Tag Archives: America

Gresham’s Second Law

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , ,

Rupert Murdoch’s dominance of the Australian media is usually spoken of in terms of the 70% share his newspapers have in the Australian market. That is almost three-quarters of the Australian public are exposed (often with no alternative) to the Gospel according to Rupert every day. Every day exposed to his neoconservative ideology and his absolute determination to destroy those left of centre parties Labor and The Greens.

But the problem is much worse than mere market share. Mr Murdoch, no fool whatever his other failings, realised very early on that, just like a large share holding in a company leads to control of the company, 70% media saturation can be turned into 100% control of political discourse.

Works like this. Murdoch or his editors (but I repeat myself) decide on the format for the latest government attack. Doesn’t matter what it is, some fabricated and dishonest attack on the PM’s integrity, or a policy proposal, some poll result, some disagreement between Labor Party members, some union “scandal”, the latest fake leadership challenge. Whatever. The very act of launching the attack, in 70% of Australia’s newspapers, makes the attack itself “news”. The truthfulness, accuracy, of the attack is irrelevant (Rupert understood), its mere existence becomes news and is consequently repeated by other media outlets. Not to repeat it (notably in the case of Fairfax and the ABC, there is no question of not repeating it in the other media) would be evidence of pro-government bias. And that failure to repeat would itself feed into the next News Ltd media cycle, and so on.

Conversely, and this is just as important, when 70% of the country’s newspapers decide simultaneously, by pure coincidence, to NOT cover an event that might impact badly on the political Right, then the rest of the media will ignore it too. Covering it, when News Ltd is not, would be another clear indication of bias of course. So it is left alone. If a Right Wing scandal falls in the forest and is not covered by Murdoch’s minions does it really fall? No, of course it doesn’t, are you not paying attention? Consequently while Labor and the PM (and her staff) were massively attacked for months throughout the media, following News Ltd’s lead, on AWU, Slipper, Thomson, Australia Day “Riot”, and so on, subsequent stories on Abbott’s history, Ashby, the HSU, Abbott’s staffers, etc, quickly became non-stories, barely mentioned, if at all, then dropped within hours.

Accentuating this power has been the recent cross-fertilisation of different media. Suddenly radio shock jocks began featuring in regular segments on tv breakfast shows. Suddenly News Ltd columnists began appearing regularly on tv current affairs shows. Suddenly tv breakfast shows began “reviewing” the morning newspapers, which meant reading out headlines from the News Ltd papers and the others who had copied them. Suddenly “Our Political Correspondent” became a regular part of news bulletins, again repeating (because it was of course now “news”) whatever hares the Murdoch Hunt Masters had set running that day.

To complete the cycle, Right Wing politicians, gratefully accepting the Murdoch talking points each day about the “bad government”, began doing press conferences in which they merely repeated them, thus strengthening the perception that they were actually “news”, and keeping them running through each news cycle.

Once upon a time our national broadcaster, the ABC, would have kept outside this Murdochian Circle. Had reporters who created news themselves, not just parroted the news agenda of News Ltd. Had programs that set the political agenda not copied someone else’s. Conducted interviews with questions they had researched, not simply repeating political spin from the Right. So it provided a circuit breaker, an alternative.

Now, not only does it not provide an alternative but it has been locked into the Murdoch circle, behaving in exactly the same way as other media outlets. But it is even worse than that. The ABC, retaining the air of authority, of credibility, of objectivity, built up carefully over decades by good people, is providing legitimacy in turn to News Ltd. The procession of News Ltd journalists, columnists, the reviewing of the papers, the breathless presentation of Murdoch Memes, all replace the original good journalism of the ABC with propaganda.

And similar processes seem to have happened in America and Britain. Everywhere Murdoch thrives, bad journalism drives out good.

Read the news today, oh boy

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , ,

I first became aware of “news” in 1956, which was, in retrospect, not a bad year to do so. My own personal news was that this was my last year of primary school, last year of childhood you could say, and 1957 would bring the first year of adulthood, the simultaneously frightening and exciting prospect of high school.

Unaccountably the rest of the planet seemed blissfully unaware that I was, at least in my head if not out loud, singing “Watch out World, here I come”. They seemed preoccupied with other stuff in that year of my awakening awareness of news that was to continue for a lifetime.

Plenty of other stuff had happened since I was born (the years known as AD for After David), small matters like the end of world wars, atomic bombs, Berlin Wall, Long March, Korean War, Indian independence, a new Queen of England, death of Stalin, the voting out and voting in of Churchill, and so on, but I had been too young to take much notice of (or understand had I done so) those interesting times I was living in.

But then came 1956, and my mind sprang to attention as the world seemed to erupt in serious, newsworthy events, most with long-term implications. Suez! Hungary! Olympics in Melbourne! TV in Australia! Elvis Presley! First commercial nuclear power plant! Black protests (Rosa Parks having done her courageous thing in December 1955) increasing in America!

From then on of course, year after year, newsworthy events kept happening until you felt like screaming “stop the world I want to get off”. There was Sputnik in 1957 (the whole world, it seemed, including me, stood outside their houses at night, getting cricks in their necks as they stared upwards at a tiny manmade star moving, it seemed unbelievable, through space. Or, almost as incredibly, it was possible to listen, on a radio, to the high-pitched beeping sound that was the star communicating with Earth. Advanced technology, completely indistinguishable from magic, and destined, though few of us knew at the time, to revolutionise communications among other things).

