Pixelated Semantics

Finally: Australia ratifies Kyoto Protocol

2007-12-03T16:29:00.000+10:00

On December 3, 2007, 4:28PM; the SMH has just reported "Australia has ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd signed the instrument of ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in his first act after being sworn in this morning."

Good to see the conservative neuropathy that prevented the former PM from lifting his pen for over 11 years seems to have been confined to that dreadful period of recent history.

Pig City (no time for paradise)

2007-07-16T11:17:00.000+10:00

Pig City, 14 July 2007 at Uni of Qld: the first reunion of one of the world's oldest punk scenes. Saints first played UQ in 1974 (kicked out for playing 'No Time' Bailey says). A strong crowd of mostly over-40 types file in through the afternoon. Security tries to be intimidating, and the half dozen cops in uniform stroll around to make a presence, but it doesn't really work. The ban on leaving the venue to smoke lasts all of about 30 minutes or less, with Dusan B. leading the charge. By the time the Saints play there is a solid cloud of weed-scented smoke inside the 'no smoking' venue itself. Nobody is bothered.

A fenced-off oval on a warm winter's day holds a caricature of an amusement park-the red and blue flashing police lights on the marquee entrance a nice touch. Queues for beer become half an hour waits, social encounters of their own to palliate the wait. Dusty ground trampled by lots of grey haired black jacketed oldies in boots and sunnies.

4ZZZ has a live broadcast from a small tent just inside. Sonn after kick-off The Black Assassins make an impromtu appearance, thrashing 'Death Take Me Now' in balaclavas while band members, and audience (including at least one prominent writer) attack and destroy a mannequin strongly resembling the PM, while two of Qld's finest observe with curiosity. Hilarious and liberating--all live to air on ZZZ.

In the big top, The Apartments play a moving, emotive set, almost hauntingly beautiful, with some fine bass from John Wilsteed and taut delivery from Peter M Walsh.

The crowd builds to about 7000 through the day. Fashion tone of the day is not the dressed-up punk look that came late to the Aussie scene in the 70s, but the non-uniform non-conformism of a generation that started something that has become codified and imitated. As exemplified by the Saints. The greatest reunion of Brisbane ratbags in memory is well underway.

Highlight of the afternoon is Kev Carmody's set, including 'The Bitchin Song' and a deeply moving 'Little Things'. Kev delivers a strong sense of injustice, history, and poetry, and a great dose of motivation to resist the backwards conservatism of the time--full circle back to the late 70s under Joh Bjelke (who is unfondly remembered during the day.)

Pineapples from the Dawn of Time deliver a potent set, climaxing in an orgy of noise with 'Too Much Acid'. The Riptides take nearly the whole set to find their stride (with only one original member), but 'Sunset Strip' is gloriously delivered. The Parameters, led by Tony K., get to play 'Pig City', to the delight of the crowd--many old politicos in the front rows with huge grins. Regurgitator almost steal the day's thunder, in Kung Fu style. A solid set of old and new tunes, flawlessly and energetically played.

The lines for the beer tent get longer; the temperature starts heading for 5 or 6 degrees as the sun sets. The dust, the reunions, the smell of food waft on the night air. Like an Ekka for freaks and lefties of the old school.

The Go-Betweens tribute, in the form of Kate Miller-Heidke and a brass band play three numbers, but it falls short of the mark in some ways, although the songs are beautifully delivered. 'Cattle and Cane' is the highlight, working well with the slightly jazz style.

And then it was time for the Saints. The anticipation continued to build to almost agonizing levels, the crowd surged towards the stage. Keupper appears and starts up the guitar, and then the band is onstage thumping out 'Swing for the crime'. The audience soaks up the amazing scene of Keupper, Bailey, and Hay together again, working their magic as if they'd never been away. The set drawns heavily from 'Prehistoric Sounds'; the intervening years just fade away. They follow with 'Perfect Day', 'All Times Through Paradise', 'No Time', 'Stranded', 'The Prisoner', and into a glorious 'Nights in Venice'. Bailey stalks the stage like a man who's just buried Elvis and wants to dance on the grave; Keupper is attacking his beloved Strat with a screwdriver; Hay is thrashing away at the kit like a demon; and everything is perfect with the world.

Highlights: Black Assassins' guerilla performance; Kev Carmody; The Saints from start to finish; the cop who pulled us over afterwards and asked about the gig before confessing to being a punk fan. And this dialogue about a security guard come on far too heavy with crowd control, witnessed during the exodus after the Saints:

Andy Nehl: How about that f.....ing bouncer!
Andrew Stafford: Pig City!

(To continue as RSI allows over next few days.)

Other reviews & views:

The Black Assassins: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=119657765&blogID=289023033 and Assassins live at Pig City video: http://www.blackassassins.net/pigcity.html

'Good at the time': http://goodtimemusic-overhere.blogspot.com/2007/07/pig-city-retrospective_21.html

Senator Bartlett's blogged on the gig: http://andrewbartlett.com/blog/?p=1588

Courier-Mail: http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermail/showbritz/index.php/couriermail/comments/pig_city

News.com gallery: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/gallery/0,23816,5024294-5007115-1,00.html

ABC review: http://www.abc.net.au/brisbane/stories/s1979152.htm?brisbane and http://www.abc.net.au/brisbane/stories/s1978931.htm?brisbane (with pics in sidebar)

Pix from blogger John Cran: http://jonsbigadventure.blogspot.com/2007/07/pig-city.html

Life imitates android

2007-05-01T09:56:00.000+10:00

From the SMH; how PK Dick, and other sci-fi authors, have demonstrated prescience and foresight, with their writings increasingly becoming reality.

Workin' for the Bot

2007-02-06T10:16:00.000+10:00

From today's SMH:

A behavioural scientist, Stephen Juan, said young Australians were gripped by a 'crisis of rising expectations'.

'The promise was that ... machines would do the drudge work. Instead, people are working harder to pay for their machines,' Dr Juan said.

The pixelated garden #1: poetry by Karoline Sandborg

2006-10-13T12:49:00.000+10:00

Early summers

Fragile happy child
wrapped in the clingy sweat of the night
lying awake with wide eyes listening
to rapid rabbits heartbeats and sneaky demons
outside the trembling wooden door.
Little did I know that the demons lurking between shadows
were nothing but thousands of diamonds on the black neck of the skies
and seagulls snoring softly.

A quick knock through the walls,
only to hear it repeated from the other side,
along with the drowsy rustling of bed linen.

To see the slow breeze in the pine trees outside sea sprayed windows first thing in the morning is to be born again.
And outside, the white town across the ocean and
my gold teethed grandma humming African songs in the kitchen while making milky tea.

I can see us now, my grandma and me, sipping tea on the veranda slowly, slowly
watching the white tips of the ocean
in the quiet mornings of June.
Her furrowed hands reach towards the sun, she says
now this is a good moment isn't it?

Brown Angel and Mother Theresa

You revealed yourself in the strangest place
grazing by the waterhole of your dark green forests
10 reais and a new condom in the pocket of your signature shorts
Tiny yellow tube and cloth, take your turn brown angel before you inhale and
skyrocket

I'm already there.
Selfish Mother Theresa barefoot in
stripy hotpants
smells of Caipriniha and sweat
She dances with the locals, knee deep in mud water
happily blinded by testosterone
Usually saving the world from their sins but tonight simply smiling
revitalised by a tiny yellow tube and the contents of several broken
plastic cups and
some serious attention from a sky high angel.

Manic Virus Mail

LOL the light reflecting from you
what they call charisma
is the sparkle of screens and the manic division of your cells

They tell me you're psychotic I bet it's true
Internet is your plastic religion your ulcerous prayers run through empty ether
you live on the shiny timber floorboards of a Oslo West apartment hoping to upgrade it to living in an 87 story skyscraper in Baerum
where your life will be the same
but closer to the stars and some sort of infinity

Hey baby take it easy you didn't sleep for two days sending spoofs to me
I wrote this mail because I am worried you'll end up slitting your throat
I'm telling you do not pay attention to nervous infectious uncool others
you do and then suddenly your screen goes green and the virus spreads to every corner
and the news of your death will be broadcasted followed by a bulletin on Beef Week
and the garden gnomes' butchers aprons will darken the sky red
I'm sure of it
am I wasting my time or what
LOL.

(C) Copyright 2006 Karoline Sandborg. Permission is required for reproduction.

Gardening in the desert of the real

2006-10-13T12:43:00.000+10:00

Pixelated Semantics is now accepting submissions of original, passionate, and distinctive writing, of any form, up to approximately 1000 words. This publication will be presenting a range of writing over the next six months, while the editor recovers from RSI.

We're pleased to announce the first publication will be some compelling poetry from Brisbane-based Norwegian poet Karoline Sandborg.

New paternalism, old racism

2006-07-06T10:03:00.000+10:00

MP Tony Abbott reveals 'new paternalism' as old racism with a vote-catching makeover, denigrating millenia old mourning ceremonies of Australia's Indigenous in observing 'There seems to be an inordinate amount of time taken up with funerals and ceremonies.' Of course, to a credibility-lacking mouthpiece like that Minister, it's the aboriginals who must 'develop a work culture', never the white blow-ins who need to develop much better appreciation of the ancient society that has survived despite 200 years of being 'assimilated'. Seems to be continuing the forceful imposition of a foreign society and then elevating complaints of a 'culture of dysfunction' when assimilation fails.

Dirty deeds, dirtier lies

2006-07-03T09:38:00.000+10:00

Two parallel news stories in the last week demonstrate an apparent unwillingness of the media to make even fairly obvious connections between events, especially when it comes to 'fighting terror':

1. The two British special forces soldiers killed last week in an ambush in Helmand, Afghanistan were operating in an area where there was considerable anger over bounced cheques paid by the Brits to supposedly stop farmers growing opium poppies.

2. The two American soldiers slain last month after being kidnapped in Yusufiya, Iraq were from the same regiment as five other soldiers currently being investigated for raping and killing a young woman in that same area.

In both of these cases a measure of plain retaliation for percieved wrongs is evident; however the media prefers the legend of 'insurgency' and 'terror' to admitting bad blood caused by Coalition actions. With journalists publishing (even researching) stories that undermine official credibility increasingly being harassed and punished on an unprecedented scale, perhaps the willingness to correlate and publish is diminishing.

Mary was a good bloke

2006-06-22T09:37:00.000+10:00

The new female head of the Episcopal Church in the US uses some interesting communication strategies in her sermons:

"Mother Jesus gives birth to a new creation--and you and I are His children. If we're going to keep on growing into Christ images for the world around us, we're going to have to give up fear."

Apparently there is 'a long tradition of writings by women theologians that use the metaphor of Jesus as mother'. Biblical interpretations based on male mother figures parallel the confusing distortions of contemporary political speech.

The little accountant rides again

2006-06-21T09:12:00.000+10:00

The increasingly fascist Australian Government this morning confirms by its actions that it has abandoned propriety, integrity, and democracy in their operations, judging by today's news reports. It's obviously essential now to gain votes and support by lying about refugees and denying human rights, to treat the Indigenous paternalistically, to appease foreign powers, and to destroy the fabric of the Senate at the whim of a Prime Minister who gives all the appearance of confirming his popular status as a spiteful little accountant who hates to be seen losing an argument.

Perpetuating the War on Language with a distinctively American form of torture

2006-06-14T11:20:00.000+10:00

Showing the humanity inherent in an administration that perpetuates torture, spokesmen in the US have called recent Gitmo suicides 'a good PR move', and 'an act of asymetrical warfare'. History professor Alfred McCoy (author of the classic The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade) last night labelled that establishment 'an ad hoc laboratory for the perfection of the CIA psychological torture.' ABC News also provides a solid parallel thesis for on the political abuse of meaning:

'One of the less noted aspects of the Bush Administrations' "War on Terror" is the government's simultaneous War on Language, a calculated use of Orwellian double speak. Post 9-11, the invasion of other countries became a "preemptive strike", the capture and torture of civilians "extraordinary rendition".'

The artificial leg that lied

2006-06-09T12:16:00.000+10:00

For events in an 'asymmetrical' military campaign, the life and death of Zarqawi has characteristics that seem to strangely mirror Coalition strategy. This is subtly identified by The Australian's unnamed 'correspondents in Dubai' who write:

'By the time he was killed this week in a US airstrike, Zarqawi was more powerful as a myth than as a man. The killings he masterminded were carefully calibrated to have the maximum psychological effect and feed his legend. His repertoire of violence was a guerrilla version of the "shock and awe" tactics of his American foes. Suicide bombings were planned with great precision but rarely aimed at targets of military value - their symbolic effect was more important. The killing of hostages was also choreographed for maximum shock value and followed a ritual that became grimly familiar.'

