Tag Archives: Julia Gillard

On Julian Assange & the media

20 Apr

It was a little unnerving to find myself in agreement with former Liberal MP Ross Cameron the other day when as a panelist on ABC’s The Drum, he spoke in support of Julian Assange. In a democracy, Cameron opined, it’s necessary to have someone like Assange attempting to force accountability and transparency from governments. I almost fell off my chair.

On the same panel Annabel Crabb declared her disapproval of Assange for choosing to use a Russian television outlet, “Russia Today,” as a platform from which to launch his new career as a talk show host. It was, she claimed, unethical. This is a view shared by many mainstream journalists, and has led to Assange being described as a “traitor” and a “Kremlin patsy.”

According to the New York Times, Russia Today “is an English-language news network created by the Russian leader Vladimir V. Putin in 2005 to promote the Kremlin line abroad…Basically, it’s an improbable platform for a man who poses as a radical left-wing whistleblower and free-speech frondeur battling the superpowers that be.”

I can’t resist pointing out here that many of us would consider it unethical for Assange or anyone else to avail themselves of facilities offered by News Corp, but that’s another story and one ought not to attempt such comparisons. Clearly, Assange’s choices were extremely limited, and given the contrary nature of the man, going with Putin doesn’t seem entirely surprising.

Salon.com writer Glen Greenwald, in an interview with Russia Today, declared that “Attacks on Assange…reveal much more about the critics than their targets.” He went on to point out that Assange goes where the main stream media will not or cannot go. This is the privilege of the independent operator: mainstream journos want to stay exactly that, and are necessarily restricted  (to varying degrees depending on which mogul employs them) by their understandable desire to keep their careers.

If we can accept this about them, why must they be so carping about Assange?

Says Greenwald: “The rule is clear: it’s OK for a journalist to work for a weapons manufacturer, the US or British govts, & Rupert Murdoch, but not RT? Assange should be judged by what he does and the journalism he produces – not where it’s broadcast.”

It seems timely, then to republish this piece I wrote for On Line Opinion in December 2010.

I’m indebted to Antony Loewenstein for his article of December 2 in The Drum titled “Where’s the media’s backbone over Wikileaks?”

In his article, Loewenstein takes the Australian media to task for its collective inadequacy in the reporting of the 250,000 US cables dumped by Wikileaks.

One aspect he singles out for attention is the series of calls for the assassination of Assange, the demands that he be tried as a terrorist and condemned to death, and the demands for him to be killed without benefit of a trial at all.

These reactions, or more accurately, these incitements to murder, came from senior political and media figures in the USA and Canada, individuals with a wide-ranging public voice, and plenty of influence. Their calls for Assange’s death were reported globally.

Demands have also been made for Assange’s arrest by the US, on as yet unspecified, even nebulous charges. Australian Attorney General Robert McClelland has offered to assist the US in its pursuit of Assange, and together with Prime Minister Gillard is exploring the possibility of bringing criminal charges against him in this country.

Julia Gillard has, with no substantial grounds at all, repeatedly referred to Wikileaks and Assange’s activities as “illegal.” Whether or not the Wikileaks dump is “illegal” is far from certain. Even in the US, who is the primary victim if indeed any crime has been committed by Assange, the legality or otherwise of his actions remains unclear.

Australia has not been sinned against in the dump, but irrespective of that, in their desperation to assuage the USA Gillard and McClelland are casting about to find an offence, any offence, with which to charge Assange.

Julian Assange is an Australian citizen. Our Attorney General and our Prime Minister have publicly committed to doing everything they can to assist the US in its pursuit of one of our citizens, a citizen who has now been threatened with death several times by several different figures, in that country.

This is really quite remarkable. Our government is supposed to protect its citizens, as it protects US citizens, from threats of death. After all, didn’t we just go to great lengths to ensure that the convicted wife murderer Gabe Watson would not be returned to his homeland unless they first agreed not to kill him? Yet we’ll hunt down one of our citizens who has not been charged with, let alone convicted of anything, and offer him up for assassination apparently without a qualm.

What a very special relationship indeed we have with the USA.

But what is breathtakingly alarming is that nobody in the mainstream media, and in government, seems to find it at all necessary to remark upon the fact that Assange’s activities are considered by influential and senior figures in the USA and Canada to be deserving of death.

If you ring up your ex and leave “if you don’t stop telling everybody I’m a tosser I’ll kill you,” on the message bank, you’re in big trouble. But if you’re a powerful figure in the media and politics in the USA you can volunteer anybody for slaughter for any reason, and nobody will hold you to account for it.

And if you’re the Australian government and it’s one of your citizens being subjected to that threat, you can offer to help find him and nobody in the mainstream media will question your sanity and your ethics.

It seems that in Australia we’ve now sunk to such a level of moral turpitude that we are not at all ruffled by the notion of a whistleblower in a democracy being murdered for his activities.

Silence implies complicity. Silence implies approval. Silence implies that it is fine by us to incite the assassination of someone who has caused bother and embarrassment to important people.

Embarrass important people? Of course you’ll be killed!

Loewenstein appeared on The Drum on ABC TV December 2, to discuss his perspective on the media’s coverage of the Wikileaks dump. The panel consisted of Annabel Crabbe, Leigh Sales (both senior ABC journalists) and Joe Hildebrand of   the Daily Telegraph. It very quickly proved impossible to persuade any of these three panelists to seriously address the media’s coverage of the Wikileaks affair, or indeed the affair itself. They would not address the contents of the cables, or the death threats. Not even the implications for free speech and dissent if the US does declare Wikileaks a terrorist organisation (as has been suggested by the US Administration and others) could tempt them into a more thoughtful state of mind.

