The Symbolism Of Howardism



The Australian's 'editor-at-large' (does this mean he works from home?) Paul Kelly is, curiously, trying to perfume up the wretched stink of The Howard Era with a new book, but Howard's love of the Easiest Option Loaded With Symbolism keeps blasting through the quiet-dignity renovation work from Kelly, continually exposing the phoniness of his 11 years in power :

With John Howard facing political oblivion in September 2007, Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson delivered him a potential re-election strategy in an unprecedented letter.

He suggested three ideas for Howard's election agenda: a referendum to deliver "recognition of indigenous people within a reconciled, indivisible nation", a referendum for an Australian republic based on an affirmation of the British heritage, and a paradigm shift from a "welfare state" to an "opportunity state".

Howard embraced the first proposal but rejected the other two.

You don't get a knighthood if you try to make Australia mature enough to do away with the monarchy.

Meanwhile, a dash of drama in the countdown to John Howard's state funeral :

Former Australian prime minister John Howard was hospitalised over the weekend after a severe allergic reaction to an anaesthetic, it was reported Sunday.Howard, whose conservative administration ruled Australia from 1996 to 2007, spent two nights in hospital after suffering an anaphylactic reaction to anaesthetic during a visit to the dentist...

Perhaps the kangaroo bone effect takes a while to come on.

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Law Changed

Blair's Law used to mean :

"the ongoing process by which the world's multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force."

But according to the Urban Dictionary, Blair's Law now means :

As a blog war intensifies, the probability of lawyers being called in to protect the glass jaw of the more cowardly party approaches 1.

– Inspired by the precedent set by the aborted 2009 defamation case of (Australian journalist/blogger) Tim Blair vs Teh Left.

Aborted? Must be why I only got the one letter demanding compensation for causing "immeasurable hurt". I was hoping to collect the whole set.

More from the Urban Dictionary on Blair's Law :

TB: “My girlfriend’s been fighting all my battles for me under a pseudonym, but we got caught out and now my tough-guy reputation is in tatters. How am I going to weasel my way out of this one?”

JB: “Only Blair's law can save you now, my chinless friend.”

WB: “Jeez!”

And that's enough of all that.

The Bullet That May Bring Down The NSW Government

Reality, always so much more WTF? than fiction can ever be.

From today's Sydney Morning Herald :

The Neutral Bay property developer and loan shark Michael McGurk may have been killed because he was in possession of a tape that had potential to bring down the NSW Government.

The audio tape is understood to contain revelations about the bribing of senior government figures.

The head of the homicide squad, Superintendent Geoff Beresford, described the killing as ''very targeted''.

Police said Mr McGurk had died as a result of a single bullet wound to the head while his son Luke sat in the passenger seat of his black Mercedes-Benz saloon.

One bullet. It certainly sounds professional.

A week before his death, McGurk told Sydney Morning Herald journalist Kate McClymont (excerpts) :

...he had reason to believe that a person, whom he named, was planning to have him killed.

...he confessed to making recordings, which he claimed to have made legally, with a well-known Sydney man. When pressed he hinted at corruption involving Labor politicians, both state and federal.

McGurk later became expansive, providing the Herald with a detailed list of names to investigate.

...he had been told there was a plan to have him killed and he was extremely anxious as he believed the person had the means to carry out such a threat.

He concluded by saying that by the end of the week he hoped to be able to hand something over to the Herald, which would enable us to see the ''whole picture''.

He was killed before he could hand over to the Herald what he had.

These events will obviously plunge the NSW Labor government into further chaos, as they vault from Melrose Place shenanigans to being linked to something grimly reminiscent of The Sopranos.

The obvious question, besides who ordered the hit and who carried it out, is : Where Is The Tape?

And did McGurk make copies of the allegedly incriminating tape and distribute them to trusted friends or lawyers to make public if the threats against his life were carried out?

The Sydney Morning Herald sounds like it's sitting on one hell of a story, one that could bring down the NSW government. Or more accurately, finish it off.

Cannabis Causes Schizophrenia....Just More Drug War Propaganda?

By Darryl Mason

The reality has been set for millions of parents, by a steady stream of Reefer Madness-style tabloid headlines and talkback radio fearmongering, that their 15 year old kid occasionally sharing a joint with friends is running a very dangerous risk of triggering the onset of schizophrenia, suicidal downward spirals or an even worse range of psychoses that will inevitably, irrevocably, tear families and lives apart.

