Tag Archive for '9/11'

They lied about the air too

Published
by
tigtog
4 months ago
in Authoritarianism, China, Ethics, Media, Sociology, Sport and The Web
. 35 Comments

Like Andrew Bartlett, I agree entirely with Andrew Bolt regarding the shameful weaseling by the International Olympic Committee regarding the whole idea of granting the 2008 games to the authoritarian dictatorship of China in the first place.

crossposted

UPDATE: It has been pointed out in comments that LP has not discussed the Rudd government’s continued determination to introduce ISP-level internet filtering this week. To redress that lack I’ll quote a post I made at Hoyden About Town a couple of days ago in its entirety below:

No surprises: internet filtering test results show products block legitimate content

We said it would. Despite a cheery press release from Communications Minister Stephen Conroy that all is going well, an analysis of the actual test results shows that the tested filters slow connection speeds significantly (which means ISPs would have to increase capacity, the costs of which would be passed on to consumers) and have a false positives rate that would block at least 10,000 legitimate sites (and that’s for the best product result - most would block more). It gets worse:

None of the products could effectively filter instant messaging, streaming video, peer-to-peer file sharing like BitTorrent, newsgroups or newly-invented Internet protocols except by blocking them entirely. Let’s count them again. None.

How long will the Rudd government continue to pretend that having this cumbersome, costly and ineffective product shoved at us under an opt-out scheme is in any way a good idea?

Via Tim Dunlop at Blogocracy.

Nigerian Evangelicals and violent homophobia

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 1 week ago
in Authoritarianism, Developing world, Ethics, International, Lesbian and Gay, Politics, Religion and Sexuality
. 39 Comments

We’ve featured a couple of posts here about the upheavals in the Anglican Church over conservative bishops’ hatred of teh gay, and the farce that is the Lambeth Conference, where openly gay American Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson has been prohibited from attending - alone of all the 800 something bishops worldwide. At the earlier conservative meeting in Jerusalem, GAFCON, where Sydney’s own Archbishop Jensen was among the movers and shakers, the pr line was that the conservative African bishops were only concerned with the purity of the biblical faith, standing against all the terrible first world postmodern relativism.

In fact, the story of Nigerian Christian gay rights activist Davis Mac-Iyalla, who has just been granted asylum by the British government, goes a long way towards demonstrating what is actually at stake in the alleged Christianity of the Nigerian church’s hierarchy. As does their attitude towards legislation proposed in Nigeria last year. All this is very far from some genteel doctrinal dispute, or a culture war only violent in its rhetoric.

Michael Savage is a drongo

Published
by
tigtog
4 months, 1 week ago
in Authoritarianism, Disability, Feminism, Levity, Masculinity, Parenting, Philosophy, Politics, Relationships, Science and Women
. 29 Comments

I could have used many harsher terms, but I was exhausted from outrage and despair after reading his latest, and couldn’t really give him my best invective.

Apparently, despite decades of study from medical and childhood health professions, Michael Savage knows better than all of them when it comes to autism. (Like so many of his fellow cultural warrior pundits, an awful lot of it boils down to WIMMIN R DOIN IT RONG (AS USUAL (COZ WIMMIN R LOOSRS)), but there’s a nasty side-dish of JUST SNAP OUT OF IT)

That’s what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’” Savage concluded, “[I]f I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, ‘Don’t behave like a fool.’ The worst thing he said — ‘Don’t behave like a fool. Don’t be anybody’s dummy. Don’t sound like an idiot. Don’t act like a girl. Don’t cry.’ That’s what I was raised with. That’s what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You’re turning your son into a girl, and you’re turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That’s why we have the politicians we have.

Basically? F*ck you and that ablist, misogynist high horse you’re riding, Savage. Continue reading ‘Michael Savage is a drongo’

Homosexuality not actually work of the devil, report finds

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 1 week ago
in Authoritarianism, Books, Writers & Writing, Ethics, Europe, Feminism, International, Lesbian and Gay, Media, Politics, Religion, Sexuality, Sociology and Women
. 9 Comments

It was a very easy contrast to make for the media - while World Youth Day 2008 has been acclaimed as a success by the Catholic Church in Australia, Anglicans were tearing themselves to pieces, with the decennial Lambeth Conference reduced to a farce. A large number of quasi-schismatic conservative bishops boycotted, having earlier set up a quasi-church outside the Anglican Communion’s traditional structures at GAFCON in Jerusalem.

What’s all the fuss about? Teh gay.