There was the election and killing of JFK, the build-up in Vietnam, the Beatles, Castro, riots in Paris, the Prague Spring, Woodstock, the assassination of Allende, the end of the Vietnam War, man on the Moon, and on and on as Sixties became Seventies and beyond.

All through these decades, as the world settled back into a new order after the end of World War Two (like a city rebuilding after an earthquake), serious news was related to us in serious ways. Morning newspapers gave sober facts, thoughtful editorials, expert analysis, on the significant events of the previous day at home and abroad. Television and radio had major evening news bulletins to do likewise. Oh, of course there was also frivolous stuff all through the media, but there seemed to be a recognition (especially from the ABC, but other media outlets as well), that there needed to be a core of seriousness for serious times. That there were things that an educated public needed to know.

But then, somewhere along the way to the 21st Century (and this won’t be news to any observant human being), everything changed. Oh, there was no shortage of significant world events, but the way they were, or weren’t communicated to the public changed.

On the pretext that there was more news to report, the “24 hour News Cycle” became a self-fulfilling description, and 24 hour news channels came into being. Instead of single major news bulletins in an evening, short news grabs were pumped out all through the day, and lasted no longer than a ay. And because when you got down to it there weren’t any more significant events than there had been, “news” had to be padded out with a white noise of trivia.

But by happy coincidence this padding served another function. Because so much “news” was being pumped out by the media it was hard to make people (whose parents and grandparents had once clustered eagerly around a radio to hear the 7pm Bulletin) take any interest in news bulletins. So they had to be turned into entertainment. Short snappy tabloid style reports replaced longer factual ones. Nothing could be reported that didn’t have video footage to accompany it. Analysis from experts was replaced by opinions from small numbers of regular ideologues (some employed, some on contracts). Sport dominated bulletins that had once kept it to a minimum, including at times running sporting stories as the lead.

Bulletins had to end on a happy note, so funny animals, whacky people, strange events, of a kind once restricted to tabloid newspapers or sideshow alleys, appeared, often taking more time than a report of, say, World War Three breaking out. And then began to be dotted through the bulletin to lighten it up. Conversely, to add suspense and interest, in the way of a lurid crime novel, the networks began including scare campaigns in which anything and everything in your kitchen could kill you, strangers could slaughter you, children be abducted, yellow hordes invade, aircraft crash, and so on. Every day some new thing to fear – keep reading/watching, we will keep you alert and alarmed, keep you warned about what to be fearful of.

So news bulletins, once so fundamental to a well-informed democracy, turned into glossy gossip magazines with moving pictures. And the “24 Hour News Channels” going the same way except at greater length with much repetition, and slabs of talking heads from right-wing think tanks or shock jock radio or Retired-Conservative-Politician-Land.

Then to compound (if ’twere needed) the problem, politicians, seeing the way the electronic wind was blowing, and realising that the days of thoughtful, longer, discussions of policy or events was long gone, began speaking in sound bites themselves to fit into the new news style. And, to be helpful, associating political stunts, as colourful and entertaining as possible, to go with the three word slogans and three sentence propaganda. There you are, a small package beautifully tailored for insertion straight into “news” bulletins 2013-style.

So a torrent of news noise washes across this land. Little or no information, in fact often deliberately misleading information through the stunts and slogans, just a scrap-book of sound and fury signifying nothing. And, as an unforeseen consequence, a view of the world promoted in which everything is of equal significance, or that nothing is of any significance. Wars and rumours of war of no more interest than skate-boarding dogs or surf-skiing hamsters. No ability of the public to distinguish what if anything is of concern and importance among all the fake fear campaigns and funny animals.

No way now that a child born in 2002 could see 2013 as a memorable year of great world events, or understand what they mean.

Nor could anyone else.

Put on your red dress

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by politics • Tags: , , ,

The previous post caused me a lot of difficulty in writing. Most of the pieces I post here flow easily, write themselves almost. I rarely re-read and almost never edit. It probably shows, although I tend to disagree with Sheridan when he said “You write with ease to show your breeding, but easy writing’s vile hard reading”. I find the opposite, although I should say that I get the post more or less sorted out in my head before I ever put one finger to keyboard, so I am not quite doing automatic writing.

But the previous post was one where the flow just didn’t flow, and I had to keep hacking about, adding bits, removing bits. Eventually I needed to stop before it became unwieldy and unreadable and you, dear Reader, lost patience with it.

I think part of the reason was that I was trying to pack several different things into it, and, although that is often the case on this blog, the trouble here was that each thing was quite large and unwieldy in its own right. So I thought I had better have a go at a follow-up post to explain what I was trying to do (indulge me for once, I never do this).

Should say hastily (and guiltily) I wasn’t really concerned with the details. Hence my egregious mistake with dress colour (and the spelling of “Kernot”, D’Oh), but good to know you guys paying attention. My purpose was three-fold:

First I have long been interested in the turning points of history. A silly phrase, in one way (rather like “transitional fossils” in evolution, every point in history is a turning point), but one widely used. Three options – the inevitable march of ideology and events theory; the Great Man theory; the horseshoe nail theory. I have always preferred the latter, and the Lewinsky-Clinton affair is a classic example. If Monica had not joined the White House Intern Program, if she had not been in contact directly with Clinton, hell, if she had taken the red, sorry, blue dress off first, or washed it, then history would have been different. “For want of a dry cleaner the White House was lost” perhaps.