In fact, the panel illustrated exactly what Loewenstein is complaining about. Amid much giggling, Crabbe remarked that Assange had thrown a “tantie” about a New York Times article, and asked what did that tell you about the man. Well, not a lot, really. He can spit the dummy. And this matters because?

Sales insisted that Assange is a journalist and not, as Loewenstein suggests, a whistle-blower, on the grounds that he releases his material through the mainstream newspapers. Therefore he ought to be playing by journalists’ rules, which apparently don’t cover dumping 250,000 cables in the manner in which he has dumped them.

Mercifully, I cannot recall Hildebrande’s contribution, other than that it involved a lot of noisy laughter.

These comments from Al Jazeera reporter, Mike Hanna, give an indication of the information that is now available to us, thanks to Wikileaks. Hanna is referring to allegations that US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton ordered US diplomatic staff to steal the personal data (credit card, frequent flyer information) of highly placed United Nations officials:

Even the most cursory read (of the leaked cables) makes clear diplomatic staff are being asked to conduct a massive intelligence gathering exercise – involving, to put it bluntly, the theft of personal data. This, on the face of it, is a document asking diplomats to carry out activities that are not only against all accepted protocols, but are illegal in terms of US or international law. To repeat, it is couched as an order, an instruction, not a request.

In other words, there was plenty for The Drum panel to have an opinion about, and intelligently discuss.

The panel’s attitude to the Wikileaks story was, and remains, inexplicable.

Assange has scooped every mainstream journo on the planet. He’s rewritten the rules of investigative journalism with his massive dump, and he’s not even a journalist. Reporters have to go to the secondary source because Assange controls the primary. He’s not one of them. He’s an outsider. He plays by his own rules. And he pays the price.

Loewenstein suggested that envy and jealous rivalry might be a contributing factor in the Australian mainstream media’s apparent determination to give the Wikileaks story as little in-depth attention as possible. This the only explanation I can find, unless they’re in cahoots with the Gillard government to give the matter the minimum amount of credence, as authorised by the PM, and instead to distract us by focusing on Assange’s hair colour, temperament, and how he should list his occupation on his CV.

Lowenstein also suggests that some Australian media are far too cosy with centres of power, and far too impressed by them. They are thus rendered incapable of comprehensively analysing an attack such as Wikileaks has made on that centre. He gives the example of the ABC’s World Today Eleanor Hall, of whom he comments: “It was painful on Monday listening to ABC radio’s The World Today grilling a New York Times journalist about his paper’s decision to publish some of the revelations. Virtually every question asked by host Eleanor Hall could have come from the State Department. The contents and implications of the cables were mostly ignored.”

This is scary stuff. Is it now becoming the media’s role to shoot the messenger and ignore the message? To ask questions on behalf of a government? To put obstacles in the way of the public dissemination of subversive material?

∫

There’s no doubt Assange is a complex figure. He has been roundly criticised for exposing government secrecy while simultaneously running an organisation that is viewed as highly secretive by some observers. It’s ironic that in order to expose secrecy one has to be secretive, however, it’s also difficult to imagine how any organisation can offer protection to whistle blowers without engaging in some form of secrecy that will hopefully protect them.

Be that as it may, complexity in people who stand out on the world’s stage isn’t remarkable: only the other day I heard someone carping about how difficult Nelson Mandela could be. Such people do not inhabit the “imagined sensible middle” that mainstream journos are supposed to achieve. (This link to Mr Denmore’s blog “The Failed Estate” is worth a read, BTW.  It’s a response to the unrelenting carping of many journos about bloggers and social media commenters, which is not entirely different from their griping about Assange).

Even Ross Cameron has his sexual scandals, one of which caused him to lose his seat in 2004. Perhaps the journalists who carp and judge are morally beyond reproach: I do not know. What I do know is that I am grateful for mavericks such as Julian Assange. When Annabel Crabb, Leigh Sales, and Joe Hildebrand make a similar contribution to the world I will be grateful for them as well. It took guts to do what Assange did. It doesn’t take much guts to get up on the telly and laugh at him.



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The King’s Tribune, The PM gives the msm the finger, and things you might like to read.

2 Mar

I don’t know if you’re familiar with The King’s Tribune, a monthly journal on politics, media and culture. It’s available in hard copy and online, and it’s the only journal our household reads cover to cover.

And this month I’m proud to be a contributor:

http://www.kingstribune.com/current-issue/1469-down-among-the-women

Journalist Jill Singer wrote a piece for the Herald Sun about the legal threats made against me by Melinda Tankard Reist a couple of months ago. I was enormously cheered by her perspective and it’s with some amazement that I hear she’s being replaced at the Herald Sun. Can it be true that her replacement is Lara Bingle?

As regulars know, I’m no great fan of Julia Gillard’s but driving home from my water ballet class this morning I laughed out loud when heard how she’s turned the tables on some prominent msm journalists with her announcement of Bob Carr as Foreign Minister. This follows a couple of days of unrelenting media criticism on the topic, from some who may now like to eat their words. Not that they will.

Even to my jaundiced eye, a “fairly unrelenting anti Gillard campaign” seems a realistic assessment of the last few months’ coverage by some journos, whose lack of objectivity remains inexplicable.

After the leadership question was settled the other day I firmly resolved to accept Ms Gillard, and focus all my critical faculties on Tony Abbott and his gang of thugs from now until the election. This is because I would rather have needles in my eyes than do anything that might assist those agents of Satan into government.

So please, PM, stay on track, continue to give the bastards hell in question time, and don’t do anything silly. I’m not in your electorate so I won’t be voting for you, but as I’m rather fond of my local federal member who works very hard for us, I can safely say the ALP has my vote, barring any unforseen and disagreeable event that might cause me to protest at the ballot box.

At Hoyden about town, there’s this piece on free speech that is worth reading.

