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The all sneer no substance academic
After recent exchanges with University of Canberra Academic Jason Wilson, I have formed the view that there is a wide gulf between his own esteem of his knowledge and intellect and the far less impressive reality.
There is no doubt that Wilson fancies himself – this is evident from his sneering during twitter debates and his presumptuous claim to know more about the Middle East than the experienced journalists at The Australian.
One of our debates concerned whether the terrorist threat in Australia was real or whether it was just a beat up. Strangely, Wilson believed that the number of non-terror related homicides was relevant to this question:
Never mind the terrorist threat. Look at the number of men killing their partners!
So according to Wilson’s logic, we should not be concerned about men killing their partners either, because this number is dwarfed by the number of people who die every year in motor vehicle accidents.
Moreover, there are a couple of other problems with Wilson’s argument, as I pointed out:
“To point out the social effects of terrorism is to engage in nationalist fantasies.”
According to Jason Wilson, there is no unity in Australian society. For a fellow who deems himself to have a very sound knowledge of international affairs, this appears to show that Wilson does not understand that compared to many other countries, Australia is one of the most harmonious.
However, in spite of his pompous demeanor, the exchange shows that Wilson does not really think through the issues at all. It is plain that he has not considered that some terrorist attacks have killed thousands, and that a successful terrorist attack in Australia could well drive a wedge between mainstream Australian society and certain parts of the Muslim community. His only response is to accuse me of believing in a “nationalist fantasy”.
Finally, just today Wilson accused me of making up the fact that he supported some form of media regulation. Whilst I could not find the tweet where Wilson indicated as such to me, I was able to find an article he wrote for the Drum in 2012. Whilst the article does not endorse the recommendations of the Finkelstein Report, the following comments reveal that Wilson does consider a free media market to be unsatisfactory and would support some form of media regulation:
It’s a shame that most of the Finkelstein Independent Media Inquiry Report will go unread by many of those who are damning it…. The problems it identifies are real enough, and pressing.
Australia has the worst concentration of media ownership in the developed world – no other country has, or likely would have, allowed things to get to this point… There are no truly effective remedies for ordinary people with few resources, whom the news media prints lies about, whose privacy is invaded, or whose careers are ruined by baseless reporting.
It is a shame that, rather than seeing the online space as cacophonous and unruly, Finkelstein didn’t instead offer ways in which diversity and sustainability might be promoted for a better media future.
As you can see, I did not “make it up”. I was right. Wilson does want media regulation.
No Sunshine and Lollypops in Iraq
I’ve been following the recent events in Iraq with some dark bemusement because it seems to me to be the obvious demonstration of the brutality of Islam and the absolutely pernicious outcome when you mix a religion that preaches the primacy of the next world and the requirement for mechanistic totalitarian obedience with in this life to secure a place in the next. Add to that the centuries old schism between the Sunni and Shia incarnations of Allah’s faithful and you have the recipe for greater death and destruction than either of the last two wars in that blighted land.
The US government is, quite rightly, not rushing to get involved and I certainly do not expect to see any US boots on the ground anytime soon. The news that Shia Iran is lending support to the Current government may well provide a bulwark to the Iraqi government and its rather wonky military who have not shown much intestinal fortitude at all in the face of the ISIS insurgents. The only bright spot for the west is that with the involvement of Iran in the conflict we may well see a replay of the Iran Iraq wars that predated Gulf war one. I can almost hear the usual suspects screaming with horror at my suggestion that such a war could be a bright spot but my reasoning is quite simple; If the Sunnis and Shias are concentrating on killing each other in Iraq they will expend a great deal of resources (in terms of men, materials and money) on the fight and ultimately neither will win, further the utter brutality of Islam will be on show for the world to see finally every Jihadist killed in this coming war is one less that we have to worry about. Oh yeah lets not forget that we can leave Allah to choose just who is fighting for the just cause and who is on the side of Satan
The usual suspects will of course be arguing that we and the entirity of the west are in some sense culpable for this conflict (cue Richard Ryan) and that we will have to accept more “refugees”. I say bollocks to that fro a couple of reasons. Firstly this conflict shows us that the followers of both sides of the schism in Islam are incapable of letting go of the animosities of their history and they are much more than willing to perpetuate them for the rest of time. This alone should be sounding very loud alarm bells warning us to chose anyone else but Muslims for our humanitarian programs. The Bleeding hearts will , sadly keep insisting that we should continue to pretend that Islam is warm cuddly and benign when it is very evidently anything but benign. That said lets see how things play out on the ground there but I don’t expect any “Sunshine and Lollypops” .
Cheers Comrades
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
The Fate of Traitors
I suspect that after a substantial part of his bid has been served that Bradley Manning may just wish that he had been convicted of the most serious charge so that he could have had the “green dream” or an appointment with a firing squad rather than spending the rest of his life within the walls of a military prison .
click for source
As the US military justice system is not so inclined to make sentences for multiple crimes run concurrently, choosing instead to make them cumulative its very likely that Manning will spend the rest of his life behind bars this is of course going to be a most timely reminder of the fate that awaits all traitors and oath breakers…
Now if only they could send in a Seal teem to liberate Julian Assange from tat embassy room in London they could have a nice show trial and then…
Cheers Comrades
if you aid the enemy, then you are the enemy
Cue:- Richard Ryan
One for Richard
I dedicate this vid to Richard Ryan, our resident Islamic fan boy who takes great delight at the prospect of the global caliphate.