Second I was trying to subvert the whole “Great Man” thing in another way too. Here was Bill Clinton, mover and shaker, most powerful man in the world, leader of the free world, nuclear codes in satchel, all that crap. And there was a young girl just out of college. Power disparity? Of course. But in another way she proved far more powerful than he did, or, at the very least, she affected his world as much, or more, than he did her’s. Strikes me that this has probably been the case on far more occasions than we ever know about.

Virginia Woolf said that “Anon” in British literature was usually a woman. The women behind the scenes of the captains and kings (and queens, possibly, in case of Queen Anne) were often (though of course not always) “Anon” too. Their roles just as unknown to history as those of anonymous writers.

Finally, something touched on, but not expanded, in the post, the use of private matters as weapons in political discourse. This seems to me, while always a possibility in the past (especially where homosexuality or adultery involved), to have grown much more prevalent since Lewinsky. It seems to me that what politicians do in privacy, what their sexual preferences are, is of no relevance to, should not be a part of, political discourse.

The only exceptions to this would be:
1 where the activity is illegal, eg, most obviously, paedophilia, or rape
2 where the activity could certainly lead to blackmail with security implications, or
3 where the politician concerned has made a political career on a platform of “family values”, or anti abortion, or anti gay, and so on.

Apart from that, the fact that politics makes strange bedfellows is of no concern of mine or anyone else. It does not, as is often said, go to “character” (except in the three examples I gave above). Someone’s sexual preferences and partners go less to “character” in a politician than do, say, being an evangelical, or receiving payments from lobbyists, or being a vegetarian.

But these days the media has convinced the public that the reverse is true. In recent times there has been the horrid case of a Gay Club being “staked out” by a tv camera crew in order to film a NSW politician leaving and run with the footage for days until his resignation was forced.

More recently of course has been Peter Slipper, where, to put it even at its simplest, private sexually-charged text messages between adults were splashed all over the Press to force the resignation of a Speaker of Parliament and the collapse of a government. The former succeeded, the latter, just, not.

This stuff shouldn’t happen in Australia, or indeed anywhere else.

There, have I cleared the water, or muddied the pond?

A Thousand Ships

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by politics • Tags: , , , ,

The most significant woman in the World in the last 20 years was a very young White House Intern. No, not the best, or the brightest, or the most powerful, woman in the world, but the most significant, the one whose existence changed history the most.

Look powerful male leaders have always taken advantage of their power (that “powerful aphrodisiac” as Kissinger put it, and I guess he knew) to take advantage of young women. But there have also been many extramarital relationships for leaders apparently based on equality of personal power. Millions of both kinds over the centuries, including Kings (and two of the Queens) of England.

So why do I single out the Clinton-Lewinsky “relationship” [hard to think of word here] for special mention? Two reasons.

Going back through time many American presidents have had extra-marital relationships. Even in relatively recent times of course we have Kennedy (and in very different way perhaps Eisenhower, though before he became President) and perhaps Carter (though he seems not to have inhaled). None of the other recent presidents seem to have (and most seem very unlikely to have, but who knows the mysteries of human attraction?) as far as we know.

Recent British political leaders? Seems not. There was of course Profumo (but then I would say that, wouldn’t I?), though that’s about all.

And Australian leaders, senior politicians? Well, there was Hawke and D’Alpuget, and presumably Gorton and Gotto. Then there was Cairns and Morosi (did I imagine it being said recently that it was young John Howard, of all people, who discovered them in a broom cupboard or something?), and Evans and Kernot, and that’s about it to my knowledge.

But the thing about all those is that little or nothing was said about most of it in the Press at the time, no front page compromising photos, no salacious titbits read out by radio shock jocks. Nor great political capital made, presumably on the basis that those in the glass houses of as yet undiscovered indiscretions probably better pull the blinds down. Oh there was some “Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink” but then it was “Say no more” and that was that.

But with Bill Clinton it all changed and the political world would never be the same again. His “indiscretion” with young Monica Lewinsky was turned into a weapon to smash his Presidency, impeach him for heaven’s sake. Look, sure, it was inappropriate use of power in workplace, no question, bad behaviour. Should have been punished, and steps taken to look at the structures of the White House in terms of sexual harassment and how to prevent it. But the reaction was far out of proportion, and it seemed clear Ms Lewinsky was being used by powerful forces who hadn’t the slightest interest in sexual mores.

Soon made obvious by the trotting out of a whole lot of more mature and non-White House ladies, all apparently called Gennifer (having the same names may have made things confusing, or simpler, I guess), though my memory may be faulty, said to have had relations with Clinton. And on and on. So effectively that the business of government was badly impacted, paralysed, as lawyers and committees proliferated, and shock jocks pontificated. Which was of course the aim, the start of the new tactics by the Right in America to make it impossible for a Democratic President ever to effectively rule again, as Obama has now discovered.

You could argue that taking private lives from off-limits and into the Blitzkrieg Politics that Attwater and Rove introduced meant that nothing would ever again be unthinkable as a political tactic. Swiftboating, Birtherism, Filibustering, Sequestering, and just plain Racism all were legitimised in a sense when Monica’s red dress, and descriptions of Clinton’s genitals, were accepted as legitimate political discourse.

