on their own people based on facts that they contrive? The text of the relevant statutes doesn’t answer that question. But our constitutional ideals, to say nothing of common sense, should — and the answer must be no.’” - @stevevladeck.bsky.social. #Trump
mediaactive.bsky.social
OPINION “One way to look at much of the second #Trump administration is that it is a recapitulation of some of the worst episodes in the history of the #USA.” #fascism #dictatorship #democracy www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...
Opinion | Trump 2.0 Is America’s Worst Moments Redux
www.nytimes.com
mediaactive.bsky.social
OPINION “One way to look at much of the second #Trump administration is that it is a recapitulation of some of the worst episodes in the history of the #USA.” #fascism #dictatorship #democracy www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...
Opinion | Trump 2.0 Is America’s Worst Moments Redux
www.nytimes.com
mediaactive.bsky.social
“Israeli military forces on Wednesday intercepted a flotilla of ships trying to break the naval blockade of #Gaza, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry & to a legal defense group representing the activists aboard.” In international waters again. #Israel #genocide www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/w...
Israel Intercepts Another Activist Flotilla That Aimed to Break Gaza Blockade
www.nytimes.com
mediaactive.bsky.social
The thousands of babies & children murdered by the brutal, profoundly immoral, fascist #Netanyahu regime in #Israel. October 7 was heinous. The subsequent civilian slaughters & scorched earth destructions in #Gaza beyond comprehension. All for “Greater Israel”? www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...
Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead
Every name on a list compiled by health authorities in Gaza of the child victims of Israel’s offensive
www.theguardian.com