At Liberty Victoria there’s the piece that sparked a Twitter exchange between myself, Sandi Logan and others, where Mr Logan displayed his mastery of Orwellian doublespeak, of which more later.

If you are interested in what’s happening in the US in the battle for the right to control what women do with our bodies, this piece from Salon is a must read.

And this little piece brought joy to my heart when I read it. As you might know, Optus took legal action in an effort to silence AFL boss Andrew Demetriou who’d accused them of stealing content and other nefarious practices. It was his personal opinion, the judge decided, and refused an injunction. At least we live in a country where we can still express personal opinions without being legally gagged. Hoo haa!


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A tale told by idiots

26 Feb

And so we enter the next stage of the Gillard/Rudd cage fight.

It’s nasty. It’s dirty. And despite Attorney-General Nicola Roxon’s political speak, Monday’s leadership challenge will not be the end of it, no matter which contestant triumphs. In a valiant effort to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted, Roxon is now calling for everyone to get behind whoever wins. Yes. I can see that happening. They’ve all demonstrated their capacity to focus on the big picture, haven’t they?

We are witnessing a clash of egos. It’s likely that anyone who seeks to lead a government is going to need exceptional self-belief and both Gillard and Rudd have demonstrated they’ve got it in spades. Remember Gillard announcing Rudd’s ousting with the revelation that the government had lost its way and she was the messiah who was going to get it and the country back on track?

Then this week we have Rudd telling us that only he can save us from an Abbott-led coalition government, to which Roxon responded that we ought to stop being fanciful about messianic rescuers. Of course she didn’t add, only if they were Rudd.

Neither of the contestants is messianic. They’re both more than a little shabby, and tainted by circumstances of their own making. If anyone is depending on either of them to save the country from Tony Abbott, they’re going to be very disappointed.

There’s a monumental battle going on to claim the high moral ground, when it ought to be about good governance. The level of vitriol directed at Rudd by Wayne Swan, Simon Crean and others is alarming: suppose Rudd does win tomorrow, or at  later date, how are they going to work with him? Have they all forgotten why they were elected? Man up, people. Stop whining about the demon Rudd and get on with your jobs. The world is full of people who don’t get on with their bosses. Most of them have to just suck it up.

This can’t be the first government to endure serious tensions, but they usually don’t get into this disgraceful self-eviscerating state about them.

As if that isn’t enough, the populace by far prefers Rudd to both Gillard and Abbott. It’s a reckless politician that denies the popular will, especially with this history behind it.

The overthrow of Rudd was bound to end in tears. What a pity those who dreamed up that scheme lacked the foresight to predict it’s inevitably long-lasting and complex repercussions. There seems to be an alarming disconnect between the government and the people, one that began when Rudd was ousted without much explanation. It’s a bit late now to wash that dirty linen, and it also looks rather after the fact.

Gillard may well be more capable of facilitating the daily business of governing the country than Rudd proved to be. Rudd may well be streets ahead in popularity, and perhaps this does indicate he stands a better chance against Abbott in 2013. That depends on what he does between now and then, should he win tomorrow. If his return to the leadership causes widespread revolt and ministerial resignations that’s only going to play into Abbott’s hands. This doesn’t augur well for Roxon’s preferred solution, and as she has already stated that if Rudd offered her a portfolio she wouldn’t accept it, one has to wonder just what she’s on about. While Rudd may be difficult, some of the others don’t sound so straightforward either. They also sound a long way from making the best of it and getting behind whoever wins.

This morning Education Minister Peter Garrett announced he wouldn’t work in a Rudd government. Who do these people think they are? Elected representatives, that’s who they are, and they aren’t elected to refuse portfolios.

If Gillard is returned, she and her camp can be accused of yet again ignoring the will of the people, who’ve demonstrated in the polls they want Rudd back, and more, didn’t want him thrown out in the first place. Somehow, Gillard will have to turn around those who are resentful, feel cheated, and don’t want her as leader when it comes time to fight the next election. One can imagine how Abbott will use this “denial of the will of the people” narrative against the ALP.

The only winner of tomorrow’s contest is likely to be Abbott, I fear. Serves the ALP right, I also fear. But pity the poor punters. We’re the victims in this farce. Not Rudd. Not Gillard. Not any of those precious pollies who just couldn’t find a way to work with their boss. They should have tried harder, shouldn’t they? Because they are probably going to pay the ultimate price for ousting him when they become the opposition in 2013.

This is truly a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Greer at the Opera House, Eva Cox, Julia Gillard and MTR. Feminism today. *Sigh*

7 Feb

There’s been a debate raging in the media for over three weeks now as to whether or not morals campaigner Melinda Tankard Reist’s claim to be a feminist is legitimate. Some of the arguments are addressed here and here.

This has come at a convenient time for the Sydney Opera House events management team, who have now co-opted the debate and the threats of defamation made against me by Tankard Reist as advertising material for their upcoming event starring Germaine Greer and Naomi Wolf. This event is titled “The F-Word,” and up until the legal threat the organisers were worried that nobody was interested in feminism anymore. The resulting internecine wars have gone a long way towards cheering them up.

Any woman who believes she has the right to tell any other woman she may not call herself a feminist is engaging in an act of bullying. A woman may self-identify in whatever way she chooses. Others may disagree with her choice but disagreement isn’t the same thing as attempting to deny her the right to define herself as she sees fit.

There were at least twenty-seven different factions of feminism last time I counted, many with oppositional points of view. Hegemonic attempts to impose just one definition of the ideology as the norm on all women who would thus identify themselves, is antithetical to feminist principles.

In a situation where the group calls itself “feminist” and is but one of many groups identifying as such, on what grounds does this group assume the entitlement and privilege that allows them to declare all others ineligible?