Cheers Comrades
Compassion and fairness for asylum seekers
Amanda Vanstone was minister for immigration in the Howard government and she still knows her onions, her opinion piece in the Age this morning is succinct and to the point:
When you say yes to someone who has come in with a people smuggler, you are going to have to say no to people waiting in camps for the world to help them. So being nice to one person means you are not being fair to another. Not fair at all.
It’s all too easy to market yourself as compassionate because you take up the cause of asylum seekers who come in the back door. But it is a conveniently conspicuous compassion, and it’s the politics of convenience.
How can letting others with more money buy a place at the front be in any way fair to the refugees in camps? The government needs to bite the bullet and recognise that the people in camps who come in the front door are deserving of priority. That’s what’s fair.
Things have changed, so the policy needs to change. Permanent protection should be saved for the most deserving – those who have spent years in refugee camps with little hope, or those for whom we are the country of first asylum.
For those who force our hand and come in the back door through other countries, we should offer protection – but temporary protection only. No visas to travel the world, and no family reunion.
Its a tough but fair regime that Amanda Vanstone is suggesting here and who could possibly argue with that ? So if the coalition is the only party prepared to make this sort of reform it is obvious that a change of government is necessary sooner rather than later if we are going to solve this problem.
Cheers Comrades
Shoot the prick???? or has Julian been reading too much John le Carre?
Am I the only one who is utterly sick and tired of hearing about this sad little prick Julian Assange? While I don’t advocate that his actions deserve a capital sanction it seems that many in the USA would be happy to apply rule “303” to the ex-pat Aussie.
What has surprised me is that only now has a whole mess of keyboard warriors swung into action to make Wikileaks a pariah of the internet. Frankly I don’t know why this has not happened sooner. The question is can this site be driven to the same sort of locations as that other most undesirable stuff of the ether? In other words how long will it be before this site has to share servers with the purveyors of child pornography? Which is just a little more welcome than the trivial trash that this site has been recently infesting the web with. My Latte-sipping™ friends are of course falling over themselves to offer fawning excuses for this idiot thinking that he is doing something good and noble.
There has been chatter in technology circles that the attacks are the work of governments displeased with WikiLeaks, though that is impossible to prove, given the anonymity of the web.
Someone portraying himself as an American patriot took credit for the first spate of disruptions to the site, a claim that security experts said was credible.
On Friday, the French government moved to ban WikiLeaks from servers there, saying it was ”unacceptable” that companies in France were hosting a ”criminal” website.
And the US-based online financial transactions service PayPal has said it will stop taking donations for WikiLeaks, a move that WikiLeaks blamed on ”US government pressure”.
As the cyber attacks increased last week, WikiLeaks sought refuge on the servers of the bookseller Amazon, only to be booted at the request of the US Democratic senator Joe Lieberman.
As WikiLeaks moved around the web, Mr Assange hit back at moves by the Australian government to aid in his prosecution.
”[The federal Attorney-General] Robert McClelland is a US suckhole, worse than [John] Howard on [David] Hicks, and needs to go,” he wrote on his Twitter account, which is followed by about 360,000 people.
On Saturday, Mr Assange said it was ”impossible” to return to Australia because of comments by Mr McClelland and the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who labelled his actions ”illegal”.
But yesterday Mr McClelland seemed to offer some concession to the Townsville-born former hacker, saying: ”Mr Assange is entitled to the same rights as any other Australian citizen.
”This includes the right to return to Australia and also to receive consular assistance while he is overseas if that is requested.”
Mr Assange also revealed that more than 100,000 people had downloaded an ”insurance” file containing an encrypted version of the cables, and the key to that code would be released if ”something happens to us”.
To the Latte-sipping™ set he has become something of a hero but looking at the the bigger picture has he actually made any part of the world a better place? Has any thing so far revealed been a catalyst for some greater good? The last thing that made a big splash was that gun sight recording from Iraq and I think that the only thing that it ended up showing was that mistakes are made in the heat of battle. Well Doh! Like we did not already know that 🙄
The part that I have emboldened in the above should once and for all prove that this man is nothing but a self serving blackmailer who has been reading too many John Le Carre novels. Frankly there is only one thing to say to such blackmail and that is “fuck you!”. If he has a case to answer in Sweden then lets see him before a court there and if he has broken any US law lets see him swiftly extradited because I am sure that they have a vacancy in one of their comfy federal prisons….
Cheers Comrades
The shoe-throwing d*ckhead
The dreadlocked rats tail says it all - dickhead!
This is the mindless git who threw his shoes at former Prime Minister John Howard on the live ABC Q&A show last night.
He missed.
Well, to be fair, it was a pretty limp-wristed effort and he didn’t seem to be aiming.
My guess is he’s a Greens supporter. Whatever – he’s an idiot and has just set the cause of the left backwards.
And I’m not the only one who thinks it was inappropriate.
Regardless of what you think of Howard sending us to Iraq – which was the git’s reason for throwing his shoes – this is Australia, dickhead, and unlike Iraq we are civilised over here and we don’t go around assaulting our politicians.
Do it with words, not with your stinking Dunlop Volleys or whatever they were.
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 