The Smoking Pot Leads To More Dangerous Drugs myth was dismissed years ago, but the Will My Cannabis Smoking Daughter Go Psycho? replacement has proven to be a very powerful PR tool for the cannabis prohibitionists.

But just how true are those original claims that cannabis = schizophrenia/psychosis?

A new study in the UK has cast doubt on the supposed link between cannabis use and schizophrenia.

But at least one Australian researcher says the study needs more evidence.

Professor Joseph Rey of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney, whose previous research has identified a link between cannabis and schizophrenia, is sceptical of the study's results.

"Not showing that there is a link does not mean there is no link," he says.

.........okay.

"...the evidence suggesting that cannabis use does increase the risk of schizophrenia is quite strong. We need more evidence to counteract what we already know."

More evidence.....

This latest study, led by Dr Martin Frisher of Keele University, examined the records of 600,000 patients aged between 16 and 44, but failed to find a similar link.

(The authors) point out that "although using cannabis is associated with a greater risk of developing psychosis, there is also evidence of increased cannabis use following psychosis onset."

According to the study, cannabis use in the UK between 1972 and 2002 has increased four-fold in the general population, and 18-fold among under-18s.

....the researchers found no increase in the rates of schizophrenia and psychosis diagnosis during that period. In fact, some of the data suggested the incidence of these conditions had decreased.

"This concurs with other reports indicating that increases in population cannabis use have not been followed by increases in psychotic incidence."

The Full Story Is Worth A Read

Alex Wodak, director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent's Hospital, wrote in the Melbourne Age, that the 'War On Drugs' has, ultimately proved to be a failure, and a full and proper debate about drug prohibition in Australia is now overdue :

It is now clear that support for a drug policy heavily reliant on law enforcement is dwindling in Western Europe, the US and South America, while support for harm reduction and drug law reform is growing.

Wodak turns back to the century old origin of the 'War On Drugs' :

One hundred years ago, the US convened the International Opium Conference. This meeting of 13 nations in Shanghai was the beginning of global drug prohibition.

Prohibition slowly became one of the most universally applied policies in the world. But a century on, international support for this blanket drug policy is slowly but inexorably unravelling.

Wodak cites the rapidly changing attitudes across the world towards drug prohibition, as a new generation of leaders with less hysterical attitudes towards drug use, probably because so many have used them in the past with no lasting side effects, begin winding back the tired old propaganda.

In January, Barack Obama became the third US president in a row to admit to consumption of cannabis. Bill Clinton had admitted using cannabis but denied ever inhaling it. George Bush was taped saying in private he would never admit in public to having used cannabis. When Obama was asked whether he had inhaled cannabis, he said: ''Of course. That was the whole point.''

Obama has candidly discussed his drug use. ''Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow [cocaine] when you could afford it.'' He has also admitted the ''war on drugs is an utter failure'' and called for more focus on a public health approach.

In February, a Latin American drug policy commission similarly concluded that the ''drug war is a failure''. It recommended breaking the ''taboo on open debate including about cannabis decriminalisation''. The same month, an American diplomat said the US supported needle-exchange programs to help reduce the transmission of HIV and other blood-borne diseases, and supported using medication to treat those addicted to opiates.

A few more example of the changing attitudes to drug prohibition, cited by Wodak :

....a national Zogby poll in the US provided evidence of changing opinion on the legalisation of cannabis: 52 per cent supported cannabis becoming legal, taxed and regulated.

In Germany, the federal parliament voted 63 per cent in favour to allow heroin prescription treatment.

In July, the Economic and Social Council, a UN body more senior than the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, approved a resolution requiring national governments to provide ''services for injecting drug users in all settings, including prisons'' and harm reduction programs such as needle syringe programs and substitution treatment for heroin users. This month, Mexico removed criminal sanctions for possessing any illicit drug in small quantities while Argentina is making similar changes for cannabis.

Portugal, Spain and Italy had earlier dropped criminal sanctions for possessing small amounts of any illicit drug, while the Netherlands and Germany have achieved the same effect by changing policing policy.