Continue reading ‘Homosexuality not actually work of the devil, report finds’

“we can’t take American assurances that they do not torture detainees at face value”

Published
by
tigtog
4 months, 1 week ago
in Authoritarianism, Ethics, Foreign policy, Language, Politics, Security and Terrorism
. 8 Comments

Story: British MPs raise torture concerns

So some politicians have finally noticed that when one group of people define torture so that it includes waterboarding and another group defines torture so that it excludes waterboarding, then the word torture itself becomes stripped of substance in terms of the debate over the ethical and humane treatment of prisoners (let alone which techniques are actually effective at intelligence-gathering).

Took them long enough.

Pope Benedict XVI apologises to victims of sexual abuse in Australia

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Activism, Authoritarianism, Crime, Disasters, Ethics, Media, Parenting, Politics, Religion and Sydney
. 36 Comments

The text of the papal apology, delivered this morning at a Mass in St Mary’s Cathedral, can be read here.

The symbolism of the setting for the apology - a mass for seminarians and members of religious orders and the consecration of a new altar for the Cathedral - was no doubt intended by the Vatican to signal that the Pope was speaking sternly to those at the centre of the institution. But it’s also deeply problematic - as it suggests that the problem is only one for the church, excluding the victims who were left outside while the pomp and panoply of the liturgy took place for the exclusive benefit of the hierarchy.

Continue reading ‘Pope Benedict XVI apologises to victims of sexual abuse in Australia’

Ah, those Russians!

Published
by
Paul Norton
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Film, TV, Video etc, History, International and Media
. 101 Comments

Russia’s state-run Rossiya TV network is conducting an online poll to decide who is the greatest Russian of all time.

The results thus far are dispiriting. In first place is the last Tsar, Nicholas II, followed closely by Josef Stalin (who wasn’t even Russian) with Vladimir Ilych Lenin (who was largely Tatar, German, Jewish and Swedish rather than Russian) in third place. In fourth place is 20th century popular singer Vladimir Vysotsky with Tsar Peter the Great fifth. No sign of Mikhail Gorbachev or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the poll, but Nikita Khrushchev is in the final 50. Andrei Sakharov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky are in but aren’t on the leaderboard, unlike those lovable rogues Boris Yeltsin and Ivan the Terrible.

Are LP readers better judges of Russians than Russians themselves? I’ll put in a plug for Gorby, Jules Martov, Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky and call for your responses. If nothing else, this thread might bring Fyodor out of the woodwork.

Update (28/7/08). Lenin has now jumped to the lead ahead of Vysotsky, with Stalin in third place, and Khrushchev making a late charge into fourth followed by Alexander Nevsky. Tsar Nicholas II is dropping off the pace somewhat in sixth place, followed by Yuri Gagarin, Georgy Zhukov, Peter the Great and Alexander Pushkin.

Latest Update (4/8/08). St Sergy Radonezhsky, Russia’s most popular saint and a folk-hero during the time of Mongol occpuation, has now sprung to the lead. Considering that he is reputed to have performed miracles whilst still in his mother’s womb, winning an online poll should be child’s play for him. Stalin is back to second place, followed by Georgy Zhukov rising to third, Lenin slipping back to fourth and Yuri Gagarin recovering to fifth. Rounding out the top ten are, in order, Prince Alexander Nevsky, Alexander Pushkin, the multi-skilled Mikhail Lomonosov, Nikita Khrushchev and Vladimir Vysotsky. The various Tsars all seem to be dropping off the pace after being prominent early.

Bad work and the denial of liberty

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Activism, Authoritarianism, Economics, Ethics, Industrial Relations, Philosophy and Sociology
. 81 Comments

A lot of the debate about WorkChoices, quite properly, revolved around not just the severe distraint that the legislation placed on bargaining power in the employment relationship but also on its failure to accord employees basic civil rights in the workplace. Much of recent thinking on employment has revolved around extending the rights proper to civil society to the workplace - and reframing a perspective that saw rights only at issue insofar as they revolved around liberal principles of contract. But basic rights within the workplace should just be a baseline, as it were. I don’t agree with all of the arguments in his paper, but I’m pleased to see David Coats from The Work Foundation publishing a provocative piece for the new(ish) Australian thinktank Per Capita entitled Quality of Work and A New Politics of A Quality of Life. [link to pdf]

The principal goal of progressive politics is to create a society in which people have the capabilities to choose a life that they value. Allied to this of course is the profound conviction that unless certain goods are provided collectively – education, healthcare, infrastructure and physical security for example – then some citizens, generally the poorest and most vulnerable, will fall by the wayside. The opportunity to choose a life that one values is inevitably diminished if an employee is condemned to insecure poorly paid work with limited opportunities for progression. “Bad work” in this sense is a significant constraint on individual liberty.

