Yes Max, but to a large degree that’s what we have in Australia - a “liberal or libertarian left” and a “conservative right”.

So you see, I wasn’t confusing anything - just making a fairly trite point based on broad political characterisations.

But if it makes you happy (and for the sake of your sickness and tiredness no less), I’ll unstitch my “genuine socialist or leftist” patch!

Nick, like nasking, you’re confusing small l liberalism or libertarianism with leftism or socialism.
There is nothing remotely leftist or socialist in defending some photographs that a genuine socialist or leftist might critique as hegemonic in their representations of girls. If you honestly believe adults should be entitled to produce and view and buy what ever the f-they want then your politics are closer to those of the neo-liberal right you expect thinking people to believe you’re against. All I hear in favour of the image in question is the sort of abstract bullshit that right-wing constitutional fundamentalists resort to to attempt to validate the distribution of hate literature, etc. When you feel you need to appropriate emotive language about censorship you’re argument is lost before it begins. I am yet to see someone defend the work with a dissection of critiques which bother to address the value of consent within the marketplace that is the world of art or address concerns with regard to gender in this context. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion. Just don’t pretend that you’re left-wing because you’re not.

And suspending the principles which underscore critiques of gender in media or forgoing analyses of the value of consent in the marketplace in the context of the photograph is “left-wing” how?
It’s rather people like yourself who resemble right-wing neo-liberals because your throwing away everything to defend something which is essentially a commodity. You might be a liberal or libertarian but you are not “left”. I am sick and tired of imbeciles who reduce these debates to erroneous dichotomies of “liberal or libertarian left” versus “conservative right”. You might like to actually engage with socialist theory, or at least bloody buy a dictionary. Left and liberal or libertarian are not synonymous. And your stance on this position has more in common with right-wing neo-liberalism than anything else.
You need to realise that if your desire to defend images which reinforce white middle class male fantasies about adolescent girls eclipses your desire to defend girls from a status quo of the commercialisation of eroticisation within such a patriarchal framework then you’re the one who is in bed with the right.

I suspect that all three of us might be in furious agreement if we could only agree what we are talking about.

su, it actually annoys me more than I can say when members of the public and the media, and indeed politicians presume to know better than the courts whether the accused is guilty and even how severe the sentence should be.

Hear fucking hear!

Brian, while the public presumption of innocence before the trial is laudable and essential, extending that to matters that have been decided is above and beyond the call of duty.

su, it actually annoys me more than I can say when members of the public and the media, and indeed politicians presume to know better than the courts whether the accused is guilty and even how severe the sentence should be. If we haven’t sat through the whole procedure we really don’t know. Of course journalists and writers sometimes do sit through the whole procedure, and they are in a position to have a better idea.

I can’t comment on whether in “most” cases the family and friends rally around the accused. That’s a matter of counting heads. Certainly being accused can interrupt ties, loyalties and friendships and some of the harm done by false accusations where they occur can be permanent.

All I’m trying to say here is that in the D’Arcy case the crime was horrible, the accusations were contested and are still, but to my knowledge not in a way that is going anywhere legally. I have no idea whether D’Arcy’s supporters are lying, deluded or whatever. I’m saying that the case was complex, the media storm significant, but Beattie seems to have acted with circumspection and responsibility. That doesn’t make him as pure as the driven snow, but he probably did better than you’d normally expect from a politician.

I’m saying that the assertion that Labor in Queensland was defending a sexual offender and closing ranks around him doesn’t seem to stand up. Remember he was pushed out of the party as soon as he was ordered to stand trial and before he was found guilty.

Even so, the main player in Labor then has now moved on. It’s stretching things to use those events as evidence in making generalisations about the Labor Party now.

Probably I should have just referred to the fact that he was pushed out when committed and that Beattie had been trying to ease him out for some time prior to that. But I wanted to indicate just what a smelly pile we were dealing with.

It’s simply of a time past and of a different kind and order, compared with what’s happening now.

Can we talk about something else now?

Even recent eye-witness testimony is problematic Brian, and extremely susceptible to suggestion whether unwitting or deliberate. It is exceptionally difficult to secure a conviction for these kinds of cases so I think this assumption that they were all the victims of a set up is just wishful thinking. I will believe it when the appeals are upheld.

I disagree strongly that tardiness in addressing complaints of criminal activity is irrelevant. If the first instinct of an organisation is to manoeuvre to protect itself from bad publicity, or to put itself at arms length from a person who is seen as tainted, rather than referring the matter for investigation, then inevitably it will lay itself open to charges of complicity. The fact that there have been convictions is a good sign but sacking the person who had an obligation to report is a very clear indication that there is a problem in how these matters are dealt with. It isn’t a problem restricted to any political party, it is a fundamental failure shared by other institutions; churches, schools etc and it needs to be addressed.

Just as the Buswell thing was interesting, not because it revealed him to be a jerk, but because it said something about the institution that rewarded him with power, the Orkopoulos matter is important because it indicates a problem with detecting abuse of power. Burying heads in sand is not a good response to that.

Sauer-Thompson said;

This, remember, is from a political party that has defended the sexual offenders in its own ranks. Remember how they closed ranks around Milton Orkopoulos in Sydney and Bill D’Arcy in Queensland? Isn’t that revolting?

“a political party that has defended the sexual offenders in its own ranks. Remember how they closed ranks around … Bill D’Arcy in Queensland?”

I’m saying that the reality is more complex, that the notion the Qld Labor defending Bill D’Arcy and closing ranks around him is at least highly debatable and probably dead wrong, and in any case irrelevant to the matter in hand.