It is now clear that support for a drug policy heavily reliant on law enforcement is dwindling in Western Europe, the US and South America, while support for harm reduction and drug law reform is growing. Sooner or later this debate will start again in Australia.

The real debate will begin here, and soon, but we will first have to endure the blathering of the usual old cliche-spouting, fear-churning gatekeepers of drug prohibition in the Australian media, who will cite a handful of cases where drug use has destroyed lives while ignoring the many millions who have experimented with drugs of all kinds and suffered no long-lasting damage, to their health, their family lives, or their careers. Well, those who didn't get arrested anyway.

The winding back of drug prohibition in Australia is likely to be an occasionally ugly and misinformation-plagued debate, but a necessary, long-overdue one.

I'd imagine that cannabis, at least, will be all but legalised in Australia within a few years, if only because so many Baby Boomers already prefer it as an alternative to side effect-heavy pharmaceuticals when it comes to tamping down all those aches and pains of growing old, and vote-powerful Boomers simply won't tolerate being hassled, or fined, by the police for blowing scuds on the back lawn of their nursing homes.

You Think That's Something? Well, Let Me Tell You About The Time....



By Darryl Mason

I don't want to take anything away from this obviously incredible record....

In a back room of his Braidwood cottage in the NSW Southern Tablelands Phil Day has just broken the world record on the 28-year-old classic arcade game and successor to Space Invaders, Galaga.

Passing the previous mark of 2.7 million set by an American, Andrew Laidlaw, in 2007, Mr Day's score of 3.44 million is the culmination of six months' training and practice.

It took him two hours to break the record.

But I swear that I can remember a kid not just scoring a few million, but more than ten million, and clocking over the Galaga machine in a local takeaway, back in 1982-1983.

It took him more than five hours, probably closer to six, and he drew a coming-and-going crowd, some of whom thought it was hilarious fun to try and distract the unflappable gamer. This was in the days before mobile phones, or even phones in every home, and word about this massive event unfolding was spread by kids on bikes, rushing to friends' houses to alert them to the news of historic spectacle of Galaga mastery.

There might have been fifteen or more kids gathered around the Galaga machine, in the late afternoon of a firey hot Saturday, when the score hit 9,999,999 and then turned back to zero. There was an awed silence, and then applause, and then the patient, but well over it, shop owner told everyone to get the fuck out. Naturally, the kid that clocked Galaga sauntered away with only these words, "So what? It's no big deal."

Or maybe this happened on a Moon Patrol machine. Or was it the Mrs Pacman pinball?

No, it was Galaga, dammit, I'm sure of it, and even if the above details about Galaga's scoring system are flat out wrong, I will be, regardless, shouting to bored young people well into my old age that I Was There The Day an incredibly focused friend clocked over Galaga, turned that bastard back to zero, and that the youth, like them, with their iBrains and holograms and flying robot friends, don't know what the hell real excitement is.

Or was.

This year marks the 30th birthday of Space Invaders.

I Am, So You Are Too

Miranda Devine :

Let's play a game: who doesn't have narcissistic personality disorder in our self-obsessed age? A surfeit of self-love is almost a prerequisite for success now, and the proliferation of egomaniac sites, from Twitter and MySpace to Facebook and YouTube, make the peer pressure to be grandiose and irrationally self-confident almost irresistible.

Almost irresistible?



It's always amusing to read a lecture on narcissism from a newspaper columnist.

Tobias Zeigler at Pure Poison asks : Are We All Mental Health Professionals Now?

Federal Police Chief Authorises Use Of Surveillance Aircraft That Doesn't Officially Exist To Find Lost Government Minister

By Darryl Mason

The Australian Federal Police have stopped denying one of their aerial surveillance vehicles was used in the search and rescue of missing Victorian government minister Tim Holding, but only after "The AFP went so far as to say they did not own any aircraft."

The Age runs a photo of a (manned) GA Airvan, as an unnamed source claims such a plane was/is used by the AFP in operations over Australia :

The Age has been told that the equipment that produced a thermal image of Mr Holding was a US-made Star Sapphire Forward Looking Infra-red Radar system capable of finding a human body from well over two kilometres away.

The system can be used to track criminal fugitives, terrorists or missing people through darkness or cloud in forests or at sea at a considerable distance.

