PR is more important than anything else to the Greens. When Johnathon Moylan fraudulently tricked investors, costing some of them thousands of dollars, Green leaders praise him for “drawing attention” to something. It’s as if stupid punters are so dumb and Green’s brains so Omniscient, that any crime is forgiven in the quest to tell the world a green “fact”. Did Christine Milne think Australians don’t know the Greens blame coal miners for hot days? Did she think that people would hear for the first time that Greens really really don’t like the coal industry and they would suddenly awaken from their stupor and be converts to the cause? Did she think if Green chicanery raised the cost of capital formation in the coal industry, causing that industry to suffer, that everyone else would overlook Green illegality and applaud?
A delusional anti-coal mining activist, Jonathan Moylan, impersonated a bank spokesman and issued a fake media release, falsely declaring that the bank had withdrawn a $1.2 billion loan facility from Whitehaven Coal because of ”unacceptable damage to the environment.” He created a dummy email inbox to push the deceit further to cause real damage. The story was picked up by some news outlets, and shares fell by 9% before people realized it was fake. Those who want to downplay the seriousness are calling it a “hoax”. The real world knows it is fraud.
Mum and Dad investors who may have sold too cheaply on the “news”, or even faced margin calls, could have lost thousands of hard earned dollars. The share transactions won’t be canceled. In response, two Greens leaders praised the liar.
On Tuesday, Senator Milne described Mr Moylan’s hoax as being ”part of a long and proud history of civil disobedience, potentially breaking the law, to highlight something wrong”. [SMH]
Senator Rhiannon, who wrote: ”Congrats to Jonathan Moylan, Frontline Action on Coal, for exposing ANZ investment in coalmines.”
Greens are crippled by this narcissistic sense of their own giftedness. They thought people would discuss the dangers of coal after this outrageous criminal act; instead people are discussing the danger of The Greens.
How much do the Greens care about the average voter? Not at all. Civil disobedience does not and has never meant doing something that hurts other citizens. (Isn’t it illegal to incite people to break the law?) And let’s remember the bigger picture (cough cough): the Greens are more gifted than the average voter, and the Green burden in life is to lead the proletariat.
Michael Smith says Milne must resign:
Christine Milne still doesn’t get it. Forgery. $300Million in financial disadvantage. A blow to the integrity of our financial system. But on the ABC’s 7.30 tonight, she’s still praising a prima facie felon.
Go and get some help Chris. You’ve lost your sense of perspective. This offender has caused actual, real harm to a financial market that is a fundamental element of our civil society. No stock market means no investment, much fewer jobs, much more misery. Moylan’s forgery and deception caused $300M in real damage and who knows how much damage to investment confidence. And that confidence was further hammered when you as a leader of the Labor/Greens government endorsed his crime.
Milne and Rhiannnon don’t seem to realize that any halfwit with a computer could create a forged press release these days. If it were legal to do such a thing, activists could release fake documents about, say, solar companies, falsely saying that unaffordable government subsidies were being withdrawn, or that some “new” discovery made the whole production line of XXX-solar unviable. Since the renewable industry is utterly dependent on those subsidies, or the belief that it is a techno winner, this would trash the price, and once investors realized that “renewables” share were prone to regular spikes and “hoaxes” soon no one would want to invest in them. How well would this work out for Green investment — which is financial struggling and borderline even with subsidies — unlike the robust coal industry?
What happened to “one rule for all”? The Greens rule of law (where you break the law if you believe it’s ok) would destroy everything the Greens say they want, and allow the big guys to walk all over the little ones.
Katherine Wilson at The Age thinks green criminals should be forgiven, and Moylan should be called a hero because the nation is burning up, and he is “helping” save us from the coal-fired-weather. She thinks that honest talk, accurate discussion and free speech is not enough to convince Australians (they are too-stupid), and now the climate emergency is so bad that only cheating and lying will work.
“…to charge him with a criminal offence would be utterly immoral. For those citizens who have not given up on the conviction that taking action is ”the greatest moral, economic and environmental challenge of our generation”, there is little choice but to pull off hoaxes of this kind. For all the ”free market of ideas” posturing, the media and finance marketplace that Moylan sought to disrupt is not some equal playing field operating under rules of fair play. As countless journalism academics have documented, news agendas are set by public servants, PR agents, politicians and business leaders. They are not commonly set by ordinary concerned citizens. This is why Moylan orchestrated his hoax at a time when the Australian Securities Exchange is operating at a fraction of normal levels.
In these contexts, it is difficult to sympathise with those who argue that we should condemn Moylan because of the so-called mum-and-dad investors who ”lost” money because of the hoax. True, his action may have affected the sort of ”ordinary” people who have blind faith that finance markets are based on trust and immutable laws. But are the people who gamble their spare funds in coal industry investments really the victims here? Moylan’s hoax asks us to consider a broader category of victims: the world’s citizens and environments who are facing the real consequence of big polluters such as coal companies.