And it only got worse. Clinton was so politically damaged by the unprecedented all-out assault that in turn he was no use to, in fact counter-productive for, the Gore presidential candidacy. Instead of being able to build on his role in a succesful and productive presidency, and use the once very popular Clinton in the campaign, Gore was effectively forced to campaign by cutting loose from his history, his actual qualification for the top job. Ms Lewinsky’s red dress had stained Gore’s campaign, and the stain could not be removed. The result, as we know, was to end in the tears of the hanging chads (in itself another development o tactics in the absolute lust for power of the Right), and, incredibly, the election of the most foolish and incompetent man ever to hold the Presidency.

And the result of that, of course, was 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, the rise of terrrorism and the mad-brained “war on terror”, loss of political freedoms for Americans and others who copied them, trillions of dollars in unfunded expenditure compounded by tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of banks, the eventual virtual collapse of the world finances, and the continuing failure of American action on climate change as the world slowly melted.

So, a major shift in not just American history and society, but that of the whole world, a shift that has continued to resonate for twenty years, and goes on. And a big influence even on the fate of the actual planet we all live on. A thousand consequences launched, unexpectedly, at the first time a vivacious young lady walked into the Oval Office.

Helen of Troy? Pffft!

Although, wait a moment, wasn’t it actually Bill of Arkansas who launched the thousand war ships, Clinton himself who pulled the temple down?

Helen of Troy? Reinstated.

Tilting at markets

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by Economics, politics • Tags: , , , ,

Once upon a time I thought that Steve Jobs was an IT saint, put down on Earth for a little while to enrich the lives of ordinary mortals, and Bill Gates, well, wasn’t. Recent years have tended to almost, though not quite, reverse those judgements, though you would still have to pry my iPad and MacPro from my cold dead hands, and I have never bought a computer that uses Windows.

Still, Bill, and Melinda, Gates, having gained wealth beyond the dreams of anyone except Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, and Australian mining magnates, have been heaven bent (unlike Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, and Australian mining magnates) on putting their riches to good use. And good for them.

And good for Bill, on the basis of what he has learnt in his post-capitalist life, getting stuck into capitalism, “ripping it a new one”, as I would say if I was one of them trendy bloggers.

He pointed out:
“The malaria vaccine in humanist terms is the biggest need, but it gets virtually no funding. If you are working on male baldness or other things you get an order of magnitude more research funding because of the voice in the marketplace than something like malaria.”

While this example relates to a particular interest of Bill Gates, it obviously applies more generally. That is, you can’t rely on “capitalism” to provide any kind of services to a community because it will always focus on the profitable bits and ignore the unprofitable ones. Poor people, and poor regions, will always miss out, an observation that in itself makes nonsense of the libertarian free market neoconservative think tank demands to privatise everything up to the air we breathe.

But Bill’s observations, while absolutely correct and damning, are at the same time just a tad ironic.

One of the demands of conservatives of course is that we get rid of all social services, public support mechanisms, because the super rich, getting ever richer under neoconservative governments, will let a little largesse trickle down from the high table to the poor. Just as, once upon a time, king and nobles might allow the poor to fight over food scraps from their table, or over a handful of pennies scattered on the ground, or allow, graciously, hems of robes to be touched in a free medical service.

The irony is that even a benevolent billionaire like Gates, offering not robe touching but malaria treatments to the poor, is still working to the capitalist model. Not “The Market” but Bill’s own interests and inclinations decide what he will support and fund. Absolutely fair enough, it’s his money that we (well, not me, but you see what I mean) gave him, and he can spend it as he pleases.

But what pleases him is no more serving the whole community in the most effective way than the drug companies who put their mouths where the money is. What we need you see, is a system where the people of a country would elect some of their number to represent their interests. And that number would investigate the needs of the country, its people, and set priorities accordingly. Then there could be a mechanism whereby each citizen, and corporation, according to their ability, contributed a proportion of their wealth to a fund which would be used to pay for those priorities.

If only we were smart enough to invent something we could call, oh, I don’t know, “democracy”. Then we could get things like Malaria funded properly, and not at the whim of capitalists and capitalism, and capitalism could pretend to deal with hair loss.

Lay down misere

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Andrew Elder has written an excellent piece suggesting that the Liberal Party is engaged in trying to makeover Tony Abbott’s image into that of an Antipodean Ronald Reagan:
“The sunny optimism and pleasantness that Abbott showed in his 60 Minutes appearance reminded me of Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s demeanour made him more appealing than his policies of cutting social welfare and decreasing taxes for the wealthy might otherwise have seemed. And he diminished criticism by not letting it get to him.”

I reckon Andrew is probably right. A very difficult tactic to counter as Reagan’s opponents from Carter onwards discovered. “Don’t worry be happy” could be a theme song with an Australian accent for the “Tony One Three” campaign. The more Gillard and Swan attack with, you know, facts about the economy, the more Albanese boasts about 500 pieces of legislation, the more it reinforces their image as being negative tinkerers, while Tony just beams his way through. May, as Andrew suggests, use Reagan’s “there you go again” to deflect any of that troubling discussion about actual policies. Just vote for him, the message will be, and it will be morning in Australia and happy days will be here again. A vote for Gillard, the implicit message will go, is a vote for a misery guts who thinks Australia isn’t perfect, that things need fixing, that people should, in short, worry, be unhappy with their lot.