This mythmaking seems to be a double-edged sword, cutting the throat of humanitarian values in two directions at once:

'US forces also sometimes found it convenient to feed the Zarqawi myth. Most experts believe his foreign fighters make up only a fraction of the insurgency, but the US military portrayed Zarqawi as its most dangerous foe in Iraq.'

The Washington Post reported earlier this year that the US military mounted a psychological operations campaign to 'magnify the role of Zarqawi' in Iraq's 'insurgency'. However, that wasn't the only magnification. There's also the notional artificial leg that became part of the pretext for the invasion itself:

'He was long said to have an artificial leg, fitted in Baghdad during Saddam Hussein's rule - a claim some US officials used to bolster their case that the Iraqi president was conspiring with al-Qaeda. The tale about the leg - like so many of the myths around Zarqawi - turned out to be false.'

The symmetrical commentary also has his death conform to a wider Coalition agenda, with Rummy observing 'on the very day he gets killed, the [Iraqi] government gets formed'.

A purist Big Brother approach

2006-06-02T09:58:00.000+10:00

Man of Steel dissembles on smartcard fascism:

'If you want to take a purist Big Brother approach, well, you don't have cards for anything. You don't have your photograph on your car licence.'

Say what? Very notably, in announcing a monumental backdown over the Snowy sale proposal, the Man also reckons:

'...it is important that on occasions a government have both the courage and the willingness to change its mind on something.'

Why the 'courage and the willingness' suddenly appear over this issue, and not nuclear power, refugees, Iraq, IR, health, land rights, or any other issue confronting parliament in the last 10 years is not yet apparent, although he does offer, in shades of Big Brother puritanism

'It has never been part of my master plan to sell the Snowy'.

Perhaps the Man could share this 'master plan' with the public that elected him.

Simulacra (2)

2006-06-01T13:51:00.000+10:00

Speaking of fake humans, within a day of the 'fake company' revelation, a 'Japanese acoustics expert' has devised a method to hear what the Mona Lisa's voice 'would have sounded like'. Reuters report:

'Dr Matsumi Suzuki, who generally uses his skills to help with criminal investigations, measured the face and hands of Leonardo da Vinci's famous 16th century portrait to estimate her height and create a model of her skull.

"Once we have that, we can create a voice very similar to that of the person concerned," Suzuki told Reuters in an interview at his Tokyo office last week. "We have recreated the voices of a lot of famous people that were very close to the real thing and have been used in film dubbing."'

How they know the voices are close to 'the real thing' in the absence of benchmark voice recordings (for example from the 16th century, or prior to the 1890s in any case) is not discussed. The story does disclose that

'The scientists brought in an Italian woman to add the necessary intonation to the voice.

"We then had to think about what to have her say," Suzuki said. "We tried having her speak Japanese, but it didn't suit her image."'

Indeed.

The uselessness of data seduction

2006-06-01T13:09:00.000+10:00

Insightful article at the SMH on the uselessness of most consumer data, and the problem of 'mistaking data as the insight', called 'data seduction'.

Simulacra

2006-05-30T16:01:00.000+10:00

Taking commercial piracy to the ultimate edge, the SMH reports that NEC Corporation have discovered an outfit in China who were faking the entire company. I wonder, in shades of PK Dick, if there were other gangs unaware of the operation who were faking the fakes. The pirates apparently 'went as far as developing their own range of consumer electronic products'. As Dick wrote:

'Fake realities will create fake humans. Or, fake humans will generate fake realities and then sell them to other humans, turning them, eventually, into forgeries of themselves. So we wind up with fake humans inventing fake realities and then peddling them to other fake humans.'

-How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, Philip K. Dick, 1978.

Absurd hallmarks

2006-05-28T11:28:00.000+10:00

Finally, implicit parallels of the War on Terror with the Cold War are made overt by GW Bush:

' Like the Cold War, our enemies believe that the innocent can be murdered to serve a political vision [...] Like the Cold War, they're seeking weapons of mass murder that will allow them to deliver catastrophic destruction to our country. If our enemies succeed in acquiring such weapons, they will not hesitate to use them, which means they would pose a threat to America as great as the Soviet Union.'

However the tacit proliferation being fostered by the US is left of out the 'threat'. As El Baradei of the UN says:

'Mutually assured destruction will once again be the absurd hallmark of civilisation at its technological peak.'

More differentiated

2006-05-26T13:13:00.000+10:00

The Oz reports on the latest damage control from the White House:

'Mr Bush expressed regret for calling for terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden to be brought in "dead or alive" and taunting Iraqi insurgents by saying "bring 'em on".

The blunt-speaking Texan said it was "kind of tough talk that sent the wrong signal to people. I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe a little in a more sophisticated manner [...] I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted and so I learned from that."'

And:

'I think that probably in retrospect, though at the time it was very difficult to argue this, we could have done de-Baathification in a more differentiated way than we did.'

The Australian describes the speechifying as 'extraordinarily humble', which could be taken to either be bias in favour of Bush, or a backhander that implies he's very rarely anything but arrogant. In contrast, here is part of the transcript from NPR:

"Saying 'Bring it on.' Kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. That I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner. You know, 'Wanted dead or alive,' that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted."

House of unrepresentatives

2006-05-26T11:36:00.000+10:00

Man of Steel champions representative democracy, from the SMH:

'There are occasions where I make decisions [...] which are based clearly on the majority view of the public, and there are occasions when I don't.'

In a related issue, is this statement on the Australian Government Attorneys General's Department 'Hot Topics' page a proper use of taxpayer funded information delivery (and reflective of the separation of powers), or a politicised platform for the minister to attack legitimate critics of legislation?

'Sedition

It is clear the most vocal critics and commentators have not read the legislation - that is the only way of explaining why many have ignored the existence of a "good faith" defence or the fact a person would need to have intentionally urged the use of force or violence to be prosecuted for the offence of sedition. For those who would like to know what the legislation actually states, here is the link (see Schedule 7): Anti-Terrorism Bill (No2) 2005.'

[Note, the supplied link to the Bill no longer functions. Also note public criticism arose from the previous draft of the laws, which the minister objected to being released by the ACT Chief Minister. After changing the Bill, the AG continued to criticise objectors to the wording that was removed - Ed.]

The Department's own publication Australia's National Framework for Human Rights - National Action Plan states:

'Australia has a strong and representative democracy, signifying government by the people through their representatives.'

'Signifying' but not guaranteeing.

The Australian Government Information Management Office publication Guidance on Departmental and Ministerial Websites clearly is at odds with the AG's practice:

14. Nor should departmentally funded websites contain material of a party political nature. [...] It is not in order, however, for material that relates solely to party political issues [...] to be placed on a departmentally funded site.'

To 'attack the policies of the Opposition' is a very different proposition to attacking critics of unpopular law. Whether the critics of the Sedition laws were right or not is not at issue here: the use of government websites for political purposes in supporting that law by criticising the public demands consideration.

The AG is currently contemplating expanding the Sedition provisions to allow banning of books and other publications.

Peaceful and lawful dissent

2006-05-24T11:16:00.000+10:00

Man of Steel was ambushed in Ireland yesterday by questions and protests on the Australian role in Iraq, East Timor oil and gas, children overboard, and 'anti-union' and 'criminal' industrial relations legislation. The SMH and The Age report the response:

"Part of the joy of democracy is the right of peaceful and lawful dissent," he said. "The Irish brought many things to Australia, and one of them was dissent. So they are living exemplars of that Irish spirit. God bless them."

Shock and flaws

2006-05-23T15:09:00.000+10:00

One columnist seems to be pre-emptively striking at Cindy Sheehan with invective like:

'Cindy Sheehan, pin-up girl for the loopy Left, global terrorists, and the anti-US, anti-Howard, anti-Iraq war push, is entertaining her addled fans in Sydney tonight. '

It seems the only defense left for the pro-Howard pro-invasion minority is to create offense with phrases like 'loopy Left, global terrorists' and 'addled fans': obviously a lack of WMD or any other proper excuse for post-9/11 misadventures has taken its toll on the critics ability to present a coherent reason for involvement. Here's what Cindy Sheehan has said in Australia today:

'I think Australians, they just need to get out on the streets and they need to say, "John Howard, you work for us" [...] George Bush isn't even popular in America any more so I don't know why any leaders in any countries who claim to govern their countries with the consent of the people they govern would align themselves closer with George Bush [...] I believe George Bush is the greatest recruiter for Al Qaeda in Al Qaeda's history [...] You don't kill innocent Iraqi people, you don't fight a war on terror with a war of terror and that's what George Bush is doing and that's what [the Australian] Government is doing in support of George Bush. To say I'm a tool of the loopy Left, let me tell you almost 70 per cent of Americans agree with me.'

Effectively inhumane

2006-05-23T14:11:00.000+10:00

You've got to wonder about the humanity of the 40 people who left a man to die on the side of Mt. Everest so that they could claim the fleeting 'glory' of making it to the summit (according to the SMH today.) The excuse:

'...at 8,500 metres it's extremely difficult to keep yourself alive--let alone keep anyone else alive [...] He was effectively dead ... so we carried on'.

Though equal or worse lapses are recorded every day in war zones, the competitiveness of these adventurers forms absolutely no excuse for choosing to let someone die rather than forgo 15 minutes of fame. The result of a lifetime of infamy apparently did not occur to them as being a consequence. According to the Telegraph, the path to the top is the 'dead zone':

'About 200 people have died on Everest since the first expeditions in the 1920s. The corpses are stepped over by climbers travelling the most popular routes.'

Australia's nightmare (revisited)

2006-05-22T15:41:00.000+10:00

As the SMH observes, PM Howard has again 'ramped up his rhetoric' in making increasingly frequent calls for 'a full-blooded debate' on uranium and nuclear energy 'like the GST' (with no apparent irony--the GST in Australia of course was implemented without debate or mandate).

Man of Steel is winding up the public again: this time using nuclear energy to make comparisons without a basis ('cleaner and greener' than what?), and to have a tilt at pre-selecting an audience ('some of the people') by arguing:

'...the environmental advantages of going to nuclear power are there for all to see. It is cleaner and greener and therefore some of the people who in the past have opposed it should support it.'

Uranium enrichment (whether as a forerunner to nuclear power or not) is also being hastily pushed in concert by other senior figures in government--leaving the explanation that enrichment is also 'a step on the road to building nuclear weapons' to journalists. Countries close to here are already expressing alarm.

By the way, according to former deputy PM Anthony in his Australian editorial, a nuclear waste deposit is not a 'dump', its a 'hi-tech operation'.

Time's up

2006-05-22T09:08:00.000+10:00

One hundred years after the Industrial Revolution: take poverty, the NME, Manchester and Liverpool, a dose of the Sex Pistols, The Fall, and the Buzzcocks, famous audiences, infamous gigs, and what do you get? The biography of D-I-Y Northern UK Punk from Paul Morley in The Observer.....

Would the last indigenous land owner please point the way to the uranium?

2006-05-20T11:26:00.000+10:00

Would the sudden rediscovery of violence in Aboriginal communities be related to the federal government's desire to have Aboriginal land unencumbered to facilitate transformation into uranium mines? Impressively one-sided and concerted justifications for dispossession are being formed in the media: any form of comparison with abuse, neglect, and poverty in white suburbs is, of course, totally absent.

Locked and loaded: the Vista experience

2006-05-19T10:44:00.000+10:00

Microsoft's specs for Vista have been officially posted. In the detail is the devil's hand: for with some versions users will be forced to have a 'Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2 chip' (built-in hardware Digital Rights Management) and for 'Premium' installations they mandate 'Internet access capability'. Locked and loaded, to extrapolate a militarised cliche: users will be unable to control their access rights to media that is legally owned, and will be forced to allow remote access to their machines (such as reporting software piracy, etc.) MS also promise that 'All editions of Windows Vista will deliver core experiences such as innovations in organizing and finding information, security, and reliability': 'functions' or 'features' are now 'core experiences' (if these are anything like Man of Steel's 'core promises' expect Vista to revert to the operating level of Windows 3.1 in short order). Strictly speaking, an 'innovation' is probably not an 'experience' either.

Win/lose

2006-05-19T10:29:00.000+10:00

A quote from the 'new counterinsurgency manual for the U.S. Army', reported by Reuters:

'The insurgent wins if he does not lose, while the counterinsurgent loses if he does not win.'

There's no room for complexity here. Neither do women fight insurgencies, according to this language.

Who's my saviour now?

