In Praise Of Michael Smith

There’s a peculiar thing happens when you are a Smith. Lots of other folks have your name. I’ve seen the death of Michael Smith in a boating accident reported on the TV News by Michael Smith. Driving to work I heard that the Space Shuttle was launching, pilot Michael Smith. Then had to pull over when it blew up… There’s a Michael Smith doing weather on a blog, but trying to find which one, well:

The Search finds a lot

Michael Smith, Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation …
Michael Smith, Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Executive, leads advanced research in severe weather detection for AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions.. Known as “America’s Tornado Expert,” Mike is one of America’s leading authorities in the field of extreme weather and its effects on society and business.

Michael Smith – Miami News, Fort Lauderdale News, Weather
When most kids were watching cartoons, Michael was watching The Weather Channel and couldn’t wait for the local weathercasts on the evening news.

Michael Smith « CBS Miami
It’s the same great news, weather, … There is a potential for strong to severe storms throughout the day, according to CBS4 meteorologist Michael Smith.

Michael Smith Meteorologist – Home | Facebook
Michael Smith Meteorologist, Atlanta, Georgia. 1,326 likes · 1 talking about this. Meteorologist Michael Smith

Michael Smith leaving ESPN’s ‘SportsCenter’ – usatoday.com
A little more than a month after co-host Jemele Hill’s departure, Michael Smith is also leaving the ESPN show.
[…]

We are sort of everywhere. One running a major bank in Australia. Another a Christian Rock musician. There’s one Michael Smith per 2000 of working population at every place where I’ve worked. That’s a LOT of Michael Smiths.

FWIW, the Fred Smiths of the world have made the Fred Smith club and has annual get-together parties. The club was on some TV show a few decades back. Keeping the address list up to date must be interesting. “Hi, this is Fred Smith, my new address is…” But to the best of my knowledge the Michael Smiths of the world have not yet set up a club.

Generally this means that when I hear of a Michael Smith doing something, it tends to just be noted as Anonymous Anonymous doing something. When the same guy has several different big splashes, unless I read the bio, they are catalogued as different folks / events.

So in this case I’d seen michaelsmithnews.com but not realized the back story to how it came to be. I’d figured “just another one of us blogging”… But oh, was there more. I take some solace, for my sloth in not knowing, from this particular Michael Smith being an Australian News Reporter, so not in media here in the USA. At least, that’s my excuse for not looking up the bio.

What is most intriguing in this Michael Smith is that, as a dogged reporter uncovering dirt in Australian Politics, he raised the ire of Julia Gillard, who got him fired in revenge. (Politicians really need to learn that in the age of the internet, petty revenge and personal attacks are not going to stay hidden and do not sit well with us little people voters.) The Pointman did the work to lay out this bit of history. It is well worth the read. Yes it’s Australia centric, but it involves the Leftist Globalist Cabal and their methods, so is pertinent to all of us.

https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/who-is-michael-smith/

Any bolding was done by me.

Who is Michael Smith?

Posted by Pointman on December 12, 2013

From about 4 years ago, but still relevant.

This is a guest article by one of our regular commenters, Blackswan. Among other things, it demonstrates the new reality that if the mainstream media allows itself to be muzzled by politicians, or chooses to only represent views it finds itself in agreement with, then those views can nowadays find an alternative platform in the wide open plains of the internet and the blogosphere. This is a great success story showing yet again that one determined person can make a difference. Given a moribund mainstream media which is increasingly detached from the ordinary person and which is hesitant to do investigative reporting of powerful interests, I think it’s the shape of things to come.

So kudos to you, Blackswan.

Yes, it is no longer possible to muzzle the truth. Politicians are finding themselves surrounded by a million reporters they can not control nor influence. And no, recruiting left wing friends and fellow travelers at Facebook & Google to decide what is YOUR accepted “truth” and censor all others is not going to work. Folks will just move on to other platforms. For example, I use DuckDuckgo for my searches, not Google. I abandoned Google as soon as they were demonstrated biased and manipulative for political ends.