So a source tells The Age the spy plane is a GA Airvan....but "sources" tell the Herald Sun the spy plane :

...could be a Cessna 208 Grand Caravan or a Britten Norman Defender, which had been heavily modified to conduct covert operations at high altitude.

No Australian mainstream media appears to be entertaining the idea that the spy plane could be, and more than likely is, a UAV. Not yet anyway.

Incredibly, The Australian backs the AFP respin :

The Australian Federal Police -- which was linked to the plane in some news reports yesterday, but actually has no aircraft -- deflected inquiries back to Victoria Police, while the Defence Force said none of its aircraft was involved in the search.

And that's after the Herald Sun reported :

AFP chief Mick Keelty, on his second last day in the job, offered the use of the plane to search for Mr Holding.

Victoria Police mentioned the plane on its website when it announced a campsite used by Mr Holding was seen on Monday night by a plane using sophisticated night vision equipment.

"Police located minister Tim Holding just after 10am this morning after an AFP plane located a possible camp site overnight," the statement said.

The statement was later amended to remove all mention of the AFP.

Shhh, it never happened. That occasional buzzing noise you might hear over your city at 3am is probably just some angry wasps. The Australian Federal Police do not have spy planes, even if the AFP chief authorised the loan of a spy plane to find a Victorian government minister lost in the wilderness.

Melbourne radio ranter Derryn Hinch thinks the rescued Tim Holding is "an arrogant, self-centred turd" and weighs in on the spy plane controversy :

Why all the secrecy about the Australian Federal Police spy plane with its secret heat-seeking, and night surveillance equipment?

Premier Brumby boasted at first it was used. And Victoria Police put out a press release referring to an ‘AFP planer’ and then tried to withdraw it and the Federal Police flatly denied they had any such planes. Which is a lie.

So, the high tech plane was successfully used to pinpoint Holding’s location. Was such a plane offered in New South Wales when that British tourist was missing for 13 days? No.

At least the AFP spy plane controversy distracts a little from the rising chorus that Holding's rescue was treated as something very, very special indeed by the Victorian Labor government. The deployment of a previously unknown Australian Federal Police surveillance aircraft being just the start of "special treatment". There is a nasty 'us vs them' belief spreading fast, along the lines of "Look what they do for one of their own! They'd leave us poor fuckers out there to die of exposure!"

This attitude is fusing with suspicion that Tim Holding staged his own disappearance for publicity reasons, best exampled by a pungent little punnet of conspiracy theories found on the most paranoid and conspiracy-laden mainstream media blog in Australia :

"Call me a cynic but his political career needed a boost and he thought that this sort of publicity was one way of doing it."

"Tim Holding is a publicity hound and all round media bitch. This incident has done wonders for his profile."

The next time anyone goes missing in the bush, in the desert or on a snow-slashed ridge, we can expect the deployment of (formerly top secret) spy planes, from the Australian Defence Force and/or the Australian Federal Police, to help find them. And within 72 hours, just as was done for Tim Holding.

Can't we?

Maybe.

Obviously pizza-scoffing, infuriatingly dim, British backpackers will be left to fend for themselves.

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Well Fuck Off Somewhere Else Then

What sort of unpatriotic scumbags viciously denounce their own country, and the Australian people, when we're at war?

Tim Blair's kind of scumbags :

"I’m at the end of my tether with this spineless, formerly great nation."

"Go to buggery, fascist nannies! It's a big interferring Orwellian government. The only choice will be which arm you want the microchip in."

"I find myself hating this nation and detesting its inhabitants more every day."

You're undermining the troops you rancid vermin.

These kind of Australia Haters should be watched closely, if they hate Australia that much they might be capable of anything.

Doesn't all that sound so familiar?

Federal Police Tell Media To Shut Up About Their Secret Spy Plane

Do the Australian Federal Police have unmanned aerial surveillance planes that they're not yet ready to admit to owning?

After the Australian Federal Police issued a press release explaining, or boasting, that an 'AFP plane' found a missing Victorian government minister in remote wilderness, under heavy cloud cover - he was using a flashlight inside his emergency tent - they quickly changed their minds, removed all references to aerial vehicles they officially do not own or operate in the press release and contacted Australian media to demand they not report what their own media department had told reporters barely an hour before.

Why?

The Herald Sun digs deeper :

In a statement released this afternoon, the AFP said they "provided aerial support" to Victoria Police with their search operation and "routinely lease aircraft to support operational activity across the country".