2006-05-10T16:25:00.000+10:00

The Treasurer's Budget Speech (ABC-TV, Peter Costello, Budget Speech to Parliament, May 9, 2006, 7.30pm) contains another rhetorical appeal to insecurity, with the usual inference that relief from such a state is best provided by 'responsible government'.

This was shown strongly through his declaration that 'we have had terrorist attacks [...] there were moments when we were vulnerable'.

Australians abroad have unfortunately been victims of terrorist attacks, but in the last twenty-three years there have been no attacks at home, and 'we' seems to deliberately overreach its collective authority.

There will also always be moments when people are vulnerable--the Treasurer is deepening appeal by adding what is really an unrelated statement (i.e. there were also unremarked moments when 'we' were hungry, or sad, or unwell.)

Were 'we' any less vulnerable during the entire Cold War, with the threat of nuclear annihilation an omnipresent and long-used justification for various kinds of security state activity and now-familiar erosion of civil rights?

Appeal to vulnerability was also a favourite of the Vietnam War era (e.g. the 'domino theory') and earlier (Menzies justification for his anti-communist legislation)--a historically useful device that conservative government language frequently employs, especially with loaded terms and phrases like 'politically motivated violence' (Fraser, Howard), 'terror' (Fraser, Howard), and 'communist threat' (Fraser, Menzies, et al.)

Magic moment in media ethics

2006-05-10T16:22:00.000+10:00

One media outlet's morning TV news personality has re-defined the meaning of 'ambulance chaser'; David Koch was seen on footage (Channel 7, 6pm News, 9 May, 2006, Brisbane) climbing (apparently uninvited, from the edit shown) into the back of an ambulance to speak to one of the just-rescued Beaconsfield miners--moments after the fellow had been allowed to walk from the mine, after 14 days in a small cage underground, to a stretcher in the back of the ambulance.

The footage showed an ambo somewhat quizzically looking on as Channel 7 filmed through the door of the ambulance, while Koch inelegantly leaned forward out of shot and spoke briefly and inaudibly to the man. A policeman of serious expression was then shown walking alongside the van towards the door, apparently early in the process of asking the 'personality' to leave. The package then cut to footage of the miner, solo, in the back of the now departing ambulance.

As if such an act needed further flourish, the lead-in to the story actually used the words 'magic moment' to describe what is arguably an ethical lapse of instant notoriety.

Meat is misdirection

2006-05-09T14:58:00.000+10:00

What parts of farmed animals (which are, incidently, currently being called 'difficult-to-manage property' by Wired--as if objectification equals palatability) are actually found in Aussie Meat Pies? As opposed to consumer expectations of what 'meat' content may mean, media sources are today disgorging reports that pie content includes:

snouts
ears
tongues
tendons
blood vessels
'bits' of lung tissue
'other gristle'
tongue roots

The SMH observes that 'a meat pie can just as easily be made from goat, buffalo, hare or camel (snout included) as beef or lamb' - providing it's not a wild animal. The only prohibited 'meat' ingredients are apparently foetuses and offal--unless they're 'clearly labelled'. According to Choice 'consumers should be aware that the word meat might not mean the same to them as it did to the food regulatory body'. The food manufacturing companies would seem to be only too aware of the disparity between public interpretation and letter-of-the-law labelling compliance, if the amount of non-muscular meat in their products is any indication.

Pagan emptiness of a total society

2006-05-05T12:00:00.000+10:00

A couple of strange statements in the morning media: Bishop Pell:

'"Pagan emptiness" and Western fears of the uncontrollable forces of nature had contributed to "hysteric and extreme claims" about global warming.

'In the past, pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.'

PM Howard:

'We should never allow envy to creep in if we are to have a total society in which we recognise that there are some people always that will be more heavily rewarded than others because of their skill or good fortune.'

Seeing calls for action on global warming as a form of paganism seems like a new form of religious delusion; I can think of no other description. And as for Man of Steel, the phrase 'total society' has a nasty ring of underlying authoritarianism (as with the infamous 'year zero' or 'final solution').

Basically simplistic

2006-04-28T09:01:00.000+10:00

An 'MP with junior responsibilities in immigration and multiculturalism' has announced he's 'examining prospects for a compulsory citizenship test for migrants' that would make 'fluency in English a requirement'. In fact a 'basic' English language requirement has been imposed on migrants at least since the Australian Citizenship Act 1948. The definition of 'basic' is given by the government as '300 hours of English language tuition'. In comparison, one year's worth of a four subject undergraduate university degree currently provides about 200 hours tuition. That 'basic' tuition for English seems to have designs on 'substantial'.

The MP reportedly also 'wants Islamic religious leaders to give their sermons in English and train home-grown imams'--apparently as unburdened by any knowledge of Islam as by any knowledge of the Citizenship Act. To pronounce that 'religious leaders will have to deliver much or all of their sermons in English' is a dog-whistle that tries to balance offense with ignorance.

The Koran is accepted as

'...a compilation of the speech of God in Arabic. This speech is in Islamic tradition considered inimitable; any paraphrase of that speech would change the meaning and dignity of that speech. And any translation into any other language would also hopelessly change the meaning of the sacred text.'

There's such obvious expertise in multiculturalism and citizenship requirements here. And by the way--a government communicator writes on their citizenship website of 'a desirabl [sic] tightening of Citizenship policy', apparently leaving that statement unamended since May 2001. Now that's basic English.

The Magic ID Card

2006-04-26T08:27:00.000+10:00

It seems inevitable that Man of Steel and his unaccountable cronies will try to foist a national ID card on the population soon. One stated reason is that it will 'protect against terrorists'. Probably as effectively as the fridge magnets. Rhetorical justification in part from the PM:

'I think when people talk about civil liberties they sometimes forget that action taken to protect the citizen against physical attack is a blow in favour and not a blow against civil liberties.'

As usual, precisely how this Magic ID Card will protect or balance the further loss of rights is not outlined. That citizens are apparently willing to 'sacrifice privacy and civil liberties for protection against terrorists' does not mean the 'sacrifice' will offer any protection at all.

A parliament or two in the pocket

2006-04-21T13:17:00.000+10:00

On the subject of corruption in Australian politics, (of which the AWB enquiry only dusts the veneer) Barnaby Joyce has made an interesting allegation, covered solely in the Courier-Mail today:

In an extraordinary attack on his Coalition colleagues, Senator Joyce yesterday said certain MPs were in the "back pocket" of the oil giants, but refused to name who they were.

"Oil companies are very powerful. They run countries, they have no problem running politicians," he said.'

On precedent this story will be sunk, quickly: it is correctly described as extraordinary when a Senator accuses his own party of corruption so forthrightly. It is even more interesting that there is as yet, no follow-up or wider interest in the topic.

Note (24 April): - As predicted, the story has sunk almost without trace. There was one reproduction in WA, one 'clarification' in an interview with the ABC on the same day as the Courier-Mail item--and that seems to be all:

'I believe that the oil lobby is an extremely powerful lobby in Canberra and it has certainly had an effect on a number of politicians and they sing the oil companies' mantra.

Now, I don't - just to be completely clear - that doesn't mean I believe they're corrupt or anything like that, but I do believe that as a lobbying group the oil companies have far too much power and get far too much bang for their buck in Canberra.'

...and an MP or three behind bars

The topic of corruption surrounds the reasons for the Australian intervention in the Solomon Islands as well--but is the redeployment of force there actually preventing the proper parliamentary examination of allegations?

Rummy's list

2006-04-21T10:02:00.000+10:00

The release of Rummy's List of Gitmo detainees provides more substance for critics than defense for the Bushistas. The reportage speaks eloquently:

'Experts say the list released by the US Defence Department does not include a single senior figure from Al Qaeda or other Islamic extremist groups, nor from Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime.

"It's nonsense. Guantanamo is a gigantic failure"

according to a 'leading specialist on central Asia'.

'"They are going to know absolutely nothing about terrorism - we absolutely got the wrong guys"

said 'a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) unit focused on Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden'.

'The more that is learned about these prisoners, the more holes appear in (President George W Bush's) narrative of a tough and triumphant fight against Al Qaeda".

"Instead, when the full story is told, Guantanamo may come to stand as much for incompetence as it does for injustice."'

according to a spokesperson the Washington branch of Human Rights Watch.

The Australian however selectively reports the release of the names almost as if it were a type of business PR effort, without a single reference to the lack of value of the information from their interrogations or any of the human rights issues involved.

Yahoo! has created its own infamy and destroyed its own credibility as well, through its apparently ongoing and willing assistance with human rights abuse in China; a Republican congress-person in the U.S. observes

'There are probably dozens, if not hundreds of people who have been [put in prison] and tortured as a result of Yahoo opening up its e-mail servers.'

It's peculiar politics though to make these criticisms while being part of a government that basically has the same lack of due process and transparency at its own little gulags, regardless of the suspected crimes of accused detainees.

Knowledge-based foreign policies

2006-04-20T16:15:00.000+10:00

As if to bluntly contrast the near-hysteria in sections of the media (and politicians) in the region over Papua, Siswo Pramono of The Jakarta Post/ANN writes a respectful and reasonable case for a 'Knowledge-Based Foreign Policy', rather than the reactive and economically focussed behaviour currently on display on both sides of the Arafura Sea. His argument for both sides to become more culturally sensitive and knowledgeable of each other is very positive in relieving the tension being otherwise fostered by 'interested parties'.

Australians are not likely to give up support for an independant Papua overnight however - despite the efforts of some politicians and their media fraternities to persuade us that 'democracy' means that a conservative government knows better than large majorities of those who elected them - in this case, talking down 77% support for independance to the north. Knowledge-based foreign policies can only be an improvement.

Three critical flaws

2006-04-12T13:51:00.000+10:00

From today's press releases arises the thesis that Microsoft's 'Patch Tuesday' announcements always announce 'three critical security flaws' - usually in their web browser or operating system; announcements which almost always carry the same basic PR wording (and in the media's publications also almost always do not describe the actual flaws). This may produce some interesting analysis - for instance; why currently three flaws, and why usually at the level of 'critical'? Is there a limit on the number and type of flaws that MS can cope with - or is there an 'acceptible' amount of security risk that is maintained? It seems that two flaws was the standard number announced up until 2005, which coincided with increased pressure on MS over security (though the flaw count found on quick searching is 2, 3, 5, 7, or 10 in nearly all cases, 3 seems to have become standard.) As for the PR wording, here is a very quickly researched set of examples.

AustralianIT, April 12 2006.

'Microsoft has warned of three "critical" security flaws in its Windows operating system that could allow attackers to take control of a computer.'

Reuters (via MSN), August 9 2005.

'Microsoft Corp. warned users of its Windows operating system on Tuesday of three newly found "critical" security flaws in its software, including one that could allow attackers to take complete control of a computer.'

IDG, July 12 2005.

'Microsoft Corp. has released three software updates that patch critical security flaws in its products, including a patch for an Internet Explorer vulnerability first reported last week.'

SMH, June 15 2005.

'Microsoft has released 10 security bulletins, three of them describing critical flaws that could let an attacker take complete control over a computer system.'

TuneXP, November 2003.

Microsoft Corp. warned users of its Windows operating system today of three newly found "critical" security flaws in its software, including one that could allow attackers to take control of a computer.'

Surely MS should be informing its users about the risks entailed in the use of their software in a communicative manner, rather than recycling the same press releases year after year; PR that seems designed to either drive users like ignorant sheep to MS's web site or to cause them to switch off completely.

A better brand for death

2006-04-11T13:29:00.000+10:00

The 'War on Terror' is now officially 'rebranded' as the 'Long War', according to the BBC and others (following a concerted recent PR effort from the Pentagon.) The BBC writes 'It sounds eerily like the Cold War - and that is no mistake' - a change in terminology presented as unplanned and reactive that justifies maintaining military-industrial dominiation of civil society and continuing shadow wars against ideology and threat as it ever was since 1945. The name is probably deliberately kept vague (for semantic wriggle-room as much as having ill-defined enemies that may be expanded at will)--as William Safire writes for the NYT, 'War-namers, stand down: what was euphemized after the US Civil War as "the late unpleasantness" will not get a name until it's over.'

A certain amount of bleed-over

2006-04-10T16:26:00.000+10:00

A report in the Washington Post (via ABC Online News) appears to confirm that the Pentagon is waging an information war that targets the 'US Home Audience' as 'one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign'. The campaign which exaggerates the role of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for propaganda has 'included leaflets, radio and television broadcasts, Internet postings and at least one leak to an American journalist'. Rawstory (in what amounts to its own leak of a media story) reports that the Post reveals 'a New York Times journalist published an article based on a "selective leak" which may have been part of "a psychological operations campaign"'.

