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Some thoughts about mooted changes to Media ownership law in Australia
People are creatures of habit and it is only that so many people are habituated to buying the news papers that any are still being sold at all. Just take any kind of commute on public transport and consider how many people are reading a paper and how many are staring at a screen instead. Some certainly may be playing games or even watching video but I expect that they will be out numbering those who are still reading dead tree editions of the MSM.
Then there is the things in the paper that people buy them for, most papers are not exclusively about politics and current affairs anyway, so some readers will be buying the paper for its coverage of sport, lifestyle or even just for the crossword puzzles. My point is that the political classes (in particular those from the left ) just look at the raw sales figured and they think that every reader of the Herald Sun is in the thrall of Rupert Murdoch and that the owners dictate to their readers directing their opinions. The reality is that all media entities write to their audience. If they don’t their audience wither away quite quickly. With the coming of the internet this is even more how things work Online entities are even more in an endless quest for readers so you have to play to what your readers want rather than thinking that you can manipulate their thinking. I have been writing a blog for nearly a decade now and I have noticed just how quickly particular readers flit in and out its the same now with the way that people read things online from the likes of Murdoch, Fairfax or even the Guardian People don’t just get their news from one source any more no matter what the subject is they will read what several sources say about it and then make up their mind. This behaviour is the same when it comes to broadcast TV people flit form one channel to another seeking different perspectives. My argument is simple, if the media consumers have changed their habits then perhaps there is something in the notion that media diversity laws from the last century should perhaps reflect those changes as well.
Cheers Comrades
Is it the love of beer that prevents Damian Doyle from converting to Islam?
Damian Doyle has always struck me as a strange individual, so sanctimonious and so judgemental of yours truly and so full of condescension for anyone who does not hold beliefs concurrent with his own. He is an avid consumer of what I call “disaster porn” and if there is some natural disaster in the third world he is onto it like a flash tweeting about it or decrying the tardy response of the west to said disasters. Anyway our Damian has written a rather wordy piece about the way that Islam is perceived in this country and in it he sneers at any and all criticism of that faith.
During the question and answer session it became clear that many members of the audience were genuinely curious about Islam. Having heard so many terrible things about the religion – not just at the forum but elsewhere too – they wanted to understand its core teachings and central texts. One woman commented she had attempted to read the Qur’an but found it unintelligible and confusing. That’s a pretty normal response as it’s a very different book to, say, the New Testament. “So where can we learn more about Islam?”
The response at that forum, naturally enough under the circumstances, was not all that helpful. The conveners were unanimous in their advice, “There’s an excellent website called Jihad Watch, which is run by an organisation that we’re linked with. Its main author, Robert Spencer, has also written a lot of books that are essential reading”.
Of course, you don’t need to attend a meeting of the Q Society, a fringe group fighting the good fight against the ‘Islamisation of Australia’ and the implementation of sharia law in our school tuckshops, to meet people who see Islam as a baffling unknown. Through conversations in pubs and coffee shops, by reading letters in tabloid newspapers and on blogs, or by listening to commentary on television or radio, it’s easy to see that Islam is a poorly understood religion in Australia.
Notice the way that Doyle frames his barely concealed contempt for anyone who is critical of Islam? The reference to Tuck-shops is clearly an allusion to the cruelty concerns of the issue of the conversion of institutional food sources to halal even when only a very tiny number of the consumers are Muslim. It seems to me that Doyle is suggesting that only very favourable discussion of Islam should ever be listened to and considered and that anything that is at all critical of Islam is haram.
Please dear readers go to his piece and you will find a great example of quisling rhetoric in full flight, an essay that even tries to play down the significance of Female Genital Mutilation Note his choice of words to describe the practice:
A sad example of this is the issue of female genital cutting. The attendees at the Q Society forum would have been left with the impression that female genital cutting is an Islamic practice as an example of the religion’s repression and abuse of women. By contrast, the conference attendees heard an account of a pre-Islamic cultural practice being eliminated from a community as a result of a local imam’s leadership during the 1950s.
Yes Damian we have all heard that line and although it may be true in the most pedantic sense for every Muslim society that abhors and rejects the practice there are many others who are at best indifferent to the vile practice..
It seems to me that for Damian dreams about is an uncritical acceptance of Islam and the practice of the faith, both here and elsewhere in the world, and a substantive deference to the sensitivities of those who follow that faith. Thus he wants no criticism of the hot heads who call for the beheading of unbelievers and he wants to see nothing but positive PR for the faith within the Australian community.:
And so I’ve decided to start small. To think about the things I can influence, rather than those I can’t. People will decide for themselves what to believe about Islam and its role in society, both in Australia and globally. Some will continue to reach out to sources of information that, in my view, are toxic and uninformed. I need to remember that a simple thing I can do is to let them know there are other sources, that those sources can be trusted, and that obtaining information from a range of sources is the best way to become informed.
The trouble with this exercise in parsimony, as readers of this blog will know, is that Damian considers any sort of criticism of Islam at all is an example of “bigotry” and I can’t help thinking that the only thing that is preventing Damian from going the whole hog to making the declaration ” There is no god but Allah and Mohamed is his prophet” must be Mr Doyle’s love of beer.
Cheers Comrades
click to read Damian’s tweets
Related articles
- Ha Ha Islamophobia (iainhall.wordpress.com)
- Opinion: Stop calling criticism of Islam ‘Islamophobia’ (iranaware.com)
- Islam’s Rise and the West’s Denial (creepingsharia.wordpress.com)
- Guess how many Islamic terror attacks since 9/11 (counterjihadreport.com)
- Islam’s Rise and the West’s Denial (iranaware.com)
Half a million page views at the Sandpit
I know that statistical miles stones are really meaningless but that does not stop you feeling pretty good when you reach them. Well if you keep an eye on the hit counter at the bottom of the page some time today I expect that you will see the counter tick over t0 the magical “500,000” mark . That is pretty good for a modest blog written as a bit of fun .
Thanks very much to all of those who take the time to read what I and my friends put up here and a special thanks to all of those who take the time to comment and argue with what is on this web-page. Commentary and argument is the life blood of blogging and long may it keep pumping at the Sandpit.
Cheers Comrades
Due process on asylum claims
Source: The Australian
The other very long “claims of persecution” thread produced an intense debate and one that is quite transplantable from the microcosm of a blog like the Sandpit to the community at large no matter which side of the argument you are on there are plenty of people who have a similar opinion out there in the community . The piece I cite today from the OZ points out that one reason that those who have got here will remain in detention for a long period of time (besides the Labor party’s cowardly “processing freeze”) is that there is a distinct lack of people to review claims for asylum that have been denied and on top of that ASIO are unable to complete the security reviews in a timely manner as part of decision making process either.
Add to that the clear reluctance of the government to forcefully deport those who are deemed not to be legitimate refugees or those who fail a security test and you have a very good understanding of just why we are running out of space to house the boat people detained under the regime of Brother Number One and the Anointed one.
So my questions for today are how long should it take to decide the legitimacy of the asylum claims and if those claims are denied how long should it be before the failed claimants are deported?
Cheers Comrades
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 