The ongoing fights about who is entitled to identify herself as a “feminist” are a sad indicator of an ideology that is rapidly disappearing up its own fundament. For example, presented with a choice between engaging in public debate about the other issues the Reist defamation threats have raised, such as free speech, our defamation laws, the rights of bloggers and social media users, all of which are or would once have been considered feminist issues, the public feminists decided to ignore all that.

Then we have the pro Tankard Reist argument that she is an “authentic” feminist as presented here. Whenever someone uses the word “authentic” in an argument such as this I wonder why. To cast other feminists as “inauthentic” perhaps? The article is written by women who describe themselves as “radical” feminists. Are they also authentic? Have I fallen down a rabbit hole?

The battle for and against is two sides of the same struggle for sole possession and domination of the feminist narrative. A struggle that is founded on exclusion, expulsion, entitlement, privilege, and an appalling lack of imagination.

If I wanted to define feminism for myself, I would turn to bell hooks

Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys.

 At the risk of incurring the usual old anti feminist slurs, I’d suggest that any woman or group of women who seek to take possession of the term “feminist” are engaging in their own form of patriarchal domination, and one that we could all do well without.

I don’t know if Greer and Wolfe will be discussing any of this. But I am bemused as I watch a defamation threat made against me by a self-described feminist, turned into an advertisement for an Opera House event at which two of the planet’s most famous feminists will discuss the relevance of feminism. Irony, anyone?

Then there’s the furore about whether or not criticism leveled at Julia Gillard is sexist and misogynist. This is difficult. I’m of the opinion that there is a strong misogynist undercurrent, but I can’t prove it. It’s easy enough to find examples of male PM’s whose appearance is subject to mockery, and exaggerating physical appearance of politicians is the cartoonists’ stock in trade.

Gillard comes with baggage of the worst kind. Would the emotions surrounding that baggage have remained so powerfully alive had a man ousted Kevin Rudd? Is it worse when a woman does it? And if so, why? Is this a manifestation of unresolved mother issues from the time when many of us were under some woman’s thumb, and powerless? Does it hurt more when a woman does it because they aren’t supposed to?

Fascinating questions for an analyst of the collective psyche.

I do take issue with the argument that because she’s a woman Gillard has less authority. She has authority, and in my opinion that authority is both increasing and stabilising as she grows into her role.

Rather, there are those among us who resent a woman’s authority. We might like to reframe that as the woman’s regrettable lack of that quality, however I don’t believe that’s the case in this instance. Anyone who watched as Gillard calmly instructed her bodyguards to ensure Abbott’s safety on Australia Day can’t claim the woman has no authority. It’s innate.

The inability to accept and deal with a female authority figure  is often expressed in dismissive contempt.

In many ways turning the Gillard story into a gender argument is not helpful, even though misogyny is undoubtedly present and ought to be outed if possible. Nevertheless, a woman can’t win when gender becomes the focus of the debate, and Bob Brown didn’t do Gillard any favours by attempting to defend her. I doubt it’s a stoush the PM herself is eager to engage with.

And so to the second feminist Australian Legend to be honoured by Australia Post, Eva Cox.

After referring to me as a nit-picking blogger in her article for New Matilda on whether Tankard Reist is a feminist or not, Cox later apologised for the insult.

However, as she then went ahead and published the same article again here I’ve come to the conclusion that her apology meant less than nothing.

It’s interesting being silenced from both ends of the feminist spectrum. Tankard Reist uses the law in an effort to control me. Cox chooses the arguably more subtle method of refusing to name me and dismissing my arguments at the same time. A man would be pilloried for using the same negating tactics against a woman writer.

Cox apparently has no objections to the law being employed to silence female dissent, which surprises me somewhat, but there you go. Tankard Reist has positively seized upon the law as an instrument of personal control, and has now resorted to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights as well.

Then there’s this description of me and my kind made by Cathy Sherry, in her article defending Tankard Reist. I am, she writes, an  “unaccountable blogger sneering and abusing from the safety of [my] bedroom.” According to Ms Sherry, I’m not even worthy of an office simply because I blog. In a later comment elsewhere Ms Sherry refers to me as “faceless” as well, while Anne Summers refers to me simply as “a blogger”. Summers also apologised later.

How to explain this feminist contempt for female bloggers? One would think that blogging and feminism were made for each other. The blog offers an ordinary woman a voice where once there was a deep silence that has been broken only by a select few.

At the end of  three weeks of remarkable encounters with a variety of self-described feminists I have to conclude that because I’m unknown, a blogger, and entirely without influence I don’t count as a feminist or as a woman, and am to be shut up one way or another by a feminist who has more of a public presence than me.

I’m not unduly upset by all this, but I am very puzzled, as well as a little aggravated. I fear it says a great deal about where feminism is today, and it isn’t pretty. I fear it suggests that feminism has sold itself out to some of the values it once despised and resisted. I fear it’s going to be all down hill from here, if we aren’t very careful.

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Who would Jesus sue?

15 Jan


If you are interested in Melinda Tankard Reist’s fundamentalist Christianity you’ll find a biography here with far more detail than I provided, including her affiliation with the Salt Shakers, a Christian fundamentalist organisation founded by, among others, strident anti-homosexual Baptist preacher Bill Meuhlenberg. Meuhlenberg’s latest anti same-sex marriage rant, titled “When darkness descends upon a nation” was written in reaction to the recent ALP decision to support same-sex marriage.

Among other rhetorical gems, you’ll find this comment on Prime Minister Julia Gillard:

And what of Labor’s leader? Did we really ever expect that a fornicating socialist atheist was going to really hold the line on this? Of course not; certainly not when she is in bed with our other leader, a homosexual socialist atheist.