And yet, and yet… it’s a tactic that relies totally on the acquiescence of the media to succeed. Relies on them being taken in by the sunny smile and the inability to hear questions over the roar of the helicopter. Needs them to be also captivated by the idea that all will be well, don’t you worry about that.

Because it could so easily go the other way. The first to try something like this was Harold Macmillan with his “Never had it so good”. It worked, because many workers were better off, and the economy was going well, and Macmillan won a big victory in 1959. In retrospect though it is seen as an “out of touch with the workers” comment, and is often used to pour scorn on those who use the Reagan tactic.

Imagine, for a moment, that the present Australian government used the Macmillan phrase, or some equivalent. Tried to be sunny and optimistic about the future, didn’t bother people with policies, indicated by their demeanour and smiling expression that the good ship SS Australia was sailing along smoothly under the light touch of a Labor captain.

Before the PM had finished speaking the News Ltd presses would be running hot with Julia Gillard’s face photoshopped on to Macmillan’s body. The ABC reporters would be hot-footing it to western Sydney to find pensioners, old people, migrants, doing it tough, demanding to know how the PM could live on their pensions or unemployment benefits. “Rooted” of Rooty Hill would be writing letters to the Sydney Morning Herald suggesting that the PM was a silver tail from Kirribilli who wouldn’t know the price of Coles Brand bread. Battlers would be queuing up on Alan Jones radio to demand an election to throw this out-of-touch government on the scrap heap of history while Alan agreed that these people should be forced to live on he, Alan’s, wages for a week and see how they got on.

And the more Julia and Wayne tried to smile and be sunny through this onslaught, the more out of touch they would be portrayed as being. And Tony Abbott would appear on breakfast tv looking serious and demanding that the government be honest with people about how tough they were doing it, and promising to give everybody a million dollar note the day after he became PM. Suddenly misery would be good for electoral success.

And the Libs would win with a lay down misere against a government that thought it was holding all the aces.

All Greek to me

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , ,

Hardly a week, hardly a day goes by without examples of police brutality being reported somewhere in the world. Mounted police charging into peaceful demonstrators, suspects tasered to death, handcuffed prisoners shot dead, people in custody beaten up in watch houses, arrested and restrained people sprayed in face with capsicum spray, people dragged behind police cars, people in police trucks left to die from the heat on hot days, you name it, it’s happened somewhere yesterday, happening today, will happen tomorrow.

All par for the course when armed, uniformed men, with absolute authority, are given power over the powerless. Much the same happens in prisons. Or in wartime. But I didn’t want to talk about the actual brutality so much, as about what follows.

Generally nothing.

As soon as an accusation is made, or CCTV or mobile phone footage comes to light, the police force swings into action. Counter accusations will be made against brutalised victims, calls for consideration of “context” of the event, demands that it be recognised what a difficult job police have. Leading politicians, high-ranking police chiefs by their side, will, grim-faced, support their thin blue line. Internal enquiries will be promised. Things will be got to the bottom of.

Police union heavies will hold press conferences, appear on shock jock radio, calling for sympathy and understanding for the traumatised policemen involved, demand that no action be taken, criticise even the suggestion of a totally secret internal investigation.

What there will not be, from any policeman or policewoman, is any hint of sympathy for the victims of the police action, or any hint of criticism of the police concerned. Call that solidarity, this is solidarity. The thin blue line is suddenly very thick indeed, guarding the bridge against the barbarians. The barbarians being the 99.9% of the population who are not members of the police force.

The other occupation, apart from police, derived from the Greek word “polis” meaning both city-state and body of citizens (who created and governed the city-state) is politician. Hardly a week, hardly a day goes by without examples of politicians making sexist and racist remarks, using refugees as political footballs, talking garbage about climate change, favouring the very rich while pretending at principled action, and so on. You think of a piece of wrong-headed, stupid, nasty and vicious comment that could be made, and it was yesterday, is being made today, will be made tomorrow.

Bad enough that we have people in politics with minds like gutters, sewers even, but it gets worse. No sooner is the comment made than leaders of the political party concerned, fellow members, will be blitzing tv, radio, newspapers, to defend the obnoxious remarks, spin them, soften them. Shock jocks will join in to make it seem that this new level of gutter politics is perfectly reasonable, honest, accurate, is now, in fact, the new norm.

What there will not be is any hint that the politician was wrong in what they said about refugees, Aborigines, climate change, single parents, lesbians and gays, environmentalists, the poor. The thin blue line of conservative politicians will be there to hold the line against the outraged politically correct 90% of the public who do not share those views.

Look I get it, really I do. Football players will rally around someone who has stamped on an opponent’s head, soldiers around those who have shot civilians, doctors around those who have damaged patients, lawyers around those who fail clients in court. Defend your fellow workers when they are in trouble and they will defend you when you are. But even without that reciprocity element, the compulsion to look after your own is very strong, perhaps hard-wired back to when the first band of early humans dashed across the savannah pursued by lions. Even on a much larger scale, the concept of “my country right or wrong” “love it or leave it” seems to be a common feature of countries which differ in everything else.

Poor young Bradley Manning has recently completed 1000 days of solitary confinement in very nasty conditions, not even actually charged, let alone convicted. He was a whistleblower, but those responsible for the nastiness he helped expose (for example the helicopter crew massacring Iraqi civilians in Baghdad), remain unpunished, uncriticised even, while he has been subject to the acrimony of a whole nation.

