The Media Sewer in Oz

Merv Brendle should know better.  Likewise Senator Cori Bernardi.  Australian media, let alone universities (sic) will exhibit no improvements without the present arrangements die: by starvation.  Cut university funding, abolish humanities and so-called social science departments that are little more than engines of lying propaganda at the expense of scholarship and a liberal education.  The ABC: abolish it.   Reform simply won’t happen.

Find alternative means to publish differing viewpoints.  That includes clearly argued opinion as well as equally clear reporting.  It happened in the past: The Advertiser in the 1910s reported Parliamentary debate and inquiry. Door-stop interviews were unknown.  And so on and so forth. . . .

Although one should not view the past with rosy-coloured glasses; it could be no less nefarious than it is today.  The difference is that it need not be.

Is there a market for media of integrity?  There may have been once.  I doubt it now.  Notions that reform of current institutions, not least those funded by taxpayers, is absurd.  People today read less.  The claim is that they read online.  That is false.  They may spend time online but not reading for understanding their time or even knowing about it day by day.  Friendship is now meaningless, community with it.  Collaborative learning (to use the term of one University librarian) tramples the individual.  ’Be a team player’, is the cry. Conformity rules.  And that, today, includes slandering and belittling Tony Abbott.

Messrs Brendel and Bernardi chatter fatuously about reform.  Good luck with that!

Unless the Liberal Party, in particular, acknowledge that they have no friends and only enemies in Australian media and act accordingly they have no real chance at electoral victory except beyond the old saw that oppositions do not win elections, governments lose them.  They simply must find alternative means by which to communicate with the public.  I suspect it can be done, if not easily.  Trusting the old ways is a recipe for disaster.  Perhaps innovate.

 

 

Australia’s trailer-park trash media

No part of Australia’s utterly repellent media–print, TV, radio–warrants exemption from a deluge of savage criticism following the death of a nurse in London.  Jeff Kennett, yes, a politician, says we must have sympathy for the amoral media numbskulls responsible for this appalling event.  To hell with him as well.

This is tragic for the family of the dead nurse; for 2DAY FM it is not,whatever management might say.  Had the management any integrity, the station would cease to exit immediately.  But this is Australian media, hence they own the tragedy and they will bleed it to suit themselves.

Here, politicians crawl to media, media trawls for politicians’ inane chatter in a non-stop nihilist circus.  Australian media is utterly devoid of merit (the ABC should have been abolished years ago); it lies for its mates, puffs violence parading as sport, inflates lying government propaganda as absolute truth (such as climate change [as presently defined] or Keynesian economics ['stimulus' or, now, 'unexpected falls in commodity prices'].  Lies, every syllable.

Parasites all, forget counselling, put ‘em in the stocks, management included.

 

Apple continues . . .

Another day, another iPad.  This with a difference: retina.  Very good.  And urgently required.

I have used the Barr Smith Library of the University of Adelaide regularly over the past forty years.  It has grown steadily over that time, various changes and innovations have come and gone, most making little real difference but perhaps making the whole a little easier to manage. One was truly negative, although apparently made at the request of users.  That was the area given over to new journals.  Each week on Tuesday the new arrivals of the previous seven days would appear in order of the Dewey number.  Then no longer.  It meant that browsing across disciplines was no longer possible; I had greatly appreciated being able to do so.  One never knew when something might appear in an unexpected place that could help with my research.  That has now gone.  Rigidity has displaced this flexibility.

Now students seem to read much of their required reading online using machines that are manifestly inadequate for the task.  My guess is that most will read less and with the gradual demise of tutorials even less learning will follow.

Hence my hope that retina will quickly appear in MacBook Air products.  That way reading will seem less a chore than it might (there’s no getting away from poor choices by academics).  Let’s hope the ghost of Jobs has taken this to heart and inspired his colleagues to continue to make Apple pertinent.  In many ways learning is at risk, this technical innovation for which I plead may reduce at least some of that risk.

 

 

 

Why have libraries?

If they’re not open to the public. Thus the State Library of South Australia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What minister is responsible for this further instance of government’s contempt for the citizenry? Incidentally why have we no subscription libraries in South Australia?

Humbug . . . and then some—2

So the Carbon Tax has passed the House of Representatives. It’s a bad day. The Leader of the Opposition yesterday rightly suggested that none of the provisions of this legislation take effect until after another election. Government preferred cowardice; it cannot look the electorate in the eye.

Parliamentary despotism is commonplace in the modern world and likely to become only more so. In Australia it is unusual but is now the rule in Canberra. The basic definition of government is acting by deceit. Neo-Keynesiamism, NBN, “national security” and environmentalism: all have deceit at their heart. Not rubbish about being on the side of history changes that: thus Prime Minister Gillard:

“Whether they are on the side of history, whether they are on the side of action, whether they are on the side of change or whether they were content to stand against and watch the world change while Australia stayed the same,” she said.