"This capability has been utilised previously in a search capacity," the statement read.

The spy plane revelation - posted on the Victoria Police media website yesterday - was a breach of national security.

Whoops.

The last word from the Australian Federal Police on this issue :

"No further comment will be made in relation to the deployment of any operational assets of the AFP."

How soon before the Australian Federal Police get UAVs not just equipped with extremely sensitive heat-sensing/thermal imaging capability, but also weapons?

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to assume that UAV makers have already pitched their vehicles, and given demos, to the Australian Federal Police. Along with Israel, Australian companies have had enormous success selling UAVs to both armies and police forces across the world.

The question is how many did the AFP buy? And were those purchases part of a black (off the books) budget?

The Australian Federal Police recently took part in 'urban operations' training during Operation Talisman Saber war games held in Queensland. As part of the military exercises, unmanned aerial vehicles from the 20 Surveillance and Target Acquisition Regiment were also used, according to the Defence Department's own website.

Daily Telegraph Falls For Michael Jackson Misinformation Experiment

On August 26, the Sydney Daily Telegraph ran the following piece of clickbait :



The original video and story was faked by German broadcaster RTL as "an experiment aimed at showing how quickly misinformation and conspiracy theories can race across the planet," according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

RTL ran the fake Michael Jackson video on YouTube for only 24 hours, and thank to clickbait media junkies like the Daily Telegraph, amassed more than 880,000 views before they pulled it down.

"We wanted to show how easily users can be manipulated on the internet with hoax videos," spokeswoman Heike Schultz of Cologne-based RTL told The Associated Press.

"Therefore, we created this video of Michael Jackson being alive, even though everybody knows by now that he is dead - and the response was breathtaking."

The Daily Telegraph story remains online, with no correction or updates explaining it had been suckered into a "misinformation experiment."

This is exactly the kind of celebrity story twaddle that Rupert Murdoch is expecting people to pay to read online by this time next year.

More Here

UPDATE : Looks like 'Hoax Or Real?' is going to become a standard Daily Telegraph clickbait feature.

Today's effort :



Pravda has plenty of these type of stories, but I get the feeling Daily Telegraph editors already know that.

UPDATE : Half a day as a feature story on the front page of the Daily Telegraph site (is nothing else happening in Sydney, or the world?), and the 'alien baby' story has only pulled a thin 4 comments. Didn't turn out to be quite the clickbait, or commentbait, it was expected to be, not even making the Daily Telegraph's Top Ten Stories list.

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For those who like their love songs with a bit of grunt:

James Murdoch : Our Bananas Are Doomed

Forget about the looming immolation of the worldwide Murdoch media empire, James Murdoch has some stunning news about bananas :

"Witness the international banana market. In the 1950s the banana export industry faced a problem: the then dominant Gros Michel – or ‘Big Mike’ - variety was being wiped out by a fungus called Panama Disease. The industry took the decision to replace the entire world export crop with a supposedly disease-resistant variety called the Cavendish banana – the one we eat today. Unfortunately it now appears that these bananas may themselves be vulnerable to a different kind of Panama Disease. Since Cavendish bananas are genetically identical sterile clones, they cannot build up any resistance."

Wait, we're going to lose all bananas? Why didn't I read about that in The Australian? I might have even paid for it.

James Murdoch used the example of doomed bananas to illustrate some difficult parallels he tries to draw between Darwinism and the free market. You can read the speech here. It's actually chock full of first class conspiracy theories and bizarre proclamations about how you can only have free speech if people are forced to pay for the news. Something like that. You try and make sense of it.

On any scale of rankings for Paranoid & Desperate Ramblings, it's right out there. Then again, you must remember that James, like his dad, Rupert, is now facing severe pressure from shareholders about why they should both be collecting eight figure salaries when hundreds of Murdoch journalists and sub-editors will be canned across the US, the UK and Australia, in the next few months.

Two decades ago, Rupert Murdoch made the following prediction in a speech :

....television sets would be “linked by fibre-optic cable to a global cornucopia of programming and nearly infinite libraries of data, education and entertainment”....

So Murdoch knew what was coming, but didn't prepare for it. He didn't understand, back then, and only really gets it now, that that the rise of Free Information would mean the loss of monopoly, of control, of vast profits, of influence and relevancy.