What you will also discover in the Tankard Reist bio is that for 12 years she was employed by Tasmanian Senator Brian Harradine as his bio ethics advisor. During this period Harradine successfully prevented Australian women from accessing the drug RU 486 despite it being available in other Western countries, and the numerous trials that had proven it’s safety and effectiveness as an early abortion drug.

But wait! There’s more! During Tankard Reist’s employment as his bio ethics advisor, Harradine also successfully prevented AusAID,the main Australian government overseas aid organisation, from funding any organisations that provide “abortion training or services, or research, trials or activities which directly involve abortion drugs,” even where it could save the life of a woman.

The Harradine-determined AusAID policy allowed funding for counselling after an abortion, but disallowed the dissemination of advice and education to women in underdeveloped countries who sought safe abortion.

A World Bank Report at that time estimated some 68,000 women in underdeveloped countries died as a consequence of unsafe abortion, and some 5.3 million suffered temporary or permanent disability.

This situation caused Bernard Keane to write this in Crikey, in an article titled “AusAID conservatives have blood on their hands:”

As a consequence of the restrictions, thousands of women overseas have died from unsafe abortions (see Sue Dunlevy’s excellent article from last year for some figures). Those deaths are a direct legacy of Brian Harradine and the Howard Government’s willingness to cater to the medieval delusions of the superstitious.

Tankard Reist’s involvement with fundamentalist Christians opposed to abortion, contraception, surrogacy, and homosexuality are well documented, and I have to wonder why she’s singled me out at this point in time for writing about her religious beliefs.

Throughout her career, Tankard Reist has doggedly described herself as a feminist, despite her anti choice stand, and her willingness to align herself with people such as Meuhlenberg and Harradine, who seek to exert their control over women’s bodies. Tankard Reist appears to be quite comfortable supporting and abetting this urge to dominate and control women, while simultaneously railing against what she considers the objectification, sexualisation, and pornification of women in popular culture.

Tankard Reist apparently has no qualms about having worked for a man whose determination to impose his religious beliefs on government policy prevented women far less fortunately placed than herself  from accessing medical help and education about contraception and abortion. It appears to be of little consequence to her that women in underdeveloped countries suffered and died as a direct consequence of Harradine’s religious beliefs, during the period when he was her employer.

Yet show her a Kanye West video or a Brian McFadden clip, or women in Victoria’s Secret lingerie who like pole dancing, and she’s got petitions going every which way to silence and censor. What’s wrong with this picture?

As I think Jesus is reported as having observed, by their friends you shall know them.

(The title of this post comes from a tweet I received yesterday and I think it’s brilliant.)

UPDATE: I received the letter of demand from Tankard Reist’s lawyers on my personal email address. They state that they’ve sent a hard copy to my home address. I am not in the phone directory and I have no landline in my name. My personal email address isn’t available on my blog and neither is my home address. It probably wasn’t difficult to find someone who would divulge my email address, but my home address? 

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Same old msm misogyny, all politicians are liars, and only if I’m water boarded

3 Jan

I don’t know if this is just an attack of ennui after the holiday festivities, but all I can find to say about the new year is blah blah blah.

Same old politics politicking on.  Same old fights between right and left. Same old controversies, increasingly bereft of impact due to over-exposure. Same old msm misogyny against the PM. Yes, it’s taken me a long time to come round to acknowledging that. I have my disagreements with Ms Gillard, and I didn’t want legitimate arguments against her to be obfuscated by allegations of misogyny. It was bad enough when the feminists went wild at her ascension, conveniently ignoring the context in which it took place.

But I have to admit that there can be no other reason for the msm’s unceasing attacks on her, their unwavering support of that grotesque ferret Tony Abbott, and their wilful ignoring of Gillard’s considerable achievements. To collapse into primitive binaries: Abbott’s a man. Gillard’s a woman. The msm can’t deal with it. They are profoundly misogynist. They would see us delivered unto the mad monk rather than have a woman in the Lodge.

Gillard is undoubtedly a woman of strong character and great political talent, and I think she’s growing into her prime ministerial role. That said, she’s a politician. I feel no compunction about embarking on a stereotyping frenzy when it comes to them. They are liars. They are hypocrites. They are self-seeking, ego-driven megalomaniacs and they are quite likely psychopathic as well. However, within these parameters, some are not as bad as others. Gender makes no difference whatsoever, except, perhaps, in the way in which these dangerous dysfunctions are expressed. That said, I bet all my xmas presents that Gillard would have taken us into the illegal Iraq invasion, just like Howard. Then there’s her stand on the Australian citizen in big trouble overseas, Julian Assange. Her government’s implied preferencing of Chopper Reid over David Hicks in the matter of proceeds of crime. The mess she’s made of asylum seeker policies. Oh, here I go again re-visiting the same old fights. But what else can one do? Fall silent?

Anyway, if we are going to be critical of our PM, let’s not allow misogyny to muddy the waters. We don’t need it.

Then there’s the same old windbags on commercial TV and the same old botoxed, artificially bosomed, tarted up bottle blonde anchors and presenters. Except when they’re bottled brunettes. I guess that’s some kind of variation.

It’s freaking me out how so many TV women are starting to look exactly the same, with the tortured hair, and bloated lips through which they deliver their version of the day’s news and (ahem) analysis in breathless girly voices. They’re modeling themselves on the Fox News girls, aren’t they?

Reminder to self: now @RupertMurdoch is on Twitter give him a serve about his anchors. And champion pie-stopper @Wendi_Deng also has a verified account, making a husband and wife team rivalled only by David and Kristen Willamson, who I am coming to below this image of an ideal Fox anchor:

A brief respite yesterday when someone on Twitter directed me to this blog, a site wherein Bob Ellis and David and Kristen Williamson recreate for readers a blog version of the Jerry Springer Show. Transfixed by the same awful fascination with which I have in times of self-destructive boredom watched adults self-mutilate on Springer’s show for the emotionally challenged,  I read this mutual exchange of abuse and recrimination, much of it overtly and covertly sexual, and laughed my head off. The Williamsons struggle with silly attempts to defend themselves against the irrational onslaughts of Ellis in outraged linguistic flight. Everybody knows Ellis can outdo anyone in a public brawl because unlike most of us, he has no boundaries. He will say anything.  And he does.