Reuters adds that a U.S. military briefing document from 2004 stated 'Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response'. Not that it's surprising for the military to use the U.S. media to 'affect views of the war' - but semi-official revelation of propaganda operations is rare.

The Post reports:

'With satellite television, e-mail and the Internet, it is impossible to prevent some carryover from propaganda campaigns overseas into the U.S. media, said Treadwell, who is now director of a new project at the U.S. Special Operations Command that focuses on "trans-regional" media issues. Such carryover is "not blowback, it's bleed-over" he said. "There's always going to be a certain amount of bleed-over with the global information environment"'.

'Bleed-over' has the resonance of a military term perhaps ill-chosen (or not) to describe notionally unforseen propaganda effects of a campaign strategy for fighting a 'war on terror'.

Come out of the cupboard...

2006-04-06T13:55:00.000+10:00

The SMH is reporting:

'British anti-terrorism detectives escorted a man from a plane after a taxi driver had earlier become suspicious when he started singing along to a track by punk band The Clash, police said Wednesday [...] The taxi driver had become worried on the way to the airport because Mann had been singing along to The Clash's 1979 anthem London Calling.'

That's right - punks are now 'terrorist suspects' too. There's a pattern emerging--detailed in many posts--here. It's also a theme the newly-released film V for Vendetta strongly argues: our government's security campaigns are not solely about terrorism at all, that this 'war' is even more related to social and economic control and the elimination of dissent. Alternatively, we can accept that singing our favourite anthems to rebellion is now a de facto crime:

London calling to the faraway towns
Now war is declared and battle come down
London calling to the underworld
Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls...

Dark distinctions and deconstructions

2006-03-28T08:46:00.000+10:00

The SMH is reporting what amounts to an open acknowledgement that the US (and Australian?) government prefers to see dissidents as terrorists:

'The murky connection the US Government makes between some left-wing activist groups and terrorism was illustrated by a US Department of Justice presentation delivered this month at a University of Texas law lecture in Austin. An FBI counter-terrorism official showed 35 slides listing militia, neo-Nazi and Islamist groups.

One slide, under the category of "anarchism", listed groups with which terrorists might associate. The list included Food Not Bombs, which mainly serves vegetarian food to homeless people and, with a question mark next to it, Indymedia, a website featuring articles written by radical journalists and activists.'

The reporter's equivocation ('murky connection') is quite reasonable: as well as the lack of comprehensive evidence that anti-war protesters resort to terror in the name of peace (as our governments do - ask the Afghan and Iraqi civilian dead), the fact that left activists are often apostates and agnostics would make them an extremely unlikely partner of any kind for deeply religious Islamic 'terrorists'. In fact, this supports the belief that Bush's 'war on terror' is also a magnificent pretext for the massive surveillance and repression of any domestic political organisations that are not government-aligned conservatives.

More euphemistically, the Hindustan Times points out that 'the war on terror became the global war on terror and is now the long war': it also quotes from the July 4, 2005 issue of the American Conservative:

'A new Bureau of Reconstruction and Stabilisation in the State Department is charged with organising the reconstruction of countries where the United States has deemed it necessary to intervene in order to make them into market democracies. The bureau has 25 countries under surveillance as possible candidates for Defence Department deconstruction and State Department reconstruction. The bureau's director is recruiting "rapid-reaction forces" of official, non-governmental and corporate business specialists.'

It seems America's 'war on terror' is now a series of 'Defence Department deconstructions'.

The countries targetted for 'deconstruction and reconstruction' are a list derived from those seen to be resisting globalisation, apparently. In fact, a theoretical symbiosis between 'anti-globalisation' and 'terrorism' seems like becoming the next justification for the heavy-handed treatment of activists and dissidents. The Hindustan Times also reports:

According to Thomas P.M. Barnett (The Pentagon's New Map) the world has a "functioning core", which is integrating into the world of globalisation. This includes India, China, Japan, Russia, the EU, North America, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The rest of the world - the entire Islamic world, Africa, parts of Latin America and Central Asia - is a 'non-integrating gap' disconnected from the rest and subject to instabilities. The thesis is that decreasing this disconnectedness and increasing connectivity in the functioning core of globalisation would ensure lasting peace.

This disconnectedness can be cured through deconstruction and reconstruction.'

Barnett is very confident in his analysis (complete with a casual Star Trek analogy):

'...show me where globalization and connectivity are thick and I'll show you people living in peace. Show me where globalization hasn't spread, and I'll show you violence and chaos.

Steffen: So, if you're right and globalization brings peace, why are we experiencing so much blow-back?

Barnett: Because globalization can be a wrenching process. When globalization rolls into traditional societies - and those are the only societies left outside the Core - it has certain profound effects. Globalization is Borg-like in its integration abilities: it remakes you more than you can ever remake it. '

The choice of 'Borg' for the metaphor has two sides: though it speaks with the 'authority' of popular culture, the negative connotations are disturbing ('it remakes you more than you can ever remake it' - so much for individualism.) Unfortunately, the 'violence and chaos' attending attempts at reconstruction as a component of the global economy is a lot more than blowback (Iraq, for example): any attempts to question the legitimacy of American hegemony seem to be increasingly characterised by the State as supportive of terrorism - with the one-eyed stare of the surveillance state turned on it's citizens who are now 'enemies' or 'sympathisers' by the very fact of their dissent. One of Barnett's key points seems to be lost in the machinery of American politics: that 'Globalization comes with rules, not a ruler.'

The IHT reports that last autumn the French institute Ipsos polled 500 people between the ages of 20 and 25 with the question: 'What does globalization mean to you?' 48 percent responded 'fear' and 27 percent said 'hope.' It's an arguable truth that most people are unlikely to accept any solution imposed on them from outside (unless the situation is so life threatening that any intercession is better than none): despite efforts to package it otherwise, to many 'globalisation' is a one-sided solution for the western corporate impasse over future areas of profit, and not a mechanism for peace and prosperity.

Land of hope and duress

2006-03-27T15:42:00.000+10:00

In the small print of recent reportage of the Moussaoui trial is a stunning revelation of US government agency foreknowledge of 9-11:

'FBI agents acknowledged under cross-examination that the bureau knew years before Sept. 11 that al-Qaida had plans to use planes as missiles to destroy prominent buildings.

They also acknowledged numerous missed opportunities in the months before Sept. 11 to catch two of the hijackers with terrorist links known to the government, even though the pair frequently used their own names in the U.S. to rent cars, buy plane tickets and even, once, to file a police report after one got mugged.'

A small fact with huge potential to cascade; one of many facts that may cause Tony Blair's dissent-disparaging pronouncement today that 'Anti-Americanism is madness' to be percieved as reality-based as the Italian President's claim that 'communists eat babies'; (itself a contemporary echo of the 'Huns with babies on their bayonets' propaganda of WW1 - and a timely, if less than factual, slander when opposed by Communist candidates in his next election.)

As the writer (and former US military officer) William Blum recently observed:

'There was never any such animal as the International Communist Conspiracy. There were, as there still are, people living in misery, rising up in protest against their condition, against an oppressive government, a government usually supported by the United States.'

Meanwhile The Globe and Mail opimistically (and perhaps imperialistically) writes that

'English is to language as capitalism is to economics. It is the language of laissez-faire, of enterprise -- and, beyond all argument, of hope.'

How it is a singularly economic 'language of hope' for Australian workers who today are finding their working conditions shockingly and unilaterally axed might take some explanation. As one concerned lawyer writes for the SMH:

'Then there are these new agreements. I can't say don't sign them, because "sign this or you're sacked" which any court would otherwise find to be duress, is specifically declared not to be "duress" by the legislation.'

The ability of legislation to redefine words of longstanding common use seems to be at odds with notions of 'democracy'. After all, 'duress' is definitely a concept that Bush, Blair, and Howard are familiar with.

These incessant and morbid portrayals

2006-03-24T13:25:00.000+10:00

The head of the Australian Defence Force is today referring to engagements with 'anti-coalition militia elements' in the Afghanistan deployment. The UN is describing a 'growing threat from the Taliban and other illegal armed groups' and the 'threat to the security and stability of Afghanistan posed by the Taliban, al Qaeda, [and] other extremist groups.'

A military news site refers to 'Coalition forces [attacking] a Taliban command cell'. Forbes talks of 'foreign militants' before quoting President Musharraf as not being willing to 'tolerate the presence of these terrorists in Pakistan' (but obviously willing to use the 'T' word.) Xinhua quotes an Afghani commander describing the ambush of 'Taliban militants'; while Bloomberg describes the same incident as engaging 'the Taliban militia'.

However, in Iraq, the US military talks of working 'to find and destroy terrorist caches' (with undertones of the infamous 'search and destroy' phrase from Vietnam), 'insurgents' and 'suspected terrorists', but also 'ethnic-sectarian incidents'.

USAToday pertinently quotes Michael Waller from The Institute of World Politics:

'Incessant, morbid portrayals of an individual, movement or mortal enemy might rally support for the American side, but they have a shelf-life that gets tired over time. Constant specters of unrelenting dangers risk sowing defeatism and chipping away at our own morale. Abroad, they risk making the U.S. look like a bully in some places and surrender the propaganda advantage to the other side.'

Is the language used to describe these 'specters of unrelenting dangers' being deliberately diluted to make the threats seem vague and yet more pressing at the same time, for 'propaganda advantages'? It seems the 'freedom spread experiment' (as one American columnist describes their two costly interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq) is extracting too high a price on both lives and credibility: diffusion of the language certainly makes for a smaller target for critics.

Straw men

2006-03-23T11:44:00.000+10:00

Excellent analysis of the 'straw-man argument' at Media Matters. The technique involves misrepresenting the substance of a question or assertion as a way of attacking critics and avoiding a direct answer. MM uses GW Bush's denials that he ever linked Iraq to Al-qaeda, and the reporting of the denials, as an appropriate case-study; they also demonstrate the uncritical reporting in US media deriving from successful use of 'straw men'. Forbes also covers similar territory, with focus on using the rhetorical device by vaguely defining proponents who are then attacked to boost credibility:

'...the straw man device, in which the president makes himself appear entirely reasonable by contrast to supposed "critics," is just as problematic [...as 'dressing up events with a too-rosy glow' - editor]

A specialist in presidential rhetoric [...] views it as "a bizarre kind of double talk" that abuses the rules of legitimate discussion.

"It's such a phenomenal hole in the national debate that you can have arguments with nonexistent people," Fields said. "All politicians try to get away with this to a certain extent. What's striking here is how much this administration rests on a foundation of this kind of stuff."'

A near perfect example of this in the Australian context comes today from the former Immigration minister, who continues to deny accountability for the seemingly frequent detention of mentally ill citizens by his then department:

'Mr Ruddock said he could not be held accountable for actions he had not taken in ensuring the immigration department was running properly. [...]

Mr Ruddock said part of the difficulty in properly identifying people resulted from Australia's lack of a universal identity system.

The problem was made worse when people themselves - perhaps because of their diminished mental capacity - did not properly identify themselves to authorities in the first place, he said.'

Note the emphasis from the non-accountable Minister is shifted from potentially unlawful detention of the vulnerable to trying to engender a need for a 'universal identity system', and towards blaming the victim for their 'diminished capacity' - rather than acknowledging the lack of due process and enforcement of safeguards which would form part of the 'due diligence' of a Cabinet Minister's role. However, a Minister stating he 'could not be held accountable for actions he had not taken' could also be seen as admitting negligence - leaving the question of 'diminished capacity' also resting with the Minister's performance.

Note: Man of Steel has freshened up his straw men also, pushing his unwanted 'workplace reforms' by targetting a notional 'office whinger' as someone 'whose job might not be so secure under the new [...] regime'. His statements are populated not by actual cases, but by 'some people who have been a disruptive influence' and 'somebody in a small office of five people who constantly and unreasonably complained', while 'so many people have spoken to me and said, "I know exactly what you are talking about". His many 'someones' and absence of factual anecdote does make a case for a 'new regime' - in government.

Weapons of choice for controlling the public

2006-03-23T10:28:00.000+10:00

A clutch of citations for the language of terror: William Safire of The New York Times looks at the ironies of historical slang and the problems of new descriptions in 'Language: Clean your clock, and the long war'.

At Counterpunch Mike Whitney writes on the language of terrorism:

'The War on Terror is the truest expression of the calculated dishonesty of the Bush White House. It is grounded on "unproved assumptions" and, then, disseminated by an aggressive campaign of fear mongering. These are the weapons of choice for controlling a timorous public...'