There’s no doubt, I think, that work continues to be central to our late modern society not just in terms of the creation of wealth, but also in enabling or potentially enabling fulfilment, creativity and self-actualisation. Continue reading ‘Bad work and the denial of liberty’

Emma Foster: In memoriam

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Crime, Disasters, Ethics, Law, Media, Melbourne, Parenting, Politics, Religion and Sydney
. 56 Comments

I hope that Anthony Foster and his family, who intend to confront Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell in Sydney this week over the Catholic Church’s treatment of their late daughter, Emma Foster, who took her own life in January and her sister Katie, both of whom were raped as primary school children by Father Kevin O’Donnell, aren’t dismissed as “Catholic bashing” and raining on the World Youth Day parade or subjected to victim blaming as Anthony Jones was. Foster told the tragic tale of his daughters’ abuse and how it marked their lives horrendously for the worse, and probably brought Emma’s life to a close, on Lateline tonight.

Continue reading ‘Emma Foster: In memoriam’

Is criticism of World Youth Day automatically Catholic bashing?

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Ethics, Feminism, History, Lesbian and Gay, Media, NSW Government, Politics, Religion, Sexuality, Sydney and Urbanism
. 82 Comments

It’s no secret that “the sectarian strand” is one of the less attractive aspects of Australian history, and interestingly, probably not one featured highly either in the so-called “black armband” or triumphalist narratives so beloved of our home grown Antipodean culture warriors. That may be because the deep cleavages - overlapping but not identical to class and ethnicity - around Catholicism and Protestantism needed to be elided and to be buried in order to construct the “Anglo-Celtic” identity which came into its own at the same time that the state aid controversy was settled into its grave and multiculturalism launched on its career. And not coincidentally. “Anglos” and “Celts” were on different sides of the political and cultural coin in the Great Southern Land of the Holy Spirit for most of its whitefella history. In a way, Gough Whitlam is probably the progenitor of the “mainstream” Anglo-Celtic Australian. But sectarianism typically rears its head as a defensive accusation whenever the Catholic Church is particularly prominent in public debate, and whenever criticism is directed at the Church’s institutional power.

In the context of World Youth Day in Sydney this week, this accusation has been levelled both with regard to criticism of the extraordinary powers granted to police by Greg Craven and with regard to the ABC’s highlighting of Cardinal George Pell’s ethically very questionable handling of clergy sexual abuse complaints by Andrew Bolt. More broadly, the media sponsors of World Youth Day at News Limited have worked themselves into a lather of holy righteousness, denouncing “aggressive secularism” and lauding all the Popey goodness they’re sponsoring - without disclosing that sponsorship in their journalistic or opinion pieces.

It may well be that a residue of sectarian anti-Catholicism might be in play on the margins of all this, but one of the big ironies is that while Tony Abbott and others speculated that Pope Benedict’s message might not be communicated effectively, the Pope himself has seemingly become a football to be kicked around by the usual suspects in distinctly Australian culture wars which often have only a tenuous connection with his concerns. But are there not genuine issues - of public interest - that can and should be raised at a time when Catholicism is top of the pops in the media stakes?

Continue reading ‘Is criticism of World Youth Day automatically Catholic bashing?’

Annoyed! III

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 3 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Crime, Ethics, Media, NSW Government, Relationships, Religion and Sexuality
. 116 Comments

Irfan Yusuf has the money quote on all the World Youth Day imbroglios, writing in today’s New Matilda:

I guess it really boils down to values. Cardinal Pell once accused Muslims of having difficulty separating Church from State. Unless he openly distances himself from (and not just denies involvement in) increased police powers designed to protect pilgrims from annoyance, his own secular credentials might look compromised.

On Lateline last night, in the context of new revelations about the crimes of Father Terrence Goodall, and George Pell’s casuistry in dealing with clergy abuse victim Anthony Jones, and his avoidance of any admission of culpability and therefore responsibility for the consequences of his actions, host Tony Jones interviewed prominent Catholic journalist and author Robert Blair Kaiser.

And I think that model can be applied to modern times and we can be a much more responsible, accountable church in a local situation where the bishop is not appointed by the Pope but elected by the people.