Against this floridity, David and Kristen splutter the kind of middle class indignation that can only be mocked, because of its mediocrity, and its utter failure to see beyond itself.  Far too much of it in some of his plays, unkind people may mutter, and not always satirical?

All in all I’d rather read Ellis than either of the Williamson’s, but only if I was water boarded into making a choice in the first place.

Things may look up. Then again they may not. I am waiting for the Rapture. I am steadfast. I have faith.

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We’ve signed the Convention, but…

21 Dec

I don’t know about anyone else but I’m beginning to feel righteously infuriated by the asylum seeker stand-off. The kind of righteous fury that would prompt one to smite the fools and political charlatans, if one only had smiting powers.

So far the best account of the current impasse I’ve read is this one by Robert Manne at The Drum this morning. Since then both Alexander Downer and Philip Ruddock have thrown in their two pence worth here in the SMH, with Ruddock claiming the Malaysia solution is still possible, while Downer advises Abbott to keep his nose out of negotiations at this stage, and let government and coalition teams handle them rather than leaders.

This latter piece of advice I heartily endorse. Abbott has not shown himself to have the slightest talent for negotiation. That unfortunate lack is exacerbated by an ingrained misogyny that makes negotiations with a woman especially problematic. Add to that the fact that this particular woman has the job he believes is his by divine right and clearly, including him at the table is going to get us precisely nowhere.

Abbott cannot be trusted to empty his head of personal grievances and focus on the much bigger issues at hand. That’s just one of the multitude of reasons why he should not be Leader of the Opposition, and especially why he should not be our next PM.

As for the Malaysia “solution.” Remind me, wasn’t it  only 800 most recent boat arrivals we were planning to send to that country?  Haven’t we just about reached that number?  So if we do pack 800 asylum seekers off to an uncertain future and accept 4000 refugees in exchange, what next?

Oh, and I forgot. We have to change the law first so we can put that “solution” into effect, thanks to Robert Manne’s enterprising nephew David, who took the government to the High Court and got the Malaysia “solution” kyboshed under our current legislation.

A small digression. There has been much brou ha ha about the use of the word “denier” in the climate change debate. Those who object claim it is an unmistakeable reference to Holocaust deniers. Yet nobody gives a hoot about the use of the word “solution” in the refugee debate, even though it immediately puts one in mind of Hitler’s genocidal “final solution.” To my mind “solution” is far more repulsively evocative than “deniers,” especially given that word’s confusing (and defusing) French meaning, that is, the thickness or otherwise of stockings.

What nobody will address is our responsibility as signatories to the UN Refugee Convention, and how that influences the decision by asylum seekers to attempt dangerous sea voyages. People only make these drastic attempts to get to us in the first place because we are known to be a country of asylum.

We make no stipulations about who can claim asylum, or the manner in which they gain entry to our country. These high falutin’ invitations to hospitality bear little resemblance to the reality, though since the last High Court decision those who arrive by boat are to be treated the same as those who arrive by plane, ending a truly despicable discriminatory practice based entirely on methods of transport.

The UN Convention clearly does not work for Australia anymore. We are turning ourselves inside out in our attempts to find ways to circumvent it, while still wishing to remain full signatories. The people suffering most as a consequence of our gyrations and manipulations are asylum seekers, who hear our invitation and accept it, only to either die on the way, or be treated abominably once they arrive.

I don’t imagine that our commitment to the UN Refugee Convention is going to be re-assessed anytime soon. So perhaps we should consider educating potential asylum seekers in our little ways. Yes, we have signed the Convention and you are absolutely entitled to believe that we are a country of asylum, and to attempt to come here requesting sanctuary. However, if you die in the attempt that is not our fault. Should you be successful and be granted refugee status, the fact that we are a country of asylum does not mean you will automatically be allowed to stay here and we reserve the right to send you to whatever country we can persuade to take you off our hands.

So do not think when you embark on your epic journeys, that you will be allowed to stay in this country in the event that you arrive. We do not like queue jumpers, and we prefer to give sanctuary to those we invite, not those who importunately demand it of us by just turning up.

No, we agree that none of this appears in the fine print of the UN Refugee Convention. Yes, we are quite likely engaging in misleading advertising. However, as there is nothing at all you can do about that, because we are powerful and you aren’t, we suggest you don’t come here in the first place.

You think we should reword our commitment to the UN Convention?  Meh, everybody who’s anybody knows that Convention means nothing.

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Why KRudd MP better not attempt a come back

12 Dec

I don’t believe KRudd MP is going to make a play for the leadership in the first half of next year, and so convinced am I of my rightness that I’ve bet all my Christmas presents on Twitter.

Think about it. He doesn’t have enough support and never has had even when he was PM, otherwise he wouldn’t have found himself lying in the gutter looking at the stars with his left testicle by his side, cruelly severed without benefit of anaesthetic by several faceless men and a faced woman all wielding long knives.

While it would be sweet revenge for KRudd MP to re-assume party leadership and his abruptly terminated Prime Ministership, consigning his mortal enemies to the dustbin of the vanquished in the process, that kind of stuff doesn’t happen in real life. It’s the stuff of Jacobean revenge plays and Shakespearean drama. Admittedly so was the original coup, but they can’t pull it off twice in four years, especially since it was only ever accidentally in those high cultural realms in the first place.