I’ll skip over the history of Gillard and how she rose in Australian politics.

[…]
It also emerged that Gillard’s name had been mentioned in the Victorian State Parliament in 1995 regarding an alleged fraud perpetrated against the Australian Workers Union (AWU) by Gillard’s then lover who happened to be an official of the AWU, her firm’s major union client, and that she had received benefits from that crime including extensive home renovations. At the time she dismissed the matter as scurrilous politicking and was adamant that she had done “nothing wrong”.

Meanwhile the Rudd/Gillard government lurched from one financial crisis to the next, with Rudd’s popularity in the polls plunging into the 30s zone. In 2009 Gillard, with the backing of the faceless Union puppet-masters of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and an election due the following year, made her move in a late night strike at Rudd’s leadership, ousting him from Office with herself duly installed as Prime Minister by the Labor Caucus. Her term in office was even more disastrous than Rudd’s with the Parliament at times sounding more like a fish market than a sober chamber of debate in the nation’s administration.

The Liberals won a slim majority in the 2010 election but in a last-minute bid to avoid the Opposition benches, Gillard signed a post-election deal with the Greens and three so-called Independent MPs thereby forming a coalition wresting control from the Liberals and forming a minority ALP government with a margin of one single vote. Our democracy teetered on a knife-edge.

Remember that in Australian politics, “liberal” has the classical sense more like libertarian.

The key point here being that Gillard has some dirt there in the background waiting to be found. Skipping down some more (really you ought to just hit the link and read the article. I flows so well I feel like I’m being a butcher here with just quoting chunks).

In August 2011 Glen Milne, a senior mainstream journalist, revisited his earlier profile article on Gillard and expanded it to examine those old ‘rumours’ about her involvement in the AWU matter and her defence of the alleged corrupt behaviour of one of her ALP MPs Craig Thomson, whose conviction on any criminal offence would see him expelled from the Parliament and Gillard’s minuscule majority lost. Milne’s retracted article can be found here.

It was reported that Gillard’s reaction to Milne’s article was “ballistic” and she demanded a retraction and apology from the publisher. The CEO complied and Milne was fired. Not satisfied with that, Gillard also demanded that Milne’s appearances on our taxpayer-funded national broadcaster, the ABC, cease forthwith and he lost his regular spot on a weekly political commentary program.

Gillard wasn’t finished yet.

In the offending article Milne had mentioned one Michael Smith, a Sydney talkback radio broadcaster/journalist who had been pivotal in extracting vital admissions from the allegedly crooked Thomson. Smith’s radio station began promoting a forthcoming interview with a one-time President of the AWU, Bob Kernohan, who intended to discuss the long history of corruption, fraud and theft in the Union movement and its extensive cover-up over decades. For Smith, what took Kernohan’s story out of the realm of rumour, gossip and innuendo was the fact that he had extensive documentation from old court proceedings to validate his concerns.

So here we have a vain vindictive political machine hack attacking the messenger. Then the publisher folds and fires them. Spineless publishers being political puppets. ANY publisher (print, TV, whatever) who doesn’t stand up for their people, or fires folks for political pressure, needs to find another job. That puts you in the “no news here” political lap dog group and you will find your readership in rapid decline as all the “good stuff” goes elsewhere. And that’s just what happened, the good stuff went to blogging.

Gillard went for the jugular. Ten minutes before the pre-recorded interview was due to be broadcast, station management called Smith in and ordered him to ‘pull’ the interview. Although Smith had extensive legal advice to clear the interview of any likelihood of litigious consequences, the management was adamant and Smith was suspended from the airwaves.

He was told that unless he signed a legally binding agreement to cease and desist from any story on Union corruption or the Prime Minister’s close historic connection to it, he would not be returned to his desk. He refused to sign the document and resigned forthwith.

And now the most extraordinary chapter in this story begins.

