Blogging politics, culture, sociology and life from Brisvegas
Howard is staying on to fight the 2007 election.
The cult of celebrity achieves another unlikely threshold. You can now buy celebrity skin cells, bacteria, and erm, fecal matter, via the wonders of the internets. The FAQ includes:
Where do you get your samples from?
We obtain the vast majority of our specimens from an extensive network of trustworthy suppliers, who in their dealings with entertainment and hospitality services, come into contact with celebrities on a day-to-day basis. On occasion we purchase quality specimens from private sellers. Regardless of where the specimens come from, we make certain that all specimens obtained go through the same rigorous testing process.
And for any consumers wondering about the authenticity of their purchases:
All our specimens are tested by experienced body-fluid identification technicians at the Allamas Biological Research Facility in Greeley Colorado and cross-referenced hospital birth records and blood analysis from the Red Cross.
The culture of complaint that swirls around Big Brother usually conflates several issues - sexual and behavioural norms, censorship and nudity, and a cultured distaste for mass entertainment. However, the original justification for television at all was supposed to be its educative function. As Jessculture suggests, the re-uniting of an openly gay man with his lover on national tv has to serve some broader purpose to the good. And it’s interesting as well to see whether David follows up on his aspirations to become a National Party politician - which he was speculating when talking to Gretel tonight were now up the creek. He’d certainly have name recognition.
The phrase belongs to Theodor Adorno, who also wrote:
No universal history leads from savagery to humanitarianism, but there is one leading from the slingshot to the atomic bomb.
Carl von Clausewitz argued that war is a continuation of politics by other means. He also argued that war is a prime example of the universal tendency of plans to fail, and of the intentions of action to misfire and backfire. The “noise” of war was of prime concern to Clausewitz.
Politics is about the creation and contestation of meanings, and about the distinction between friends and enemies. War has a substrate of lived experience - and of the experience of death, often the death of innocents. The continuation of this war requires that meaning overwrite the bodies of the dead, Lebanese, Palestinian or Israeli. It requires that politics inscribe justifications and rationalisations on death. War is also about the violent inscription of narrative signification on the stuff of life and death.
Universal narratives are mobilised as well as divisions - “the global war on Terror”, “anti-semitism”, “a new Middle East”, “the clash of civilisations”. War makes it more vital that we employ a hermeneutics of suspicion, precisely in the service of truth and undeconstructible justice.
Another way of making sense and assigning meaning to fragmented events exists aside from their inscription in rhetorical totalities. Music.
Trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj improvised some music over a recording of his lived experience - the sound of bombs falling on Beirut. You can listen by clicking this link. In doing so, perhaps Kerbaj can provide you with a counterpoint to grand abstractions.
“It is freaking for the nerves but I quickly understood that if I play music while it is happening, it is much better than just hearing it happening. Somehow my brain shifts and I focus totally on the music.”
Asked if he thought his composition was in questionable taste, he said: “Throwing bombs on buses with kids escaping from their villages is in much more horrible taste.”
He said the recording was a way of making people listen to what Beirut was facing. “It’s not like on CNN. It is not a Hollywood movie, it is really happening.”
When Mel Gibson made The Passion of the Christ, it stirred up questions about his possible antisemitism — he has not repudiated his father’s Holocaust denial, and some critics say the film reaffirms old antisemitic imagery.
Now it seems Gibson has blurted out what he really thinks about The Jews, after being arrested for drunk driving. The original version of the police report into the incident (pdf) says he “blurted out a barrage of antisemitic remarks”:
S/Gibson blurted out a barrage of anti-semitic remarks about “fucking Jews.” S/Gibson yelled out, “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” S/Gibson then asked [the arresting Deputy], “Are you a Jew.”
The report was censored by the Deputy’s superior, on the grounds that it would be too inflammatory and might incite antisemitic sentiment in the community. Gibson, once he sobered up, tried to distance himself from his remarks:
I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said.
And so you should be, Mel, but thanks for letting us know what you really think.
Possibly the best edition of “Better Know A District” yet — the District of Columbia.*
* Not part of the United States.
An open thread where you can, at your weekend leisure, discuss whatever you like.
Jessculture bemoans the claim by teenager Stephen Battaglia, “a Year 11 student at Carey Grammar Schoolâ€?, that hugging the Prime Minister was one of the most awesome events of his life.
She argues, quite reasonably in my view:
The words “Prime Minister” and “awesome” do not belong in a sentence together. Ever. Especially from teenagers. I thought the youth of today enjoyed listening to Linkin Park and feeling bitter toward authority figures? THAT’S THE WAY GOD INTENDED THINGS TO BE, WHY ARE THEY NOT LIVING UP TO THEIR END OF THE BARGAIN?
So help her out, please. Regale us with stories of teen rebelliousness and stories of genuinely awesome moments in life.
So the PM claims sole responsibility for his government when it comes to Australia’s economic growth but won’t wear any blame at all when it comes to possible interest rate rises?
Right. So positive economic growth is all about what the government does, while negative economic factors have nothing to do with the government at all. Instead, it’s all about the bananas. Or am I missing something?