So I’m calling bollocks on the MSM’s fevered speculation about a Rudd/Gillard rift as the precursor to a leadership challenge in the new year. Of course there’s a bloody rift. They’re never going to be best friends, and they never were in the first place. They don’t have to be. Are we to believe everyone in the government gets along?

But what did interest me on Twitter this morning were the tweets about finishing the job on Kev’s nuts if he so much as causes a destabilising rumour. That I find bizarre. IMO the federal ALP destabilised itself when it threw him out, and they’ve been paying for it ever since. The PM has contributed to the destabilising process with a variety of peculiar, unthought through and ultimately highly mockable “decisions” which I won’t detail here because it’s holiday time and everybody knows anyway.

So it seems a bit rough to turn round and blame the victim, but that is what bullies usually do. No matter what you think of Kevin, he did get rumbled, and it’s pretty normal after being rumbled for a human being to indulge in fantasies of revenge. Of course, thoughts and actions are very different things, but I’m betting that KRudd MP is not daft enough to launch into a leadership tilt that will most likely see him right back in the gutter again, sans both testicles this time, and sans his much-loved job as Foreign Minister. I mean, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

However, sense and politics are not always or even sometimes bedfellows, I grant that.

I don’t want KRudd MP as PM again. That ship has sailed. There may well be a leadership change next year, but it better not be back to Rudd because that will turn the government into a total laughing-stock, and they really cannot afford that.

The MSM is whipping up trouble, as is its wont. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that they’re all rooting for the Noalition. In the media what isn’t said is as influential as what is, and I’m flabbergasted that the MSM has maintained a studied silence on the Coalition costings black hole scandal. Well, it isn’t a scandal, actually, and it should be. These people are attempting to sell themselves as an alternative government and they are to all intents and purposes a bunch of financially incompetent drongos. Yet is the MSM ridiculing them? Is it hell.

Given that the Gillard government has, in spite of everything, achieved a great deal since taking office, why in the name of all that is reasonable would anyone want to replace them with a gang of ageing shrivelled charlatans led by a deeply conflicted homophobic misogynist? Why, I ask you. Why, why, why?

I have never really recovered from the shock of WHAT THEY DID WHEN THEY TOOK OUT MY PM WITHOUT TELLING ME. But it’s time to let old hurts and resentments go. IT WAS SOOOO DASTARDLY. But that was then. This is now. IT WAS SOOOO UNSPEAKABLE. But we have to work together to make the very best of what we’ve got. AND NO MATTER HOW PISSED I AM AT YOU COWARDLY BASTARDS FOR WHAT YOU DID, you are still by far the better option.

So, please, everyone in government, do your very best to stabilise yourselves. Look at the big picture, consider the greater good, and those of you who want revenge, dig deep into your inner stores of goodness and find it in yourselves to forgo that desire in the interests of this nation, and of our future. I’m begging you. On my knees. Please do not make us have this:

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Real or hyperreal: can we still distinguish?

7 Dec

There’s a piece in The Drum this week by Clementine Ford titled “We’re all real women…” My first thought was, is that like in the “real” Julia Gillard, or what? Since the PM adopted that manner of self-description the word “real” appears to have entered a state of extreme fluidity, and I don’t really know what it means anymore.

This is disconcerting because “real” was one of the words in our language that one used to be able to rely on through consensus. The term “unreal”is also clear when used as praise, and we can’t really apply it to describe what women are when they aren’t “real.”

I almost wrote “being real” just then. But I don’t think we should go there this morning. One step at a time.

There are millions of words that are totally unreliable and change meaning at the drop of a hat, often appropriated by politicians to obscure rather than reveal. “Real” was not, until the PM co-opted it, one of those words, at least not in the sense of being used to reassure the populace that the subject of enunciation was now entering a novel phase of authenticity.

No politician in my living memory has ever risked admitting they’d previously been false, before Julia Gillard did it.

What her claim to have suddenly become “real” signified was that prior to her announcement, the PM had apparently been inhabiting a hyperreal universe in which, according to French theorist Jean Baudrillard, human consciousness is tricked into detaching from real emotional engagement, opting instead for simulation and endless reproduction of fundamentally empty experience from which it is compelled to continually move forward.

This is the equivalent of emotionally experiencing theme parks such as Disneyland as real suburban living, and  Las Vegas casinos such as the Paris and the Venetian as real cities. That is, reality has been replaced with signs and symbols, making it ultimately irrelevant. I can testify to this. I haven’t been to Venice, but I have been to the Venetian in Las Vegas. Watching a program on television filmed in Venice I found myself thinking, that’s just like the Venetian in Vegas. This is but a small example of Baudrillard’s theory, and I am appalled at myself.

However, in comparison with the Las Vegas Venetian and Disneyland other places seem very real, and this is the purpose of it all. The hyperreal conceals the fact that the real is no longer real, by making the no-longer-real look real when one leaves the hyperreal and re-enters the “real” world.

Who is responsible for this mind-fucking post modern conspiracy I cannot say, except to suggest that the media and capitalism play a pivotal role.

Then there is the question of what value one attaches to the “real.” In the case of women, if anti pornography campaigner Gail Dines and her ilk are to be believed, the hyperreal destroys all value in the real, and men who inhabit the hyperrealistic world of pornography either attempt to persuade “real” women into imitating the simulacra (now there’s a mind-boggling concept), or they become incapable of interaction with the “real” because she isn’t exciting enough.

In the case of Ford’s article, I think “real” signifies women who feel themselves to be whole without the trappings of fashion, considerations of weight and size, and male approval. Whereas in Ms Gillard’s case I believe she was referring to a political presentation that apparently went from not real to real in a nano second, though given the magazine cover above, I’m inclined to think there was also a physical dimension to her claims.