Counterpunch also has semantically-driven items on the politics of language and war's 'body counts', including a credible calculation of half a million dead in Iraq.

Unpleasant recollections that demand attention

2006-03-22T15:10:00.000+10:00

News.com is reporting on issues with the homeless making Darlinghurst's streets 'unpleasant' (when was either Darlo or poverty ever 'pleasant'?). The text of a pamphlet being 'handed out to undesirables' is given as:

'Dear Friend, local businesses have pledged to make the new Oxford Street pavements as PLEASANT as possible.

Did you realise asking people for money makes it UNPLEASANT? This is what our customers tell us all the time.

We're sorry you're down on your luck but ... there's NO REASON for you to damage our businesses and make the street UNPLEASANT.'

Evidently the writer is comfortable SHOUTING IN CAPITALS at those who are so rude as to be poor, homeless, and hungry in public: do they realise people asking other people for money are usually desperately in need? In more Marxist times, the word 'bourgeois' would likely be used to describe these attitudes; today the poor are little more than the refuse of capitalism (so 'undesirable', and yet so real).

While mentioning rubbish; Man of Steel has today found another occasion where he 'doesn't recall' details of the job he is paid to do - joining a long list of other executives and politicians who seem to have appalling memories considering the salaries they pull for their organisational and management 'skills'. You can give them millions of dollars a year, just don't expect them to remember what they did yesterday. Perhaps the public will eventually realise the paradox in the position of 'not recalling' awkward facts: either the managerial class admits to being little more than highly overpaid hacks with very poor personal skills, or that duplicity, dishonesty, and corruption are as much part of their job as taking credit and avoiding blame.

And finally, a sharp point of focus: unlike many other news agencies, the SMH covers the dreadfull toll on human rights defenders in the last year; including a tribute from the UN Commissioner on Human Rights:

'They are the guardians of our fundamental freedoms. Without defenders, human rights would not exist. They are the conscience of the international community forbidding us to avert our eyes.'

Whether on the streets, in politics, or human rights, avoidance of unpleasant truths has become a hallmark of society: from 'collateral damage' to 'undesirables', it permeates our language.

Understand this if you should

2006-03-21T13:52:00.000+10:00

Those who doubt the entrenching of 'dog-whistle' techniques in Australian political language might wish to consider this statement from Man of Steel's speech for his 10th anniversary 'celebrations':

'You ought to choose [candidates] on the basis of the contribution they can make and their capacity to win the seats, not on the basis of their past affiliations with any section or group of the Liberal Party at the present. It's a great opportunity and I hope the message I convey by that is understood by all of those who should understand it.'

There in the last line is a precise embodiment of the principle: speaking to those who 'should' understand the message, and not speaking to those who wouldn't. This is the communications style of dictators and not democrats, should you choose to understand the difference.

All that tedious communism

2006-03-20T14:03:00.000+10:00

Does simply thinking about a 'patented fact' infringe the patent? The NYT reports the US Supreme Court is hearing a case claiming just that. The Time's columnist, Michael Crichton, ends by stating wryly:

'I wanted to end this essay by telling a story about how current rulings hurt us, but the patent for "ending an essay with an anecdote" is owned. So I thought to end with a quotation from a famous person, but that strategy is patented, too. I then decided to end abruptly, but "abrupt ending for dramatic effect" is also patented. Finally, I decided to pay the "end with summary" patent fee, since it was the least expensive.'

The Boston Globe seems to be confusing the US government's penchant for obfuscating intelligence matters with 'open source' software, by claiming parallels with the release of 'millions of pages of captured [Iraqi] files' to the internet in an 'unprecedented effort' to 'disseminate raw intelligence material' - so that enthusiastic amateurs can translate it. They quote one law professor enthusing that 'open source' means that 'Workers control the means of production, but without all that tedious communism'. To others it's 'just more evidence that the Bush administration doesn't take national security seriously' - and the government's willingess to play 'chinese whispers' with sensitive intelligence material (that has formerly been part of the basis for going to a war costing tens of thousands of lives) strongly supports that belief.

Speaking of 'communist-style control' (to quote the ACTU this morning), under the Australian government's undemocratic IR laws there is now a $6000 fine for workers who dare to ask their boss for unfair dismissal protection - while in France, they take to the streets for less. Here it seems public disquiet with Man of Steel's 'not extreme' methods is cowed by the threat of fines (and quite possibly by Sedition laws.)

When satire looks like phishing, war looks like peace

2006-03-17T15:03:00.000+10:00

It's been confirmed that a satirical website that featured an 'apology' speech from Man of Steel for the Iraq war was shut down 'under orders from the Australian Government'.

The SMH reports that writer Richard Neville's 'site had been shut down in response to a request from the Prime Minister's office on basis that it looked too similar to its own site'.

For either the PM's office or the IT companies involved to claim they cannot tell satire from 'phishing' betrays either an attempt at disigenuity or an ignorance of contemporary culture that is as believable as the PM's denials over the AWB scandal.

The author's defence is completely credible:

'I don't see how you can make judgements that ignore the content or intention of the site. To give the satire more impact it was important to make it look like an official speech. Obviously there was no hacking of the original site, and I did not choose to make it too close to the actual design, and my name and address were readily accessible.'

Unlike the response from Melbourne IT (which apparently allocated the address for the site) that 'to us it looks like a phishing site': those sites are almost solely dedicated to extracting personal information from unwitting users. Phishing is defined by the History of Computing site as 'to gain unauthorized access to one's personal data or account for malicious or fraudulent purposes': this is not what Neville was doing.

As Kevin Rudd says, 'the Howard Government now seems to regard lying as the way in which you run a country'. We can now indisputably add 'censoring' to the sorry trail of behaviour that betrays a serious government contempt for human rights and democracy.

The obliteration of human liberty

2006-03-14T12:00:00.000+10:00

The issue of 'death squads' operating in Iraq is gaining media attention - though some sources seem to play down the involvement of the government and coalition forces. It's also interesting that the report on the ABC's Lateline last night had a mysterious 'technical difficulty' at the exact moment their Iraq correspondent began to discuss the topic. Only a handful of commentators have so far related the issue to America's 'universal death squads' (e.g. Predator missile strikes in Pakistan and Yemen) - which were declared by Presidential order in 2001 - and as a recent UN report observed:

'Empowering governments to identify and kill "known terrorists" places no verifiable obligation upon them to demonstrate in any way that those against whom lethal force is used are indeed terrorists. While it is portrayed as a limited "exception" to international norms, it actually creates the potential for an endless expansion of the relevant category to include any enemies of the State, social misfits, political opponents, or others.'

With the 'death squad' activity now confirmed by the Iraqi government, the phrase is moving out of the realms of 'euphemism' (as the ABC described it) towards becoming either another very ugly stain on the front pages - or a truth too difficult to look at, to speak of.

Lying and Deception as Government Policy

2006-03-14T08:49:00.000+10:00

There's a decent article on 'Lying and Deception as Government Policy' at Counterbias.com by Ramzy Baroud (though a little too brief and lacking references):

'...the Bush administration has undeniably pushed the conventional and sometimes acceptable margin of a government's deceit to the point that lying becomes the primary, if not the sole form of public policy.'

Substitute 'Howard Government' for 'Bush admin' and you have a parallel definition of policy in Australia, also.

Remake, remodel, rewrite

2006-03-13T14:46:00.000+10:00

There seems to be a rise in the number of unconvincing attempts to characterise fascism as rising not from the right but the left. It's not only rewriting history for what seems like propaganda more related to current politics than examining definitions; it's perhaps even justifying the torrent of misinformation and abuse heaped on those who dare to disagree with the 21st century's variety of monotheistic conservatism (especially disparaging 'the left' - i.e. those who haven't invested their entire life in Me First behaviour.)

The poverty of names and the sense of poetry

2006-03-13T14:36:00.000+10:00

Thought-provoking account of a seminar in the USA with Alain Badiou, a professor whose writings 'harness the contemplative strengths of philosophy to love, art, and radical politics'. Amidst some intriguing ideas are striking observations that:

'...names in politics are impoverished. ... The weakness of politics today is a weakness of poetry."

The fall of communism, he continued, also influenced that impoverishment. "Marxism," he said, "had a constellation of names" for political concepts. "It was a sky of names. We lost the sky."'

and

'"There is always, in every truth procedure, a poetic moment," he said. 'The finding of a new name. ... We cannot even know a truth event without a sense of poetry."'

A sense of poetry that escapes both thought and daily life in this era: presumably being (at least partially) supplanted by terror of the unknown and fear of diversity.

We will decide who thinks here and what they think

2006-03-10T09:11:00.000+10:00

Now there's a proposal for legalised brainwashing for those with an ideology that is not state-approved, whether Islamic, terrorist, or otherwise; the explicitly fascist nature of the suggested 'solution' is both a corruption of the role of the state and potentially a severe threat to civil liberties for dissidents of any kind. And comparing terrorists to drug addicts (and saying they 'may need similar treatment') is like comparing politicians to human beings. As an Australian Council for Civil Liberties spokesman points out, the proposal also fails to address political or ideological discontent at the root of (non-state) terrorism - not that causes will receive attention when there's money to be made from conducting a campaign based on fear, civil destruction, and clever graft.

To put this 'proposal' in some kind of perspective, there have been more than 30 documended terror bombings in this country perpetuated by neo-nazis and right-wing extremists since the early 1960's - yet there are no calls for the compulsory 'deprogramming' of these citizens, who also arguably hold 'irrational' views. These attacks are never described when discussing terrorist threats here - despite the involvement of some of the same elements in the Cronulla incident, and others.

As if to further amplify the one-sidedness of much 'terror' reporting, news from Turkey today points to right-wing military involvement in terror bombings in that country, carrying out illegal activities as undercover agents of paramilitary forces: yet such threats from 'within' ruling political cabals are almost always ridiculed and diminished.

The expressions of Oscar Cleavage

2006-03-08T08:16:00.000+10:00

Government ministers seem to have less trouble with the truth in private than in public:

'The fact is the great majority of Australians do not support what we are doing on industrial relations, they violently disagree'

according to Senator Minchin, speaking to a right-wing think tank. This is an admission that recent changes to IR laws were without mandate or justification, and that the wishes of the electorate are being willfully ignored; it's also a departure from the usual government PR front presented.

A bit of a lapse today for Reuters news agency as well, with their coverage of a recent event including a feature labeled 'PICTURES: Oscar Cleavage and Expressions'. Cleavage is now 'top news'?

10 more glorious years

2006-03-07T10:54:00.000+10:00

Gerard Henderson writes in the SMH today that 'the irrationality of so many Howard haters has the unintended consequence of enhancing Howardism' - while completely failing to make an argument in the article for either irrationality or unintended effects. Indeed, he fails to acknowledge that the epiphet 'Howard Hater' is an invention of conservative columnists which carries only abusive, rather than constructive, connotations - and masks the paucity of understanding or humanitarian ideals from the right (unless you consider unbridled free market capitalism an idea rather than an ethical nightmare). As Carmen Lawrence recently observed:

'Hostility to outsiders has become something of a hallmark of this Government and it's cultivated a form of paranoid nationalism... I'm not a Howard hater, I just don't like the way he's conducted his government and I certainly don't put it all down to him. It's a collection of individuals who make up the Coalition parties who've taken us in the direction that I for one, like almost half the population, given the voting patterns, don't endorse.'

The tag of 'haters' seems almost to be deliberately accruing to Howard's notional personality cult by using a pecularly inverse logic: if you disagree with the government, you must hate the leader. Curiously similar to the Bushian logic of the War of Terror - and even echoing the often fatal 'logic' applied to other critics of totalitarian regimes. Indeed, the term seems to have come into use at around the same time the tag 'Bush Hater' gained currency in the US. To call for a blanket 'respect' for Howard without showing any inclination to respect those who oppose his government shows only the greatest hubris - and a desperate need to create an enemy to rally against.

Excessively free ideas

2006-03-03T11:33:00.000+10:00

A challenging view of the English language is quoted in a review of the book God's Terrorists by Charles Allen in The Independant. According to one Jihadist, Enlish is

'...so closely connected with materialistic life that it is not only harmful but dangerous for the spiritual life. If a young man, before learning Quran and the traditions of the holy Prophet in detail, learns English and reads English books... he will become an unreligious, uncultured person with excessively free ideas to such an extent that it would not only be difficult but impossible to reform him.'

If you compare the current western ultra-conservative views of 'excessively free ideas' with Jihadist Islamic notions there may not be much difference: and those who disdain their cultural flavours of 'bible-bashing' are likely to find no support on any side of power.