The politics of water is getting more interesting in Queensland, with Peter Beattie suggesting either the next state election or a plebiscite should determine support for recycled water. Beattie’s moved his position on this issue recently, which may not be unrelated to a discovery that a power station was sucking water out of SEQ dams without informing the board or the Minister. This, of course, should be a tad embarrassing to the state government as it suggests that information on the actual water demand in SEQ hadn’t factored in the need for water in generating power. Meanwhile, the good burghers of Toowoomba vote tomorrow in a local referendum on whether to go with recycled water for their parched city.
The Nats are apparently trying out their political lines for a possible state campaign on the issue. Yesterday, Deputy Leader Jeff Seeney played the toilet card:
“If he wants to make it an election issue I think the people of Brisbane will judge him very poorly for making them drink their own waste water,” he said.
And today Leader Lawrence Springborg is talking up Google shares:
Coalition Leader Lawrence Springborg urged southeast Queenslanders to surf the internet to find answers about recycled water.
Mr Springborg’s plea came after his own internet investigation turned up what he said were blatant misrepresentations by Mr Beattie using London and Singapore as examples of recycled sewage being used successfully in drinking water.
Mr Springborg said the comparisons were meaningless and misleading.
“I was actually getting excited about this until I checked it out using a Google search and a few phone calls,” he said.
Mr Springborg said recycled water was only used in minute quantities in London and Singapore, compared to what was being proposed for Toowoomba and now Brisbane.
He said most international examples of using recycled water were for non-drinking purposes, like gardening and industry.
“I just say to people don’t listen to the pollies, look it up on the internet,” he said.
John Quiggin will be the speaker at the next BrisScience talk at 6.30 on Monday night at City Hall in the Ithaca Auditorium.
Details are here:
Economics: The Hopeful Science
Discussion of environmental problems is often polarised between two kinds of pessimists.
On the one hand, many environmentalists argue that we cannot possibly sustain existing standards of living without wrecking the environment. On the other hand, are opponents of environmental policy who argue that we must accept grave damage to the environment as the cost of economic progress. Economics suggests a more hopeful answer. We can, if we choose, address the most severe environmental problems facing Australia and the world, and still enjoy rising standards of living over time.
A disgruntled somebody appears to have dumped a whole lot of syringes in a bin 2 doors away from the drug-injecting room in Kings Cross, and then phoned the Daily Terrorgraph to come and see what the dreadful druggies were doing to the area. If s/he wanted to be just a bit more convincing, perhaps s/he should have stuck the needles in a bit of chuck steak and drawn a bit of blood so that they looked like they’d been used, instead of dumping sparkling clean obviously never used syringes in the bin.
Not that the discrepancy between a vista of sparkling clean syringes and the alleged health threat of dirty contaminated needles worried the Terror at all as they ran with the story like a drunk at Pamplona: a big picture of the needles in the bin, and a story opening thus:
THESE are the photographs that shame the so-called “safe” injecting room in Kings Cross – dozens of syringes spilling from a bin in a public street.
At best, the photographs prove critics’ claims that the taxpayer-funded centre is a honeypot that attracts and keeps drug addicts in the area.
At worst, they show that centre staff are exposing the public to potentially deadly blood-tainted needles by showing no care in their disposal.
The bins overflowing with syringes have stood for three days on a footpath at the rear of the Kings Cross Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Kellett St – in the path of pedestrians and school children.
Since Peter’s second thread has reached 200 + comments and is therefore taking time to load, here’s another chance to continue the conversation.
One discussion starter might be the hypothesis being advanced by commentators in the Israeli Press that this war is a result of Olmert’s and Peretz’ political weakness and that its agenda and implementation are being driven by the military rather than the government.
As Uzi Benamin writes:
…two weeks into the war, it is coming across as a runaway train over which the government’s control is growing increasingly tenuous.
The decision to send large ground forces into southern Lebanon and to assign them targets further and further from the border is looking more of a derivative of the military dynamic than the outcome of any well-thought-out political consideration.
If that is the case, of course, it makes any political solution that may be on the horizon that much harder to achieve.
People might also like to discuss the situation in the Gaza, which is receiving little media attention now.
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Recent comments
Jack Hackett, Mark, Fine, zorronsky, Fine, danny [...]
Paulus, Mercurius, Jack Hackett, David Jackmanson, Paulus, Lefty E [...]
Jack Hackett, Sam Clifford, Mark, Maugrim, GB, Mark [...]
Jack Hackett, Paul Burns, professor rat
Geoff Russell, klaus k, Jane, klaus k, klaus k, Jane [...]
Andyc, Jane, professor rat, David, Ambigulous, Andos [...]
steve, steve, danny, steve, steve, steve [...]
TimT, Darlene, Jane, boynton, Helen, Greg [...]
paul walter, pH, Paul Burns, emmjay, tigtog, yeti [...]
Jane, Paul Norton, Andos, Robert Merkel, Paul Burns, Ambigulous [...]
Graham Bell, Graham Bell, Dave, crankynick, paul walter, tigtog [...]
Ambigulous, Wind_Sur, Patrick B, Ambigulous, Bingo Bango Boingo, Patrick B [...]