You brought Sauer-Thompson’s statement to our attention and endorsed it, (”Spot on.”) so you have to take some responsibility for it’s truth and relevance.

It could be said that Beattie in trying to ease D’Arcy out before D’Arcy was committed to trial was prejudging his guilt, but then D’Arcy was quite lazy as a local member, if memory serves and was probably not doing his job of representing his electorate well. On these grounds alone he may have deserved to go.

But it’s all irrelevant to the Henson matter and indeed, I think, to any generalisations one would make about the nature of the Labor Party today.

There are three statements about my position on what I’m saying here that might have relevance. One is that personally I have an extreme negative emotional reaction to Bill D’Arcy. It’s unreasonable that I should have this reaction because I’ve never met him. But it could have something to do with the media’s treatment of him. In fact, from what I recall there is a question as to whether he could have got a fair trial.

Second, what he is said to have done is abominable.

Third, I’ve heard a psychologist who did his PhD on memory and worked both forensically and therapeutically with the victims of childhood sexual abuse. His position was that a person’s memories are their’s alone and have to be respected and treated as part of the experience of that person. The stability and accuracy of such memories for forensic purposes, however, is quite problematic.

But D’Arcy’s conviction stands and I’m not prepared to lift a finger to change it. It’s all in another place, another time and has no relevance to the issue at hand. That’s all.

I’ve got no opinion about that. The fact is that he was convicted by the jury.

And yet you felt the need to include those non-facts as if they may have pointed to some hidden truth, including a slur against the plaintiff.

Anyway take it up with Gary Sauer-Thompson, I was quoting him.

Acoustic guitar pickups

There is a website devoted to establishing his innocence with his wife apparently leading the charge. You will find it easily if you google. It contends that he was convicted on the basis of one witness who 35 years earlier was claimed to have been raped in front of a class of 20 children. D’Arcy’s supporters claim that the 8 year old victim told no-one at the time. They further claim that the police tried to get supporting statements from the 20 children present and failed.

I’ve got no opinion about that. The fact is that he was convicted by the jury. Whether, as claimed, he was a victim of trial by media I have no idea.

Back in January 2000 the Magistrates Court ordered that D’Arcy stand trial. On ABC radio there was this exchange:

GERALD TOOTH: Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, is relieved that he can now reveal his true motivation for pressuring the former back bencher to quit Parliament.

PETER BEATTIE: I have moved decisively in relation to these matters. Mr Darcy is no longer a Member of Parliament.

Beattie said that he had been on the case since August 30 1998.

Clearly it was to Beattie’s political advantage that the reasons he had been trying to edge D’Arcy out did not become public and create a media storm. But Beattie is also a lawyer. It’s my impression that he has shown a commendable interest in protecting the integrity of due legal process, even when his political interest was in play.

In any case time has moved on and I don’t think those events have any relevance to what’s happening now. Are we going to have the matter of Keith Wright (who claims to have been stitched up by his own barrister who was politically aligned with his factional opponents) brought up also? It was 1992, and some of the players in Qld politics then are very much around.

It’s similarly irrelevant, I think. Iemma is another matter entirely.

I have demonstrated that it’s possible to trip the Wesley Anne trigger by strumming moderately hard on an UNPLUGGED ACOUSTIC GUITAR.

Wow. Is an unplugged acoustic guitar like a gay homosexual?

FDB, you continue to ignore the fruitful creative opportunities before you. Just think: Wesley Anne could host next year’s national Air Guitar championships!

Meanwhile, back on the topic…

This, remember, is from a political party that has defended the sexual offenders in its own ranks. Remember how they closed ranks around Milton Orkopoulos in Sydney and Bill D’Arcy in Queensland? Isn’t that revolting? Condemning public erotica in the form of art as offensive and harmful, accepting it in advertising, and spinning the secrecy masked as decency in its own ranks.

Spot on. Iemma in particular must be hugging himself that someone has tethered this particular sacrificial beast to his door post. Someone mentioned Girard in another post. Henson gets to represent the complicity of institutional power so that everyone else can just carry on with business as usual.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6zReaqDIwk

His choice to respond and his comments are of course up for debate and interpretation - but I think the following points might be acknowledged, or…disagreed with

1) This is all he’s had to say on the issue - apart from standing by these original comments.

2) It’s a reasonably frank response - not overblown soap-boxing on ‘what is our society coming to’, ‘this kind of thing should be banned’, ‘you can count on us, the government’ etc.

3) He didn’t suggest in any way he think Henson is a deviant (I’d be almost certain he knows he’s not), or that he should be condemned or found culpable of anything.

4) He didn’t suggest in any way he considers it porn. He viewed and referred to it as art - but doesn’t see the merits of it.

5) He finds the images visually revolting.

I’m not quite sure how this was transformed so quickly into ‘oh great another Howard, thinks he speaks for all of us’…

But as you point out up top Kim, as Labor creep to the right (questionable but strategic sense for a centrist government to push the Opposition further into their corner), a vacuum opens up on the left and issues like this will be where the Greens etc can score points and fill it.

I’ve said before, but the success of the UK Lib Dems these last 10 years is a pretty good example. If Labor stay in power in Oz, the Greens will quite probably double their vote in the next 2 terms.

I don’t think Henson has to be a perfect or a perfectly consistent human being

Yes in fact if we made that a criteria the result would be: shithouse art.

BTW, 85dB SPA? that’s about the recommended level to mix recordings for long periods at (i.e. won’t tire the ears). it’s not “loud”.