I myself personally have never seen much difference between what the PM considered not real about herself, and what is apparently the genuine article. This is almost certainly my own fault, an unfortunate inability to detect subtle nuance for which I should be punished.

So, if both the PM and Ms Ford find it necessary to assert the “realness” of women, albeit in differing ways, is this an attempt to reclaim us from a hyperreal existence in which we cannot  distinguish reality from fantasy? A frantic effort to rescue us from the consequences of struggling to maintain our sanity in a world teeming with simulacra?

The news in Jezebel today that Swedish fashion house  H&M have stopped airbrushing human beings and instead have replaced them with computer-generated virtual bodies with “real” female human heads digitally imposed, would suggest this is the case.  Such a move does confirm that as Baudrillard suggested, simulacra work to obliterate the notion that reality is in any way relevant to our understanding of our lives. If Jezebel hadn’t outed them, we  would have assumed we were looking at human beings (albeit enhanced) rather than cyborg hybrids.

The question is, what does all that mean?

Well, absolutely sod all according to Baudrillard, who claims that all meaning is rendered meaningless by being infinitely mutable. Which brings me back to the meaning of “real.” Along with Clementine Ford and the PM I was labouring under the illusion that “real” meant something. It doesn’t. It’s a crock. It’s as mutable as any other word. There is nothing to hold on to, we are drowning in fluidity, and this is not a pipe.

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PM is ‘fornicating socialist atheist’ in bed with ‘homosexual socialist atheist’ claims Christian Right

4 Dec

Guest post today by Christian right pastor Bill Muehlenberg (though he doesn’t know it yet). In the public interest No Place For Sheep has nicked this from Bill’s “Culture Watch” website. If you don’t like it Billy boy, bite me.

UPDATE: It’s really worth going to Bill’s website and having a read of the comments that have gone up there on his article today.

Thanks to Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear for the link.

Image by bigotedbillmuehlenberg

WHEN DARKNESS DESCENDS UPON A NATION, by Bill Muehlenberg

Federal Labor has declared itself to be aligned with the powers of darkness. It has decided that the most important thing this nation needs is homosexual marriage, and to hell with ordinary Australians and workers who dare to stand in their way.

Here is the story: “The Australian Labor Party has voted in favour of same-sex marriage. It’s also backed a motion to allow state and federal Labor MPs a conscience vote on gay marriage if a Bill comes to parliament. The motion on the conscience vote was carried 208 votes to 185.

“The motion to change the party platform on same-sex marriage was carried on the voices. When the results were announced, Senator Penny Wong hugged Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Delegates on the floor of the party’s national conference in Sydney clapped and cheered.”

So Labor has officially and decisively abandoned its own base, the workers, and the Australian people, and has declared that it exists solely to do the bidding of Bob Brown and the militant homosexual lobby. This is a sad day for a political party and the nation.

Well did Kim Beazley Sr say three decades ago, “When I joined the Labor Party, it contained the cream of the working class. But as I look about me now all I see are the dregs of the middle class. And what I want to know is when you middle class perverts are going to stop using the Labor Party as a spiritual spitoon.”

Imagine what he would say today? This is a betrayal of workers, of a party, and a nation. It is a sell-out, and our children will especially suffer as a result. And assuming this becomes a bill and is eventually passed, this will clearly mean an open attack on Christianity, family, and marriage.

And what of Labor’s leader? Did we really ever expect that a fornicating socialist atheist was going to really hold the line on this? Of course not; certainly not when she is in bed with our other leader, a homosexual socialist atheist. One commentator got it right:

“But it is now clear Gillard’s authority and credibility will be diminished by the vote on the party platform at a conference she has been unable to exploit to lift her leadership and revive Labor. While senior ministers such as Wayne Swan, Simon Crean and Anthony Albanese desperately insisted Labor was not being sidetracked by same-sex marriage and was really concentrating on jobs, the opposite was obvious.

“Incredibly, this was an issue Gillard had decided to commit to before the last election and has continually defended but has not publicly championed so that if she was beaten she would be seen as going down fighting for something she believed in.

“Instead, Gillard has only weakly defended her position in a newspaper article and completely disappeared from view ahead of the conference this week. This defeat for Gillard and the fight within the ALP, no matter how it is handled, will have reverberations far beyond the single issue of same-sex marriage.”

There are not only huge political and social ramifications concerning all this, but spiritual ones as well. The Bible makes it quite clear what this is all about:

Proverbs 14:34 – Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.
Proverbs 29:2 – When the godly are in authority, the people rejoice. But when the wicked are in power, they groan.

But it is not just godly leadership which is so very much lacking today. So too is godliness in the pews. Where are the Christians who have faithfully stood up about this? I have been telling Christians for months now they must contact their local MPs before this Labor conference.

Yet I would be very surprised indeed if even 5 per cent of them did. We are so engrossed in our own selfishness and trivial pursuits that we are fully happy to see the entire nation be destroyed around us. Our apathy and indifference is killing this nation and it is killing the church. Yet we do not even bat an eyelash over it.

And don’t get me started about all the so-called Christians who actually support Labor, the Greens, and the radical homosexual agenda. The truth is, we have traitors in our midst, even in the pulpits. One pastor after another has sold his soul in order to be popular, receive the praises of men, and not rock the boat.

Fortunately not everyone is living in gross, sinful compromise and rebellion. A pro-marriage rally was held this morning in Sydney to side against the evil at the Labor conference. There should have been tens of thousands of Christians there – even hundreds of thousands. If Hillsong alone sent its flock there, it would have been massive.

So where were they? Why do the bulk of believers seem to not give a rip about any of this? Why are our churches silent, our leaders cowardly, and our people so frozen? What will it take to rouse a deaf, dumb and compromised church? There is clearly only one answer to all this:

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

So suck that up all you fornicating middle class dregs.

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