There’s something about the Michael Smiths of the world that involves a lot of spine. Best way to get us “in your grill” is a threat. “Do THIS or else” is a call to battle. No, not for all of us. But a lot of us seem to share that trait. I suspect it is a mix of the heritage of being a Smith. Somewhere up the family tree was a guy with a hammer and fire, making weapons during time of war, and ploughs in peace. “Invasion” or “Being attacked” meant “Get to work at the forge”. That kind of thing enters family lore and soaks into the family culture.

[…]
Meanwhile, with Gillard on the warpath and MSM CEOs cringing at the prospect of a Finkelstein axe hanging over their corporate heads, nobody would touch Michael Smith with a barge pole and his promising broadcasting career came to a shuddering halt.

Smith had an interesting and varied career – he had been a soldier, a police officer, managed a state symphony orchestra, been CEO of a telco in Indonesia, and had spent several years as a very popular and charismatic radio broadcaster and journalist in Queensland. He had been head-hunted to Sydney, the mecca of talkback radio, much of it syndicated to regional areas. He had a deceptively relaxed, easygoing style which often lulled his political interviewees into a false sense of security. He was not intimidated by the usual political double-speak and doggedly pursued probing questions which made him popular with his listeners, long fed up with being sidelined by the arrogance of the political classes.

It’s a Very Bad Idea to antagonize someone who’s been a cop. These are folks who have chosen to strap on a gun and go out to face injustice in the streets defending others. Nothing gets a cop fired up more than a Big Baddy doing Bad Things to the Little Guy. I can just feel the bit in the teeth when that Michael Smith realized he was the one being attacked.

Now, again, the Smith heritage has a point to make. By Definition we come from families with Independent Small Business in the background. It is being employed by OTHER people that’s the weird thing. Being told “nobody will hire you” just says “OK, go do it yourself. Take out your hammer and anvil, light a fire, and get to work.” And that is what Michael Smith did.

[…]
Events escalated when the seemingly impossible happened; Harry Nowicki, a lawyer researching a book on the AWU, located Ralph Blewitt and persuaded the one-time AWU official to return to Australia from his current home in south-east Asia to make a sworn statement to police confessing his role in the 1990s exploits of Gillard and her lover, Bruce Wilson. He was described as Wilson’s “bag man” and his role was pivotal in the siphoning of hundreds of thousands of dollars into spurious accounts and laundering the cash.

Blewitt had watched from afar as Gillard rose to power and he became increasingly troubled by his past. As a veteran of Vietnam war service getting older and seeking some redemption in his latter years, Blewitt resolved to “puts things right” and see justice finally take its course. He was refused immunity from prosecution for his confessed crimes but returned anyway, making full statements to police, waiving any client privilege in legal documentation involved and prepared to let the chips fall where they may.

With no funds and little experience in the blogosphere michaelsmithnews.com (MSNews) was born. It is a website that has become a phenomenon, unprecedented in its scope and popularity in Australia and probably unique in the world. Drawing on his creative flair and a fearless ‘anything is worth a try’ attitude, Smith has devised a very innovative format and style.

Folks who’s ancestors spent their lives “playing with fire” at a time when it was nearly magical, and always risky, are rather likely to be fearless. Scared folks don’t play with molten metal and make swords and knives. Smiths do. We don’t intimidate worth a damn. It’s a bad idea to try to intimidate a Smith.

[…]
Beginning with his devoted radio audience, people began to login to MSNews in increasing numbers. Few people outside of Brisbane or Sydney had previously heard of Michael Smith but gradually hundreds from around the country climbed on board. This was amazing, unique – instead of our news being pre-digested by a journalist hack who generally put a left-wing bias into every news item, here we could see documents for ourselves – lay people with no previous knowledge of the union movement or the legal profession could read the material, see for themselves the relevant pieces of legislation involved and have it explained to them either by Smith or other bloggers, professionals themselves.
[…]
As the evidence mounted, Gillard became even more strident in an effort to distract, deter, and denigrate Smith and his blog. She saved her most vitriolic attack for Blewitt describing him as “an idiot, an imbecile, rotten to the core and a stooge.” Her famous ‘misogyny speech’ erupted in her increasing attempt to adopt ‘victim status’, to become a martyr who was only being criticised because of her gender not her incompetence or highly questionable moral, ethical or legal practices. She stood in the Parliament and shrieked “Who is Michael Smith?” dismissing him as just another shockjock who had been “sacked for his lies and smears” against her. That question became a catch phrase on the blog – ‘who is Michael Smith?’ It became farcical as most of the MSM continued the cover-up and refused to challenge her shrieking denials.