As Rupert Murdoch himself said back in 1989 :

"If someone goes bust, too bad."

Exactly.

Music 'Piracy' Out Of Control....And Clearly Growing Desperate For More Content To 'Pirate'

By Darryl Mason

How many record sales will Craig McLachlan lose out on now his 1990s back catalogue has been uploaded to The Pirate Bay?

Well, I guess that depends if someone was planning to buy a Craig McLachlan album and then saw it for free on The Pirate Bay and thought, 'No, fuckit, I'm not paying!'



So far there doesn't appear to be any takers.

Australian music shows up The Pirate Bay frequently, as you would expect, seeing as this country has produced some of the greatest rock bands in history.

But is it just fans uploading old songs they want to share, or are some of the band members themselves sharing with the world the albums they created that their record companies are no longer interested in?

Are careers destroyed and jobs lost because some punk-loving kid in an American trailer park has downloaded most of Frenzal Rhomb's back catalogue from The Pirate Bay for free? Has the Australian music industry been irrevocably damaged because some old German Rose Tattoo fan has 'stolen' a copy of an old impossible-to-legally-buy Buffalo album from a file-sharing site?

Of course not.

Perhaps tonight, a junior ad executive in Japan is scanning the 'Fresh Torrents' of The Pirate Bay and will come across McLachlan's back catalogue, download it out of curiosity and tomorrow will sell his boss on the idea of using 'Hey, Mona' as the theme tune for a new sports drink campaign.

Stranger things have surely happened.

While we hear plenty from the copyright holders about how 'Music Piracy Is Killing Music', we rarely hear from the copyright creators themselves - the bands and songwriters - about how they feel when they discover that an out-of-stock old album of theirs has found its way onto a file-sharing site and is finding new audiences around the world long after their record labels gave up on them.

I would expect many of them would be overjoyed, regardless of whether or not they 'illegally' uploaded the album the albums themselves.


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James Murdoch : Free News Is Anti-Free Speech

Now I may be misquoting James Murdoch to some extent by attributing the above words to him, but it certainly seems to be what he is saying in this remarkably whiney speech, as the worldwide Murdoch media empire loses billions and faces ruin. This is how the Murdoch-owned TimesOnline reported the story:

An out-of-control BBC and addiction to central planning by regulators are damaging democracy and media choice in Britain, James Murdoch said in Edinburgh last night.

Giving the annual MacTaggart lecture to an audience of television executives, Mr Murdoch, 36, the son of Rupert Murdoch, called for a “dramatic reduction of the activities of the State” in broadcasting, arguing that it effectively treated viewers like children.

He contrasted the prevailing political attitude to mainstream broadcasting with the lightly regulated newspaper, film or book industry where consumer choice predominates.

Mr Murdoch, chief executive of the European and Asian operations of News Corporation, parent company of The Times, said: “In the regulated world of public service broadcasting, the customer does not exist: he or she is a passive creature — a viewer in need of protection.

“In other parts of the media world, including pay television and newspapers, the customer is just that: someone whose very freedom to choose makes them important.”

He said that the “chilling” expansionism of the BBC meant that commercial rivals and consumer choice were struggling. In particular the “expansion of state-sponsored journalism” in the form of BBC News online was “a threat to plurality and the independence of news provision, which are so important to our democracy”.

Mr Murdoch criticised Radio 2’s effort to woo younger listeners by hiring presenters such as Jonathan Ross on “salaries no commercial competitor could afford”.

“No doubt the BBC celebrates the fact that it now has well over half of all radio listening. But the consequent impoverishment of the once-successful commercial sector is testament to the corporation’s inability to distinguish between what is good for it and what is good for the country.”

Mr Murdoch’s lecture comes 20 years after his father, the chief executive of News Corp, made a wide-ranging attack on the BBC and the British television establishment. However, this speech fell short of calling for specific cutbacks to the BBC or other changes in broadcasting policy, so as to concentrate on first principles.

He said: “The consensus appears to be that creationism — the belief in a managed process with an omniscient authority — is the only way to achieve successful outcomes. There is general agreement that the natural operation of the market is inadequate, and that a better outcome can be achieved through the wisdom and activity of governments and regulators. This creationist approach is similiar to the industrial planning which went out of fashion in other sectors in the 1970s. It failed then. It’s failing now.”