Good robots gone bad

2006-03-01T08:56:00.000+10:00

The federal government's strategy leading into the next election year seems to be racism, xenophobia, nationalism, and even more racism: a grab bag of bigotry that's currently being both dog-whistled to extremists and peddled to moderates as necessary. When lies can be accepted as 'not deliberate' and past campaigns are recycled into new distortions for the same ends while dissent is silenced, the desperation and ideological sterility of these fake 'moderates' is close to the surface.

Arguably one of the clearest examples of 'dog-whistling' to extremists is today's pronouncement from Man of Steel that he doesn't 'regard the people that followed [Pauline Hanson] as being racist' - an expression calculated to bring the Hansonites into the conservative mainstream by tacitly accepting their extremism, while giving the appearance of moderation to others and ignoring the very reasonable perception of racism in Hansonism (and in the conservative government's conduct of immigration and multicultural activity) from the other 50% or so of the country that has a different view.

High Definition Churches

2006-02-12T10:48:00.000+10:00

Advertising blurb spreads like a virus, infecting us with phrases like 'High Definition Churches'. The art of spin itself is now called 'heresthetics'. Perhaps it is 'the end of Authority' after all.

Detecting deception and other kinds of unusual text

2006-01-24T10:00:00.000+10:00

Researchers in Canada are reported to have a 'new computer tool' that is being developed to 'quantify the amount of spin in (political) speeches'. It's said to be 'based on algorithm (sic) designed to measure the amount of deception used in text.' The device apparently 'measures the frequency of first-person pronouns, use of exception words such as "however" and "unless" and the number of negative emotion and action words contained in the text'. Wisely the researchers leave a caveat that models of word use are not yet fully understood. Turning the device on the media could also be instructive...

A New Rejectionism

2006-01-20T10:18:00.000+10:00

A couple of potentially useful resources: Al-Jazeera has a timeline of OBL tape releases, and Forbes has a transcript of the 'latest' tape (which was notably very quickly 'authenticated' compared to previous efforts.) ABC News has a partial tape timeline, but with quotes from transcripts. While the US rejects OBL's apparent 'truce offer' on this tape saying it won't negotiate with 'terrorists', they seemed comfortable announcing last December that they were negotiating with 'rejectionists' in Irak.

No law against art - yet

2006-01-18T16:06:00.000+10:00

Interesting that there is effort to prevent photography near industrial sites on 'security grounds' on the basis of the 'current climate' (i.e. terrorism) - as I can name artists who were forcibly prevented from filming near a Certain Multinational Chemical Company at Port Botany in Sydney due to 'security' ...in 1983! So what is new - are security powers now legally arbitrary?

The fascists fought the fascists and the fascists won

2006-01-12T11:31:00.000+10:00

Political Affairs offers a well-documented, sobering, and somewhat disturbing article on the use of 'anti-communism' (and 'anti-terrorism') to disguise the rise of fascism in Europe, and elsewhere: Behind the condemnation of communism, lies the revival of fascism. The warning that fascism is gaining credibility partly by 'attacking the forces and movements that defend the social and democratic rights of the workers' has a particular resonance with certain developments in Industrial Relations in Australia, by the way. And then there's facts like this:

'In January 2005, the Latvian government, together with the embassy of the United States published a piece called History of Latvia: the XXth century. The book was launched at a press conference given by the President of the Republic. It states, among other things, that the camp of Salaspils, where the Nazis did medical experiments on children and where 90,000 people were killed, was only a "corrective work camp" and that the Waffen-SS were heroes in the struggle against the Soviet occupation.'

PA may be of a Marxist bent; that does not make the writing any less relevant.

Annoyance Crime 1.0

2006-01-11T14:33:00.000+10:00

According to a law just passed in the US, it is now illegal to make anonymous internet postings that 'annoy' someone - posting 'annoying' Blog comments or sending 'annoying' e-mail messages without disclosing your 'true identity' could result in jail terms. The pixels will fly over this. Should not laws be passed by those who actually understand what they are regulating, or is that too logical to be political? The nexus of the 'offence' relies on the vague, arguable distinction between 'incidental annoyance' and 'intentional annoyance'. Might also the use of nicknames, monikers, and aliases online be now a crime? [Based on precedent, expect the Australian Government to do the same within months, by the way.]

Crimes against the word

2006-01-10T15:05:00.000+10:00

Salman Rushdie's written an extremely good article on extraordinary rendition and other wordcrimes, titled 'Ugly phrase conceals an uglier truth' and available in today's SMH. For example:

'In the beginning is the word. Where one begins by corrupting language, worse corruptions swiftly follow.'

Indeed.

Multiple cartographies of surveillance

2006-01-08T11:16:00.000+10:00

Truly fascinating article at Cartome, on the 'unprecedented threatscape of the homeland', and the development of 'latent infrastructures of political control already embedded in suburban landscapes [that] expose consumer-driven sprawl as uniquely manipulable information space'. Instructive and essential.

The abuse of popular incredulity

2006-01-04T12:22:00.000+10:00

One to watch: The Australian reports an Italian judge has ordered a priest to appear in court and prove that Jesus Christ existed, in a case brought by a 'militant atheist'.

Paleo-Tyranny

2006-01-03T11:26:00.000+10:00

Returning to a current theme, there seems to be growing acceptance of the use of the term 'fascism' to describe western political and social trends. The (admittedly communist) 'zine Revolution warns of a 'fascism [that] dresses itself in religious, indeed Christian, clothing'. Others, even on the Right, describe a 'vastly powerful Neo-Fascist Party state' emerging in the USA; while even letters to the editor in American newspapers decry their President's 'usurping of constitutional powers [that] puts the country in danger is a hallmark of fascism'. Libertarian capitalists (sic) reflect on the 'continued tightening of the federal fist under the premise of 'protecting us from terrorists' might be considered evidence of this rise of the new fascism'. The great diversity of political opinion converging on the accepted use of the same term, fascism, to describe the state of society demonstrates just how retrograde we have turned; barbarically so, in many cases.

Losing the luxury of forgetting

2005-12-29T10:15:00.000+10:00

In the SMH a very interesting account of a man who has 'stored so much of his life on computer that he is in danger of forgetting how to remember'.

A meme run amok

2005-12-25T13:44:00.000+10:00

Provocative article The Simulacran Republic at the Online Journal:

'We no longer have a country. . . . just the hollow shell of one, a global corporation masquerading electronically and digitally as a nation called the United States. The corporation now animates us from within our very selves through management of the need hierarchy in goods and information. Sure there is flesh within the machine, but its animating force is a viral concept, a meme run amok. Free market capitalism...'

Highly commended writing, with shades of PK Dick (The Simulacra) and Jean Baudrillard (Simulation Strategies). [Original research credit to JQJ.]

Surviving the season

2005-12-22T12:59:00.000+10:00

Silly season has been a bit slow this year, with all those importantly pointless stories sidelined by a recent wave of political trivia - like Australia's Kristallnacht at Cronulla and Maroubra, GW Bush's adoption of despotic powers outside the law, the Federal government's abuse of Senate powers in ramming through ideologically unsound 'reforms'....

In keeping with the 'relaxed and comfortable Australia' that some politician invented (while feeling pleased with himself at finally scaring enough people into voting for him), instead of canvassing the usual 'top ten' word lists, new dictionary terms, and the linguistic detritus of another year in the media, for the next few weeks postings will concentrate on highly recommended 'holiday' reading (and I will try very hard to not mention Australian politics).

Beginning with two remarkable articles:

The Making of the Enemy [Part Two] from Manuel Valenzuela

Causachun coca! Wanuchun yanquis! (Long live coca! Yankee go home!) from the newly elected Bolivian President Evo Morales

Also recommended is Andy Rosen's private collection of his Punk photos from 1976-84. You could also visit the Thought Criminals' website and legally download a whole double-album's worth of some of the finest punk music made in Australia. (And their first gig in 25 years has been announced at the Annandale Hotel in Sydney on Feb 4, 2006!

A faster and quicker stench

2005-12-20T15:22:00.000+10:00

The secret surveillance of Americans, GW Bush asserts, is 'faster and quicker' [sic] than having to request court warrants. He also said that his constitutional and statutory powers allowed the circumvention of the courts - a notion that many dispute. Authoritative commentators are openly canvassing 'a whiff of fascism in Washington' in recent weeks, with GW Bush's authoritarian behaviour finally being acknowledged (and demonstrating that contrarians are not simply reaching for hyperbole.)

In Australia, the Victorian government is proposing a 'Charter of Rights' - which ought to be laudable in the wake of unwanted, unwarranted attacks on civil rights from the Federal government; however the intention seems at face value to be more concerned with creating a legal instrument for the denial of rights. The announcement was immediately qualified by the Attorney-General's statement that 'a charter of this kind will not prevent the Government from taking strong action where necessary [...] it will provide a transparent process by which rights and duties can be appropriately balanced.' Doublespeak at it's finest.

The real Sedition?

2005-12-15T12:37:00.000+10:00

Victorian Premier Bracks yesterday commendably called out the recent 'racial violence' for what it is - formed from 'Nazi ideology'. Despite being quoted on SBS TV News last night, (until now) not a single media outlet has today reported the comments.

Questions are also being asked as to why 'shock jocks' who have arguably incited violence through the media, are not being charged under the government's shiny new sedition laws - for instance Alan Jones, who is reported to have said he 'understood' the text messages used to called for 'force' and then read them on air - is this not providing information that supports incitement to violence to a wide public already stirred up by the issue?

Man of Steel's questionable decision to again state his 'Nationalist' fervour yesterday, and to refuse to condemn the use of the Australian flag as a rallying point for 'white Australia' should also be taken into account. Those actions could be argued to add tacit support in the absence of clear condemnation and restraint of language:

'I have had a very clear view on identity for a very long time. I've never felt anything other than a passionate Australian nationalist. The frantic search for a precise, unanimously accepted definition of who we are is a load of nonsense.'

The local Liberal MP's curiously tame response to the initial incident also seems to carry an implicit 'understanding' of the violent Anglo response to a media-magnified threat 'against a way of life', as with others in government often demarcated by what is not said.

There seem to be no depths that our current 'moderate conservatives' will not descend to in their desire to retain power at any cost - as long as properly managed perceptions are maintained through a compliant media. Howard can now conveniently claim 'everything this government's said about homegrown terrorism has been totally justified' - but the fact the worst 'race riots' here since 1860 have been sparked on Howard's watch, fanned by the rhetoric and the apparent ethical failures of his government have become a supporting excuse for removal of civil rights and other authoritarian behaviour is a damning indictment.

Descent into hell

2005-12-13T15:33:00.000+10:00

Man of Steel's denials of racism in the Sydney gang riots is completely in line with a leader and a government that has carefully manipulated these sentiments in the electorate in the past, and is still doing so with Anti-terror laws. (Remember a parade of ministers recently advising dissatisfied Muslims that if they 'don't want to assimilate into this country' to leave.) The rioters are just 'exuberant youths breaking laws' says Mr. Ruddock, although hate speech and attempted murder are hardly 'exhuberance' for any typical Australians.

Other documented cases of manipulation (in a way that speaks to the racist elements of Australia without overt demonstration, called 'dog-whistling') include the failure to recognise or apologise for stolen generations of indigenous, the 'we'll decide who comes here' sentiments of the Tampa incident and election period, the Hansonite party which for some years assured the Coalition of power by swapping electoral preferences and parliamentary votes.

The failure to recognise and condemn the implicit racism of the violence in Sydney contradicts the perception of many other politicians and the population; yet Howard and government are depending on a credibility they barely posesses anymore. Worse, neo-nazis are also clearly implicated in the violence; as are media commentators in Sydney (identified by excellent reporting on the ABC's evening TV news and the SMH) who create a sense of public menance, yet disclaim responsibility for those who act on the fears that are created. Last week for instance, 2GB's Alan Jones was reported urging a 'community show of force' in Cronulla - exactly what happened. And yet we have a federal government again desperately trying to deny a reality the rest of the country has no problem identifying, and fascists in the streets instigating violence for an agenda that conveniently appears to suit elements of an extreme conservative government.

Man of Steel and his cronies say that charges of racism complicate issues. What is 'complicated' about racism that has been tacitly fostered, and allowed to spread unrestrained? The politicisation of cultural fears by government as part of the 'terrorism debate' (and as part of electioneering) is having results that are undeniably ugly and socially damaging; and indeed, with the passage of the dreadful Sedition laws, the stifling of dialog and the rise of mindless force may be just the beginning of a descent into hell.