Instead this government displays the deliberate intention to enter the trash-can of history like so many predecessors who have claimed the logic of history on their side. The Australian government can, today, continue only by lying. It is the most elemental definition of contemporary Australian government: lying to cover the utter cowardice of members of government and total contempt of the people of this country. Utterly loathsome.

Where now? Presumably the government must find some means by which to delay the next federal election due some time prior to 30 November 2013.

Update: The ABC finds much merit in the claim of The Atlantic that Prime Minister Gillard–or Gilliard for Americans–is a “Brave Thinker”. The claim is nonsense, fraudulent even, but since left-wing media organisations like the ABC and The Atlantic have little or no tolerance for the public generally, I guess we can expect no better. What’s brave about holding the electorate in contempt?

 

Humbug . . . and then some

“Locals restore nature’s balance”, calls the headline for a segment of the ABC’s 7:30 Report:

The Trees For Life organisation has helped plant millions of trees over the past three decades.

The claim of private plantings is probably true’ the implication is not. No-one who has travelled within the triangle of, say, Mount Barker, Mount Pleasant and Belair could surely have failed to notice the condition of the Eucalypts below the line of the stringybarks. All others are ill for whatever reason. To the best of my knowledge, no one takes the least interest. It is an unmitigated disgrace and a sign, if any is needed, of the unleavened cant and humbug of environmentalism and contemporary government.

The Devil in the Details

From the BBC:

Egypt troops dead after Coptic church protest in Cairo

At least 17 people have been killed and scores injured after a protest in Cairo against an attack on a Coptic Christian church.

Egyptian TV showed protesters throwing petrol bombs and army vehicles burning outside the state television building.

Copts blame Muslim radicals for the partial demolition of a Coptic church in Aswan province last week. . . .

Egypt’s Coptic Christians—who make up about 10% of the population—accuse the governing military council of being too lenient on the perpetrators of a string of anti-Christian attacks.

The protest on Sunday was calling on the council to sack the governor of Aswan province after the church was damaged on Friday.

The clashes began outside the state TV building in central Maspero Square but soon spread to Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the demonstrations which led to President Mubarak’s resignation.

Thousands joined in the street violence, hurling stones and tearing up the pavement for ammunition.

It is not clear how many of those killed were soldiers and how many were demonstrators.

Protesters also called for the resignation of the military council, in particular its chairman, Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi.

Hundreds from both sides attacked each other with sticks, said witnesses quoted by the Associated Press.

From the Jerusalem Post:

They [Coptic Christians] took to the streets demanding the sacking of the province’s governor for failing to protect the building.

More than four vehicles were set ablaze and television footage showed protesters breaking windows of parked cars and army personnel carriers driving full speed towards crowds of protesters.

Gun shots were heard and witnesses said crowds of protesters carried bodies. It was unclear who was shooting.

“We were marching peacefully,” Talaat Youssef, 23-year old Christian trader told Reuters at the scene.

“When we got to the state television building, the army started firing live ammunition,” he said, adding army vehicles ran over protesters, killing five. His account could not be immediately confirmed.

“The army is supposed to be protecting us,” Youssef said.

Al Arabiya TV’s correspondent, whose office buildings are in the area, said she saw bodies outside the building but did not know if they were just wounded. She also said they saw protesters attacking military police and seizing their weapons.

Thousands of Christians protested in Cairo and Alexandria on Sunday over the attack, chanting against the ruling military council and its head, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.

The protesters want the government to fire the governor of Aswan Province, Mostafa al-Sayed, after the partial demolition of the church on Friday. Egyptian media said Muslims were accused of attacking the church after talk spread in the town that the building did not have legal authorization.

Also from the Jerusalem Post:

‘Babi Yar massacre was to test reaction to Jewish genocide’

The chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, who is a former Chief Rabbi of Israel and who was a child Holocaust survivor, theorized last Thursday that the massacre at Babi Yar in Kiev 70 years ago may have been an experiment by Hitler to test world reaction to the elimination of the Jewish people.

Had the world raised its voice in protest at this horrendous atrocity, Lau surmised, what ensued afterwards might not have happened, and many more Jews might have survived the Holocaust. . . .

Retrospectively, said Lau, when he thought about it, he realized that the Babi Yaar massacre had taken place prior to the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the top Nazi command had discussed the final solution to the Jewish problem.

Babi Yar, he said, may have given Hitler the impetus to continue further. . . .

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in a video-taped message, said that he had been to Babi Yar during one of his visits to Ukraine and had been unable to understand how Jews could be slaughtered like cattle in their thousands in this one place. The only conclusion he could draw, he said, was that because Jews had lost their sovereignty, they had lost their ability to defend themselves.