In referring to the democratising forces unleashed by Vatican II, Kaiser was suggesting that the root cause - not just of clergy abuse but also of cover-ups and grossly inadequate responses to its “horror” - is a deeply authoritarian tradition and its accompanying mindset and culture. George Pell is one of the leading lights of the Catholic “restorationists” who want to put all the genies of Vatican II back in the bottle, and return to a “Father Knows Best” model which has given us Catholics a Church marred and contaminated by misogyny and authoritarianism. Pell’s attitude to political power (which has been on show with World Youth Day) and his treatment of those whom some priests and brothers have monstered is cut from the same cloth - a desire to protect the institution and its power above all else. Continue reading ‘Annoyed! III’

Annoyed! II

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 3 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Ethics, Media and Religion
. 67 Comments

This sort of thing was probably always going to surface in the media just before Pope Benedict XVI came to Sydney for World Youth Day, but I’m sure Cardinal Pell is annoyed that he’s been accused of lying to a victim of clerical sexual abuse in order to protect a priest who was later convicted. He might also be annoyed that there are documents obtained through legal action and given to Lateline which make a pretty convincing case that the allegations may have merit. When he was Archbishop of Melbourne, Pell was accused of offering victims hush money not to speak out (an accusation he denied), something that is now expressly prohibited by the Catholic Church’s protocol - Towards Healing - on dealing with clergy abuse victims. Broken Rites, a support and advocacy group, has criticised the Church’s protocols. It’s noteworthy here that the Archdiocese of Melbourne has a separate set of protocols, a legacy from the time when Dr Pell was Archbishop and his opposition (alone among all the Catholic Church’s Australian bishops) to the national standards regulating church responses.

Continue reading ‘Annoyed! II’

Art Monthly furore!

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 3 weeks ago
in Advertising, Art, Authoritarianism, Culture, Ethics, Law, Media, Parenting, Photography and Politics
. 221 Comments

I was interested to read of the loud condemnations by Morris Iemma and Kevin Rudd of the cover of the latest issue of Art Monthly Australia. The cover features detail from a print of Polixeni Papapetrou’s Olympia as Lewis Carroll’s Beatrice Hatch before White Cliffs. In this artwork, the artist’s then six year old daughter, Olympia Nelson, is portrayed naked. My first thought was to wonder whether either Iemma or Rudd had actually seen the magazine in question, and that’s still unclear to me. My second thought was to wonder whether one of the media themes of the day - embodied in this piece by Nicholas Pickard in Crikey - had any merit. Pickard argued that the magazine’s editor, Maurice O’Riordan, was a “total fool” who was playing into “Hetty Johnson’s hands”. The two subtexts appear to be that the Bill Henson controversy had faded away, leaving artists to go about their business as normal (or something), and that O’Riordan was courting more controversy in order to increase sales of his mag, heedless of the dangers of raking up the cinders of the fire the Bill Henson controversy started.

But, unlike a lot of people who might have an opinion about this new controversy/furore/”debate”, I thought I might go and buy a copy of the magazine in order to form my own view. So I did.

Continue reading ‘Art Monthly furore!’

Waterboarding Hitchens

Published
by
tigtog
5 months ago
in Authoritarianism, Ethics, Language, Law, Politics, Security, Sociology and Terrorism
. 34 Comments

Christopher Hitchens actually had himself waterboarded by the US Military to see whether it felt like torture to him. It did.

via Pharyngula, who has links to video.

The public’s gain is the public’s loss

Published
by
Mark
5 months ago
in Authoritarianism, Culture, Economics, Education, Ethics, Government, International, Media, Policy, Politics, Sociology and The Web
. 2 Comments

When I read about Andrew Leigh’s departure from academia into the pointy end of the social policy world on secondment to Treasury for six months, my first thought was that it was a mixed blessing - no doubt Andrew will do good things in the public service, but taking him out of the mix of commentary in the blogosphere and the pages of the Fin deprives us of one of the far too few provocative and interesting and informed writers on public affairs we have in this country. My second thought, having attended Richard Allan’s presentation at the CCi conference last week was that it didn’t need to be this way. Tim Watts got there before me - pointing to the much more enlightened view taken on public servants contributing to public debate in the Old Blighty. Once the home of the “Official Secrets Act” and all things backstage and hidden, Westminster is doing an awful lot better in promoting open government and facilitating public debate than we are in this country. And British citizens are doing a lot better at finding ways to talk back to power via the web. Worth thinking about why that might be so.

Continue reading ‘The public’s gain is the public’s loss’