Political Hypnosis

2005-12-08T14:57:00.000+10:00

Playwright Harold Pinter has made a dramatic Nobel Prize acceptance speech, courageously calling for the prosecution of Bush and Blair for war crimes, calling the Iraq invasion a 'blatant act of state terrorism', and clearly stating the effects of American interventionism:

'The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War [...] I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force of universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis'.

He also makes an extremely vital point that demonstrates why the political use of Sedition laws against writers will fail: that in literature 'a thing is not necessarily either true or false. It can be both true and false'.

Dissenting opinions

2005-12-08T12:41:00.000+10:00

The SMH discusses the impact of Sedition law on blogging, and attracts some worthwhile commentary.

Are you satisfied with being Australian today?

2005-12-07T12:51:00.000+10:00

While the new regime of restricted civil rights is being born, it's become very clear that media coverage of 'leadership' issues in the Federal government is being encouraged by the protagonists to distract attention from the appalling anti-democratic nature of their legislation being passed at the same time.

Note that on the very morning that Anti-terror and Workplace bills are passed a slew of media releases and stories focussing on Howard and Costello appear, starving contentious issues like Sedition of room in the press.

For example, in the current Breaking News section of News.com there are five stories dealing with leadership and one dealing with the economy, all failing to discuss the impact of their laws. The SMH's news queue is similar, but is running noticeably less government PR than News.com.

Backtracking through recent coverage at the times of contentious debate over legislation in the Federal parliament produces exactly the same pattern: debate is not only being stifled in the Senate, but in the public domain by the very simple means of politicians providing other 'big issues' (like leadership) that successfully push discussion that reflects badly (and accurately it may be argued) to the margins.

It seems Senator Joyce is also fond of his own form of distraction and profile building by threatening to 'cross the floor' at every opportunity, going through the motions of being independent-minded before ultimately delivering the vote the government desperately needs to seal its current ideological rampage.

This is polity without substance, democracy without representation, and media manipulation of the highest order.

Lost in the fog of reporting are extremely significant stories such as the impact of having 'one third of Australia's woodlands and 80 per cent of temperate woodland [...] cleared, with less than five per cent remaining in some parts of southern Australia'.

Are we satisfied today? It's now illegal not to be, apparently.

Indirectly lethal knowledge

2005-12-04T10:34:00.000+10:00

Recent revelations of American military 'cash for comment' in the Iraqi media should not be surprising - indeed, it's not only a sign of losing the battle for public support, it may be the least of a range of disturbing covert activities that are emerging into the media's focus.

American involvement in 'counterinsurgency programs' (such as Vietnam, El Salvador) is a matter of record - that many of these programs were little more than organised murder of leftists and dissenters is almost always downplayed.

The New York Times publishes reportage alleging Iraqi security forces are carrying out summary executions, substantiated by at least one human rights organization. American officials overseeing the training of the Iraqi Army and the police are said to 'acknowledge that police officers and Iraqi soldiers, and the militias with which they are associated, may indeed be carrying out killings and abductions in Sunni communities' with the convenient caveat that the action is 'without direct American knowledge'.

Note the phrasing 'without direct' knowledge, not 'the complete absence of knowledge'. Damage limitation and misdirection arguably form the qualification that '...they also say it is difficult, in an already murky guerrilla war, to determine exactly who is responsible'.

Adding to the 'murk' is the recent video showing private security contractors working for Aegis Defense Services (formerly known as Sandlines, by the way) firing lethally and indiscriminately at Iraqi civilian motorists in Baghdad.

Some commentators are are charging media complicity in playing 'a pivotal role in trying to obfuscate the details of America's involvement in the terror-war'. Research is presented that describes the Iraqi Interior Ministry as 'the hub of the clandestine death squad activity'. One writer decries the assumption (as in the NYT's line) 'that the ministry is manned exclusively by theocratic Shiites' as 'more misleading gibberish'.

Torture chambers, death squads, and random shootings and bombings have today become the tools of 'democratic' nations - but are presented as the behaviour of enemies and rogue elements to maintain the media fiction of a clean conflict with noble intentions. At very least the public is being distracted by ongoing disinformation efforts that seem to whitewash the real perpetrators and planners of crimes against humanity, while fostering the insurgency it hides behind.

The freedom to be informed we don't want freedom

2005-12-01T11:22:00.000+10:00

News Ltd is using the outcome of a survey ('completed by 3890 people and compiled by research agency CoreData'), to report that 'a majority of respondents trusted the Government's plans (for draconian 'anti-terror' laws) and only 39 per cent believed the Government was going too far.' However, the item then admits in the next paragraph that '...the sample was not reflective of the total Australian population - a majority of respondents were male and 67 per cent earned more than $50,000 a year'. They are using admitedly biased 'research' to claim 'free speech restrictions have received overwhelming support' and that 'a majority agreed that average people would have to surrender rights and freedoms to prevent terror attacks' - blatantly misrepresenting popular opinion while at the same time running a campaign that features strong editorial argument for the need for free speech and protection of journalists.

There's a similar regard for ethics in the column by Louise Evans in the print edition of The Australian on 29 November, page 11 titled 'There are times we're forced to do whatever it takes' - which argues in favour of accepting corruption in business and politics, that 'doing whatever it takes' to achieve a result is 'understandable'. Like using poll results exclusively drawn from high-income males to represent a majority opinion, perhaps?

The schizotypy inventory

2005-11-30T10:28:00.000+10:00

The SMH is running another one of those 'research-based' stories that seek to link creativity and mental illness, often by the most covertly dubious of means. They report on a study that looked at the 'personalities of artists and poets and discovered they shared some traits with the mentally ill', which also included a 'schizotypy inventory'. I'm also sure that 'traits of the mentally ill' could be used to produce similar findings against politicians, journalists, and in fact probably any other overdressed ape that shares the human gene pool and who seems to present an attractive target for pointless discussion. 'Never said no - Jack Kerouac' is the picture caption used, which makes for a sexy tag but completely misrepresents the man's character (did they interview any surviving partners? No.) This type of 'research' often seems to have more to do with discrediting those most engaged in open criticism of society than offering insight into creativity and sexuality. The 'study' deals with an unspecified 'sample of visual artists, poets and schizophrenic patients' among 425 people - not enough to extrapolate such vivid conclusions, but all the better for depicting poets as beasts, it seems.

Mocking the courage of conviction

2005-11-30T09:54:00.000+10:00

The appalling, unjustified, 'anti-terror' legislation has passed the lower house of the Australian Parliament with the Labor Party voting to support it. When a Labor Senator says after the vote that 'I think the Liberal senators on this committee have to have the courage of their convictions' (and vote the bill down in the Senate) the only response is to decry the political hypocrisy that seems to characterise both sides of the Australian Parliament these days. 'Courage of Convictions' ought to have seen Labor voting against these unwarranted laws that will severely impact free speech, surely. Even the former Liberal PM Malcom Fraser has spoken against the laws, and has severely criticised the so-called 'Liberal' Party for its drift to authoritarianism: if Fraser keeps it up, I'm going to end up thinking that someone whose policies I protested against in the 70's and 80's is a more decent bloke than the current leadership of the ALP - at least the Liberal Fraser clearly speaks out against injustice, unlike the leadership of the ALP who seem to want it both ways.

The irrepressible dissident Max Gillies sums up the situation eloquently on the 7.30 Report:

JOHN HOWARD, PM: People can still attack me and Mr Beazley and lampoonists, as I am sure they will, without any fear of being put in the slammer.

MAX GILLIES, SATIRIST: It's not up to him to tell us whether we should make jokes at his expense or not. He's our servant. We're not his servants.

Indeed - there is nowhere in the Australian Constitution (to the best of my knowledge) that says our parliamentarians are there to do anything but represent the people of Australia: however, representation seems to have been replaced by 'acting in the interests' without consensus or consent, acting on the narrow ideology of career politicians out of touch with the electorate and blind to the impacts of their unjustified attacks on our formerly democratic system.

Yes, this airing of opinion could be called dissent and dissatisfaction. However, does anyone expect the country's creative contrarians to sit back and watch their freedom of expression be taken away by the pin-stripe suited conservative equivalent of Genghis Khan's horde?

Fashion wear

2005-11-27T10:56:00.000+10:00

Cryptome.org uncovers some very interesting and well made utility garments and accessories produced apparently by US agencies.

Robots talking underwater and the verbal equivalents of faded jeans

2005-11-27T10:28:00.000+10:00

A succinct but descriptive exposition of the processes of modern language appears in a case study of the current use and abuse of the term 'gravitas':

'Some words become fashionable, the verbal equivalents of faded jeans. Lexical trends spring from pop culture (bling-bling and yada yada) or current events (pandemic and refugee).'

Faded jeans for one linguist may be a neoprene suit for another: American researchers are 'teaching underwater robots to speak, learn and make decisions on their own' - using 'complex algorithms and linguistics to create their language, expressed in sound waves underwater'. Wonder if it's anything like Tibetan SMS?

Five minutes of fame

2005-11-25T12:30:00.000+10:00

A commentator on Channel 9 TV news at 6pm on the 22nd of November coined the memorable phrase '5 minute Muslim'.

Tests of Character

2005-11-24T12:38:00.000+10:00

The deportation of a drug addict with criminal convictions on 'character' grounds has to be one of the most despicable and callous acts of the former Immigration Minister to date. The action has left the man stateless and desperate on the streets of Belgrade - when a domestic rehabilitation program would have been the appropriately just and humane response. Though he lacked citizenship, the man grew up and lived here almost all his life, and was not born in the country he was deported to: it is surely an abuse of power to distinguish this man as 'non-Australian' purely because of his petty crimes and addictions. No Australian addict could be treated in a similarly arbitrary manner - in theory; other abuses related to arbitrary detention of citizens and deportation have been well documented lately. Ministerial 'discretion' seems to be replacing the legal system at every opportunity for this extremist government.

Note: Who, it should be asked, administers and sets the standards for the 'character test' that has resulted in 233 permanent residents being evicted from their own country? The DIMIA web site indicates that the 'test' includes such loosely defined 'catch-all' benchmarks as

'having regard to the person's past and present general conduct, the person is found to be not of good character'

Discretionary powers based on the ambiguity of the character provisions of Section 501 of the Migration Act seem to lend themselves very nicely to arbitrary interpretation.

Otherwise, would any number of accused ex-Nazi war criminals who emmigrated be still living in Australia, for instance? Or perhaps mass murder by a fellow 'anti-leftist' is evidence to a conservative of better 'character' than pleas for help from a drug addict.

Autonomous semantics

2005-11-21T14:28:00.000+10:00

The Australian's op-ed piece on 'fascism' today argues implausibly the term is 'difficult to define' (at odds with any number of encyclopaedias and dictionaries that have no trouble with clear explanation) - and still manages to conflate the term with a conservative 'misunderstanding' of Socialism.

While trying to reclaim high ground over 'liberalism' (notably 'small l'), the argument contrives disdain for anyone who dares label 'the present policies of the Howard Government [as] fascist'. Critical use of the term 'fascist' as a rhetorical device is also 'a misuse and abuse of language' the writer alleges, while enthusiastically doing exactly the same with their own pet label, 'liberal'.

The contrived subtext is that Howard's party is to the writer the only one that stands for 'liberty', while its opponents of the Left are really 'fascists' themselves: in fact arguing that 'Fascists sought to worship the state and nation because they had lost their religious faith' is clearly a 'manipulation of language' effectively gutting the term of all of its agreed dictionary-defined meaning.

It is difficult not to see this article as active misinformation - dictionaries are readily available, and are the most-used tool of any writer. The author contrives an argument that Socialism and Fascism are identical, and dismisses critics who don't seem up to speed with his sudden redefinition of Fascism to a form of religious experience.

This is an autonomous reconstruction of semantics to deflect criticism of the current behaviour of the conservative government, (who somehow are now leading lights of 'individual autonomy' despite using their Senate majority to shut down debate on contentious issues and to centralise Commonwealth power at the expense of the States).

The writer (and those who for a moment believe such specious reasoning is credible) need only spend a few second's effort before finding a reputable and relevant definition of Fascism (with emphasis added):

1: a political philosophy, movement, or regime [...] that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

The unfortunately strong resonance between the Howard government's activities and the 'standard' definition is exactly the substance overlooked by the writer to fashion his argument.

Spray and slay

2005-11-20T10:35:00.000+10:00

The Independant documents the appalling characteristics of what it openly calls the 'Dirty War' in Iraq - where Coalition involvement is charged in:

Endemic torture of prisoners
Use of napalm and phosphorus
Extra-judicial killings
Indiscriminate 'spray and slay'

There is an interesting quote from a 'British officer' who said 'You hear about the militias infiltrating the police. But they did not have to. We invited them to join.' It also separately reports on the killing of civillians by Marines, including the 'shooting and killing of a British TV crew'.