The American government seems determined to ensure that Manning’s treatment will be a warning to others, that no one will ever again break ranks and reveal wrong doing. That the interests of the state and those of its citizens are no longer inextricably linked as the Greeks had envisaged.

Police and politicians seem to have never believed they were. I don’t get it.

It’s all Greek to me.

Never the Bride

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , ,

Has been often said that Aneurin (“Nye”) Bevin was the greatest Prime Minister Britain never had, and no one could argue with that. However I can’t think of any other Post War British Opposition Leaders who didn’t win election as PM about whom you would say that (can any of you dear readers?).

Got thinking about that when a reader responded, on Twitter, to the previous post with a question as to whether I agreed Kim Beazley was the best Prime Minister Australia never had. I do agree with that (with some reservation about religious influence) – his background, intellect, education, experience and big-heartedness (or is that “big-tickerness”?) made him ideally suited to instantly fit into the job. As he has into the role of Australian Ambassador to America.

But beyond that it’s difficult to think of any others that would have been a gain. I suggested Bert Evatt, but you’d have to restrict that to his earlier years in his prime. Probably not (with all due respect) Simon Crean, although he would certainly have done a highly competent job. And not John Hewson, but I’ll come back to him.

Any of the other possibilities are farcical – Sneddon, Peacock, Downer, Calwell (although Arthur would certainly have created a different Australia, by no means necessarily a bad thing) – why, you might as well suggest McMahon as foreman material. What? Oh.

But what about Hewson, you ask? Well, certainly a smart man. And since losing the unlosable election of 1993 has been solid on climate change. But he is what he is, something of a Malcolm Turnbull twin. Uncomfortable with the Billy Tea Party no-nothings of the Abbott Liberal Party, but at the same time big business to his conservative boot straps.

So my gut feelings at the time of Keating’s “Sweetest one of all” 1993 victory were mixed. I think I sensed instinctively that while the Left had won a battle it had lost a war. Keating and Labor were encouraged to believe that Liberal-Lite was a recipe for continuing success. And then were swamped so badly in 1996 when John Howard’s Liberal-Heavy Brigade rolled in that they would be out of power for a political generation of 11 long years of backwards clock-winding.

A Hewson victory in 1993 would have let people see what the modern Liberal agenda really is (as in Newman’s Queensland more recently), and Hewson couldn’t have carried off the Howard Battler vote, nor the dirty pool, of people like Reith, in order to stop the public strongly rejecting neoconservatism in 1996 for a win by Kim Beazley. Ah, these what-ifs of history are intriguing, are they not?

But mentioning Kim Beazley brings us naturally back to America. If Australia, like Britain, only had one great PM who never was, how has the American public treated its candidates? Well, remind yourself that this is a country that voted in Nixon, Reagan and GW Bush NOT JUST ONCE BUT TWICE! Giving Eisenhower, Clinton and Obama two terms goes nowhere near balancing those appalling decisions. And while it’s pleasing that Dewey, Goldwater, Humphrey, Dole, McCain and Romney never got to stand on the bully pulpit, a country which didn’t have Presidents Stevenson, McGovern and Gore (not to mention killing Robert Kennedy as well as his brother) is a country far more wasteful of leadership talent than the UK or Australia.

And all that of course is to leave aside the absence of potential female leaders who never got above the glass political ceilings. Just one each in UK and Australia. The one-off force of nature that was Thatcher couldn’t be held back, and Julia Gillard only made it in unusual circumstances. In America Geraldine Ferraro was restricted to number two behind the unimpressive Mondale, and Hilary Clinton just failed at the last barrier against the Obama unstoppable force for “change”, although hopefully she will get a chance to win in 2016. Sarah Palin of course was chosen as a token, not of her femaleness or intelligence, but of her ability to grunt speeches at the equally nutty Tea Party wing of the Regressive Republican Party. But how many talented women in all three countries have never had a chance to even seek the top job?

Now that’s a lot of best prime ministers (and presidents) we’ve never had.

Ill wind

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by Climate Change, Economics • Tags: , , , , , , ,

This month, once again, air pollution in Beijing has been in the news again. The only new part was that some enterprising fellow was selling bottled air to the public! Let’s leave that for a moment to sink in.

Yes, bottled air. I mean, once upon a time bottled water seemed the ultimate in environmental madness, but we as a species have now really excelled ourselves.

Still, an ill wind and all that, the right-wing think tanks of the US and Australia will be pleased. You see their major task, and this of course has nothing, I repeat nothing, to do with the big corporations that fund them, is to get rid of all regulations in their respective countries. “The Market”, they profess to believe, and I am sure, almost sure, this is a genuine belief they would hold even without funding, will take care of the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, once freed of the terrible burdens of red, black, green, purple tape.

And here in China (just a touch ironically, but never mind) is the perfect example of their belief in action. Allow business to pour fumes into the air unchecked and, cometh the hour, cometh the libertarian, someone will be ready to sell bottles of less polluted air to twenty million people.

Not saying their beliefs haven’t been proved correct over and over. Here the collapse of a building erected without the burden of building codes provides work for bulldozer drivers in the clean-up; there people burnt in a factory with no fire escapes or sprinklers will provide work for undertakers. Polluted drinking water provides work for medical personnel, as do train and plane crashes, and cigarettes.