Defending the BBC, Sir Michael Lyons, the Chairman of the BBC Trust, said that its licence fee funding system meant that it “has no choice but to serve all audiences, but that doesn’t meant that it can or should seek to squeeze out other providers”.

He added: “We have to be careful not to reduce the whole of broadcasting to some simple economic transactions. The BBC’s public purposes stress the importance of the well-tested principles of educating and informing, and an impartial contribution to debate.”

Ofcom, the communications regulator, was criticised by Mr Murdoch for intervening “with relish” whenever it had the opportunity and producing adjudications on what broadcasters “can and cannot say” amounting to “roughly half a million words” long. Its activities included “the no doubt vital guide on ‘How to Download,’ which teenagers across the land could barely have survived without”.

He stopped short of calling for the abolition of Ofcom but said that its activities needed to be reduced “to contemplate intervention only on the evidence of actual and serious harm to the interests of consumers”.

Mr Murdoch, who is also the chief executive of BSkyB, 39.1 per cent owned by News Corp, made clear that he believed that broadcasters such as Sky should be freed from the long-standing requirement to produce impartial news.

He argued that “the mere selection of stories and their place in the running order is itself a process full of unacknowledged partiality”. The impartiality rule was “an impingement on the freedom of speech”.

Ofcom said that it welcomed Mr Murdoch’s contribution. It was “committed to its duty to protect consumers’ and viewers’ interests and to promote competition and innovation based on thorough and objective evidence and analysis”.

For some contrast, this is how the BBC reported the James Murdoch speech attacking the BBC :

News Corporation's James Murdoch has said that a "dominant" BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK.

The chairman of the media giant in Europe, which owns the Times and Sun, also blamed the UK government for regulating the media "with relish".

"The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision," Mr Murdoch said.

He was giving the MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival.

Mr Murdoch said that organisations like the BBC, funded by the licence fee, as well as Channel 4 and Ofcom made it harder for other broadcasters to survive.

"The BBC is dominant," Mr Murdoch said. "Other organisations might rise and fall but the BBC's income is guaranteed and growing."

"The scope of its activities and ambitions is chilling."

News Corporation, which owns Sky television, lost $3.4bn (£2bn) in the year to the end of June, which his father, News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch, said had been "the most difficult in recent history".

Other media organisations are also struggling as advertising revenues have dropped during the downturn.

Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, told BBC's World Tonight that Mr Murdoch had underplayed the importance of Sky as a competitor.

"Sky continues to grow and get stronger and stronger all the time so this is not quite a set of minnows and a great big BBC," Sir Michael said.

"The BBC has a very strong competitor in Sky, and not one to be ignored."

Mr Murdoch said free news on the web provided by the BBC made it "incredibly difficult" for private news organisations to ask people to pay for their news.

"It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it," he said.

News Corporation has said it will start charging online customers for news content across all its websites.

It owns the Times, the Sunday Times and Sun newspapers and pay TV provider BSkyB in the UK and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the US.

Rupert Murdoch addressed the same festival 20 years ago, and criticised the UK's media policy then as well.

Unfortunately for the Murdoch empire, now crying "Unfair!", the vast majority of Brits, like the vast majority of Australians, are very happy, and very satisfied, with their taxpayer funded broadcasters.

How To Climb A Coconut Palm

By Darryl Mason

On Bounty Island, in Fiji, the other week, I wandered into a tourist demonstration by a staff member of how to retrieve a coconut "before it gets ripe and falls on your head".

The staffer went up the palm tree faster than I can run on horizontal surfaces. Perhaps seven or ten seconds to reach the top. It was stunning to see. Compared to how I climb stairs, it was a superhuman feat. The dangers were obvious, to slip at the top would have meant shattered bones bursting through skin, minimum. We were on an island. Rescue would have taken an hour, or more. He was loudly, enthusiastically applauded by all.

The staffer, however, looked a little devastated later when I told him that some Australians don't need to risk their lives and limbs, like he'd done, to get their coconuts. "A ladder!" No, I explained, they kicked them down with a meticulously aimed football. "Football?" Yes, football. He'd never heard of this technique, but intended to give it a try the first chance he got.