Meanwhile Amnesty International is holding a conference in London which brings together the biggest gathering of former 'war on terror' detainees - and the transcripts of their accounts of the Gitmo experience are sober, compelling indictments of the systematic dehumanising use of torture.

Moazzam Begg: 'The use of torture has in the 21st century become a topic of debate. Should we or should we not. And I think that it's just such a terrible statement ... on the state of us as human beings on the planet today.

The people who claim to be the upholders and defenders of freedom are debating now whether it is legitimate to use torture. After all of what the world has been through arguing against the fact. And if it does in one way or another become legitimised, either mental torture or physical or psychological, which has been clearly used by several countries, then I think the world will spiral into something that nobody will be able to control.'

And speaking of unreliable evidence, the United Nations inquiry into the murder of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafiq Hairri was headed by the same man who provided the 'irrefutable proof' (later considered to be fake) of Libyan guilt in a nightclub bombing in Germany, which then justified Ronald Reagan's bombing of Libya.

God's own monopolistic embryo-loving homophobic Nazis

2005-11-20T10:19:00.000+10:00

Getting considerable coverage is Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, the largest orgnisation of American Judaism, who has 'blasted' conservative religious activists in a speech given yesterday, calling them 'zealots' who claim a 'monopoly on God' while promoting anti-gay policies akin to Adolf Hitler's.' He said 'religious right' leaders believe 'unless you attend my church, accept my God and study my sacred text you cannot be a moral person... What could be more bigoted than to claim that you have a monopoly on God?'

He also said conservatives too narrowly define family values, making a 'frozen embryo in a fertility clinic' more important than a child, and ignoring poverty and other social ills.

The War on Art: shots fired, none injured

2005-11-11T13:34:00.000+10:00

Those who doubt the government's willingness and capacity to use anti-terror measures to silence critics need to think again. According to the ABC this morning, 'manipulated digital portraits' of the Prime Minister and two senior ministers hanging in the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery have been labelled 'treasonous' but they are (as yet) not be coming down. The artist, Michael Agzarian, has been told the Prime Minister's office received a complaint alleging his works were 'treasonous'. The complaint was referred to the Arts Department, which then contacted the gallery to ask if the show was government-funded - strongly suggesting a willingness to intervene where authority can be claimed, impacting any artist, musician, or writer who receives (or works under) government funding. The first shot in the War on Art has been fired. For creative contrarians, the signs are certainly ominous.

No room for consensus

2005-11-11T09:49:00.000+10:00

John Howard's appreciation of parliamentary democracy could possibly be summed by the statement he made on SKY news yesterday, reported on the ABC's 7pm News:

'You don't pass laws in this country by bargaining with different groups'

No, as Gough Whitlam observed on the 7.30 Report following, you turn parliament into an 'irrelevance'.

Till Victory

2005-11-09T09:22:00.000+10:00

The Oz (and others) this morning puts considerable effort into using 'anti-terror' raids as an attempt to sideline and attack the government's critics - almost 6 pages worth, in fact. What the government's apologists seem to overlook are very simple facts to understand:

Nobody criticises the police and enforcement agencies for doing their job
The suspension of legal rights and criminalisation of dissent from the government's policies in the new laws will not stop terror attacks, will not achieve security, and are grossly disproportionate to any threats, real or otherwise
Howard's record with the public is less than exemplary, and he can only blame his own past actions for the degree of cynicism with which his antics last week were met
The announcement of 'terror threat' and the hoopla over the arrests is completely at odds with the lack of a raised terror warning, and concern from some agencies over the politicisation of operational matters

Crowings of 'victory' from the conservative wedge of the media should wait until arrestees have been tried and convicted of terrorism offences - until then, a great more propagandising cannot disguise the erosion of democracy in this country. The greatest surprise is perhaps the willingness of sections of the media and society to line up and have their rights taken away. Perhaps after a 7 year stint in solitary they might figure out that draconian laws alone will secure nothing.

The hissing from outer space

2005-11-07T16:02:00.000+10:00

A genuinely Fortean event, for those interested in unexplained phenomena, has been reported in the SMH: a meteor shower (from the Taurids apparently) accompanied by 'booming noises' (which are not infrequently heard in such instances) and 'hissing noises [that] are unexplained'. The 'hissing' seems to be quite rare, though has been previously reported (further research in Charles Fort's Complete Books is highly recommended).

An old disorder for the new world

2005-11-06T10:51:00.000+10:00

According to the SMH, artists are rebellious because 'creative types are more prone to psychosis' and other mental illnesses. Writers apparently scored highest on 'most personality disorder scales'. Isn't it reassuring to know that we're not driven by dissatisfaction with society and politics, nor divine inspiration, nor even just good ideas or stimulation from learning, observing, and socialising; rather, it's just the old 'personality disorder' - and what sounder reason would people need to ignore the work of artists next time they may feel challenged by them?

Not totally related to matters distant from expedience

2005-11-03T11:18:00.000+10:00

A domestic terror threat conveniently arrives at the same hour Man of Steel needs support to pass his contentious, anti-democratic 'anti-terror' laws - yet it's revealed that a 'key national counter-terrorism body was not informed of the latest terrorism threat'. 'Purely coincidental' Howard says; meanwhile the 'public' terrorist threat level in Australia has not been raised as a result of 'advice' perfectly timed to provide credibility for a damaged government. His attempt to frame the domestic nature of the 'threat' with the sheer ambiguity of a statement that 'the concerns we have are not totally related to matters distant from Australia' demonstrates a contempt for clear communication and a preference for politicing that elevates rumour to a dangerously dictatorial position.

Note: Comments from writer David Williamson today eloquently convey the increasing concerns over a 'cultural blackout' held by creative contrarians:

'It's one of the major functions of art - to look critically at what's going on around you. I think this is the most authoritarian government this country has ever had and it doesn't like voices of dissent.

'You get the feeling that the concept of democracy is not strongly held by this government. It's as if there's only one political line, one opinion. Everything else is attacked with a ferocity unlike anything in our nation's history.'

The Australian records that poet William Blake was charged with sedition for shouting 'Damn the king and damn his soldiers' when he discovered a drunken trooper 'pissing in his garden'. Presumably our new sedition laws afford similar protections for spooks caught short while on surveillance detail?

Definition of a police state

2005-11-01T08:46:00.000+10:00

While government types have criticised objections to proposed terror laws as 'overstated' (even extending to the questionable assertion that some rights are 'bogus'), the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission president yesterday told a forum on the proposed laws that they would achieve exactly the same goal as those of a police state:

'It might sound over-dramatic to say that the proposed laws are of the kind that may identify a police state, but let us reflect for a moment on that proposition [...] The defining characteristic of a police state is that the police exercise power on behalf of the executive, and the conduct of the police cannot be effectively challenged through the justice system. Regrettably, that is exactly what the laws which are currently under debate will achieve.'

It may be easy for the government to dismiss its contrarian citzens, but the HREOC president's definition strongly supports the public's concern (unlike the dismal and inappropriate lack of perspective from an Opposition Leader at odds with half his own party.) The consensus among writers and other artists is also that the sedition laws inhibit freedom of speech, particularly for journalism and creative expression - and it's curious that these provisions have been widened since the 'unauthorised' previous draft has recieved public comment.

Unusual industrial artifact

2005-10-31T14:41:00.000+10:00

Portrait of a Semtex factory, knitted from wool.

[ Note: 'Semtex' in this context refers to textiles. ]

A law too far

2005-10-28T09:26:00.000+10:00

The ABC's Lateline last night surveyed 25 of Australia's leading security analysts and discovered most of them believe proposed anti-terrorism laws 'go too far'. Very significantly, some of the strongest opposition is from one of Australia's earliest counter-terrorist soldiers, Brigadier Malcolm MacKenzie, who established the first SAS CT Assault Team in Australia. He's reported as saying:

'I think they're grossly over the top. Australia has a very, very small, low terrorist threat... We've had virtually no terrorist activity in Australia. The little bit there has been has been outsiders getting involved. And in my experience in Northern Ireland where we had similar laws, they didn't work anyway.'

There is clear consensus emerging that the laws are inconsistent with the rights of freedom of expression, including protests from within the Government's own agencies; Man of Steel has dramatically oversold the laws and the threats they are supposedly designed to counter, to the detriment of the people they are supposedly 'protecting'.

Overall, there's been a great deal of dissent from these proposed laws this week, far outweighing any potential support. Yet today Howard's main conversation with the media has been on daylight saving; terrorism, like the PM's battered credibility, seems to have stepped back from the spotlight. Meanwhile, a slew of CEO's and the IMF have put forward their support for the IR laws, which also lack public support; the greatest enthusiasm seems to come from those who have the most to gain and the least to lose from the 'reforms', but it's probably not enough to restore the government's credibility.

Note: Concerns are mounting that anti-war protests will be criminalised, especially with the removal of the 'intent' provisions of the sedition laws in the latest draft (which has been kept secret from the public that it will drastically affect - secret laws, detention without charge, secret trials; not exactly the definition of proper governance of a free and democratic society.) One Labor MP has without irony stated that the laws 'would allow state agencies to terrorise citizens', and even jibed that the government's whole approach is 'a matter of terrorising the citizens'. The SMH reports that the 'planned legislative blitz is unravelling', as is the country's compliance with an international civil rights accord.

Reversing into tomorrow

2005-10-24T10:18:00.000+10:00

Print-outs from colour printers have been revealed to be carrying 'an invisible bar code [...] that contains the serial number of the printer as well as the date and time a document was printed.'

The research, from the EFF and reported in the Washington Post, focuses on Xerox, but has identified similar coding on pages printed from 'nearly every major printer manufacturer' ranging back at least 10 years. It reportedly reminds an EFF spokesperson '...of a program the Soviet Union once had in place to record sample typewriter printouts in hopes of tracking the origins of underground, self-published literature.'

The parallel with policing samizdat is another sign of the growing conservative tendency to take societies backwards into 'cold' wars and moral injustices of the past in the name of 'protecting' people from future 'terrors'.

It's not just printers, either. Reflecting on the oppression perpetuated during apartheid in South Africa, author J.M. Coetzee has told the Australian Book Review function:

'I used to think that the people who created [South Africa's] laws that effectively suspended the rule of law were moral barbarians. Now I know they were just pioneers ahead of their time.'

The Australian's writer even acknowledges 'there was no question his pointed speech was directed at [Australian] anti-terror laws'.

What debate?

2005-10-21T12:27:00.000+10:00

The SMH has carved up a radio interview with the Prime Minister into a slew of separate stories, one of which (on a Republic) has some rather disturbing interpretations:

'I think the mark of a confident, competent government is that it does allow debate, providing the debate does not become destructive and providing the debate is not based on personalities [...] I think it's good for a government to have debate on issues. I think the public wants that.'

Isn't it the mark of a democracy that a government is compelled to allow debate? Not to forget the libelous and destructive personality-based 'debate' that Howard ran against Keating when Opposition Leader. The qualification that he 'thinks it's good' to have discussion (rather than acknowledging dialogue is at the core of democracy) implies either considerable arrogance or the willingness to prevent debate.

Indeed, Man of Steel is effectively offering the population the opportunity to say they do not want discussion, in saying he 'thinks' they 'want that'. The fact that these statements are laden with qualification is the mark of a politician who seems perpetually unable to make an accountable statement to the electorate, and who could be perceived as hiding his actual point of view behind 'palatable' sound bites.

In fact former PM Fraser (and others) are currently accusing the government of 'stifling debate' on anti-terror measures. The government's recent behaviour in the Senate (gagging debate) only amplifies that concern.

To relegate debate to an optional feature of government is a clear indication of anti-democratic motivations at work.

The sharks that whimpered

2005-10-20T15:25:00.000+10:00

CNN seems like it is joining the sharks circling the Bush Administration in recent weeks: it's currently featuring an article on the "slash-and-burn assaults on [the Administration's] critics". However, the article fails to deliver much in the way of substantial analysis; it retreads current knowledge on the "CIA-leak" affair with a very narrow focus. The writing appears to be more damage control than investigation; there is no substantive background or detailed analysis of technique and strategy. By focussing on "small" (or apparently isolated) problems in this way, the larger issues (and deliberate patterns of behaviour) often escape scrutiny.

These techniques, of assault on critics, and damage control by distracting admissions, are also notably stock in trade of Man of Steel's Australian 'government' (as a browse through the archives of this site should evidence).