In fact scarcely a day goes by but somewhere in the world someone, as well as the owner, is making money as a result of regulations unwritten or unenforced. And, thanks to the think tanks succesful fight against any action on climate change, the whole world is still the oyster for energy companies as well as forestry industries, fisheries, agribusiness.

What’s the old Yorkshire saying – ah yes, “Where there’s muck there’s brass”.

The Colour Purple

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by Climate Change, Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Media Matters has analysed media coverage in the US media of climate change in recent years and found, in spite of record temperatures and droughts etc, that coverage was actually declining. Furthermore, even when climate change was mentioned, the vast majority of those interviewed were Republican climate change deniers, with actual climate scientists rarely if ever interviewed. I don’t know if a similar study has been done recently in Australia, although there are studies of the abysmal News Ltd newspapers coverage, but it is absolutely clear that similar, if not worse, statistics would apply. I’m looking here a one particular Australian case which probably has relevance everywhere.

The record high temperatures in Australia this week, followed by devastating bushfires, were an obvious “teachable moment” for the media to join the dots for the public. This is what climate scientists have been predicting, this is what happened, this is what the future holds. Instead there was again a studious silence. It was as if there was no such thing as climate change, as if (like the America drought last year) these things were happening by chance in some world in which nothing else had changed.

Here is a recent example from Australia’s national broadcaster the ABC. Some background. The “7.30 Report” is a relatively serious current affair program, immediately following the main evening news bulletin, and often expanding on the main stories from the news. On the 8 January, as temperatures soared and fires raged, a great deal of the News Bulletin was devoted to those events, and then the 7.30 Report devoted the whole program to them.

None of the news items mentioned climate change, nor did the 7.30 Report in its first half, to my increasing frustration and yelling at the tv set. Then came an interview with “Alasdair Hainsworth from the Bureau of Meteorology”. The presenter, Ben Knight, introduced the segment by noting temperature records, and then noting that the Bureau had been forced to add more colours, black and purple, to its temperature maps to cope with the new high records. Extraordinary, right, and the obvious time to have a discussion about climate change, and indeed Mr Knight began the interview with the question “why are we in this situation where Australia is breaking these temperature records?”

Yes, I thought, here comes a decent climate change discussion at last. But I was wrong. Whether by design, or because that was the way the meteorologist interpreted the question, we immediately moved into a routine that has become very familiar. The ABC (and other networks) when it asks about the cause of events, means only the proximate cause, not the ultimate one. By this means, turning climate discussions into discussions about weather, every time, it avoids every opportunity to talk climate change. And so it was yet again, Mr Hainsworh talking about the trapping of heat on the continent, lack of cloud and moisture, delay in monsoon season and so on. Now, fair enough, this seems to be Mr Hainsworth’s area of expertise (a manager, Assistant Director Services, a meteorologist involved in IT systems and so on, his team recently won an award for “Our Next Generation Forecast and Warning System was highly commended at the Comcover Awards for Excellence in Risk Management in March 2012. These awards recognise exceptional and inspiring leadership in the management of risks faced by Commonwealth Government agencies. The judging panel recognised that the system improved our ability to manage and inform the community about severe weather events, including severe thunderstorms and flash flooding. These events present a significant risk to the safety of the Australian community”). But that being the case, why was he asked to appear? Well, apparently because he is responsible for the area that had to put new colours on the map. OK, now we have an another opportunity to talk climate change.

And here we go, the conversation proceeding as follows:

“BEN KNIGHT: It’s always a difficult question but how much of an aberration is this or does this actually fit into this pattern we’ve seen over the past decades where it’s been progressively getting hotter and hotter?
ALASDAIR HAINSWORTH: Certainly I can comment that this has broken the record as the hottest period. We’ve had six days in a row where the national average maximum temperature has been in excess of 39 degrees. The previous record was four days and we’ve also seen the hottest average day in Australia which was Monday and perhaps it could have been broken again today, although it’s somewhat cooler in Tasmania today. So, that may not be the case. Certainly it’s almost unprecedented as far as records are concerned.
BEN KNIGHT: And you now have this really quite interesting situation where Australian temperature maps have actually had to change because previously they only went up to 50 degrees, we’re now seeing that you’ve got an extra couple of gradings in purple and black to show temperatures which go beyond 50 degrees and indeed on Sunday and Monday in parts of Australia are forecast to do just that?
ALASDAIR HAINSWORTH: Yes, that’s right. The charts previously did go above 50 degrees, our models certainly were picking temperatures above 50 degrees but they were, it was showing up as white and so we decided that we would alter the temperature scale to ensure it showed it properly and we’ve added the extra two gradations which take the temperatures up to between 52 and 54 degrees Celsius.
At this stage we’ve only seen the first gradation, which is between 50 and 52 populated but yeah, it’s certainly extraordinarily hot over South Australia and central Australia and unfortunately it does appear as though it’s going to, it’s set to continue.
BEN KNIGHT: Do you think we are seeing a new reality, a new paradigm?
ALASDAIR HAINSWORTH: Well, as far as the models are concerned then yes. We haven’t seen these temperatures before but by the same token our computer modelling is getting better, it’s getting more accurate, it’s getting higher resolution. So it could be a combination of these factors which in actual fact just means that it’s actually modelling these things better, that it may not necessarily mean that they haven’t happened before but it’s simply that we haven’t been able to model it before.”