If you go to Fiji in a few years time, and you can no longer experience the incredible sight of a local literally running up a coconut palm because they're all using footballs to kick them down, blame me.











For someone who used to lick the chocolate off Bounty Bars and throw the rest away, that fresh coconut tasted absolutely delicious.

The Australian Praises One Party State

By Darryl Mason

Having some trouble working out why the Labor and Liberal parties spend so much time agreeing with each other? Do you find it surreal that the main point of contention this week between the mainstream 'The Left' and 'The Right' in Australian front bencher politics appears to have been something to do with signs in school yards? Do you find it a bit unnerving that the only voices of true opposition to just about anything of major importance seem to be coming from The Shooters Party or National Party backbenchers?

Obviously you'll need a little bit more time to adapt to the new 'Centrist' reality. But his lead editorial in The Australian explains why you should just sit back and float downstream (excerpts) :

Such is the centrist nature of contemporary Australian politics that it is not beyond imagination to see Malcolm Turnbull as a Labor leader and Kevin Rudd as a Liberal. It is not that the ideologues have departed the scene, just that today's political parties are driven by policy and pragmatism rather than the blind tribalism of earlier decades. In this context, it is easy to see the Opposition Leader being courted by, or courting Labor.

Australian politics has sometimes been deeply divided along ideological lines, but our general temperament is more centrist. These days, voters are keen on conviction and competence in their politicians, not outdated ideological positions.

Even Maxine McKew thinks War Is Right for now. The War On Afghanistan anyway. And bits of the one in Pakistan.

The true opposition party with the numbers to do some real damage to Labor at the next election is not The Liberals, but, of course, The Greens.

I wonder why Malcolm Turnbull didn't pester The Greens for a gig back when he was auditioning for Labor? It's what a true maverick would have done.

John Pilger On Obama

It still seems astounding that neither the Murdoch or the Fairfax media in Australia publish Australian journalist John Pilger's writings.

Next year, both Fairfax and Murdoch will be asking readers to pay to read some, or all, of its columnists. But the columnists that people might actually pay to read, like Pilger, won't get a run. Why is that? What is the truth that Pilger speaks that so many in the Australian media are so clearly afraid to publish?

The harshest kind of truth.

It's Not Making Up The News If You Find It On The Internet

Rupert Murdoch :

"Quality journalism is not cheap...."

No, it's not. So thank fuck for made-up stories about celebrities :

"When we have a celebrity scoop, the number of hits we get now are astronomical."

And so today, the Sydney Daily Telegraph dips a toe into a future celebrity scoop 'news'
fountain :



For now, you can read about and speculate on how Michael Jackson may have faked his own death, for free at the Daily Telegraph. But what about in six months?

Will people pay to read about Michael Jackson sightings when Murdoch launches his massive gated 'News' portal in the new year?

Probably.

Enough may.

The motivation then is not to even bother to find out if some obvious hoax has a remote strand of credibility before running it as news. They don't bother now. The Daily Telegraph story asks 'Hoax Or Real Deal?' The newspaper's editors know the video isn't real. That's not the point. It's click bait, and so it must run.

Next year, if a Michael Jackson sighting, or a particularly thrilling piece of daylight UFO vid, is vastly popular across the global Murdoch online NewsOTainment empire, and people are paying for it, millions of them, then the motivation, the profit motivation, is not to report news that happens, but create the News(OTainment) user stats show people are paying to read.

If paying readers want Michael Jackson sighting stories, they'll get Michael Jackson sighting stories. If they want to believe that there are motherships hiding behind the Moon and that a global invasion by Saturnians is imminent (or may have already begun), then this is the reality Murdoch subscribers will be delivered.

'Aliens Already Among Us Video : Hoax Or Real Deal?'

Lucky then, that Murdoch owns television and movie studios.

It's the future of news. You don't have to embrace it, or believe it, just enjoy it, like the smell of toast or the sound of steady rain on a tin roof.


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Fiji, August 13 - 16 2009











Photos By Darryl Mason

Professional Idiot : Yeah, I Got Nothing

ABC pundit, Channel Nine Today Show regular guest and Herald Sun associate editor, Andrew Bolt, wishes a Jew-hating terrorist a very happy birthday :



Why would Andrew Bolt wish Yasser Arafat Happy Birthday?

Comment bait.

He may still also be working off that 'free' trip to Israel.