Meanwhile MSNews moved on – relentlessly.

See, what Gillard may have missed is that WE wonder “Who is Michael Smith?”. We know we will never have fame and name recognition. We are by definition Anonymous Anonymous. It is only our deeds that speak. So I’m pretty sure that Michael Smith got a bit of a chuckle out of the question. I can imagine him saying “We are what we do. Let me show you what I do.”

I’m going to skip over the step by step on what was done, what happened next. It’s a good read, so hit the link. Jumping to the end game:

And all the while the audience has grown, taking MSNews into uncharted territory for an Australian blog site. In 15 months he has had over 15 million page views, moderated and posted several hundred thousand comments, scanned and published hundreds of documents and all as a one-man operation. Regular bloggers, appreciative of Smith’s work on their behalf, post donations to his nominated bank account, his only source of income to maintain the site and its resources.

Recent weeks have seen several prosecutions end up in court hearings in Melbourne – one being the allegedly corrupt Health Services Union (HSU) Secretary/MP Thomson who used his union credit card for thousands of dollars worth of hookers, pornography, family airline tickets and $100,000 worth of ATM cash withdrawals. Such prosecution was only taken after Michael Smith extracted certain admissions during a past radio interview. That investigation led to the revelation that the head of the HSU and a former national president of the Labor Party, Michael Williamson, had stolen $20 million from the Union over a long period. He took a guilty plea on only $1 million and currently awaits sentencing. Very convenient – no witnesses called, no further investigation of other parties involved and $19 million vanishes into the ether as though it never existed.

In another courtroom appeared Gillard’s old boyfriend Wilson who is busily pleading legal professional privilege over documents seized in a police raid on her old law firm. That action was only taken after Michael Smith lodged a formal complaint with the Victoria Police Fraud and Extortion Squad over an alleged ‘false instrument’ Gillard signed to further her lover’s money laundering operation. Smith also lodged a formal complaint with the Victorian Law Society over the false entry in her law firm’s Trust Account which further concealed the source of stolen money.

You know, it’s a Very Bad Idea to annoy the Smith; now Gillard is seeing why.

In the times of knights and armor, it was frequently the case that orders were given to capture the smiths alive. They were the arms industry, after all. This resulted in folks with swords and armor entering the smithy. The smith would look at them and, so the family story goes, say “This hammer makes armor and it can take it apart too.” Or maybe it’s just an attitude thing… Attack me, I’m gonna get a bigger hammer.

Happily for Smith and his family, after two years in the broadcasting wilderness, the leading Sydney talkback radio station 2GB has given him a weekly afternoon spot for political commentary and this Christmas will see him hosting a full program when the current popular host is on holiday. It’s a step in the right direction for Smith. The owners of that radio network are not entirely altruistic in their choice; they are masters in the advertising world and read the winds of change in the broadcasting industry. They know that Smith will bring with him a devoted base of discerning listeners from across the country who will tune in on the internet and broaden 2GB’s reach way beyond its current licensed broadcasting footprint.

Meanwhile MSNews remains unique; a new genre in communications that combines politics, the law, anti-corruption whistle-blowing, humour, entertainment, interactive participation in published comment or by the phone, interaction between commenters themselves, and most importantly, a new optimism within the community that they actually have a voice, they will be heard and that the tentacles of corruption that have blighted our nation can be weeded out.

Justice will prevail.

Nice ending that. The original has an update after that point.

My takeaway from all this is pretty simple. That Michael Smith is doing a bang up job. Some cranky connected political brat decided to get all pissy at him, and discovered it’s a Very Bad Idea to be a brat to a cop.

Who is Michael Smith? We are all Michael Smith… Millions and millions of us.

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