Now I had to not only listen to this extraordinary exchange, but read it several times, to try to make sense of it. I think we have here not really a conspiracy of silence, as it were, but more a combination of circumstances resulting in the same outcome. Mr Hainsworth, I’m guessing, is there because the ABC researcher rang the BOM and said we want to do an interview about this heatwave and about the altering of the weather map parameters could you put us on to one of your people to interview please? And the BOM public relations person has said, oh, you want Mr Hainsworth, his area is responsible for the map. So there we are. Mr Hainsworth is there to talk about the map (and is in any case not a climatologist), Mr Knight is there to talk about record-breaking hot weather (although I am guessing he is also under some kind of ABC protocol that doesn’t let him use the phrase “climate change”).

So, potential cross-purposes established, we start this part of the interview. Mr Knight tries to ask whether this hot weather is the result of the changing climate (without using the term, instead going for the euphemism “past decades where it’s been progressively getting hotter and hotter”) or is some kind of “freak event” as it were. Mr Hainsworth is there to talk about hot weather events, and about his map which reports them, so he does. The map and nothing but the map.

Mr Knight, perhaps hoping that although he can’t mention climate change, perhaps he can get his interviewee to do so (again, I am guessing that an ABC protocol may specify this) tries again with a different euphemism. Are we, he asks “seeing a new reality, a new paradigm?” Knight (again I’m guessing) hears his own question as “come on Buddy, talk about climate change FFS, ‘new paradigm’, get it?”. Hainsworth, having been invited on to talk about his map, hears “how did you construct your wonderful new map on your computer, what were the computer paradigms?” and answers accordingly, yes indeed, our computers are bigger and better so the maps are getting better. Or perhaps I am being too kind.

Whatever, the outcome is that extraordinary weather, a clear prediction of climate science, and obvious further evidence that the planet is warming, are both apparently “discussed” in serious tv programs on the national public broadcaster without climate change ever being mentioned. Furthermore the guest manages (I think unintentionally) to suggest that all of this could be just some kind of computer modelling glitch and we aren’t really getting hotter at all. In any case, it’s all because of some odd combination of weather circumstances. (It’s worth noting that the Bureau of Meteorology has apparently issued a statement I can’t find that “Clearly the climate system is responding to the background warming trend”. Which is fine but too mild, and as far as I know was little reported if at all).

Now, if I were to complain to the ABC about this, I would be met with incredulity. “What are you talking about? We talked about the map and got the senior person from the BOM responsible for it to talk about it. What more do you want?” And, at one level, fair enough. But at another level, why not get a climate scientist on? Why not mention climate change by name even once in half an hour of news and current affairs tv?

The next day, by contrast, the media was full of the statements by Warren Truss, leader of the Right Wing National Party and future Deputy Prime Minister in a conservative government. No problems with euphemisms, or being cautious for Mr Truss. He announced that linking heatwaves and record temperatures and bushfires with climate change was “utterly simplistic”. He went on to say that “carbon dioxide emissions from bushfires over the past week would eclipse those from coal-fired power stations for decades. Indeed I guess there’ll be more CO2 emissions from these fires than there will be from coal-fired power stations for decades”. It hardly needs saying that Mr Truss has done no research in climate science, has done no postgraduate degree in the subject, and in fact has no undergraduate qualification of any kind. He began work as a farmer, then went into politics.

It also hardly needs saying that his CO2 from bushfires comment is mind-numbingly wrong. “bushfires this year have emitted an amount of CO2 equivalent to 2% of Australia’s annual emissions from coal-fired power. The current bushfires must burn an area of forest greater than Tasmania to generate CO2 emissions equivalent to a year of burning coal for electricity. And the current bushfires must burn an area of forest the size of New South Wales to generate CO2 emissions equivalent to a decade of burning coal for electricity.” In addition of course, the CO2 from bushfires will be reabsorbed as burnt trees regrow, so, unlike coal power stations, there is no net gain of CO2 from bushfires at all. Again, to my knowledge, there was no fact checking of Mr Truss on tv when he was interviewed, or subsequently. Certainly there was none, nor any contrary view in the News Ltd paper report I saw.

So Climate Change denialists, Right Wing politicians, are able to make any outrageous nonsense claim (Mr Truss also said “‘I’m told it’s minus one in Mt Wellington at the present time in Tasmania. Hobart’s expecting a maximum of 16. Australia’s climate, it’s changing, it’s changeable. We have hot times, we have cold times… “!) they like and it will be hyped up by the media (big headline in the Herald-Sun “Climate change link to heatwave, bushfires ‘utterly simplistic’, says Warren Truss”). Conversely, it seems, any situation in which the reality of climate change might by chance become obvious to the public is played down, or structured in such a way as to avoid the possibility of information transfer to public ears.

It has so far proved impossible to get past the media who are guarding the gate against any possibility of action on climate change. The time has come for more direct action, more big claims, like those of Truss but based on reality not fantasy. Aim to generate headlines in spite of the media. And every time you get a chance at an appearance on tv or anywhere else in the media, keep saying “climate change” over and over. The time for being shy, unobtrusive, in the climate change closet, is over, the time has come for purple prose to go with the new purple patches on the map.