These are interesting thoughts: The first historical, the second very much rooted in the capacity of victims of religious hatred and intolerance to respond by demanding protection by the state whose responsibility it is to maintain public safety but which, to all intents and purposes, avows the same sentiments as the persecutors.

Egypt has long been a place of great difficulty for Christians; the so-called revolution that removed the Mubarak family from power has only heightened division. Elections featuring the Moslem Brotherhood are due shortly. The outlook here, as elsewhere, is deeply disturbing.

Addendum: See this piece, “Christians fear Islamist pressure in Egypt“, from Associated Press. it includes this revealing comment from the father of a schoolgirl:

“After the revolution, there are no administration and no officials to go to. The system is lax and there is no supervision from the ministry,” he told AP. “If things were under control, extremists would not have a free hand to act as they wish.”

It doesn’t stop here

Henry Ergas,writing in The Australian on 26 September, reported government planning to make the carbon tax more or less incapable of repeal. The legislation for the carbon tax evidently contains an implicit threat against potential agents of repeal: colossal expense running to billions of dollars.

Threats of one sort or another seem to be a theme of our time. The debt crisis in the Eurozone is perhaps the largest of these: pay up two trillion Euros or succumb to economic depression.

Another, largely unreported set of threats levelled against small local communities or families has its roots in contemporary Islam. These are particularly egregious owing to their small scale. Yet each is ugly, utterly repellent and multiplied many times over weeks and months. No word from the so-called international community, naturally, nor from western churches by and large. For centuries church people have taken heart and inspiration from the persecution of the early church. No need to look so far abroad any more: contemporary Christians throughout the world suffer nor less than any who have gone before. Their aloneness is breathtaking; their faith astonishing.

The contrast between such people of faith and the machinations of the great and good is truly radical, if not absolute, their humility so different from technocratic and ever-propagandising arrogance. One of these has a future; the other is in terminal denial. Interesting.

 

 

Critical faculties and evidence irrelevant now

The example is only a small one really but illustrates the decision by countless thousands of privileged individuals to forsake reason, to listen only to the voices that suit.

Julian Burnside is a lawyer, “prominent” apparently. Apparently, too, he doesn’t like Tony Abbott, leader of the federal opposition:

In [various] Twitter posts, Mr Burnside described Mr Abbott as a “dangerous man with no moral compass” who would lead Australia “back to the dark ages”.

He said new book Tony Abbott: A Man’s Man, by Susan Mitchell, was “a terrifying portrait of a truly dangerous, unprincipled person: a liar and a hypocrite”.

Pathetic. Anybody wonder why politicians are widely despised and why some of us loathe their self-righteous critics.

Years ago many observed Bush Derangement Syndrome. That, in 2008, extended to Palin Derangement Syndrome. In Australia, we may rightly pity those with Abbott Derangement Syndrome. Like this nation’s chief scientist, Burnside tolerates no opposition; like the government led by Julia Gillard, he tolerates no dissent.

Update: There’s more: see, for example Andrew Bolt. Inconveniently, Tom Dusevic, described as National Chief Reporter for the Australian and reporting Susan Mitchell’s book, included this paragraph:

A spokesman for Mr Abbott said: “Susan Mitchell has not sought to interview Tony as part of her research. The book is so inaccurate and over the top that if it appeared on the ALP website people would dismiss it as lacking all credibility.”

No Interview! No attempt to interview.Yet another person of privilege not deigning to speak with the object of her loathing.

Then there’s the publisher proclaiming a “blistering critique”. How can one claim to have blistered the blighter if you’ve not spoken with him? The long march through the insiotutions continues without rest. The hatred for persons of difference is absolute. The pathology increasingly self-evident. And as the Herald-Sun‘s Andrew Bolt might have said and the Catholic Archbishop of Paris did say during the German occupation of France from May 1940: prudence must dictate our words and actions.*

*See Vesna Drapac, War and Religion: Catholics in the Churches of Occupied Paris.  Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1998, passim.

 

 

So what’s the point?

If the Liberal Party won’t reconsider absurdities like renewable energy targets, why consider them at all? There is a chronic idiocy about contemporary politics no matter the country. We know politicians and governments generally—bureaucrats and technocrats—have nothing but contempt for ordinary people. Public authorities hold good sense and logic with the same disdain. And the result will be impoverisation, “the active creation of poverty within a society or economy”. What an amazing policy to take to an election. But there it is.

Update: Even so, some people remain surprised—or continue to affect surprise—at the “double-dealing” of the prime minister and her government. Perhaps less affectation and more perspiration in the direction of defeating or at least reversing this odious legislation for a carbon tax. For instance, how does one sack a High Court?